Research on the evolution of language is often framed in terms of sharp discontinuities in syntax... more Research on the evolution of language is often framed in terms of sharp discontinuities in syntax and semantics between animal communication systems and human language as we know them. According to the so-called "pragmatics-first" approach to the evolution of language, when trying to understand the origins of human language in animal communication, we should be focusing on potential pragmatic continuities. However, some proponents of this approach (e.g. Seyfarth & Cheney 2017) find important pragmatic continuities, whereas others (e.g. Origgi & Sperber 2000) find sharp discontinuities. I begin (in Section 1) by arguing that this divergence is due to the fact that the proponents implicitly rely, respectively, on two different views of pragmatics, corresponding to different conceptions of what is involved in context-dependence-one "Carnapian", the other "Gricean". I argue that neither conception is fit to serve the purposes of pragmatics-first approaches to the evolution of language. In Section 2, I examine a recent formal "semantic-pragmatic" analysis of monkey calls, due to Philippe Schlenker et al. (in, e.g., 2014, 2016 a, b, 2017), which appears to improve on the Carnapian and Gricean conceptions. However, I argue that the appearances are misleading and that the S-P analysis is no better suited than Carnapian analyses for the purposes of those seeking to establish human-nonhuman pragmatic continuities. Understanding why this is so will point the way toward my preferred, genuinely intermediate conception of pragmatics (as defended in OMITTED), which-I argue in Section 3-is better fit for these purposes. Drawing on recent discussions of chimpanzee communication, I briefly indicate which aspects of extant primate call communication-both gestural and vocal-could potentially count as pragmatic according to this conception.
Even a cursory look at the literature on animal communication reveals that, on a dominant view, t... more Even a cursory look at the literature on animal communication reveals that, on a dominant view, the theoretical task of explaining the evolution of linguistic meaning is to be understood in (at least roughly) Gricean terms. After raising some diffi culties for the Gricean approach to the emergence of meaning, I will motivate an alternative conception of the explanatory task, which focuses on the potential of non-Gricean, expressive communication for illuminating the origins of meaning. This conception not only seems ethologically plausible and philosophically cogent, but it also renders the puzzle of language evolution more tractable by treating meaningfulness as a multifaceted phenomenon with potentially divergent evolutionary roots.
Ordinarily, if a person produces a nonreflective, ‘unstudied’ self-attribution of a
present ment... more Ordinarily, if a person produces a nonreflective, ‘unstudied’ self-attribution of a
present mental state – an avowal – we do not presume that they have produced
the avowal on some specific epistemic basis; and we do not expect them to know
how they know the self-attribution to be true. This no-‘how’ character of basic selfknowledge is puzzling, given that we regard avowals as manifesting factual, and
indeed privileged, knowledge. I am here interested in views that accommodate both
the baseless, no-‘how’ and the factual, privileged character of basic self-knowledge.
I argue that leading constitutivist views, which embrace both, fail properly to meet
the doxastic (as opposed to justificatory) requirement on basic self-knowledge,
thereby failing to preserve its genuinely factual character. I then argue that an alternative,
neo-expressivist approach is better placed to meet the doxastic requirement,
as well as being at least as well-placed as constitutivist views to address the
justificatory requirement on baseless self-knowledge.
RESUMEN Se piensa que nuestro conocimiento de nuestros actuales estados mentales es, a la vez, ca... more RESUMEN Se piensa que nuestro conocimiento de nuestros actuales estados mentales es, a la vez, característico y privilegiado. Gilbert Ryle es célebre por haber ofrecido una explicación deflacionista del auto-conocimiento, argumentando que nuestros episodios de lenguaje interno podrían servir como base evidencial privilegiada (y posiblemente también característica) pa-ra el auto-conocimiento de los estados mentales. La explicación de Ryle ha sido, en gran parte, rechazada. Sin embargo, diversos autores han intentado recientemente traer de nuevo a la vida la explicación de Ryle como un modo de dar cuenta del papel que desempeña el lenguaje interno en el auto-conocimiento. En este artículo, evaluamos críticamente dos de tales explicaciones " neo-ryleanas " , argumentando que son insatisfactorias, especialmente porque no pueden dar cuenta del carácter privilegiado de nuestro auto-conocimiento de los estados mentales. Extraemos de tal evaluación algunos desiderata que debe cumplir una teoría que pueda explicar adecuadamente la significación de los episodios de lenguaje interno para el auto-conocimiento privilegiado. Concluimos sugiriendo que esos desiderata favorecen un enfoque neo-expresivista para la comprensión del papel que desempeña el lenguaje interno en el auto-conocimiento. PALABRAS CLAVE: auto-conocimiento, lenguaje interno, estados mentales, neo-ryleanismo, neo-expresivismo, privilegio de primera persona. ABSTRACT Our knowledge of our own present states of mind is thought to be both distinctive and privileged. Gilbert Ryle has famously offered a deflationary account of self-knowledge, arguing that our inner speech episodes (ISEs) could serve as a privileged (and possibly also distinctive) evidential basis for self-knowledge of mental states. Ryle's account has been, for the most part, rejected. However, several authors have recently attempted to revive the Rylean account by way of explaining the role of inner speech in self-knowledge. In this paper, we critically evaluate two such " neo-Rylean " accounts, arguing that they are unsatisfactory, especially since they cannot account for the privileged character of our self-knowledge of mental states. We extract desiderata for a theory that can adequately explain the significance of ISEs for privileged self-knowledge. We conclude by suggesting that these desiderata favor a neo-expressivist approach to understanding the role of inner speech in self-knowledge.
