The normative ingredient in semantic theory

Diego Marconi
Universitdel Piemonte Orientale, Vercelli
marconi@cisi.unito.it

The purpose of semantic theory has been characterized in different ways; however, most
characterizations agree in regarding semantic theory as a descriptive enterprise. Concerning
what exactly is to be described, opinions may vary: "how language works"
1
, "the meanings of
the infinite set of sentences of the language"
2
, "facts about meaning"
3
, "what it is that
someone knows when he knows the language"
4
. Still, in all such statements of purpose the
word 'description' (or 'describe') occurs. On the other hand, many have regarded meaning
itself as a normative notion.
5
Again, this may mean different things to different people, though
the idea is often involved that the meaning of expression X is the norm for the use of X: so
that, for example, to know the meaning of X is to know how X ought to be used.
There need be nothing paradoxical in such a situation: many descriptive theories
describe norms. For example, an anthropological account of a tribe's ethical system, or an
account of a legal system can be regarded as descriptions of systems of norms. Thus,
nothing forbids that e.g. the "facts about meaning" that form the object of semantic theory
according to Higginbotham be normative facts, i.e. facts that consist in the holding of certain
norms for the use of words or linguistic expressions in general. However, it is to be admitted
that the propositions of the semantic theories most of us have in mind do not look like
descriptions of norms at all. This being so, two options suggest themselves. It may be that
such appearance is deceptive: although they do not look like descriptions of norms, that is
what the propositions of semantic theory really are. They could even be taken to be, not
descriptions, but statements of norms: one might suggest that propositions of the form
"Expression e means m" are to be read "Expression e ought to be used in such-and-such a
way" (where the relevant "way" is determined by m). Alternatively, it could be thought that
semantic theories of the standard kind simply disagree with the normative conception of
meaning: what they implement is a descriptive conception (for example, the conception, also

1
Dummett 1975, p.99; see also Davidson 1967, p.24.
2
Partee 1981, p.61.
3
Higginbotham 1991, p.271.
4
Dummett 1975, p.99.
5
For example, philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Putnam, Kripke, McDowell, Brandom. See the
references in Horwich 1998, p.185, fn.3.
2
attributed to Wittgenstein, according to which the meaning of expression X is its (de facto)
use, and to know such a meaning is to know how the expression happens to be used).
I would like to suggest a third option. I would like to show that certain characteristic
features of standard semantic theory are best accounted for by assuming that such theories
obey a normative principle, which itself reflects a normative constraint on the use of language.
This is "the normative ingredient in semantic theory". The theory itself need not be regarded
as normative (i.e., its propositions need not be read as describing or stating norms); however,
that the theory has the form it has can be brought back to normative principles.
I will focus attention on formal semantics (more particularly, on model theoretic
semantics); this is, first of all, to fix ideas, and, secondly, because the several varieties of
formal semantics, taken together, constitute by far the best developed corpus of semantic
theory. However, I believe my conclusion to hold more generally: for example, all theories that
are "modest" in the sense of Dummett (1975) share the features that are best rationalized by
postulating a normative ingredient.


1. The informational import of formal semantics.

In formal semantics in general, the semantic value of a syntactically complex expression is
specified as a function of the semantic values of its constituent expressions; ultimately, as a
function of the semantic values of individual words or morphemes. For example, in model
theoretic semantics based on the work of Richard Montague (1974) the specification of the
semantic value of a complex expression (
1
,
2
,...,
n
) (where
1
,
2
,...,
n
are the
expression's immediate constituents, and stands for the expression's syntactic structure)
takes the following general form:

V
M
[(
1
,
2
,...,
n
)] = f (V
M
[
1
], V
M
[
2
],..., V
M
[
n
])

where V
M
() = the semantic value of in model M, and f only depends on .
When the complex expressions that are involved are sentences, such specifications
take the form of statements of truth conditions, i.e. of statements of the following form:
(
1
,
2
,...,
n
) is true in model M iff R(V
M
[
1
],...,V
M
[
n
]),
where R may have one of several forms, depending on both and the
i
's. For example,

