Brandom

May 8, 2007

Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism

Lecture One

Extending the Project of Analysis1

My aim in these lectures is to present a new way of thinking a out language, specifically a out the relations etween meaning and use, or etween what is said and the acti!ity of saying it" #o that end, $ will introduce a new metatheoretic conceptual apparatus, and de!elop it through applications to a num er of sorts of locution that ha!e, properly, een the focus of intense philosophical interest% logical and semantic !oca ulary, inde&ical !oca ulary, modal, normati!e, and intentional !oca ularies" #he concerns that animate this enterprise arise from a way of thinking a out the nature of the general pro'ect pursued y analytic philosophy o!er the past century or so, and a out its epic confrontation with (ittgensteinean pragmatism" )ustifying that rendering of the tradition would take me far afield, ut it will e well to egin with at least a sketch of that moti!ating picture"

Section 1: The Classical Project of Analysis

$ think of analytic philosophy as ha!ing at its center a concern with semantic relations etween what $ will call *!oca ularies+" $ts characteristic form of ,uestion is whether and in what way one can make sense of the meanings e&pressed y one kind of locution in terms of the meanings e&pressed y another kind of locution" -o, for instance, two early paradigmatic
1

#he work reported here was conducted with the support of the ."(" Mellon /oundation, through their 0istinguished .chie!ement in the 1umanities .ward, and the 2enter for .d!anced -tudy in the Beha!ioral -ciences at -tanford 3ni!ersity 4where $ was also supported y the Mellon /oundation5"

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pro'ects were to show that e!erything e&pressi le in the !oca ulary of num er<theory, and again, e!erything e&pressi le using definite descriptions, is e&pressi le already in the !oca ulary of first<order ,uantificational logic with identity" #he nature of the key kind of semantic relation etween !oca ularies has een !ariously characteri=ed during the history of analytic philosophy% as analysis, definition, paraphrase, translation, reduction of different sorts, truth<making, and !arious kinds of super!enience>to name 'ust a few contenders" $n each case, howe!er, it is characteristic of classical analytic philosophy that logical !oca ulary is accorded a pri!ileged role in specifying these semantic relations" $t has always een taken at least to e licit to appeal to logical !oca ulary in ela orating the relation etween analysandum and analysans>target !oca ulary and ase !oca ulary" $ will refer to this aspect of the analytic pro'ect as its commitment to *semantic logicism+"2 $f we ask which were the !oca ulary<kinds whose semantic relations it was thought to e important to in!estigate during this period, at least two core programs of classical analytic philosophy show up% empiricism and naturalism" #hese !enera le modern philosophical traditions in epistemology and ontology respecti!ely were transformed in the twentieth century, first y eing transposed into a semantic key, and second y the application of the newly a!aila le logical !oca ulary to the self<consciously semantic programs they then ecame"

.s base !oca ularies, different species of empiricism appealed to phenomenal !oca ulary, e&pressing how things appear, or to secondary<,uality !oca ulary, or, less

$n this usage, the logicism a out mathematics characteristic of /rege+s Grundgesetze and ?ussell and (hitehead+s Principia is semantic logicism a out the relations etween mathematical and logical !oca ularies"

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demandingly, to o ser!ational !oca ulary" #ypical target !oca ularies include o 'ecti!e !oca ulary formulating claims a out how things actually are 4as opposed to how they merely appear5, primary<,uality !oca ulary, theoretical !oca ulary, and modal, normati!e, semantic, and intentional !oca ularies" #he generic challenge is to show how what is e&pressed y the use of such target !oca ularies can e reconstructed from what is e&pressed y the ase !oca ulary, when it is ela orated y the use of logical !oca ulary" .s ase !oca ularies, different species of naturalism appealed to the !oca ulary of fundamental physics, or to the !oca ulary of the natural sciences 4including the special sciences5 more generally, or 'ust to o 'ecti!e descripti!e !oca ulary, e!en when not regimented y incorporation into e&plicit scientific theories" #ypical targets include normati!e, semantic, and intentional !oca ularies"

Section 2: The Pragmatist Challenge

(hat $ want to call the @classical pro'ect of analysisA, then, aims to e&hi it the meanings e&pressed y !arious target !oca ularies as intelligi le y means of the logical ela oration of the meanings e&pressed y ase !oca ularies thought to e pri!ileged in some important respects> epistemological, ontological, or semantic>relati!e to those others" #his enterprise is !isi le in its purest form in what $ ha!e called the @core programsA of empiricism and naturalism, in their !arious forms" $n my !iew the most significant conceptual de!elopment in this tradition>the iggest thing that e!er happened to it7>is the pragmatist challenge to it that was mounted during the middle years of the twentieth century" Benerically, this mo!ement of thought amounts to a
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displacement from the center of philosophical attention of the notion of meaning in fa!or of that of use% in suita ly road senses of those terms, replacing concern with semantics y concern with pragmatics" #he towering figure ehind this conceptual sea<change is of course, (ittgenstein" $n characteri=ing it, howe!er, it will e useful to approach his radical and comprehensi!e criti,ue y means of some more local, semantically corrosi!e argumentati!e appeals to the practices of deploying !arious !oca ularies rather than the meanings they e&press"

(ilfrid -ellars 4one of my particular heroes5 critici=es the empiricist core program of the classical pro'ect of analysis on the asis of what one must do in order to use !arious !oca ularies, and so to count as saying or thinking !arious kinds of things" 1e argues that none of the !arious candidates for empiricist ase !oca ularies are practically autonomous, that is, could e deployed in a language<game one played though one played no other" /or instance, no discursi!e practice can consist entirely of making non<inferential o ser!ation reports" /or such relia ly differentially elicited responses ,ualify as conceptually contentful or cogniti ely significant only insofar as they can ser!e as premises from which it is appropriate to draw conclusions, that is, as reasons for other 'udgments" 0rawing such conclusions is applying concepts inferentially>that is, precisely not making non<inferential obser ational use of them"6

Cuine offers an e!en roader pragmatist o 'ection, not only to the empiricist program, ut to essential aspects of the whole analytic semantic pro'ect" /or he attacks the !ery notion of meaning it presupposes" Cuine is what $ ha!e elsewhere called a @methodologicalA pragmatist"9
6

#his argument occupies roughly the first half of his classic @Dmpiricism and the Ehilosophy of MindA Freprinted y 1ar!ard 3ni!ersity Eress, 1887G" 1is criti,ue of the phenomenalist !ersion of empiricism can e found in @EhenomenalismA, in his collection Science! Perception! and "eality F?outledge Hegan Eaul 18:7G" 9 @Eragmatics and EragmatismsA in )ames 2onant and 3rs=ula M" Ieglen 4eds"5 #ilary Putnam: Pragmatism and "ealism F?outledge 2002G, translated as JEragmatik und EragmatismusJ, pp" 28<98 in -and othe, M 4ed"5 Die "enaissance des Pragmatismus FKel rLck (issenschaft, 2000G"

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#hat is, he takes it that the whole point of a theory of meaning is to e&plain, codify, or illuminate features of the use of linguistic e&pressions" 1e, like 0ummett, endorses the analogy% meaning is to use as theory is to obser ation" .nd he argues that postulating meanings associated with its of !oca ulary yields a bad theory of discursi!e practice"

$f there were such things as meanings that determine how it would e correct to use our e&pressions, then those meanings would at least ha!e to determine the inferential roles of those e&pressions% what follows from applying them, what applying them rules out, what is good e!idence for or against doing so" But what follows from what depends on what else is true>on laws of nature and o scure contingent facts>that is, on what claims can ser!e as au&iliary hypotheses or collateral premises in those inferences" $f we look at what practical a ilities are re,uired to deploy !arious its of !oca ulary>at what one has to e a le to do in order to count as saying something with them>we do not find any special set of these whose practical significance can e understood as pragmatically distincti!e of semantically necessary or sufficient conditions":