Page 1. On the Possibility of a Solitary Language* DORIT BAR-ON University of North Carolina at C... more Page 1. On the Possibility of a Solitary Language* DORIT BAR-ON University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Imagine a man who, unlike the familiar Robinson Crusoe, has lived all his life on a desert island, with no other people ...
Recent discussions of animal communication and the evolution of language have advocated adopting ... more Recent discussions of animal communication and the evolution of language have advocated adopting a 'pragmatics-first' approach, according to which "a more productive framework" for primate communication research should be "pragmatics, the field of linguistics that examines the role of context in shaping the meaning of linguistic utterances" (Wheeler & Fischer 2012: 203). After distinguishing two different conceptions of pragmatics that advocates of the pragmatics-first approach have implicitly relied on (one Carnapian, the other Gricean), I argue that neither conception adequately serves the purposes of pragmatics-first approaches to the origins of human linguistic communication. My main aim in this paper is to motivate-and begin to articulate-an intermediary conception whose scope is narrower than Carnapian pragmatics but broader than Gricean pragmatics. To do so, I first spell out what I take to be the key insight offered by proponents of the Gricean approach concerning the emergence of linguistic communication, namely, its being communication 'from a psychological point of view' (Tomasello, 2008). I then develop this insight using key elements from the anti-Gricean 'biosemantic' account of linguistic communication due to Ruth Millikan (1984, 1995, 2006, 2017, and elsewhere). I argue that the intermediary pragmatics-first approach that I propose, which draws on both Gricean and Millikanian resources, would be better equipped to serve the purposes of those who search for potential precursors of human linguistic communication in animal communication.
Cheney and Seyfarth’s groundbreaking studies on vervet monkey alarm calls paved the way for a ser... more Cheney and Seyfarth’s groundbreaking studies on vervet monkey alarm calls paved the way for a serious investigations of what animal signals might mean and their relevance to the evolution of language. Although the question of what drives call production remains largely unanswered, and parallels with language cannot be discerned in this domain, there appear to be some similarities to language in the way primates, and other animals, derive information from utterances by pragmatically interpreting their significance using available contextual cues. We describe some of the advances that Cheney and Seyfarth’s work spurred and illustrate our current understanding using the alarm calling system of putty-nosed monkeys as an example. We also briefly indicate some of the obstacles to adopting either a purely ‘Carnapian’ or purely ‘Gricean’ pragmatic approach to the evolution of language. We conclude by briefly sketching an intermediate pragmatic framework. This framework takes account of the expressive character of a subset of communicative signals that are biologically designed to openly reveal psychological states, thereby allowing mutually beneficial interactions among, specifically, signalers and receivers that live in social groups.
The notes below were produced by Dorit BarOn in preparation for meetings of a reading group on Be... more The notes below were produced by Dorit BarOn in preparation for meetings of a reading group on Beyond Concepts and lightly edited by Ruth Millikan. The notes were prepared for online publication with the help of Drew Johnson. (Bullets in italics are reader glosses, comments, or questions.)
Philosophers are often interested in explaining significant contrasts between ordinary descriptiv... more Philosophers are often interested in explaining significant contrasts between ordinary descriptive discourses, on the one hand, and discourses – such as ethics, mathematics, or mentalistic discourse – that are thought to be more problematic in various ways. But certain strategies for ‘saving the differences’ can make it too difficult to preserve notable similarities across discourses. My own preference is for strategies that ‘save the differences’ without sacrificing logico-semantic continuities or committing to deflationism about truth, but also without embracing either truth-pluralism or global expressivism. I motivate my preference by examining, as a test case, mentalistic discourse. I begin by reconstructing three philosophical puzzles that have led philosophers to think of mentalistic discourse as problematic (Section 2). These puzzles concern the semantic, epistemological, and metaphysical status of contrasts between first-person present-tense attributions – ‘avowals’ – and all other ordinary contingent attributions. I then briefly present my own, neo-expressivist strategy for addressing the puzzles (Section 3). Unlike traditional ‘simple expressivism’ (which is the analogue in the mentalistic realm of ethical emotivism), neo-expressivism is not committed to avowals’ being non-truth-apt or having non-propositional meanings. And yet it does not require embracing either deflationism about truth or global expressivism. It preserves continuities between mentalistic and other discourses while allowing us to capture discontinuities. Moreover, it is possible to apply the neo-expressivist framework in other areas where the notion of expression is deemed explanatorily useful, as illustrated by considering ethical neo-expressivism (Section 4). In the final section (5), I make more general comments on truth and meaning and tease out some of the commitments of the approach I advocate.
