Philosophy of Language U73126

Lecture 6

Grounding: Convention and cognition

1. Introduction

This week, we look at how ‘meaning facts’ are grounded more generally. That is, we are not just
focusing on one kind of term – proper names or natural kind terms or anything else – but we are
looking at the whole of language. Why is it that our words mean what they in fact mean?
We begin with two intuitions. On the one hand, it can seem that language just has to be
conventional: it is to a large extent arbitrary what word means what, and all that matters is that
speakers of a language agree. Moreover, as conventions surrounding our words change, so do
meanings. (E.g. awful, naughty.)
On the other hand, consider what normally convinces you that a word has a certain meaning:
it is your impression that the word has that meaning. If you see a definition in a dictionary that
diverges from your own impressions, it is very tempting to wonder if the dictionary definition is
wrong, or incomplete. But this suggests that it is not convention, but our impressions – or, perhaps,
the cognitive processes that give rise to our impressions – that ground facts about meaning.

2. Convention

2.1 Lewis on language conventions

David Lewis (1975, Languages and Language) developed a well-known account of how ‘meaning
facts’ are grounded by convention.
Lewis distinguishes between languages and language: languages (with an “s”) are
mathematical functions that assigns meanings to strings of symbols (i.e. words, sentences); language
(without an “s”) is a social phenomenon involving the uttering of certain strings of vocal sounds (or
inscribed marks) and responding to those utterances. Lewis develops a relation between languages
and language: language (the social phenomenon) involves a particular convention to use a language (a
mathematical function). In particular: language (the social phenomenon) involves a convention of
truthfulness and trust in a particular language (mathematical function).
Lewis defines a convention as follows: a regularity R is a convention in a population P iff,
within P:
(1) Everyone conforms to R.
(2) Everyone believes that the others in P conform to R.
(3) The belief that the others in P conform to R is a good and decisive reason to conform to R.
(4) There is a general preference that everyone conforms to R than almost everyone conforms to
R.
(5) There is at least one alternative possible regularity, Rʹ, that satisfies (3) and (4).
(6) It is common knowledge that (1)–(5) are true.
(Note: ‘everyone’ is understood loosely – a few exceptions are permitted.) Example: driving on the
left-hand side of the road in the UK.
His proposal, then, is that language (social phenomenon) involves a convention of

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truthfulness and truth in L (a mathematical function). Here, truthfulness in L means that people try to
avoid uttering sentences that are false in L; and trust in L means that people tend to form beliefs that
the sentences uttered by others are true in L. Lewis supposes that a population P uses L (in a ‘perfect
case of normal language use’), and considers his proposal in light of his definition of convention. He
argues that, given an interest in communication, the following hold:
(1) In P, there is a regularity of truthfulness and truth in L.
(2) The members of P believe that this regularity of truthfulness and truth prevails amongst them.
(3) The belief that others in P are truthful and trusting in L provides a good reason for each
individual to be truthful and trusting in L.
(4) There is a general preference that everyone is truthful and trusting in L than that almost
everyone is truthful and trusting in L.
(5) There is a possible alternative to the regularity of truthfulness and truth in L, namely a
regularity of truthfulness and truth in Lʹ, that satisfies (3) and (4).
(6) It is common knowledge that (1)–(5) are true.
We can tie this account directly to our question about grounding ‘meaning facts’. For Lewis: a
word/sentence x means m in a population P iff there is in P a convention of truthfulness and trust in a
language that assigns m to x.

