Davidson's Theory of Meaning and Fregean Context-Principle⁽¹⁾

In this essay I will try to make clear the relationship between Fregean context-principle, and Davidson's claims of meaning-holism and inscrutability of reference, and inquire, whether Davidson's holism is compatible with Fregean context-principle, by distinguishing a few different phases of Davidson's holism.

1. DAVIDSON'S 'HOLISTIC' THEORY OF MEANING

According to Davidson, a theory of meaning must satisfy the following two demands:

[1] it would provide an interpretation of all utterances of speakers, actual and potential, of a speaker or group of speakers;

and

[2] it would be verifiable without knowledge of the detailed propositional attitudes of a speaker. ([ITI],xiii)

The first demand concerns the question, how a creature with finite powers can understand and produce potentially infinite number of sentences, which he has never encountered. Further Davidson regards this demand as acknowledgement of the holistic nature of linguistic under-standing. Nevertheless it is not so clear, what 'the holistic nature' means.

Davidson contrasts the two approaches to the theory of meaning, the one is the 'atomistic' or 'building-block method', which starts with the simple and builds up the complex, and the other is the "holistic method, which starts with the complex (sentences, at any rate) and abstracts out the parts." ([RWR],221). According to the former,

"Having explained directly the semantic features of proper names and simple predicates, we could go on to explain the reference of complex singular terms and complex predicates, we could characterize satisfaction ..., and finally truth." ([RWR],220)

That is, this proposal is to assign a meaning to each basic expression in isolation and to regard the meaning of a complex expression formed from the basic vocabulary in accordance with the

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set of formation-rules as the function of the meanings of its constituent expressions by appealing to Fregean compositional principle, while Fregean context-principle is neglected.

Davidson adopts the rather simple dichotomy, and does not distinguish sharply the molecular view from the holistic view of language, but rather he appears to regard them as a matter of degree and the latter as the result of a simple extension of the former. Here I tentatively characterize the molecular view of language as the one which admits the priority of sentence-meaning over word-meaning, partial understanding of language, and progressive language-acquisition, as Dummett insists.⁽²⁾

Frege's context-principle surely supports the molecular view of language, but it is questionable, whether a holistic views in any degree are always compatible with Frege's context-principle. Now Davidson formulates his 'meaning-holism' as follows:

"We can give the meaning of any sentence (or word) only by giving the meaning of every sentence (and word) in the language." ([TM], 22)

This formulation is, however, equivocal. I want to distinguish a 'mild meaning-holism' from a 'genuine global meaning-holism'. The former only acknowledges implicit semantic interconnectedness of sentences and words, or Evans's 'Generality Constraint' [Evans, [VR],100f.]. Namely, according to this constraint,

"There could be no such thing as understanding a single isolated sentence, without being able to understand any other." (Dummett, [LBM], 222)

On the contrary, a 'global meaning-holism' takes the entire language as its scope for mastering and understanding a word. (Ibid., 230)

A mild meaning-holism will in fact be, however, involved in any recursive semantics, not only Frege's semantics and Dummett's molecular view, but also even in atomistic recursive theories, such as Montague Grammar or Chomsky's transformational generative grammar, since the notion of recursiveness assumes that one word plays the same semantic role in any sentence of language, in which occurs. I think this degree of holism is harmless. Nevertheless it is questionable, whether Davidson's 'holism' is never beyond the mild one, nor toward a global one.

According to Davidson, the degree of holism, to the effect that

"we understand the meaning of each item in the structure as an abstraction from the totality of sentences in which it features" ([TM], 22),

"was already implicit in the suggestion that an adequate theory of meaning must entail

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all sentences of the form 's means m'". (loc.cit.)

   What is then the adequacy condition of a theory of meaning?

