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Language and Reality BOOK REVIEWS LANGUAGE AND REALITY: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE inevitably, from such lack of neutrality (even antholo- PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE gies do, in the editor's choice of what to include and what to exclude), although the less neutral such a book Michael Devitt and Kim Sterelny is, the less it can be considered an introductory text. (Department of Traditional and Modern Philosophy, Before examining the substance of this book's per- University of Sydney, Australia; and Department spective, I should make some observations on its style: of Philosophy, Australian National University, Each chapter ends with a detailed and helpful biblio- Canberra) graphical/historical essay called "Suggested Reading". Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987, xii + 274 pp. There is also a brief glossary and an index. The writing ISBN 0-262-04089-1, $27.50 (hb); ISBN 0-262-54046-0, style is conversational and somewhat colorful, even $12.50 (sb) sarcastic at times. For example: Much of this work [on modal logic] is complex, difficult and technical. All of it depends to some extent on modern THE MEANING OF LANGUAGE logic. We shall, therefore, spare you an exposition of Robert M. Martin these results. (p. 23.) (Department of Philosophy, Dalhousie University, We are as enthusiastic for conquest as any causal theorist Halifax, Canada) could be, but the wise imperialist knows his limitations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books, 1987, ix We think that Putnam goes way too far. (p. 75.) The text is aimed at a wide variety of students from + 230 pp. ISBN 0-262-13224-9, $19.95 (hb); ISBN 0-262-63108-3, various disciplines, with harder passages--from as short as a part of a sentence to as long as an entire $9.95 (sb) chapter---delimited by the mark **. The placement of Reviewed by **s is often odd: sometimes the middle of a sentence is William J. Rapaport **ed, and there is at least one un**ed sentence whose State University of New York at Buffalo pronouns refer back to a **ed sentence! Curiously, the passage in the Preface that describes the authors' the- I INTRODUCTION oretical perspective is within **s! What, then, is their perspective? It consists of four MIT Press has given us two new introductory philoso- aspects: phy-of-language books, both of which fall within the 1. Naturalism: "The theory of language.., is an category of "single-author" texts (despite the multiple empirical and conjectural theory like any authorship of one of them); that is, they are not anthol- other .... [P]eople [are] . nothing but com- ogies, but presentations of the material from the per- plex parts of the physical world" (p. x). Thus the spective of the author(s). Why would a publisher issue authors are opposed to certain views of Whorf, two such texts in the same year, running the risk of Kuhn, Feyerabend, Putnam, Dummett, structur- having each undercut the other? One answer might be alists, and Wittgenstein, but they are not opposed that these books address very different audiences. Mi- to Quine (although he is only mentioned, not chael Devitt and Kim Sterelny's Language and Reality discussed). is a scholarly, high-level introduction, while Robert M. 2. Functionalism: The authors view philosophy of Martin's The Meaning of Language is an elementary, language as part of cognitive science; they are in somewhat simplified introduction. In what follows, I sympathy with certain views of Fodor, Dennett, shall describe and briefly summarize the two books, and Lycan, and Stich. conclude with some observations and recommenda- 3. The authors accept some of "the insights of tions. transformational generative grammar, whilst re- maining sceptical of its claims about psychological 2 LANGUAGE AND REALITY reality" (p. x). According to Devitt and Sterelny, Language and Real- 4. The authors are in favor of causal theories of ity "is an introduction to the philosophy of lan- reference, as presented by Kripke, Donnellan, guage.., intended primarily, but not solely, as a Putnam, and Field. textbook .... We make no pretence at neutrality. A Whether these can all be juggled successfully is beyond definite theoretical perspective pervades this book" (p. the scope of this brief review. Readers of this journal ix). Of course, all "single"-author texts suffer, albeit should be aware that there is no mention of Situation 108 Computational Linguistics, Volume 14, Number 3, September 1988 Book Reviews The Meaning of Language Semantics and only brief mention of Montague's con- (rejected) theories while avoiding some of the bad ones. tributions. They then develop the theory to handle empty names, Part I ("Introduction") discusses ways in which existence statements, etc. Chapter 5 ("Theories of philosophy is concerned with language. It discusses the Reference: Other Terms") extends (and rejects) de- nature of language for communication and for private scription theories and extends (without rejecting) causal use; it characterizes language as being stimulus-inde- theories to natural-kind terms and artifactual-kind