2.2 Objections

First, you might worry about the details. In particular, it is unclear to what extent there really is a
regularity of truthfulness and trust in a language. Lewis does not tell us how many lies and how much
distrust there can be, given a convention of truthfulness and trust. (See Ruth Millikan’s Language
Conventions Made Simple for an alternative that avoids most of Lewis’s troubling details.)
A more general objection is raised by Stephen Laurence (1996, A Chomskian Alternative to
Convention-Based Semantics, pp.278–281). First, he notes that Lewis’s account is demanding: it
requires speakers to have a range of quite specific beliefs, reasons and preferences. Second, he notes
that, if Lewis’s account is right, then one would expect the language convention to ground not just
‘meaning facts’, but also (say) ‘syntactic facts’ (such as that “Sue ate the chocolate” has “Sue” as the
subject rather than “the chocolate”) and ‘phonological facts’ (such as that the sound we make at the
start of “tasty” is classed as representing a “t” rather than a “p”). But, Laurence claims, it is
implausible that speakers have the requisite beliefs, reasons and preferences for Lewis’s account to
successfully ground such facts.
Finally, Laurence argues (pp.288–291) that there is empirical evidence that undermines
Lewis’s account. For Lewis, one’s linguistic abilities are tied very closely to one’s abilities to reason
about others’ minds. However, Laurence points to recent studies of autistic individuals that suggest
that autism is linked to a lack of ability reason about others’ mental states, but emphasising that
autistic individuals can nonetheless have “nearly normal linguistic abilities” (p. 289). And,
conversely, he points to studies of individuals who were not exposed to language until after the
critical age of language acquisition: such individuals can have normal abilities to reason about others’
mental states, but never develop anything like normal linguistic abilities.

3. Cognition

An alternative view is that ‘meaning facts’ are grounded by facts about how language is processed in
the mind (e.g. Laurence, Emma Borg (2004, Minimal Semantics)).
The empirical view about how language is processed is roughly this: (i) the mind/brain is
divided up into informationally-encapsulated modules; (ii) there is a modular language faculty, in

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which language is processed; and (iii) there is a semantic module in which words/sentences of natural
language are associated with meanings.
According to Emma Borg, the semantic module effectively encodes (something like) a
Davidsonian theory of meaning: it has a small stock of information that it associates with a finite
number of words, and it implements an algorithm for deriving truth conditions (T-sentences) for
wholes sentences based on the information associated with its constituent words.
The view about how this grounds meaning is roughly this: words and sentences of natural
language have their meanings in virtue of being assigned those meanings by the semantic module.

What makes “grass is green” mean that grass is green is that this is the content delivered by
the semantic theory contained within a subject’s language faculty: grounding is thus achieved
by appeal to the contents of the mind. (Borg, 2010, Semantics and the Place of Psychological
Evidence, p.35)

So a word/sentence x means m for a speaker S iff, given appropriate input, S’s semantic module would
assign m to x.
Both Laurence and Borg defend the view (at least in part) with reference to the kind of
empirical evidence used to object to Lewis’s account. Moreover, the view is often considered to
complement contemporary theoretical linguistics (in the broadly ‘Chomskian’ tradition), which is
typically taken to be a subfield of psychology and cognitive science.

3.1 Objections

One standard objection to this type of account is that it is somewhat anthropocentric: it ties language
to the specific psychology of humans. That is, it says that a speaker’s words and sentences obtain their
meanings in virtue of the specific, modular cognitive processes that underpin human language use.
But this illegitimately excludes the possibility that (say) an alien race with a radically different
psychology might one day visit Earth and learn English. For example, suppose that the aliens in
question do not have a modular language faculty, but simply learn the rules of English. Such aliens
might plausibly be said to speak English. But, on the present view, the words and sentences that they
would utter would not have any meaning, because they would not have the requisite psychological
mechanisms to ground such meaning.
Laurence (2003, Is Linguistics a Branch of Psychology, pp.91–100)1 claims, however, that it
is begging the question simply to assert that the alien speaks English: we would need to look carefully
at the alien’s psychology to determine how best to theorise about its language. Maybe we will end up
saying that the alien speaks English, but maybe not. More generally, Laurence argues that, as things
stand, we get the best theoretical explanations of linguistic phenomena by tying meaning to
psychological processes – we can worry about aliens if we ever meet them.
A second objection targets Borg’s variant of the view. For Borg, a sentence has its truth
condition in virtue of the semantic module assigning that truth condition to that sentence. A problem
arises in light of self-denying sentences, e.g. the liar sentence: the liar sentence is not true. Linguistic
evidence suggests that the semantic module assigns the following truth condition to that sentence:

(TL) “The liar sentence is not true” is true if, and only if, the liar sentence is not true.

The problem is that (TL) is a contradiction: so it seems that, contrary to Borg’s view, “the liar sentence
is not true” cannot have the truth condition assigned to it by the semantic module.

1 This paper is in Barber, A. (ed.) 2003. Epistemology of Language. Oxford University Press.