what does commonsense psychology tell us about meaning?

What Does Commonsense Psychology Tell Us about Meaning?Author(s): Mark RichardSource: Noûs, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp. 87-114Published by: WileyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2216202 .

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NOUS 31:1 (1997) 87-114

What Does Commonsense Psychology Tell Us about Meaning?

MARK RICHARD

Tufts University

1 Introduction

Michael Devitt tells us to look to everyday talk about meaning to discover meaning's nature. We should determine what purposes, explanatory and otherwise, lay behind such talk; meanings are the sorts of things whose ascription would serve such semantic purposes.

According to Devitt, propositional attitude talk is the locus of folk semantics. Its primary purposes are two: to explain and anticipate behavior, and to use believers as "guides to reality" (in virtue of the fact that their beliefs tend to be true). Propositional attitudes, says Devitt, are token mental structures, sentence-like enought to license identification of beliefs with "mental sentences." To utter

(1) Ralph believes that Ortcutt is a spy

is to say that a mental sentence Ralph "believes-true" has a certain property specified by the clause "that Ortcutt is a spy." Folk talk about meaning is thus ascription of certain properties to mental sentences, with the purposes of explaining behavior and "guiding us to reality."

From all this, Devitt infers that meanings are properties, of the sort ascribed by (1), the possession of which would in fact serve semantic purposes-that is, whose possession would explain behavior (according to our folksy explanatory principles) and which would make others guides to the ways of the world.

One might question whether attitude ascription is the primary locus of the folk theory of meaning; homilies about understanding and communication (both linguistic and otherwise) seem as important here as talk of the attitudes. Arguably, the account of meaning one would extract from this discourse differs from Devitt' S.2

?) 1997 Blackwell Publishers Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 108 Crowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK.

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I will not press this point; I accept for today the assumptions outlined above. I will argue for four points. (1) Devitt says meanings are things whose ascription in commonsense psychological explanation (CPE, henceforth) would actually explain behavior. He identifies (behavior explanatory) meanings with ways of referring; for names, demonstratives, and some predicates, such ways of referring are causal relations between representations and reality. I will argue that humdrum facts about CPE undercut the identification of (behavior explanatory) meanings with such causal relations.3 (2) Devitt argues that there is no motivation for identifying (some aspect of ) the "content" or meaning of token thoughts with reference independent inferential role. I argue that Devitt is wrong about this. In fact, his own views lead to the conclusion that content does involve aspects of reference independent inferential or conceptual role. (3) I argue that preferable to Devitt's (naturalized) Fregean account of attitude ascription are contextualist views, such as those advanced by John Perry, Mark Crimmins, and myself. (4) Finally, I argue that Devitt's account of meaning's nature, when combined with contextualism about attitude ascription, leads to the view that (for instance) there is nothing to the meaning of a name type besides its reference. That is to say: If we accept Devitt's methodology for finding meanings, the facts about attitude ascription then require to us endorse a "direct reference" view of meaning for name types, instead of Devitt's quasi-Fregean proposal (on which one meaning of a name is its "mode of referring" to its referent).

2 Devitt's Account of Meaning

According to Devitt, to utter


is to say that there is a token mental sentence S which Ralph believes (i.e., to which he bears the relation picked out by 'believes') which has a complex property-a meaning-which is supplied by the clause 'that Ortcutt is a spy.' These meanings are representational. Sentence S has the property ascribed by (1)'s 'that'-clause only if S is true iff Ortcutt is a spy, with the possession of these truth conditions secured by S's having parts which refer to Ortcutt and to the property of being a spy.

But there is something more to meaning than reference and truth, Devitt tells us. He claims (1) is ambiguous. Sometimes (1) just says (roughly) that Ralph has a belief realized by a mental sentence of the form o is F, where o refers to Ortcutt and F to being a spy. But sometimes it says that he has a belief realized by such a sentence, where o refers to Ortcutt "in the same way" or "under same mode" as does the word 'Ortcutt.' 4 So there are two kinds of meanings which a mental term (corresponding to 'Ortcutt') might have: the transparent one, which is the property of referring to Ortcutt, and the opaque one, which is the property of referring to Ortuctt "under the mode of 'Ortcutt. "' 5Devitt holds that there is an "intimate link" between the meanings of the constitutents of our thoughts and the meanings



COMMONSENSE PSYCHOLOGYAND MEANING 89

of the corresponding parts of the natural language sentences which ascribe them. He concludes that our natural language terms typically have two sorts of meanings, too.

The opaque meaning of a singular term is a property it has in virtue of how it refers. Delineating possible "modes of reference" thus gives us a typology of (opaque) meanings. According to Devitt, the reference relation is largely a causal relation. Demonstratively used expressions refer in virtue of (perceptually mediated) causal relations among the referent, the expression, and its user. Thus, some "modes of reference" are "demonstrative reference properties" such as

P1: referring to Hannah in virtue of a demonstration of her P2: referring to Hannah in virtue of being addressed to her

Beyond specific demonstrative modes of reference, there is (for each object u), a general demonstrative mode of reference; an example is

P3: referring to Hannah in virtue of some demonstrative relation.

A proper name token-say one of my uses of 'Moore' to name G.E.-refers because it is linked to the referent via a chain tracing back to an ur-use of the name ('s type) to refer to the referent. Such a chain may be thought of as a se- quence; its members are the abilities of various speakers to use the name type to refer. Your ability to use 'Moore' to name G.E. directly precedes mine in the chain if I "borrowed the reference" of the name 'Moore' from you. Such a chain's first member will typically be "grounded" in an object, to which uses of the name associated with the chain refer. Chains for a name type are knit together into networks in virtue of speakers recognizing uses of the name as co-inciding with their own.6 One assumes that a similar story will be told for the majority of predicates, both natural kind predicates and otherwise.

Such is a whirlwind tour of Devitt's garden of modes of reference. Now, exactly what are the opaque meanings of demonstratives and proper names-what are their d-senses, as I shall call them? The opaque meaning of any use of a demonstrative, according to Devitt, is the property of referring to the bearer demonstratively; the opaque meaning of a proper name which is part of a network N is referring to the bearer in virtue of being part of that network.' Put otherwise, and subject to certain caveats I will discuss, Devitt holds that opaquely construed, a use of

(2) Ralph believes that d is a spy,

d a demonstrative referring to Ortcutt, says that Ralph has a belief realized by a sentence of the form x' is a spy, with x' a term which refers to Ortcutt in virtue of some demonstrative relation. And, subject to certain caveats to be discussed, Devitt holds that an opaque use of (1) is true provided Ralph has a belief realized



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by a sentence of the form x is a spy, where x is part of the same network as is (1)'s use of 'Ortcutt.'

3 Prima Facie Problems for Devitt's Account

Caveats are very much in order, given that CPE is underwritten by the nomolog- ical truth of opaque readings of claims such as

(3a) If Ralph believes that Ortcutt spies, and he believes that if Ortcutt spies, then Ortcutt should be shot, then ceteris paribus he believes that Ortcutt should be shot. (3b) If Ralph believes that you are a spy, and he believes that if you are spy, then you should be shot, then ceteris paribus he believes that you should be shot.

Devitt is pretty clearly committed to the nomologicality of such principles, holding a version of the received view, that CPE explains in virtue of support from lawful generalizations expressible in (more or less) unadorned English, like those in (3).8 But without modification or restriction, the account of attitudes and their ascription just sketched sits poorly with the received view. For consider:

The Multiple Network Problem

We can and do appeal to warhorses like (3a-b) in explaining the behavior of those who do not speak English. Suppose Ralph a mono-lingual speaker of Spanish who believed-true Spanish versions of 'Ortcutt spies' and 'if Ortcutt spies, he should be shot.' Suppose these attitudes bring Ralph to try to shoot Ortcutt. We explain his behavior with (1), (3a), and an ascription of the conditional belief. But Ralph's vocabulary, particularly Spanish versions of 'shoot' and 'spy,' do not enter into the causal network grounding the English predicates. So (1), construed opaquely, doesn't even seem true on Devitt's view; he must seemingly deny that we can explain Ralph's behavior with (3a), since it does not involve reference to those senses which in fact motivate him. The problem here is that one must individuate meaning more coarsely than d-sense for (3a) to be explanatory. Which brings us to:

The Fine Grain Problem

Recall that 'Ralph believes that you are a spy' is true, opaquely construed, provided Ralph has some demonstratively grounded belief to the effect that you are a spy. Because of this, (3b) seems no approximation to a law, since Ralph might believe the consequent of the conditional "if you spy, you should be shot" under, say, one "visual mode of presentation," its antecedent under another. Brief med- itation on Peter's problems with 'Paderewski' shows that (3a) is no better off. Apparently, one must individuate opaque meanings more finely than d-sense, if one is to hold Devitt's view of meaning and that we do manage to explain behavior with the aid of the warhorses.