Cuine thought one could sa!e at least the naturalist program y retreating semantically to the le!el of reference and truth<conditions"

)ames and 0ewey appeal to the same sort of methodological

pragmatism in support of more sweeping sorts of semantic re!isionism>pursuing programs that

?orty, for instance, argues should e understood as more re'ectionist than properly re!isionist"

.nd under the

anner @0on+t look to the meaning, look to the use,A (ittgenstein further radicali=es the pragmatist criti,ue of semantics" Eointing out to egin with that one cannot assume that uses of singular terms ha!e the 'o of picking out o 'ects, nor that declarati!e sentences are in the
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usiness of stating facts, he goes on to deny, in effect, that such uses e!en form a pri!ileged center, on the asis of which one can understand more peripheral ones" 4@Language,A he says, @has no downtown"A5

$ take it that (ittgenstein also understands the home language<game of the concept of meaning to e e&planation of how e&pressions are correctly used" .nd he is profoundly skeptical a out the utility or applica ility of the model of postulation, e&planation, and theoretical systemati=ation in the case of discursi!e practices>a out the possi ility of systematically deri ing aspects of correct use from assigned meanings" -een from this perspecti!e, the idea of the
classical pro'ect of analysis is to codify, using logical !oca ulary, the meanings e&pressed y one !oca ulary>from which we are to deri!e proprieties of its use>from the meanings e&pressed y some other !oca ulary>from which we can deri!e proprieties of its use"

One idea, $ think is that this enterprise makes sense only if we

think of the uses as species of a genus>of them all eing the same general kind of use, say stating facts, or representing states of affairs" #his may seem plausi le if we focus on a !ery restricted set of uses>'ust as, in the case of tools, we might e impressed to notice that nails and hammer, screws and screwdri!er, glue and rush all ha!e the function of attaching more<or<less flat things to one another" -o we can think of declarati!e sentences as stating empirical, physical, normati!e, modal, and intentional facts, making claims a out such states of affairs 4e!en if we then find oursel!es metaphysically pu==led a out the nature of the fact<kinds to which we ha!e there y committed oursel!es5" But if we think of the uses as ery different, if we think also a out the carpenter+s le!el, pencil, and tool< elt, if we think of linguistic practice as a motley, of uses as not coming in a simple, or systematic, or e!en determinate !ariety, then the !ery idea that there is such a thing as meanings that permit the codification of proprieties of ,uite

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disparate kinds of use>e!en with li eral use of logical ela oration of the meanings> ecomes contentious and in need of 'ustification oth in general and in each particular case"

More specifically, (ittgenstein uses the image of @family resem lancesA to urge that the kinds into which linguistic practices and the !oca ularies caught up in them are functionally sorted>what elong together in o&es la eled *game+, *name+, *assertion+, *o ser!ation+ and so on>do not typically admit of specification in terms of underlying principles specifia le in other !oca ularies, whether y genus and differentia4e5 or any other kind of e&plicit rule or definition" $t is easy to understand this line of thought as entailing a straightforward denial of the possi ility of semantic analysis in the classical sense"

$ think that one thought underlying these o ser!ations a out the unsystematic, unsur!eya le !ariety of kinds of uses of e&pressions and a out the uncodifia le character of those kinds concerns the essentially dynamic character of linguistic practice" $ think (ittgenstein thinks that an a solutely fundamental discursi!e phenomenon is the way in which the a ilities re,uired to deploy one !oca ulary can e practically e$tended, ela orated, or de!eloped so as to constitute the a ility to deploy some further !oca ulary, or to deploy the old !oca ulary in ,uite different ways" Many of his thought<e&periments concern this sort of process of pragmatic pro%ection of one practice into another" (e are asked to imagine a community that uses proper names only for people, ut then e&tends the practice to include ri!ers" #here is no guarantee that interlocutors can master the e&tended practice, uilding on what they can already do" But if they can, then they will ha!e changed the only sessences proper<

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name usage could e taken to ha!e had"7 $n the old practice it always made sense to ask for the identity of the mother and father of the named itemM in the new practice, that ,uestion is often senseless" .gain, we are asked to imagine a community that talked a out ha!ing gold or sil!er in one+s teeth, and e&tends that practice to talk a out ha!ing pain in one+s teeth" $f as a matter of contingent fact the practitioners can learn to use the e&pression *in+ in the new way, uilding on ut adapting the old, they will ha!e fundamentally changed the smeanings of *in+" $n the old practice it made sense to ask where the gold was before it was in one+s toothM in the new practice asking where the pain was efore it was in the tooth can lead only to a distincti!ely philosophical kind of pu==lement"8

.t e!ery stage, what practical e&tensions of a gi!en practice are possi le for the practitioners can turn on features of their em odiment, li!es, en!ironment, and history that are contingent and wholly particular to them" .nd which of those de!elopments actually took place, and in what order can turn on any o scure fact"

#he reason

!oca ulary<kinds resist specification y rules, principles, definitions, or meanings e&pressed in other !oca ularies is that they are the current time<slices of processes of de!elopment of practices that ha!e this dynamic character>and that is why the collection of uses that is the current cumulati!e and collecti!e result of such de!elopments< y<practical<pro'ection is a motley" 8 $f that is right, then any codification or theoretical systemati=ation of the uses of those !oca ulary<kinds y associating with them meanings that determine which uses are correct will, if at all successful, e successful only contingently, locally, and temporarily" -emantics on this !iew is an inherently Erocrustean enterprise, which can proceed only y theoretically pri!ileging
7

2f" Cuine+s remark 4in @#wo 0ogmas of DmpiricismA5% @Meaning is what essence ecomes when it is detached from the thing and attached to the word"A 8 $ am inde ted for this way of thinking of (ittgenstein+s point to 1ans )ulius -chneider+s penetrating discussion in his Phantasie und &alkul F-uhrkamp, &&&&G" 8 . patient and detailed in!estigation of the mechanisms of this phenomenon in asic descripti!e and scientific concepts, and an e&tended argument for its u i,uity can e found in Mark (ilson+s e&citing and original 'andering Significance F1ar!ard 3ni!ersity Eress, 200:G"

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some aspects of the use of a !oca ulary that are not at all practically pri!ileged, and spawning philosophical pu==lement a out the intelligi ility of the rest"10 On this conception, the classical pro'ect of analysis is a disease that rests on a fundamental, if perennial, misunderstanding>one that can e remo!ed or ameliorated only y heeding the ad!ice to replace concern with meaning y concern with use" #he recommended philosophical attitude to discursi!e practice is accordingly descripti e particularism, theoretical (uietism, and semantic pessimism"

Section 3: Extending the Project of Analysis: Pragmatically Mediated Semantic Relations

On this account (ittgenstein is putting in place a picture of discursi!e meaningfulness or significance that is !ery different from that on which the classical pro'ect of analysis is predicated" $n place of semantics, we are encouraged to do pragmatics>not in the sense of Haplan
and -talnaker, which is really the semantics of token<refle&i!e e&pressions, nor again in the sense of Brice, which addresses con!ersational heuristics in terms that presuppose a prior, independent, classical semantics> ut *pragmatics+

in the sense of the study of the use of e&pressions in !irtue of which they are

meaningful at all" #o the formal, mathematically inspired tradition of /rege, ?ussell, 2arnap, and #arski, culminating in model<theoretic semantics, is opposed an anthropological, natural< historical, social<practical in,uiry aimed oth at demystifying our discursi!e doings, and at deflating philosophers+ systematic and theoretical am itions regarding them" $ think that contemporary philosophers of language ha!e tended to draw this opposition in the starkest possi le terms, treating these approaches as mutually e&clusi!e, hence as re,uiring that a choice