1^
and
^

2
is true in M iff
1
is true in M and
2
is true in M
3
(where
1
,
2
are sentences,
^
indicates concatenation, and 'and' is the word 'and'). In the
case of complex sentences (such as the example I just gave), their semantic value is stated
to be a function of the semantic values of their constituent sentences. Not so with atomic
sentences, i.e. sentences none of whose syntactic constituents are themselves sentences.
In that case, the sentence's semantic value is a function of the semantic values of the
sentence's non-sentential constituents; ultimately, it is a function of the semantic values of the
words and morphemes occurring in it. For example,
'John runs' is true (in M) iff R(V
M
[John], V
M
[run]).
Thus, for any complex expression, the expression's semantic value is ultimately specified as
a function of the semantic values of the words and morphemes that syntactic analysis has
determined to be the expression's ultimate constituents. Model theoretic semantics (and
formal semantics in general) is compositional semantics.
This being so, it is not hard to see that the informational content of a formal semantic
theory partly depends on the specification of the semantic values of individual words. For the
theorems of such a theory essentially tell us how to compute the semantic value of a
linguistic expression from the values of its constituents - ultimately, of its constituent words. If
these are not informatively specified, it is as if we were instructed on how to perform an
operation on factors that have not been specified: we would know what the result of
performing the operation would be, if we were given the factors; as it is, we cannot say to
know the result.
Now, many people have pointed out that, in fact, the semantic values of most
individual words are not informatively specified in formal semantics.
6
In the case of the so
called 'descriptive constants', i.e. in the case of most words,
7
what we are told is at most the
word's logical type: we may be told, e.g., that the word denotes a function from possible
worlds to sets of individuals, or a function from possible worlds to sets of pairs of individuals,
and so forth. Such information, though substantial, is clearly incomplete: it does not
discriminate between 'horse' and 'run', or between 'over' and 'beat'. It is therefore insufficient
to compute the semantic value of, say, 'The horse is in the pen' in such a way that it turns out
to be different -in a definite way- from the semantic value of 'The book is on the table'. But a
theory that cannot discriminate between 'The horse is in the pen' and 'The book is on the
table' as to semantic value cannot claim to be fully informative as a semantic theory.

6
Partee 1981, Bonomi 1983, pp.62-66, Johnson-Laird 1983, pp.172-173. Montague himself was well
aware of this, see 1974, p.209.
7
It is often assumed that in the case of the logical constants connectives, quantifiers, the operator
necessarily, etc.- formal semantic theories provide complete information. Hartry Field (1977) has
claimed that there is no significant difference between this case and the case of the descriptive
constants.
4
One should not, however, jump to the conclusion that such theories are therefore
informationally empty. As it was already suggested, they can -and, in my opinion, should- be
regarded as providing mostly conditional information concerning the semantic values of the
expressions they are about. Perhaps the best way to express this point is by saying that such
theories are really informative, not about the semantic values or "meanings" of linguistic
expressions, but about the semantic effects of syntax. They spell out the contribution of
syntactic composition to a complex expression's semantic value, by explicitly specifying
functions that determine such a value from the constituent words' values. They do not spell
out the meaning of any linguistic expression, but they show how such a meaning is affected
by the expression's form.
In order to increase their informational content, formal semantic theories are often
supplemented with meaning postulates. Meaning postulates can be seen as constraints on
the admissible interpretations of the descriptive constants: they rule out (e.g.) interpretations
under which men turn out not to be animals, or bachelors turn out to be married.
8
Meaning
postulates allow us to make semantic distinctions that are impossible without them. For
example, given the appropriate meaning postulates we may discriminate between 'The horse
is in the pen' and 'The book is on the table' on account of the different inferences that are
licensed by each sentence: e.g. the former, but not the latter entails 'An animal is in the pen'.
Thus, meaning postulates increase a formal semantic theory's informational content by
providing information concerning the descriptive constants, well beyond their logical type.
However, as it was shown long ago,
9
meaning postulates do not determine the
interpretation of the descriptive constants to the extent of bringing the theory's admissible
interpretations down to one: the one in which 'man' refers to men, 'animal' to animals, and so
forth. Given any system of meaning postulates, there still are infinitely many distinct
interpretations of the theory-cum-meaning postulates that are admissible. Thus, in a sense, a
semantic theory to which a system of meaning postulates has been added does not really
determine a sentence's truth conditions: the circumstances in which the sentence is true
(either in a model or absolutely) are not fully specified, for the semantic values of the
descriptive constants have not been completely fixed. The theory is still informationally
incomplete, both with respect to its professed aim -specifying the truth conditions of all
sentences in a language, or in a fragment of a language- and with respect to the content of a
normal speaker's competence.


