Confession time. I don’t have a good grasp as to what linguistic appropriateness is. But in so far as I do, I’m starting to get interested in cases where it seems intuitive that the person has done something linguistically inappropriate. In the long run, I’m interested in how the cases might inform some debates in epistemology.
In this post, I’m just going to lay out another case.
Suppose Arnold knows that Brian uses the word “chips” differently. Arnold uses “chips” to refer to very thin fried potatoes that come in snack bags. He uses “chips” in the American sense. Brian uses “chips” in the British senses to refer to what many Americans would call “fries”.
Brian points to a bar and asks “Do they sell chips in there?”
Arnold says yes, knowing that they sell what Arnold would call “chips”. Arnold also knows that they do not sell what Brian would call “chips”. He knows that Brian is unaware of such a difference in their terms.
Intuition Check: Is there something linguistically inappropriate about a Arnold’s utterance?
My intuition is that there is.
(Posted from my Android phone)
p.s. I think all of these thought experiments are going somewhere…I’m just not sure where yet.
Agreed. Intuitively, the problem in this case is that Arnold didn’t answer the question Brian asked (which was, after all, a question stated in Brian’s idiolect, not Arnold’s). You could get a similar effect with other ambiguous terms, e.g. ‘bank’, or even outright foreign languages that had deceptively similar-sounding words. I’m not sure I see the epistemic significance of this, though…?
Hi Richard,
I’m starting to think that some of the cases where it seems like it’s inappropriate to assert, “I know X” in cases used to motivate Stanley/Hawthorne views might be cases where the speaker has good reason to think that the hearer has some high-standard constraint…and the linguistic inappropriateness of asserting I know would be explained in a similar manner as above (rather than appealing to the kinds of epistemic theories that Hawthorne/Stanley endorse)….not sure though…
Isn’t this a problem in stating intuitions across contexts? I’m trying to recall, wasn’t there an argument to something like the effect that one was double indexing in comparisons in a way that undermined the value of intuitions—in Stephen Predelli?
Hi Matthew,
I’m not sure I follow. Do you mean there may be a problem in stating our intuitions from our context, when the speakers in the thought experiment are in a different context?
Hi Andrew,
I think that cases, which are in themselves interesting, are weakened by the intuitions which introduce the cases. Intuitions underpinning contents may be thought of as providing cross-modal content, that’s some kind of function they have in supporting ‘thought experiments'(though, of course, just as likely, one’s intuitions are relatively constrained as are one’s normal judgments, as one thinks of them). However one is to have (imagine having) intuitions, are these intuitions subject to the sorts of content/context constraints that would apply in case they were stated? A function of thought experiments may be to indicate the distinction.
I’m hunting for the Predelli paper. In it I recall was a discussion of indexicality focused on the distinction between type theorists (Kaplan) and token theorists (Predelli, Reichenbach) … as I can’t find the paper the point is kind of eluding me, but it was something to do with wanting to preserve a roughly Russellian or direct level of reference in contexts sufficient to derive comparisons at the level of content.
Hi Matthew,
I think I’m still not following. Maybe I should have a look at the Predelli paper when you get the reference.
Is the worry that while we might have an intuition about the appropriateness of linguistic usage in some given possible (but non-actual) thought experiment, for all we know we might not have that intuition if the scenario were actual? And then we go from there to some conclusion like…Therefore, intuitions about linguistic appropriateness in these cases should not be trusted.
Hi Andrew
I’m making a general point about prescriptiveness. And whether even a particular intuition is trustworthy. Or, rather, is some intuition about the appropriateness of usage couched, and if so how would it prescribe for uses within a scenario? So I think, obviously, and at least, one should be wary of engaging with one’s intuitions, or putting them to work in any fully evaluative sense. Of course some of this reduces to the platitudes about propositional or terminological identities.
I don’t anyway see why one would not be actually dismissive of one’s intuitions about a possible scenario from the viewpoint of that scenario actualised–if any of that makes sense.
I suppose I also think that the issue about identities and the recognition of the occurrence of identities rather spoils the terrain; I think we may well be talking about just linguistic appropriateness in these cases, your last point is correct.
I should apologise, I was actually thinking of a paper by Garcia-Carpintero called ‘Indexicals as Token-Reflexes’,here,http://www.jstor.org/pss/2660113. The mix up was caused by me remembering a response to Recanati’s ‘Literal Meaning’ by Predelli and Garcia-Carpintero. Sorry.