4 Devitt's Solution to the Multiple Network Problem and an Objection

Devitt' s answer to the multiple network problem is, roughly speaking, to "coarsen" the notion of d-sense, so that name tokens A and B have the same d-sense provided they are either produced by abilities in the same network, or one of them is a (conventional) translation of the other.9 So, in our imagined scenario in which Ralph is Spanish, we can explain his behavior using (1) and (3a) so long as their content sentences translate the mental sentences which realize Ralph' s attitudes.

This seems inconsistent with the idea that N has the same d-sense as M is an equivalence relation. A conventional translation of 'groundhog' into French is 'marmot'; conventional translations of 'marmot' into English are either of 'groundhog' or 'woodchuck.' So 'groundhog' in English has the d-sense of 'marmot' in French which has the d-sense of 'woodchuck' in English, but the two English expressions presumably do not share a d-sense, as they are not part of the same network.10

The problem makes itself felt most sharply if we consider a French translation of the principle

(G) Whoever wants to shoot a groundhog and believes that she sees a groundhog in front of her will ceteris paribus take a shot

a translation in which 'groundhog' is consistently translated as 'marmot.' (G) seems as apt a candidate for lawfulness as do (3a) and its fellows; if (G) is lawful, the French translation ought be, too. But Devitt would have us understand 'marmot' in the translation as specifying a "disjunctive" way of thinking of ground- hogs, one which someone employs if she thinks of something using any of 'marmot's translations, including either 'groundhog' or 'woodchuck.' So the French translation implies that if someone wishes-true 'I shoot a groundhog' and believes-true 'there is a woodchuck,' then ceterisparibus she will shoot. But such a person need not be fatigued; she needn't have overriding desires; she may be concentrating on both the belief and desire, ready to shoot the second she sees a groundhog. In such a case, one thinks, none of the defeating conditions tucked into the 'ceteris paribus,' obtain. Since the subject does not shoot, we have no law.

5 Devitt's Solution to the Fine Grain Problem

Devitt's answer to the fine-grain problem can be seen as responding to the objection just raised. In essence, the fine grain problem is this: because 'London' and 'Londres' have the same d-sense, Devitt's view implies that the warhorses are false. Devitt responds that the warhorses don't apply to cases in which fine- grained distinctions among d-senses can be drawn. According to Devitt, you can't explain Pierre's behavior by invoking a warhorse such as



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(3c) Whoever wants to visit London and thinks that if they buy a ticket to London, they will visit it, will ceteris paribus buy a ticket"

because it "doesn't apply" to him. Since (3c) doesn't apply to Pierre, he is no counter-example to its truth.

How can this be? Devitt's observes that there isn't a "match" between Pierre's belief 'London is ugly' and his intention 'Je voyage au Londres' because Pierre "hasn't made the appropriate identity assumption" connecting the terms 'Lon- don' and 'Londres.' (231) Devitt instructs us to call modes of referring unified for a person when she "makes the appropriate identity assumption." The idea, I take it, is that if abilities to refer are abilities to refer to a single object, an identity assumption linking terms which express the abilities is "appropriate"; one makes such an assumption if (roughly) the abilities are in one or another way "linked" to a single "file of information." 12

Modes of referring are properties, such as

P1: referring to Hannah in virtue of a demonstration of her P2: referring to Hannah in virtue of being addressed to her P3: referring to Hannah in virtue of some demonstrative relation.

They can thus be partially sorted in a genus/species relation, with a mode P being species of a mode Q if any token which is a P is a Q. but not vice versa. So, for example, the specific demonstrative modes P1 and P2 are species of the general demonstrative mode P3.

Suppose that all the species of a mode of reference M (which are realized in one or another of my token beliefs) are unified for me. Then for any two tokens that have M, I (correctly) take them to refer to the same thing (I "make the identity assumption"). Suppose, for instance, that all P3's species are unified for me. Then I realize, of any two of my demonstrative presentations of Hannah, that they present the same object. In this case there is, from an explanatory perspective, no point in distinguishing among such presentations: If I believe Hannah to be sad under P2, and I have beliefs under P1, I will believe her sad under Pl.13 Fine grained distinctions among my demonstrative presentations of Hanna are irrelevant in explaining my behavior, given that P3's species are unified for me. So if a psychological explanation presupposes that the subject of the explanation has united all species of the modes referred to therein, the fine grain problem will not arise.

This is Devitt' s answer to the fine grain problem. We can apply a psychological generalization to a person only if that person has "unified the d-senses" the generalization refers to:

For a psychological generalization to be appropriate, a mode [invoked in the generalization]... must have no ununified species. (232, emphasis in original)




(3b) is not "appropriate" if Ralph has seen Ortcutt in two different locales-and thus has two demonstrative presentations of Ortuctt-but does not realize that he saw the same man twice. (Remember-the d-sense of a demonstrative token is a general demonstrative mode of reference.) Generalizations in which 'London' occurs in content sentences will not be appropriate in the case of someone like Kripke's Pierre. For 'London' supplies the disjunctive mode

P4: referring to London in virtue of being in the 'London' network or the 'Londres' network or...

But Pierre has tokens (of 'London' and 'Londres') of this type which are not unified.

What does Devitt mean, by saying that commonsense generalizations are not appropriate in such cases? He might mean that the generalizations are to be for- mulated in such a way that their quantifiers over sense are restricted to unified senses-i.e., to senses, all of whose modes are unified (for the thinker).14 Or perhaps Devitt doesn't intend a restriction in the quantification over senses in the laws of commonsense psychology, but intends that there is, among the ceteris paribus conditions in any of its laws, the condition that the agent have unifed all the relevant senses. So far as I can tell, these interpretations don't effect what behaviors the laws would explain or what counterfactuals they sustain. I take it that it is obvious that if this suffices to solve the fine grain problem, it handles the objection to the Multiple Network problem's solution.15

6 Can We Live with This Solution?

Devitt's solution to the fine grain problem makes it impossible to account for innumerable cases of commonsense psychological explanation. It is not at all unusual for a person to fail to "unify" demonstrative modes of reference, or fail to appreciate co-reference of names which translate each other. The fact that someone is ignorant of a "relevant" identity seems, by and large, completely irrelevant to the success of a psychological explanation.

Example: Smith is in a field full of sheep. One is particularly close to him. He hears its 'baa.' He sees that it is about nibble his shoe. Suppose his belief that the sheep is about to nibble his shoe and his desire to avoid that brings him to kick the sheep. If you ask me why Smith kicked that [pointing at the sheep], I can explain by pointing at the sheep and saying

(4) Smith kicked that sheep because he thought that sheep was going to nibble his shoe, and he believed that kicking it would stop it from nibbling.

This seems as good as CPE gets. But suppose-unknown to me-Smith smelled the sheep he eventually kicked,

knew he was smelling one or another sheep, but was oblivious to which, of the many sheep he saw, he smelled. Does this render (4) non-explanatory? Surely



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not. The fact that Smith has not "unified" his olfactory presentation of the sheep with his visual and aural presentations is neither here nor there to the success of (4). But the olfactory presentation of the sheep is a demonstrative presentation of it. So Smith' s demonstrative presentations of the sheep are not unified. So commonsense laws such as

(S) If Smith thinks that kicking that sheep will stop its nibbling and Smith wants to stop that sheep's nibbling, then ceteris paribus Smith will kick that sheep

don't, on Devitt's view, apply to Smith. So they can't underlie explanation (4). So, it seems, (4) is, after all, non-explanatory.

Surely commonsense finds this sort of fact totally irrelevant to whether (4) is successful. However it is that commonsense tries to explain behavior by ascribing attitudes, what it is trying to do is something whose success would normally be unaffected by such "failures of unification." Such examples, in which modes are ununified, but the lack of unification seems obviously irrelevant to the behavior explanatory enterprise, can be multiplied ad lib and ad nausea. And they are not confined to cases involving demonstratives.