8
For a fuller discussion of the nature and role of meaning postulates see Marconi 1997, pp.13-20.
9
Partee 1981, p.71. The same conclusion is implicit in Putnams model-theoretic argument; see
Putnam 1981, pp.22-48.
5

2. Completing a descriptive semantic theory.

The theory does indeed account for part of a speaker's competence: for, to the extent that a
speaker can be said to understand a sentence, he can draw inferences from it (and to it)
based on both the sentence's structure and the words occurring it.
10
All such inferences are
provable consequences of the theory-cum-meaning postulates. In this respect, the theory can
be seen as the description of a speaker's inferential competence (perhaps of an idealized
speaker's inferential competence).
However, a competent speaker has further abilities, that the theory only captures to a
very limited extent. For concerning individual words (such as 'cat' or 'yellow') a speaker
knows more than their logical types and inferential relations: she knows how to apply them in
the real world. She does not simply know, for example, that 'cat' refers to animals that have
whiskers and meow and chase mice (and whatever else could be captured by the meaning
postulates for 'cat'); she also knows how to apply the word 'cat' directly to those animals.
Such an ability, aside from being intuitively part of semantic competence, must be postulated
if the application of language is to be accounted for: knowing that cats are animals with
whiskers etc. would not by itself ground
11
the application of 'cat' unless one knew how directly
to apply 'whiskers', 'meow', 'mice' and so forth. Inferential abilities do not by themselves
"reach out" to the world: the application of language requires referential competence (Marconi
1995, 1997).
Formal semantic theories (with meaning postulates) only capture referential
competence to the very limited extent of determining to what kind of entities a world is to be
applied: this is what the fixation of the descriptive constants' logical types amounts to. It is
then clear that formal semantics, when regarded as a descriptive theory of semantic
competence, is informationally incomplete. It accounts for a speaker's inferential
competence, but represents her referential competence to a very limited extent.
It could be objected that, on the contrary, there are formal semantic theories those
stemming from Donald Davidson's work- where knowledge of the descriptive constants'
reference is indeed represented by (so called) lexical axioms, i.e. by theoretical statements
such as

(1) Val (x, man) iff x is a man

10
Such abilities constitute what I call 'inferential competence' (Marconi 1995).
11
This use of ground (and grounding) stems from Partee 1981; it was explicitly theorized by Steven
Harnad (see e.g. Harnad 1990).
6
(2) Val (<x,y>, knows) iff x knows y
etc.
12

(They are supposed to be read as follows: the predicate man applies to x if and only if x is a
man; the predicate know applies to the pair <x,y> if and only if x knows y; and so forth). Thus
it is argued- such theories are not incomplete: they represent a normal speaker's referential
competence, for, as we remarked a moment ago, such competence just consists in her
knowing, of a word such as 'man', that it applies to men. Of course, such a theory is only
intelligible if one understands the language in which it is phrased: (1), for example, is only
intelligible if one understands the word 'man' (or, for that matter, the words 'if and only if', etc.).
However, this holds of any theory whatsoever: even atomic physics is only intelligible if one
undestands the language in which it is couched.
Now, this argument is clearly unconvincing. The trouble with "lexical axioms" such as
(1) and (2) is not that in order to understand them one needs generally to understand the
language in which they are phrased, but, rather, that understanding them presupposes that
one already has available the information they are themselves supposed to convey. It is as if
to understand each statement of atomic physics one needed to already know the very
information that statement is providing. Such a theory would be altogether useless: it would
not add to the information that is already available.
Some partisans of Davidsonian semantics admit that statements such as (1) and (2)
"in a sense...are uninformative"; however, they insist that what they state is no less
"substantive" (Larson, Segal 1995, pp.31-32). To prove their point, they appeal to a non-
homophonic version of the axioms, i.e. to the axioms of a semantic theory that is about a
language that does not coincide with the language in which the theory itself is phrased. Such
would be, e.g.,
(3) Val (x, man) si et seulement si x est un homme.
According to these Davidsonians, (3) is clearly "substantive"; but what it says is exactly what
(1) says, namely, that the word 'man' applies to a certain category of objects. Therefore, if (3)
is "substantive" then so is (1).
What 'substantive' means here, is not entirely clear. That (1) and (3) may have in
some sense "the same content" ("express the same proposition") is not at issue. However,
even assuming that they have the same content, it certainly does not follow that they are
equally informative. Otherwise, one would be obliged to conclude, against Frege (1892), that
the two sentences "'Hesperus' denotes Hesperus" and "'Hesperus' denotes Phosphorus" are
equally informative, as in a sense they both state the same thing: namely, that the word

