Questions for the Final

Hamilton College, Spring 2009

Questions to Prepare for the Final Exam

Devitt, “Linguistics is not Psychology”

1. Chomsky criticizes Bloomfield’s linguistics. How does Devitt’s interpretation of those criticisms differ from Katz’s interpretation of those criticisms?
2. What are Devitt’s three distinctions? How do they lead to an argument for linguistic reality?
3. Distinguish process rules from structure rules. How does this distinction lead to an argument for linguistic reality?
4. How does Devitt attempt to make linguistic reality, with its use of linguistic types, compatible with nominalism?

Katz, “The Unfinished Chomskyan Revolution”

1. Characterize and distinguish linguistic nominalism, linguistic conceptualism, and linguistic platonism.
2. Why is infinity in linguistics incompatible with concretism in the foundations of linguistics?
3. Are there infinitely many sentences? Are there infinitely long sentences? Explain.
4. How does Katz differ from Chomsky on methodology in linguistics?

Chomsky, “Language and Problems of Knowledge”

1. What is Chomsky’s poverty of the stimulus argument? How does it support both nativism and the existence of a universal grammar?
2. How does Chomsky argue against the Wittgensteinian that our knowledge of language is representational? (You might consider the difference between knowledge-how and knowledge-that.)
3. Distinguish E-language from I-language. How does Chomsky argue that we should understand language as I-language?
4. How is Chomsky’s view of language psychologistic? Does this view conflict with Frege’s claims that we should understand language as objective?
5. Is Chomsky an empiricist or an apriorist? Explain.

Millikan, “Truth Rules...”

1. Describe Millikan’s solution to the rule-following problem. How is her solution non-representational?
2. How does Millikan’s distinction between distal rules and proximal rules support her solution to the rule-following problem?
3. How is Millikan’s solution to the rule-following problem straight, rather than skeptical?
4. Does Millikan’s solution work?

Kripke, “On Rules and Private Language”

1. Describe Kripke’s quus/plus problem. Why does the problem arise?
2. Distinguish skeptical solutions from straight solutions. How does Kripke depict Wittgenstein as providing a skeptical solution?
3. How do traditional attempts to solve the skeptical problem lead to a crazy view? How does Kripke’s Wittgenstein provide a non-crazy view?
4. What is the role of the community in our understanding of rules?

Wittgenstein, “On the Private Language Argument”

1. How do the terms ‘five’ ‘red’ and ‘apples’ differ in their meaning? How does Wittgenstein use these terms to oppose the Augustine/Locke theory of meaning?
2. “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him” (p 223). Explain.
3. Describe Wittgenstein’s deviant counters. What is the problem? Why can’t we solve the problem by pointing?
4. According to Wittgenstein, what is a private language? Why can’t we have one?
5. How might Wittgenstein’s private language argument follow from his discussion of rule-following?
6. What, according to the private language argument, are sensations?
7. How does it follow from Wittgenstein’s work that mathematics is conventional?

Katz, “Introduction” and “Sense”

1. How does Katz’s new intensionalism differ from Fregean intensionalism?
2. Describe the autonomous theory of sense, and its related version of analyticity.
3. Why is Katz’s theory liable to an accusation of circularity? How does Katz avoid the criticism?
4. Consider Putnam’s argument about the robot cats from Mars. How does Putnam’s argument differ from Katz’s.

Davidson, “Truth and Meaning”

1. What is the difference between a compositional meaning theory and a compositional truth theory?
2. How does Davidson propose to use Tarski’s work to explain meaning?
3. Is Davidson’s proposal successful? Explain.

Tarski, “The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics”

1. How does Tarski compare his theory of truth to earlier theories, like that of Aristotle?
2. What is the liar sentence? What problem does the liar present for a theory of truth? How does Tarski avoid the problem of the liar?
3. What is the T-schema? How does it relate to the theorems of a Tarskian truth theory? Distinguish the roles of an object language and a metalanguage in the construction of Tarski’s theory.
4. What is the difference between inflationism and deflationism about truth? Is Tarski’s theory deflationist?

IBS (Schiffer and Johnston)

1. What is deflationism? What is deflationism about meaning?
2. How might concerns about physicalism lead to meaning deflationism?
3. Describe the kinds of platitudes that exhaust the theory of meaning, for the deflationist.

Grice, “Meaning”

1. What is speaker-meaning, according to intension-based semantics (IBS)? How does speaker-meaning relate to sentence-meaning?
2. How is IBS a reductionist program?
3. How is IBS a two-step reductionist program?
4. Why are beliefs a problem for IBS?

