The Basis of Meaning, Misc

This paper contests a point that Jacques Derrida and John Searle actually agree on, within their infamous debate: that a sign must be repeatable. I focus on a situation involving dissent when evaluating this claim.

Explained how expressions with pathological self reference can simply be rejected as semantically/syntactically unsound thus preventing undefinability, and undecidability. This sentence is not true: "This sentence is not true" is true only because the inner sentence is semantically unsound. The inner sentence is formalized in Minimal Type Theory as LP := ~True(LP). (where A := B means A is defined as B).

"true on the basis of meaning expressed in language" reframes the analytic synthetic distinction making the line of demarcation unequivocal. This builds on the notion of formalism from the philosophy of mathematics, extending it. All of computation can be construed as applying finite string transformation rules to finite string inputs. Stipulated relations between finite strings is the ultimate basis for all knowledge that can be expressed in language. -/- .

There are several linguistic phenomena that, when examined closely, give evidence that people speak through characters, much like authors of literary works do, in everyday discourse. However, most approaches in linguistics and in the philosophy of language leave little theoretical room for the appearance of characters in discourse. In particular, there is no linguistic criterion found to date, which can mark precisely what stretch of discourse within an utterance belongs to a character, and to which character. And yet, without at (...) least tentatively marking the division of labor between the different characters in an utterance, it is absolutely impossible to arrive at an acceptable interpretation of it. As an alternative, I propose to take character use seriously, as an essential feature of discourse in general, a feature speakers and listeners actively seek out in utterances. I offer a simple typology of actions in discourse that draws on this understanding, and demonstrate its usefulness for the analysis of a conversation transcript. (shrink)

In this note, I point out some implications of the experiential principle* for the nature of the relationship between language and the world. I argue that this principle implies the existence of a certain relationship between linguistic tokens and facts, and that this relationship undermines most critiques of the referentiality of language.

1st GPMR Workshop on Logic and Semantics: Medieval Logic and Modern Applied Logic, Reinische Friedrich Wilhelms Universität Bonn, Germany, 2007.

Should we displace the moral responsibility from the individual to the social in accounts of oppression, discrimination, and injustice? Here, I consider anti-individualist challenges to the explanation of social phenomena and of social injustice. First, I argue that those challenges are consistent with social phenomena that are constituted by people’s attitudes and actions, and I provide evidence from research in the social sciences to this effect. Second, I argue that putative paradigm cases of structural injustice are cases where individuals, or (...) collectives of individuals, have moral responsibility, or are cases with no individual or collective culprits, and where it is questionable that they are unjust. (shrink)

Responsibility requires causation. But there are different kinds of causes. Some are connected to their effects; others are disconnected. We ask how children's developing ability to distinguish causes relates to their understanding of moral responsibility. We found in Experiment 1 that when Andy hits Suzy with his bike, she falls into a fence and it breaks, 3-year-old children treated "caused", "break" and "fault" as referring to the direct cause, Suzy. By 4, they differentiated causes: Andy "caused" the fence to break, (...) it's his "fault", but Suzy "broke" it. We found in Experiment 2 that when the chain involved disconnection, 3-year-olds focused only on the direct cause. Around 5 they distinguished causes, saying that the disconnecting cause "caused" an object to break, it’s their "fault", but the direct cause "broke" it. Our findings relate to the outcome-to-intention shift in moral responsibility and suggest a more fundamental shift in children's understanding of causation. (shrink)