Journal of the History of Analytic Philosophy, 2019
I address here the question what sense to make of the idea that there can be thought prior to lan... more I address here the question what sense to make of the idea that there can be thought prior to language (both in ontogeny and among nonlinguistic animals). I begin by juxtaposing two familiar and influential philosophical views – one associated with the work of Paul Grice, the other associated with the work of Donald Davidson. Grice and Davidson share a broad, rationalist perspective on language and thought, but they endorse conflicting theses on the relation between them. Whereas, for Grice, thought of an especially complex sort is a precondition of linguistic meaning, for Davidson, there can be no genuine thought without language. I argue that both views present us with unpalatable alternatives concerning our understanding of the natural origins of objective thought and meaningful language. Drawing on what I take to be key insights from Grice and Davidson, I then lay out some broad desiderata for an intermediate position. I finally turn to a certain form of nonlinguistic communication of the sort of which both prelinguistic children and languageless animals are capable – viz., expressive communication. I propose that a proper appreciation of the character and function of expressive communication can help us trace the outlines of the desired intermediate position. My topic in this paper is the relation between language and thought. It concerns, more specifically, the question what sense to make of the (increasingly compelling) idea that there can be thought prior to language, both in ontogeny and among nonlinguistic animals. My starting point will be two familiar and influential philosophical views on the relation between thought and language – one associated with the work of Paul Grice, the other associated with the work of Donald Davidson. Proper treatment of my topic requires a deeply interdisciplinary investigation, drawing on insights and findings from linguistics, cognitive science, and comparative psychology, among others. My modest aim here will be to provide a philosophical prolegomenon of sorts to this investigation. I begin with a brief characterization of certain contrasts, alongside some similarities, between Grice and Davidson. As we will see, although Grice and Davidson share a broad,
Research on the evolution of language is often framed in terms of sharp discontinuities in syntax... more Research on the evolution of language is often framed in terms of sharp discontinuities in syntax and semantics between animal communication systems and human language as we know them. According to the so-called "pragmatics-first" approach to the evolution of language, when trying to understand the origins of human language in animal communication, we should be focusing on potential pragmatic continuities. However, some proponents of this approach (e.g. Seyfarth & Cheney 2017) find important pragmatic continuities, whereas others (e.g. Origgi & Sperber 2000) find sharp discontinuities. I begin (in Section 1) by arguing that this divergence is due to the fact that the proponents implicitly rely, respectively, on two different views of pragmatics, corresponding to different conceptions of what is involved in context-dependence-one "Carnapian", the other "Gricean". I argue that neither conception is fit to serve the purposes of pragmatics-first approaches to the evolution of language. In Section 2, I examine a recent formal "semantic-pragmatic" analysis of monkey calls, due to Philippe Schlenker et al. (in, e.g., 2014, 2016 a, b, 2017), which appears to improve on the Carnapian and Gricean conceptions. However, I argue that the appearances are misleading and that the S-P analysis is no better suited than Carnapian analyses for the purposes of those seeking to establish human-nonhuman pragmatic continuities. Understanding why this is so will point the way toward my preferred, genuinely intermediate conception of pragmatics (as defended in OMITTED), which-I argue in Section 3-is better fit for these purposes. Drawing on recent discussions of chimpanzee communication, I briefly indicate which aspects of extant primate call communication-both gestural and vocal-could potentially count as pragmatic according to this conception.
Even a cursory look at the literature on animal communication reveals that, on a dominant view, t... more Even a cursory look at the literature on animal communication reveals that, on a dominant view, the theoretical task of explaining the evolution of linguistic meaning is to be understood in (at least roughly) Gricean terms. After raising some diffi culties for the Gricean approach to the emergence of meaning, I will motivate an alternative conception of the explanatory task, which focuses on the potential of non-Gricean, expressive communication for illuminating the origins of meaning. This conception not only seems ethologically plausible and philosophically cogent, but it also renders the puzzle of language evolution more tractable by treating meaningfulness as a multifaceted phenomenon with potentially divergent evolutionary roots.
