Katz and Wittgenstein

1. Katz presents three proofs that sense is independent of use: baby-talk, derogatory terms, and megasentences. 'Urine' and 'pee-pee', he says, have one sense but different uses. I agree that they have the same sense, but 'pee-pee' in Baby-English and 'urine' in standard-English, like 'chile' (in Black-English) and 'child', have the same use too. Baby-English is a dialect; speaking it, you say 'pee-pee' just where in standard-English you would say 'urine'; thus, they have the same use. Derogatory terms are different: 'pee-pee' implies nothing about urine that 'urine' does not, but 'piss' does. The meaning of 'S is a kike' is not 'S is a Jew' but, roughly, 'S is a Jew & (x)[Jew(x)-*F(x)]'. The use of derogatory terms does differ from the use of nonderogatory ones, but so do their senses. Megasentences (say, with multiple 'who' clauses), Katz says, are never used, yet they have meaning; thus sense is independent of use. This argument is invalid: linguistic rules extend the sense of sentences that are used to those that are not used: most legitimate type-sentences are never used! 2. For Wittgenstein a word is what has a role in a language-game; thus a sample of Blue may be a word. A quotation is also a sample, denoting what it is an instance of, yet it is part of language (PI I, 16). Katz claims that Wittgenstein mistakes tokens for types: 'being part of a sentence-token does not mean being part of language' (MM 46). But Wittgenstein talks of typesentences: the type-sentence Pronounce the word may have many tokens; its fourth word is a type-word. It is surely mad to ask you to pronounce the very same token that I have just pronounced! Rather, it is the type word 'the' that Wittgenstein asks you to pronounce (you do that by producing a new token of it). Katz's objection misses that. Lexicographers notoriously differ in what they admit as words. Consider 'Aye', 'Yea', 'Ah-huh', and the nod used for affirmation: which of them are words? Why? Are interjections words? Is the under-the-chin hand-motion an Italian expression? Wittgenstein's suggestion that all types used in languagegames be treated as words is very reasonable. 3. A Wittgensteinian language-game may be as limited as PI I, 2 or have the vast expressive power of English. Katz demurs: in his view a language

Epistemology · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · Philosophy · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications