Page 536 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Key Figures
truth for a language should then enable anyone to understand any declarative sentence uttered by a native speaker of the language.
2. Dummett's Critique
Dummett's concern is with the knowledge in virtue of which anyone can speak and understand a language. He takes issue with what he sees as the fundamental assumptions behind the truth-conditional account. First, it is committed to realism, which not only entails the equation of meaning with truth-conditions, but is also committed to bivalence—the thesis that every sentence (more properly, statement or proposition) is determinately true or false whether or not it can be recognized as such. Second, this latter commitment has the effect of placing many of the sentences of natural language beyond the recognitional capacities of its speakers. Examples of such sentences include those about the past, other minds, and especially counterfactuals, e.g., 'If Hitler had conquered Britain, he would have executed Churchill.' Sentences of these kinds could be true without native speakers recog- nizing when their truth-conditions were fulfilled. By contrast, for Dummett, speakers' knowledge of mean- ing must be capable of being manifested in their linguistic practice. If knowledge of truth-conditions cannot be manifested because those truth-conditions
exceed recognitional capacity, then knowledge of truth-conditions cannot amount to knowledge of meaning. Truth, then, realistically construed, is, according to Dummett, explanatorily idle. One can ascribe mastery of or competence in a language only to those who are capable of displaying it. This com- petence would be displayed in the use of sentences in circumstances inwhichtheirassertabilitywasjustified. Dummett is, therefore, appealing to some notion of 'verification'. A theory of meaning for a language will
thus be constructed on the recursive specification, not of truth-conditions but of'verification' conditions.
3. ProblemsandCriticisms
Some of Dummett's own assumptions have attracted criticism. If the idea of verification is taken in the sense of conclusive verification, then it would appear too strong, since people frequently acquire linguistic understanding in conditions which are rarely evi- dentially conclusive. Additionally, there are cases in which use might mask differences of meaning, or even cases where sentences differing in meaning might non- etheless have identical evidential grounds. It suffices to note here that Dummett has identified serious prob- lems for attempts to construct systematic theories of meaning.
See also: Formal Semantics; Holism; Meaning: Philo- sophical Theories; Realism.
Bibliography
Dummett M A E 1973 Frege Philosophy of Language. Duck- worth, London
Dummett M A E 1975 What is a theory of meaning? In: Guttenplan S (ed.) Mind and Language. Oxford University Press, London
Dummett M A E 1976 What is a theory of meaning? Part II. In: Evans G, McDowell J (eds.) Truth and Meaning: Essays in Semantics.Clarendon Press, Oxford
Dummett M A E 1978 Truth and Other Enigmas. Duckworth, London
Dummett M A E 1981 The Interpretation of Frege's Phil- osophy. Duckworth, London
Dummett M A E 1982 Realism. Synthese 52:55-112 Dummett M A E 1996a The Seas of Language. Clarendon
Press, Oxford
Dummett M A E 1996b Frege and Other Philosophers. Clar-
endon Press, Oxford
Wright C G 1986 Realism, Meaning and Truth. Blackwell,
Oxford
Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) made massive, revol- utionary, and lasting contributions to a variety of different philosophical fields. He is the founder of modern formal logic; he initiated the modern era in the philosophy of mathematics; his contributions to the understanding of how language relates both to the world of which it speaks, and to the thoughts which it expresses are second to none; and in philosophy as a whole, according to one authority, 'he achieved a revolution as overwhelming as that of Descartes,' by
formulating the methods, priorities, principles, and goals that were to become definitive of'analytic' phil- osophy (see Dummett 1973: 665-66).
1. Life
Frege was born and spent his childhood in Wismar, in the Mecklenburg region of northern Germany. In 1869, at the age of 21, he entered the University of Jena as a student of mathematics. Two years later he moved to the University of GOttingen where in 1873
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Frege, Gottlob D. Bell