10

$ would e happy if those who dance with his te&ts find affinities here with 1egel+s insistence that the metaconceptual categories of )erstand must e replaced y those of )ernunft" $t is characteristic of his philosophical am ition that draws the opposite of (ittgenstein+s conclusions from an appreciation of the dynamics of conceptual de!elopment and its sensiti!ity to ar itrary contingent features of the practitioners, de!oting himself to ela orating what he insists is the logic of such processes and the conceptual contents they shape"

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e made etween them, there y marking out a su stantial sociological faultline in the discipline" #hose who are mo!ed y the pragmatist picture generally accept the particularist, ,uietist conclusions (ittgenstein seems to ha!e drawn from it" .nd those committed to some !ersion of the pro'ect of semantic analysis ha!e felt o liged to deny the significance of pragmatics in this sense, or at the least to dismiss it as irrele!ant to properly semantic concerns" $n the most e&treme cases, the attitudes of anti<pragmatist philosophers of language to (ittgenstein+s picture !erges on that of the Kictorian lady to 0arwin+s theory% One hopes that it is not true, and that if it is true, at least that it not ecome generally known"

But $ do not think we are o liged to choose etween these approaches" #hey should e seen as complementing rather than competing with one another" -emantics and pragmatics, concern with meaning and concern with use, ought to e understood as aspects of one, more comprehensi!e, picture of the discursi!e" Eragmatist considerations do not o lige us to focus on pragmatics to the e&clusion of semanticsM we can deepen our semantics y the addition of pragmatics" $f we e&tract conse,uences from the pragmatists+ o ser!ations somewhat more modestly and construe the analytic pro'ect somewhat more roadly, the two will e seen not only as compati le, ut as mutually illuminating" $f we approach the pragmatists+ o ser!ations in an analytic spirit, we can understand pragmatics as pro!iding special resources for e&tending and e&panding the analytic semantic pro'ect, from e&clusi!e concern with relations among meanings to encompass also relations etween meaning and use" $n its most am itious form, such an enterprise would aspire to articulate something like a logic of the relations etween meaning and use"

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$f we lea!e open the possi ility that the use of some !oca ulary may e illuminated y taking it to e&press some sort of meaning or content>that is, if we do not from the eginning em race theoretical semantic nihilism>then the most important positi!e pragmatist insight will e one complementary to the methodological pragmatism $ ha!e already identified" #he thought underlying the pragmatist line of thought is that what makes some it of !oca ulary mean what it does is how it is used" (hat we could call semantic pragmatism is the !iew that the only e&planation there could e for how a gi!en meaning gets associated with a !oca ulary is to e found in the use of that !oca ulary% the practices y which that meaning is conferred or the a ilities whose e&ercise constitutes deploying a !oca ulary with that meaning" #o roaden the classical pro'ect of analysis in the light of the pragmatists+ insistence on the centrality of pragmatics, we can focus on this fundamental relation etween use and meaning, etween practices or practical a ilities and !oca ularies" (e must look at what it is to use locutions as e&pressing meanings>that is, at what one must do in order to count as saying what the !oca ulary lets practitioners e&press" $ am going to call this kind of relation @practice< !oca ulary sufficiencyA>or usually, @EK<sufficiency,A for short" $t o tains when engaging in a specified set of practices or e&ercising a specified set of a ilities11 is sufficient for someone to count as deploying a specified !oca ulary"

Of course it matters a lot how we think a out these content<conferring, !oca ulary< deploying practices or a ilities" #he semantic pragmatist+s claim that use confers meaning 4so
talk of practices or the e&ercise of a ilities as deploying !oca ularies5

re!erts to tri!iality if we are allowed

to talk a out @using the tilde to e&press negation,A @the a ility to mean red y the word *red+,A or
11

/or the purposes of the present pro'ect, $ will maintain a studied neutrality etween these options" #he apparatus $ am introducing can e noncommittal as to whether we understand content<conferring uses of e&pressions in terms of social practices or indi!idual a ilities"

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@the capacity to refer to electrons y the word *electron+,A 4or, $ think, e!en intentions so to refer5" .nd that is to say that the interest of the EK<sufficiency of some set of practices or a ilities for the deploying of a !oca ulary is ,uite sensiti!e to the ocabulary in which we specify those practices<or<a ilities" #alk of practices<or<a ilities has a definite sense only insofar as it is relati!i=ed to the !oca ulary in which those practices<or<a ilities are specified" .nd that means that esides EK<sufficiency, we should consider a second asic meaning<use relation% @!oca ulary<practice sufficiency,A or 'ust @)P*sufficiency!A is the relation that holds etween a !oca ulary and a set of practices<or<a ilities when that !oca ulary is sufficient to specify those practices<or<a ilities" KE<sufficient !oca ularies that specify EK<sufficient practices let one say what it is one must do to count as engaging in those practices or e&ercising those a ilities, and so to deploy a !oca ulary to say something"

EK<sufficiency and KE<sufficiency are two asic meaning*use relations 4M3?s5" $n terms of those asic relations, we can define a more comple& relation% the relation that holds etween !oca ulary K and !oca ulary K when K is KE<sufficient to specify practices<or< a ilities E that are EK<sufficient to deploy !oca ulary K" #his KK<relation is the composition of the two asic M3?s" (hen it o tains $ will say that K is a pragmatic meta ocabulary for K" $t allows one to say what one must do in order to count as saying the things e&pressed y !oca ulary K" (e can present this relation graphically in a meaning*use diagram 4M305%

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M ean in g "# se $ iag r am % 1 : P r ag m atic M e ta&o c a' ( lar y

R e s 1 %K K < 1 , 2

1% E K <su ff

!
#he con!entions of this diagram are%

2 % K E <su ff

Koca ularies are shown as o!als, practices<or<a ilities as 4rounded5 rectangles" Basic meaning<use relations are indicated y solid arrows, num ered and la eled as to

kind of relation" ?esultant meaning<use relations are indicated y dotted arrows, num ered, and la eled as

to kind and the asic M3?s from which they result" #he idea is that a resultant M3? is the relation that o tains when all of the asic M3?s listed on its la el o tain"

Being a pragmatic meta!oca ulary is the simplest species of the genus $ want to introduce here" $t is a pragmatically mediated semantic relation etween !oca ularies" $t is pragmatically mediated y the practices<or<a ilities that are specified y one of the !oca ularies 4which say what counts as doing that5 and that deploy or are the use of the other !oca ulary 4what one says by doing that5" #he semantic relation that is esta lished there y etween the two !oca ularies is of a distincti!e sort, ,uite different from, for instance, defina ility, translata ility, reduci ility, and super!enience" My 'asic s(ggestion for extending the classical )roject of

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analysis so as to incor)orate as essential )ositi&e elements the insights that animate the pragmatist criti*(e of that )roject is that+ alongside the classical semantic relations 'et,een &oca'(laries that )roject has traditionally a))ealed to+ ,e consider also pragmatically mediated ones-of ,hich the relation of 'eing a )ragmatic meta&oca'(lary is a )aradigm. $
will introduce an apparatus that recursi!ely generates an infinite set of such pragmatically mediated semantic relations" $n fact $ will e!entually argue that unless we take steps along these lines, we cannot understand the e&pressi!e roles played y some of the kinds of !oca ulary with which the analytic tradition has een most centrally concerned% logical, modal, normati e, and intentional !oca ularies"

