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Outlines of an Empirical Theory of Meaning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

A. Cornelius Benjamin
A. Cornelius Benjamin*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

In what follows I shall consider symbols only in their function as conveyors of meanings. That symbols have emotive and volitional properties as well, that they have elaborate and complicated relations to the self which uses them, that they are themselves physical counters, i.e., noises, visual objects, etc.,—all of these facts I recognize but choose to neglect. When symbols are considered merely as instruments for the transfer of meanings, only one important assumption is involved, viz., symbols which are precisely defined are to be preferred to symbols which either are undefined or are defined inadequately. In other words, the task of a theory of meaning is that of showing how symbols take on a maximum degree of precision in significance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , July 1936 , pp. 250 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1936

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References

1 Lewis and Langford, Symbolic Logic, p. 211.

2 The Standardization of Error, p. 17.

3 R. Carnap, Philosophy and Logical Syntax, p. 56.

4 The article by Leo Abraham, “A Note on the Fruitfulness of Deduction,” Philosophy of Science, vol. 3, no. 2, does not seem to me to meet the issue squarely. Novelty in deduction may be due, according to this article, either to a “linguistic” feature, or to a neglect of one or more of the premises (or of their associative union) in making a comparison with the conclusion. But if deduction is itself a linguistic matter, how by means of such techniques can we derive a linguistic form which is regarded as “more significant” than the premises from which it was derived? And if deduction arises simply in the “joint consideration” of the premises, rather than in their single consideration, then the problem of novelty arises precisely in the act by which we pass from single to joint consideration. Propositions do not associate themselves, we associate them; thus by an act proceeding according to rule we get novelty.

5 Carnap, op. cit., p. 52.