Declaratives Are Not Enough - University of Pittsburgh

[Pages:44]Declaratives Are Not Enough Author(s): Nuel Belnap Source: Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, Vol. 59, No. 1 (May, 1990), pp. 1-30 Published by: Springer Stable URL: Accessed: 28/05/2009 14:42 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@.

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NUEL BELNAP

DECLARATIVES ARE NOT ENOUGH

(Received17 January,1989)

1. THE DECLARATIVE FALLACY

My thesisis simple:systematictheoristsshouldnot only stop neglecting interrogativesand imperatives,but should begin to give them equal weight with declaratives.A study of the grammar,semantics, and pragmaticsof all three types of sentence is needed for every single seriousprogramin philosophythatinvolvesgivingimportantattention to language.1

Part of the backgroundof my thesis is that in our culturewhen a logician, or nearly any trained philosopher,says 'sentence,'what is meantis a declarativesentence,2a sentencecapableof having,as they say, a truth-value,or maybe truth-conditionsa, sentence that can be used to 'say'something,a sentenceexpressinga proposition,a sentence thatcan play a role in inferenceas eitherpremissor conclusion,a sentence thatmightoccur in someone's(say Quine's)'canonicallanguage.' This is what is to be rejected.This is the DeclarativeFallacy.Instead, one should recognize that from the beginning there are not only declarativesentences,but, at least,both interrogativesand imperatives. The grammarianas re rightand those teachersof elementarylogic that seem to have miseducatedmost of us are wrong:give all sentences equal time, and do not take declarativesas a paradigmof what can happenbetweenfullstops.

I wish eagerly(butparentheticallyt)o grantthatthereare or maybe other sorts of sentences besides the declaratives,interrogatives,and imperatives,say the optatives,or the performativesa, nd indeedfurther on I will ask you to thinka momentabout the precatives,but it is no part of my thesis that I've got the goods on what sorts of sentence are enough;so if you just promiseto take my remarksas nonexclusive,we canmakesomehonestheadwayandallwillbe well.

PhilosophicalStudies59:1-30,1990. ? 1990 KluwerAcademicPublishersP. rintedin theNetherlands.

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1.1. DeclarativeAs re Not Enough

Here is an exampleof the DeclarativeFallacy.Frege says, rightlyor wrongly,that only in the contextof a sentencewordshave meaningthe famouscontextprinciple.3There is, I think,smalldoubt thatFrege himself,and no doubtthatthe traditionthatfollowedhim,has in mind only declarativesentences,4leavingout the interrogativesand imperatives altogether,and if so, then the contextprincipleis bad philosophy. For one thing,to the extentthatit is trueit is seriouslymisleading,for the role that wordsplay in interrogativesand imperativesis at least as importantas the role they play in declaratives.Thus,the word six can obviouslybe just as meaningfulin an interrogativeor in an imperative as it is in a declarative.And conversely, if you want a contextual explanationof the meaning of six, the declarativecontexts are not enough:you had betterknow as well how it functionsin interrogatives andimperativesD. eclarativecontexthasno prideof place.

You mayrespondthatonce you knowall aboutsix as it functionsin declaratives,then whatit comes to in the contextof interrogativesand imperativesis determinedand thereforesecondary.The point is doubly wrong.In the firstplace,it is a cheapphilosophicalshot, for symmetrically,if I know all thereis to know aboutsix as it functionsin imperatives,or in interrogativest,hen it is to an equalextentdeterminedwhat six comes to in declaratives.If for instance I know everythingthat anyonecan ask using six, then I know everythingthatanyonecan say usingsix. And in the secondplace, some words,and six is one of them, playdistinctiverolesin interrogativesa,sin

Whichsix speechactsaremostimportant?

Here the six is arguablypartof the interrogativeform ratherthanpart of a declarativematrixsuggestingpossibleanswers,asit mightbe in

Whichspeechactsrequirethepresenceof sixpersons?

For a second thing,there are certainwords or modes of combination whose significanceis principallyto be gathered from their roles in interrogativess,ay the questionwordsthemselves.Take whatas in

Whatis an illocutionarfyorce?

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Frege'scontextprinciplesuggeststhat whathasno meaningexceptas it occurs in a sentence,but the primarysort of sentencein which what occursis not a declarativeat all.If you wantto knowwhat whatmeans, look at it in the context of interrogatives- that is the best of advice. Another example is offered by the way or ways or functions in interrogativesh;ow or worksin,forexample,

Is it declarativesor interrogativesthat have invertedword order?

does not havemuchto do withtruthtablesor assenttablesor anything like those devices for understandingdeclaratives,because it has to do with the interrogativeform itself. I am supposingthat it is obvious to youthatwe arenotgivena yes-noquestioninvolvingthedeclarative,

Declarativesor interrogativehsaveinvertedwordorder.

