抄録
Inquiry into the theory of meaning (hereafter refered to as “inquiry”) is a new method of inquiry in the philosophy of language proposed in the 1960s. It was considered new in terms of both its subject and method. In this paper, we identify the subject and method of Dummett's analysis, as he advocated his anti-realist theory of meaning. For Dummett, inquiry is the analysis of the ability that a person who can speak a language actually has, that is, a practical ability to speak a particular language. The ability to speak a language is not the ability to speak sentences or a set of such abilities, because one learns to speak a language not by memorizing sentences or their use. An analysis of the ability to speak a language is parallel to that of an ability to cook a particular dish. Dummett says a theory of meaning is a description of linguistic ability.
However, it is not clear how we can philosophically “describe” an unobservable ability that is distinguished from any observable act. In justifying his project, Dummett asserts that practical abilities can be classified as knowledge or nonknowledge. The former abilities, being knowledge themselves, have propositions the knowledge of which translates to the ability itself. These propositions are not a description of the ability from the outside but an “internal description” of such an ability. The propositions themselves are components of an ability, and abilities can be philosophically analyzed by clarifying these propositions. Dummett states that the abilities to speak a language and cook a dish are both knowledge.
In cooking, the recipe of a dish is an internal description of the ability to cook the dish. Therefore, we can clarify propositions corresponding to a recipe in cooking as an analysis of linguistic ability. Clarifying such propositions is inquiry, and the propositions constitute a theory of meaning for language.
