The case for eliminativism about words

Abstract

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.

Internalist priorities in a philosophy of words

“…My proposal is a radical departure from common sense, but this is no mark against the proposal, of course. Still, it might appear to be burdened with the onerous task of offering an internalist paraphrase of our externalist talk lest we adopt a thoroughgoing and wholly implausible error theory for all word talk (Tasker, 2022). Eschewing, however, an externalist model of ontology for a wholly internalist model of explanation concerning word-phenomena is not inconsistent with the truth of much of what we say about words even without exploring the periphrastic option.…”