Meaning Diminished: Toward Metaphysically Modest Semantics

Abstract

In this short but wide-ranging monograph, Kenneth Taylor makes a case for a diminished role for semantics and linguistics in metaphysical theorizing. He argues for the broadly negative conclusion that considerations about language cannot tell us much about the fundamental nature of reality. One might think such a conclusion hardly worth stating, and yet the idea that we can discover metaphysical insights by investigating language has had a remarkably tenacious grip on the field of metaphysics. This is a topic that has received increasing attention from metaphysicians, many arguing for the same conclusion as Taylor (see, e.g., Heil 2003; Dyke 2008.) Taylor’s novel contribution is that he approaches the issue from the perspective of semantics rather than metaphysics, which reveals insights that metaphysicians should acknowledge.Taylor pitches his coverage of this issue at a fairly high level of abstraction and generality, acknowledging that much more can be said at a more detailed level. This might lead one to criticize him for ignoring relevant literature, or at least only selectively attending to it. There is certainly a trade-off to be made between keeping the overall shape of the project in view and attending to every detail. In my view, this topic stands in need of the broad-brush, yet relatively concise, treatment that Taylor gives it here, so it is a trade-off worth making.Taylor presents a distinction between what he calls “narrowly linguistic semantics” and “broadly philosophical semantics” (18). I shall return to the former in a moment, but to get a handle on the approach that Taylor favors, and the approach to which he is opposed, consider first the latter. He subdivides broadly philosophical semantics into referential and ideational semantics, and argues that the difference between them “leads naturally and directly to two different understandings of the relationship between semantic analysis and metaphysical inquiry” (38). Ideational semantics leads to metaphysical inquiry that pursues “the way of ideas,” which claims to gain metaphysical insight into the fundamental nature of reality by interrogating the ideational or conceptual contents of our thought and talk. Referential semantics leads to metaphysical inquiry that pursues “the way of reference,” which seeks to gain metaphysical insight by interrogating the worldly objects referred to by our thought and talk. Taylor rejects the former approach and endorses the latter.Presented in this way, one might wonder whether anyone would even be tempted by the way of ideas. If one wants to find out about the fundamental nature of reality, surely it makes more sense to investigate reality, rather than the language we use to describe it. And yet, as mentioned above, the influence that this idea has had on metaphysics runs deep. Taylor gives examples. Saul Kripke’s (1980) arguments for natural kinds rely heavily on a semantic analysis of natural kind terms. Donald Davidson (1967) offers an analysis of the logical form of action sentences to support his metaphysics of events. Peter Ludlow (1999) argues for a tensed metaphysics of time by way of a semantic analysis of temporal language. Other examples abound.This tendency in metaphysics is surprising given that the generative paradigm in linguistics is inherently neutral with respect to the metaphysical nature of reality. In his discussion of narrowly linguistic semantics, Taylor notes that linguistic semanticists tend not to weigh in on the nature of reference, truth, or other semantic fundamentals. This neutrality is rooted in the fact that semantics within the generative tradition is, in the first instance, an inquiry into the mind and its representational powers. It is not directly focused on the external world, nor on the relation between mind and world. And this is just as we should expect. One function of language is to represent the world, so investigating language can at most reveal facts about our cognitive and representational faculties, and how we think about the world.Recent work in psychology and linguistics has shown that speakers of different languages experience, perceive, or think about certain aspects of the world differently. For example, different languages employ different spatial metaphors to represent time, and studies have shown that their speakers also think differently about time, in ways that correspond to the preferred metaphors in their native language. So, language not only reflects the structure of our temporal representations, but it can also influence or shape those representations (Casasanto 2008). The implication for those tempted by the way of ideas in metaphysics should be clear. If language shapes thought, and speakers of different languages think differently about the world, then the way of ideas will lead to speakers of different languages drawing different metaphysical conclusions from each other. Far from giving us metaphysical insight into the fundamental nature of reality, the way of ideas risks isolating speakers of different languages in their own separate realities.The way of ideas in metaphysics begins by interrogating, scrutinizing, and sharpening the ideational contents of our concepts. Once we have sharpened our concepts of, for example, virtue, number, time, freedom, or water, we are in a position to say what something must be like to be an instance of virtue, number, time, freedom, or water. Taylor has a number of closely related strands of argument against this approach. First, he notes that even those most committed to the way of ideas must accept that it is possible that there is nothing answering to our concepts. At some point, a priori interrogation of our concepts must “give way to a degree of a posteriori empirical