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Home , Pragmatics, Proposition

1

What is a ?

by Arthur Sullivan

Department of

Memorial University of Newfoundland (Canada)

email: [email protected]

Abstract

The aim of this is to make some progress concerning one of the stumbling blocks at

play in recent debates surrounding the - distinction: namely, that the foundational ‘proposition’ tends to be used in different ways by different people.

A bit more specifically, two primary goals of this paper are to distinguish the

foundational (i.e., ‘What is a proposition?’) from subsequent to which it is

constitutively tied, and to clarify what hangs on some different answers to the foundational

question. I begin with a brief overview of the semantics-pragmatics border wars. Then I investigate some central senses of the term ‘proposition’, and tie certain distinct notions of a proposition back to the semantics-pragmatics debates.

Finally, I sketch a case for the claim that the foregoing bracken-clearing adds to the case in favor of one of the varieties of view in these semantics-pragmatics border wars – i.e.,

(borrowing Stanley’s on Recanati’s terminology) non-propositional syncretism.

Keywords

Proposition; semantics; pragmatics; ; syncretism.

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1. Overview

One guiding assumption behind this present research is that there are some prevalent stumbling

blocks at play in recent debates surrounding the semantics-pragmatics distinction, and that they

help to hinder progress toward the kind of sophisticated, theoretical consensus that is being

reached in some other areas of the study of . One primary aim of this research is to make some progress concerning one such stumbling block: namely, that the foundational term

‘proposition’ tends to be used in different ways by different people.

I will first briefly illustrate this focal stumbling block with to two current

debates in which it seems likely that the opposing factions are adhering to distinct conceptions of

a proposition. (I will return to both of these debates in §4.) First, one the one hand, Cappelen &

Lepore (2005) insist that sentences like “Jill is ready” or “Simon is tall” express . On

the other hand, in different ways Recanati (2004), Bach (2005, 2006), Soames (2005), and Neale

(2007) (among many others) deny that such sentences express propositions, insisting rather that

what they semantically express is (in some sense) incomplete. For a second example, Potts

(2005) defends a multiple-proposition theory of expressives, arguing that, say, “I have to look

after Sally’s damn dog while she is away” semantically expresses two logically and

compositionally independent propositions. In reviewing Potts’ work, while Bach (2007) finds the

multiple-proposition approach to be plausible for some other phenomena (e.g., supplements), he

rejects the multi-dimensional approach to expressives, largely on the grounds that that which

expressives semantically add to a should not be classified as propositional.

To the extent that there are several non-equivalent senses of the term ‘proposition’

employed in the literature, it is difficult to see exactly what is at issue in such disagreements. As

a consequence, these debates lack the kind of focused, mutual engagement without which 3

resolution and progress are rather unlikely. There can be little hope of even sorting out these

sorts of debate, let alone making progress on them, without further clarifications to the operative

conceptions of ‘proposition’.1

Primary goals of this paper include: (i) to distinguish the foundational question (i.e.,

‘What is a proposition?’) from subsequent questions to which it is constitutively tied, and (ii) to

clarify what hangs on some different answers to the foundational question. Toward that end, I will investigate some central senses of the term ‘proposition’, and relate certain distinct notions of a proposition back to both certain issues, as well as certain theoretical approaches, at play in the debates at the semantics-pragmatics interface.

2. A survey of the disputed territories

To the stage, I next give an overview of some contested issues at the semantics-pragmatics interface, and of some of the main types of theoretical approach to those issues. (Henceforth,

‘semantics-pragmatics’ will be abbreviated to ‘S/P’.) I will call the extreme opposing factions in

these S/P border wars ‘conservative literalism’ and ‘radical contextualism’. A wide range of

options between these extremes have been developed and defended (some of which will be discussed below).

Conservative literalists hold that semantic competence is a distinctive, tractable phenomenon which carries the vast majority of the explanatory burden within a theoretical account of our linguistic behavior. They insist that the of why we are able to appropriately utter and successfully interpret an infinite range of expressions which we have never before encountered has almost entirely to do with our of a and a

1 For confluent discussions of the central importance of the precise content of the term ‘proposition’, cf. Recanati (2004: 90-5), Borg (2007: 347-50), Cappelen (2007: 15), and Taylor (2007: Section II). 4

.2 Of course, in general, linguistic also requires facility with some salient

contextual cues. (Most generally, the grammar plus the lexicon is insufficient to determine

whether a certain linguistic expression is being used literally or non-literally. Other cases in

which it is plausible to hold that interpretation requires extra-semantic help include disambiguation – e.g., ‘Al hurried to the bank’ – or the saturation of indexicals – e.g., semantic competence will tell you that the of a literally used token of ‘she’ is female, but it will not tell you exactly which female is the referent.) Nonetheless, says the literalist, these phenomena are circumscribed and peripheral; and even in such cases semantic competence (i.e., knowledge of what is literally expressed) is still the vastly most important factor in the interpretative process.