Insteadthe or in the interrogativeis workinginterrogativeltyo determinewhatis to countas a possibleanswer.

Let me summarize:declarativesare not enough. They are too insubstantialto count as a paradigmfor interestingtheses in the philosophyof language.

1.2. PropositionsAreNotEnough

Here is an easy corollaryof or additionto my thesis:assertions,thatis, the speech acts so called,arenot enough.And it needs bearingin mind thatnot only are theynot enough,but theyare not in anyphilosophical sense 'primary,e' ven thoughthe canonicallanguagesof the dominant, more formallogiciansallowfor nothingelse. To supposethatassertion is the primaryspeech act is to commit at least a misdemeanorwith respectto theDeclarativeFallacy.

Well, you may say, avoidance of the DeclarativeFallacy is tired advicethatyou havetakenall yourlife, becauseyou area fan of speech acts, and all speech activistshave alwaysknownthat there are numerous kinds of speech acts, with non-assertionssuch as questions and commands being prominent among them. I, too, am awed by our magicalpowersto do thingswith words,but alas, manyof the central

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theoristsin this traditionarejust as guiltyof the DeclarativeFallacyas those philosophers,say, who exclude interrogativesand imperatives fromtheirinvented'canonicalanguages.'

Forexample,permitme to quotefrompage1 of a recentbook.5

The minimalunits of humancommunicationare speech acts of a type called illocutionary acts. Some examples of these are statements, questions, commands, promises, and apologies.Whenevera speakerutters a sentence in an appropriatecontext with certainintentions,he performsone or more illocutionaryacts. In general an illocutionaryactconsistsof anillocutionaryforceF anda propositionacl ontentP.

On the surfacethis looks to be a paradigmrejectionof the Declarative Fallacy,but it is not. The fallacyis, at the verybeginningof the theory, to endow everykind of speech act withthe same kind of content,here called'propositionacl ontent.'Let us say thateachassertion,or whatwe might call 'declarativeact' (this would not be Searle-Vanderveken terminology,but it is just as good) consistsof an illocutionaryforce F and a propositionalcontent P. Then you are guiltyof the Declarative Fallacyif you supposethatinterrogativeacts, or imperativeacts (as we might call them), can have the same propositionalcontent, P, as a declarativeact. Of course the whole drivingidea of speech activistsis thata singlecontentcan be clothedin a varietyof differentforces,and it is not this crucialidea about which I am now complaining.I am objectingonly to the DeclarativeFallacy,which here emerges as the special case of supposingthat interrogativeacts and imperativeacts have the same content as declarativeacts. I understandthat there are many speech acts that share a propositional content but differ in illocutionaryforce; good. And there are many other speech acts that share an interrogativecontent but differ in illocutionaryforce, and othersthatsharean imperativecontentbut differin illocutionaryforce. So the programis a healthyone;the only - but serious- mistakeis to suppose that you can identify the content of all speech acts with propositionalcontent, that is, with the content of declarativespeech actsor assertions.

One way to avoid this mistakeis to take the contentof a speech act to consist not of a propositionall by itself, but insteadto consist of a proposition togetherwith a markerof mood or perhapsforce - to count the force, so to speak, as part of the content.6But afterall this strategyre-commitsthe DeclarativeFallacy, for even with its mood

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marker,at bottomeach speech act is construedas based on a proposition, situated,so to speak,at the core of its core. Strictavoidanceof the DeclarativeFallacy,however, requiresthe recognitionthat interrogatives and imperativesare not just markeddifferentlyfrom declaratives, butpossessfundamentallydifferentunderlyingcontentstructures.

Ina word,propositionsarenot enough. I have to makegood on an impliedpromiseto distinguishthe content of interrogativeacts and imperativeacts from that of declarative acts,butnot now.7 Again, summarizingso far:declarativesa, ssertions,and propositions are not enough. They do not provide enough variety of content to supportthecontent/forcedistinctionof speechacttheory.