Another example: Suppose your friend thinks "London is not pretty." Wanting you to know this, he says to you "London is not pretty." You explain what he did thus: He uttered "London is not pretty" because he wanted me to know that Lon- don is not pretty. Surely you have succeeded in explaining your friend' s behavior, even if (unknown to you) your friend is the infamous Pierre.

Devitt makes a concession which might be thought to respond to such criti- cism. Of

(T) Pierre believes that London is not pretty

Devitt writes

if we want to advert to the meanings that will do the explanatory job, [perhaps] we have to resort to a complex nonstandard ascription, instead of (T), for example:

(T') Pierre believes that London, qua city he is living in, is not pretty.

[But] perhaps not. Perhaps in [a situation in which we are discussing Kripke's example]...the context of (T) "supplies the qua"; (T) has a hidden-indexical element; and (T) is elliptical for (T'). [But].... 'London' usually specifies a disjunctive mode [i.e., P4] and is not elliptical. (234, example sentences renamed)

The concession is that in certain cases 'London' is elliptical for some more elaborate expression, and thus contributes not P4 but something like




P5: referring to London in virtue of the d-sense of 'London,' and being at- tached to a mental file labelled current residence.

P5 may be unified, even if P4 is not. This doesn't deal with the problem. Devitt holds-and must hold, as we will

see-that such cases, in which (T) involves reference to a property of a "mental file" such as being labelled current residence-are very unusual. So for Devitt such a case must be triggered by something like an intention on the part of the speaker to depart from normal protocol and make such reference. But in the examples I gave, there is no reason to think such intentions would be present, even inchoately, unless they were normally present. The cases, recall, were ones in which the speaker was unaware of the failure of unification. In uttering (4), I didn't know that Smith didn't associate smell and vision; you didn't know about Pierre's bizarre history. And if these facts were brought to our attention, we wouldn't find that they robbed our explanations of power. Since the examples seem to be ones which are perfectly unexceptional, with regard to speaker intentions, and ones in which an explanation is given, it seems to follow that ordinary attitude ascription works by referring, or otherwise adverting, to properties distinct from d-senses, ones whose grain is far finer."6

7 Explaining Behavior

There is a familiar type of story, about attitudes and their ascription, which the foregoing examples strongly suggest. On this story, the mind "sorts" information into "files," a file being a locus of information which purports to be about a single thing. Some files have "labels." Some labels might be natural language names; some might express "demonstrative modes of presentation"; some may be descriptive. Since the purpose of such files is to act as loci of information about what is supposedly a single individual or relation, it is not inappropriate to call them representations. In the preceding examples, believers have multiple representations which "trace" to a single individual.17 Continuing to think of beliefs as sentence tokens, the story sees the token parts of a token belief-in particular, its "names" and "predicates"-as linked in some significant way to representations. Such linking, on this story, makes the token a "proxy" for the representation itself.

On this picture, token belief states-say, a "visual belief" that this sheep is dangerous, or an "olfactory belief" that that sheep smells have parts ("names") which are "linked" to representations, which are loci of information about (purportedly) a single object. If I correctly take different beliefs to be about the same thing, token "names" in those beliefs will be linked to a single representation; if I fail to register an identity, token names which (in some sense of 'should') should be linked to a single representation will not. And if I mistake the objects of two beliefs for a single object, "names" in such beliefs will be erroneously linked to a single representation.



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How does such a picture help in accounting for the explanatoriness of ascriptions such as (4)? Note first that it is natural to take the warhorses to involve quantification over representations and quantification over or reference to truth conditional content. For example, something like

(5) Whoever believes that Al smokes, and believes that if Al smokes, he will die, will, ceteris paribus believe that Al will die

is naturally taken as equivalent to, or even making the claim that

(R) If you have a belief to the effect that if Al smokes he'll die, and a belief to the effect that Al smokes, and these beliefs are realized by tokens tracing back to one representation of Al and one representation of smoking, then ceteris paribus you'll believe that Al will die.18

The quantification over representations makes it plausible that the claim has nom- ological force; the reference to truth conditional content allows it to explain how psychological states lead to interaction with the non-mental.

If such are the laws of CPE, attitude ascription involves reference to, description of, or quantification over token representations, not just their truth conditional content or their d-senses. If (4) alludes not simply to truth conditional content or d-senses, but to Smith' s sheep representations, (4) makes a claim which, combined with the appropriate law and obvious claims about Smith's desires, implies that Smith behaves as he does. So long as what I say with (4) implies

(4') There is a representation under which Smith believes the sheep about to nibble and under which he believes that kicking it will prevent said nibbling

what I say, combined with the appropriate law, will imply that Smith behaves as he in fact does. Since I do explain Smith's behavior in this case, I do allude to his representations, either by referring to them, describing them, or in some more oblique way.

If all this is correct, it undermines Devitt' s account of meaning. According to Devitt, the primary task of semantics is a normative one: Explain the nature of the properties which we ought to ascribe in order to serve our purposes in our talk of meanings. On this view, a meaning is something whose ascription would serve to explain behavior in the context of CPE. (61-2) But what we ought to be talking about when we use attitude acriptions to explain behavior are representations, not d-senses. We can explain the behavior of Smith, Pierre, and Peter, as well as the behavior of those who "know all the identities." Trying to explain behavior by reference to d-sense, instead of representations, is unnecessarily risky. If explanation in terms of d-sense works, it does in terms of representations. But one never knows when someone's d-sense will turn out to be ununified, frustrating




explanation at the level of d-sense, but not representation. But if we hold that attitude ascriptions advert to representations, reference to d-sense is explanato- rily idle. As long as attitude ascription involves reference to truth conditions, it serves our interests in "reality guiding." There is no task in behavior explanation for which d-senses are better suited than representations. Devitt's own methodology mandates that meanings aren't d-senses but representations.

8 Two Factor Theories

On Devitt's view, if a property does not contribute to the determination of reference (or truth conditions), it is not a meaning. In particular, "inferential properties contribute to meaning only insofar as they determine reference." (19; emphasis in original) For example, Devitt tells us, if the property which 'bachelor' has, in virtue of my being inclined to infer n is unmarried from n is a bachelor, is "part" of the meaning of 'bachelor,' then the extension of 'bachelor' is included in that of 'unmarried.' I take it the general principle is that an inferential pattern cannot contribute to meaning if it's unsound.19

It is thus not surprising that Devitt rejects "two factor theories" of meaning.20 Such theories hold that there is an "aspect" or "component" of meaning (of token beliefs) which determines reference and truth conditions, and an aspect of meaning, involving the inferential (or conceptual, or functional) role of sentences which varies independently of the first aspect.21 By saying that the aspects in question are independent, the two factor theorist (TFT) means (something like the claim) that identity of one component of meaning across individuals is consistent with fairly pronounced and unsystematic divergence in the other component across those individuals. Identifying the reference independent component of meaning with some aspect of the inferential role, the independence claim is supposedly entailed by the fact that fixing a language's referential properties does little to constrain inferential roles, and vice versa.

TFTs by and large agree with Devitt, that meanings are what are or ought be ascribed in propositional attitude ascription. The difference between Devitt and the TFT is as to whether CPE does or ought involve the ascription of properties consitutive of inferential roles, when those properties do not "help determine reference." Devitt says it does not and ought not. A typical TFT reasons as follows: There is an aspect of meaning, relevant to psychological explanation, which is constant across functional duplicates and which is captured by the inferential roles of sentences for those duplicates. But, since functional duplicates can have wildly differing environments, it is to be expected that some of these meaning determining inference patterns will be sound in only one of the duplicates' environments. Thus, there is an aspect of meaning, captured by inferential role, which does not determine reference.

Prima facie, it is difficult to see how Devitt can coherently oppose the TFT.22 Consider the relation U-Big 'U' Unification-borne by singular term tokens in the mental idiom of a single thinker x, when x "makes the identity assumption"



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concerning them.23 In terms of the file metaphor, Uaf3 provided x has a file f-an assemblage of information purportedly about a single individual-such that the abilities to refer which are "responsible" for a and f3 are each "linked" to f.24 If Uaf3, the tokens have inferential relations in virtue of this. To a first, if sloppy, approximation, if Uaf3 (for an individual x), then x is inclined to infer n = f3 from n = a, and vice versa. And if the terms have these inferential relations, the thinker takes them to name the same thing, so that they will bear U to one another.25 So there is an equivalence between terms being related by U and their having the corresponding inferential properties. Now Devitt assumes that the relations we do and ought ascribe in attitude ascription are meaning constitutive. All this seem to make it fair to say that, if attitude ascription does and ought involve ascribing the relation U to pairs of terms, then not only is U meaning constitutive, for terms to which it is ascribed, but the corresponding relational inferential properties are meaning constitutive as well.

