In analytic philosophy, a fundamental distinction is made between the ordinary use of a term (a word, name, phrase, etc.) versus the self-aware mention of it. The distinction between use and mention can be illustrated with the English word cheese: Some style authorities, such as Strunk and White, emphasize that mentioned words or phrases should be visually distinct. On the other hand, words or phrases do not carry typographic markings.

The phenomenon of a term having different references in various contexts was referred to as suppositio (supposition) by medieval logicians. 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 : "That is my pig." (personal supposition)
  • With a : "Santa Claus's pig is very big." (personal supposition)
  • With a : "Any pig breathes air." (simple supposition)
  • Metaphorically: "Your grandfather is a pig." (improper supposition)
  • As a : "Pig has only three letters." (material supposition)

The use–mention distinction is particularly significant in analytic philosophy. Confusing use with mention can lead to misleading or incorrect statements, 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

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

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

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

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

Some analytic philosophers have said the distinction "may seem rather pedantic".

See also

Notes

References

Sources

  • Derrida, Jacques (1977). Limited Inc abc ... in Limited Inc
  • Devitt, Michael; Sterelny, Kim (1999). Language and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language
  • Wheeler, Samuel (2005). "Davidson as Derridean: Analytic philosophy as deconstruction" in Cardozo Law Review. Vol. 27–2 November 2005 Symposium: Derrida/America, The Present State of America's Europe

Further reading

  • Moore, A. W. (1986). How Significant Is the Use/Mention Distinction? in Analysis Vol. 46, No. 4 (Oct. 1986), pp. 173–179
  • "Robert and the Use-Mention Distinction", by William A. Wisdom, c. 2002
  • "On the use of Quotation Marks", by Ralph E. Kenyon Jr. PhD, 29 December 1992, Revised 21 October 1993, Published in ETC: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. 51 No 1, Spring 1994. (accessed: 26 August 2006).
  • "The evolution of Confusion", talk by Daniel Dennett AAI 2009, 4 October 2009