Semantical Rules

         Just as there are syntactical rules, so too there are semantical rules.  In the contemporary Pragmatist philosophy of science the semantical rules describe the meaning of a descriptive term by exploiting the analytic-synthetic character of universally quantified statements believed to be true. If it is believed that all ravens are in fact black, then the statement “All ravens are black” is a semantical rule describing part of the meaning of the term “raven.”  The idea of blackness is a component part of the complex idea of raven, as is revealed by the redundancy in the phrase “black raven.”         Semantical rules are statements in a metalanguage, since they are about language.  The semantical rules can be expressed in the style of a Tarskian sentence using single quotation marks for object language and double quotation marks for metalanguage.  Consider the traditional Tarskian formulation: “’All ravens are black’, if and only if all ravens are black.”  This conditional sentence only expresses the truth condition for the universal affirmation.  On the other hand a semantical rule in the Tarskian style would read: “The concept black is a component part of the concept raven, if and only if ‘all ravens are black’ is believed to be true.”  Like the universal affirmation, this statement analyzes the composition of the meaning of “raven.”

Univocal and Equivocal Terms

         The definitions in a unilingual dictionary are semantical rules.  Usually each lexical entry in the unilingual dictionary offers several meanings for a descriptive term, because terms are routinely equivocal with several alternative meanings.  Even the English language, which has a very large vocabulary, economizes on words by giving each word several different meanings, which are distinguished in context.  There is always at least one semantical rule for each univocal use of a descriptive term.  The descriptive term is univocal if none of the predicates in the several statements functioning as semantical rules can be related to one another by a universally quantified negative statement.  Thus if two semantical rules are “Every X is A” and “Every X is B”, and if it is also believed that “No A is B”, then the terms A and B are parts of different meanings for the term “X”, and “X” is equivocal.  Otherwise A and B would be different parts of the one meaning complex associated with the univocal term “X.”  Furthermore some of the structure of the meaning complex associated with the univocal term is revealed if the predicates in the statements can be related to one another in universally quantified affirmations, such that some of the statements in the list form a deductive system.  Thus if the predicate terms “A” and “B” in “Every X is A” and “Every X is B” were related in the statement “Every A is B”, then one of the statements in the list could be logically derived from another. Awareness of the deductive relationship and the consequent display of structure of the meaning complex associated with the term “X” makes the meaning of “X” more coherent.  The dictionary meanings are only minimal descriptions of the meanings of univocal descriptive terms.  Such terms may have many semantical rules, when many characteristics apply universally to a given subject term.  Thus there are multiple predicates that universally characterize ravens, characteristics which are known to the ornithologist, and which may fill a page of his reference book about birds.

Relativized Semantics

         As said above, all the statements believed to be true and predicating characteristics universally of ravens are semantical rules describing the complex meaning of “raven.”  But if a bird watcher captures a bird specimen that looks like a red raven, he must make a decision.  He must decide whether he will continue to believe “All ravens are black” and that he holds in his birdcage a red nonraven bird, or he must decide not to continue to believe “All ravens are black” and that he holds a nonblack raven bird.  In either case a semantical change must occur.  Because semantics is relativized to a system of beliefs, it has an artifactual nature, which means that a decision is involved.  Color could be made a criterion for species identification instead of the ability to interbreed, although many other beliefs would also then be affected in violation of Quine’s principle of minimum mutilation of the web of beliefs.
         The decision is also ontological. If the decision to reject the belief “All ravens are black” becomes conventional, then the phrase “red raven” becomes a literal description for a type of existing birds.  Red ravens suddenly populate many trees in the world, however long ago nature had evolved red ravens.  But if the decision is to continue to believe “All ravens are black”, then there are no red ravens in existence.  In that case the phrase “red raven” is a metaphor like “vulpine man”, and the reader or listener is left to surmise from context and supply from imagination what the poet might have had in mind by his phrase “red raven.”  But if the reader-supplied metaphorical meaning later becomes conventional, much less trite, then the metaphor has become a dead metaphor, and “red” becomes at least in part equivocal with a new literal meaning, as with the two literal meanings for “running” in “running title” and “running turtle.”
         The bird watcher’s scientific discovery requires that all the ornithological reference books be updated either to include a new species of red-colored bird or to exclude the characterization that all ravens are black.  The availability of the choice is due to the artifactuality of the semantics of language and to the ontology the relativized semantics describes.  As it happens, since color is not conventionally definitive of animal species, especially if the birds of different color can interbreed, the books will probably not announce a new species, but instead will note that red ravens have been observed. These semantical and ontological details may seem rather pedantic, if not quite bird-brained, but semantics and ontology have been controversial in science and philosophy.  For example in 1905 Einstein’s relativity theory changed the semantics of the familiar term “simultaneity” in a way that many of his cohorts in physics had found difficult to accept.  And today economists still argue whether or not consumer credit card borrowing limits are money, a decision that is hugely consequential for a banker’s legally required minimum reserve requirements.  Our linguistic decisions alone neither create nor annihilate reality.  But they do change our characterization of it into kinds according to the degree that the current state of our semantics discriminates the sometimes profuse and sometimes paltry manifold of attributes, whereby physical things manifest themselves to us.