This article argues that thought cannot be understood either as a simple manipulation of symbols or as the effect of a formal system closed upon itself. Thinking consists in circulating between several levels of meaning, from the sensible inscription of contents within an experience of the world to the operations of formalization, reflection, and metatheoretical re-elaboration. The problem of thought thus appears first of all as a problem of reference: a statement gains access to meaning only insofar as it refers (...) to more than its syntactic structure alone. This thesis is examined on the basis of several classical and contemporary difficulties: the difference between linguistic production and effective thought, the impasses of logical self-reference, the status of reflexive certainty, understanding as the unification of a manifold, and finally the limits encountered by every formalism when it claims to account for its own conditions of sense. These analyses converge toward one and the same idea: the causal and material supports of thought, indispensable though they are, do not exhaust its reference, its normativity, or its lived unity. It is this irreducible gap that the article proposes to think under the name of the dualism of meaning. Far from designating an absolute separation between two heterogeneous substances, this dualism refers to the difference between several regimes of intelligibility. It makes it possible to understand why a machine could gain access to authentic thought only on condition that it cease to be reducible to the execution of algorithms, that is, on condition that it acquire a relation of its own to the world, to itself, and to the possibility of its statements. For more detailed developments, see Philosophy of Meaning, Geoffroy de Clisson (open access on PhilPapers). (shrink)

Cet article soutient que la pensée ne peut être comprise comme une simple manipulation de symboles ni comme l’effet d’un système formel clos sur lui-même. Penser consiste à circuler entre plusieurs étages de signification, depuis l’inscription sensible des contenus dans une expérience du monde jusqu’aux opérations de formalisation, de réflexion et de réélaboration métathéorique. Le problème de la pensée apparaît alors d’abord comme un problème de référence : un énoncé n’accède à la signification que s’il renvoie à davantage que sa (...) seule structure syntaxique. Cette thèse est examinée à partir de plusieurs difficultés classiques et contemporaines : la différence entre production langagière et pensée effective, les impasses de l’autoréférence logique, le statut de la certitude réflexive, la compréhension comme unification d’un divers, enfin les limites rencontrées par tout formalisme lorsqu’il prétend rendre compte de ses propres conditions de sens. Ces analyses convergent vers une même idée : les supports causaux et matériels de la pensée, pour indispensables qu’ils soient, n’en épuisent ni la référence, ni la normativité, ni l’unité vécue. C’est cet écart irréductible que l’article propose de penser sous le nom de dualisme de la signification. Loin de désigner une séparation absolue entre deux substances hétérogènes, ce dualisme renvoie à la différence entre plusieurs régimes d’intelligibilité. Il permet de comprendre pourquoi une machine ne pourrait accéder à une pensée authentique qu’à la condition de ne plus être réductible à l’exécution d’algorithmes, c’est-à-dire d’acquérir un rapport propre au monde, à elle-même et à la possibilité de ses énoncés. Pour des développements plus détaillés, se référer à la Philosophie de la Signification, Geoffroy de Clisson (en libre accès sur PhilPapers). (shrink)

This paper extends implication-space semantics to include first-order quantification. Implication-space semantics has recently been introduced as an inferentialist formal semantics that can capture nonmonotonic and nontransitive material inferences. Extant versions, however, include only propositional logic. This paper extends the framework so as to recover classical first-order logic. The goal is to formulate a theory in which consequence relations can be nonmonotonic and supraclassical, while obeying the deduction-detachment theorem and disjunction simplification, while also including conjunctions that behave multiplicatively as premises and (...) counterexamples to the usual quantifier rules. The paper explains these constraints and shows how they can be met jointly. The result is a first-order version of implication-space semantics that has all the virtues for which inferentialists and inferential expressivists praise propositional implication-space semantics. (shrink)

In his 2023 book The Concept of Democracy: An Essay on Conceptual Amelioration and Abandonment, Herman Cappelen argues that we should stop using ‘democracy’ and ‘democratic’ (D-words). In this paper, I critically engage with Cappelen’s argument, focusing primarily on his contention that D-words likely fail us semantically, either by being meaningless or by having massively mismatched extensions. Against Cappelen, I argue for three claims. First, even if D-words aren’t fully semantically settled, they are likely at least partially settled. Second, even (...) if D-words are only partially semantically settled, they can be useful enough to retain in our conceptual repertoire. Third, even if the extension of D-words is massively mismatched, this would be a serious consideration for their abandonment only under specific conditions that don’t seem to obtain in the case of the mismatches that Cappelen considers. I also address the objection that my defence of D-words is overly optimistic, as it underestimates the extent of their normative exploitation. (shrink)

