The Logic of Meaning and Empirical Knowledge: Exploring Language and Perception

1. EPM: Chs VII & VIII Q: What’s the difference between a thermometer and a person who knows what the temperature is? A: …! Pete Mandik Chairman, Department of Philosophy Coordinator, Cognitive Science Laboratory William Paterson University, New Jersey USA

2. Ch VII: “The Logic of ‘Means’ • Main idea: Meaning is not a relation between a word and the thing (or property or whatever) that the word stands for. The meaning of “apple” is not a relation between a word and a fruit. The meaning of “apple” is a role that the word plays in a system that include a whole bunch of stuff (e.g. the rest of a language, lots of knowledge, and maybe some fruit)

3. “…When we picture a child …learning his first language, we, of course, locate the language learner in a structured logical space in which we are at home. Thus, we conceive of him as a person (or, at least, a potential person) in a world of physical objects, colored, producing sounds, existing in Space and Time. …[U]nless we are careful, we can easily take for granted that the process of teaching a child to use a language is that of teaching it to discriminate elements within a logical space of particulars, universals, facts, etc., of which it is already undiscriminatingly aware, and to associate these discriminated elements with verbal symbols.” (p.65)

4. “[O]nce we have abandoned the idea that learning to use the word "red" involves antecedent episodes of the awareness of redness …there is a temptation to suppose that the word "red" means the quality red by virtue of these two facts: briefly, the fact that it has the syntax of a predicate, and the fact that it is a response (in certain circumstances) to red objects.” (p.66)    But this is just the implausible “thermometer view”.

5. Bad reason for believing the Thermometer View: • “[S]uperficial resemblance of • (In German) "rot" means red • to such relational statements as • Cowley adjoins Oxford.”(p.67)

6. “Means” is not really a relation • “Means” has the same sense in “’rot’ means red” and “’und’ means and”. • ‘und’ means and not in virtue of being related to and-ish objects (know one know what they would be if there were such things). Therefore ‘rot’ means red not in virtue of being related to red objects

7. ‘rot’ means red… • …in virtue of the fact that ‘rot’ plays the same role in German that ‘red’ plays in English. This is just like how ‘und’ means and in virtue of the fact that ‘und’ plays the same role in German that ‘and’ plays in English.

8. It has not been ruled out, then, that… • “…one cannot understand the meaning of the word "red" -- "know what redness is" -- unless one has a great deal of knowledge which classical empiricism would have held to have a purely contingent relationship with the possession of fundamental empirical concepts.” (p.69)

9. Ch VIII: “Does Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?” • Answer to titular question: Kind of. But not what foundationalist epistemologists think it is.

10. “Clearly the …"thermometer view" .. won't do as it stands. Let us see, however, if it cannot be revised to fit the criteria I have been using for "expressing observational knowledge.” (p.74)

11. First: • In order for “This is green” to express knowledge it must have authority (i.e. “it must be worthy of being made, credible, that is, in the sense of worthy of credence”).

12. Second: • “if the authority of the report "This is green" lies in the fact that the existence of green items appropriately related to the perceiver can be inferred from the occurrence of such reports, it follows that only a person who is able to draw this inference, and therefore who has not only the concept green, but also the concept of uttering "This is green" -- indeed, the concept of certain conditions of perception, those which would correctly be called 'standard conditions' -- could be in a position to token "This is green" in recognition of its authority.” (pp. 74-75)

13. “In other words… • for …"This is green" to "express observational knowledge," not only must it be a symptom or sign of the presence of a green object in standard conditions, but the perceiver must know that tokens of "This is green" are symptoms of the presence of green objects in conditions which are standard for visual perception.” (p. 74)

14. Regress? • “it might be thought that there is an obvious regress in the view we are examining. Does it not tell us that observational knowledge at time t presupposes knowledge of the form X is a reliable symptom of Y, which presupposes prior observational knowledge, which presupposes other knowledge of the form X is a reliable symptom of Y, which presupposes still other, and prior, observational knowledge, and so on?” (p. 76)

15. How to avoid the regress • “Thus, all that the view I am defending requires is that no tokening by S now of "This is green" is to count as "expressing observational knowledge" unless it is also correct to say of S that he now knows the appropriate fact of the form X is a reliable symptom of Y, namely that (and again I oversimplify) utterances of "This is green" are reliable indicators of the presence of green objects in standard conditions of perception. And while the correctness of this statement about Jones requires that Jones could now cite prior particular facts as evidence for the idea that these utterances are reliable indicators, it requires only that it is correct to say that Jones now knows, thus remembers, that these particular facts did obtain. It does not require that it be correct to say that at the time these facts did obtain he then knew them to obtain. And the regress disappears.” (pp. 76-77)

16. “Thus, while Jones's ability to give inductive reasons today is built on a long history of acquiring and manifesting verbal habits in perceptual situations, and, in particular, the occurrence of verbal episodes, e.g."This is green," which is superficially like those which are later properly said to express observational knowledge, it does not require that any episode in this prior time be characterizeable as expressing knowledge.” (p.77)

17. “If I reject the framework of traditional empiricism, it is not because I want to say that empirical knowledge has no foundation. For to put it this way is to suggest that it is really "empirical knowledge so-called," and to put it in a box with rumors and hoaxes. There is clearly some point to the picture of human knowledge as resting on a level of propositions -- observation reports -- which do not rest on other propositions in the same way as other propositions rest on them. On the other hand, I do wish to insist that the metaphor of "foundation" is misleading in that it keeps us from seeing that if there is a logical dimension in which other empirical propositions rest on observation reports, there is another logical dimension in which the latter rest on the former. ” (p. 78)

18. “Above all, the picture is misleading because of its static character. One seems forced to choose between the picture of an elephant which rests on a tortoise (What supports the tortoise?) and the picture of a great Hegelian serpent of knowledge with its tail in its mouth (Where does it begin?). Neither will do. For empirical knowledge, like its sophisticated extension, science, is rational, not because it has a foundation but because it is a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim in jeopardy, though not all at once.” (p.79)

19. THE END