Conservative literalists tend to give central importance to formal semantic theories. To a large extent, they conceive of the semantic enterprise as a matter of pairing sentences with

(-independent) conditions.3 The traditional S/P divide is both relatively clear and of

paramount importance, for a conservative literalist. Semantics is the study of the lexicon and the

grammar; pragmatics studies what speakers use linguistic expressions (whose literal is

specified by semantics) to do. Conservative literalists scoff at many provocative conjectures

within the study of language (e.g., about metaphorical meanings, referential meanings, pragmatic

2 For convenience, I will factor semantic competence into two discrete components, which I will call ‘knowledge of a lexicon’ and ‘knowledge of a grammar’. Knowledge of a lexicon consists of understanding the meanings of a basic set of primitive expressions; knowledge of a grammar consists of facility with a set of compositional rules for combining primitive expressions into larger, molecular expressions. These stipulations are of course very crude, but I just use them for stage setting. As far as I can tell, these crude stipulations do not beg any important points of contention between literalists and contextualists.

3 For examples of different variations on this theme, cf. the separate research programs spearheaded by Davidson (1967), Montague (1974), Kaplan (1989), and Barwise & Perry (1983). 5

meanings, etc.) as simply fuzzy-headed mistakes attendant upon the failure to properly draw and

consistently heed the S/P distinction.4

Radical contextualists, in , hold that the project of pairing sentences with context-

independent truth-conditions is, at best, a very small part of a comprehensive theoretical account

of our linguistic behavior. (‘At best’ because some would go so far as to say that the conservative

literalists’ cherished notion literal semantic meaning is “incoherent” (Recanati 2004: 4).)

Contextualists attach great significance to the complex, dynamic adaptability of our linguistic

behavior, and tend to hold that formal semantic theories are not terribly relevant to our

unreflective, everyday communicative exchanges. Contextualists have more affinity for the

ordinary language tradition in mid-20th-century . (Many – though by no means all – are explicitly pessimistic about the very idea of a systematic theoretical account of linguistic behavior.) Gently put, contextualists accuse literalists of fashioning theories that only

apply to mythical frictionless planes, and of forcing various sorts of recalcitrant data (some of

which are described below) to fit with their outdated, ill-motivated theories.

I will briefly describe two distinct but related lines of contextualist against

literalism, which I will call ‘context-shift’ and ‘underdetermination’ arguments.

Context-shift arguments challenge the very idea of context-independent truth-condition, on the grounds that the truth-conditions of a given can vary among contexts. For example5,

suppose the only beer in the (contextually salient) fridge is a teaspoon that has been spilled into

the vegetable drawer. The one unambiguous sentence ‘There is beer in the fridge’ would be

if said to a reveler in search of refreshment, but would be true if said to someone who was

4 For example, cf. Davidson (1978) on metaphor, or Kripke (1977) on referential meanings. For recent defenses of varieties of conservative literalism, cf. Borg (2004), Stanley (2007).

5 This example is borrowed from Corazza (2004: 10). 6

supposed to have cleaned the fridge. This poses a difficult challenge to many varieties of

literalism – i.e., What exactly is the truth-condition, then, for that sentence? Searle (1978),

among others, forcefully presses the case that this sentence is hardly unique or non-standard, in this respect. With a little ingenuity, context-shifting arguments can be run on most if not all sentences.

Undetermination arguments are built upon mundane, ubiquitous cases in which what the grammar plus the lexicon delivers as the literal meaning is not what we would intuitively characterize as the proposition expressed. In some cases, what semantic competence would specify as the proposition expressed does not seem to suffice to constitute truth-evaluable content (e.g., ‘Jill is ready’); in other cases, what semantic competence would specify as the proposition expressed seems clearly inappropriate (e.g., ‘I have had nothing to eat’). A conservative literalist might dismiss such cases as loose talk – as merely leaving the obvious unsaid, for the sake of convenience – but it seems that even an otherwise completed, neither vague nor ambiguous sentence (e.g., ‘John finished Sally’s book’) can be used to express an indefinite number of distinct propositions (e.g., John finished the book that Sally wrote;

John finished the book that Sally recommended for their book club; John finished the book that he dedicated to Sally; etc. etc.). Contextualists take the kind of creative, supplementary interpretive process which Recanati (2004, among other places) calls ‘free enrichment’ to be the , not a peripheral and circumscribed oddball. (E.g., when we hear

‘She took out her key and opened the door’, we take the sentence to assert that she opened the door with the key.) And then there is the wealth of convergent data cataloguing the extent to 7

which the lexicon is adaptable, malleable – that linguistic interpretation requires constantly

shrinking or expanding the senses of to fit the context at hand.6

All of this, says the radical contextualist, shows that the work of conservative literalists is

of limited , and of questionable relevance. Relatedly, contextualists hold that traditional

conceptions of the S/P divide are neither all that clear nor all that important, since these

challenges to literalism suggest that – even in such thoroughly mundane and simple cases –

pragmatic interpretive processes are required prior to identifying truth-conditions.7 Conservative literalism is by no means dead, though.8 To a literalist, the radical contextualists’ conclusions are

at best drastically unwarranted, and at worst a barely coherent reactionary fad. There are grounds

to be pessimistic as to the prospects of any theory of linguistic interpretation which does not give

central importance to literal meanings, or to the S/P divide.9

Again, there is a range of options stretching between these two extremes. Both literalism

and contextualism come in moderate forms, which aim to concede the importance of their

opponents’ driving intuitions and to carve out a principled middle ground. A large band-width of

this intermediate terrain is taken up by what Recanati (2004: Ch.4, among other places) calls

‘syncretic views’. Syncretic views distinguish between, and assign different theoretical work to,

6 Travis (1975) and Searle (1978) are influential sources for this point in philosophy; both acknowledge debts to the ordinary language tradition. For some current research informed by both philosophy and linguistics, see Carston’s Lexical Pragmatics Project, online at http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/lexprag/.

7 As Borg (2007: 340) puts it, contextualists take the above considerations to prove that “pragmatic effects are endemic throughout the literal, truth-evaluable content expressed by sentences”, or that “pragmatics infects semantic content in a substantial way”.

8 For example, cf. Stanley (2007: 202-5) for a brief overview of some literalist lines of response to the above sorts of contextualist challenges.

9 To cite one example, Cappelan & Lepore (2005: x) give for a nice clear statement of one central line of argument against contextualism: “The common thread that runs throughout our criticism of contextualism is that it fails to account for how we communicate across contexts. People with different background beliefs, goals, audiences, perceptual inputs, etc. can understand each other. They can agree or disagree. They can say, assert, claim, state, investigate, or make fun of the very same claim. No theory of is adequate unless it explains how this is possible. Contextualists cannot provide such an explanation.” 8

various different aspects of the contents that are communicated with uses of sentences.10 Here is

a nice succinct statement from Stanley’s (2005) review of Recanati (2004):

Adherents of the Syncretic View agree with contextualists that what speakers consciously intend to express by their utterances is not usually the semantic content of the sentences uttered (even relative to that context of use). But adherents of the Syncretic View nevertheless maintain that sentences, relative to a context of use, do have a semantic content, and that the fact that they do is in some sense important for the theory of meaning. (Stanley 2007: 232)

To get more specific requires introducing distinctions between sub-types of syncretic view. What

Stanley (2007: 234) calls ‘propositional syncretism’ holds that sentences in context always

express propositions, but that it is typical for that proposition to be distinct from exactly what it

is that the speaker is primarily intending to express. (So, for example, even relative to a context

of utterance, ‘Jill is ready’ just semantically expresses the proposition that Jill is ready

simpliciter, but the speaker is almost certainly saying that Jill is ready for some specific

contextually salient thing; ‘I have not eaten’ semantically expresses the proposition that I have

not eaten simpliciter, but I am almost certainly saying that I have not eaten within some specific,

contextually salient timeframe.) A paradigm case of propositional syncretism is Cappelen &

Lepore’s (2005) combination of semantic minimalism and -act pluralism. Though

obviously a departure from conservative literalism, in conceding the thorough saturation of the

interpretive process by pragmatic factors, propositional syncretism nonetheless retains

literalism’s views on the crispness and importance of the S/P distinction.11

10 Thus understood, it seems clear to me that Kaplan (1989), Perry (2001), and Stalnaker (2001) are (at least proto-) syncretic theorists. I come back to this point in §6.