Clear and Vague Meaning

         Terms are univocal or equivocal; meanings are clear or vague.  Clarity is increased for a descriptive term by the addition of universal statements to the list of statements believed to be true and containing it as a common subject term, and also by the addition of universal statements believed true and relating the predicates in the list.  The universal statements may be either affirmative or negative.  Affirmative statements offer clarity by adding information and in some cases by exhibiting semantic structure.  Negative statements offer clarity by contrast and by exhibiting equivocation.  Vagueness remains to the extent that such clarification is lacking.  Vagueness can never be eliminated completely, since it is the absence of information, but it is reduced by the addition of universal statements accepted as true.  Inevitable vagueness is a manifestation of the empirical underdetermination of language.

Analysis of Semantical Change vs “Holism”

         Semantical change was vexing to the contemporary Pragmatists, when they first accepted the artifactual thesis of the semantics of language.  When they threw out a priori analytic truth they mistakenly also rejected analyticity.  And when they accepted the contextual determination of meaning, they mistakenly took an indefinitely large context as the smallest unit of language that can be examined.  This context was typically construed either as consisting of a whole explicit theory with no criteria for individuating theories, or even more vaguely as a “paradigm” consisting of a whole theory together with many associated pre-articulate beliefs and tacit skills.  This is a wholistic (or “holistic”) semantical thesis.  On the wholistic view a new theory that succeeds an old theory that has been falsified by empirical testing must completely replace the old theory together with all its observational semantics and ontology.  This view is typically associated with the historian of science Thomas Kuhn, who wrote a popular monograph titled Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, and also with the philosopher of science, Paul Feyerabend.  This wholism creates a problem for the decidability of empirical testing in science, because complete replacement deprives the two theories of any semantical continuity, such that they cannot describe the same phenomena or address the same problem.  If a new theory must completely replace an old one, such that there can be no semantical continuity, how can the new theory be said to be an alternative to the old one, much less be a better one?
         However, it is not necessary to accept the wholistic view of semantics, because rejection of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy and its a priori truth claim do not imply the rejection of analyticity.  The contextual determination of meaning implies only that the dichotomy need be rejected, not analyticity as such.  As discussed above, universally quantified empirical (i.e. synthetic) statements believed true for any reason are also analytic statements used as semantical rules for semantical analysis.  And the analysis consists of exhibiting the composition and structures of meanings by revealing their component parts. Therefore when a semantical change occurs due to a change in some of the beliefs in the context of a system of beliefs, some parts remain common to both the old and new meanings, while the semantical change consists in dropping some parts and in adding some new ones. The meaning parts that endure through the change from one theory to a later one are those occurring in the statements of empirical test design, which do not change. Furthermore since every predicate term has a semantical rule describing its complexity, the web of beliefs contains elementary components that may be called “semantic values.”  These semantic values are the smallest distinguished features of the real world that are recognized by the language at the current time.  The introduction of new semantic values produces partial semantic incommensurability between old and new descriptive discourse, such that discourse after the introduction of the new semantic values cannot be fully commensurated with the old discourse about the same subject.

Semantical State Descriptions

         A state description is a synchronic display consisting of a list of universally quantified statements containing both the currently nonfalsified theories addressing one problem and the test design statements that define the problem.  The theories may be nonfalsified because they have not been tested.  And the state description may be augmented with falsified theories for new theory development, so that it is a cumulative state description; old theories have scrap value consisting of language that may be recycled.  The state description is a semantical description, because the universally quantified statements believed to be true at the given point in time, function as semantical rules exhibiting the component parts of the composite meanings associated with their common univocal descriptive subject terms.  Furthermore a state description is for a scientific “profession”, which consists of the persons who are attempting to solve the scientific problem.  On this definition a profession is a much smaller group than the academicians in the field of the problem, while at the same time it is not restricted to academicians.  A diachronic display consists of two state descriptions representing two chronologically successive states sharing a set of common descriptive terms. Both synchronic and diachronic displays are static analyses; the diachronic display enables a comparative static analysis.  State descriptions are the beginning and ending points for a dynamic analysis, which describes the transition from one state to the next.

Scientific Realism

          Academic philosophy has often been a comfortable and remunerative haven from reality.  Even more than insane schizophrenics, inane academics need reality checks.  In particular pedantic philosophers need be told that there is a real world existing independently of human cognition, and that it is the first object of human cognition. Realism is not a conclusion that can be proved logically either by science or in any other way.  But all persons are experientially aware of reality from the awakening of consciousness.  That awareness is a primordial prejudice.  One is reminded of Bertrand Russell’s “proof” for realism: after announcing his intent he simply raised his hands.  Nothing spoken, but enough said.  This awareness grows in sophistication with the acquisition of language including in due course the acquisition of the language of science.  The advancement of science is the increasing adequacy of human knowledge of the real world.  For the empirical scientist the consciousness of reality becomes astute when theory reveals reality, and acute when reality refutes theory.  A falsifying test outcome is no time for Cartesian doubt that the first object of human knowledge is the recalcitrant real world.  Such is the basis for scientific realism.  Scientific realism is the thesis that the most critically empirically tested and currently nonfalsified theory, i.e. a scientific law, in science is the most adequate available description of reality. 

