From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ub!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!wupost!uunet!mcsun!uknet!ox-prg!oxuniv!mc703 Tue Nov 26 12:31:03 EST 1991
Article 1453 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Xref: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca rec.arts.books:10314 sci.philosophy.tech:1033 comp.ai.philosophy:1453
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ub!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!wupost!uunet!mcsun!uknet!ox-prg!oxuniv!mc703
>From: mc703@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,sci.philosophy.tech,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Language & Logic
Message-ID: <1991Nov20.214001.2910@vax.oxford.ac.uk>
Date: 20 Nov 91 21:40:01 GMT
References: <1991Nov15 .003438.11323@grebyn.com> <1991Nov15.160741.5495@husc3.harvard.edu> <JMC.91Nov17135110@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> <1991Nov17.190935.5546@husc3.harvard.edu>
Organization: Oxford University VAXcluster
Lines: 33

In article <1991Nov17.190935.5546@husc3.harvard.edu>,
zeleny@brauer.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

>                         Please note that the burden of providing a finitely
> representable semantical theory capable of fixing the operational criteria
> of reference lies on AI researchers like you.

Why is everyone fixated with classical semantics?  What does Mikhail make of
the later Wittgenstein's ideas about language (and maths): he went right off
truth-conditional semantics as a theory of meaning. Which is not to say that
he comes up with a replacement "theory" - some people seem to think he was dead
set against the whole idea.  If anything, he thinks that assertibility
conditions determine meaning; that language has to be seen as reactions to
things rather than descriptions along the lines of logic.  He makes the point
that you can't justify everything you say; if you tried, you would have an
infinite regress of justifying your justificatory rules (Phil. Investigations,
para. somewhere-in-the-late-200s - I'll dig it out if anyone is interesteD).
I think John McDowell & Gareth Evans too have interesting ideas about the role
of the "constitutive force" of conventions, assumptions and traditions in
language (and life in general).  (Lots of this stuff is concerned with
rebutting scepticism based essentially on a classical "objective"
correspondence outlook).

My personal opinion is that anything Mikhail would recognize as semantics :-)
is going to be a bad theory of language, let alone thought in general.  I
recall reading some stuff by Kripke (Locke Lectures at Oxford University in
the late 70s) in which he gives various reasons why the Russellian treatment
of, for example, definite descriptions, is not sufficient for real language:
what does Mikhail think of Kripke?

Um ... this looks a bit telegraphic but I must zoom off now ...

William Chesters, Wadham College, Oxford


