Quotes & Quinean Quasi-Quotes, Quickly

Constantinople is a long word. Spell it!

Here, I try to motivate and introduce quotation and quasi-quotation. These devices appear all over the place in contemporary philosophy, because they let you express ideas quickly and clearly. So, it’s important to learn how they work and how to use them. My focus is on accessibility; no special pre-requisites are assumed. Footnotes are worth reading.

Strict Quotes

Constantinople is a long word. Spell it!

(A) C-O-N-S-T-A-N-T-I-N-O-P-L-E.

(B) I-T.

Which is correct? Actually, both are bad. A better answer is:

(C) It’s not a word, it’s a city; I can’t spell cities.

Clearly, something fishy is going on. When doing philosophy, we want to avoid this sort of ambiguity. We use quote marks to indicate that we’re talking about the enclosed term itself.¹² Constantinople is a city, while 'Constantinople' is a name of the city; it’s spelled as in (A), while 'it' is spelled as in (B). Here are some more examples:

• 'Quine' is a term that designates Quine (the philosopher).

• 'Philosophy' is a term that designates philosophy (the subject).

• 'Your subscription to Offhand Quibbles' is a term that designates your subscription to Offhand Quibbles (the thing you’ll get by clicking below).

Not-so-strict Quotes

Sometimes, we’ll add quote marks where, strictly, they don’t belong. For example, ‘‘scare quotes’’ (like that!) occur whenever, strictly, we’re not talking about the enclosed term itself, but instead using the term as normal.³ However, scare quotes allow us to distance ourselves from outright using certain terms as normal, and convey the sense that we’re kinda-sorta talking about the scare-quoted term itself.

Other times, we’ll omit quote marks where, strictly, they do belong. For example, I’ll often say that my name is Oak. Strictly, though, my name isn’t Oak, I’m Oak! My name is the term 'Oak'. But if I open an email with Hi, my name is 'Oak', I’m likely to get a response that opens with Hi ‘‘Oak’’, which looks funny — since they’re scare quotes, this implies some doubt that my name is ‘Oak’.⁴

As illustrated just above, I’ll sometimes also use italics in place of strict quotes. This is conventional in linguistics, for instance, where single quotes are used for glosses (e.g., my aunt has a cat named 满满 ‘plumpy’).⁵⁶

Quasi-Quotes

Enclosing an expression in quasi-quotes is equivalent to enclosing that expression, with each relevant term replacing its own name within that expression, in strict quotes. Often, the relevant terms are those named by Greek letters. For instance, if we take φ as 'Constantinople' (i.e., 'φ' as a name for the city’s name), ⌜φ is a city⌝ is equivalent to 'Constantinople is a city'. The 'φ' in ⌜φ is a city⌝ is the name of φ (i.e., the city’s name), so it gets replaced by the city’s name.

This is useful for stating general rules about terms:

• For any proposition φ, ⌜φ⌝ is true if and only if φ.

  • 'Constantinople is a city' is true if and only if Constantinople is a city.

• If φ and ψ are English sentences, then ⌜φ because ψ⌝ is an English sentence.

  • 'Constantinople is a city' and 'Istanbul is a city' are English sentences, so 'Constantinople is a city because Istanbul is a city' is an English sentence.

• ⌜φ only if ψ⌝ is equivalent to ⌜if φ, then ψ⌝.

  • 'Constantinople is a city only if Istanbul is a city' is equivalent to 'if Constantinople is a city, then Istanbul is a city'.

Conclusion

We don’t have to be pedants. Often, an apology for being careless with use vs. mention is more than enough. However, it’s good to have the tools for being precise, because sometimes we do need them — whether for reading philosophy, writing philosophy, or (more practically) dismantling riddles meant for children.

1. When we use a term, we talk about the object it designates; when we talk about an object, we use a term designating it. So, to talk about a term itself, we use another term which designates it. We can cheaply get this second term by just enclosing our original term in quote marks. Whenever we use this cheap second term, we talk about the first term.

2. In this context, 'mention' is synonymous with 'talk about', so philosophers will call this the 'use-mention distinction'. I use 'term' synonymously with 'name' (which emphasizes the designator role) or 'expression' (which de-emphasizes the designator role).

3. It’s clearly not true that the term 'scare quotes' occurs whenever we do this!

4. It is! My parents named me for Oklahoma State University, where they both went.

5. Yes, she (the cat, not the aunt) is quite plumpy.

6. Jarringly, they mark emphasis (we might call these 'scare italics') with ꜱᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘꜱ.