Communicative Action Tzu-Wei Hung Editor Communicative Action Selected Papers of the 2013 IEAS Conference on Language and Action 1 3 Editor Tzu-Wei Hung Institute of European and American Studies Academia Sinica Taipei Taiwan ISBN 978-981-4585-83-5 ISBN 978-981-4585-84-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-981-4585-84-2 Springer Singapore Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London Library of Congress Control Number: 2014936113 © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2014 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recita- tion, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or infor- mation storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar meth- odology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplica- tion of this publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publica- tion does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publica- tion, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Preface This book focuses on the relationship between action and language. Despite in- tensive debates over action and language, few studies have examined how they are related and their shared underlying mechanisms. Some researchers claim that language is a special and highly structural case of action; that sensorimotor circuits form a cortical basis for language, and that language processing can be accounted for by sensorimotor interactions. Hence, the extent to which a mechanism for pro- cessing actions also facilitates processing language is an interesting question. This book aims to foster a conversation among interdisciplinary scholars inter- ested in unpicking the relationship between these two significant human capacities. This book is written for readers from different academic backgrounds—from gradu- ate students to established academics, and readers will benefit from the diverse perspectives and extensive discussions of relevant issues. Earlier versions of the essays in this book were presented at the 2013 IEAS Conference on Language and Action, held from September 17 to September 18, in Taipei, Taiwan. For financial and administrative support, I thank the Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica (Chyong-Fang Ko, Director) and its Philosophy Group (especially Jih-Ching Ho, Wan-Chuan Fang, Norman Y. Teng, Timothy Joseph Lane). Following peer review, only some of the conference papers presented were selected for inclusion here, and I thank the referees for their work. I regret that I had to turn down several quality papers due to space limitations. Finally, I thank the editorial assistants, Yu-Tin Lin, Chih-Wei Wu, Kuei-Feng Hu, and Yi-Hsin Lai, for making this book possible. Institute of European and American Studies Tzu-Wei Hung Academia Sinica Taipei, Taiwan v Contents Part I Language in Communication Names, Descriptions, and Assertion .............................................................. 3 Ray Buchanan Indefinites in Action ........................................................................................ 17 Hsiang-Yun Chen A Defense of the Knowledge Account of Assertion: From a Model-Theoretic Perspective ............................................................ 33 Syraya Chin-mu Yang Part II Action and Bodily Awareness When Actions Feel Alien—an Explanatory Model ...................................... 53 Timothy Lane Self-Consciousness and Its Linguistic Expression ....................................... 75 Rory Madden Personal and Sub-Personal: Overcoming Explanatory Apartheid ............ 93 Hong Yu Wong Part III Sensorimotor Interaction and Language Acquisition How Infants Learn Word Meanings and Propositional Attitudes: A Neural Network Model ............................................................. 107 Alistair Knott What Action Comprehension Tells Us About Meaning Interpretation ...... 125 Tzu-Wei Hung vii Contributors Ray Buchanan Department of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA Hsiang-Yun Chen Department of Philosophy, Centenary College of Louisiana, Shreveport, LA, USA Tzu-Wei Hung Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan Alistair Knott Department of Computer Science, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand Timothy Lane Graduate Institute of Humanities in Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan Rory Madden Department of Philosophy, University College London, London, UK Hong Yu Wong Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany Syraya Chin-mu Yang Department of Philosophy, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan ix Part I Language in Communication Names, Descriptions, and Assertion Ray Buchanan Abstract According to Millian Descriptivism, while the semantic content of a lin- guistically simple proper name is just its referent, we often use sentences contain- ing such expressions “to make assertions…that are, in part, descriptive” (Soames 2008). Against this view, I show, following Ted Sider and David Braun, that simple sentences containing names are never used to assert descriptively enriched proposi- tions. In addition, I