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Naming and Saying

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Wilfrid Sellars
Wilfrid Sellars*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Abstract

The essay adopts the Tractarian view that configurations of objects are expressed by configurations of names. Two alternatives are considered: The objects in atomic facts are (1) without exception particulars; (2) one or more particulars plus a universal (Gustav Bergmann). On (1) a mode of configuration is always an empirical relation: on (2) it is the logical nexus of ‘exemplification.’ It is argued that (1) is both Wittgenstein's view in the Tractatus and correct. It is also argued that exemplification is a ‘quasi-semantical’ relation, and that it (and universals) are “in the world” only in that broad sense in which the ‘world’ includes linguistic norms and roles viewed (thus in translating) from the standpoint of a fellow participant.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , January 1962 , pp. 7 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1962

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Footnotes

∗∗

Presented as the opening paper in a symposium on Reference and Use at the May 1961 meeting of the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association.

References

1 Mind, 67, 1958

2 Ibid., p. 163

3 Which n-adic concept the names are made to satisfy is, of course, as philosophers use the term, a matter of convention.

4 One is reminded of the peculiar objects which, according to Frege, one talks about when one attempts to talk about concepts.

5 I shall subsequently discuss the dangers involved in the use of color examples with particular reference to the interpretation of color words as names.

6 The philosopher I have in mind is Professor Gustav Bergmann and the views I am discussing are those to be found, I believe, in certain passages of his interesting paper on “Ineffability, Ontology and Method” which appeared in the January 1960 number of the Philosophical Review.

7 Cf. Bergmann, op. cit., p. 23, n. 2.

8 I use this way of putting the matter to make the point with minimum fuss and feathers. It is worth reflecting, however, that the grammatical parallel to ‘a exemplifies green’ would be either ‘a exemplifies being below b’ or ‘a and b jointly exemplify below-ness (the relation of one thing being below another).’

9 Strictly speaking, there would be a relation of exemplification for each order of fact, and, on non-elementaristic views, a family of such relations for each type.

10 See f.n. 9.

11 When he adds that “I can think of this space as empty, but not of the thing without the space,” he suggests the intriguing possibility that we can make sense of the idea that the language we use might have had no application.

12 Whether these sets constitute embracing sets of primitive predicates of different orders, or whether they fall into subsets (families of determinates) is a topic for separate investigation.

13 I find here the implication that primitive one-place predicates (configurations) — if not all primitive predicates — come in families (determinates) and that objects are of different logical form if, for example, one exists in the logical space of color, the other in the logical space of sound.