Sergia Emilia E.

Casio Word Count: 1392 On David Lewis Languages and Language

In his essay Languages and Language, David Lewis attempts to synthesize the thesis that a language is a system of meanings extracted from human culture and history, or a function, a set of ordered pairs of strings [of types of sounds or marks] and meanings (656) with the anti-thesis that language is a rational and social phenomenon which is part of the natural history of human beings; a sphere of human action, wherein people utter strings of vocal sounds, or inscribe strings or marks, and wherein people respond by thought or action to the sounds or marks which they observe to have been so produced (656) that pervade a population by way of conventions. In this paper, I will attempt to summarize David Lewis essay. The thesis states that the sentence is the domain of a language, while the meanings are in the range. The meanings come from what we know about any possible world, thus, meanings can be from worlds to truth values, or a set of worlds. This means that a sentence is true in a language (L) in a world (w) if w belongs to a set of worlds in which the sentence () is true in that language (L), etc. The anti-thesis states that a persons beliefs and desires the reason for which he produces sounds and marks. He does so to express his beliefs and desires. The receiver to these sounds and marks responds in a certain way and is able to conclude something about the producers state of mind and its causes because he is aware that the sounds and marks produced depend on the producers state of mind. He may merely believe what he concludes or act upon it according to what he himself believes.

Regularities in verbal activity within P are caused by replication of reasons for thinking and acting stems from the information garnered from the exchanges articulated above. They can be explained or accidental. They can be explained as conventions of the population in which they prevail (657). Conventions are regularities in action and belief that persist because it is in the majoritys best interest. Past conformity gives people reason to conform, causing future conformity. The conformity to conventions in a population has six conditions (in which the term everyone allows for the exception of a few): 1. Everyone conforms to this regularity R. 2. Everyone believes that others conform to R. 3. This belief gives everyone good reasons to conform to R: that the people one is now dealing with conform to R, or that there has been, is, or will be general conformity. These reasons are practical in that conformity is on the level of action, or epistemic in that conformity is on the level of beliefs. Epistemically, conformity to conventions is a matter of believing premises that confirm the truth of the belief underlying the conformity to R. 4. There is a general preference for general over slightly-less-than-general conformity to R. Everyone who conforms to R will want everyone else to confirm to R. This condition distinguishes cases of conformity from cases of deadlocked conflict in which people dont want everyone to conform to R because he would lose the chance of personal gain at non-conformists expenses. 5. There is at least one alternative for R that satisfies the last two conditions. Alternative R will give people as good practical or epistemic reasons to conform as R. There is also a general preference for conformity to R over anything less than general. There is normally no way of conforming to both R and R. R could

have been the regularity that pervaded a population instead of R. This shows the arbitrariness of conventions. 6. The facts listed in conditions above are matters of common knowledge, and the knowledge aforementioned may be merely potential. They are facts knowable to anyone who thinks hard enough about it, and they would not disbelieve it the way they know that others would not disbelieve it. Lewis says that if we examine the verbal behavior of two linguistic communities, we will find similar arbitrary conventions that perpetuate because of a common interest in coordination: the conventions of language. In synthesizing, Lewis goes on to find the connection between languages (as discussed in the anti-thesis) and language (as discussed in the thesis). We call this connection thusly: a given language is a/the language of (or used by) a given population, and this holds true by virtue of the conventions of language prevailing in P. The convention whereby a population uses a language is one of truthfulness and trust in it. A user is truthful to the language by never uttering a sentence of a language unless he believes it to be true in the language. The respondent to the user of language trusts in a language by believing that the language is truthful and believing that anothers utterance in the language is true in it. Lewis reviews the conditions that define a convention to verify the prevalence of a convention of truthfulness and trust in a language: 1. There is at least a regularity of truthfulness and trust in L. 2. Those in P believe that this regularity exists among them.

3. There is an expectation of conformity that usually gives everyone good reason to conform. The speaker expects the hearer to be trusting in L, so he has reason to believe that by utterances in L, he is able to express and impart his beliefs to his hearer. The hearer expects the speaker to be truthful in L, and has good reason to believe that the speakers sentence is true in L. We now have coordination between the truthful speaker and the trusting hearer. 4. There is a general preference for general conformity to the R of truthfulness and trust in L. Everyone wants to preserve the coordination in which one is able to impart his beliefs in L. 5. The R of truthfulness and trust in L has alternatives in that another language L may be as capable of meeting the needs of P for communication. 6. All facts above are common knowledge in P. We have come across this definition of language: a language L is used by a population P if and only if there prevails in P a convention of truthfulness and trust in L, sustained by an interest in communication. There are 27 objections that Lewis anticipates and replies to. I classified most of them into issues. Objections on indexicality are concerned with the lack of provisions for indexical, ambiguous and polymodal sentences, as well as with the inexplicit quality of the meaning of some sentences. Lewis replies by saying that natural languages are at once indexical, ambiguous and polymodal and shows how his theory is general enough to include these types of sentences. The meanings of sentences do not have to be explicit or fixed for them to be truthful because they were believed to be true on the moment of utterance.

Objections on the Definition of Language include that the thesis can allow for the inclusion of strings of sounds of marks that are not usable by a human population and do not have truth value. Lewis replies by saying that he is referring to natural languages and that truth value is relative to the P that uses L. Objections on Conventions and Conventionality have a lot to do with the conditions by which trust and truthfulness to L are conventions, as well as conformity to conventions. Lewis answers these objections by saying that the trust and truthfulness of L is a convention because there is always the alternative to the truthful and trusting in L. Beliefs and desires are what drive the actions that become regularities and thus conventions. The conventions of language are not the same as the rules of language because conventions are the reason for the persistence of language and not the way by which languages are used. The common man need not know the concept of L to be truthful and trusting in it, but it is enough to be able to recognize conformity and non-conformity to it. By synthesizing the thesis and anti-thesis, Lewis provides a theory of language that proves that philosophy of language can be one field of study, and not a separation between linguistics and theory of language.

Source Lewis, David. Languages and Language pp. 656-674.