But we have seen that U is a relation which we should and do ascribe to terms, when we attempt to explain behavior by ascribing beliefs. Smith's token beliefs 'Al smokes' and 'if Al smokes, then Al will die' will not tend to yield the belief that Al will die, unless the requisite tokens of 'Al' are Unified. Put otherwise (and a bit tendentiously) Smith's token of 'Al smokes' will not have the same meaning ("for Smith") as the antecedent of his token of 'if Al smokes, then he will die,' unless Smith Unifies the requisite tokens of 'Al.' However: a and ( can be Uni- fied though they refer to different things. I may be firmly disposed to infer n = a from n = ( and vice versa though it is simply false that a is P. We do, after all, have false beliefs about who's who. But this means that the inferential properties (and the relation U) do not determine reference. The upshot is that when Ua(3, the relation U, as well as the inferential properties determined by the fact that Ua(, are "components" or "factors" in the meaning of a and (3 which vary independently of the reference of those terms; though meaning constitutive, these properties do not help determine the reference. It thus appears that the TFT is correct.26

I can see a way in which Devitt might resist this line of reasoning, though I do not see much motivation for it. Consider

(A) Smith thinks that Al smokes, and if Al smokes, then he will die.

To assertively utter this, Devitt might insist, is not to say that Smith Unifies two mental tokens of 'Al.' At least (A) does not directly say this. Rather, (A) says (in part) that the property

Q: referring to Al in virtue of being in the causal chain determining the reference of 'Al'

is unified for Smith. To say that this is unified for Smith is to say that all of its species are unified with one another. That is, for any tokens t and t' which have Q. Smith makes the identity assumption concerning them-that is, Smith Unifies t




and t'. To utter (A) is thus to say something which implies that Smith Unifies tokens of 'Al.' But to say something which implies p is not to say p. All that uttering (A) actually ascribes to Smith's Al's tokens is a relation along the lines of

Q': referring to Al in virtue of being tokens of a unified mode of reference.

But this property is reference determining, in the sense that if two tokens have it, they must refer to the same thing. So there is no violation here of the principle that properties which constitute meaning must determine reference.

One point to make about such a response to the above argument is this. While it is possible to describe our practices of acribing attitudes to explain behavior in this way, no reason has been given for thinking that such a description has anything to recommend over one on which uttering (A) involves making a claim about the truth conditional content of Smith's beliefs, along with a claim that various of constituents thereof are inferentially linked. So no reason has been given for thinking that there is anything wrong about what the TFT says about mental content.

In fact, there are arguably reasons for preferring the TFT' s way of looking at matters to Devitt's. Consider the case of Lucy, who heard a man say 'Help me, please' and who at the same time saw a man trying to lift a log. Being a helpful sort, Lucy went to the log lifter and helped him. If she asked herself why she did what she did, she might think to herself

(H) I knew that he [intending the man she helped] was lifting a log. And I thought that his [intending the man she heard] request was so polite, that I should be helpful.

Even if the man Lucy heard was not the man she saw and helped, (H) arguably explains Lucy's behavior, given that her visually mediated belief, her aurally mediated belief, and her Uniting her visual and aural representations were what brought her to do what she did. But (H) cannot be explanatory in virtue of a "law" such as

(L) If one takes x to be lifting a log and takes y to want help, then ceteris paribus one will help x,

for there is no such law. (H) explains Lucy' s behavior because of the lawfulness (of some refinement) of

(L') If one sees x to be lifting a log and thinks y to want to help and Unifies the relevant representations of x and y, then cateris paribus one will help x.

But this sort of law explains Lucy's behavior in terms of non-reference determining properties of representations-in terms of Unification.27 But then we



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have an example of a case in which we explain behavior by adverting to someone's beliefs and the non-reference determining inferential relations among them. And if there are such cases, then there is a reason to prefer the TFTs account to Devitt' s.

I have argued that Devitt' s own views make a (mild) "two factor" account of mental meaning seem to be correct. I have done this by concentrating on an inferential link-one induced by unification-which, though not constitutive of reference, seem, even by Devitt' s lights, constitutive of meaning. Whether a co- gent case can be made for the view that other reference independent aspects of inferential role contribute to meaning or content is of course an interesting question. Rather than pursue it here, I want now to consider a way in which one might defend Devitt' s views of meaning against some of the objections raised in earlier sections.

9 A Defense of the Identification of Meaning and d-sense

One might defend the identification of meaning and d-sense as follows. Suppose that a use of


refers, describes, or otherwise adverts to particular representations of Ortcutt. One needs an account of how this is achieved, as Ralph may have many representations of Ortcutt. Devitt might claim the simplest account runs so: (1) refers (or otherwise adverts to) Ralph's representations by referring to a d-sense. In uttering (1) we use the d-sense of 'Ortcutt is a spy' to help pick out one of Ralph's representations. Context (via the intentions of the speaker or otherwise) supplies something which, along with this d-sense, determines a representation so that a use of (1) claims

(1') Ralph has a belief state with the d-sense that Ortcutt is a spy, and which is F

where the property F varies contextually, and the belief states over which we quantify are individuated in terms of representations.

Suppose this is the correct story about (1). Then the only properties consistently ascribed to Ralph's token beliefs by (1)'s uses are: having the truth conditions that Ortcutt is a spy; having these truth conditions in virtue of having the d-sense of 'Ortcutt is a spy.' If so, then the conventional role of the t-clause 'that Ortcutt is a spy' in (1) is to ascribe these properties. So (since these are the only properties we should consistently ascribe to tokens of 'Ortcutt is a spy') these would be the meanings of (the relevant) token beliefs. Furthermore, this result makes it plausible to think that these properties should be identified with the meaning(s) of the sentence type 'Ortcutt is a spy.' And these are exactly the properties Devitt does identify with the meaning of the sentence.




This defense of Devitt works only if (1) (in a context in which behavior explanation is at issue) implies that Ortcutt has a belief which shares a d-sense with 'Ortcutt is a spy.' It seems to me that this is simply not how attitude ascription works.

10 Contextualisms

According to many, using (1) involves adverting to Ralph's representations. But the adversion varies across contexts, and is in no way tied to the meaning, conventional or otherwise, of the sentence 'Ortcutt is a spy., 28 Perry and Crimmins have suggested that a typical use of (1) makes a claim roughly along the lines of

(1") Some mental sentence that expresses the Russellian proposition that Ortcutt is a spy and which is F realizes a belief of Ralph's

where F could be most any property of mental sentences-e.g., was first tokened when Ralph saw Ortcutt at the beach, contains 'Orcutt'used as a name of Ortcutt, is Jerry Fodor's favorite example of mentalese, etc. I hold that a context of use provides a "translation manual" from the representations of Ralph's mental idiom into a public language; the manual, for example, may require that 'Ortcutt' translate only representations labelled 'Ortcutt,' or that it only translate the name Ralph uses to identify the figure seen at the factory, etc. On this view, (1) comes to something like

(1"') Some mental sentence that expresses the Russellian proposition that Ortcutt is a spy translates a belief of Ralph's

with the translation relation being highly contextual. Neither view requires a match, in d-sense (or any non-referential cognitive content) between 'Ortcutt is a spy' and a state of Ralph's. If any such contextualist view is correct, the defense of Devitt just envisioned fails.29

Devitt thinks such views are undermotivated. He (correctly) notes that contextualism implies that a use of (1) might be false even though Ralph has a belief he expresses with 'Ortcutt is a spy.' This is because a use of (1) can refer or advert to a representation which is unconnected with Ralph's 'Ortcutt' -file. Devitt writes: "So far as I know, the literature contains no examples that support [this], and I have been unable to imagine any." (204)

Imagine that it is mutual knowledge that a story containing the sentence 'Ber- nard J. Ortcutt is an arsonist' has been read and believed true by everyone. Ralph is at the factory one night and sees a shadowy figure in the bushes. A little while later, he calls the police. Why did Ralph call the police? Mary was there; she reports

(5) Ralph and I saw someone-Ortcutt, it turns out-at the factory last night in the bushes. It was too dark to make out his features. Ortcutt was acting as



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if he was about to set the factory on fire. When Ralph saw Ortcutt' s behavior, he called the police because Ralph thought that Ortcutt was an arsonist.