2. A TRUTH-CONDITIONAL THEORY OF MEANING. ITS CONTEXT PRINCIPLE ABOUT

SENSE, ITS COMPOSITIONAL PRINCIPLE AND ITS 'MILD MEANING-HOLISM'

The adequacy condition is in essence Tarski's Convention T, that is, the formally correct definition of truth for an object language L will be called a materially adequate, if it has the following consequences:

(i) all (T) sentences which are obtained from the axiom-schema(T),

(T) s is true in L iff p

by substituting for s a name of any sentence in L, and for p the expression which forms the translation of this sentence into the metalanguage;

and

(ii) every (T) sentence itself is in fact true.⁽³⁾

What makes a natural language decisively different from a formalized language is that the former contains demonstratives, indexicals, tense and other context-dependent linguistic devices. Davidson thinks that such linguistic devices "cannot be eliminated from a natural language, without loss or radical change, so there is no choice but to accommodate theory to them." ([TM], 33) Davidson's strategy is

"to view truth as a relation between a sentence, a person, and a time; ... corresponding to each expression with a demonstrative element there must in the theory be a phrase that relates the truth conditions of sentences in which the expression occurs to changing times and speakers. Thus the theory will entail sentences like the following:

'I am tired' is true as (potentially) spoken by p at t iff p is tired at t." ([TM],34)

In fact the logic and relativised truth-conditional formal semantics of demonstratives and indexicals has been remarkably developed since 1970 by Kaplan and others.⁽⁴⁾

Now Davidson recognizes that there is an obvious connection between Tarskian definition of truth and the concept of meaning. Because, as Frege and Wittgenstein claimed, Davidson acknowledges that "to give truth conditions is a way of giving the meaning of a sentence." ([TM], 24).

But it is impossible to construct a theory of meaning based on Tarski's Convention T as

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such, because the latter presupposes the concept of meaning, in order to analyse the concept of truth. Davidson's strategy is the reverse to Tarski's, namely, to consider truth to be the central primitive concept, to get at meaning. ([ITI],xiv)

Thus one might say, in terms of Wittgenstein's terminology⁽⁵⁾, that the meaning ('sense' or 'thought' in Frege's sense) of sentence is shown in the (T)-sentence, due to the fact that the sentence to replace for p on the right hand side of (T), which says or states the condition under which the sentence to replace for s on the left hand side of the (T)-sentence is true.

Now the following phrase in Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884) suggests Frege's context-principle about sense, though he did not distinguish Sinn from Bedeutung yet in this period:

"It is enough if the sentence taken as a whole has a sense; it is this that confers on its parts also their content." ([GLA],§60)

In Grundgesetze der Arithmetik Frege's context-principle about sense is more explicitly formulated as follows:

"The names, whether simple or themselves composite, of which the name of a truth-value consists, contribute to the expression of the thought, and this contribution of the individual[composite] is its sense. If a name is part of the name of a truth-value, then the sense of the former name is part of the thought expressed by the latter name." ([GGA], I, §32)

That is, the meaning ('sense') of a word is its contribution to the meaning ('thought') as the truth condition of a sentence as a whole in which the word occurs.

Now within Tarskian truth conditional semantics,

(a) the satisfaction condition of a primitive predicate 'Rxy' is given as follows:

A predicate 'Rxy' is satisfied with the sequence of objects iff the object assigned to x stands in the relation R to the object assigned to y.

(b) The denotation condition of a name N is given as follows:

A name N denotes the object O iff O satisfies the special open sentence 'x = N'.

Since such a satisfaction condition or a denotation condition states respectively the contribution to the truth condition of a sentence in which the predicate or the name occurs, one might say that the meaning ('sense') of the predicate or the name is shown. If so, one might further say that the meaning ('sense') of a word to replace s, is its contribution to the meaning

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('sense') of that sentence as a whole and those of any other sentences in which that word occurs.

Further the adequacy condition (i) requires that the (T)-sentence of every sentence in L must be derivable as a theorem from the semantic axiom-schema (T). This enables us to discriminate the meanings ('senses') of given sentences, even if they are not simple singular sentences, but compound general sentences containing logical constants, such as logical connectives and quantifiers, because the canonical proof of the truth, as a theorem, of a given compound sentence 's' in L gives the analysis, which shows step by step how the truth of 's' depends recursively upon the logical structure of 's'. Thus, if these steps of the proofs of the truths of the sentences, e. g. 'Every boy loves some girl' and 'Some girl is loved by every boy', are mutually distinguished, then this distinctness is reflected on their difference in meaning ('sense').

