Form and Meaning

Abstract This chapter aims to portray the language of meaning. The notion of the scope of an occurrence of a logical constant is familiar and precise. On a Geachian account, it is just the scope that has changed, the meaning remains the same. The notion of scope may be of only illusory relevance. The question of the scope of an occurrence of a ‘logical’ word of English, far from settling questions about the local meaning of such words, cannot itself be settled before semantical questions have been dealt with; the formulation of those questions of representation and interpretation may require a subtlety of discrimination beyond any that the language of ‘meaning’ can support. The role of ‘any’ has the same role as 'some’, although ‘any’ is disjunctive in a sense, i.e. its role is different from that of ‘some’.