Quine, “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and “Ontological Relativity” (through p 51)

1. What are the two dogmas? How are they related?
2. How does Quine interpret ‘analyticity’? Why?
3. What’s wrong with explaining analyticity in terms of Carnapian meaning postulates?
4. What’s wrong with explaining synonymy in terms of substitutivity?
5. How is the explanation of synonymy in terms of modality (necessity) circular?
6. What is the connection between the analytic/synthetic distinction and the problem of radical translation?
7. What is meanings skepticism? How does Quine argue for it?
8. Distinguish underdetermination, indeterminacy of translation, and inscrutability of reference.
9. Is reference inscrutable? Explain.
10. How does semantic holism differ from semantic atomism? Why should we believe in holism?

Positivism (Ayer and Hempel)

1. What is the verifiability criterion of meaning?
2. How does the verifiability criterion of meaning involve semantic atomism?
3. How might the verifiability criterion of meaning be circular?
4. How is positivism a foundationalist project?

Putnam, “Meaning and Reference”

1. What is externalism about meaning? How does Putnam’s Twin Earth example support externalism?
2. Are terms for natural kinds rigid designators? Explain.
3. Describe Putnam’s division of linguistic labor hypothesis. What does it mean for the claim that meanings are apprehended by language users?

Kripke, “Naming and Necessity”

1. What’s wrong with the simple descriptivism of Frege and Russell? Explain the Aristotle objection.
2. How are the Gödel/Schmidt and Jonah cases counter-examples to cluster descriptivism?
3. What is a rigid designator? Distinguish rigid from non-rigid designators. What does Kripke’s claim that names are rigid designators mean?
4. How can there be claims that are both necessary and a posteriori? Provide examples. How does Kripke’s argument for necessary a posteriori claims rely on rigid designation?
5. How can there be claims that are both contingent and a priori? Provide examples. How does Kripke’s argument for contingent a priori claims rely on rigid designation?
6. How does the rejection of descriptivism leave open a question of how names hook onto the world? How does Kripke attempt to answer that question?
7. What problems face direct reference theory that descriptivism solved? How might Kripke solve those problems?

Donnellan, “Reference and Definite Descriptions”

1. Consider, “The Dean of Faculty is well-educated.” Provide an attributive interpretation and a referential interpretation of that sentence.
2. Show that whether a speaker believes that a description of a person actually holds of the person is independent of whether a speaker uses that description referentially or attributively.
3. How do Russell and Strawson make errors from failing to observe the attributive/referential distinction?

Strawson, “On Referring”

1. What is the difference between referring and asserting or ascribing? How does this difference indicate a problem with Russell’s theory of definite descriptions?
2. How does ‘the purple platypus on my left has no teeth’ suffer from a failure of presupposition? How would Strawson’s analysis of this sentence differ from that of Russell? From that of Frege?
3. What are the bearers of truth values? Compare the answers of Frege, Russell, and Strawson.
4. What is bivalence? How does it support or undermine the positions in the above question?

Russell, “Descriptions”

1. How does Russell solve Frege’s puzzle without positing senses?
2. How do Frege and Russell differ in their analysis of ‘the king of France is wise’? How do their analyses differ on their attributions of a truth value to that sentence?
3. For Russell, do names refer? Explain.
4. How does Russell solve the problem of substitutivity in opaque contexts?
5. How is Russell an extensionalist?

Frege, “On Sense and Nominatum”

1. Describe Frege’s three motivations for the sense/reference distinction.
2. How do the senses of singular terms differ from the referents of singular terms? How do senses of sentences differ from the referents of sentences?
3. How does the distinction between sense and reference solve the problem of cognitive content for identity statements?
4. How does the distinction between sense and reference solve the problem of false presupposition/empty reference?
5. How does the distinction between sense and reference solve the problem of substitution into opaque contexts?

Frege, “The Thought”

1. What is a thought/proposition?
2. How do thoughts/propositions exist in a third realm? That is, how are they distinct from both psychological objects (ideas) and physical objects?
3. Describe the Lauben case. What conclusions does Frege draw from that case?
4. What is intensionalism? Why do we call Frege an intensionalist?

Locke, “Of Words”

1. How does Locke argue that words stand for ideas in our minds?
2. How does Locke’s theory of meaning avoid Frege’s puzzle?

Readings on the ontological argument

1. In what sense is the ontological argument a linguistic argument?
2. Provide an example of a non-linguistic reply to the ontological argument. Why is it not a linguistic solution?
3. Provide an example of a linguistic reply to the ontological argument. Why is it linguistic?