Here I want to quote Davidson's vivid metaphor.

"All true sentences end up in the same place, but there are different stories about how they got there; a semantic theory of truth tells the story for a particular sentence by running through the steps of the recursive account of satisfaction appropriate to the sentence. And the story constitutes a proof of a theorem in the form of an instance of schema [(T)]." ([TF],49)

On the other hand, if we trace the steps of the proof of a given sentence reversely, it would be shown how the meaning of the sentence is composed of the meanings of the constituent words together with the logical structure of the sentence. That is, such a truth conditional theory of meaning for a language L accommodates Frege's compositional principle, and so it shows "how the meanings of sentences depend upon the meanings of words if it contains a (recursive) definition of truth-in-L." ([TM],23)

Now it would be clear that there is a close relationship between Davidson's truth conditional theory of meaning and Frege's context-principle about 'sense'.

In fact Davidson explicitly admits Frege's context-principle about sense, namely, "Frege said that only in the context of a sentence does a word have meaning." ([TM],22) But he does not distinguish sharply a molecular view from the holistic view of language, but rather,he insists that "in the same vein he [Frege] might have added that only in the context of the language does a sentence (and therefore a word) have meaning."(loc.cit.) How far, one could say, is such Davidson's holistic claim correct?

At any rate, if the proof of the (T)-sentence of each sentence is carried out dependent upon its recursive structure, the logical structure of each sentence determines the logical

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interrelations (including the relation of the logical consequence) with other sentences. Thus the recursive logical-structure of each sentence explains what position or role in the semantic space of the language as a whole each sentence occupies or plays. Further the meaning ('sense') of a constituent (a word) of a sentence can be explained as playing the identical systematic role in other sentences or making the same contribution. In fact Davidson claims:

"The work of the theory is in relating the known truth conditions of each sentence to those aspects ('words') of the sentence that recur in other sentences, and can be assigned identical roles in other sentences." ([TM],25)

In other words, the meaning [sense] of a word is not only its contribution to the meaning of a sentence, but also to the meanings of all other sentences, in which it recurs, in the language. I want to call this position as Davidson's 'mild' meaning-holism concerning recursive interconnectedness of sentences and words. I think this degree of holism is harmless, since it can be admitted from a molecular view of language.

3. INSCRUTABILITY OF REFERENCE AND THE CONTEXT PRINCIPLE ABOUT REFERENCE

Davidson accepts Quine's thesis of the inscrutability of reference:

"there is no way to tell what the singular terms of a language refer to, or what its predicates are true of, at least no way to tell from the totality of behavioural evidence...Quine and others have shown how to construct systematic examples of alternative schemes of reference such that, if one of them is in accord with all possible relevant evidence, others are. Quine argues that this fact should lead us to recognize that the relation of reference between objects and words (or their utterances) is relative to an arbitrary choice of a scheme of reference (or translation manual),.." ([IR],227)

Davidson is concerned exclusively with the thesis of the inscrutability of reference, to the effect that "even if logical form and truth are fixed, acceptable theories may differ with respect to the references they assign to the same words and phrases." ([IR],228)

Davidson's permutation argument to show the inscrutability is divided into two steps:

Davidson's first step for inscrutability of reference is as follows:

(A) His example of the permutation argument:

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The scheme₁: the name 'Wilt' refers to Wilt and the predicate 'is tall' refers to tall things;

(T1) The sentence 'Wilt is tall' is true iff Wilt is tall.

The scheme₂: 'Wilt' refers to the shadow of Wilt and 'is tall' refers to the shadows of tall things.

(T2) The sentence 'Wilt is tall' is true iff the shadow of Wilt is the shadow of a tall thing.

Davidson regards the truth conditions clearly equivalent.

