Tasker Nick
Hertford College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Synthese. 2022;200(5):351. doi: 10.1007/s11229-022-03846-0. Epub 2022 Aug 19.
Words are ubiquitous and familiar, and the concept of a word features both in common-sense ways of understanding the world, and in more theoretical discourse. Nonetheless, it has been repeatedly argued that there is no such thing as words. In this paper, I will set out a range of arguments for eliminativism about words, and indicate the most promising responses. I begin by considering an eliminativist argument based on the alleged mind-dependency of words, before turning to two challenges arising from linguistic theory in the Chomskian tradition. The first of these is issued by Rey in a number of places, including in his recent book (Rey, 2020). The second is Collins's ( 2010, 2021a) argument based on the alleged explanatory redundancy of words. I will also consider an eliminativist challenge based on the difficulty of providing existence and persistence conditions for words. One general lesson which emerges is that these eliminativist arguments, if they work at all, could be turned against a whole swathe of non-linguistic objects; in other words, the case for eliminativism about words is no stronger than the case for eliminativism about ordinary objects in general.
词语无处不在且为人所熟知，词语的概念既存在于理解世界的常识方式中，也存在于更具理论性的论述里。尽管如此，一直有人反复论证说不存在词语这种东西。在本文中，我将阐述一系列支持消除主义关于词语观点的论据，并指出最有希望的回应。我首先考虑基于所谓词语对心智的依赖性的消除主义论证，然后转向乔姆斯基传统语言理论引发的两个挑战。其中第一个是雷伊在多个地方提出的，包括在他最近的著作中（雷伊，2020年）。第二个是柯林斯（2010年、2021年a）基于所谓词语的解释冗余性的论证。我还将考虑基于为词语提供存在和持续条件的困难而提出的消除主义挑战。一个普遍出现的教训是，这些消除主义论证，如果它们确实有效的话，可能会反过来针对大量非语言对象；换句话说，关于词语的消除主义的理由并不比关于一般普通对象的消除主义的理由更强。
