Abstract
“I wish I had said that”, said Oscar Wilde in applauding one of Whistler’s witticisms. Whistler, who took a dim view of Wilde’s originality, retorted, “You will, Oscar; you will”. The function of this tale (from Holbrook Jackson’s The Eighteen-Nineties) is to remind us that an expression like “Whistler said that” may on occasion serve as a grammatically complete sentence. Here we have, I suggest, the key to a correct analysis of indirect discourse, an analysis that opens a lead to an analysis of psychological sentences generally (sentences about propositional attitudes, so-called),and even, though this looks beyond anything to be discussed in the present paper, a clue to what distinguishes psychological concepts from others.
I am indebted to W. V. Quine and John Wallace for suggestions and criticisms. My research was in part supported by the National Science Foundation.
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References
Alfred Tarski, ‘The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages’, in Logic, Semantics, Metamathematicsy Oxford 1956, pp. 152–278. The criterion is roughly Tarski’s Convention T that defines the concept of a truth-predicate.
The view that a characterization of a truth-predicate meeting Tarski’s criteria is the core of a theory of meaning is defended in my ‘Truth and Meaning’, Synthese 17 (1967) 304–323.
For documentation and details see my ‘Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages’ in Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Proceedings of the 1964 International Congress (ed. by Yehoshua Bar-Hillel), Amsterdam 1965, pp. 388–390.
Word and Object, Cambridge, Mass., 1960, Chapt. VI. Hereafter numerals in parentheses refer to pages of this book.
R. Carnap, The Logical Syntax of Language’, London 1937, p. 248. The same was in effect proposed by P. T. Geach, Mental Acts, London 1957.
The point is due to A. Church, ‘On Carnap’s Analysis of Statements of Assertion and Belief’, Analysis 10 (1950) 97–99.
G. Frege, ‘On Sense and Reference’ in Philosophical Writings (ed. by P. Geach and M. Black) Oxford 1952, and A. Church, ‘A Formulation of the Logic of Sense and Denotation’, in Structure, Method, and Meaning: Essays in Honor of H. M. Sheffer (ed. by Henle, Kallen and Langer) New York 1951.
R. Carnap, Meaning and Necessity, Chicago 1947. The idea of an essentially Fregean approach limited to two semantic levels has also been suggested by Michael Dummett (in an unpublished manuscript). Neither of these proposals is in detail entirely satisfactory in the light of present concerns, for neither leads to a language for which a truth-predicate can be characterized.
My assimilation of a translation manual to a theory of truth is not in Quine. For more on this, see the article in reference 2.
B. Mates, ‘Synonymity’, in Meaning and Interpretation, Berkeley 1950, pp. 201–226. The example is Church’s.
A. Church, ‘Intensional Isomorphism and Identity of Belief’, Philosophical Studies 5 (1954) 65–73; W. Sellars, ‘Putnam on Synonymity and Belief’, Analysis 15 (1955) 117–20.
I. Scheffler, ‘An Inscriptional Approach to Indirect Quotation’, Analysis 14 (1954) 83–90.
J. A. H. Murray et al (eds.), The Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford 1933, vol. XI, p. 253. Cf. C. T. Onions, An Advanced English Syntax, New York 1929, pp. 154–156.1 first learned that ‘that’ in such contexts evolved from an explicit demonstrative in J. Hintikka, Knowledge and Belief, Ithaca 1962, p. 13. Hintikka remarks that a similar development has taken place in German and Finnish. I owe the reference to the O.E.D. to Eric Stietzql.
I assume that a theory of truth for a language containing demonstratives must strictly apply to utterances and not to sentences, or will treat truth as a relation between sentences, speakers, and times. The point is discussed in ‘Truth and Meaning’, pp. 319, 20 (see reference 2).
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© 1969 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Davidson, D. (1969). On Saying That. In: Davidson, D., Hintikka, J. (eds) Words and Objections. Synthese Library, vol 21. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1709-1_11
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