(B) Further since Davidson regards his theory of meaning as an empirical theory,

"there can be no relevant evidence on the basis of which to choose between theories and its permutations....[For] if some theory of truth or interpretation is satisfactory in the light of all relevant evidence, then any theory that is generated from the first theory by a permutation will also be satisfactory in the light of all relevant evidence."([IR] 235)

Davidson's second step for inscrutability is as follows:

Even if an interpreter [C] can distinguish the cases of the schemer [B]'s scheme₁ in terms of subscripts: "Wilt refers₁ to Wilt" and of his scheme₂: "Wilt refers₂ to the shadow of Wilt", the interpreter [C] cannot uniquely identify the reference of the schemer [B]'s predicate 'refer', i.e. which of refer₁ or refer₂ it refers, since there is another permutation argument concerning the schemer [B]'s predicate 'refer'again.

Therefore, the permutation argument shows that there are more than one isomorphic interpretation of a singular term and a predicate in a language iff there is such permutation among alternative interpretations.⁽⁶⁾

Though Davidson objects to Quine's ontological relativity, he admits the relativity of one's interpretation to one's scheme of reference as follows:

"Given a scheme of interpretation...,we have decided what words we can use in our own language to interpret the words of a speaker...All that we can say gets fixed by the relativization is the way we answer questions about reference, not reference itself...If we take his word 'rabbit' to refer to rabbits, we take him to be speaking one language. If we take his word 'rabbit' to refer to things that are j [permutation] of rabbits, we take him to be speaking another language. If we decide to change the reference scheme, we

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decide that he is speaking a different language. In some cases the decisions are ours...There is no way to tell which of these languages a person is speaking."([IR]239)

Thus it is only relative to an interpreter's attribution of a specific reference scheme or interpretation of a language to the speaker, or only internally in one language with one specific reference scheme, that one can talk about the reference of a word of the speaker. Nevertheless beyond one language, "the questions what object a term refers to, or what objects a predicate is true of, has no answer." ([ITI],xix)

Now how should we think about the relation between Davidson's claim of inscrutability of reference and Fregean context-principle?

There are intense disputes about Frege's context-principle about reference.⁽⁷⁾ I do not want to concider such debates any more here, but only say that the following formulation is at least one of the possible interpretations of Fregean context principle about reference:

It is only internally, that is, only within one language that the context-principle uniquely determines the reference of a word as its contribution to the truth value of a sentence in which it occurs in the language.

Let us first review Frege's formulations of the context principle. In GLA the notion of 'Inhalt' is not differentiated yet, so that the notion of reference ('Bedeutung') is only thin notion.

"Never to ask for the meaning [Bedeutung] of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a sentence [Satzzusammenhang]." ([GLA],x)⁽⁸⁾

Now the problem in GLA for Frege is as follows:

"How, then, are numbers to be given to us, if we cannot have any ideas or intuitions of them? Since it is only in the context of a sentence that words have any meaning, our problem becomes this: To define the sense of a sentence in which a number word occurs"⁽⁹⁾

, namely,"those [sentences] which express our recognition [Wiedererkennen] of a number as the same again","a means of arriving at a determinate number and of recognizing it again as the same","a general criterion for the identity of numbers", that is, "a criterion for deciding in all cases whether b is the same as a..." ([GLA]§62)

   Thus the context of a sentence is nothing but the following "recognition-statement [Wiedererkennungsaetze], the recognition-judgement [Wierdererkennungsurteil], a numerical identity [Zahlengleichung]"([GLA]§106) ('The number of the concept F' is represented as 'N(F)'):⁽¹⁰⁾

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(E) N(F)=N(G) the concept of F is equinumeral with the concept of G.

The right hand side of (E) gives the truth condition of the left hand side numeral equation, so that it provides the criterion of identity for numbers.

In GLA, (E) is derived from the explicit definition (D):

(D) The number of the concept F =_df the extension of the concept F.

Now there is no permutation argument concerning the definition of number in GLA.⁽¹¹⁾

Insofar as the GLA is concerned, there is no explicit distinction between object language and metalanguage, but rather only one language including arithmetical symbols to be assumed, though it contains a number of metalinguistic expressions, such as 'sentence', 'word', 'name', 'content', 'reference', and 'sense'. Thus the extension of a concept and so the number of a concept seems to be uniquely determinable only internally owing to the criterion of identity for numbers based on equinumericity in one language of GLA. So that the context principle about reference in GLA might tell us that the reference of a word is determined internally in the context of a sentence only within one language.

