Stephen R. Schiffer - The Things We Mean

CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD

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Stephen Schiffer 2003
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First published 2003
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ISBN 0-19-824108-9 (hbk.)
ISBN 0-19-925776-0 (pbk.)
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Introduction

Stephen Schiffer

Do there exist such things as the things we mean? If so, then those things are also the things we believe, and the things in terms of which we must understand not only the meanings of linguistic expressions, but their references and truth-value as well. If such entities as the things we mean and believe exist, an account of their nature must be the most foundational concern in what philosophers call the theory of content, whose concern is the nature of linguistic and mental representation.

In this book I argue that there do exist such things as the things we mean and believe, and I aim to give an account both of their nature and of how that nature affects certain foundational issues in the theory of content which turn on the nature of content. The book may be viewed as dividing into two main parts. The first part consists of Chapters , and it articulates and partially motivates the positive theory of propositional content this book has to offer (the entire book provides a more complete case for the theory).

In Chapter , 'The Face-Value Theory', a prima facie case is made for the face-value theory of belief reports of the form 'A believes that S': that theory of the logical form of those reports which must be defeated if it's not to be accepted. According to this theory, reports of the form in question say that A stands in the belief relation to the proposition that S. This theory leaves open the question of the nature of the propositions to which that-clauses refer. The debate about this further question among face-value theorists tends to presuppose the compositionality hypothesis that (nearly enough) the referent of a that-clause token is determined by its structure and the referents its component expressions have in that token. Virtually all face-value theorists who accept the compositionality hypothesis hold that the proposition to which a that-clause refers is, in a sense spelled out in the text, a structured proposition whose components are the referents the expressions in the that-clause have in that that-clause. This seems