Suppose, as one would naturally assume, Mary utters (5) with the intention of conveying that Ralph formed his belief "under a visual mode of presentation." It is surely natural then to say that

a. even if Ralph did not recognize the man in bushes as Ortcutt, if Ralph thought that's a arsonist on seeing Ortcutt, and this belief brought him to phone the police, then Mary spoke truly (and so, inter alia, her use of

(la) Ralph believes that Ortcutt is an arsonist

was true); b. if Ralph did not think that's a arsonist on seeing Ortcutt, but rather called

the police because of his standing belief Ortcutt is a arsonist, thinking it time to complain to the police, then what Mary said was not true. But then Ralph' s having a belief expressed by 'Ortcutt is an arsonist' cannot automatically make (la) true.

Both a and b are prima facie plausible accounts of the case envisioned. They are exactly what contextualist views say is perfectly possible and what Devitt alleges is unimaginable.30

I just argued that a sentence of the form

(7) Ralph believes that b is F

where b is a proper name of u may be used to make a claim true only if Ralph has a belief realized by a sentence of the form

(8) c is F

where c is a demonstrative referring to u. It is easy to come up with cases in which b in (7) is a demonstrative referring to u, and (7)'s truth seems to require Ralph's having a belief realized by a sentence of form (8) with c a proper name of u.

Imagine Ralph has been corresponding with Kripke about modal logic. Un- aware of Kripke's interest in set theory, Ralph hasn't sent his work on large cardinals. Ralph has heard Kripke speak about set theory at an ASL meeting. He vividly remembers the talk. But he didn't realize it was Kripke who was speaking. When Ralph finally meets Kripke, Kripke asks "Why didn't you send me your work on large cardinals?" Ralph replies,

(9a) I didn't realize that you were interested in set theory. If I'd known that you were interested, I would have.

(9a) strikes me as true. It is only if

(9b) I knew that you were interested in set theory




as it occurs in Ralph's utterance of (9a) is false. (9b) is not false, if the purpose of 'you' therein is simply to indicate a demonstrative mode of presentation of Kripke. For Ralph did believe demonstratively that Kripke was interested in set theory (he had a standing belief that that guy [the one at the ASL meeting] was interested in set theory). (9b) is false only because the purpose of 'you' therein is to intro- duce to a mode of presentation of Kripke associated by Ralph with 'Kripke.'

It would not be hard to give examples in which a use of (7), with b one name of u, requires that Ralph have beliefs about u involving another proper name of u.31 So it seems that the truth of a use of (7) may be tied to Ralph's having a "demonstrative" or "proper name" belief quite independently of whether b is a demonstrative or proper name. Because of this the prima facie case for some version of contextualism is quite strong.

Devitt objects to contextualism. He says it makes it a mystery that auditors are able to understand attitude ascriptions. He proposes a constraint for a "theory of attitude ascriptions":

(DC) The theory must explain how hearers use linguistic conventions together with accessible context to understand ascriptions. (199)

He claims that "The more numerous the meanings that a t-clause can ascribe, the more difficult explaining this becomes":

It is presumably not the case that [(1)] could be used in any context to ascribe any ...mode of referring [to Ortcutt], for then the hearer's task [of interpreting the utterance] would be impossible. In some way the context must limit the ascriptions which can be used for a mode, so that the hearer can infer the mode from the ascription in the context. It is hard to see what the limitations could be. At least, the...theory is seriously incomplete without an account of the limitation. (206)32

The objection might be taken to be this: (a) For any (disambiguated) declarative sentence type T, there is a "procedure" P, known to any competent speaker, which allows her, given information about "accessible aspects" of a situation in which T is used, to determine the statement made. (b) But if a sentence type such as (1) can be used, regardless of "accessible aspects" of context, to refer to any (property of ) of Ralph's representations, there is no such procedure. (c) Contextualism implies that a type such as (1) can be so used. So it's wrong.

Either the unvoiced referential intentions of a speaker are part of accessible context or they are not. If they are not, then (a) is wrong. Suppose you are holding an ornate cup full of juice. I look over at you, see what you have in your hand, gesture at it, and say 'you can have that.' If I mean the juice in the cup, I say that you can have it; if I mean the cup, I say that you can have it. We can imagine speech situations "indiscernible" save for such differences in my unvoiced inten- tional states. Such situations would not differ in terms of "accessible context," if intentions are not part of such. They would differ in what was said. This refutes (a).



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On the other hand, if unvoiced referential intentions are part of accessible context-and, after all, one can always ask about them-it is not clear why we should accept (b). For in this case the instruction-find out what (sort of) representation of Ortcutt (if any) the speaker has in mind-may be part the procedure any competent speaker knows, which suffices, given accessible context, to interpret (1).

Let us use the term communicative protocol to refer to a generally recognized means for a user to make it clear to her audience to what she is referring when she uses a contextually sensitive expression. One communicative protocol for 'that' is demonstrating the intended object of reference; one communicative protocol for 'here' is (something like) anaphora with an earlier place name in the discourse (as in

What's it like in Chicago1? It's pretty windy here1.)

Examples like the cup example, it seems to me, make it quite implausible that one should be able to give necessary and sufficient conditions for reference in terms of linguistic conventions and communicative protocols. However, it might be thought plausible that if an expression E is contextually sensitive, then either there is a simple rule which gets one from a context of utterance to E's referent, or there are in fact communicative protocols for E whose use typically enable competent speakers to determine E's referent. Otherwise E is an expression whose use, typically, auditors interpret only by luck. Perhaps it's not impossible for there to be a language with such an expression. But it's unlikely. A theory that implies that English contains such an expression is in trouble.

If we accept this line of thought, then it seems that whether some permutation of Devitt's objection goes through depends upon whether there are generally used and recognized means for making it clear to the audience to which (types of) representations a speaker refers (or describes, or quantifies over, or otherwise adverts to), when ascribing belief.

For reasons which will emerge below, I am not sure that we should accept the line of thought. Be that as it may, it seems to me plausible that there are such protocols for "representation reference" in use.

One such "protocol" is something like this: If the audience knows that there are several proper names of an object o, and you want to convey that x has a belief about o under a representation she voices with one of those names, then use it in ascribing the belief to x. A second protocol is something like this: Say something to make a (property of a) representation more salient than others and then refer to it. Consider the example of Mary and Ralph. What Mary says before she ascribes the belief that Ortcutt was an arsonist to Ralph makes a certain property-being caused by a perception of Ortcutt-particularly salient. If I say

(10) After Mary read Twain's Huck Finn, she wanted to read another book by him.




the property being a way of identifying Twain as Huck Finn's author is particularly salient. More generally: a pointing, a startling event, or another aspect of context may make it mutual knowledge that certain objects are salient. Likewise, what a speaker says about Ralph, or what is known about Ralph's way of ex- pressing himself, or some other aspect of context may make it mutual knowledge that certain representations or their properties are particularly salient. Demon- strative reference to mundane objects is often achieved by intentionally exploiting the contextual salience of the referent. Likewise, reference (or other adversion) to representations is often achieved by exploiting the contextual salience of such.

11 Indeterminacy

I have argued that there are ways we (typically) use to make our adversion to representations known to our audience. Some may not be convinced. In the typical case of demonstrative reference, it is translucent, to what object the speaker (intends to) refer. We rarely find that there are alternative, distinct best candidates for the object of reference. Can the contextualist say the same? Consider, for example a view like Perry and Crimmins,' on which we supposedly refer to properties of representations. Why suppose, in the Mary/Twain example, that the property I mentioned is more salient than, say being a way of identifying Twain as 'Twain' or being a way of identifying Twain as an author?

Reflecting on this, one might argue (a) There is practically no use of an attitude ascription where it is determinant that a particular representation or property thereof is the intended object of reference (or adversion). (b) A meaningful expression cannot be mired in this sort of indeterminacy. In particular, if uses of a device generally fail to achieve determinant reference, then the device isn't referential. But (c), if contextualism and (a) are correct, then predicates such as 'believes that Ortcutt is a spy' are mired in such indeterminacy. So contextualist accounts are wrong.33

I deny (a). If I say 'After she heard the lecture on Cicero and read a poem signed 'Tully,' she believed that Cicero orated, but not Tully,' it is clear to which of her representations I mean to advert: One which "holds" the lecture information, another which "contains" the poem information. If I tell you that Smith saw Kripke but did not realize that it was him, and that is why she thought that Kripke was a plumber, it is clear to what representation I mean to advert-one which "held" the (relevant) visually obtained information. In each example, a particular property of representations is distinguished enough that it may (by those who think that attitude ascription involves reference to properties of representations) be identified as an object of reference.