1.3. TruthConditionsAreNotEnough

There are yet more who thriveby committingthe DeclarativeFallacy. There is an enormousschool with an even more enormousgroup of hangers-onthat says that what we ought to pay attentionto are truth conditions,and thatto have a theoryof truthconditionsis to haveit all - well,most of themsay,grudginglyt,hatperhapswe also need a small auxiliarytheoryof reference,just in case the languageis non-canonical enough to contain a few singularterms.The reason this school is so large is not entirelya matterof charisma;in fact there is tremendous enlightenmentto be had by thinkingof variouspieces of languageas resultingby grammaticacl ombination,and seeing how the meaningof the grammaticawl holes ariseout of the meaningsof theirparts.Tarski was a genius.Nevertheless,the sloganthatmeaningis truthconditions is flawedin morethanone way,not leastbecauseit seemsto forceus to takethe conceptof truthmuchmoreseriouslythanwe should,nor least becauseit appearsto suggestthatour understandingof languageresults from internalizingthe recipes that Tarskiinventedfor the first-order functionalcalculus.

But I am puttingthese flaws aside in orderto call to your attention thatthe only items thatcan possiblyhave truthconditionsare declarative sentences,or at leastitemswitha propositionalcontent.Davidson's famous and deceptively short transitionfrom meaning to truth8is remotelyplausibleonly for the meaningof declarativesor theirilk. If,

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however,we wantto understandthe meaningof interrogativeass arising by compositionfromthe meaningsof theirgrammaticaclonstituents,as we should, then truthconditionsare not enough.Whatwe wantwhen we want to become clear on an interrogativeis what questionit asks, and what counts as a possible answerto it; and in the frameworkthat approachesthisproblemin the spiritof Tarski,we wantan accountthat sees this dimensionof meaningas arisingby grammaticacl ombination. Furthermorea, nd with equalimportance,just as with Tarskiwe investigatethe waysthatdeclarativesentencesare grammaticapl artsas well as wholes,so thatthey contributetheirmeaningto largercontexts,just so we shouldexpectthe sameof interrogativesw; e shouldexpectthem, in an adequatelanguage,to contributetheirmeaningto otherinterrogatives, or to declaratives,or to imperatives,or whatever.We shouldask fora Tarskiaccountof thedeclarative,

How importanttruth conditionalsemantics is said to be dependson whomyouask

that makes it clear that in that declarativethere are embedded two ingredientinterrogativesentences,each of which should contributeits distinctivemeaning.Let me emphasizethe point:interrogativesoccuras compositional elements in declarativesjust as truly as declaratives occur as compositionalelementsin interrogativesT. herefore,whether you believe that understandingclimbs the grammaticaltree compositionally, or descends the grammaticaltree contextually,you should agree that interrogativesand declarativescannot have independent theories.

Thereis of coursemore to interrogativesi,ndeed a greatdeal more. Here is a tiny samplethatarose in the workthatsome of us, including Bennett9 and Thomason, did together a number of years ago: in thinkingabout

Michael wonderedwhere each adequatetheoryof imperativesispublished,

we shouldsee theembeddedandthereforecontributoryinterrogative,

whereeachadequatetheoryof imperativeisspublished,

asitselfarisingby a universal

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eachadequatetheoryof imperatives

quantificationinto the open interrogative,

wherex ispublished.

That is, we have here a quantifierexpression transformingnot a declarativeinto a declarative,but an interrogativeinto an interrogative. Forunderstandingthesetransformationst,ruthconditionsarenot apt.

It is also obvious that the nature of the complaintsI am making counts againstthe sufficiencyof 'verificationconditions,'such as those urgedby Dummett,'0just as muchas they do againstthe sufficiencyof truthconditions.Itis theverytypeof theconditionsthatis wrong.

The same holds for imperatives,though to a lesser extent, for the content of an imperative act is certainly more closely allied to a propositionthan is the content of an interrogativea, nd therebymore easily fits the truth-conditionaol r verification-conditionaml old. Also muchless is knownabout the compositionalsemanticsof imperatives. In the firstplace,not muchis knownof how the meaningof an imperative arises out of the meaning of its constituents,althoughvarious essaysin actiontheorycan perhapsbe takento be contributionsto this theory. In the second place, philosophers have almost universally ignored the obvious fact that imperativesembed in largercontexts as readilyas do declaratives,so that no one at all has studiedhow the meaning of an imperativecontributesto those larger combinations. Whatis it exactlythatyouhaveto knowaboutanimperativesuchas

John,giveusa lectureon truthconditions

in order to say something interestingabout its contributionwhen embedded,asin thefollowing:

Mary,requestJohntogiveusa lectureon truthconditions?

A signalweaknessof the speechact program- not in its essencebutin its presentstate - is its failure,in spite of its attentionto imperatives andinterrogativest,o focuson theproblemsof compositionality.

Summaryso far of what is not enough: declaratives;assertions; propositions;truthconditions;verificationconditions.None of themare enoughfor a compositionaltheoryof meaning.In partthe thesisis that understandinghow such a theory works - or doesn't work - for

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