11 At least, I say this because of the obvious fundamental importance of the distinction between semantics (i.e., semantic minimalism) and pragmatics (i.e., pluralism) for Cappelen & Lepore (2005). It is somewhat awkward for me, then, that Cappelen (2007: 3) has subsequently stated: “…there’s no such thing as the semantics- pragmatics distinction and looking for it is a waste of time” [italics in original]. Taking all of Cappelen (2007) into consideration, though, it seems evident that he is frustrated with the “extraordinarily confusing array of ways” (p.20) in which philosophers and linguists have drawn the S/P divide, and with oversimplified notions that all problems 9

What Stanley (2007: 234) calls ‘non-propositional syncretism’ holds that the semantic contents of sentences, even relative to a context of utterance, are in some cases non- propositional. Bach’s (2005, 2006) syncretism, for example, is non-propositional because he denies that ‘Jill is ready’ or ‘I have not eaten’ semantically express propositions, even relative to a context of utterance. As Bach puts it, “…the sentences in question are semantically incomplete

– their semantic contents are not propositions but merely propositional radicals” (2006: 435).

Soames (2005) is another example of a non-propositional syncretist. The semantic content of a sentence relative to a context of utterance may on Soames’ view be a ‘propositional matrix’, while what we would intuitively call the proposition expressed is the contextually salient completion of that matrix. If I say to the waitress ‘I’d like some coffee please’, the semantic content expressed does not specify whether I want a cup or 100 gallons, of beans, grounds, or liquid, etc. etc.; while, in context, it is intuitively clear to all parties that what I have expressed is a request for hot liquid coffee in a size and format suitable for one person to drink.12

For non-propositional syncretists, interpreters exploit contextual cues to get from propositional radicals/matrices/blueprints/etc., to the appropriate propositional content. And

again, as was the case for propositional syncretism, non-propositional syncretism concedes

substantive ground to contextualism, but yet retains a recognizably traditional, though refined,

conception of the S/P border. (Semantic competence is still a distinctive phenomenon which

plays the major role in interpretation for a non-propositional syncretist; there is still a massive

would be solved if we could just get the S/P distinction right. Fair enough; but I do not think that Cappelen has subsequently rejected the fundamental importance of the above distinction.

12 Another instance of non-propositional syncretism is described by Neale (2007: note 7) as follows: “… I prefer to talk of sentences encoding blueprints for propositions. No proposition blueprint is itself a proposition (any more than a building blueprint is a building). Many distinct propositions (or buildings) may satisfy a single blueprint.” 10

between a literal and a non-literal usage for Bach or Soames – as opposed to, say,

Searle (1978) or Davidson (1985); and so on.)

This is enough of a survey of the options to illustrate the importance of the foundational question: What is a proposition? It is hard to home in on the exact substance of the disagreement between Cappelen & Lepore, on the one hand, and Bach or Soames, on the other, without first settling on one specific conception of what a proposition is. More pessimistically, it might seem that the only difference between propositional and non-propositional syncretists is that they adhere to different conceptions of proposition. Even further, Cappelan & Lepore (2005: Part 1),

Stanley (2007: 235-6), and Borg (2007: 349-50) all argue that there may be just the merest of terminological difference between Bach’s or Soames’ non-propositional syncretism and

Recanati’s (2004) supposedly radical contextualism. Could it really be that the above-rehearsed

Homeric struggles at the S/P border are premised on terminological confusions about foundational terms such as ‘proposition’?

In any case, there can be little hope of even sorting out these debates at the S/P border, let alone making progress on them, without further clarifications to the operative conceptions of propositional content. At the very least, this may show up some of the prima facie disagreements as merely terminological, and thus help us to better isolate and evaluate the genuine, substantive points of contention between these opposing factions. On, then, to the foundational question:

What is a proposition?

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3. Some preliminary remarks about propositions

I take it that, first and foremost, propositions are equivalence classes, and the commodity which

they categorize is . For various purposes, it is indispensable to have a term to

designate what is semantically in common among cases like the following:

1. is now sitting.

2. I am now sitting. (said by Aristotle)

3. You were sitting, yesterday at this time. (said to Aristotle, in 24 hours)

4. Aristote est assis, maintenant. (said in Quebec)

[1]-[4] semantically express exactly the same information; it is that repeatable, semantically expressed information content that the term ‘proposition’ is introduced to label.