Ordinarily, if a person produces a nonreflective, ‘unstudied’ self-attribution of a
present ment... more Ordinarily, if a person produces a nonreflective, ‘unstudied’ self-attribution of a
present mental state – an avowal – we do not presume that they have produced
the avowal on some specific epistemic basis; and we do not expect them to know
how they know the self-attribution to be true. This no-‘how’ character of basic selfknowledge is puzzling, given that we regard avowals as manifesting factual, and
indeed privileged, knowledge. I am here interested in views that accommodate both
the baseless, no-‘how’ and the factual, privileged character of basic self-knowledge.
I argue that leading constitutivist views, which embrace both, fail properly to meet
the doxastic (as opposed to justificatory) requirement on basic self-knowledge,
thereby failing to preserve its genuinely factual character. I then argue that an alternative,
neo-expressivist approach is better placed to meet the doxastic requirement,
as well as being at least as well-placed as constitutivist views to address the
justificatory requirement on baseless self-knowledge.
RESUMEN Se piensa que nuestro conocimiento de nuestros actuales estados mentales es, a la vez, ca... more RESUMEN Se piensa que nuestro conocimiento de nuestros actuales estados mentales es, a la vez, característico y privilegiado. Gilbert Ryle es célebre por haber ofrecido una explicación deflacionista del auto-conocimiento, argumentando que nuestros episodios de lenguaje interno podrían servir como base evidencial privilegiada (y posiblemente también característica) pa-ra el auto-conocimiento de los estados mentales. La explicación de Ryle ha sido, en gran parte, rechazada. Sin embargo, diversos autores han intentado recientemente traer de nuevo a la vida la explicación de Ryle como un modo de dar cuenta del papel que desempeña el lenguaje interno en el auto-conocimiento. En este artículo, evaluamos críticamente dos de tales explicaciones " neo-ryleanas " , argumentando que son insatisfactorias, especialmente porque no pueden dar cuenta del carácter privilegiado de nuestro auto-conocimiento de los estados mentales. Extraemos de tal evaluación algunos desiderata que debe cumplir una teoría que pueda explicar adecuadamente la significación de los episodios de lenguaje interno para el auto-conocimiento privilegiado. Concluimos sugiriendo que esos desiderata favorecen un enfoque neo-expresivista para la comprensión del papel que desempeña el lenguaje interno en el auto-conocimiento. PALABRAS CLAVE: auto-conocimiento, lenguaje interno, estados mentales, neo-ryleanismo, neo-expresivismo, privilegio de primera persona. ABSTRACT Our knowledge of our own present states of mind is thought to be both distinctive and privileged. Gilbert Ryle has famously offered a deflationary account of self-knowledge, arguing that our inner speech episodes (ISEs) could serve as a privileged (and possibly also distinctive) evidential basis for self-knowledge of mental states. Ryle's account has been, for the most part, rejected. However, several authors have recently attempted to revive the Rylean account by way of explaining the role of inner speech in self-knowledge. In this paper, we critically evaluate two such " neo-Rylean " accounts, arguing that they are unsatisfactory, especially since they cannot account for the privileged character of our self-knowledge of mental states. We extract desiderata for a theory that can adequately explain the significance of ISEs for privileged self-knowledge. We conclude by suggesting that these desiderata favor a neo-expressivist approach to understanding the role of inner speech in self-knowledge.
Page 1. On the Possibility of a Solitary Language* DORIT BAR-ON University of North Carolina at C... more Page 1. On the Possibility of a Solitary Language* DORIT BAR-ON University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Imagine a man who, unlike the familiar Robinson Crusoe, has lived all his life on a desert island, with no other people ...
Recent discussions of animal communication and the evolution of language have advocated adopting ... more Recent discussions of animal communication and the evolution of language have advocated adopting a 'pragmatics-first' approach, according to which "a more productive framework" for primate communication research should be "pragmatics, the field of linguistics that examines the role of context in shaping the meaning of linguistic utterances" (Wheeler & Fischer 2012: 203). After distinguishing two different conceptions of pragmatics that advocates of the pragmatics-first approach have implicitly relied on (one Carnapian, the other Gricean), I argue that neither conception adequately serves the purposes of pragmatics-first approaches to the origins of human linguistic communication. My main aim in this paper is to motivate-and begin to articulate-an intermediary conception whose scope is narrower than Carnapian pragmatics but broader than Gricean pragmatics. To do so, I first spell out what I take to be the key insight offered by proponents of the Gricean approach concerning the emergence of linguistic communication, namely, its being communication 'from a psychological point of view' (Tomasello, 2008). I then develop this insight using key elements from the anti-Gricean 'biosemantic' account of linguistic communication due to Ruth Millikan (1984, 1995, 2006, 2017, and elsewhere). I argue that the intermediary pragmatics-first approach that I propose, which draws on both Gricean and Millikanian resources, would be better equipped to serve the purposes of those who search for potential precursors of human linguistic communication in animal communication.
