Related quote:
"consider the sentence, 'I am hot'. Countless people may use this same sentence; but it is logically impossible for two different people to make the same use of this sentence: or, if this is preferred, to use it to express the same proposition. The expression 'I' may correctly be used by (and only by) any one of innumerable people to refer to himself" (Stawson 1950, 327).
This quote describes the distinction Strawson made between a sentence/expression itself, its use and its utterance. The meaning of the sentence "I am hot," for example, does not change on its on, devoid of context, because all there is to evaluate are the words themselves and their combination. The meaning can vary based on use, depending on whether the speaker is actually referring to them self, or on utterance as "I" can refer to any number of people.
I think this is a less complicated way of looking at non-existent subjects than Russell's method, so is better in that sense. It is easier to just say that someone's use or utterance of a particular sentence is off, rather than turning the offending subject into an existential statement.
What do these distinctions imply about how messy/complicated (or not) most languages are?
--André Robert
As an aside, was anyone else worried about the argument Strawson was trying to make on 323 where he writes "For if it is true that one may be mislead by the grammatical similarity of S to other sentences into thinking that it is logically of the subject-predicate form, then surely there must be other sentences grammatically similar to S, which are of the subject-predicate form" (Strawson 1950).
ReplyDeleteOne, I'm having a hard time reading this in that I can't tell if this logic is what Strawson is using to try to argue against Russell, or if he is saying, "Oh look here at this weird logic Russel is using"?
My second, and more pressing concern is that this kind of logic seems to follow the structure of "Oh look, that horse with a 3D-sculpted horn glued to its head could be mistaken for a Unicorn, therefore there must be actual unicorns".
Thoughts?
--André