Note that one nice feature – at least for present purposes – of this way of approaching propositions is that it admits a relatively clean separation of semantic questions about propositions from metaphysical questions about their constituents, structure, and ontological status. For example, it is not part of the present project to engage with and rebut the various

Ockhamist, Quinean, and otherwise technical arguments against the intelligibility or usefulness of the notion of a proposition. (Cf. King (2007) for a recent overview.) From a semantic point of view, propositions are just simply ways of categorizing assertions, attitudes, etc.; as such, they are eminently intelligible and useful. The metaphysical status of such things as ‘ways of categorizing’ is of course a complex and contested issue; but it is not attendant upon semanticists to conclusively solve such issues before they can avail of this indispensable theoretical tool.

This is not to deny that a comprehensive metaphysical account of propositions is an important goal, or to deny that it can be hard to determine sameness or difference of 12

propositional content. It is rather to insist that it is expedient to distinguish, as far as possible13,

my focal semantic issues from distinct, though not unrelated, metaphysical questions, issues, and

debates. Difficult metaphysical questions about propositions, about which I will try to presume

as little as possible, include whether their constituents are concrete or abstract, what their internal

structure might be, and exactly how propositions relate to mental states and to language-

independent states of affairs.

One central semantic question about propositions, then, is: What, exactly, are the criteria

for individuating these equivalence classes of information? Several different, more or less

precise, ways to individuate propositions have been developed. Central points of contention

which divide up opposing factions include the nature of the relation between the notions of co-

extensiveness and synonymy, and the (related) question of whether what Frege calls ‘modes of

presentation’ ought to be classified as semantically relevant, or rather to be classified as pragmatic, or psychological, or etc. Within the past few decades, the decision space of options has become exponentially more complex in the wake of the finer semantic distinctions which are

drawn within multi-dimensional semantics (cf. Kaplan (1989), Perry (2001), Stalnaker (2001)).

At least to some extent, differing criteria for propositional identity are at play in the S/P border disputes; so this is one sort of question which must be borne in mind below. However, I now move on to a question that is conceptually prior to the issue of criteria of individuation for propositions—i.e., first and foremost, what theoretical work are these equivalence classes of

13 I make no claim that it is either theoretically or practically possible to remain completely metaphysically neutral in the course of semantic theorizing. Here is one example of how the semantic question of how to individuate propositions seems to be inextricably linked to metaphysical questions about propositional constituents – Russellians about propositional constituents are thereby committed to coarse-grained criteria of propositional identity; conversely, one of the more compelling aspects of the Fregean approach to propositional constituents is that it enables more fine-grained criteria of propositional identity. 13

information supposed to be doing for us, anyway? I aim to show that different positions on the

literalist-contextualist spectrum correspond to different approaches to that question.

4. Linking specific conceptions of propositional content to the literalist-contextualist spectrum

(4i) The proposition’s central jobs

This general terrain is greatly complicated by the fact that propositions have been put to many

different jobs – so many that it is reasonable to wonder whether any one thing can play all of

these roles.14 A short-list of the central jobs associated with the term ‘proposition’ would have to include at least:

1. the semantic contents expressed by sentences

2. the bearers of truth or falsity

3. the objects of the propositional attitudes

This list could easily be doubled or tripled – e.g., 4. the of ‘that-’ clauses; 5. that which stays common among changes in illocutionary force; and so on – but I take it that the above three are, historically and conceptually, the most fundamental.

Now, the idea that more or less distantly related issues might boil down to different as to which of the above jobs to take as primary is hardly novel or surprising. Take, for example, disputes between Millian and descriptivist approaches to the semantics of proper . To the extent that one takes job [3] above as the fundamental sense of the term

‘proposition’, one will thereby be inclined toward a descriptivist approach to names; while, conversely, to the extent that one is inclined toward a Millian approach to names, it seems that one is ipso facto compelled to giving job [2] theoretical precedence over job [3].

14 Lewis, for example, expresses on this point. Cf., e.g., (1979: 134, 143; 1986: 54). 14

However, something that is forcibly underlined by these recent S/P debates is that we can

no longer innocently presume that one and the same semantic entity is fitted for both jobs [1] and

[2]. In what follows, I will develop the suggestion that what latently underlies these S/P border

wars is a dispute over this question. (For ease of exposition, I will sometimes refer to job [1]

propositions as ‘context-independent semantic contents’, and to job [2] propositions as ‘truth- bearers’.)

(4ii) Can any one semantic entity play both jobs [1] and [2]?

