A philosophical inquiry into ambiguity, vagueness and metaphor in language
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Linguistics and Philosophy $ (1982) 295-297.
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find out. Schemer is of no help here, since he simply invokes the notion of token-extension with no attempt at explication. Yet this obscurity about Schemer's fundamental semantic relation is less of a problem than might be feared. For, as he notes, many of the distinctions he draws and the arguments he presents are readily recast in terms of more familiar semantic notions. Much of the effort in Schemer's account of ambiguity is devoted to distinguishing different types of ambiguity, and explicating the distinctions in inscriptionalist idiom. This latter chore requires considerable ingenuity since in many cases there are simply too few extensions to go around "Green centaur", for example, is ambiguous; "it may be used to mean centaurs of a certain color, or centaurs of a certain degree of experience" (p. 21). But the ambiguity cannot be traced to the diverging extensions of various "green centaur" tokens, since all of these have the same, null, extension. Here the ambiguity can be captured by noting that the tokens of "green" in various "green centaur" utterances are themselves divergent in extension. But there are other cases where this move will be of no avail. There are several different characters in Greek mythology all going by the name "Argus" - Argus, the hound, Argus, son of Medea, and others (p. 3). Thus the name "Argus" is ambiguous. Yet all "Argus" tokens have the same things in their extensions - viz. nothing. Here the trick is to note that while "Argus" tokens are co-extensive, various compound expressions containing "Argus" tokens differ in extension. Two "Argus-picture" tokens, for example, may differ in extension, one denoting certain pictures of dogs, the other certain pictures of men. Tokens of "Argus-description" may have analogously divergent extensions. There is some temptatiad hoe expedient. But, as Scheffler notes (pp. 32--6) learning the extension of "centaur-picture" and "centaur-description" is a fundamental part of learning the meaning of "centaur". On Schemer's view, vagueness is a pragmatic phenomenon. A term is vague for a subject to the extent that the subject is indecisive in applying the term to the elements of a given domain. There are, of course, many possible reasons for a subject's uncertainty. He may lack knowledge that others have, as when a school boy is indecisive in applying "African capital city" to Ouagadougou. Or it may be that no one now has the requisite knowledge, as when we are all indicisive about the application of "region of the universe inhabited by intelligent beings". Earlier accounts of vagueness would have added a third possible reason. Sometimes a subject is indecisive because the term itself is "semantically vague", there being certain objects which are neither in nor outside the term's extension. The indecisiveness we feel about the application of "middle aged" to a man of
BEYOND THE LETTER: A Philosophical Inquiry into Ambiguity, Vagueness and Metaphor in Language by Israel Scheflter. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
The phenomena of ambiguity, vagueness and metaphor in language have fostered bold, some would say reckless, theses about the nature of meaning, the limitations of logic and the workings of the human mind. Yet they have received relatively little systematic attention from philosophers. There has been no substained philosophical effort at exploring the nature, varieties and interrelations of the three. This is the project Scheflter undertakes in a lean and delightful volume destined to become the starting point for all future philosophical work in the field. Not one to make life easy for himself, Scheffler embarks on his project with one hand tied behind his back. He renounces all reliance on a grab-bag of traditional notions including "ghostly" (p. 1l) entities like senses, ideas, concepts, propositions, facts, and "in particular, meanings" (p. 8). Also to be avoided are the "notions of analyticity and synonymy, modal and counterfactual constructions, and purportedly essential features of objects or elements" (p. 8). Finally, Scheftter surrenders theoretical dependence on "sets, classes, sequences or other abstract objects" (p. 8). The point of this last stricture is "to avoid ultimate appeal to types as distinct from tokens" (p. 8). Inscriptionalism is the label Scheftier proposes for this nominalistic stance in semantics. Schetller offers no extended defense of his abstemious foundations. Though he levels the accusation that synonymy is "critically obscure", (p. 11), and alludes to "the sorrows of the subjunctive" (p. 52), he refers us to the writings of Quine, Goodman and Morton White for substantiating arguments. That is fair enough. What is unsettling is Scheffler's own choice of analytical primitives. The basic notion in his account is that of the extension of a predicate token. Yet for the past two decades Quine has been urging that the notion of the extension of a predicate type suffers from empirical indeterminacy. Token-extension inherits all of this indeterminacy and adds obscurity of its own. To see this, consider an example. Suppose I tell the moving men, "Please put the table down in the corner". Granting normal circumstances, it is reasonably clear that this token of "the table" denotes a particular table being carried by the men. But what is the extension of the "table" token in my utterance? Does it include only the appropriate items of furniture? Or does it also include tables of contents, water tables and the like? I do not know the answer, nor do I know how to
296
REVIEW
find out. Schemer is of no help here, since he simply invokes the notion of token-extension with no attempt at explication. Yet this obscurity about Schemer's fundamental semantic relation is less of a problem than might be feared. For, as he notes, many of the distinctions he draws and the arguments he presents are readily recast in terms of more familiar semantic notions. Much of the effort in Schemer's account of ambiguity is devoted to distinguishing different types of ambiguity, and explicating the distinctions in inscriptionalist idiom. This latter chore requires considerable ingenuity since in many cases there are simply too few extensions to go around "Green centaur", for example, is ambiguous; "it may be used to mean centaurs of a certain color, or centaurs of a certain degree of experience" (p. 21). But the ambiguity cannot be traced to the diverging extensions of various "green centaur" tokens, since all of these have the same, null, extension. Here the ambiguity can be captured by noting that the tokens of "green" in various "green centaur" utterances are themselves divergent in extension. But there are other cases where this move will be of no avail. There are several different characters in Greek mythology all going by the name "Argus" - Argus, the hound, Argus, son of Medea, and others (p. 3). Thus the name "Argus" is ambiguous. Yet all "Argus" tokens have the same things in their extensions - viz. nothing. Here the trick is to note that while "Argus" tokens are co-extensive, various compound expressions containing "Argus" tokens differ in extension. Two "Argus-picture" tokens, for example, may differ in extension, one denoting certain pictures of dogs, the other certain pictures of men. Tokens of "Argus-description" may have analogously divergent extensions. There is some temptatiad hoe expedient. But, as Scheffler notes (pp. 32--6) learning the extension of "centaur-picture" and "centaur-description" is a fundamental part of learning the meaning of "centaur". On Schemer's view, vagueness is a pragmatic phenomenon. A term is vague for a subject to the extent that the subject is indecisive in applying the term to the elements of a given domain. There are, of course, many possible reasons for a subject's uncertainty. He may lack knowledge that others have, as when a school boy is indecisive in applying "African capital city" to Ouagadougou. Or it may be that no one now has the requisite knowledge, as when we are all indicisive about the application of "region of the universe inhabited by intelligent beings". Earlier accounts of vagueness would have added a third possible reason. Sometimes a subject is indecisive because the term itself is "semantically vague", there being certain objects which are neither in nor outside the term's extension. The indecisiveness we feel about the application of "middle aged" to a man of
BEYOND THE LETTER: A Philosophical Inquiry into Ambiguity, Vagueness and Metaphor in Language by Israel Scheflter. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
The phenomena of ambiguity, vagueness and metaphor in language have fostered bold, some would say reckless, theses about the nature of meaning, the limitations of logic and the workings of the human mind. Yet they have received relatively little systematic attention from philosophers. There has been no substained philosophical effort at exploring the nature, varieties and interrelations of the three. This is the project Scheflter undertakes in a lean and delightful volume destined to become the starting point for all future philosophical work in the field. Not one to make life easy for himself, Scheffler embarks on his project with one hand tied behind his back. He renounces all reliance on a grab-bag of traditional notions including "ghostly" (p. 1l) entities like senses, ideas, concepts, propositions, facts, and "in particular, meanings" (p. 8). Also to be avoided are the "notions of analyticity and synonymy, modal and counterfactual constructions, and purportedly essential features of objects or elements" (p. 8). Finally, Scheftter surrenders theoretical dependence on "sets, classes, sequences or other abstract objects" (p. 8). The point of this last stricture is "to avoid ultimate appeal to types as distinct from tokens" (p. 8). Inscriptionalism is the label Scheftier proposes for this nominalistic stance in semantics. Schetller offers no extended defense of his abstemious foundations. Though he levels the accusation that synonymy is "critically obscure", (p. 11), and alludes to "the sorrows of the subjunctive" (p. 52), he refers us to the writings of Quine, Goodman and Morton White for substantiating arguments. That is fair enough. What is unsettling is Scheffler's own choice of analytical primitives. The basic notion in his account is that of the extension of a predicate token. Yet for the past two decades Quine has been urging that the notion of the extension of a predicate type suffers from empirical indeterminacy. Token-extension inherits all of this indeterminacy and adds obscurity of its own. To see this, consider an example. Suppose I tell the moving men, "Please put the table down in the corner". Granting normal circumstances, it is reasonably clear that this token of "the table" denotes a particular table being carried by the men. But what is the extension of the "table" token in my utterance? Does it include only the appropriate items of furniture? Or does it also include tables of contents, water tables and the like? I do not know the answer, nor do I know how to
