Flujograma del Proceso de Desarrollo de Materias Primas Propuesto

 3.31 Error theory

As a general methodological principle, it is usually good idea to be open to the possibility that the discourse we are trying to understand is mostly false. We can separate the questions of whether mathematical discourse commits us to abstract objects and whether there are such objects, or whether moral discourse commits us to objective values and whether there are such values. To say that the commitments of a discourse are false in this way is to embrace an error theory. Some error theories are very plausible; for example some religious discourse almost certainly commits to there being things of a kind which there are not. Interpretive charity must come to an end somewhere, especially if we have an explanation for people making the error in question.

As such, rejecting a Meinongian ontology does not immediately rule out a Meinongian analysis of discourse involving fictional names. Marga Reimer [2001] proposes just this package. We analyse sentences involving empty names as the Meinongian does, except that wherever the Meinongian sees reference to a non-existent, we see failure of reference. Even attitude ascriptions are then bad cases which can be treated along the lines of chapter one, because it is a mistake to be committed to the content the believing of which we are ascribing. There are no non-existents, so there are no contents with non-existents as constituents, and so nobody can believe them, and we shouldn’t say they do.

Reimer notes that even if a theory of gappy propositions like Braun’s (see §4.41) can account for all our intuitions about the truth of sentences involving fictional names, it can’t account for our intuitions about their content. Following A. P. Martinich [1996: 184], she says that non-philosophers think that when we use empty names we are talking

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about their bearers. If a kid says ‘Santa is coming’, or if I say ‘Santa doesn’t exist’, we say they are talking about Santa. These content intuitions commit us to there being a Santa, even if there doesn’t have to be a Santa to evaluate what the child says as false and what I say as true. And if what we say about contents commits us to a Meinongian ontology, then it is reasonable to take us as (implicitly) committed to one, and to give a Meinongian analysis of discourse involving empty names. This leads to either a Meinongian ontology or an error theory, and Reimer’s sense of reality is robust enough to recommend the latter. Reimer’s challenge is a serious one, and she is right to separate the commitments to the Meinongian analysis and the Meinongian ontology. We can argue that her position is uncharitable, but as with other error theories, charity has only so much weight. Another way of arguing against her is to point out that the case for non-Meinongian analysis of different kinds of discourse involving apparently empty names doesn’t only rest on the implausibility of the Meinongian ontology.

In chapter four we will distinguish two kinds of discourse involving fictional names, one which is about things as real as musical works, and one which is pretence and so does not commit us to anything. In §3.42 I will offer a non-Meinongian analysis of the attitude ascriptions. Even if we stand by the case for those analyses, we could still remain error theoretic about the content intuitions, although hopefully we won’t have to even do that.

We can of course question how strong and how resilient the intuitions are, but if we can’t explain them away, we can offer a non-Meinongian analysis of the content intuitions. We could take ‘x is about y’ not to be extensional in the y position, and analyse it the same way we will analyse intentional transitives in §3.42. Alternatively, we could follow Andrew Bacon [2013] and adopt an independently motivated positive

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free logic for ascriptions of reference and aboutness. The first option is closer to my own position, but Bacon’s proposal shows that Reimer’s is not the only other game in town when it comes to ascribing reference and aboutness.

An error theory would be appropriate if we found non-Meinongian analyses of attitude ascriptions unsatisfying, but still found the Meinongian ontology implausible. I agree that the Meinongian ontology is implausible, but I don’t agree that non-Meinongian analyses are unsatisfying. The case against Reimer rests in large part on the positive case for the analyses I will give later on, in §3.42 for attitude ascriptions, and in the next chapter for discourse involving fictional names.

 3.32 Pretence and paraphrase

Reimer’s error theory is one way of rejecting the contents because there aren’t the constituents: she says we’re committed to them and we’re wrong. A more charitable way is to say that we know full well there aren’t the contents, and so we don’t presuppose that there are. We might sound like we are presupposing that there are the contents, but we are speaking either non-seriously or non-literally. There are a few ways of cashing this out. On the non-serious side, we could say that the attitude ascriptions are pretence. We could either be pretending to attribute Meinongian contents, or pretending to attribute contents involving the abstract artefacts if we actually want to commit to those40_.

On the non-literal side, we could paraphrase the apparent attitude ascriptions as somehow conveying information about thinkers’ knowledge of the make-believe games, or the texts, or something like

40 _{In the terminology of §4.42, pretending to attribute Meinongian contents}

without committing to there being such contents would be unanchored pretence, while pretending to attribute contents involving objects which we do commit to would be anchored pretence.

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that. Walton [1990: 396-419] proposes something like this, where the paraphrases are unsystematic, but in each particular case taken in context it will be reasonably clear what information is being conveyed. My objection to the pretence and paraphrase accounts also applies to the error-theory. Certainly we do sometimes speak non-seriously, non- literally or falsely, in order to convey true information to one another. There is no particular reason in principle why attitude ascriptions involving fictional names could not be a case in point. The problem is that it isn’t plausible to say that this non-serious, non-literal or false discourse doesn’t convey some true information, and if we admit that it does, our theoretical work isn’t done. Saying that it isn’t part of the literal content and thus consigning it to what Kripke [2011d: 328] called the ‘pragmatic wastebasket’ doesn’t really help.

Recall the role of propositions for expressing generalizations about thought and communication. We don’t commit to propositions just to make ourselves feel better about our actual propositional attitude ascriptions; we commit to propositions either to explain or at least describe resemblances between the way thinkers cognitively engage with the world, and the way these resemblances propagate themselves through communication. The question about whether attitude ascriptions involving fictional names commit us to a level of propositions is not just about giving a semantics for the attitude ascriptions; it is about whether the resemblances we are conveying information about are properly modelled by a level of propositional content. I will suggest in §3.42 that they are.

Once we have done the work, investigating whether it is reasonable to invoke a level of propositional content here, we may find that a semantics for the attitude ascriptions drops out of it. This will be the case if two conditions are satisfied: the resemblances must be describable in terms of propositional content, and the resemblances so

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described must match up systematically enough to the sentences we use to convey the information that a semantics can be given. If it can, this will undercut the motivation for treating the attitude ascriptions as non-serious, non-literal or false. It follows then that treating the attitude ascriptions in this way only leaves the job half done, and until we have done the other half we can’t know whether we did the first half right.

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