In general, the guiding idea behind job [1] is that what the term ‘proposition’ is primarily

introduced to designate is that which holds constant throughout all uses of a sentence, across

various contexts of utterance.15 The proposition is what the semantic module delivers,

completely determined by the lexicon plus the grammar. Propositions are context-independent

semantic properties of sentences (presumably, as a function of the separate context-independent

semantic properties of the expressions which compose the sentence). This tack on propositional

content essentially involves abstracting away from the vagaries of various uses in diverse

contexts to yield what is in common amongst them all.

Approaching the notion of a proposition down this avenue brings into sharp relief a fundamental difference between literalists and contextualists. Contextualists by no means deny that there are such things as job [1] propositions (i.e., context-independent semantic contents), or

that they have a useful role to play in semantic theorizing. (It simply cannot be denied that

linguistic expressions have context-independent semantic properties.) Rather, where

contextualists depart from literalists is on the question of whether job [1] propositions constitute

15 Although such relatively well-understood phenomena as and complicate the precise statement of this point, I know of no compelling reason to think that they undermine it. As my interests lie elsewhere, I will ignore these complications in this paper. 15

or determine definite truth-conditions. In general, literalists take job [1] propositions to be

relatively precise and determinate – i.e., for any well-formed complete sentence, the lexicon plus

the grammar will specify a truth-bearer. In contrast, a contextualist would hold that no more

substantive content could be given to job [1] propositions than relatively unspecific ‘semantic

potentials’ (cf. Recanati (2004: 97, 152). Thus, for contextualists, job [1] propositions are

nothing more than vague and variable recipes, constituted by vague and variable semantic

potentials.

This suggests that we could take literalism to be the position that job [1] propositions are

also job [2] propositions, and contextualism as the position that context-independent semantic

contents generally fall short of specifying truth-bearers. (This may well be what Recanati (2004:

4) means when he alleges that the conservative literalist notion of literal semantic meaning is

“incoherent” – i.e., literalists take it as an analytic truth that one semantic entity does both job [1]

and job [2], but that assumption may well be undermined by the contextualist challenge.) The

issue between literalists and contextualists is then over whether one needs pragmatic interpretive

processes to get from job [1] to job [2] – i.e., whether what the semantic module delivers

generally falls short of specifying a truth-bearer.

This is also a point at which propositional and non-propositional syncretists will part

company. On the question of whether the context-independent semantic contents expressed by

‘Jill is ready’ or ‘Simon is tall’, say, specify or constitute a truth-bearer, non-propositional

syncretists absolutely and unequivocally say ‘no’. Presumably, at least a large part of why they do not want to call the context-independent semantic contents in question ‘propositions’ is

precisely that they fall short of specifying or constituting truth-bearers. In this respect, non- 16

propositional syncretism makes a substantive concession to contextualism, agreeing that that

which does job [1] generally falls short of also and thereby doing job [2].

Clearly, propositional syncretists want to give a different answer to this question, and to

say that what such sentences semantically express does specify or constitute a truth-bearer –

indeed, this move may be precisely what makes their brand of syncretism ‘propositional’.

However, it is not altogether clear whether, toward that end, Cappelen & LePore (2005) (i)

disagree with non-propositional syncretists’ about what it takes to be a truth-bearer, or rather (ii) share the same of the term ‘truth-bearer’ but disagree about its .16 For the

most part, it sounds like Cappelen & LePore (2005) want to espouse option (ii) – cf., e.g., (2005:

181); though to my mind Hawthorne’s (2006: 443) question constitutes a decisive reductio of the

possibility of their taking that option: “If LePore is ready for breakfast but not ready to learn to play golf, is Lepore ready?”. (For whatever else one about truth-bearers, surely the law of non- is sacrosanct.17)

In any case, we find propositional syncretism lining up closer to the conservative

literalists’ position on this question, insisting that that which does job [1] is also that which does

job [2]; whereas, again, non-propositional syncretists make a more substantive concession to

contextualism on this issue. As mentioned above (§2: p.10), many take this to show that the

difference between non-propositional syncretism and radical contextualism is merely

16 The difficulty of categorically answering this question is related to Cappelen & LePore’s desire to stay neutral on some fundamental but contentious points – see (2005: p.3, note 3). See Atlas (2007) for a discussion of whether they ought to attempt to, or in fact manage to, achieve this .