12
See e.g. Larson, Segal 1995.
7
'Hesperus' is the name of a certain planet (the same planet in both cases). On the contrary, it
is generally admitted that a sentence's informational content is not independent of its
wording.
13

Hence, from the fact that (3) is informative one cannot derive that (1) is informative as
well (least of all that it conveys the same information): the comparison of (1) with (3) proves
nothing concerning the informational content of the lexical axioms. Thus a semantic theory
that includes such lexical axioms is not thereby informationally richer than a Montague-style
theory, in which the descriptive constants' semantic values are "fixed" by axioms such as
V
M
(man) Dmn
M
.
Indeed, it would be surprising if it were otherwise, for intuition suggests that there is no
substantial difference between the two kinds of theory in terms of the amount of information
they convey concerning the descriptive constants of the language.
This having been settled, it would seem that a descriptive theory of semantic
competence need not be thus incomplete. It would seem possible to supplement it with (a
suitable representation of) the information on which a normal speaker's application of words
is based. For many if not most words, such information involves procedures that
systematically relate words to the output of perceptual processes: it is thanks to what we see
(or, in a few cases, hear or touch) that words are applied and decisions made concerning the
truth value of sentences. The addition of such (perception-based) referential algorithms would
make formal semantics into a complete description of semantic competence. In fact, many
attempts within so called "cognitive semantics" appear to go in that direction.
14
It is an open
issue whether such a theory could be a description of "communitarian" competence, or in
other words, of the competence of an idealized speaker to whom all information distributed
throughout the linguistic community is available, or whether the theory would be bound to be
the description of some individual speaker or other's competence.
15
In any event, it appears
that the completion of a descriptive theory of semantic competence would be a feasible
enterprise.

13
A well-known exception is Salmon (1986). Salmon finds reason to say that the two sentences are
equal in semantically encoded information, though they differ in pragmatically imparted information
(pp.78-79). Pragmatically imparted information is information that can be conveyed by performing an
action, including the action of uttering a certain sentence. Thus from the fact that one uttered "'Hesperus'
denotes Phosphorus" rather than the semantically equivalent "'Hesperus' denotes Hesperus" some
(additional) information can be drawn, which is, however, to be kept distinct from the information encoded
by "'Hesperus' denotes Phosphorus" (which is the same as that encoded by the other sentence). As far
as I can judge, Salon's clever suggestion did not stick. But anyway, for the purpose of the present
discussion it is enough that some informational difference between the two sentences be acknowledged
in both cases, whatever its origin may be.
14
See e.g. Woods 1981, Lakoff 1987, Jackendoff 1992, 1996.
15
For a discussion see Marconi 1997, pp.52-53.
8


3. The alleged inadequacy of a complete descriptive semantic theory.

However, such an enterprise must face a strong philosophical obection. It can be argued that
a theory of the proposed kind would be inadequate as a semantic theory, for it would yield the
wrong truth conditions for the sentences of the language it deals with. For suppose that the
semantic value of the word 'cat' were determined (in the theory) by importing the procedures
by which some speaker (or even an idealized speaker) de facto applies the word 'cat'. Even
disregarding the fact that such procedures are often based on rough, first-approximation
criteria that would not meet scientific standards, clearly even the best procedures available to
the community as a whole -i.e. the experts' procedures- are fallible: something might be
picked out by such procedures and yet not be a cat. The truth conditions of (say) 'Tom is a
cat' cannot be made to depend on the procedures by which we go about recognizing cats, for
such procedures might succeed and yet 'Tom is a cat' be false, or viceversa. Saul Kripke,
Hilary Putnam, and other proponents of direct reference theory have produced many
arguments and given many examples to this effect.
16
Concerning the contribution of the word
'cat' to the truth conditions of sentences in which it occurs, the only determination that
matters is being a cat: the semantic value of 'cat' must be fixed in such a way that it is
guaranteed to pick out cats and only cats. Nothing else would do. In particular, the proposed
referential algorithms are not suitable candidates, for even the best such algorithms we could
design bring no such warrant with themselves: in principle, something could meet all criteria,
both perceptual and scientific, for cathood and still not be a cat. Proponents of direct
reference theory conclude that the semantic value of 'cat' is simply to be identified with cats,
or cathood, or the species cat.
17