Cheney and Seyfarth’s groundbreaking studies on vervet monkey alarm calls paved the way for a ser... more Cheney and Seyfarth’s groundbreaking studies on vervet monkey alarm calls paved the way for a serious investigations of what animal signals might mean and their relevance to the evolution of language. Although the question of what drives call production remains largely unanswered, and parallels with language cannot be discerned in this domain, there appear to be some similarities to language in the way primates, and other animals, derive information from utterances by pragmatically interpreting their significance using available contextual cues. We describe some of the advances that Cheney and Seyfarth’s work spurred and illustrate our current understanding using the alarm calling system of putty-nosed monkeys as an example. We also briefly indicate some of the obstacles to adopting either a purely ‘Carnapian’ or purely ‘Gricean’ pragmatic approach to the evolution of language. We conclude by briefly sketching an intermediate pragmatic framework. This framework takes account of the expressive character of a subset of communicative signals that are biologically designed to openly reveal psychological states, thereby allowing mutually beneficial interactions among, specifically, signalers and receivers that live in social groups.
The notes below were produced by Dorit BarOn in preparation for meetings of a reading group on Be... more The notes below were produced by Dorit BarOn in preparation for meetings of a reading group on Beyond Concepts and lightly edited by Ruth Millikan. The notes were prepared for online publication with the help of Drew Johnson. (Bullets in italics are reader glosses, comments, or questions.)
Philosophers are often interested in explaining significant contrasts between ordinary descriptiv... more Philosophers are often interested in explaining significant contrasts between ordinary descriptive discourses, on the one hand, and discourses – such as ethics, mathematics, or mentalistic discourse – that are thought to be more problematic in various ways. But certain strategies for ‘saving the differences’ can make it too difficult to preserve notable similarities across discourses. My own preference is for strategies that ‘save the differences’ without sacrificing logico-semantic continuities or committing to deflationism about truth, but also without embracing either truth-pluralism or global expressivism. I motivate my preference by examining, as a test case, mentalistic discourse. I begin by reconstructing three philosophical puzzles that have led philosophers to think of mentalistic discourse as problematic (Section 2). These puzzles concern the semantic, epistemological, and metaphysical status of contrasts between first-person present-tense attributions – ‘avowals’ – and all other ordinary contingent attributions. I then briefly present my own, neo-expressivist strategy for addressing the puzzles (Section 3). Unlike traditional ‘simple expressivism’ (which is the analogue in the mentalistic realm of ethical emotivism), neo-expressivism is not committed to avowals’ being non-truth-apt or having non-propositional meanings. And yet it does not require embracing either deflationism about truth or global expressivism. It preserves continuities between mentalistic and other discourses while allowing us to capture discontinuities. Moreover, it is possible to apply the neo-expressivist framework in other areas where the notion of expression is deemed explanatorily useful, as illustrated by considering ethical neo-expressivism (Section 4). In the final section (5), I make more general comments on truth and meaning and tease out some of the commitments of the approach I advocate.
Journal of the History of Analytic Philosophy, 2019
I address here the question what sense to make of the idea that there can be thought prior to lan... more I address here the question what sense to make of the idea that there can be thought prior to language (both in ontogeny and among nonlinguistic animals). I begin by juxtaposing two familiar and influential philosophical views – one associated with the work of Paul Grice, the other associated with the work of Donald Davidson. Grice and Davidson share a broad, rationalist perspective on language and thought, but they endorse conflicting theses on the relation between them. Whereas, for Grice, thought of an especially complex sort is a precondition of linguistic meaning, for Davidson, there can be no genuine thought without language. I argue that both views present us with unpalatable alternatives concerning our understanding of the natural origins of objective thought and meaningful language. Drawing on what I take to be key insights from Grice and Davidson, I then lay out some broad desiderata for an intermediate position. I finally turn to a certain form of nonlinguistic communication of the sort of which both prelinguistic children and languageless animals are capable – viz., expressive communication. I propose that a proper appreciation of the character and function of expressive communication can help us trace the outlines of the desired intermediate position. My topic in this paper is the relation between language and thought. It concerns, more specifically, the question what sense to make of the (increasingly compelling) idea that there can be thought prior to language, both in ontogeny and among nonlinguistic animals. My starting point will be two familiar and influential philosophical views on the relation between thought and language – one associated with the work of Paul Grice, the other associated with the work of Donald Davidson. Proper treatment of my topic requires a deeply interdisciplinary investigation, drawing on insights and findings from linguistics, cognitive science, and comparative psychology, among others. My modest aim here will be to provide a philosophical prolegomenon of sorts to this investigation. I begin with a brief characterization of certain contrasts, alongside some similarities, between Grice and Davidson. As we will see, although Grice and Davidson share a broad,
