Language, Self, and Substance

Language, Self, and Substance

I will offer some sketchy remarks on meaning and the self in the light of the anti-substantialist view of the mind. First, there has to be something wrong with the Cogito as traditionally conceived, since the self (reference of “I”) is not a substance. We can’t say, “I think, therefore I exist as a substance”: the meaning of “I exist” cannot be that a certain substance exists, because nothing mental is a substance. The word “exists” here can’t be functioning as a predicate of a substance, and “I” can’t be a singular term denoting a substance; for then the sentence would be meaningless for lack of reference. What it does mean is obscure. Second, physical substances contribute to the meaning of sentences about physical objects, but so do non-substantial states of consciousness, since grasp of meaning implicates the ontology of consciousness. Meaning must be a combination of substance and non-substance, a peculiar hybrid. We are familiar with sense and reference; well, this is absence of substance and presence of substance. Meaning is going to be something rather special given its ontological underpinnings—a juxtaposition of external substance and internal lack of substance. It has an intelligible ontology and an unintelligible (to us) ontology at the same time. Third, sentences about the mind will find themselves in an awkward position: they are not about anything substantial, so their meaning cannot be fixed by the substance denoted. How then can they have meaning? Not in the way physical sentences do. They are about non-substance and also grasped by non-substance; so, they must be semantically quite different from sentences about substantial things. How can they have meaning? Must they have a pure use type of meaning, while sentences about physical things have a denotational substantial meaning? Fourth, the self cannot be a substance, so its nature and persistence through time cannot be like the nature and persistence of substances proper. Perhaps we need to look with more favor on etiolated psychological continuity theories, or admit complete bafflement. Nor can the word “I” function as a substance-denoting word: there is no such substance to be denoted; and it is unclear what else might be its denotation, if any. In sum, the elusive ontological status of the mind poses problems for standard theories. A semantics based on substance, such as our ordinary physical sentences demand, is inapplicable to psychological sentences, but nothing else suggests itself. Yet the sentences look very much the same. There is a real threat that psychological sentences can have no genuine truth-conditional meaning. A psychology without substances looks like a psychology that cannot be talked about. How can there be a science of such a thing? There can be no doubt that external substances play a formative role in the creation of meaning, but if the mind has no substantial ontology, it cannot play the same kind of role—so mental language ought not to be meaningful at all. This is a lot worse than indeterminacy of meaning, because now there are no (mental) rabbits to talk about, i.e., substance-like mental entities. Mental talk has no articulable subject-matter.[1]

[1] I feel paradigms shifting beneath my feet. Have we been complacently assuming a substance ontology for the mind in our theorizing about language and thought? What if we gave that up?