3nder what circumstances would this simplest pragmatically mediated semantic relation e philosophically interesting, when considered in connection with the sorts of !oca ularies that ha!e een of most interest to classical analysisN .t least one sort of result that could e of considera le potential significance, $ think, is if it turned out that in some cases pragmatic meta!oca ularies e&ist that differ significantly in their e&pressi!e power from the !oca ularies for the deployment of which they specify sufficient practices<or<a ilities" $ will call that phenomenon @pragmatic e$pressi e bootstrapping"A $f one !oca ulary is strictly weaker in e&pressi!e
power than the other, $ will call that strict e&pressi!e ootstrapping" (e are familiar with this sort of phenomenon in ordinary semantics, where sometimes a semantic metalanguage differs su stantially in e&pressi!e power from its o 'ect language>for instance, where we can produce an e&tensional metalanguage for intensional languages, as in the case of possi le worlds semantics for modality"

One e&ample of a claim of this shape in the case of

pragmatically mediated semantic relations>though of course it is not e&pressed in terms of the machinery $ ha!e een introducing>is 1uw Erice+s pragmatic normati!e naturalism"12 1e argues, in effect, that although normati!e !oca ulary is not reducible to naturalistic !oca ulary, it might still e possi le to say in wholly naturalistic !oca ulary what one must do in order to e
12

-ee his @Oaturalism without ?epresentationalismA in Mario de 2aro and 0a!id Macarthur 4eds"5 +aturalism in ,uestion F1ar!ard 3ni!ersity Eress, 2006G, pp" 71<80"

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using normati!e !oca ulary" $f such a claim a out the e&istence of an e&pressi!ely ootstrapping naturalistic pragmatic meta!oca ulary for normati!e !oca ulary could e made out, it would e!idently e an important chapter in the de!elopment of the naturalist core program of the classical pro'ect of philosophical analysis" $t would e a paradigm of the sort of payoff we could e&pect from e&tending that analytic pro'ect y including pragmatically mediated semantic relations"

#he meaning<use diagram of the pragmatically mediated semantic relation of eing a pragmatic meta!oca ulary illustrates a distincti!e kind of analysis of that relation" $t e&hi its that relation as the resultant, y composition, of the two asic meaning<use relations of EK< sufficiency and KE<sufficiency" . comple& M3? is analy=ed as the product of operations applied to asic M3?s" #his is meaning*use analysis" #he same analytic apparatus applies also to more comple& pragmatically mediated semantic relations" 2onsider one of the pragmatist criticisms that -ellars addresses to the empiricist core program of the classical analytic pro'ect" $t turns on the assertion of the pragmatic dependence of one set of !oca ulary<deploying practices<or<a ilities on another"

Because he thinks part of what one is doing in saying how things merely appear is withholding a commitment to their actually eing that way, and ecause one cannot e understood as withholding a commitment that one cannot undertake, -ellars concludes that one cannot ha!e the a ility to say or think how things seem or appear unless one also has the a ility to make claims a out how things actually are" $n effect, this -ellarsian pragmatist criti,ue of the phenomenalist form of empiricism consists in the claim that the practices that are EK<sufficient

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for *is+<P talk are EE<necessary for the practices that are EK<sufficient for *looks+<P talk"17 #hat pragmatic dependence of practices<or<a ilities then induces a resultant pragmatically mediated semantic relation etween the !oca ularies" #he meaning<use diagram for this claim is% M e an in g "# se $ iag r am % 2 : P r ag m atic ally M e d iate d S e m an tic P re s( ) ) o sitio n lo o / s"
R e s 1% K K 1 ,2 ,7

is"

7 % E K <su ff

1 % E K <su ff

lo o / s"

2% E E <n ec

is"

#he resultant M3? here is a kind of comple&, pragmatically mediated, KK<necessity, or semantic presupposition"

$n fact, although -ellars+s argument for the crucial EE<necessity relation of pragmatic dependence of one set of !oca ulary<deploying practices<or<a ilities on another is different, his argument against the o ser!ational !ersion of empiricism>the claim that purely non<inferential, o ser!ational uses do not form an autonomous discursi!e practice, ut presuppose inferential uses>has e&actly the same form%

17

$ discuss this argument in greater detail in the final chapter of Tales of the -ighty Dead F1ar!ard 3ni!ersity Eress 2006"G

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M e an in g "# se $ iag r am % 3 : P r ag m atic ally M e d iate d S e m an tic P r e s( ) ) o sitio n

R e s 1% K K 1 ,2 ,7
o ' s e r&a tio n a l

in fe r e n tia l

7 % E K <su ff

1 % E K <su ff

o ' s e r &a tio n a l

2% E E <n ec

in fe r e n t ia l

/or these cases, we can say something further a out the nature of the pragmatically mediated semantic relation that is analy=ed as the resultant M3? in these diagrams" /or instead of 'umping directly to this KK resultant M3?, we could ha!e put in the composition of the EE<necessity and second EK<sufficiency relation, yielding a kind of comple& pragmatic presupposition%

M e an in g "# se $ iag r am % 0 : C o m ) o sitio n

lo o / s"
R e s 2% E K 2 ,7

is"

7 % E K <su ff

1 % E K <su ff

lo o / s"

2% E E <n ec

is"

$f this diagram were completed y an arrow from Kis<P to Klooks<P such that the same diagonal resultant arrow could represent both the composition of relations 2 and 7 and the composition of relation 1 and the newly supplied one, then category theorists would say that the diagram commutes" .nd the arrow that needs to e supplied to make the diagram commute they call the retraction of relation 1 through the composition ?es2%

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M e an in g "# se $ iag r am % 1 : C o m ) o sitio n an d R e tr ac tio n

R e tr a c tio n o f 1 th ro ( g h R e s2

lo o / s"
R e s 2% E K 2 ,7

is"

7 % E K <su ff

1 % E K <su ff

lo o / s"

2% E E <n ec

is"

.fter composition, then, the ne&t most comple& form of resultant M3? is retraction" .naly=ing the structure of -ellars+s pragmatist arguments against empiricism re,uires recogni=ing the pragmatically mediated semantic relation he claims holds etween phenomenal and o 'ecti!e !oca ulary as the retraction of a constellation of more asic meaning<use relations"

Section 0: A(tomata: Syntactic P "s(fficiency and P"s(fficiency

Oow this is all e&tremely a stract" #o make it more definite, we need to fill in 4at least5 the notions of !oca ulary, practice<or<a ility, EK<sufficiency, and KE<sufficiency16, which are the fundamental elements that articulate what $ am calling the @meaning<use analysisA of resultant meaning<use relations>in particular, the pragmatically mediated semantic relations etween !oca ularies that $ am claiming we must acknowledge in order to pursue the classical pro'ect of philosophical analysis in the light of what is right a out the pragmatist criti,ue of it" (e can egin to do that y looking at a special case in which it is possi le to e unusually clear and precise a out the things and relations that play these metatheoretic roles" #his is the case where
16

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*!oca ulary+ takes a purely syntactic sense" Of course, the cases we e!entually care a out >and will e discussing in the remaining lectures>in!ol!e !oca ularies understood in a sense that includes their semantic significance" But esides the ad!antages of clarity and simplicity, we will find that some important lessons carry o!er from the syntactic to the semantic case"

#he restriction to !oca ularies understood in a spare syntactic sense leads to correspondingly restricted notions of what it is to deploy such a !oca ulary, and what it is to specify practices<or<a ilities sufficient to deploy one" -uppose we are gi!en an alphabet, which is a finite set of primiti!e sign types>for instance, the letters of the Dnglish alpha et" #he uni erse generated y that alpha et then consists of all the finite strings that can e formed y concatenating elements drawn from the alpha et" . ocabulary o!er such an alpha et>in the syntactic sense $ am now after>is then any su set of the uni!erse of strings that alpha et generates" $f the generating alpha et is the Dnglish alpha et, then the !oca ulary might consist of all Dnglish sentences, all possi le Dnglish te&ts, or all and only the sentences of -aking .t /$plicit"19

(hat can we say a out the a ilities that count as deploying a !oca ulary in this spare syntactic senseN1: #he a ilities in ,uestion are the capacity to read and write the !oca ulary" $n this purely syntactic sense, *reading+ it means eing a le practically to distinguish within the uni!erse generated y the !oca ulary, strings that do, from those that do not, elong to the
19