Descartes’ substance dualism can be plausibly seen as an ontological solution to epistemic puzzle... more Descartes’ substance dualism can be plausibly seen as an ontological solution to epistemic puzzles surrounding the seemingly privileged, first-person access we have to our own minds. His is an attempt to answer the question: What must (or could) a Self be so that each of us could have the sort of privileged basic self-knowledge – knowledge of all (and only) our own present states of mind – that we appear to have? In this paper, I disentangle various semantic and epistemological issues surrounding uses of “I” to refer to ourselves and uses of non-evidential (or ‘base-less’) self-attributions of present states of mind – “avowals” – to produce true claims about our states of mind. I juxtapose two dilemmas that have informed my treatment of “I” and of avowals – one due to Elizabeth Anscombe, the other due to Richard Rorty. I use the juxtaposition to revisit certain (neglected) aspects of the motivation and defense I have provided for my neo-expressivist approach to the security of avowals, to self-knowledge, and to capturing the mental/nonmental divide. In Section 1, I outline Anscombe’s Dilemma – which concerns uses of “I” ‘as subject’ – and my preferred, non-Cartesian way of avoiding it. In Section 2, I discuss Rorty’s Dilemma – which concerns so-called first-person authority. In Section 3, I suggest that our discussion of the mental/nonmental divide should begin with a question that I take to be prior to the Cartesian question articulated above, namely: What must (or could) states of mind be so that, as subjects of such states, we could be in a position to express all (and only) our present states of mind through our behavior, thereby enabling others to have immediate uptake of them? I conclude with some comments on potential implications of neo-expressivism for our understanding of the metaphysical nature of mental states and the mental/nonmental divide.
‘Pragmatics-First’ Approaches to Animal Communication and the Evolution of Language
Dorit Bar-On
... more ‘Pragmatics-First’ Approaches to Animal Communication and the Evolution of Language Dorit Bar-On Abstract Recent discussions of the evolution of language have advocated a ‘pragmatics-first’ approach: the idea that pragmatic phenomena are key to understanding differences between linguistic and animal communication, as well as the possibility of the emergence of the former from the latter. However, as argued in Bar-On & Moore (2017), advocates of the ‘pragmatics-first’ approach have understood ‘pragmatics’ in two importantly different ways; both have roots in the philosophy of language. On the first notion (due to Carnap 1942), pragmatic phenomena are those that involve context-dependent determination of the content/significance of an utterance or signal. On the second (due to Grice 1957), pragmatic phenomena essentially involve the production of utterances with audience-directed communicative intentions (and their attribution to producers by their interpreters). I use the distinction for two related purposes. First, to evaluate a recent and influential formal analysis of monkey calls, due to linguist and philosopher Schlenker et al. (e.g. 2014, 2016, 2017), which invokes certain pragmatic principles to explain the derivation of call meanings (through a form of pragmatic enrichment). And second, to motivate the need for an intermediate notion of pragmatics – one that would allow us to reconceive the significance of animal communication for our understanding of the evolution of language.
A fundamental puzzle about self-knowledge is this: our spontaneous, unreflective self-attribution... more A fundamental puzzle about self-knowledge is this: our spontaneous, unreflective self-attributions of beliefs and other mental states—avowals, as they are often called—appear to be at once epistemically groundless and also epistemically privileged. On the one hand, it seems that our avowals simply do not rely on—nor do they require—justification or evidence. On the other hand, our avowals seem to represent a substantive epistemic achievement: they appear to represent beliefs that are especially apt to constitute genuine knowledge of our own present states of mind. Several authors have recently tried to explain away avowals' groundlessness by appeal to the so-called transparency of present-tense self-attributions—a feature that is best illustrated by considering present-tense self-attributions of beliefs. As observed by Gareth Evans, if asked whether I believe, e.g., that it's raining, I will typically not 'look inward' and attend to my own state of mind, but instead I will look outside, to the world—to see whether it's raining or not. Two recent and divergent construals of transparency agree that it shows avowals of beliefs (and perhaps other mental states) to be only apparently groundless. After a critical discussion of these two construals (Section 2), we present an alternative reading of transparency that explains—rather than explains away—the apparent groundlessness of avowals (Section 3). We then explore (in Section 4) a way of coupling this alternative reading with a plausible account of how it is that our ordinary avowals can represent genuine knowledge of our own present states of mind.