This entry gives an overview of use theories of meaning qua theories about the nature of meaningfulness. Such theories analyze what it is for an expression to have a meaning in terms of its relation to use in certain conditions. They vary along two dimensions: first, how they take meaningfulness to relate expressions to use in such conditions (e. g. via dispositions of use, conventional regularities in use or rules governing use); and, second, what sorts of conditions they take to (...) be relevant (e. g. while certain worldly states obtain, while being in mental states, while performing acts of speaker meaning). The main varieties of views discussed are Lewisian Conventionalism, the Gricean Program, and Rule-Based views. (shrink)

This paper introduces a model-based account of meaning, arguing that meaning properties reside in models rather than in the external world. Building on this view, it explores how such an instrumentalist framework can engage critically with various concerns raised by Wittgenstein, Quine, and Kripke[nstein]—each of whom voiced scepticism toward certain conceptions of semantic theorising and, in some cases, the reification of meaning. While the scope and nature of their respective criticisms may differ, the paper suggests they share a broadly deflationary (...) attitude toward semantic metaphysics. Twentieth-century challenges to mainstream truth-conditional semantics, from verificationism, inferentialism, and other alternatives, have further complicated the semantic landscape, prompting a reconsideration of metaphysical assumptions in theories of meaning. In light of both scepticism about meaning and explanatory disagreement in semantics, the paper questions the metaphysical interpretation of theories of meaning and proposes a reoriented understanding of semantic theorising—one that is formally tractable yet philosophically restrained. (shrink)

Jaroslav Peregrin’s project in Normative Species: How Naturalized Inferentialism Explains Us is to provide an account of the emergence of normativity. He takes the project to be essential for understanding the kind of creatures we are, namely, normative creatures whose lives are governed by rules. My focus in this response is on linguistic meaning, and on the kind of explanation of language that Peregrin puts forward. While I agree that meaning depends on the intersection of many cognitions, I have doubts (...) about some aspects of Peregrin’s conception of this intersection. (shrink)

From “Is Semantics Possible?” (1970) to his seminal work “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” (1975), Hilary Putnam developed his semantic externalism about the meaning and reference of natural kind terms. His metasemantic position, especially his idea of ‘indexicality’, is typically interpreted as a form of physical externalism. Such a view is committed to both natural kind realism (as a basis for reference determination) and causal-historical chains (as a basis for reference preservation). I contend that this interpretation requires reconsideration. Some scholars have (...) presented textual evidence that Putnam did not presuppose natural kind realism when he developed his metasemantic position during the relevant period. Nonetheless, the question of how Putnam’s semantic externalism should be reformulated remains open. In this paper, I reconstruct his metasemantic position as what I term convergent externalism. On this account, the diachronic identity of reference is both guided by norms inherent to our linguistic practices and retroactively secured. While Putnam revised his general philosophical views throughout his career, my thesis demonstrates that the metasemantic and epistemological foundations of his thought were more unified than is often recognized. (shrink)

Liberal epistemology typically treats indoctrination as a defect in agency: a failure of openness, critical reflection, or responsiveness to reasons. This paper argues that such diagnoses presuppose a framework-neutral conception of reason and evidence that cannot be sustained. Drawing on Wittgenstein, Sellars, Quine, Davidson, and Bernard Williams’ account of thick concepts, I develop a model of semantic frameworks in which what counts as a reason, an alternative, or relevant evidence is itself grammar-dependent. Where frameworks diverge at this level, deliberative agency (...) cannot function as the primary mechanism of revision. The result is not irrationality but incommensurability. -/- I distinguish between thin, execution-level agency and robust, authorship-level agency, arguing that liberal accounts of remediation tacitly rely on the latter. While frameworks can change, such change is unlikely to be deliberative or self-directed. Empirical work in political psychology is reinterpreted as documenting surface divergence rather than agent-level failure. The education–indoctrination distinction, I conclude, is not structurally grounded but normatively indexed to framework commitments. Liberal epistemology therefore, misdiagnoses thick concept non-transferability as epistemic vice. (shrink)