The context principle about reference in GGA is formulated as follows:

" One can ask for the reference only in the case that the signs are constituents of sentences, which are to express the thoughts." ([GGA]II,§97,S.105)

If the distinction between object language and metalanguage is permitted as in GGA, we could apply the permutation argument even to the case of number theory by providing distinct frames of references to its object language, and in fact Frege himself constitutes a permutation argument concerning the Wertverlauf of a function, or the extension of a concept.⁽¹²⁾

The criterion of identity for the Wertverlauf is given in the form of Axiom V:

(Ax.V) F( a) = G( e) "x[Fx Gx].

There could be a permutation g such that g(F( a)) ą F( a), but the criterion of identity for some abstract entity g(F( a)), is the same as for Wertverlauf, i.e.,

(*) g(F( a)) = g(G( e)) "x[Fx Gx].

Thus the right hand side of the equivalence relation of the Ax.V could not be said to provide

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the criterion of identity uniquely for Wertverlauf, but only for the equivalence class of Wertverlauf and others.

One could say, after Davidson, that we could not face to the single object language, but in fact two or more distinct object languages with distinct schemes of reference. Frege thought this troublesome question is avoidable, insofar as his formalized language is concerned, but it is not clear, whether it is solvable in general.

One of plausible morals from the permutation argument concerning Fregean context-principle could be as follows:

The reference of a word can be uniquely determined as its contribution to the truth value of a sentence in which it occurs, only 'internally', namely only relative to and from within one object language with a specific reference scheme. If so, the reference of a word can be distinct in distinct object language with distinct scheme of reference, so that the context-principle cannot determine uniquely the reference of a word 'externally', namely, beyond the scope of one language independent of the reference scheme.

If this suggestion is correct, then at least one of plausible interpretations of the context-principle about reference is as follows:

It is only internally, that is, specific to one language with one scheme of reference, that the context-principle determines the reference of a word as its contribution to the truth-value of a sentence in which it occurs in the language.

If it is so, then Davidson's claim of inscrutability of reference by appealing to the permutation argument (or to the Loewenheim-Skolem Theorem) appears to provide the reductio ad absurdum argument against the 'externalist' version of the context-principle about reference, and defends the 'internalist' version of Fregean context-principle about reference, that is, that the reference of a word is uniquely determined as it occurs, only internally, only from inside of one language with one specific reference scheme, but not beyond that scope, from outside, of one language, independent of any specific reference scheme.

Davidson's theory of meaning so far explained does not seem to require a 'genuine, global meaning-holism' beyond the 'mild meaning-holism' concerning recursive interconnectedness of sentences and words, but to be compatible with a 'molecular view of language'.

Further, since Davidson appears to presuppose the prior understanding of the concept

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of truth, or of satisfaction in the metalanguage, and seems to be concerned with only the knowledge of the truth of the semantic axioms, from which the (T)-sentences of each sentence are derivable, but not with the knowledge of the propositions with the axioms express, his theory of meaning appears to be not full-blooded, but only modest in Dummett's sense.⁽¹³⁾ But this impression would be wrong. This question is connected with radical interpretation and global holism.

4. RADICAL INTERPRETATION AND HOLISM

Now let us recall the second demand of Tarski's Convention T for the adequate theory of truth, that is, " every (T)-sentence itself must in fact be true." This demand provides a test of the adequacy for a theory of meaning, namely, it provides the criterion of selecting the correct (T)-sentence of a sentence among other alternatives.

In the special cases where both of the object language and metalanguage are one's mother tongue, and the former is contained in the latter, the truth of a (T)-sentence of a sentence seems to be easily and self-evidently given as equivalence by disquotation. The equivalence condition is, however, not sufficient to discriminate the correct (T)-sentence from the incorrect even in the mother tongue, for even the following satisfies the equivalence condition:

(S) 'Snow is white' is true in L iff grass is green.

