David Lewis’s Theories Of Meaning

Language is an important tool for human beings,but no matter what function language plays,the understanding of its meaning is indispensable.Therefore,many modern and contemporary philosophers regard the theory of meaning as the core of language research,and have developed a variety of theories of meaning.According to David Lewis,there are two themes that need to be distinguished in the theory of meaning:first,the description of possible languages or grammars as abstract semantic systems that make symbols relevant to various aspects of the world;Second,the description of psychological or social facts,and thus the specific one of these abstract semantic systems is used by a person or a group.According to Lewis’s distinction,meaning theory can be divided into two categories:semantic theory and pragmatic theory.Semantic theory is to explain what the meaning of language expressions is,and pragmatic theory is to explain what facts about language users make language expressions have this meaning.Semantic theory is the theory of assigning semantic contents to expressions in a language.Semantic methods can be divided according to whether they assign propositions to the meaning of statements and,if so,what views they take on the nature of those propositions.Pragmatic theory attaches great importance to the study of language use.It studies the meaning of language according to the conversational behavior in various specific situations.Pragmatic theory often involves the study of language users.There are two approaches to the study of pragmatic theories.One can explain the meaning of the language used by a group from the mental state of its members,while the other cannot.This paper will first introduce the semantic theory and pragmatic theory,introduce various viewpoints in the two theories,and analyze these viewpoints.On this basis,it will elaborate how Lewis constructed his theory in these two fields.Lewis’s theory of meaning can be roughly divided into the semantic part and the pragmatic part.The first part is possible world semantics.This theory holds that a language L is a function that can assign truth conditions to statements,assigning each sentence a set L(s)of possible worlds.A statement s is true in L if and only if the real world belongs to L(s).The other part is his convention theory.The language L is used by the group P,if and only if there is a convention in P,that is,truth and trust in L.A speaker is true in L if and only if he tries to avoid saying something that is not true in L,a speaker trusts in L if and only if he believes that a sentence spoken by another speaker is true in L.Given the popularity of this convention,speakers who want to communicate have reason to follow it,which in turn keeps the convention alive.In the study of language as an abstract semantic system,Lewis holds the truth value condition theory of meaning.This view was first put forward by Frege,that is,the meaning of a sentence is its truth condition,which was agreed by many people and had a significant impact on the development of semantics.Lewis defined language as a function that assigns truth conditions to sentences and combined this with the theory of the possible world.Lewis holds that the truth condition of a declarative sentence is the set of possible worlds in which it may be true,and that the truth condition of an imperative sentence is the set of possible worlds in which it is observed.The focus on truth conditions is not because Lewis believes that truth conditions are the whole of language,he admits that languages have grammars.A grammar,in Lewis’sense,is a dictionary(for example,a collection of basic components,along with their interpretation),a generated component(for example,rules for making components into larger components),and a declarative component(for example,rules for linguistic expression).Lewis prefers to interpret language as a function that can assign truth conditions to statements.Lewis believes that in interpersonal communication,the speaker and the listener are faced with a problem of cooperation(coordination means that all participants can cooperate to reach a satisfactory result),and the selection of a language for communication may be a solution to this problem.That’s the way it works when lewis is analyzing the signal.But he doesn’t think it works for general language.The reason is that he treats conventions as laws of behavior,and it is often difficult to tell what behavior the listener will take.Thus,instead,Lewis argues,a group of people speak a language if and only if there is a true-speaking convention in L,and the convention exists in P.The parties to the coordination problem(and the convention to resolve it)are different people who want to communicate within P.Eventually they solved the coordination problem by speaking truth in L.Lewis answered what is meaning through his theory of semantics,explained the combinability of language,how simple language components constitute more complex language expressions through combination,and explained the relationship between compound language expressions and the components that make up them.In addition,the theory of the meaning of conventions explains how we can give meaning to meaningless language expressions in language practice,and how language is used by people through conventions.Through Lewis’s theory of meaning,we can clearly see what the meaning of linguistic expressions is and where their meaning comes from.