Der Beitrag behandelt das Konzept der mentalen (sprachlichen) Repräsentation, das in der Forschung in vielen Disziplinen auf je spezifische Weise verwendet wird. Diese Verwendungsweisen haben grundlegende theoretische Bedingungen, mit denen diverse Herausforderungen verknüpft sind. Zunächst werden jene Herausforderungen reflektiert und es wird mittels einer Repräsentationsmatrix ein Analyseraster bereitgestellt, das den praktischen Umgang mit dem diversen Konzept der mentalen sprachlichen Repräsentation erleichtert. Dort sind Dicho- und Trichotomien zusammengefasst und erläutert, die in der Literatur als Merkmale diskutiert werden. In der Arbeit zu (...) mentalen (sprachlichen) Repräsentationen ermöglicht die Matrix so eine explizite Positionierung und damit die theoretische Schärfung des Konzeptes in der Forschungspraxis. Weiterhin wird ein eigener Ansatz skizziert, der die genannten Anforderungen adressiert und auf die Matrix Bezug nimmt. (shrink)

Unless we are willing to countenance the sceptical possibility that most of our thought and talk is meaningless, it would seem that something must guarantee that the ontology presupposed by semantics aligns with the truth about ontology. One motivation for Linguistic Idealism is that it provides such a guarantee. We argue here that such a guarantee is not actually needed to avoid scepticism, since semantics can successfully ‘do its job’ of systematically pairing meanings with utterances even if it has false (...) ontological presuppositions. More broadly, we explore and defend a form of anti-realism about linguistics according to which correct or acceptable linguistic theories can have false presuppositions and thus fail to be true. We argue that this is partly due to the fact that linguistic ‘laws’ or principles themselves—the things that govern or explain language and linguistic competence—do not need to be true in order to ‘do their job’. (shrink)

In his recent book, The Concept of Democracy: An Essay on Conceptual Amelioration and Abandonment (OUP, 2023) Herman Cappelen argues that we should abandon the concept of democracy, and hence stop using the words “democracy” and “democratic.” In the course of developing his arguments for this surprising claim, Cappelen also offers a more general theory of what kind of reasons count in favor of abandoning a concept. In this paper, which is part of a book symposium on Cappelen’s book, I (...) review and criticize both his theory of abandonment and his case for abandoning the concept of democracy. I argue that Cappelen’s abandonment theory is inconclusive, and that his case for abandoning the concept of democracy is unconvincing. (shrink)

In this dissertation I examine metasemantic issues related to the phenomenon of homesign communication. Most children born with severe congenital hearing impairment are raised by caregivers who are not Deaf, and who are sometimes unable to provide their deaf children access to sign language education. Consequently, these children go through the period in which first-language acquisition normally takes place without learning a language. Still, deaf children in these unfortunate circumstances are not severed from all interpersonal communication. Over time they develop (...) networks of gestures that serve their communicative needs. These gestural systems, unique to the individual children who are their primary creators and users, are known as “homesign”. Homesign has persistently been adduced as evidence for a nativist position in debates concerning the logical problem of language acquisition, what is sometimes called “Plato’s problem”. Here, I argue that homesign is pertinent to what I call “Plato’s Second Problem”, viz., the normativity of meaning. According to one tradition in the philosophy of language traceable through Kripke, Wittgenstein, and, ultimately, Plato’s Cratylus, meaningful linguistic expressions carry conditions of correct use that are plausibly accounted for in terms of the conventions of public languages. Analysing linguistic meaning in terms of public convention, however, would make impossible the meaningfulness of homesign gestures, since homesign is a form of communication that occurs in the absence of such conventions. While not all linguistic properties are present in homesign, given the abundance of linguistic structure in homesign revealed by empirical investigation, it would be far too hasty to deny that they are meaningful linguistic expressions on a priori grounds. Though some philosophers reject the normativity of meaning outright, I argue that homesign provides an opportunity to appreciate how the normativity of meaning is intimately linked to the Principle of Charity as it features in Davidson’s idea of radical interpretation. A consequence of reconciling the normativity of meaning with the meaningfulness of homesign gesture in this way is that convention is not essential to meaning in natural language. (shrink)