If this conclusion is accepted, then it seems to follow that what we saw as the
incompleteness of a formal semantic theory is inevitable: for any completion -i.e. any
specification of semantic values for the language's descriptive constants - is bound to yield
suspect truth conditions. Formal semantics rightly refrains from assigning semantic values
(other than logical types) to the descriptive constants, for any assignment that we would
regard as informative would risk determining the wrong truth conditions for the relevant
sentences. More precisesly: formal semantics is right in only providing "dummy" assignments
for the descriptive constants (assignments such as V
M
[cat] Dmn, or V
M
[yellow] Dmn,

16
For a survey of such arguments and examples see e.g. Rey 1983, Devitt and Sterelny 1987.
17
Depending on different versions of the theory. See Salmon 1982, Ch.2, Napoli 1992, pp.400-401.
9
whose specification is correctly regarded as non-informative), for any other specification
would not guarantee that truth conditions are determined in the right way.
As we shall presently see [4], such a conclusion is premature at this point. However,
before we see how an alternative conclusion could be suggested let us ask a different
question. What do we mean when we say that a complete semantic theory would be
inadequate? Obviously, we do not mean that it would be descriptively inadequate, i.e. that it
would not correctly represent the semantic competence of a competent (or even an ideal)
speaker. For, by construction, the theory's assignments of semantic values to the descriptive
constants exactly reflect a competent speaker's, or an ideal speaker's referential
competence. The theory fixes the semantic value of 'cat' in such a way that 'cat' turns out to
be applicable exactly to the objects that such a speaker would apply the word to;
consequently, it determines the truth conditions of 'cat'-involving sentences in such a way that
they come out true exactly in the circumstances in which such a speaker would regard them
as true (having access to such circumstances).
If the complete theory cannot be regarded as descriptively inadequate (for it does
account for the speakers' competence), it remains that it be considered as inadequate from a
normative point of view. The theory does determine the sentences' truth conditions in
conformity with an idealized speaker's competence; however, it is not guaranteed to
determine them in the right way (or: as they ought to be determined), for even an ideally
competent speaker may misapply her words. There is no inconsistency in this hypothesis:
what is meant is just that the knowledge and skills that are available to the linguistic
community as a whole at any given moment may be insufficient to pick out exactly the cats
(or exactly water, as it would be the case on both the Earth and Twin Earth before 1750).
18

It would be natural to object, at this point, that the normative jargon is entirely out of
place. The complete theory can indeed be regarded as descriptively inadequate, as it fails to
account for the sentences' truth conditions. That it is not descriptively inadequate as an
account of speaker's competence does not show that its shortcomings are of a different (i.e.
a normative) nature.
I am not going to quarrel about words. However, it is hard to see what could a
semantic theory be descriptive of, if it is not descriptive of a speaker's semantic competence
- not even of an ideal speaker's. It is, I believe, altogether wiser to look at arguments
stemming from direct reference theory as showing that language use, even ideally competent
use, is inherently responsible to a norm of truth: i.e., no matter how the word 'cat' is de facto

18
I am of course referring to Putnam's thought experiment of 1975.
10
used, it ought to be applied to objects x such that 'x is a cat' is true.
19
Theories that do not
incorporate such a requirement are normatively inadequate, no matter how faithful to the
actual use of language. For such theories -it could be argued- miss an essential ingredient of
linguistic meaning: the ingredient that comes to light when we reflect on the fact that individual
speakers, and the linguistic community as a whole may see reasons to modify their use of
language (for example, their use of some word such as 'cat') though such changes do not
entail (nor are they perceived as entailing) that a change of meaning has taken place.
If these arguments are sound, no descriptive account of use is going to be a complete
account of meaning: there is a normative ingredient in linguistic meaning that is not captured
by a theory of language use. Against this conclusion, Paul Horwich (1998) has argued that it
is possible to give such a normative ingredient its due without having to draw the conclusion
that meaning is an inherently normative notion; more particularly, without having to renounce a
use theory of meaning such as Horwich himself adheres to. Perhaps this can be done (in this
paper, I do not want to take stand on this); however, Horwich's own argument partly begs the
question raised by the direct reference normativists.
Horwich begins by remarking, rightly, that the mere fact that a notion shows up in the
antecedent of a true conditional whose consequent is normative or, as he puts it, that the
notion "has normative implications"- does not entail that the notion itself is normative. Thus,
the conditional
(4) x killed y x ought to be punished
may be true even though there is nothing normative about killing itself: that x killed y is, one
supposes, a mere though regrettable fact. Similarly, (5) may be true is true, according to
Horwich- even though meaning itself is not inherently normative:
(5) x means DOG x ought to be applied to dogs and only to dogs (p.187).
As I just pointed out, (5) is in fact endorsed by Horwich: in his opinion, it expresses the
most fundamental normative aspect of language (p.187). Nevertheless, (5) does not entail
that meaning itself is normative (no more than (4) entails that killing is normative). It seems to
follow that, first of all, Horwich does not want the converse of (5), (5'), also to hold:
(5') x ought to be applied to dogs and only to dogs x means DOG.

