Jump to content

Use–mention distinction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In analytic philosophy,[1] a fundamental distinction is made between the ordinary use of a term (a word, name, phrase, etc.) and the mention of it.[2][3] The distinction between using and mentioning a term can be illustrated with the English word cheese below:[2][3]

  1. Cheese is derived from milk.
  2. Cheese is derived from the Old English word ċēse.

The first sentence is a statement about an edible product of milk-producing animals. It uses the term; the writer is using the English word in its standard way to refer to the common dairy product. The second is a statement about the very word itself. This second sentence instantiates a mention; the writer is mentioning the word but not using it to refer to anything other than itself.

Invoking the use–mention distinction can sometimes seem pedantic, especially in simple cases where it is obvious what is being referred to.[2][4] However, scholars argue that many philosophical works have been misguided, or misinterpreted by others, based on a failure to understand or recognize this basic distinction.[2]

Overview

[edit]

Referring to a word or phrase itself, rather than what the word or phrase normally refers to, is accomplished in written language by invoking single or double quotation marks or by using italics. In philosophy, single quotation marks are typically used, while in other fields (such as linguistics) italics are more common.[5] Some style authorities, such as Strunk and White, recommend that mentioned words or phrases should be visually distinct. On the other hand, used words or phrases do not carry typographic markings.[6]

The phenomenon of a term's having different references in different contexts was referred to as suppositio (supposition) by medieval logicians.[7] Supposition describes how a term is substituted in a sentence based on its referent. For nouns, a term can be used in different ways:

  • With a concrete and real referent:[a] "That is my pig." (personal supposition)
  • With a concrete but unreal referent: "Santa Claus's pig is very big." (personal supposition)
  • With a generic referent: "Any pig breathes air." (simple supposition)
  • Metaphorically: "Your grandfather is a pig." (improper supposition)
  • As a pure term: "Pig has only three letters." (material supposition)

The use–mention distinction is particularly significant in analytic philosophy.[8] Confusing use with mention can lead to problems, such as category errors.

Self-referential statements also engage the use–mention distinction and are often central to logical paradoxes, such as Quine's paradox. In mathematics, this concept appears in Gödel's incompleteness theorem, where the diagonal lemma plays a crucial role.

Commentary

[edit]

Stanisław Leśniewski extensively employed this distinction, noting the fallacies that can result from confusing it in Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica.[9]

Donald Davidson argued that quotation cannot always be treated as mere mention, giving examples where quotations carry both use and mention functions.[10]

Douglas Hofstadter explains the distinction between use and mention as follows:[11]

When a word is used to refer to something, it is being used. When a word is quoted, the focus is on its surface aspects, such as typography or phonetics, and it is being mentioned.

Issues arise when a mention itself is mentioned. Notating this with italics or repeated quotation marks can lead to ambiguity.[12]

In Limited Inc, a 1977 response to analytic philosopher John Searle, Jacques Derrida mentioned the distinction as "rather laborious and problematical".[4]

See also

[edit]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ↑ This use of the word concrete is explained at Abstract and concrete.

References

[edit]
  1. ↑ Wheeler (2005) p. 568.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Devitt and Sterelny (1999) pp. 40–1.
  3. 1 2 Quine 1951, p. 24.
  4. 1 2 Derrida, Jacques (1977). Limited Inc. Northwestern University Press. p. 79. ISBN 9780810107885.
  5. ↑ For example, Butcher's Copy-Editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Copy-editors and Proofreaders, 4th edition, by Judith Butcher, Caroline Drake, and Maureen Leach. Cambridge University Press, 2006. Butcher's recommends against the practice, but The Chicago Manual of Style, section 7.58 (15th edition, 2003), indicates that philosophers use single quotes for a similar distinction, though it is not explained in these terms.
  6. ↑ Wilson, Shomir (2011). "A Computational Theory of the Use-Mention Distinction in Natural Language". PhD Dissertation, University of Maryland. Retrieved 16 February 2013.
  7. ↑ See Read, Stephen (2006). Medieval Theories: Properties of Terms. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  8. ↑ "Quotation". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 16 July 2005. Retrieved 5 October 2009.
  9. ↑ Simons, Peter (2006). "Leśniewski, Stanisław". In Borchert, Donald M (ed.). Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition (e-book ed.). Thomson Gale. p. 292. ISBN 0-02-866072-2.
  10. ↑ Davidson, Donald (March 1979). "Quotation". Theory and Decision. 11 (1): 27–40. doi:10.1007/BF00126690. ISSN 0040-5833. S2CID 261211103.
  11. ↑ Hofstadter, Douglas R. (1985). Metamagical Themas. p. 9.
  12. ↑ Boolos, George (1999). Logic, Logic, and Logic. p. 398. In this 1995 paper, Boolos discussed ambiguities in using quotation marks as part of a formal language, and proposed a way of distinguishing levels of mentioning using a finite number of marks.

Sources

[edit]

Further reading

[edit]
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Use–mention_distinction&oldid=1378319236"