ABSTRACT
Conclusions to Part II This part of the book is its heartland. Here we may see something of the success or otherwise of my view that a large bridge should be reconstructed between philosophy and science, without going into all the semantic problems implied by the analogy and the idea that science and philosophy should be seen as on a continuum and only separated for certain (limited) purposes, often no more than that of a division of labour.Here we have taken the two classical interrelated problems of meaning and truth. We have treated truth in rather conventional terms at first and then weaved it into a study of meaning, without placing quite the same emphasis as some on the importance of truth (or truth conditions) for an interpretation of meaning, as those such as Davidson would.We really start by looking at the slightly (but only slightly) older (could we call them “classical”) theories of meaning and then some contemporary equivalents, where the maximum avoidance of any behavioural conditions occurs. Such approaches often tend towards the “mentalistic” and nearly always shun (as far as possible) the behavioural. We move then into a semantic view of meaning (plus a brief aside on syntax) where the approach is more nearly “scientific” in some cases, and still more “philosophical” in others, although now the behavioural aspects are present.In the first case they are welcomed and the search is for meaning in terms of the responses and reactions of the people in what is, in effect, a conversation. In the second case the be-
havioural considerations are kept minimal.Then we come to the point where we try to complete the bridge which still has a gap up to this point. We look at the two viewpoints of Chapter 7, each from the other’s point of view, with an eye to showing their commonality. It seems to me that much is gained by the ability to freely translate from one to the other in both directions. Indeed the integration of the two views, looked at primarily from the philosopher’s standpoint, is the subject matter of pragmatics in Chapter 8.There is no feeling at the end of Part II that all the problems have been solved, only that taking them from rather a general (macro) point of view a great deal of integration has been seen to be possible, and many problems capable of being seen in a clearer light; if this is not so, the experiment has largely failed. But it does continue in Part III, so judgement should perhaps be reserved, at least until we get that far.The final feature of Part II is a discussion of the subjective-objective relationship. The view I have adopted is that subjective states (and this can include intentionality) can be regarded either objectively or subjectively according to our purposes. For some purposes it is necessarily dealt with objectively and one such is where the observer is excluded from the system under scrutiny and can only deal with the subjective as it manifests (or has manifested) itself in externally observable behaviour. From this observable behaviour I can ascribe behavioural disposition to these members of the system. It is only by such means I can “guess” what it is like to be a bat, or even another human being.Insofar as we can, as an observer (included in the system under scrunity), deal with the subjective, it presents no special mystery. It is an example of self-perception and this involves self-awareness (self-consciousness) which seems to be essential to the performance of the level of planning and decision making known to be performable by human beings.There is an important social feature involved in self-awareness in one (the decision maker, leader, etc.) who uses words ike T , ‘myself, and so on, and therefore is clearly aware of his separation from others and his own unity, with privileged access
to himself. The social feature is obviously connected with language, but here we are drawing attention to the fact that in making a decision (of whatever kind, including a choice between known alternatives or uncertain alternatives) I am aware that the other members of the system may hold me responsible for the outcome. Whatever the neural mechanisms involved the necessity for such a behavioural mechanism is inevitable.This brings us back to “meaning”. We are often faced with “mentalistic” approaches to meaning and here I can do little better than quote Quine (1975): Until we can aspire to actual physiological explanation of linguistic activity in physiological terms, the level at which to work is the middle one; that of dispositions to overt behaviour. Its virtue is not that it affords causal explanations but it is less likely than the mentalistic level to engender an illusion of being more explanatory than it is. The easy familiarity of mentalistic talk is not to be trusted.
