Necessary Truth, the Game Analogy, and the Meaning-is-Use Thesis

NECESSARY TRUTH, THE GAME ANALOGY, AND THE MEANING-IS-USE THESIS JOHN PETERSON HAS recently suggested 1 that necessary truths might after all pertain to the ways things really are. Henry Veatch has argued 2 most persuasively for this same thesis, and there have recently been philosophers 3 within the analytic tradition who have maintained this thesis too. There have been signs that analytic philosophy might be awakening from its Kantian slumber. Yet, there are many issues 4 to be considered if this realist thesis is to have a chance for acceptance . By way of advancing this view I would like to consider one of the primary theories of necessary truth that has been held in recent times by analytic philosophers. This theory does not attempt to explain the nature of necessary truth by reference to some internal feature of the sentence, viz., the meaning of words, the syntactical structure, or self-contradictory denials. Rather, this theory appeals to rules regarding the use of whole sentences. Rules of language dictate what we must and must not say, and these rules constitute the ground or explanation of necessary truth. For example, the principle of non-contradic1 "Analytic Philosophy Reexamined," The Thomist 44 (April, 1980) . 2 Two Logics (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1969). 3 Panayot Butchvarov, The Concept of Knowledge (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1970) and Being Qua Being (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1979); Milton Fisk, Nature and Necessity (Bloomington, Indiana: University Press, 1978) and Saul Kripke, "Naming and Necessity," in Semantics of Natural Languages, eds. Donald Davidson and Gilbert Tarman (Dordrecht , Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1972). 4 Not the least of which is the question of whether logical relations are different from so-called real relations. See Veatch, Intentional Logie (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952); also, Robert W. Schmidt, S.J., The Domain of Logic According to Saint Thomas Aquinas (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966). 4~3 424 DOUGLAS B. RASMUSSEN tion is accounted for by saying that it is a rule of language that one does not contradict oneself. This rule is neither justified by reference to some feature of the sentence nor by an appeal to the way things are. Rather, it is just a rule of language. It might be objected that this approach accomplishes nothing because it can still be asked why these rules are adopted. The mere fact that there is a linguistic rule " Don't contradict yourself " does not in and of itself show that such a rule is ultimately linguistic in character with no concern for the way things are. (In other words, it does not show that the source of the necessity exhibited in the principle of non-contradiction, to continue the example, is a result of linguistic convention.) Further, it does not illuminate the nature of necessary truth very much if every time one confronts a necessary truth, one postulates a rule of language as the explanation. If this were really to constitute an explanation, it would seem that these rules should be verifiable independently of the necessary truths they purport to explain, but what would it he like to discover the adoption of such a rule? Are they found in grammar books or dictionaries ? These objections to the appeal to linguistic rules as the source of necessary truth may seem quite effective. They are so, however , only within the confiines of a certain view of language-a view challenged by Wittgenstein. Is it the case that words ultimately obtain their meaning through their reference to something, some extra-linguistic object? Or, is it the case that the meanings of words is their use? Putting it more directly for our concern, is it the case that the rules of language require some explanation, some appeal to "objective fact," or is it the case that language is more like a game than anything else and thus its rules do not require further grounding? If the latter is true, then the objections raised against the appeal to linguistic rules as the source of necessary truth are without foundation. In this essay I will consider the claim that language is more like a game than anything else, and after suggesting...