Excerpts of articles on conceptual role semantics :

Article 1 : Gilbert Harman (Princeton) “(Nonsolipsistic) Conceptual Role Semantics”

Full online version at : http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/concepts/NonSolips.html

In this paper I will defend what I shall call `(nonsolipsistic) conceptual role semantics'. This approach involves the following four claims:

(1) The meanings of linguistic expressions are determined by the contents of the concepts and thoughts they can be used to express;

(2) the contents of thoughts are determined by their construction out of concepts; and

(3) the contents of concepts are determined by their `functional role' in a person's psychology, where

(4) functional role is conceived nonsolipsistically as involving relations to things in the world, including things in the past and future.

`Thoughts' here include beliefs, hopes, desires, fears, and other attitudes, in addition to thoughts properly so called. `Functional role' includes any special roles a concept may play in perception and in inference or reasoning, including practical reasoning that leads to action.

I include the parenthetical modifier `(nonsolipsistic)' in the phrase `(nonsolipsistic) conceptual role semantics' to contrast this approach with that of some recent authors (Field, 1977; Fodor, 1980; Loar, 1981) who think of conceptual role solipsistically as a completely internal matter. I put parentheses around `nonsolipsistic' because, as I will argue below, the term is redundant: conceptual role must be conceived nonsolipsistically

Commenting on Harman (1982), Loewer (1982) takes this nonsolipsistic aspect to be an important revision in an earlier solipsistic theory. This is not so. Conceptual role semantics derives from nonsolipsistic behaviorism. It was originally and has until recently been a nonsolipsistic theory (e.g Sellars, 1954; Harman, 1973). This is discussed further below.

(Nonsolipsistic) conceptual role semantics represents one thing that might be meant by the slogan `meaning is use'. But a proper appreciation of the point requires distinguishing (at least) two uses of symbols, their use in calculation, as in adding a column of figures, and their use in communication, as in telling someone the result.

Symbols that are being used in calculation are typically not being used at that time for communication. When you add a column of figures you are not normally communicating anything even to yourself. A similar point holds in reverse. Normally you communicate the results of your calculation to someone else only after you are done calculating. There are, of course mixed cases. You might go through a calculation on the blackboard intending your audience to see how things come out.

(Nonsolipsistic) conceptual role semantics may be seen as a version of the theory that meaning is use, where the basic use of symbols is taken to be m calculation, not in communication, and where concepts are treated as symbols in a `language of thought'. Clearly, the relevant use of such `symbols', the use of which determines their content, is their use in thought and calculation rather than in communication. If thought is like talking to yourself, it is the sort of talking involved in figuring something out, not the sort of talking involved in communication. Thinking is not communicating with yourself.

However, it would be more accurate to say content is use than to say meaning is use; strictly speaking, thoughts and concepts have content, not meaning.

…

It is sometimes suggested that words have meaning because of the way they are used; the meaning of a word is its use in the language. Ryle (1953, 1961) observes that it would be a mistake to try to extend this idea directly to sentences. There are indefinitely many sentences. Obviously, most of them are never used at all, and most sentences that are used are used only once. Sentences do not normally have regular uses in the way that words do. Sentences have meaning because of the words they contain and the way these words are put together. A use theory of meaning has to suppose it is words and ways of putting words together that have meaning because of their uses, not sentences.

Similarly, it is concepts that have uses or functions or roles in thought, not the possible attitudes in which those concepts occur. There are indefinitely many possible attitudes. Most possible attitudes are never taken by anyone, and most attitudes that are at some point taken by someone are taken by someone only once. Possible beliefs, desires, and other attitudes do not normally have regular uses or functions or roles that make them the possible attitudes they are. Consider, for example, what use or role or function there might be for the possible belief of yours that you have bathed in coca cola. This belief would have a certain content, but no obvious use or role or function. The content of a belief does not derive from its own role or function but rather from the uses of the concepts it exercises.

…

Assuming conceptual role semantics as a basic framework, it is plausible that all concepts have a function in reasoning that is relevant to their content. No doubt, some concepts have the content they have primarily because of a special role they play in perception, color concepts for example. But the content of even these concepts depends to some extent on inferential role. A given color concept is the concept of a normally persisting characteristic of objects in the world, a characteristic that can be used both to keep track of objects and as a sign of other things. For example, greenness is a sign of unripeness in certain fruits. Moreover, there are various internal relations among colors. From the premise that an object is red at a certain place at a certain time one can infer that the object is not also green at that place and time.

In the case of concepts of shape and number, inferential connections play a larger role. Perceptual connections are still relevant; to some extent your concept of a triangle involves your notion of what a triangle looks like and your concept of various natural numbers is connection with your ability to count objects you perceive. But the role these notions play in inference looms larger.

The concept expressed by the word `because' plays an important role in one's understanding of phenomena and has (I believe) a central role in inference, since inference is often inference to the best explanation. This role makes the concept expressed by `because' the concept it is, I believe. Is perception relevant at all here? Perhaps. It may be that you sometimes directly perceive causality or certain explanatory relations, and it may be that this helps to determine the content of the concept you express with the word `because'. Or perhaps not. Maybe the perception of causality and other explanatory relations is always mediated by inference.

…

Logical words have a function in inference and reasoning because certain implications and inconsistencies depend on them. Inference is, of course, a process of thought which typically culminates in a change in view, a change in your beliefs if it is theoretical reasoning, a change in plans and intentions for practical reasoning. (There is also the limiting case in which you make no change.)

There is as yet no substantial theory of inference or reasoning. To be sure, logic is well developed; but logic is not a theory of inference or reasoning. Logic is a theory of implication and inconsistency.