inquiry into what there really is” (51). Merely attending to our concepts and representations of reality “in which we meet with nothing extra-representational [could not] possibly suffice to give us access to a realm of free-standing objects” (86). The strand of argument here is that the way of ideas fails to forge a link between our representations and the reality they represent, and so leaves us trapped within the realm of representations.A second strand of argument arises out of a consideration of the differences between our understanding of the concepts of, say, water and solidity, and that of the ancients. Taylor argues that the concepts themselves don’t change, but the causal-informational network in which they are embedded does, as science progresses. Homer’s concept of water would have been embedded in a causal-informational network primarily linked to perceptually grounded notions (clear liquid, thirst quenching, and so on). Our concept of water is embedded in a much richer network that also involves scientific notions such as chemical structures. Our conceptual scheme is not fixed and static, but evolving, in response to scientific and empirical discoveries. As a result, the attempt to gain metaphysical insight by investigating just our current conceptual scheme is likely to be fruitless.A third strand of argument is closely related to the second. Taylor identifies what he calls “problematically related domains of entities” (64). He cites examples: “the normative and the natural; qualitative states of consciousness and neurophysiological states of the brain” (64), but think also of the domain of ordinary objects and the matter that constitutes them, the tensed and the tenseless, the modal and the nonmodal. These pairs of domains are problematic in that it is not obvious how the concepts in one domain are related to the concepts in the other. If one approaches this issue deploying the way of ideas, one will ask whether the concepts in one domain are reducible to the concepts in the other domain. So, for example, one might ask whether normative concepts are reducible to natural concepts. If one thinks they are, then one might conclude that there are no moral properties, only natural properties. But if a proponent of the way of ideas thinks that the reduction cannot be effected, then she might be tempted to conclude that there are properties out there in the world, moral properties, that are distinct from any natural properties. Alternatively, she might think that we must give some alternative account of what appears to be fact-stating language that employs moral predicates, and thus opt for some kind of fictionalism, error theory, or emotivism.The way of reference, as Taylor notes, rejects this entire pattern of thought (66). Arguments that infer metaphysical conclusions about the fundamental constituents of reality on the basis of the distinctness or otherwise of conceptual domains are, at the very least, hasty. Our employment of normative concepts may not be reducible to employment of merely natural concepts, but it does not follow that the facts in the world answering to those concepts must be distinctively normative elements of reality. If there are conceptual differences between problematically related domains, we cannot infer that those differences carry over to the metaphysical realm.There is much less in the way of direct argument for the way of reference here than there is a battery of arguments against the way of ideas. The way of reference is offered merely as an alternative approach, albeit one that Taylor promotes as far more plausible. Nevertheless, his positive project can be discerned in his overall view of metaphysics, which is naturalistic and broadly continuous with science (5n4). The task of “limning the true and ultimate structure of reality” (Quine [1960] 2013: 202) should be seen as the joint work of all forms of inquiry, not the preserve of metaphysics, or of physics, or of any of the special sciences (106). Each has its role to play.Seeing the task of metaphysics as part of a joint project with other special sciences is an approach that has been emerging in recent years. A good example is that of Craig Callender (2017). Callender argues that the chief problem in the philosophy of time is to reconcile what science tells us about the nature of time, with how time appears to us in experience. This project requires a collaborative effort from science, physics in particular, but also psychology, physiology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. Linguistics, semantics, and logical analysis have their role to play, too. Philosophy brings particular strengths to this interdisciplinary project, not least the ability to see past disciplinary boundaries and tie the threads of the project together.Taylor diagnoses the urge toward the way of ideas as symptomatic of the fear that philosophy will have nothing to contribute to metaphysical inquiry if it cannot be done a priori (106). Callender takes a similar view. Their work, among others, demonstrates that metaphysics is undergoing an evolution, and embracing its role as part of an interdisciplinary project to uncover “the vast and layered labyrinth of existence in its sprawling totality” (165). As a result, in my view, Taylor’s book is fundamentally optimistic. By helping to lay to rest the way of ideas, he opens the door to a new, more egalitarian, collaborative, and fruitful role for metaphysics.Taylor died suddenly and unexpectedly at the end of 2019. He makes repeated references here to another manuscript of his which was in progress. It is deeply regrettable that this larger work will never come to fruition, given the contribution made by this book to these important issues. Taylor’s final contribution to philosophy will have a lasting and positive impact.