In this chapter, Susanna Schellenberg develops a new understanding of singular modes of presentation. According to Fregean Particularism, singular modes of presentation are generated by the mental capacities employed that bring about the relevant mental state and the objects or features in the world (if any) thereby singled out. Consequently, modes of presentation can be individuated at the level of content types and token contents. Content types are individuated by the capacities employed. Content tokens are individuated by the capacities employed (...) and the mind-independent particular thereby singled out. Applied to perception, the view holds that perceptions, hallucinations, and illusions with the same phenomenal character are constituted by employing the same perceptual capacities; they thereby share a content type. But the token content of perception, hallucination, and illusion differs at least in part. (shrink)

It can seem that the point of the finitude argument put forward by the meaning sceptic in Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is merely that of undermining a particular approach to meaning, the dispositionalist approach. I argue that Kripke’s remarks about finitude have a more universal purport than has been recognized. They supply the materials for a better understanding of the kind of creatures we are and of the kind of phenomenon meaning is.

In his treatment of the Wittgensteinian paradox about rule-following, Saul Kripke represents the non-reductionist approach, according to which meaning something by an expression is a sui generis state that cannot be elucidated in more basic terms, as brushing philosophical questions under the rug. This representation of non-reductionism captures the way in which some of its proponents conceive of it. Meaning is viewed by these philosophers as an explanatory primitive that provides the basic materials for philosophical inquiry, but whose nature cannot (...) serve as an object for that inquiry. There is, however, an alternative way of conceiving of non-reductionism, which makes it possible to tackle philosophical questions about the nature of meaning head-on. (shrink)

It is argued that the foundational or metasemantic question of what it is for words to mean what they do cannot be answered in reductive terms, that is, in terms that do not presuppose meaning; yet a constructive, non-quietist answer can be provided. Specifically, a non-reductionist account of meaning can meet the demand, articulated by Saul Kripke, that two distinctions be accounted, or at least made room, for: the distinction between correct and incorrect uses of expressions and the distinction between (...) intelligent and robotic linguistic behavior. Building on Donald Davidson’s work on triangulation, a non-reductionist account is developed that meets the demand and reveals meaning to be normative in two important ways. Thus, the widely accepted connection between non-reductionism and normativity is acknowledged but, contra the received view, it is because meaning cannot be reduced to anything non-semantic that it is essentially normative, not the other way around. (shrink)

This article defends the view that having a language just is knowing how to engage in communication with it. It also argues that, despite claims to the contrary, this view is compatible and complementary with the Chomskyan conception of language on which humans have languages in virtue of being in brain states realizing tacit knowledge of grammars for those languages.

In this paper, I argue that all expressions for abstract objects are meaningless. My argument closely follows David Lewis’ argument against the intelligibility of certain theories of possible worlds, but modifies it in order to yield a general conclusion about language pertaining to abstract objects. If my Lewisian argument is sound, not only can we not know that abstract objects exist, we cannot even refer to or think about them. However, while the Lewisian argument strongly motivates nominalism, it also undermines (...) certain nominalist theories. (shrink)