Logic is relevant to reasoning because implication and inconsistency are. Implication and inconsistency are relevant to reasoning because implication is an explanatory relation and because inconsistency is a kind of incoherence, and in reasoning you try among other things to increase the explanatory coherence of your view (Harman, 1986a). Particularly relevant are relations of immediate or obvious psychological implication and immediate or obvious psychological inconsistency.

These notions, of immediate implication and inconsistency for a person S, might be partly explained as follows. If P and R immediately imply Q for S, then, if S accepts P and R and considers whether Q, S is strongly disposed to accept Q too, unless S comes to reject P or R. If U and V are immediately inconsistent for S, S is strongly disposed not to accept both, so that, if S accepts the one, S is strongly disposed not to accept the other without giving up the first.

I should stress that these dispositions are only dispositions or tendencies which might be overridden by other factors. Sometimes one has to continue to believe things one knows are inconsistent, because one does not know of any good way to resolve the inconsistency. Furthermore, the conditions I have stated are at best only necessary conditions. For example, as Scott Soames has pointed out to me, U and `I do not believe U' satisfy the last condition without being inconsistent. Soames has also observed that the principles for implication presuppose there is not a purely probabilistic rule of acceptance for belief. Otherwise one might accept P and Q without accepting their conjunction, which they obviously imply, on the grounds that the conjuncts can have a high probability without the conjunction having such a high probability. I have elsewhere argued against such a purely probabilistic rule (Harman, 1986a).

Now, if logical concepts are entirely fixed by their functions in reasoning, a concept C expresses logical conjunction if it serves to combine two thoughts P and Q to form a third thought C(P,Q), where the role of C can be characterized in terms of the principles of `conjunction introduction' and `conjunction elimination'. In other words, P and Q obviously and immediately imply, and are immediate obvious psychological implications of, C(P,Q). Similarly, a concept N expresses logical negation if it applies to a thought P to form a second thought N(P) and the role of N can be characterized as follows: N(P) is obviously inconsistent with P and is immediately implied by anything else that is obviously inconsistent with P and vice versa, that is, anything obviously inconsistent with N(P) immediately implies P. (I am indebted to Scott Soames for pointing out that this last clause is needed.) In the same way, concepts express one or another type of logical quantification if their function can be specified by relevant principles of generalization and instantiation. To repeat, this holds only on the assumption that logical concepts are determined entirely by their role in reasoning and that any role in perception they might have is not essential or derives from role in reasoning.

Article 2 : Ned Block (NYU) “Functional Role Semantics” in MITECS: The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences

According to functional role semantics (FRS), the meaning of a MENTAL REPRESENTATION is its role in the cognitive life of the agent, for example in perception, thought and DECISION MAKING. It is an extension of the well-known "use" theory of meaning, according to which the meaning of a word is its use in communication and more generally, in social interaction. FRS supplements external use by including the role of a symbol inside a computer or a brain. The uses appealed to are not just actual, but also counterfactual: not only what effects a thought does have, but also what effects it would have had if stimuli or other states had differed. The view has arisen separately in philosophy (where it is sometimes called "inferential," or "functional" role semantics) and in cognitive science (where it is sometimes called "procedural semantics"). The view originated with Wittgenstein and Sellars, but the source in contemporary philosophy is a series of papers by Harman (see his 1987) and Field (1977). Other proponents in philosophy have included Block, Horwich, Loar, McGinn, and Peacocke; in cognitive science, they include Woods, Miller, and Johnson-Laird.

FRS is motivated in part by the fact that many terms seem definable only in conjunction with one another, and not in terms outside of the circle they form. For example, in learning the theoretical terms of Newtonian mechanics -- force, mass, kinetic energy, momentum, and so on -- we do not learn definitions outside the circle. There are no such definitions. We learn the terms by learning how to use them in our thought processes, especially in solving problems. Indeed, FRS explains the fact that modern scientists cannot understand the phlogiston theory without learning elements of an old language that expresses the old concepts. The functional role of, for example, "principle" as used by phlogiston theorists is very different from the functional role of any term or complex of terms of modern physics, and hence we must acquire some approximation of the eighteenth century functional roles if we want to understand their ideas.

FRS seems to give a plausible account of the meanings of the logical connectives. For example, we could specify the meaning of "and" by noting that certain inferences -- for example, the inferences from sentences p and q to p and q, and the inference from p and q to p -- have a special status (they are "primitively compelling" in Peacocke's 1992 terminology). But it may be said that the logical connectives are a poor model for language and for concepts more generally. One of the most important features of our CONCEPTS is that they refer -- that is, that they pick out objects in the world.

In part for this reason, many theorists prefer a two-factor version of FRS. On this view, meaning consists of an internal, "narrow" aspect of meaning -- which is handled by functional roles that are within the body -- and an external referential/truth-theoretic aspect of meaning. According to the external factor, "Superman flies" and "Clark Kent flies" are semantically the same because Superman = Clark Kent; the internal factor is what distinguishes them. But the internal factor counts "Water is more greenish than bluish" as semantically the same in my mouth as in the mouth of my twin on TWIN EARTH. In this case, it is the external factor that distinguishes them.

Two-factor theories gain some independent plausibility from the need of them to account for indexical thought and assertions, assertions whose truth depends on facts about when and where they were made and by whom. For example, suppose that you and I say "I am ill." One aspect of the meaning of "I" is common to us, another aspect is different. What is the same is that our terms are both used according to the rule that they refer to the speaker; what is different is that the speakers are different. White (1982) generalized this distinction to apply to the internal and external factors for all referring expressions, not just INDEXICALS.