19
This was pointed out by Paul Horwich (1998, p.187). Horwich regards the norm that one ought to
think what is true as the basic norm of language; and he observes that, according to Kripke, the
validity of such a norm is what implies that meaning properties are not reducible to non-semantic use
properties (ib.).
11
For if the conditional went both ways, that would come close to making meaning into an
inherently normative notion.
20
Failure of (5'), however, is at first puzzling. Suppose we had a
predicate that ought to be applied to dogs and only to dogs (such as 'chien' in French, for
example); that predicate would mean DOG, wouldn't it? What else would be needed for it to
mean DOG?
But our puzzlment is only due to our disregarding that we are dealing with a use
theory. For Horwich, 'x means DOG' amounts (roughly) to 'we are disposed to apply x to an
object when and only when it is a dog'. It is then clear that (5') may not go through: in spite of
the fact that say- 'chien' ought to be applied to dogs and only to dogs, we are disposed to
apply it to many objects that are not dogs. For example, to Twin Earthian dogs: animals that
look exactly like dogs but have an entirely different biology. Leaving Twin Earth alone (for
once), we are disposed to apply 'chien' to all objects that we believe to be dogs. But, as the
direct reference theorists have pointed out, in such beliefs we may be badly mistaken. So,
even though 'chien' ought to be applied to dogs and only to dogs, we are not necessarily
disposed so to apply it: (5') does not hold.
It may seem that, by an analogous argument (5) should be rejected as well, if we are
assuming a use theory. Take any predicate of the language, such as 'dog'. What does it
mean? In Horwich's theory, its meaning is based on our dispositions to application. These are
such that we are disposed to apply 'dog' to all objects (and only to objects) that we believe to
be dogs. Call them 'dogs
B
'. So, 'dog' means DOG
B
. However, 'dog' ought not to be applied to
dogs
B
and only to them; it ought to be applied to dogs, and only to dogs. (5) does not hold
either.
But such an argument it will rightly be objected- is unfair to Horwich. (5) is to be taken
at face value. Its antecedent does not mention dogs
B
at all. The hypothesis is that x means
DOG, i.e. that we are disposed to apply x to dogs and only to dogs. This being so, there is no
reason why the consequent should be false: if we are so disposed (i.e., if x means DOG),
then, given that language is subject to the norm of truth, it clearly ought to be the case that we
apply x to dogs and only to dogs: the consequent holds, and (5) is vindicated.
It is vindicated, however, at a very high price, i.e. at the price of making it vacuously
true.
21
For there is no word in any language such that we are disposed to apply it to dogs and
only to dogs: application is based on beliefs, and so are dispositions to application. We may
wish to apply 'chien' to dogs and only to dogs, but that does not mean that we are so

20
One tends to forget that, although material equivalence is not synonymy, it is a pretty strong relation
indeed. In this case, it would amount to x's instantiating a certain semantic property exactly when it
instantiates a certain normative property. One would suspect some connection between the two
properties.
12
disposed. Assuming otherwise i.e. assuming that our dispositions relate to nature and
reality, rather than to our beliefs about nature and reality- is tantamount to assuming that
meaning is constituted, not by use or dispositions to use, but by reality itself; it essentially
amounts to packing normativity into the use theory. This flatly contradicts the spirit of a use
theory. In other words, a theory that relies on dispositions to application for its notion of
meaning cannot preserve the normativists' intuitions; to the extent that it tries to preserve
them, it reneges on its basic inspiration.