2omputational linguists, who worry a out !oca ularies in this sense, ha!e de!eloped metalanguages for specifying important classes of such !oca ularies% the syntactic analogues of semantic metalanguages in the cases we will e!entually address" -o, for instance, for the alpha et Qa, R, *an n+ characteri=es the !oca ulary that comprises all strings of some finite num er of *a+s followed y the same num er of * +s" *a4 a5S + characteri=es the !oca ulary that comprises all strings eginning with an *a+, ending with a * +, and ha!ing any num er of repetitions of the su <string * a+ in etween" 1: 1ere we can safely 'ust talk a out abilities, without danger of restricting the generality of the analysis"

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specified !oca ulary" .nd *writing+ it means practically eing a le to produce all and only the strings in the alpha etic uni!erse that do elong to the !oca ulary"

(e assume as primiti!e a ilities the capacities to read and write, in this sense, the alpha et from whose uni!erse the !oca ulary is drawn>that is, the capacity to respond differentially to alpha etic tokens according to their type, and to produce tokens of antecedently specified alpha etic types" #hen the a ilities that are EK<sufficient to deploy some !oca ularies can e specified in a particularly simple form" #hey are finite*state automata 4/-.s5" .s an e&ample, suppose we egin with the alpha et Qa, h, o, TR" #hen we can consider the laughing Santa ocabulary, which consists of strings such as *hahahaT+, *hohohoT+, *hahahohoT+ *hohohaT+, and so on"17 1ere is a graphical representation of a laughing Santa finite*state automaton,

which can read and write the laughing -anta !oca ulary%

T h e 3 a ( g h in g S a n ta A ( to m a to n

a
1

o h

#he num ered nodes represent the states of the automaton, and the alpha etically la eled arcs represent state*transitions" By con!ention, the starting state is represented y a s,uare 4-tate 15, and the final state y a circle with a thick order 4-tate 65"

17

$n the syntactic metalanguage for specifying !oca ularies that $ mentioned in the note a o!e, this is the !oca ulary 4ha;ho5ST

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.s a reader of the laughing -anta !oca ulary, the task of this automaton is to process a finite string, and determine whether or not it is a licit string of the !oca ulary" $t processes the string one alpha etic character at a time, eginning in -tate 1" $t recogni=es the string if and only if 4when and only when5 it arri!es at its final state, -tate 6" $f the first character of the string is not an *h+, it remains stuck in -tate 1, and re'ects the string" $f the first character is an *h+, it mo!es to -tate 2, and processes the ne&t character" $f that character is not an *a+ or an *o+, it remains stuck in -tate 2, and re'ects the string" $f the character is an *a+ or an *o+, it mo!es to -tate 7" $f the ne&t character is an e&clamation point, it mo!es to -tate 6, and recogni=es the string *haT+ or *hoT+>the shortest ones in the laughing -anta !oca ulary" $f instead the ne&t character is an *h+, it goes ack to -tate 2, and repeats itself in loops of *ha+s and *ho+s any num er of times until an e&clamation point is finally reached, or it is fed a discordant character"

.s a writer of the laughing -anta !oca ulary, the task of the automaton is to produce only licit strings of that !oca ulary, y a process that can produce any and all such strings" $t egins in its initial state, -tate 1, and emits an *h+ 4its only a!aila le mo!e5, changing to -tate 2" $n this state, it can produce either an *a+ or an *o+>it selects one at random18>and goes into -tate 7" $n this state, it can either tack on an e&clamation point, and mo!e into its final state, -tate 6, finishing the process, or emit another *h+ and return to -tate 2 to repeat the process" $n any case, whene!er it reaches -tate 6 and halts, the string it has constructed will e a mem er of the laughing -anta !oca ulary"

18

.s a matter of fact, it can e shown that e!ery !oca ulary reada le;writea le y a non<deterministic finite<state automaton>such as the laughing -anta automaton>is also reada le;writea le y a deterministic one" Fref"G

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$ hope this rief rehearsal makes it clear how the constellation of nodes and arrows that makes up this directed graph represents the a ilities to read and write 4recogni=e and produce ar itrary strings of5 the laughing -anta !oca ulary" 18 (hat it represents is a ilities that are P)* sufficient to deploy that !oca ulary>that is, read and write it, in the attenuated sense appropriate to this purely syntactic case" .nd the digraph representation is itself a ocabulary that is )P* sufficient to specify those !oca ulary<deploying a ilities" #hat is, the digraph representation of this finite<state automaton is a pragmatic meta ocabulary for the laughing -anta !oca ulary" #he relation etween the digraph !oca ulary and the laughing -anta !oca ulary is, then, a pragmatically mediated>not now semantic, ut syntactic>relation etween !oca ularies"

$t may seem that $ am stretching things y calling the digraph form of representation a *!oca ulary+" $t will e useful, as a way of introducing my final point in the !icinity, to consider
18

/or practice, or to test one+s grip on the digraph specification of /-.s, consider what !oca ulary o!er the same alpha et that produces the laughing -anta is recogni=ed;produced y this automaton%

T h e 4 5 !ll 6 a & e 7 h a t S h e !s 6 a & in g 4 A ( to m a to n

o o
1

h 2

a a
3

h o

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a different form of pragmatic meta!oca ulary for the laughing -anta !oca ulary" Besides the digraph representation of a finite<state automaton, we can also use a state*table representation" /or the laughing -anta automaton this is%
a h o 2 State 1 1alt 2 1alt 1alt State 2 7 1alt 7 1alt State 3 1alt 2 1alt 6

$n read mode, the automaton starts in -tate 1" #o see what it will do if fed a particular character, we look at the row la eled with that character" #he L-. will 1alt if the input string starts with anything other than an *h+, in which case it will change to -tate 2" $n that state, the automaton specified y the ta le will halt unless the ne&t character is an *a+ or an *o+, in which case it changes to -tate 7, and so on" 4#here is no column for -tate 6, since it is the final state, and accepts;produces no further characters"5

2learly there is a ta ular representation corresponding

to any digraph representation of an /-., and !ice !ersa" Ootice further that we need not use a two<dimensional ta le to con!ey this information" (e could put the rows one after another, in the form% a1alt71alth21alt2o1alt71altT1alt1alt6" #his is 'ust a string, drawn from a uni!erse generated y the alpha et of the L-., together with *1alt+ and the designations of the states of that automaton" #he strings that specify finite<state automata that deploy !oca ularies defined o!er the same asic alpha et as the L-. then form a !oca ulary in the technical syntactic sense we ha!e een considering" .nd that means we can ask a out the automata that can read and write those state<ta le encoding !oca ularies" #he meaning<use diagram for this situation is then%

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M e an in g "# se $ iag r am % 8 : S ) e c i fy i n g t h e A ( t o m a t o n th at $ e ) lo ys th e 3 a( g h in g S an ta o c a' ( lar y 3 a(g hing S an ta

R e s 1% K K 1 ,2 1 % E K <su ff 2% K E <su ff

3 S A S tate " T a'le

3 a( g h in g S an ta A ( to m ato n

3% E K <su ff

3 S A S tate "T a' le A ( to m ato n

Section 1: The Choms/y 6ierarchy and a Syntactic Exam)le of Pragmatic Ex)ressi&e 9ootstra))ing

?estricting oursel!es to a purely syntactic notion of a !oca ulary yields a clear sense of *pragmatic meta!oca ulary+% oth the digraph and the state<ta le !oca ularies are KE<sufficient to specify practical a ilities articulated as a finite<state automaton that is EK<sufficient to deploy >in the sense of recogni=ing and producing>the laughing -anta !oca ulary, as well as many others" 4Of course, it does that only against the ackground of a set of a ilities EK<sufficient to deploy those
!oca ularies"5