I challenge (b). Consider the demonstrative 'here.' Save in cases where a place name is recoverable from prior discourse, or in which such accompanies the use of 'here,' it is generally not determinate to what a speaker refers with 'here.' Generally, if I say 'it's sure hot here,' I mean that it's hot. ..here, where I am right now. But I'm lots of places right now: at a table, in a certain city, in a particular state,.... Cases in which a place name is recoverable to fix the reference of a use



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of 'here' are very much the exception. 'here' usually does not achieve determinate reference. It does not follow that 'here' is not a referential device. A cognate point can be made concerning predicates such as 'stupid' and 'cold,' which apparently demand a contextually supplied reference class or property (one is stu- pidfor a member of such and such a class; cold qua so and so).

'here' and the adjectives are devices whose interpretation seems often con- strained but notfixed by convention and contextual factors. This does not render 'here' a non-referential device. It does not mean that the adjectives are unfit to discharge the work of adjectives. If this is true of 'here' and the adjectives, then why should a similar indeterminacy with regard to predicates such as 'believes that Ortcutt spies' be a threat to contextualism?

Finally, I reject (c). The spectre of indeterminacy arises if the contextualist holds that uses of sentences such as (1) involve "tacit reference" to properties of representations. The (putative) problem is that there are so many properties of representations that are more or less salient in a speech situation, but little evi- dence that the speaker's intentions (or anything else) selects among the salient properties a particular referent.

Still, one can hold (i) what is said by (1) depends on what properties of representations the utter has in mind; (ii) it is generally indeterminate which properties a speaker has in mind, determinacy entering only at the level of "best candidates," but; (iii) utterances of (1) usually say something perfectly determinate. Consider the translational contextualism alluded to above, on which context typically supplies some "instructions for translation" to get from the mental idiom of the thinker to the spoken idiom of the ascriber. On such a view, a use of (1) says something true provided some sentence realizing one of Ralph' s beliefs can be translated by 'Ortcutt is a spy' without contravening the context's "manual" for translating from Ralph's idiom.

Suppose Mary utters (1) with Ralph's "factory confrontation" of Ortcutt in mind. She need not have a particular way of identifying Ralph's representation of Ortcutt in mind; she means only to be relaying something about Ralph's attitudes at the factory that night. In such a case there can still be a determinate collection C of "best candidates" for the property of representations which, in Mary' s context, one of Ralph' s Ortcutt representations needs to have, in order to be accept- ably translated using 'Ortcutt.' Roughly, C is the collection of properties expressed by what Mary would offer as ways to fill in the ellipsis in This belief of Ralph's is one which involves a way of thinking of Ortcutt.... Presumably it's pretty clear what Mary would offer as a completion: caused by seeing him; in part responsible for Ralph's saying 'I see an arsonist'; which brought Ralph to call the cops; etc. C would thus include such properties as

being a representation of Ortcutt caused by perceiving him being a representation of Ortcutt which was partially responsible for Ralph's

utterance of 'I saw an arsonist at the factory' being a representation of Ortcutt involved in the belief which brought Ralph

to call the police.




If we hold that Mary's utterance of (1) involves tacit reference to a property of representations, it seems to follow that in this case it is at best indeterminate what Mary said, since it is at best indeterminate to which member of C she referred. But there need be no indeterminacy in Mary's utterance on a translational version of contextualism: in this case (roughly, and ignoring ties the utterance of (1) may have to other parts of the discourse) the contextual "instructions for translation" from Ralph's idiom may be non-arbitrarily taken as including the instruction so far as Ralph is concerned, use 'Ortcutt' to translate a representation of Ort- cutt which has most of the properties in C. So long as C itself is determinate, what (1) itself says will be determinate, too. The upshot is that one can be a contextualist without thereby being committed to an extreme indeterminacy about the truth conditions of attitude ascriptions.34

12 What More is There to Meaning than Reference?

I have argued that Devitt' s objections to contextualism are not particularly com- pelling, and I have argued that Devitt is wrong in claiming that contextualist views are unmotivated. Devitt claims that "nothing very significant about meaning is at stake in [the] disagreement" between him and contextualists like myself, Crimmins and Perry:

Suppose Ralph is in a belief state that would lead him to say

(11) Ortcutt is a spy

[A contextualist] agrees with my theory that attitude ascriptions can ascribe different meanings to 'Ortcutt' in (11): [in particular] the property of referring to Ortcutt...and referring to him under mode 'Ortcutt.' [Contextualism] disagrees in thinking that this latter meaning can be ascribed not only by t-clauses containing 'Ortcutt' but by ones containing other terms that...refer to Ortcutt. In brief, ... [contextualism] disagrees over the semantics of the likes of (1), not over the likes of (11). So, nothing significant about meaning is at stake in this disagreement. [202-3]35

I disagree. An important task of semantics is to tell us what our words and sentences mean. In particular, semantics is supposed to tell us the conventional meaning(s) of our word types. Devitt identifies the meanings of (mental) tokens with the properties we do (or ought) ascribe to such tokens to serve our semantic purposes, in particular to explain behavior and assign truth conditions to thoughts. Presumably Devitt will identify the conventional meanings of a word type T with those meanings which are (or ought be) regularly ascribed to thought tokens of T in attitude ascription. For he holds that conventional meaning is determined, a la Grice, by regularities in what speakers mean when using an expression. Such regularities are determined by the meanings of our thought tokens, which are, in turn, the properties we do (or ought) to ascribe to such tokens for semantic purposes.



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Consider mental tokens of 'Sterelny' which refer to Kim Sterelny. According to Devitt, we do and ought ascribe two properties to such tokens, when talking about the beliefs of others:

ml: referring to Sterelny

and

m2: referring to Sterelny in virtue of being part of the 'Sterelny' network.

So Devitt' s view seems to be that a proper name type-say 'Sterelny' as a name of Sterelny-has two meanings, ml and m2.36 Such a view constitutes a com- promise between Fregean views (which, loosely, identify name type meaning with a way of presenting reference) and direct reference views (which identify name type meaning with reference).37

If a heavily contextualist view of attitude ascription is correct, such a com- promise view of name type meaning is undermined. On an extreme contextualist view, for pretty much any property P a mental token of 'Sterelny' might have, we might ascribe

m3: referring to Sterelny and having P

to a mental token of 'Sterelny' in the course of ascribing an attitude to someone. And we ought to do this, given that our purpose in ascribing attitudes is to explain or rationalize behavior. To explain why others behave as they do, we need to be able to talk about the particular representations of their environment which motivate them; the easiest way to do this is to advert, in one way or another, to salient properties-any salient properties-of such representations.

So, given extreme contextualism, when we speak of the thought realized by Mary's token of

(S) Sterelny is a philosopher

uttering

(M) Mary believes that Sterelny is a philosopher

we will sometimes be claiming (inter alia)

(Ml) Mary has a belief realized by a token which refers to Sterelny and which prompted her last utterance,

thereby ascribing

m4: referring to Sterleny and prompting Mary's last utterance




to a mental token of 'Sterelny.' Sometimes an utterance of (M) directed upon a token of (S) will make the claim (inter alia)

(M2) Mary has a belief realized by a token which refers to Sterelny and which was involved in her hitting Sterelny

thereby ascribing

m5: referring to Sterelny and being involved in a Sterelny slugging

to a mental 'Sterelny' token. And so on. On an extreme contextualism there is no end to the properties we might ascribe, in the course of attitude ascription, to 'Sterelny' tokens naming Sterelny.38 Together, the properties are a rag bag, indefinitely large collection. If we say that each of these is a meaning of the name type 'Sterelny' (qua name of Sterelny), we implausibly say that that name is indefinitely, if not infinitely, ambiguous. More plausibly, we might identify the meaning of the name type with properties which are regularly ascribed to 'Ster- elny' tokens by ascribing properties in the rag bag collection. But it is hard to see what property is regularly ascribed in this way, save the property ml. So in so far as the meaning of a name type is inferable from the meanings ascribed to its tokens in attitude ascription, it seems that Devitt' s method for uncovering meaning commits him to a direct reference view of the meanings of name types, as (among) their meaning(s) will be only the property of referring to their bearer, and not the property of referring to their bearer in a particular way.