Descartes’ substance dualism can be plausibly seen as an ontological solution to epistemic puzzle... more Descartes’ substance dualism can be plausibly seen as an ontological solution to epistemic puzzles surrounding the seemingly privileged, first-person access we have to our own minds. His is an attempt to answer the question: What must (or could) a Self be so that each of us could have the sort of privileged basic self-knowledge – knowledge of all (and only) our own present states of mind – that we appear to have? In this paper, I disentangle various semantic and epistemological issues surrounding uses of “I” to refer to ourselves and uses of non-evidential (or ‘base-less’) self-attributions of present states of mind – “avowals” – to produce true claims about our states of mind. I juxtapose two dilemmas that have informed my treatment of “I” and of avowals – one due to Elizabeth Anscombe, the other due to Richard Rorty. I use the juxtaposition to revisit certain (neglected) aspects of the motivation and defense I have provided for my neo-expressivist approach to the security of avowals, to self-knowledge, and to capturing the mental/nonmental divide. In Section 2, I outline Anscombe’s Dilemma – which concerns uses of “I” ‘as subject’ – and my preferred, non-Cartesian way of avoiding it. In Section 3, I discuss Rorty’s Dilemma – which concerns so-called first-person authority. In Section 4, I motivate my preferred, neo-expressivist approach to avoiding Rorty’s Dilemma by drawing on the earlier discussion of “I” and of self-identification. I suggest that our discussion of the mental/nonmental divide should begin with a question that I take to be prior to the Cartesian question articulated above, namely: What must (or could) states of mind be so that, as subjects of such states, we could be in a position to express all (and only) our present states of mind through our behavior, thereby enabling others to have immediate uptake of them? I conclude with some comments on potential implications of neo-expressivism for our understanding of the metaphysical nature of mental states and the mental/nonmental divide.
These summary notes on Ruth Millikan’s latest book Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natur... more These summary notes on Ruth Millikan’s latest book Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information (OUP, 2017) were prepared by Dorit Bar-On for a discussion group that met in Summer 2018. The notes have been lightly edited by Millikan and prepared for online publication with the help of Drew Johnson.
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present mental state – an avowal – we do not presume that they have produced
the avowal on some specific epistemic basis; and we do not expect them to know
how they know the self-attribution to be true. This no-‘how’ character of basic selfknowledge is puzzling, given that we regard avowals as manifesting factual, and
indeed privileged, knowledge. I am here interested in views that accommodate both
the baseless, no-‘how’ and the factual, privileged character of basic self-knowledge.
I argue that leading constitutivist views, which embrace both, fail properly to meet
the doxastic (as opposed to justificatory) requirement on basic self-knowledge,
thereby failing to preserve its genuinely factual character. I then argue that an alternative,
neo-expressivist approach is better placed to meet the doxastic requirement,
as well as being at least as well-placed as constitutivist views to address the
justificatory requirement on baseless self-knowledge.
I motivate my preference by examining, as a test case, mentalistic discourse. I begin by reconstructing three philosophical puzzles that have led philosophers to think of mentalistic discourse as problematic (Section 2). These puzzles concern the semantic, epistemological, and metaphysical status of contrasts between first-person present-tense attributions – ‘avowals’ – and all other ordinary contingent attributions. I then briefly present my own, neo-expressivist strategy for addressing the puzzles (Section 3). Unlike traditional ‘simple expressivism’ (which is the analogue in the mentalistic realm of ethical emotivism), neo-expressivism is not committed to avowals’ being non-truth-apt or having non-propositional meanings. And yet it does not require embracing either deflationism about truth or global expressivism. It preserves continuities between mentalistic and other discourses while allowing us to capture discontinuities. Moreover, it is possible to apply the neo-expressivist framework in other areas where the notion of expression is deemed explanatorily useful, as illustrated by considering ethical neo-expressivism (Section 4). In the final section (5), I make more general comments on truth and meaning and tease out some of the commitments of the approach I advocate.
present mental state – an avowal – we do not presume that they have produced
the avowal on some specific epistemic basis; and we do not expect them to know
how they know the self-attribution to be true. This no-‘how’ character of basic selfknowledge is puzzling, given that we regard avowals as manifesting factual, and
indeed privileged, knowledge. I am here interested in views that accommodate both
the baseless, no-‘how’ and the factual, privileged character of basic self-knowledge.
I argue that leading constitutivist views, which embrace both, fail properly to meet
the doxastic (as opposed to justificatory) requirement on basic self-knowledge,
thereby failing to preserve its genuinely factual character. I then argue that an alternative,
neo-expressivist approach is better placed to meet the doxastic requirement,
as well as being at least as well-placed as constitutivist views to address the
justificatory requirement on baseless self-knowledge.