Eerhaps surprisingly, it also offers a prime e&ample of strict pragmatic e$pressi e

bootstrapping" /or in this setting we can pro e that one !oca ulary that is e&pressi!ely weaker 2067809:8"doc 26 1;1:;2016

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than another can nonetheless ser!e as an ade,uate pragmatic meta!oca ulary for that stronger !oca ulary" #hat is, e!en though one cannot say in the weaker !oca ulary e!erything that can e said in the stronger one, one can still say in the weaker one e!erything that one needs to e a le to do in order to deploy the stronger one"

1ere the rele!ant notion of the relati!e e&pressi!e power of !oca ularies is also a purely syntactic one" .lready in the 1890+s, 2homsky offered mathematical characteri=ations of the different sets of strings of characters that could e generated y different classes of grammars 4that is, in my terms, characteri=ed y different kinds of syntactic meta!oca ularies5 and computed y different kinds of automata" #he kinds of !oca ulary, grammar, and automata line up with one another, and can e arranged in a strict e&pressi!e hierarchy% the 2homsky hierarchy" $t is summari=ed in the following ta le%
:rammar .aB .a .UanythingV c1.c2c1UanythingVc2 Oo ?estrictions on ?ules A(tomaton /inite -tate .utomaton Eush<0own .utomaton Linear Bounded .utomaton #uring Machine 4W 2 -tack E0.5

oca'(lary

?egular 2onte&t</ree 2onte&t<-ensiti!e ?ecursi!ely Dnumera le

#he point $ want to make fortunately does not re,uire us to del!e !ery deeply into the information summari=ed in this ta le" . few asic points will suffice" #he first thing to reali=e is that not all !oca ularies in the syntactic sense we ha!e een pursuing can e read and written y finite<state automata" /or instance, it can e shown that no finite<state automaton is EK< sufficient to deploy the !oca ulary an n, defined o!er the alpha et Qa, R, which consists of all

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strings of any ar itrary num er of *a+s followed y the same num er of * +s" #he idea ehind the proof is that in order to tell whether the right num er of * +s follow the *a+s 4when reading5 or to produce the right num er of * +s 4when writing5, the automaton must somehow keep track of how many *a+s ha!e een processed 4read or written5" #he only way an /-. can store information is y eing in one state rather than another" -o, it could e in one state>or in one of a class of states>if one *a+ has een processed, another if two ha!e, and so on" But y definition, a finite<state automaton only has a finite num er of states, and that number is fi$ed in ad ance of recei!ing its input or producing its output" (hate!er that num er of states is, and whate!er system it uses to code num ers into states 4it need not e one<to<one>it could use a decimal
coding, for instance5,

there will e some num er of *a+s that is so large that the automaton runs out

of states efore it finishes counting" But the !oca ulary in ,uestion consists of ar itrarily long strings of *a+s and * +s" $n fact, it is possi le to say e&actly which !oca ularies finite<state automata 4specifia le y digraphs and state<ta les of the sort illustrated a o!e5 are capa le of deploying" #hese are called the *regular+ !oca ularies 4or languages5"

#he ne&t point is that slightly more comple& automata are capa le of deploying !oca ularies, such as an n, that are not regular, and hence cannot e read or written y finite<state automata" .s our rief discussion indicated, intuiti!ely the pro lem /-.s ha!e with languages like an
n

is that they lack memory" $f we gi!e them a memory, we get a new class of machines%

4non<deterministic205 push*down automata 4E0.s5" $n addition to eing a le to respond differentially to and produce tokenings of the alpha etic types, and eing a le to change state, E0.s can push alpha etic !alues to the top of a memory*stack, and pull such !alues from the top

20

By contrast to /-.+s, there need not in general e for e!ery !oca ulary computa le y a non<deterministic E0., some deterministic E0. that reads and writes the same !oca ulary"

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stack" E0.s can do e!erything that finite<state automata can do, ut they can also read

and write many !oca ularies, such as an n, that are not regular, and so cannot e read and written y /-.s" #he !oca ularies they can deploy are called @conte&t<freeA" .ll regular !oca ularies are conte&t<free, ut not ice ersa" #his proper containment of classes of !oca ularies pro!ides a clear sense, suita le to this purely syntactic setting, in which one !oca ulary can e thought of as @e&pressi!ely more powerfulA than another% the different kinds of grammar can specify, and the different kinds of automata can compute, e!er larger classes of !oca ularies" 2onte&t<free !oca ularies that are not regular re,uire more powerful grammars to specify them, as well as more powerful automata to deploy them" /-.s are special kinds of E0.s, and all the automata are special kinds of #uring Machines" ?ecursi!ely enumera le !oca ularies are not in general syntactically reduci le to conte&t<sensiti!e, conte&t<free, or regular ones" .nd the less capa le automata cannot read and write all the !oca ularies that can e read and written y #uring Machines"

Oonetheless, if we look at pragmatically mediated relations etween these syntactically characteri=ed !oca ularies, we find that they make possi le a kind of strict e$pressi e bootstrapping that permits us in a certain sense to e!ade the restrictions on e&pressi!e power enforced for purely syntactic relations etween !oca ularies" #he hierarchy dictates that only the a ilities codified in #uring Machines>two<stack push<down automata>are P)*sufficient to deploy recursi!ely enumera le !oca ularies in general" But now we can ask% what class of languages is )P*sufficient to specify #uring Machines, and hence to ser!e as sufficient pragmatic meta!oca ularies for recursi!ely enumera le !oca ularies in generalN #he surprising fact is that the a'ilities codified in T(ring Machines-the a'ilities to recogni;e and )rod(ce

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ar'itrary rec(rsi&ely en(mera'le &oca'(laries-can *(ite generally 'e s)ecified in context-free &oca'(laries" $t is demonstra le that conte&t<free languages are strictly weaker in syntactic e&pressi!e resources than recursi!ely enumera le languages" #he push<down automata that can read and write only conte&t<free languages cannot read and write recursi!ely enumera le languages in general" But it is possi le to say in a conte&t<free language what one needs to e a le to do in order to deploy recursi!ely enumera le languages in general"

#he proof of this claim is tedious, ut not difficult, and the claim itself is not at all contro!ersial>though computational linguists make nothing of it, ha!ing theoretical concerns !ery different from those that lead me to underline this fact" 4My introductory te&t ook lea!es the proof as an e&ercise to the reader" 215 Beneral<purpose computer languages such as Eascal and 2XX can specify the algorithms a #uring Machine, or any other uni!ersal computer, uses to compute any recursi!ely enumera le function, hence to recogni=e or produce any recursi!ely enumera le !oca ulary" .nd they are in!aria ly conte&t<free languages 22>in no small part 'ust ecause the simplicity of this type of grammar makes it easy to write parsers for them" Yet they suffice to specify the state< ta le, contents of the tape 4or of the dual stacks5, and primiti!e operations of any and e!ery #uring Machine"

1ere

is the M30 characteri=ing this pragmatically mediated relation etween syntactically characteri=ed !oca ularies%

21 22

#homas ." -udkamp 0anguages and -achines 2nd edition F.ddison (esley Longman 1888G, 2hapter 10" $n principle" #here are su tleties that arise when we look at the details of actual implementations of particular computer languages, which can remo!e them from ,ualifying as strictly conte&t<free"

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M e an in g "# se $ iag r am % = : S yn tac tic P r ag m atic E x) r e ssi&e 9 o o tstr a) ) in g R ec(rsi&ely E n(m era'le
R e s 1% K K 1 ,2 1 % E K <su ff