A final, related point. Above, I argued that, Devitt notwithstanding, if meaning is what we refer or otherwise advert to in CPE, than meaning is not a construction out of the causal chains which (on Devitt' s view) determine reference. For what we advert to in commonsense attitude explanation is much more finely individuated. Indeed, it is (in part) idiosyncratically individuated, in so far as sentences such as (1) advert to what I have called representations or their properties.

If this is correct, it is not clear that there is much sense in looking for identity of meaning (above identity of reference) among the properties we ascribe, in attitude ascription, to the sentences or states which, for example, realize Mary and Ralph's beliefs that Ortcutt is a spy. Perhaps this shows that what we advert to in such explanations doesn't deserve the honorific 'meaning' to begin with. For though what I've said (I would claim) does a tolerable job of accounting for our seeming success in psychological explanation, it does little to explain why there seems to be something more to synonymity than identity of reference-why 'water' means the same in my mouth as it does in yours, though it differs in meaning from the word type 'H20-' What more there might be to meaning than reference39 is, of course, too large an issue to pursue here.

Notes

1In Coming to Our Senses (Cambridge University Press: New York, 1995). Subsequent references are indicated parenthetically. This paper is a slightly expanded version of a contribution to an APA



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symposium on the book; Devitt and Gilbert Harman were co-symposiasts. I'm indebted to Devitt and to David Braun for comments on earlier versions.

2A not implausible account of our purposes, in saying that others understand the use of a particular construction, or that they mean what we do with the construction, is a (vaguely) Wittgensteinian one: To say that Fish means what I do with 'text' is to say that he "uses" it in ways similar to that in which I and my fellows do, where (in turn) any number of accounts of "use" might flesh the proposal out. (For example, use might be inferential or functional role, or some elaborate construction from the group form of life.) Suppose someone so understands such talk, and they elevate talk of communication and meaning to the forefront of folk semantics. Then in applying Devitt's method, they may end up giving-seemingly with the method's sanction-a quite different account of the nature of meaning than does Devitt.

Devitt's remarks about views which take the primary task of semantics to be an explication of competence or understanding (65) presuppose that such views will identify competence with grasp or knowledge of meaning; they are therefore unresponsive to the sort of view just sketched.

3In fact, Devitt uses the hypothesis that non-descriptive meanings are causal chains as illustrative of how his view is to be applied. (Devitt does allow that some expressions will have their reference determined descriptively.) Coming to Our Senses is officially neutral between a causal/historical view of name and demonstrative reference and other naturalistic accounts (such as an "indicator semantics" such as Stalnaker's or Stampe's, or a teleological account such as Milikan's).

So far as I can see, substituting one or another of these accounts of the reference relation for a causal chain account of reference would not vitiate any of the critical points I make.

4More precisely: In the same way as does the occurrence of 'Ortcutt' in the relevant use of (1). 5Actually, Devitt posits a third reading for (1), on which it says that the meaning of the name

realizing Ralph's belief puts him en rapport with Ortcutt. I am going to ignore this wrinkle in Devitt's view to keep the discussion manageable.

6Thus, for example, more or less all the English uses of 'Moore' as a name of G.E. supposedly form a single causal network rooted in Moore, a network which excludes uses of names of a different orthographic or phonetic type. Those familiar with Devitt's work fleshing out a causal account of reference (see in particular Designation (Columbia University Press: New York, 1981)) will realize that I am engaged in pretty ruthless simplification. None of the critical points made below turn on any of the details I am suppressing.

7Why doesn't Devitt say that the meaning of a demonstrative such as 'you' is a "specific" demonstrative mode of presentation? Because, I think, he correctly recognizes that it is (almost always) "appropriate," for example, to say

X believes that you are in danger

to Y, if X has a belief he expressed with 'that [demonstrating Y] is in danger'; and it is always appropriate to say

X believes that that is in danger

demonstrating Y, if X can express belief, addressing Y, with 'you are in danger'; and so forth. (218ff; see especially 220).

8He holds that explanations such as

(E) Oscar gave water to Mary because he believed that Mary was thirsty and that water relieves thirst

are "supported" by "laws" which "quantify over token mental sentences having fully referential meanings of a certain sort and over related behaviors of a certain sort." (304) 1 take it that by saying that a law supports an explanation

S because T

Devitt means that the law (and perhaps suitable subsidiary premisses) entails




If T, then S

or

If T, then ceteris paribus S.

9As Devitt puts it

...in a t-clause... [the name 'London'] ascribes...the "disjunctive" mode of [referring to London via the mode associated with] 'London' or 'Londres' or..[with] the "translation" of 'London' into any... language. (233)

l?Could we just say that 'woodchuck' and 'groundhog' translate one another, in the requisite sense of 'translate,' thus avoiding the problem? It is hard to see how we could without ending up committed to, for example, the view that 'Cicero' and 'Tully' translate one another in the relevant sense. Devitt is quite emphathatic that we should not, for example, assign the same d-sense to the latter two names. (See Chapter 4, section IV, passim.)

1'Actually, Devitt hedges this a bit; the hedge is discussed in the next section. 12So, I take the idea to be this: Mode of referring M (which is a property of referring to an object

x in virtue of V) is unified for A with mode of referring M' (a property of referring to y in virtue of V) provided that for every pair of tokens t and t' which have M and M' respectively, A "makes the identity assumption" concerning t and t'. Using the file metaphor: there is a "mental file" (a locus of information purportedly about one individual) to which the terms are "linked."

Perhaps I should note that Devitt takes the file metaphor of mental organization fairly seriously. In fact, he avails himself of it in order to elaborate the notion of d-sense: To construct the d-chains (the sequences of abilities to refer to an object which run from a use of a name back to the object) which make up a network, Devitt finds it necessary to invoke "processing" of utterances "so that they are brought to bear on" mental files associated with the token's public language word type. (166-169; see especially 168)

13This synopsis of the view is my work, not Devitt's; it skirts ticklish issues about tacit belief, which Devitt wants to put to one side.

14That is: Imagine the notion of unification extended to sentences in the obvious inductive way, by assuming that we have a definition of "well formed sentence" of Mentalese, and then saying that the sense of a complex expression of Mentalese is unified if all its subexpressions are. On this interpretation the correct way to formulate a psychological explanation is not

For any d-senses sI through sk: blah blah blah

but

For any unified d-senses sI through sk: blah blah blah.

(I have, of course, extended the 'unified' terminology, so that a single mode M is unified, if all its species are unified with each other.)

15That objection was that while Devitt seemed to committed to the lawfulness of (translations of) (G), his account of d-sense seemed destined to assign the same d-sense to 'woodchuck' and 'groundhog,' which seemed incompatible with (G)'s lawfulness. Devitt might respond that this is no objection, since for a person who does not realize that 'woodchuck' and 'groundhog' have the same d-sense, the sense of 'woodchuck' will not be unified (since it will have species

being a way of referring to woodchucks and being spell w-o-o-d-c-h-u-c-k being a way of referring to woodchucks and being spelled g-r-o-u-n-d-h-o-g

about whose tokens the person does not make the appropriate identity assumption. 16A cognate point to those in the text. The cases discussed seem very much on all paws with cases

in which a believer fails to unify distinct proper names of the same object. (If this is not clear, imagine that Smith says to himself at the outset of his entry into the field "Hew, that sheep smells; stay away



112 NOUS

Stinky. And what a pretty sheep that is; don't you nibble my boots, Lubby," thereby christening the same sheep twice. Then imagine that it is the "proper name beliefs" which motivate Smith.) Devitt agrees that the latter sort of cases provide no problem for commonsense attempts at psychological explanation. Surely an account on which only the former sort of cases are problematic-on which they, quite contrary to what commonsense seems to think, are cases in which commonsense explanation fails-is prima facie a weaker account than one on which the cases are treated on a par.

I should stress that there seems to be nothing particularly problematic pretheoretically about applying commonsense psychological principles to more famous "puzzle cases." I suspect that only someone with a theoretical ax to grind would say that

Pierre gave the clerk money because he wanted to visit London

failed to explain Pierre's behavior in a case in which certain of Pierre's "French" beliefs and desires move him to give the clerk money. Pierre and the like are hard cases for certain theories; pretheoretically, they are apparently just more uncontroversial examples of cases in which we successfully explain behavior by speaking of what people think and want. Bad theories make hard cases.

