Abstract

This monograph introduces a new series with an inquiry into certain functions and limits of language. Tiles's immediate subject for examination is Strawson's claim that the use of language does not require a user who can recognize the identity and diversity of events. This suggests to the author that "language" stands for a whole family of systems of communication, possibly based on different kinds and degrees of cognitive activity. A brilliant investigation of successive "models" of the experience of users of language leads from simple to subtle structure and content. The starting point is an agent who is a mere "feature-placer"--he can only recognize and distinguish specific individual sense reports. Such a being can report isolated items of input, but that is about all, and it is not very serviceable. As the models become more complex, the author assumes that the sort of "language" we presuppose in our analyses is one able to function to guide human action in a cooperative social community. The kinds and numbers of different abilities this presupposed requirement brings with it-including the ability to recognize the identity of a recurrence of the same event--is developed. On the level a Kantian would consider that of "forms of intuition," insight is sharpened by a use of abstract logical tools to specify the formal conditions presupposed by the assumed psychological behavior of the language user. In some ways, the redirection from the structure and logic of language to the intentions and psychological capacities of its users may be reminiscent of an earlier development in Scottish philosophy. Readers of Whitehead, at any rate, may see some analogy to the redirection by Scottish realists from Hume's focus on presentational immediacy to the wider world of causal efficacy.