C o n te xt" < ree

2% K E <su ff

T (ring M achine

3% E K <su ff

P ( sh "$ o , n A ( to m ato n

$ called the fact that conte&t<free !oca ularies can e ade,uate pragmatic meta!oca ularies for recursi!ely enumera le !oca ularies in general *surprising+, ecause of the pro!a le syntactic irreduci ility of the one class of !oca ularies to the other" But if we step ack from the conte&t pro!ided y the 2homsky hierarchy, we can see why the possi ility of such pragmatic e&pressi!e ootstrapping should not, in the end, e surprising" /or all the result really means is that conte&t<free !oca ularies let one say what it is one must do in order to say things they cannot themsel!es say, ecause the a ility to deploy those conte&t<free !oca ularies does not include the a ilities those !oca ularies let one specify" #hus, for instance, there is no reason that an /-. could not read and write a !oca ulary that included commands such as @Eush an *a+ onto the stack,A>and thus specify the program of a E0. >e!en though it itself has no stack, and could not do what the !oca ulary it is deploying specifies" . coach might e a le to tell an athlete e&actly what to do, and e!en how to do it, e!en though the coach cannot himself do what he is telling the athlete to do, does not ha!e the a ilities he is specifying" (e ought not to oggle at the possi ility of an e&pressi!ely weaker pragmatic meta!oca ulary ha!ing the capacity to say what one must do in order to deploy an

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Brandom e&pressi!ely stronger one" (e should 'ust look to see where this seems in fact to e possi le for !oca ularies we care a out, and what we can learn from such relations when they do o tain"

Section 8: 3oo/ing Ahead

Let us recall what moti!ated this rehearsal of some elements of automaton theory and introductory computational linguistics" $ suggested that a way to e&tend the classical pro'ect of semantic analysis so as to take account of the insights of its pragmatist critics is to look analytically at relations etween meaning and use" More specifically, $ suggested focusing to egin with on two in some sense complementary relations% the one that holds when some set of practices<or<a ilities is EK<sufficient to deploy a gi!en !oca ulary, and the one that holds when some !oca ulary is KE<sufficient to specify a gi!en set of practices<or<a ilities" #he composition of these is the simplest pragmatically mediated semantic relation etween !oca ularies% the relation that holds when one !oca ulary is a sufficient pragmatic meta!oca ulary for another" $t is a paradigm of the infinite, recursi!ely genera le class of comple&, pragmatically mediated semantic relations that $ propose to lay alongside the other semantic relations etween !oca ularies that ha!e een in!estigated y analytic philosophers 4for instance those who address the core programs of empiricism and naturalism5% relations such as analy=a ility, definition, translation, reduction, truth<making, and super!enience" $ suggested further that pragmatic meta!oca ularies might e of particular interest in case they e&hi ited what $ called @e&pressi!e ootstrappingA>cases, that is, in which the e&pressi!e power of the pragmatic meta!oca ulary differs markedly from that of the target !oca ulary, most strikingly, when the meta!oca ulary is su stantially e&pressi!ely weaker>a phenomenon #arski has led us not to e&pect for semantic meta!oca ularies"

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(e ha!e now seen that all of these notions can e illustrated with particular clarity for the special case of purely syntactically characteri=ed !oca ularies" #he a ilities that are EK< sufficient to deploy those !oca ularies, in the sense of the capacity to recogni=e and produce them, can e thought of as !arious sorts of automata" #here are se!eral well<esta lished, different< ut<e,ui!alent !oca ularies that are known to e KE<sufficient to specify those automata" $n this special syntactic case we can accordingly in!estigate the properties of pragmatic meta!oca ularies, and when we do, we find a striking instance of strict e$pressi e bootstrapping in a pragmatically mediated syntactic relation etween !oca ularies"

Of course, the cases we really care a out in!ol!e semantically significant !oca ularies" .re there any interesting instances of these phenomena in such casesN $ ha!e indicated riefly how some of -ellars+s pragmatist criticisms of !arious ways of pursuing the empiricist program can e understood to turn on pragmatically mediated semantic relations" .nd $ mentioned 1uw Erice+s idea that although normati!e !oca ulary is not semantically reduci le to naturalistic !oca ulary, naturalistic !oca ulary might suffice to specify what one must do>the practices<or< a ilities one must engage in or e&ercise>in order to deploy normati!e !oca ulary" 1ere is another e&ample that $ want to point to, though $ cannot de!elop the claim here" /or roughly the first three<,uarters of the twentieth century, philosophers who thought a out inde&ical !oca ulary took for granted some !ersion of the doctrine that a tokening n of an e&pression of the type *now+ was synonymous with, defina le or semantically analy=a le as, *the time of utterance of n,+ and similarly for *here+ and *the place of utterance of h,+ and so on" 0uring the 1870+s philosophers such as )ohn Eerry, 0a!id Lewis, and B" D" M" .nscom e, y focusing on

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the use of inde&icals in modal and epistemic conte&ts, showed decisi!ely that this cannot e right% what is e&pressed y inde&ical !oca ulary cannot e e&pressed e,ui!alently y non< inde&ical !oca ulary" #his fact seems so o !ious to us now that we might e led to wonder what philosophers such as ?ussell, 2arnap, and ?eichen ach could ha!e een thinking for all those years" $ want to suggest that the genuine phenomenon in the !icinity is a pragmatically mediated semantic relation etween these !oca ularies" -pecifically, in spite of the semantic irreduci ility of inde&ical to noninde&ical !oca ulary, it is possi le to say, entirely in non< inde&ical terms, what one must do in order to e deploying inde&ical !oca ulary correctly% to e saying essentially and irreduci ly inde&ical things" /or we can formulate practical rules such as% $f, at time t and place U$!y!zV, speaker s wants to assert that some property P holds of

U$!y!z!t!sV, it is correct to say @E holds of me, here and now1A .nd $f a speaker s at time t and place U$!y!zV asserts @E holds of me, here and now,A the

speaker is committed to the property P holding of U$!y!z!t!sV" /urther 4as $ show in an appendi& to the ne&t lecture, where the necessary concepts ha!e een introduced5, those responses can e algorithmically ela orated so as to play the role distincti!e of essential inde&icals" Oon<inde&ical !oca ulary can ser!e as an ade,uate pragmatic meta!oca ulary for inde&ical !oca ulary" #he fact that one nonetheless cannot say in non<inde&ical terms e!erything that one can say with inde&ical !oca ulary 'ust shows that these !oca ularies ha!e different e&pressi!e powers, so that the pragmatically mediated semantic relation etween them is a case of strict pragmatic e&pressi!e ootstrapping"

$n the lectures to come, $ will e doing three things%

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further de!eloping the conceptual apparatus of meaning<use analysis, y introducing oth new asic meaning<use relations and new com inations of themM

applying that apparatus to !oca ularies of ongoing philosophical interest 4logical, modal, normati!e, intentional5M and

seeing what new pragmatically mediated semantic relations ecome !isi le in that way"

Dach su se,uent lecture will report some une&pected, suggesti!e results, which fit together cumulati!ely to constitute a distincti!e, no!el picture of what we would pre!iously ha!e thought was familiar terrain"

Besides pragmatically mediated semantic relations etween !oca ularies, there is another sort of pragmatic analysis, which relates one constellation of practices<or<a ilities to another" $t corresponds to another asic meaning<use relation% the kind of EE<sufficiency that holds when ha!ing ac,uired one set of a ilities means one can already do e!erything one needs to do, in principle, to e a le to do something else" One concrete way of filling in a definite sense of @in principleA is y algorithmic elaboration, where e&ercising the target a ility 'ust is e&ercising the right asic a ilities in the right order and under the right circumstances" .s an e&ample, the a ility to do long di!ision 'ust consists in e&ercising the a ilities to do multiplication and su traction and write down the results of those calculations, according to a particular conditional ranched<schedule algorithm" #he practical a ilities that implement such an algorithmic EE< sufficiency relation are 'ust those e&ercised y a finite<state automaton" $ndeed, automata are defined y a definite set of meta*abilities% a ilities to elaborate a set of primiti!e a ilities into a set of more comple& ones, which can accordingly e pragmatically analyzed in terms of or decomposed into the other"

