Is Meaning a Response-Dependent Property?

In analytic philosophy, language is especially significant. Philosophical analysis and the verification of the logical coherence of arguments are based on it. Therefore, the separation of content conveyed in language from the attitudes and moods of its speakers is a prerequisite and fundamental principle of analytic philosophy. This separation was sustained also when language became itself the object of philosophical investigation. Thus, the question what meaning is was investigated on the one hand with respect to the relation between language and the content it conveys, and on the other hand with respect to the relation between speakers and language. Meanwhile, the separation has proved untenable and there has been increasing cooperation between semantics and pragmatics for quite some time now. However, cooperation alone does not seem sufficient. For a number of aspects of the meaning of language, the speakers attitudes and moods are simply an integral part of the content conveyed by a verbal expression (a prime example are slurs). For these cases, an entirely different approach is necessary. This project aims to pave the way for it with the help of metaphysics. The project starts from the assumption that meaning is a property language expressions possess. But there are many sorts of property; we must therefore investigate which of them meaning is. A good place to look is a group of properties called response-dependent because having them depends on someones or somethings response. Examples are being funny or tasting sweet: something is only funny if it causes someones mirth, and for something to be sweet, it must taste sweet to someone. These responses (mirth, the sensation of sweetness) are therefore an essential factor determining whether an object possesses the relevant property. But this seems to be the case for words, too: they can only possess meaning if they mean something to someone. So considering meaning to be a response-dependent property seems an obvious choice. However, this is not enough to resolve the issue. It turns out that there is not one, but several, ontologically different sorts of response-dependent properties. So one of the tasks of this project is to define these differences. A distinction is to be drawn between properties depending entirely, and those depending only partly on a response. But the project will also investigate whether it is possible to distinguish between different response-dependent properties with respect to the nature of the response. Because surely, a response involving a judgment according to established criteria, for instance for the property of being acceptable, is of a very different nature than, say, a physical response as in the property of being corrosive. Once these distinctions have been defined, we can then investigate exactly which sort of response- dependent property the meaning of language expressions actually is. The project therefore breaks new ground in two areas: it establishes a new distinction for properties, and it thereby enables the philosophy of language to take a new perspective.

Is Meaning A Response-Dependent Property? Words, phrases, sentences have meaning - if they didn't, they wouldn't be words, phrases or sentences. And to have meaning means [no pun intended], meaning what they do to someone. But what is it metaphysically speaking for them to have the meaning they have? This project contends that having that meaning is a response-dependent property of the linguistic item in question. However, in the philosophical literature, the name "response-dependent property" has been applied to several metaphysically distinct sorts of property. So, the project first investigated the ontological bases of these properties. It found that whether something has a property often depends not just on the bearer of the property itself, but also on another object or on a conceptual framework or someone's judgment. Moreover, some properties must be manifest, others can only be dispositions or abilities that may, but don't have to, be activated or exercised. Accordingly, there are three different kinds of property that have been called "response-dependent": dispositions, judgment-dependent properties, and (truly) response-dependent properties. The project went on to look at philosophical theories of meaning and investigated which sort of property meaning is according to each of these theories. It then defended the view that meaning should be regarded as a truly response-dependent property, i.e. a property something only has when it causes the respective response in another thing (or person). In the case of linguistic items this means that they only have the meaning they do when someone responds to them by associating that meaning with them. Thus, the word 'water', for instance, means what we associate with it: the clear, (nearly) odourless liquid falling from the sky when it rains, filling rivers, lakes and oceans, and available to us when we open the tap. (Chemists give the word a meaning specific to their discipline; to them it means 'H2O' - at least in the context of their labs.) This metaphysical result of the project can now feed back into the philosophy of language and advance research there. Additionally, the ontological distinction drawn between the different properties that were all considered response-dependent in the past will help to tidy up the debate about response-dependence.