Incomplete Understanding Without Analyticity : Prototype Semantics and Social Externalism

Social externalism or anti-individualism is the view that meaning and mental content depend on the speaker's social environment, her internal state being insufficient for their individuation.Thought experiments in support of social externalism relies on the notion of incomplete misunderstanding as opposed to linguistic error and non-standard theorizing.Thus, according to Burge (1979Burge ( /2007)), a person who utters or thinks, 'I have arthritis in my thigh', betrays an incomplete understanding of the concept of arthritis, and the possibility of incomplete understanding is sufficient for the externalist thesis to follow.A question arises as to whether the notion of incomplete understanding is necessary for social externalism, or, equivalently, whether social externalism essentially relies on incomplete understanding.Wikforss (2001, 2004) maintains, as against Sawyer (2003), that the answer is affirmative and that incomplete understanding presupposes analyticity, a notion Quine (1951) famously dismissed as ill-grounded.This paper argues that social externalism essentially relies on incomplete understanding without analyticity, stemming from misunderstanding of certain (but not all) prototypes.A person who does not think that birds fly betrays an incomplete understanding of the concept of bird while perfectly understanding the meaning of the word 'bird', insofar as 'meaning' is equated with 'intension and extension'.That birds fly is a conceptual truth about birds, but it is nevertheless not an analytic truth.Wikforss (2001Wikforss ( , 2004) ) is right in claiming that social externalism essentially relies on incomplete understanding, but is mistaken in claiming that incomplete understanding presupposes analyticity.Prototype semantics as assumed in cognitive linguistics favors social externalism, contrary to the official view of the school. Social Externalism and Incomplete Understanding1.1 Social externalism: 'arthritis' 'Arthritis' is one of the best-known words in philosophy.While it seldom appears in the linguistics literature, the word has famously been used in philosophical thought experiments in support of social externalism (Burge 1979(Burge /2007)), an antithesis to internalism commonly embraced by modern linguistics (Chomsky 1965, 1986, Langacker 1987, 2008).According to social externalism, meaning and mental content depend on the speaker's social environment, her internal state being insufficient for their 44 (2022.10)e102-e132 speakers who produce and understand the expressions.It is hard to imagine where else they might be.(Langacker 2008: 27) 1.2 Incomplete Understanding of Concepts Burge's (1979/2007) thought experiment makes use of what he calls "incomplete understanding".As seen above, Adam in the actual community believes that arthritis may afflict his thigh.This belief is not empirically but conceptually false, because by definition the disease afflicts the joints only.It is a conceptual truth that no disease that lodges in one's thigh can be arthritis.On the traditional conception, an individual's understanding of meaning is either (2) or ( 3).(2) The individual associates the correct or standard meaning/concept C with the word W.(3) The individual associates an incorrect or non-standard meaning/concept C' with the word W.An example of ( 3) is illustrated in (4), discussed by Burge (1979Burge ( : 90-91/2007: 119-120): 119-120).(4) "I have been drinking orangutans for breakfast for the last few weeks."We would not reasonably ascribe to a man who utters (4) the belief that he has been drinking orangutans for the last few weeks.A more reasonable move would be to take his 'orangutans' to mean orange juice 2 .In this move, the word 'orangutan' is reinterpreted as 'what he calls 'orangutans'', in conformity with the principle of charity 3 .As the result of the reinterpretation, the man is taken to express, with the utterance of (4), the true belief that he has been drinking what he calls 'orangutans', namely orange juice, for breakfast for the last few weeks, rather than the irrational belief that he has been drinking orangutans.In uttering (4), the man is not talking about orangutans but about orange juice.The same would apply to cases in which someone believes 'arthritis' to be a tree name or fish name.The gist of Burge's (1979Burge's ( /2007) ) thought experiment is that there is a third possibility distinct from both (2) and (3), namely (5):(5) The individual associates the correct or standard meaning/concept C with the word W and partially misunderstands C.The option in (5) admits the possibility that one may use a concept which one misunderstands.When uttering (1) above, Adam expresses the belief in (6), and not the belief in (7).(6) Adam has arthritis in his thigh.2 Burge (1979Burge ( : 91/2007: 120) : 120) qualifies the conclusion: "Contrary to philosophical lore, I am not convinced that such a man cannot correctly and literally be attributed a belief that an orangutan is a kind of fruit drink."But I shall not pursue the possibility suggested by his remark. 3The following is the definition given by Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "The principle of charity governs the interpretation of the beliefs and utterances of others.It urges charitable interpretation, meaning interpretation that maximizes the truth or rationality of what others think and say."