17Note that Devitt himself accepts, at some level, such an account of mental organization; see note 12.

18Somewhat more precisely, but still pretty roughly, (R) comes out equivalent to

(R') For any x, r, r', and r": if r is a representation of Al, r' of smoking, r" of dying, x believes a conditional whose antecedent is a token of (a token of) r' predicated of (a token of) r, and whose consequent is a r" predicated of r, and believes a token of r' predicated of r, then ceteris paribus x believes a token of r" predicated of r.

One way in which this is rough is that it ignores the need to distinguish between the belief that Al smokes and the belief that the Chairman of the Chemistry Department smokes, in cases in which Al is the Chairman. We need to distinguish between these because they have different truth conditions. But one might hold that, given thatAl is the Chairman, a file "labelled" the chairman of the Chemistry Department is a representation of Al.

If we adopt such an account of representations, we would presumably want to distinguish among types of representations of an individual, just as we (might) distinguish different types of terms designating individuals. If so, the quantifier over representations of Al in the above would need to be suitably restricted.

19To be explicit. I here think of an inference pattern as something which determines a collection of token arguments. E.g., one such inference pattern determines (or just is) the collection of all pairs <a,b> such that a is a token in my mental idiom of a sentence of the form n is a bachelor, where n is token of a proper name, and b is a token of n is unmarried. To say that such an inference is sound is simply to say that there is no pair <a,b> which it determines such that a is true but b is not. It should be noted that since this ignores possible but not actual token arguments, it is a somewhat anemic notion of a sound inference pattern. Devitt may have intended the assumption in the text in a stronger way; for our purposes the weaker construal is sufficient.

20Examples of such theories are those espoused by Colin McGinn, "The Structure of Content" (in A. Woodfield, ed., Thought and Object, Oxford University Press, 1982); S. Boer and W. Lycan, Who, Me? (MIT Press, 1986) and N. Block, "Advertisement for a Semantics for Psychology" (in French, Uehling, and Wettstein, eds., Midwest Studies in Philosophy X, University of Minnesota Press, 1986).

211 will usually curtail the tripartite disjunction and speak simply of inferential role. 22As will become obvious, the argument I will give has nothing to do with functional duplicates. 23The notion of unification discussed above is a relation among meanings, not tokens: A (singular

term) meaning m is unified for x with another m' if, for any token t which has m and t' which has m', x "makes the identity assumption" with respect to t and t'-i.e., t and t' are big 'U' Unified. (A single mode is unified if all its species are unified with one another.) I will use 'Unified' to refer to the relation among tokens, 'unified' to refer to the relation (and property) of meanings.

24In the way an ability to refer is linked to a file when one uses the ability in the effort to refer to the file's subject.




25This claim is a bit problematic if we take the file metaphor as a serious explanation of the relation U, since it seems that one might be disposed to make the inferences in question without actually having a and f3 labelling the files in question. I don't think this effects the argument, and so I propose to ignore it.

26Two factor theorists are usually holist about the reference independent factor. I take this to be an issue separate from the issue of whether reference independent inferential relations are components of meaning.

27Response: Why not say that the law which underlies the explanation is something like

(L") If one believes that x is lifting a log, that y needs help, and that x is y, then ceteris paribus one will help x,

and say that in the case in question Lucy believes, of the men, that the one is the other? For if we say this, we can say that (E) is elliptical for an ascription in which Lucy also says that she thought that (as she might put it) he was he. We thus need not appeal to unification to explain Lucy's behavior.

The TFT may respond that claims like (L") are not laws, since one can have the beliefs in question without having "made the identity assumption." Consider another situation in which Lucy believes true

Bill is lifting a log Al needs help Bill is that fellow

and where the tokens of 'Al' and 'that fellow' name the same thing. In this case, there are an x (Bill) and a y (Al) such that Lucy believes

x is lifting a log y needs help x is y.

But if Lucy has not Unified the tokens of 'Al' and 'that fellow,' she need have no inclination to help. So (L") is lawful only if supplemented with some reference to Unification. But if this is so, the TFT will argue, why resist the claim that (L'), which already contains the reference to Unification and is simpler than (L"), is lawful and underlies the explanation at issue?

28Put more exactly: The sentence 'Ortcutt spies' puts no constraints on what representational state of Ralph's is adverted to, beyond a requirement that it have the same truth conditional content-or determine the same Russellian proposition as-the sentence 'Ortcutt spies.'

29See Perry and Crimmin's "The Prince and the Phone Booth," Journal of Philosophy (1989); Crimmins' Talk about Beliefs (MIT Press: Cambridge, 1992); Mark Richard Propositional Attitudes (Cambridge University Press, 1990).

301 recognize that alternative analyses of this case are possible. One could, for example, somewhat implausibly deny b, saying that Mary has explained what Ralph did only if a belief "under the 'Ort- cutt' mode" caused Ralph to behave as he did. It should be stressed that this is obviously at variance with the intentions of the speaker in cases such as that in the text.

3'Here's an example. Jones is infamous, under the monicker 'Bugsy,' as a criminal, as he leaves a hankie with 'Bugsy' on it at crime scenes. But the public and police have not identified anyone as Bugsy; only a few intimates know that Jones is Bugsy (i.e., are "acquainted" with him under both names). The police have begun to suspect Jones, and they are beginning to look into his whereabouts at the time of Bugsy' s most famous escapade, the Dimwiddle caper. Indeed, they brought Jones in for questioning on this, but Jones convinced them he was in Florida at the time.

Two of Bugsy's cronies, who are worried that Bugsy is about to be caught, are speaking:

A: Do the police know that Bugsy was responsible for the Dimwiddle caper? B: No. They are convinced that Bugsy was in Florida when the caper went down.



114 NOOS

This is a perfectly natural way of speaking and would be taken to be true, given the details of the story. Since (A and B know that) the police know-true 'Bugsy was not in Florida when the caper went down' (as well as 'Bugsy was responsible for the Dimwiddle caper'), it seems that the truth of B's report (and of A's 'the police know that Bugsy was responsible') turn on whether the police believe true things like 'Jones was responsible' and 'Jones was in Florida at the time.'

32Actually, the citation discusses an example distinct from that of Ortcutt, but Devitt's point is the same.

33For the objection to be interesting, the sort of indeterminacy at issue must be more extensive than the sort of indeterminacy a predicate has in virtue of being vague. The extension and intension of vague predicates have borderline cases; thus (on many understandings of the notion of a borderline case), it will be indeterminate which of a number of functions is the extension (intension) of the predicate. But there is substantial overlap between the candidates in such cases.

It is surely no defect of an account of 'believes' if predicates formed from it suffer from some garden variety vagueness. Certainly premiss (b) loses plausibility if it is this sort of indeterminacy is at issue. The worry behind the objection in the text is that, because an utterer of (1) will not have any particular properties of Ralph's representations "in mind," the best candidates for the intension of a use of a sentence such as (1) are wildly different, without very much overlap at all. If this level of indeterminacy threatens, premiss (b) is not implausible.

Readers familiar with Stephen's Schiffer's work will recognize that the worry I am addressing here is distantly related to that which he raises, as "the Meaning Intention Problem," in "Belief Ascription" (Journal of Philosophy, 1992). I do not think the view sketched at the end of this section is heir to such a problem; considerations of space prevent me from discussing this in detail.

34Continuing the theme of the last note: I do not really mean to say that the set C of best candidates, for what property of representations the speaker has in mind, is completely determinate; it can be a vague matter whether certain properties are members of C. As a result, there will be a certain vagueness in the intension of a use of a sentence such as (1). But to allow this is not to allow that there will be substantially disjoint "best candidates" for the intension of such a use.

35Again, I have suppressed reference to Devitt's view that one of the meanings of 'Ortcutt' is: referring to Ortcutt in such a way as to put the thinker en rapport with him.

36A bit more precisely: after what would normally be called disambiguation (which cordons off uses of the type to refer, for example, to Sterelny's other than Kim), the name type has ml and m2 as meanings.

37Devitt himself says such views are partially true and partially false because name tokens have two meanings, a "Fregean" one and a "direct reference" one; see p.142. I am ascribing Devitt the corresponding view about the types of such tokens.

38For that matter, there is no end to the properties we might ascribe with tokens of 'Sterelny' in attitude ascription.

39or constructions from such, like David Kaplan's character.



what does commonsense psychology tell us about meaning?

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