offer a diagnosis as to where the argument for Millian Descrip- tivism goes wrong. Once we appreciate the distinctive way in which this account fails, we can better appreciate the very modest role that associated descriptive infor- mation plays in the pragmatics of proper names. According to the traditional descriptivist theory, the semantic content of a proper name is given by a definite description (or cluster of descriptive information) that speakers associate with it; the name referring to whoever, or whatever, uniquely satisfies that descriptive information. As against this view, Kripke famously argued that, (a) speakers do not typically, and need not ever, associate uniquely identifying descriptive information with the names with which they are competent and (b) even in that rare case in which a speaker does have uniquely identifying descriptive in- formation in her possession, it still does not follow that her use of the name refers to the unique entity that satisfies that information. For these reasons, as well as equally familiar Kripkean considerations concerning the rigidity of names, few theorists these days are sympathetic to the traditional descriptivist account. Kripke’s arguments gave rise to a widespread endorsement of Millianism—the view that the semantic contribution of a name is exhausted by its referent. But even if we agree with the Millian that the descriptive information associated with a name does not enter into the semantic content of an utterance containing it, this informa- tion might nevertheless play an essential role in the pragmatics of names. Indeed, in recent years, a number of theorists have argued in favor of a view we might call Millian Descriptivism—a view according to which proper names have a “Mil- lian semantics,” but “a partially descriptive pragmatics of assertion” (Soames 2008, p 283). Moreover, these theorists have argued that their favored pragmatic theory of names helps to explain some of the most well-known problems with Millian ac- counts of proper names. R. Buchanan () Department of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] Tzu-Wei Hung (ed.), Communicative Action, DOI 10.1007/978-981-4585-84-2_1, 3 © Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2014 4 R. Buchanan In what follows, I argue that Millian Descriptivism should be rejected. More spe- cifically, I argue that the descriptive information we associate with a proper name no more enters into what we assert by our utterances involving it, than it does the literal, compositionally determined, semantic content thereof. As we will see, once we appreciate the distinctive way in which the Millian Descriptivist account fails, we can better appreciate the very modest role that associated descriptive informa- tion plays in the pragmatics of proper names. 1 Introducing Millian Descriptivism In Beyond Rigidity, and a series of important subsequent essays, Scott Soames has argued that linguistically simple names have a “Millian semantics,” but “a par- tially descriptive pragmatics of assertion” (Soames 2008, p. 283).1 According to this Millian Descriptivism, while Millians are correct in holding the position that the semantic content of a simple name is just its referent, descriptivists are right in holding that we regularly use sentences containing such names “to make assertions, and express beliefs, that are, in part, descriptive” (Soames 2008, p. 283). Consider, for example (1) (1) Bob Dylan is famous. Qua Millian Descriptivists, these theorists hold that the sentence-type displayed in (1) semantically expresses the singular proposition (2): (2) < Dylan, the property of being famous > Qua Millian Descriptivists, however, these theorists emphasize that the semantic content of a sentence-type such as (1) will constrain, but not fully determine, what a sincere, competent speaker might assert by a literal utterance thereof. Rather, a speaker literally uttering (1) will oftentimes assert, and be understood as asserting, various descriptively enriched propositions (hereafter, “d-propositions”). More spe- cifically, a speaker might assert—and, in so doing, intend to convey and undertake a commitment to the truth of—various d-propositions of the form displayed in (3) by uttering (1) (3) [Thex: Fxand x=Dylan] Famous (x),   1 A “linguistically simple name” is one for which “there is little… descriptive information that a speaker must associate with the name (qua expression-type) to be a competent user of it” (Soames 2002, p. 53). Such names contrast with “partially descriptive,” complex names, like “Chief Justice Roberts,” or “Rahway, New Jersey,” which are associated with “substantial descriptive informa- tion that must be grasped by any competent speaker who understands and is able to use them cor- rectly” (Soames 2002, p. 53). In what follows, I will only be concerned with “simple” cases. See, for example, Soames (2002, pp. 86–89) for an interesting discussion of the semantic contents of partially descriptive names. See Soames (2005) for some significant, and plausible, revisions to the account of semantic content offered in Beyond Rigidity.