17 Unless one adopts a para-consistent logic, of course; but I take it that that is not an of Cappelen & LePore’s (2005) program. I note that both Borg (2004) and Stanley (2007) are sympathetic to Cappelen & LePore’s (2005) general orientation, and have developed more sophisticated views regarding this present concern; though detailed discussion of their views is beyond the scope of the present paper. (An exegesis of Stanley’s views would require extensive discussion of the -semantic interface – cf. Collins (2007) for critical discussion. As for Borg (2004), her notion of a ‘weak existential’ or ‘liberal’ proposition may well show her up for a non-propositional syncretist, on my taxonomy (cf. §6).) 17

terminological. However, the above concession is not yet capitulating to contextualism, until we

add the further condition that job [1] propositions need to be pragmatically enriched in order to

be able to do job [2]. To the extent that it makes sense to hold that the required enrichment falls

within the jurisdiction of semantics – in some principled and relatively sharp sense of the term –

then there is conceptual space for a of views in between propositional syncretism and

contextualism. Again, disambiguation and the saturation of indexicals might provide plausible

instances of interpretive enrichments that fall beyond strict confines of semantic competence (as

construed in note 2) but which nonetheless should be classified as semantic, as opposed to

pragmatic. The issue dividing contextualists from their opponents then becomes whether the

required enrichments to ‘Jill is ready’ belong in the same category as those required of ‘She is a

lawyer’, or rather in the same category as those required of, say, Grice’s (1989: 32)

conversational which do not involve the violation of a maxim.18

(4iii) to sum up

Recall the first two of the central jobs associated with the term ‘proposition’ cited above:

1. the semantic contents expressed by sentences

2. the bearers of truth or falsity

I take the following excerpt from Perry (1988) to be a clear articulation of the prevalent idea that job [1] is the theoretically fundamental defining of the notion of a proposition:

…[W]e need … propositions … to get at what we seek to preserve when we

communicate with others in different contexts. [Subjective] thoughts will not do, and

neither will mere truth-values. (Perry 1988: 3)

18 For example, the case where A says “I am out of petrol” and B replies “There is a garage around the corner”, where we understand B to have pragmatically implicated that B believes that the garage is open, has petrol to sell, etc. 18

As the following familiar tentative definition from Frege (1918) attests, the idea that job [2] is

also definitive of the essence of a proposition is also widespread and canonical:

… [A proposition is] something for which the question of truth or falsity arises. (Frege

1918: 293)

It is arguable that a gulf dividing these two conceptions of a proposition was first pointed to and illustrated by Wittgenstein, Austin, and others over 50 years ago. Even still, recent work on the contextualist challenge has yielded original sharp arguments in favor of the claim that context-

independent semantic contents generally fall short of determining precise truth-conditions. One

central moral of the contextualist challenge, then, when it comes to the foundational term

‘proposition’, is that it is no longer a safe presumption (let alone an analytic truth) that the semantic entities which play job [1] are one and the same semantic entities as those which play job [2].

Let us return then to the cases from which we began. First, when it comes to Cappelen &

LePore (2005) vs. the masses on whether “Jill is ready” or “Simon is tall” express propositions, it seems rather evident that the opposing camps here are espousing different conceptions of what it takes to be propositional. Again, Cappelen & LePore (2005) stay close to the literalist pole, by insisting on a tight link between jobs [1] and job [2]; while what their opponents in this case

insist – both the contextualists and the non-propositional syncretists – is that what such sentences

semantically express cannot do job [2]. As for the second example – i.e., the case of Bach (2007)

vs. Potts (2005) on the propositional status of the expressive dimension – here the story is more

complicated. Note first that in Potts’ (2005) multi-dimensional framework he distinguishes

between at-issue and non-at-issue content, where at-issue content is defined as (among other

things) the content that the speaker is most expecting to have to negotiate with interlocutors 19

before it is accepted as common ground. In general, expressive content is non-at-issue, color commentary, for Potts (though there are non-standard but fairly familiar counterexamples). Note second that both Bach and Potts concede that expressive content is non-deniable: “A sincere utterance of ‘damn’ cannot be challenged or turn out to be false. … [E]xpressives … are also not challengeable by a hearer” (Potts 2005: 157). That is to say that they both agree that expressive content cannot in general do job [2]. Given that, Bach’s (2007) criticism of Potts (2005) on this front involves a prescriptive point about how the term ‘proposition’ ought to be used. Potts

(2005) is comfortable with calling expressive content ‘propositional’ even if it is non-at-issue and non-deniable; whereas again, as in the above dispute with Cappelen & LePore (2005), Bach will not confer the honorific ‘proposition’ on content that is ill-suited to job [2].

