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Word Meaning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
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I shall examine a theory, set out in the form of a story, which claims to explain advance in learning the meaning of words. Ignoring some important features of the theory—those notably to do with how such learning comes about—I shall ask what it is that the theory supposes us to learn when we learn the meaning of a word, or what it is that the theory supposes us to be doing when we learn it. The theory will be imputed to one Augustine, since the story may be taken as a not unfair remythologization of a theory advanced by St Augustine in the De Magistro: but I shall not attempt here either to prove or reject paternity, being content to examine the theory on its intrinsic merits which, I hope to show, are not inconsiderable.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1976
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1 The model of the dance permits convenient transpositions between the story as put by the De Magistro in a highly allusive and theological language and the more profane version of the epistemological points put in that story and considered in the present study. Aptness, not originality, has dictated the choice of model. The medieval English Easter carol ‘Tomorrow shall be my dancing day’ shows such a model used for purposes connected with theology. And another such model has been used more recently to good purpose in epistemology: see, for instance, Hare, R. M., ‘Philosophical Discoveries’, in Mind, 69 (1960) 145–162CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which used the dance to clarify a problem in the Meno, with which dialogue it is in any case highly instructive to compare the De Magistro. For the purpose in hand, however, I prefer a looser dance form than the one referred to in the article mentioned.
2 See Strawson, P. F., ‘Meaning and Truth’, in Logico-Linguistic Papers (London 1971).Google Scholar
3 Searle, J., Speech-Acts (Cambridge 1969), pp. 44–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Of a Minim of St Francis of Paula: ‘From the indult granted by Pius VII to religious of the Minims of St Francis of Paula, who are bound by vow to abstain perpetually from flesh meats, it is not permitted to infer that waterhen per se rather than merely out of custom are permitted on days of abstinence; for in that the Supreme Pontiff as a pure favour acceded graciously to the petition of those religious to use that food (waterhen) freely, he permitted the eating of that flesh meat to the faithful religious in question, without meaning to settle the theoretical question concerning the nature of that food’ (Noldin-Schmidt-Heinzel, , Summa theologiae moralis, ii (Innsbruck, 1955), p. 594n, citing Ballerini-PalmieriGoogle Scholar).
5 Ancestors of the present study benefited from comments by Professor Hare, in Oxford, and from airings to philosophy seminars in Louvain, Oxford and Bolton