This dissertation investigates ancient ecological and indigenous cultural forms in response to contemporary crises of ecology and psychology—"an alienation that haunts the modern soul while increasingly choking the biosphere." Lady Raglan's (1939) documentation of foliate masks carved into churches throughout much of Europe is taken as a starting place: faces where "oak leaves grow from the mouth and ears, and completely encircle the head" (p. 45). Another data point: excavation beneath Notre Dame Cathedral uncovers a Roman-era stone block dedicated to (...) Cernunnos ("The Horned One"), demonstrating literal encasement of pre-Christian fertility traditions in stone (Evans, 1988). The inquiry examines such documented traditional forms alongside Classical, Roman, Greek, Sumerian, and Near-East archeological and textual sources, exploring how historical patterns of human-earth relationality might inform contemporary crises through the rediscovery of autochthonous creativity: the natural human capacity to reconnect with body, symbol, ancestry, memory, and ecological life-worlds. The study introduces the method of epistrophic hermeneutics: a novel synthesis of hermeneutics with Hillmanian therapeia and epistrophē—defined by Hillman (2007/2016o) as "the reversion or return of soul phenomena to the archetype, according to the principle of likeness or analogy" (p. 153). The term hermeneutic of hospitality is introduced as an alternative to hermeneutics of faith or suspicion, respectively – a practice of epistemic humility at depth, rooted in what Hillman (1981/2013a) termed a "poetic basis of mind"(p. 31). The method embraces Hillman's dictum that "we can never be purely phenomenal or truly objective" because "one is never beyond the subjectivism given with the soul's native dominants of fantasy structures" (Hillman, 1981/2013a, p. 32). Archetypes, in this sense, are understood as "the primary forms that govern the psyche" (p. 13): participatory lenses of the epistemic eye. A hermeneutic of hospitality thus protects epistemological pluralism that includes cultural diversity yet continues deeper, beyond tokenism and into a celebration of pluralism at epistemic depth: that is, a protection of the living ecosystem of mind and image. Concretely, this reading stance follows Hillman's (1986/2016f) therapeutic attitude: "Instead of inquiry: interest, respect, welcome, praise—even attachment. To greet… even mythic presences that may be unpopular or demonized."(p. 96) This epistrophic work aims to "release the mind into its originality beyond the old entrapped condition" (Hillman, 1986/2016d, p. 295), aligning with the work’s principle of autochthonous creativity. The argument proceeds via case-rich exegesis. In Classical Greece, Dionysian masks give the Green Man civic expression; Dionysus appears as “a horned god… crowned with serpents” (Euripides, Bacchae, trans. 1996, p. 34), binding horns, snakes, and vegetation to ecstatic ritual. This vegetal–animal fusion has deep Mesopotamian precedent: Enki of the Sumerian wetlands was “the Wild Bull of Eridu” whose iconography shows “two streams, the Euphrates and the Tigris, flowing out of his shoulders” (Kramer, 1961, p. 76), while Damu embodied “the power in the rising sap” (Jacobsen, 1976, p. 39)—both figures conjoining fertility, water, and vegetal renewal. The parallel is explicit in Greek cult: Dionysus Limnaios, “Dionysus of the Swamps,” inhabited Athens’ oldest sanctuary where “water pours abundantly from under the rocks” (Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.20.3), mirroring the Sumerian Dumuzi-abzi, “the power to renew life in the watery deep” (Katz, 2003, p. 35). Wild Bull Dumuzi is at once bull and cowherd—divine animal and shepherd—whose “bitter laments when he dies as the dry heat of summer yellows the pastures” (Wolkstein & Kramer, 1983, p. 64) mark the seasonal transition toward death and dormancy. The archetypal union of Goddess and God appears again in Baal and Baalath, “the male power identified especially with water” meeting “earth,” whose union makes “plants and trees, animals and men… the offspring” (Patai, 1990, p. 45)—a cosmogony of ecological reciprocity. These figures also share the power of metamorphosis. Humbaba’s “seven splendours” enable constant transformation—“Humbaba’s face keeps changing!” (George, 2003, p. 37)—a capacity echoed in Dionysus, who is “a lion, a bull, a boar, a bear, a panther, a snake, and now a tree, fire, water” (Euripides, Bacchae, trans. 1996, p. 101). In Near Eastern vegetal–arboreal myth, Adonis is born from the trunk of his mother-tree Myrrha, which “split open to allow the birth” (Graves, 1960, p. 74); Osiris is enclosed within a tree’s girth, Isis crafting his wooden phallus for resurrection (Graves, 1960, p. 60). Likewise, Ningishzida’s “winding roots, embodiments of living supernatural power, free themselves from the trunk and become live serpents entwined around it” (Black & Green, 1992, p. 136), a precise analogue to Dionysus Perikonis who “twines himself around the column” (Pausanias, Description of Greece, 10.19.3). Taken together, these scenes form a coherent archetypal grammar: a horned-vegetal deity mediating between water and earth, embodying seasonal death and renewal, uniting the powers of plant, animal, and human through metamorphosis, and returning life to the land through sacred union. This grammar repeats across Sumerian, Levantine, and Greek worlds, providing the imaginal architecture that will later be carved into the foliate heads of Medieval Europe. By tracing – text by text, altar by altar, mask by mask – how these symbolic forms have historically mediated human–earth relationship, the study demonstrates that epistemic pluralism at depth is precisely the restoration of a type of human culture capable of ecological harmonization. This is not a dynamic that can be simulated through instrumental control; it depends on the cultivation of consciousness that lives in participatory reciprocity with the more-than-human world: an epistemic eye that glints green. A hermeneutic of hospitality, in this sense, is not merely a method of interpretation but a protection of epistemological pluralism capable of return to the imagination of the Earth. The image of the Green Man describes just this: a dynamic bridge mediating between the many worlds of participatory and epistemic possibility. His mythic dance, rooted in water and leaf, horn and mask, death and return, is the precise form through which the restoration of the living Earth and the living soul become an indivisible act. Published January 2023. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18447.50089. (shrink)