Relativized Ontology

         Ontology is the third of the metalinguistic perspectives after syntax and semantics. Ontology pertains to the real world as linguistically characterized.  In the context of science the characterizing language has meanings associated with the descriptive terms in empirically tested and nonfalsified universal statements believed true.  When scientific realism is joined with semantics relativized to universally quantified statements believed to be true, the result is the thesis that Quine calls “ontological relativity”.  Scientific realism pertains indiscriminately to all empirically warranted statements, but ontology is the distinctive characterization of reality claimed by the semantics of an individual statement. It may be added that no realistic claim is made by what a particular scientific discourse does not describe.  Silence is vagueness. As mentioned above, if one maintains the empirically warranted belief expressed in substantive language that all ravens are black, then both raven entities with their black attribute are real, and red ravens are not real.  Historically philosophers and scientists believed that they knew very well just what is real however much they disagreed among themselves, and they brought their preconceptions to the criticism of scientific theories.  This presumption led them to reject out of hand many new and empirically acceptable theories that did not conform to their ontological preconceptions. Eventually philosophers of science recognized that often the prevailing ontological preconceptions used by scientists to criticize new theories have been nothing more than ontologies described by previously accepted theories. Scientific realism lets the scientists do the ontologizing instead of the philosopher.
         Relativized ontology is the thesis that each empirically tested and nonfalsified set of universally quantified statements believed to be true defines its own ontology. It may be added that this applies to the universally quantified language presumed true in order to conduct the empirical tests, because it is empirical language having definitional force.  Ontological issues depend on prior decisions about semantical rules, which in turn enable characterization of evidence operative in empirical testing.  Subordinating ontological claims to such universally quantified statements believed true due to their empirical warrant is an outcome of the relativistic semantics, because the relativized semantics produces relativized ontology. Quine called this “ontological relativity”, although Quine imposed a nominalist ontology due to his acceptance of the Russellian predicate calculus notational conventions.       
         Relativized ontology effectively makes all referential terms theoretical terms, because it makes all entities posited entities.  The referencing of an entity is by means of the descriptive semantics that is described by the universally quantified statements characterizing it and believed true.  Thus the relativized semantics makes ontological commitment no less relative whether the postulated entity is an elephant, an electron, or an elf.  Beliefs that enable us to make successful predictions routinely are deemed more empirically warranted than those not so warranted, and the entities, properties or any other manifestations of reality postulated in those successfully predicting beliefs are invested with greater ontological commitment than alternatives.  It is to those manifestations that are most empirically consequential and about which we have the most characterizing information, to which we make our strongest ontological commitments. If the postulate of elves enabled us to predict economic fluctuations more accurately and reliably than humans, then we would accept busy elves as real entities, and would busy ourselves about them, as we have done with elephants and electrons for other types of predictable consequences.  And when we find our belief in elves to be empirically inconsequential, we reject the reality of elves, as we reject the reality of possessing demons once thought responsible for sickness. 
         As it happens, “demon” is not part of contemporary ontology, but it could have been otherwise.  Just as the meaning of “atom” has evolved since the time of Democritus, the meaning of “demon” might too have evolved to become as beneficial as the modern meaning of “bacterium” – had empirical testing regulated its evolving semantics.  Then today scientists might materialize (i.e. visualize) demons with microscopes, and physicians might write incantations (i.e. prescriptions), so pharmacists might dispense antidemonics (i.e. antibiotics) to exorcise them. But terms such as “materialize”, “incantation” and “antidemonics” would have acquired a new semantics in more empirical contexts.  As Quine observed in his “Two Dogmas” in 1952, we can preserve our belief in any statement positing anything, if we are willing to make sufficiently drastic redistribution of truth values elsewhere in our web of beliefs – the set of related beliefs that we use as semantical rules to describe our semantics and associated ontologies.  And ontologies based on scientific realism are those for which beliefs are regulated by empirical science.

Causality

        The ideas of cause and effect are ontological categories, because they are about the real world that exists independently of human cognition, which is not to say independent of human actions in the real world such as measuring.  The causal relationship is expressed in the nontruth-functional conditional statement that makes a universal claim that is believed to be true.  The causal dependency asserted to exist between what is described by the antecedent and consequent clauses is never proved or permanently established, but its tested and nonfalsified status warrants the belief in the assertion and thus in an ontological commitment.  When in the progress of science the theory is falsified, it is made clear thereby that the universality of the claim is not valid, and that a more adequate characterization of the specific causal relation is needed, if it is retained at all.  

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