The one constraint suggested by Davidson to discriminate the correct (T)-sentence is closely related to the 'mild meaning-holism', i.e. the recursive interconnectedness of the truth condition of 'Snow is white' to every other sentence of the object language. That is, the truth condition of 'Snow is white', so that the denotation condition of 'snow' and the satisfaction condition of 'is white' as the contributions to the truth condition as a whole, must play respectively the same semantic role in any other simple or compound sentences in the object language, in which each expression occurs.

Davidson's another suggestion is that (T)-sentence must be not only true, but lawlike, because he treats theories of truth as empirical theories, and the axioms and theorems have to be viewed as laws. Thus

"the evidence for accepting the (time and speaker relativized) truth conditions for 'That is snow' is based on the causal connection between a speaker's assent to the sentence

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and the demonstrative presentation of snow."(Fn.11 of [TM]26, added in 1982)

Such suggestion concerning empirical evidence seems to be closely related to his radical interpretation, in which an interpreter encounters a completely alien language and tries to interpret it. At this dimension the question arises, whether the full-blooded and genuinely holistic character of Davidson's theory of meaning figures in or not.

In radical interpretation, a builder of the theory of meaning aims to find a verified hypothesis, which maps from each true sentence in an alien language into the co-ordinating true sentence in his metalanguage. Nevertheless the theory-builder cannot have a direct insight into the equivalence between a sentence in his native metalanguage and a sentence in an alien language, because it is impossible to separate what is meant by a sentence completely from what an alient speaker believes. Unless we know what he believes, we cannot understand his utterance, and vice versa. Here the second demand for a theory construction must be recalled, namely, the theory must be verifiable without knowledge of the detailed propositional attitudes of the speaker. This condition "aims to prevent smuggling into the foundations of the theory concepts too closely allied to the concept of meaning." ([ITI]xiii)

How can the theory-builder get out of this predicament? According to Davidson,

"A good place to begin is with the attitude of holding a sentence true, of accepting it as true. This is, of course, a belief, but it is a single attitude applicable to all sentences, and so does not ask us to be able to make finely discriminated distinctions among beliefs. It is an attitude an interpreter may plausibly be taken to be able to identify before he can interpret, since he may know that a person intends to express a truth in uttering a sentence without having any idea what truth." ([RI]134-5)

Now mentioning linguistic attitudes to hold true is not a question begging, because we only know that a speaker holds a sentence to be true. However we do not know yet what he believes, nor what the sentence means. The interpreter must fix which sentence an alien speaker holds to be true or false through studying the pattern of his linguistic behaviours of assents to and dissents from sentences in given circumstances, and construct an empirical hypothesis which provides the characterization of the truth-theory for the speaker, which gives the mapping from the sentence in the alien language to be held true by the alien speaker to the true sentence in interpreter's mother tongue (metalanguage). So as Dummett remarks,

"What Davidson calls the 'evidence' for the theory of truth [and of meaning] is not external but integral, and actually internal to it. The theory is not something that we base

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upon the 'evidence'." ([WTM(I)])

Thus Davidson's theory of meaning is not merely modest, but full-blooded. By this method Davidson intends "to solve the problem of the interdependence of belief and meaning by holding belief constant as far as possible while solving for meaning."([RI]137) But all processes of interpretation rely on the principle of charity, to prefer theories of interpretation that minimize disagreement or maximize understanding.

Now if such a conception of evidence concerning radical interpretation is connected with a meaning-holism, such that "we can give the meaning of any sentence (or word) only by giving the meaning of every sentence (and word) in the language"([TM]22), it follows that "the totality of (T)-sentences should ...optimally fit evidence about sentences held true by native speakers."([RI]139) Then the first holistic demand for the theory of meaning might be satisfied. Insofar as we take this 'meaning-holism' as 'mild', it is harmless and compatible with Fregean context-principle, because each word or sentence must play the same semantic role, namely, the same sense and reference, in any other sentences in the language.