pendent, abstract, arbitrary, medium-independent, pro- terms. There is also a section on Donnellan's distinction ductive, and powerful (in the sense of being able to talk (although it is **ed, which I find odd, given its impor- about anything); and it spells out the authors' natural- tance). ism. In Chapter 6, ("Syntactic Structure"), the authors Part II ("Meaning") begins with a chapter on "Truth state that they "are setting aside the findings of the and Reference", which cites the importance of truth logicians [about syntactic structure] as too difficult for conditions as "central to explaining meaning" (p. 17). this book .... In the present chapter, we shall discuss The authors discuss reference, syntactic structure, and the findings of the grammarians, in particular, the "decompositionality" as aspects of explaining truth revolutionary findings of Noam Chomsky" (p. 89). This conditions. There is a **ed section covering speech-act is, then, another major omission, one that--given the theory, theories of questions, and Gricean implicature reliance of most philosophers of language on logical (all in three pages). Next, they turn to theories of proper analyses of sentences--is difficult to comprehend in an names, as a challenge to the doctrine that word meaning allegedly introductory text. Nevertheless, an introduc- = reference. They state that they "are attempting to tion to syntactic theory as done by (at least some) give a scientific theory of language. There is no place in linguists is valuable and important, and that they give. science for talk of the non-existent" (p. 27). This stands They discuss phrase-structure trees, the notions of in stark contrast with their claim in Part I concerning the surface and deep structures, transformations, and such "power" of language. For surely there is a place in contemporary transformational theories as generative science for talk of nonexistents, perhaps especially in semantics, extended standard theory, and trace theory cognitive science and computational natural-language (but they do not discuss government and binding theory understanding, where it is essential to recognize that or, for that matter, such newer grammatical theories as people use language to talk about everything and any- generalized phrase-structure grammar or the several thing, existing or otherwise (including such once scien- functional-unification grammar formalisms). tifically respectable things as phlogiston and such cur- Part III ("Language and Mind") begins with a chap- rently respectable but, for all we now know, nonexisting ter on "Thought and Meaning", in which thoughts are things as quarks: cf. Castafieda 1972; Rapaport 1978, identified with propositional attitudes. The authors take 1981, 1985; Routley 1979; Parsons 1980; Maida and the view that "Thoughts... are inner states: beliefs, Shapiro 1982; Zalta 1983; Shapiro and Rapaport 1987.) desires, hopes, fears, etc .... They are inner represen- Although Devitt and Sterelny introduce the notion of tations (and misrepresentations) of the external world; opacity, they decide, unfortunately, that opaque con- they have content" (p. 115). Further, thoughts are texts "are too hard for more than a passing mention in "language-like .... [They] seem to have the same this book" (p. 29). Finally, they offer two strategies to semantic properties as sentences of human lan- cope with nonreferential roles: the Fregean strategy guages .... [They] have the syntax of sentences" (p. introduces senses as new roles for meaning, besides the 116), and they are productive and abstract. The authors referential role; and the strategy of Alexius Meinong consider and reject Chomsky's and Grice's objections and David Lewis is to extend ontology to include to this view, but "seem caught in the following circle: possible worlds (though the authors are technically (a) speaker meaning is explained by thought content; (b) wrong here: Meinong did extend ontology, but to inten- that content is explained by the meaning of the thought sional individuals, not to possible worlds: cf. Casta- sentence; (c) that meaning is explained by conventional fieda, Rapaport, Routley, Parsons, and Zalta, op. cit.). meaning; and (d) conventional meaning is explained by Chapter 3 ("Description Theories of Reference: speaker meaning" (p. 124). They extricate themselves Names") presents the theory of Frege and Russell, from the circle by patching up Grice's theory. shows how it handles various problems, and raises Chapter 8 ("Linguistic Competence") explains that several objections to it. The authors then do the same syntax is a formal theory of symbols and that compe- for the cluster theory of Wittgenstein, Strawson, and tence is a theory about human minds. This poses a Searle. Next comes Kripke's argument against descrip- problem for Chomskian linguistics, which claims that tion theories, followed by the authors' claim that "We linguistics is supposed to be the study of both. The think that description theories of names are wrong not authors, however, "think that linguistic theories are not merely in details but in fundamentals" (p.
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