I motivate my preference by examining, as a test case, mentalistic discourse. I begin by reconstructing three philosophical puzzles that have led philosophers to think of mentalistic discourse as problematic (Section 2). These puzzles concern the semantic, epistemological, and metaphysical status of contrasts between first-person present-tense attributions – ‘avowals’ – and all other ordinary contingent attributions. I then briefly present my own, neo-expressivist strategy for addressing the puzzles (Section 3). Unlike traditional ‘simple expressivism’ (which is the analogue in the mentalistic realm of ethical emotivism), neo-expressivism is not committed to avowals’ being non-truth-apt or having non-propositional meanings. And yet it does not require embracing either deflationism about truth or global expressivism. It preserves continuities between mentalistic and other discourses while allowing us to capture discontinuities. Moreover, it is possible to apply the neo-expressivist framework in other areas where the notion of expression is deemed explanatorily useful, as illustrated by considering ethical neo-expressivism (Section 4). In the final section (5), I make more general comments on truth and meaning and tease out some of the commitments of the approach I advocate.
What must (or could) a Self be so that each of us could have the sort of privileged basic self-knowledge – knowledge of all (and only) our own present states of mind – that we appear to have?
In this paper, I disentangle various semantic and epistemological issues surrounding uses of “I” to refer to ourselves and uses of non-evidential (or ‘base-less’) self-attributions of present states of mind – “avowals” – to produce true claims about our states of mind. I juxtapose two dilemmas that have informed my treatment of “I” and of avowals – one due to Elizabeth Anscombe, the other due to Richard Rorty. I use the juxtaposition to revisit certain (neglected) aspects of the motivation and defense I have provided for my neo-expressivist approach to the security of avowals, to self-knowledge, and to capturing the mental/nonmental divide.
In Section 1, I outline Anscombe’s Dilemma – which concerns uses of “I” ‘as subject’ – and my preferred, non-Cartesian way of avoiding it. In Section 2, I discuss Rorty’s Dilemma – which concerns so-called first-person authority. In Section 3, I suggest that our discussion of the mental/nonmental divide should begin with a question that I take to be prior to the Cartesian question articulated above, namely:
What must (or could) states of mind be so that, as subjects of such states, we could be in a position to express all (and only) our present states of mind through our behavior, thereby enabling others to have immediate uptake of them?
I conclude with some comments on potential implications of neo-expressivism for our understanding of the metaphysical nature of mental states and the mental/nonmental divide.
Dorit Bar-On
Abstract
Recent discussions of the evolution of language have advocated a ‘pragmatics-first’ approach: the idea that pragmatic phenomena are key to understanding differences between linguistic and animal communication, as well as the possibility of the emergence of the former from the latter. However, as argued in Bar-On & Moore (2017), advocates of the ‘pragmatics-first’ approach have understood ‘pragmatics’ in two importantly different ways; both have roots in the philosophy of language. On the first notion (due to Carnap 1942), pragmatic phenomena are those that involve context-dependent determination of the content/significance of an utterance or signal. On the second (due to Grice 1957), pragmatic phenomena essentially involve the production of utterances with audience-directed communicative intentions (and their attribution to producers by their interpreters). I use the distinction for two related purposes. First, to evaluate a recent and influential formal analysis of monkey calls, due to linguist and philosopher Schlenker et al. (e.g. 2014, 2016, 2017), which invokes certain pragmatic principles to explain the derivation of call meanings (through a form of pragmatic enrichment). And second, to motivate the need for an intermediate notion of pragmatics – one that would allow us to reconceive the significance of animal communication for our understanding of the evolution of language.
What must (or could) a Self be so that each of us could have the sort of privileged basic self-knowledge – knowledge of all (and only) our own present states of mind – that we appear to have?
In this paper, I disentangle various semantic and epistemological issues surrounding uses of “I” to refer to ourselves and uses of non-evidential (or ‘base-less’) self-attributions of present states of mind – “avowals” – to produce true claims about our states of mind. I juxtapose two dilemmas that have informed my treatment of “I” and of avowals – one due to Elizabeth Anscombe, the other due to Richard Rorty. I use the juxtaposition to revisit certain (neglected) aspects of the motivation and defense I have provided for my neo-expressivist approach to the security of avowals, to self-knowledge, and to capturing the mental/nonmental divide.
In Section 2, I outline Anscombe’s Dilemma – which concerns uses of “I” ‘as subject’ – and my preferred, non-Cartesian way of avoiding it. In Section 3, I discuss Rorty’s Dilemma – which concerns so-called first-person authority. In Section 4, I motivate my preferred, neo-expressivist approach to avoiding Rorty’s Dilemma by drawing on the earlier discussion of “I” and of self-identification. I suggest that our discussion of the mental/nonmental divide should begin with a question that I take to be prior to the Cartesian question articulated above, namely:
What must (or could) states of mind be so that, as subjects of such states, we could be in a position to express all (and only) our present states of mind through our behavior, thereby enabling others to have immediate uptake of them?
I conclude with some comments on potential implications of neo-expressivism for our understanding of the metaphysical nature of mental states and the mental/nonmental divide.