Nevertheless, the isolated and piecemeal gathering and generalizing evidences for each (T)-sentence could not attain a stronger holistic aim than the 'mild' holism. Any evidences appear to support a hypothetical (T)-sentence only tentatively and partially so far examined within certain relevant ranges of interconnectednes with other sentences and words in part of a language to be interpreted.

If we take a 'global, genuine meaning-holism' seriously, the truth conditions of all sentences, the meaning and references of all names and predicates of the language must be simultaneously determined together decisively in the light of evidences, but cannot be partially defeasible except resulting the total change of interpretation and so change of language as a whole. As Dummett points out, there is no room for explaining the partial ordering progressive or piecemeal acquisition of language, which "results from the fact that it can make no sense of the idea of knowing part of a language."([WTM(I)]138) "It becomes plain that we are thereby attributing to a speaker a task quite beyond human capacities."([WTM(I)]133)

And if the 'global, genuine meaning-holism' is taken literally and seriously, neither the above-mentioned Davidson's truth conditional theory of meaning ('sense') would give support for a Fregean context-principle concerning sense, nor his claim for the inscrutability of reference would provide a kind of defence for Fregean context-principle concerning reference, because in a global, genuine meaning-holism, every sense and reference of any sentence and word, without any distinction, must be given simultaneously once for all under "preferred total assignment to names and predicates"([WTM(I)]130), so that a sentence has no priority to a word in a globally holistic theory of meaning. Either one knows an entire language completely

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or one does not know it at all. There are no intermediate stages in knowing a language. Nonetheless it must be unfair to Davidson, unless I notice that there appears to be no clear evidence for the fact that Davidson adopts literally a 'global, genuine meaning-holism' beyond a 'mild meaning-holism'. If Davidson's theory of meaning were, however, interpreted to imply such a 'global meaning-holism', then it might be difficult to incorporate Fregean context- principle in Davidson's theory of meaning.

Further Davidson proposes an idea of holistic grand theory of interpretation, which seems to go beyond a mere 'meaning-holism' toward a 'global interpretation-holism', as it were. Namely,

"What permits us to choose among various languages for a speaker is that fact that the evidence - attitudes or actions directed to sentences or utterances - bears not only on the interpretation of speech but also on the attribution of belief, wants, and intentions (and no doubt other attitudes)/...[T]he evidence on which all these matters depend gives us no way of separating out the contributions of thought, action, desire, and meaning one by one. Total theories are what we must construct." ([IR]240-41)

Now if Davidson's theory of meaning presupposes his theory of interpretation, clearly seen in the dimension of radical interpretation, and the latter must be supported by the relevant evidences, and further if such evidences inseparably bear on various propositional attitudes as a whole, then his theory of meaning must be inseparably incorporated in his 'global grand theory' of interpretation and propositional attitudes or actions. Thus his theory of meaning might be called 'genuinely holistic', insofar as an interpretation of all utterances, actual and potential, of a speaker or group of speakers could be provided only within such a grand theory. Such an idea of the genuinely holistic theory of interpretation clearly transcends the scope of Frege's original context-principle, to the effect that only within the context of a sentence the meaning ('sense') and reference of a word should be determined. Since the interpretation of utterances cannot be evidentially separated from the attribution of propositional attitudes, the determination of meaning of each expression or sentence is closely connected with ascriptions of propositional attitudes based on the observations of the patterns of linguistic behaviours as a whole shown by a speaker or speakers. Such a holistic view of language and his recognition of the Fregean context-principle appears to make a tension in Davidson's theory of meaning.

Notes

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References

[ITI] Davidson,D.: Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Clarendon Press, Oxford,1984.

[TM] Davidson,D.: Truth and Meaning (1967) rep. in [ITI], pp.17-36.

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[TF] Davidson,D.: True to the Facts (1969) rep. in [ITI], pp.37-54.

[RI] Davidson,D.: Radical Interpretation (1973) rep. in [ITI], pp.125-140.

[RF] Davidson,D.: Reply to Foster (1976) rep. in [ITI], pp.171-180.

[RWR] Davidson,D.: Reality without Reference (1977) rep. in [ITI], pp.199-214.

