Matter and Consciousness

3 The Semantical Problem

3 The Semantical Problem Where do the terms of our common-sense psychological vocabulary get their meanings? This apparently innocent question is important for at least three reasons. First, psychological terms form a crucial test case for theories of meaning in general. Second, the semantical problem is closely bound up with the ontological problem, as we saw in the first chapter. And last, it is even more closely bound up with the epistemological problem, as we shall see in the next chapter. In this chapter, we shall explore the arguments for and against each of the three main theories at issue. The first says that the meaning of any common-sense psychological term (or most of them, anyway) derives from an act of inner ostension. A second claims that their meaning derives from operational definitions . And a third claims that the meaning of any such term derives from its unique place in a network of laws that collectively constitute our ‘folk’ psychology. Without further ado, let us address the first theory. 1 Definition by Inner Ostension One way to introduce a term to someone’s vocabulary—“horse,” or “fire engine,” for example—is just to show that person an 88 Chapter 3 item of the relevant type, and say something like, “That is a horse,” or “This is a fire engine.” These are instances of what is called ostensive definition. One expects the hearer to notice the relevant features in the situation presented, and to be able to reapply the term correctly when a new situation displays the same features. Of course, both of the expressions cited could have been introduced in another way. One could have just said to the hearer, “A horse is a large, hoofed animal used for riding.” Here one gives the meaning of the term by connecting it in specific ways with other terms already in the hearer’s vocabulary. Such term introductions range from the explicit and the complete (“An isosceles triangle is a three-sided closed plane figure with at least two equal sides”) to the partial and incomplete (“Energy is what makes our cars run and keeps our lights burning”). But not all terms get their meaning in this way, it is often said. Some terms, it is claimed, can get their meaning only in the first way, by direct ostension. Terms like “red,” “sweet,” and “warm,” for example. Their meaning is not a matter of the relations they bear to other terms; it is a matter of their being directly associated with a specific quality displayed by perceivable objects. Thus speak orthodox semantic theory and common sense alike. What, then, of the terms in our common-sense psychological vocabulary? When one thinks of terms like “pain,” “itch,” and “sensation of red,” ostension seems the obvious source of meaning. How could one possibly know the meaning of any of these terms unless one had actually had a pain, or an itch, or a sensation of red? Prima facie, it seems one could not. Call this “the standard view.” While the standard view might be correct for a significant class of psychological terms, it is clearly not correct for all such The Semantical Problem 89 terms, or even for the majority. Many important types of mental states have no qualitative character at all, or none that is relevant to their type-identity. Consider the variety of different beliefs, for example: the belief that P, the belief that Q, the belief that R, and so on. We have here a potential infinity of importantly different states. One could not possibly master the meaning of each such expression by learning, one by one, a qualitative character peculiar to each state. Nor does each have a distinct quale anyhow. And the same goes for the potential infinity of distinct thoughts that P, and desires that P, and fears that P, and for all of the other ‘propositional attitudes’ as well. These are perhaps the most central expressions in our commonsense framework, and they are distinguished, one from another, by a role-playing element, the proposition or sentence P, not by some introspectible quale (= ‘phenomenological quality’). Their meaning must derive from some other source. Clearly the standard view cannot be the whole story about the meaning of psychological predicates. Further, the standard view is suspect even in its most plausible cases. Among those mental states that are...