4. Causal chains as an alternative form of grounding.

We saw that one might be tempted to argue that formal semantic theory is inevitably
incomplete, for any completion based on application procedures (even on ideal procedures) is
bound to yield the wrong truth conditions for the sentences of the language. However, an
alternative completion might be proposed that, at first sight, could not be faulted on the same
grounds. Many people, beginning with Kripke (1972), have suggested that the reference of the
descriptive constants is determined by a causal chain, i.e. by a sequence of interactions
among speakers that terminates in one or more acts of baptism, by which a word is directly
attached to an object (or a kind, or a substance). So, why not integrate causal chains into the
theory?
22
Such a completion would ground the descriptive constants (and, consequently, fix
the sentences' truth conditions) in an objective way, without relying on the speakers' actual
referential practices or on what lies at the basis of such practices (i.e. referential
competence). Such a theory would be both complete and descriptive, without sharing the
normative inadequacy of the competence-based theory.
It is not very clear how causal chains could be informatively added to a semantic
theory. What could that mean? Mentioning the individual speakers that represent links in the
chain? And what about the speakers' intentions (of conforming to the use they are picking up
from their predecessors in the chain), which are crucial to a chain's effectiveness? Of
course, it would not do just to indicate that a constant's semantic value is to be regarded as
fixed by the relevant causal chain: that would be as uninformative as the assignments that are
customary in semantic theory (assignments such as V
M
[cat] Dmn, or "axioms" such as
"'cat' denotes the species cat"). A theory to which causal chains had been added in such a
virtual sense would not be informationally complete.

21
I owe the present formulation of this point to Paolo Casalegno.
22
This was suggested by Marco Santambrogio in discussion.
13
Moreover, many people have pointed out that actual causal chains are not really
warranted to pick out the appropriate referents: they may break down; they usually involve
multiple causes (so that one should talk about causal trees rather than chains); they may lead
us nowhere.
23
What this version of the theory seems to need are idealized causal chains, i.e.
causal chains that unfailingly pick out the appropriate referents. Now, what would it be to add
ideal causal chains to a semantic theory? It would amount to saying that the reference of e.g.
cat is whatever set of individuals in the domain is causally connected with the word cat in
the appropriate way. This would be as informationally empty as the original specification.
Moreover, it would obtain normative adequacy for very cheap, by simply integrating it into the
theory: it would assign semantic values as they ought to be assigned by stipulating that they
are assigned in the appropriate way. In conclusion, a formal semantic theory to which ideal
causal chains have been added is neither informationally complete nor purely descriptive (for
the notion of an ideal causal chain is itself a normative notion), and it is normatively adequate
only in a trivial sense.
So, the conclusion that was tentatively advanced a few pages ago can now be
reasserted with greater assurance: if the arguments put forth in the context of direct reference
theory carry any weight, then a normatively adequate semantic theory is bound to be
informationally incomplete, for the semantic values of the descriptive constants cannot be
informatively specified. By contraposition, a fully informative semantic theory -for example,
one that would account for the content of individual semantic competence, including
referential competence- cannot but be regarded as normatively inadequate.


4. The normative ingredient in formal semantics.

Let us now go back to formal semantics as it stands, i.e. as the informationally incomplete
theory that was described in 1. Should it be regarded as itself a normative theory, at least in
part?
On the one hand, the theory is not normative on the face of it. It does not include any
explicitly normative statement: no statement of the form 'It ought to be the case that p' is a
theorem of a formal semantic theory. On the other hand, the assumption that the theory aims
at normative adequacy rationalizes it, in that it justifies its informational incompleteness: if we
assume that there is a norm to the (indirect) effect that the semantic values of the descriptive
constants ought not to be specified in an informative way, we can look at the theory as

23
Evans 1973, Devitt and Sterelny 1987, Fllesdal 1997, etc.
14
complying with such a norm. Thus, formal semantics can be seen as a normatively-inspired
theory. Assuming the norm against specifying semantic values for the descriptive constants
makes sense of the theory's informational incompleteness. Without such an assumption, the
theory's informational incompleteness could only be regarded as an unsatisfactory feature,
crying out for remedy.
24

Needless to say, none of this counts as an historical remark on formal semantics.
Clearly, its founders people like Tarski, Carnap, and Montague- were not aware of the
arguments against specifying values for the descriptive constants. Indeed, at least some of
them believed that reference-identifying criteria for the constants could be spelled out in
principle.
25
If it was not actually done, it was essentially for reasons of convenience. On the
other hand, formal semantics as it stood after Tarski and Carnap may have been a source of
inspiration for Kripke and the other proponents of direct reference: direct reference could be
seen as a rationalization of the treatment of reference within formal semantics.


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2
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24
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25
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15
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