[IR] Davidson,D.: The Inscrutability of Reference (1979) rep. in [ITI], pp.227-242.

[WTM(I)] Dummett,M.: What is a Theory of Meaning? In Guttenplan(ed): Mind and Language, Clarendon Press,Oxford, 1975, pp.97-138.

[WTM(II)] Dummett,M.: What is a theory of Meaning? (II) In Evans & McDowell(eds): Truth and Meaning, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1976, pp.67-137.

[LBM] Dummett,M.: The Logical Basis of Metaphysics, Harvard Univ. Press, 1991.

[VR] Evans,G.: The Varieties of Reference, McDowell(ed), Oxford, 1982.

[GLA] Frege,G.: Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, Breslau, 1884, English tr. by Austin,J.

[GGA] Frege,G.: Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, I, 1893; II, 1903, Jena, English tr. by Furth,M.

[KAP] Kaplan,D., 'Demonstratives', in Almog,Perry,and Wettstein(eds): Themes from Kaplan, Oxford, 1989, pp.481-564.

[RTH] Putnam,H.: Reason, Truth and History, Cambridge Univ.Press, 1981.

[RES] Resnik,M.: 'The Context principle in Frege's Philosophy', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 27/1967-8, pp.356-365.

[SLU] Sluga,H.: Gottlob Frege, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1980.

[TAR] Tarski,A.: 'Der Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen', Studia Philosophica I/1936, English tr.by Woodger in Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics, Oxford, 1956, pp.152-278.

[WALL] Wallace,J.: 'Only in the Context of a Sentence do Words Have Any Meaning', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, II/1977, French, Uehling & Wettstein(eds). Univ. of Minnesota Press,Morris,pp.144-164.

[WRI] Wright,C.: Frege's Conception of Numbers as Objects, Aberdeen Univ. Press, 1983

[TLP] Wittgenstein,L.: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1922.

1. ^*This essay was originally read in Prof.M.Dummett's 7th Seminar on The Context Principle, March 6th,1992 in Oxford and also at the Logik-Kolloquium of Konstance University, June 30th,1992. Especially I wish to acknowledge the valuable comments of Prof. Dummett, Mr.Peter Sullivan in Oxford, and Prof.F.Kambartel, Prof.G.Gabriel, Prof.Wolters, Dr.W.Mendonca, Dr.A.Fuhrmann and other colleagues in Konstance University. I am greatly indebted to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for its finacial support of my stay in Konstance and in Oxford during 1991-92.

2. Dummett[WTM(II)],pp.78-80.

3. Cf Tarski [TAR], pp.187-8.

4. [Kap].

5. Wittgenstein's contrast between saying vs showing in [TLP].

6. According to the Loewenheim-Skolem theorem, 'Any 1st-order language that has a model, has a denumerable, non-isomorphic model,' so that a consistent 1st-oder language may have an unintended model. Now the inscrutability of reference, to the effect that it is impossible to determine only one model uniquely among alternative models appears to follow, too. Though Putnam does not seem to commit to the inscrutability

of reference, he makes use of this theorem to distinguish internal realism from external realism.([RTH]ch.1 and ch.2)

7. See [RES]; [SLU]; [WRI].

8. Also see:

"But we ought always to keep before our eyes a complete sentence.Only in a sentence have the words really a meaning." ([GLA]60)

"...we must never try to define the meaning of a word in isolation, but only as it is used in the context of a sentence." ([GLA]106)

9. This phrase might be regarded as a locus classicus of the linguistic turn concerning determination of an abstract object.

10. Cf.(E)' The direction of the line a = the direction of the line b line a is paralell to line b.

11. On the other hand, Frege mentions an apparently analogous

argument about projective geometry concerning the duality of 'plane' and 'point' relating to 'intersection' and 'joining', such as 'the line joining two points' and 'the line of intersection of two planes' in GLA, §25, which is regarded due to the difference in pure geometrical intuitions.

12. See [GGA]I,§10.

13. Dummett [WTM(I)], pp.99f; the appendix ,pp.128f.; [LBM], pp.108f.

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