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#o get a usefully general concept of the EE<sufficiency of a set of asic a ilities for a set of more comple& ones, we need to mo!e eyond the purely syntactic automata $ ha!e descri ed so far" One way to do that is to replace their speciali=ed capacities to read and write sym ols> in the minimal sense of classifying tokens as to types and producing tokens of specified types> y more general recognitional and producti!e capacities" #hese are a ilities to respond differentially to !arious non<sym olic stimuli 4for instance, the !isi le presence of red things5, corresponding to reading, and to respond y producing performances of !arious non<sym olic kinds 4for instance, walking north for a mile5, corresponding to writing" (hat practically implements the algorithmic ela oration of such a set of asic differential responsi!e a ilities is a finite state transducing automaton"

$n my third lecture, $ will argue that the notion of the algorithmic decomposa ility of some practices<or<a ilities into others that results suggests in turn a pragmatic generali=ation of the classical program of artificial intelligence functionalism>which, though a latecomer in the twentieth century, deser!es, $ think, to count as a third core program of classical semantic analysis" .$ functionalism traditionally held itself hostage to a commitment to the purely symbolic character of intelligence in the sense of sapience" But roadening our concern from automata as purely syntactic engines to the realm of transducing automata puts us in a position to see .$ functionalism as properly concerned with the algorithmic decomposa ility of discursi!e 4that is, !oca ulary<deploying5 practices<and<a ilities" (hat $ will call the *pragmatic+ thesis of artificial intelligence is the claim that the a ility to engage in some autonomous discursi!e practice>a language game one could play though one played no other>can e algorithmically

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decomposed into non<discursi!e a ilities" #he arguments for and against this pragmatic !ersion of .$<functionalism look ,uite different from those arrayed on the opposing sides of the de ate a out the prospects of sym olic .$" #he notion of EE<sufficiency rings into !iew a slightly more complicated pragmatically mediated semantic relation etween !oca ularies% that which o tains when practices EK< sufficient for K1 are EE<sufficient 4in the sense that they can e algorithmically ela orated into5 practices EK<sufficient for K2" .nother asic meaning<use relation of the kind we ha!e een considering is EK<neccessity, the con!erse of EK<sufficiency" $t o tains when one cannot deploy a certain !oca ulary without engaging in the specified practice, or e&ercising the specified a ility" /or e&ample, $ ha!e argued elsewhere that nothing could count as engaging in an autonomous discursi!e practice 4hence using a !oca ulary one could use though one used no other5 that did not include asserting and inferring" 2onsidering that asic M3? permits the formulation of a comple& resultant M3? that is a !ariant on the prior one% a relation that o tains where practices EK<necessary for K1 are EE<sufficient for practices<or<a ilities EK<sufficient for K2"

$t can happen, $ will argue, that such a K2 is also KE<sufficient to specify the practices<or< a ilities that are EK<sufficient to deploy K1" . M30 for this is%

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3 ? : 2 is E la ' o r a te d fr o m a n d E x ) lic a ti& e o f P r a c tic e s P "> e c e ss a r y fo r 1

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$n my ne&t lecture, $ will introduce a !ersion of this comple& resultant pragmatically mediated semantic relation 4what $ call for short eing @uni!ersally LZA5, and argue that it constitutes the genus of which logical !oca ulary is a species" More specifically, $ will argue that logical !oca ulary oth can e algorithmically ela orated from and is e&plicati!e of practices that are EK<necessary for the autonomous deployment of any !oca ulary at all" .nd $ will argue that the most illuminating way to e&plain and 'ustify the distincti!e pri!ileged role accorded to logical !oca ulary y the classical pro'ect of philosophical analysis>what $ ha!e here called @semantic logicismA>is y appeal to this whole constellation of asic meaning<use relations, and the comple& pragmatically mediated semantic relation that results from it"

My last three lectures will address modal !oca ulary, normati!e !oca ulary, and the pragmatically mediated semantic relations they stand in to ordinary o 'ecti!e, empirical, and naturalistic !oca ularies, and to each other" #he modal re!olution in the last third of the 20th century reathed new life into semantic logicism, pro!iding powerful new e&pressi!e tools, which ha!e een of great use to those pursuing naturalistic programs, for instance" But this 2067809:8"doc 7: 1;1:;2016

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successor !ersion raises the same ,uestion of !indication that $ consider for semantic logicism in my second lecture% what 'ustifies according modal concepts this special, pri!ileged role in our semantic analytic enterpriseN #his ,uestion is particularly urgent since the empiricist program had always een>traditionally with 1ume, and in the 20th century logical form, with Cuine, particularly and specifically hostile to and critical of this !oca ulary" $ will egin my treatment of modality, in my fourth lecture, with a consideration of this ,uestion, and with a !indication of the role of modal !oca ulary that parallels the one $ will already ha!e offered for ordinary logical !oca ulary% modal !oca ulary, too, can e ela orated from and is e&plicati!e of, features integral to e!ery autonomous discursi!e practice>features intimately related to, ut distinct from, those made e&plicit y ordinary logical !oca ulary" $ will then enter into an e&tended treatment of the relation etween alethic and deontic 4modal and normati!e5 !oca ularies" (hen we look at those !oca ularies through the lens of meaning<use analysis, a se,uence of startling relations etween them emerges"

/or a start, $ argue that deontic normati!e !oca ulary is also uni!ersally LZ 4that it is KE< sufficient to specify practices<or<a ilities that are oth EK<necessary for deploying any autonomous !oca ulary, and EE<sufficient for practices<or<a ilities EK<sufficient for deploying the deontic normati!e !oca ulary that e&plicates them5" .lthough in this regard it elongs in a o& with alethic modal !oca ulary, the features of autonomous !oca ulary use that it e&plicates are ,uite different from those e&plicated y modal !oca ulary" $ then argue that what lies ehind -ellars+s dark and pregnant claim that @#he language of modality is a transposed language of normsA is the fact that deontic normati!e !oca ulary can ser!e as a

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pragmatic meta ocabulary for alethic modal !oca ulary" $n my fifth lecture, $ will show how e&ploiting that relation makes possi le a new kind of directly modal formal semantics that makes no appeal to truth% incompati ility semantics" $t in turn gi!es us a new semantic perspecti!e oth on traditional logical !oca ulary, and on modal !oca ulary" #he final lecture will then wea!e all these strands into a meaning<use analysis of intentionality itself 4what is e&pressed y intentional !oca ulary5 as a pragmatically mediated semantic relation essentially in!ol!ing oth what is e&pressed y modal and what is e&pressed y normati!e !oca ulary"

#he su stanti!e cumulati!e result of this se,uence of re!elations a out modal and normati!e !oca ulary is to put new flesh on the ones of ideas that originate with Hant, and are de!eloped y his tradition up through the traditional .merican pragmatists, and are reinterpreted y -ellars in the middle years of the 20th century" .nd the methodological result of this de!elopment and application of meaning<use analysis is a new synthesis of pragmatism and analytic philosophy>one that shows how concerns and considerations at the heart of the pragmatist criti,ue of semantic analysis can e seen to ha!e een implicitly at work within the analytic tradition all along"

#he title of this lecture series, @Between -aying and 0oing,A e!idently refers to my aspiration to present a new way of thinking a out the relations etween meaning and use that arises when we think systematically a out saying what we are doing when we are saying something" But the phrase itself is taken from an $talian pro!er % @Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out"A /ollowing the argumentati!e and constructi!e path $ am

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proposing for e&ploring the intricate and re!ealing ways in which semantics and pragmatics interdigitate will re,uire wearing out a few"

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