Both cases illustrate the extent to which these contested issues at the S/P border involve a tangle of terminological and substantive differences. To separate out these terminological differences is a necessary step toward engagement on the substantive points.

5. Conclusions

Let me draw out some of the reasons which have emerged for thinking that non-propositional syncretism is, all things considered, the variety of view with the most promise to deliver a comprehensive, satisfactory understanding of the S/P interface.

Note again that the contextualist challenge to conservative literalism hardly supports categorical skepticism about the very idea of context-independent semantic properties. (Cf.

§4(ii).) From here, I will argue that, to the extent that context-independent semantic properties still play a central role in interpretation, then the traditional S/P divide is just refined, not 20

undermined. Second, I will briefly sketch why non-propositional syncretic views are well-

oriented to develop the required refinements at the disputed territories along the border.

Not even radical contextualists deny that linguistic expressions have context-independent

semantic properties; rather, what they insist is that no more substantive content can be given to

context-independent literal meanings than “semantic potentials” (cf., e.g., Recanti (2004: 97,

152)). Now, to be sure, this is a bold departure from many traditional conceptions of the

semantic enterprise, since a semantic potential “only determines a against a rich

pragmatic context” (ibid: 97). However, even on this view, a recognizably traditional terrain for

semantic theorizing is marked off. Regardless of where one stands on the question of whether the

semantic module generally specifies truth-bearers, it is important to see that all parties concede

that there is distinctive and ineliminably important work for the semantic module to do, in the

process of interpretation.

Down this avenue, one moral of the contextualist challenge is that linguistic meanings are

much more flexible than traditionally conceived, that meanings are malleable – relative to, and as

mandated by, the context of utterance. Linguistic meanings provide a context-independent

framework that speakers constantly creatively adapt to suit their communicative needs.19

Correlatively, linguistic interpretation is a vast and varied art, involving complex interplay

between many different kinds of knowledge and skill.

Fair enough. We should all concede as much; but to do so is hardly to junk the very ideas

of literal meaning or the S/P distinction. Further, for lots of reasons, we still need this

recognizably traditional, though refined, conception of the semantic enterprise. We need to

invoke context-independent semantic properties to account for, in Perry’s (1988: 3) terms, “what

19 For relevant and illuminating discussions of the malleable nature of linguistic meanings see Neale (2001: pp. 140, 159, 164, 168-9) and Recanati (2004: Ch.9).

21

we seek to preserve when we communicate with others in different contexts”. (Cf. note 9.) We

need a recognizably traditional S/P divide to make sense of the very idea of non-literal usage or

pragmatic , not to mention more fundamental considerations about learnability or

systematicity.20

So, at this point, it seems that what we are after is a suitably refined descendent of the

traditional S/P divide, as opposed both to rear-guard conservative efforts to save the old view at

all costs, as well as to reactionary iconoclasm which seeks to do away with the very distinction. I

close by underlining why non-propositional syncretism is well-oriented to afford this required

nuanced and flexible picture of semantic content. For decades now, since the development of

multi-dimensional in which the effects of the context of utterance on content semantically expressed can be neatly distinguished from the effects of the context of evaluation on whether that content is true or false, it has been orthodox in the philosophy of language to distinguish

several different varieties of semantic value. (Cf. especially Kaplan (1989), Perry (2001),

Stalnaker (2001).) Grice’s (1989) systematic factoring of what is communicated into what is said

vs. what is implicated was monumental; the present point is that important strides have been

taken since then, when it comes to systematically factoring out the sub-varieties of what is said

(in Grice’s sense).

Of the four general sorts of views discussed herein – conservative literalism, propositional syncretism, non-propositional syncretism, and radical contextualism – it seems rather clear that non-propositional syncretism is the variety of view that best exploits these newly available semantic resources. Non-propositional syncretist theories constitute further developments in this above-described tradition, actively engaged in putting these different sub-

20 Recanati (2004) presses the case that the old-school notion of literal meaning does not play a psychologically realized role in various sorts of communicative interactions; but, as Bach (2005) urges, that does not undermine its cogency or worth in a rational reconstruction, or in a theoretical description of semantic competence. 22 varieties of semantic value to separate work, and sorting out the extent to which, or senses in which, these individual sub-varieties should be classified as semantic or pragmatic. Given that progress in semantics is yielding such fine distinctions, progressive semantic theory ought to exploit them in addressing its challenges.

23

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