Competent users of a language

Yesterday I pondered whether we can make sense of 'competent user' of a language, given that we can never fully master any language.  There about 170,000 words in current use in the English language, of which I probably know about 15,000.  New words are being added every year.  In addition to that, there are billions of proper names whose meaning no single person has knowledge of. I'm assuming that French, German, Indian and Japanese proper names count, given that they, or some Anglicised version of them can meaningfully be used as part of an English sentence.

Is there any sense to the notion of 'competent user'?  Perhaps we should distinguish between 'competent use' of a language and 'specialist use'.  A specialist user will understand all or most of the terms connected with the specialism.  The specialism might be in medical terms, engineering or scientific or legal terms, in place names, historical figures.  Of course, nearly everyone is a "Facebook" specialist in the sense they know the names of  their friends - names whose meaning they know but probably 99.99% of the people on the planet do not.  A generalist user, by contrast, will be equipped to communicate using terms that are in general use.  It might be difficult to set a boundary for such generalist terms, but it would probably include all the words in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, many proper names such as 'London', 'America', 'Caesar', 'Elizabeth II' and so on.

I will then define a discourse (i.e. a sentence or group of sentences) as 'semantically complete' when its meaning is clear to any generalist user of the language.

Individuation in perception

I argued earlier, e.g. here and here, that 'verbal' individuation, where we have only linguistic information about a set of characters, and where we use proper names or pronouns to learn which character is being talked about, is object independent.  No F actually has to exist, for us to be told which thing is F.  There are no hobbits, yet Tolkien can tell us which hobbit carried the ring into Mordor, which hobbit was his gardener, and so on.  Is the same true about 'perceptual individuation'? This is where we tell which individual is being pointed to, or who is the reference of a demonstrative proposition, or simply which person we are seeing or hearing.  Can we understand the demonstrative 'this rose' without there being an actual rose that is pointed to? Can you draw my attention to something, if there isn't a something?

Let's begin with films.  We can tell a story in a film, and usually the story begins in a verbal format, a screenplay.  Here, as I have argued, individuation is object-independent.  In That Obscure Object of Desire, (Luis Bunuel, 1977), the two main characters are Mathieu, a middle-aged wealthy Frenchman, and Conchita, a beautiful Spanish dancer, who ensnares Mathieu.  You can read the synopsis in Wikipeda, where the proper names 'Mathieu' and 'Conchita' tell us which character is the subject of each proposition in the synopsis.

The same story is told, in somewhat more detail, in the film itself. This scene here, for example, visually expresses the proposition "Mathieu is talking to Conchita, dressed in a maid's uniform, against the background of a flowers on a table etc.".  But we don't use proper names to individuate.  Rather, we use the images projected on the computer screen.  One image resembles a man with certain features, the other a woman with certain features.  These images are what some philosophers (such as Reid, although the medieval philosophers had the same idea) called natural signs.  We individuate each character in the film by a combination of facial features and (particularly in this film) by the context in which the features occur.  Bunuel's film is peculiar in that the same character is played by two different actresses.  Carole Bouquet (above left) plays Conchita in the scene linked to above.  In a scene shortly afterwards,  Angela Molina plays her.  Even though the actresses do not actually look that similar, the context - the uniform, the action and the logic of the scene - express the identity.  Famously, many people sat through the film without realising there were different actresses (I plead guilty).

So, a film can express a complex proposition involving many different characters. We can tell which characters is which by visual, verbal and contextual cues.  But no such character has to exist, for the story to tell us this.  At least some demonstrative reference is object-independent.

Ockham on semantic independence

In chapter 43 of Summa Logicae, on the properties of substances, Ockham gives a curious argument to support the nominalist view that truth and falsity are not real properties of propositions.  He begins with Aristotle's discussion of contraries, and of the puzzle that the very same proposition (i.e. declarative sentence) can admit of both truth and falsity.  The sentence 'you are sitting' is now true, for you are sitting. But then you stand up, and the sentence is false.  But the sentence hasn't changed.  How can it both be true and false?

Ockham argues that the truth and falsity of propositions are not some sort of quality inhering in them.   Otherwise, it would follow that a proposition was truly altered by the fact that a fly was flying.  And certain heresies would also follow - and here comes the curious argument (my translation).

For if the truth and falsity of propositions are qualities of propositions as whiteness and blackness are qualities of bodies, then whenever some truth exists, ‘this truth exists’ will be true, just as whenever some whiteness exists, ‘this whiteness exists’ will be true. And in the same way of any falsity. Then I accept the falsity of the proposition “God newly creates something”, which according to that opinion is a single quality of the proposition, inhering in it, and as a consequence is something other than God.

Then I ask whether that thing can be created by God, or not. If it cannot, then it is something other than God which cannot be created by God, which is against the Evangelist, who says “All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made.” [John 1.3]. But if it can be newly created by God, let it be given. Then “this falsity is newly created by God” will be true, and “this falsity is newly created by God, therefore something is newly created” will follow, and further “therefore it is true that something is newly created by God”, and as a consequence it is not false, and furthermore “therefore this falsity of the proposition does not exist”, and further still “therefore it is not newly created by God”.