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Demonstrative without Descriptive Conventions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

S. C. Coval
S. C. Coval
Affiliation:
Merton College, Oxford.
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Extract

I TRY to do the following things in this paper. I. To show briefly how one might argue for the mutual dependence of our demonstrative and descriptive conventions as they now stand. II. To suggest that this duality of convention may be a dispensable, though in some ways desirable, aspect of language and that if one of these conventions is non-essential it is our descriptive conventions. III. To show something of the philosophical implications of such a ‘non-word’ language. Perhaps not the least uninteresting among these implications is what may then be said about our demonstrative and descriptive conventions as they now stand and especially what this might mean for attempts to reduce our demonstrative to our descriptive conventions, which involves us again in section I. It might be said that, while section I offers some linguistic facts, sections II and III attempt to show the contingency of some of these linguistic facts.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 40 , Issue 154 , October 1965 , pp. 334 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1965

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References

page 335 note 1 ∃X [(Fx … Nx)] [(y) (Fy … Ny)⊃ (y = x)[; or as in ‘On Denoting‘, Mind, 1905, ‘“C”x is not always false and if “Cy” then y = x‘.

page 336 note 1 And predicates must be universalisable, range over the countable etc., while ST locution is unique, inapplicable to more than one thing at a time. This means ST words are not predicates though ‘at a time’ means they are re-usable following the natural economy of vocabulary

page 338 note 1 Austin in ‘Truth’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary volume, XXIV, 1950, argues that both demonstrative and descriptive conventions are among the necessary conditions of a language (not just our language).

page 339 note 1 We do, naturally, already have such adverbial-verbs anyway: (What is a pure verb?). This usually happens around heavy-duty verbs since the many modes we see there are not always usable or transferable to other verbs; such modes or adverbs may be too parochial. Supply, e.g. your own adverbial-verbs in: Oliver (eat) his portion, (approach) (to) the beadle and (ask) for more

page 339 note 2 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1956–57.