An object-based correspondence theory of truth holds that a truth-bearer is true whenever its truth conditions are met by objects and their properties. In order to develop such a view, the principal task is to explain how truth-bearers become endowed with their truth conditions. Modern versions of the correspondence theory see this project as the synthesis of two theoretical endeavours: basic metasemantics and compositional semantics. Basic metasemantics is the theory of how simple, meaningful items (e.g. names and concepts) are endowed (...) with their contributions to truth conditions, and compositional semantics is the theory of how the meanings of simple items compose to generate (among other things) the truth conditions of sentences. Understanding truth along these broad lines was once popular; it was first championed by Field (1972). However, the once-popular conception of its tasks included an over-ambitious view of basic metasemantics. It was thought that reference needed to be analyzed (or reduced a posteriori) in terms of more fundamental, non-semantic relations (e.g. causal relations, indication, or teleological relations, in the case of mental representation). Obstacles in providing such an analysis engendered skepticism towards this understanding of truth and eventually gave way to its deflationary competitors. This dissertation aims to defend the modern, object-based correspondence theory against its rivals—especially deflationism. Chapter one provides a historically-grounded overview of the theory. Chapter two identifies two points of contrast between the correspondence theorist and the deflationist: they employ different orders of explanation for the variety of semantic phenomena, and they (traditionally) take different attitudes towards the prospects of reduction. Situating the dialectic in this way allows me to develop a middle ground: a moderate version of inflationism that takes the inflationary explanatory structure and combines it with a non-reductive, pluralist approach to basic metasemantics. Chapter three expands on the details of this pluralist account of reference. Chapter four contrasts the view with another rival approach to basic metasemantics: metasemantic interpretationism. And finally, chapter five applies the theory to answer another question of broad philosophical interest: what role does our conception of truth play in inquiry about the world? (shrink)

Stipulation gives us a degree of control over meaning. By stipulating how I will use a term I am able to determine the meaning it will receive on future occasions of use. My stipulation will affect the truth conditional content of my future utterances. But the mechanisms of stipulation are mysterious. As Cappelen (2018) argues, meaning is typically determined in an inscrutable way by a myriad of external factors beyond our control. How does stipulation override these factors? And the powers (...) of stipulation are limited. Firstly, the power of stipulation is typically short-lived. Sec-ondly, some stipulations simply don’t get off the ground. What explains the limits of stipulation? I consider two related approaches to stipulation and argue that they are unable to capture stipulation’s metasemantic effects. I then provide an explanation of the metasemantic effects of stipulation: Stipulation determines meaning by determining the word use it is fitting to hold the speaker to. This account is able to capture the mechanisms and limits of stipulation, whilst also explaining why we should care about stip-ulative success. I close by briefly drawing out some lessons for conceptual engineering. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I sketch a novel interpretationist account of linguistic content that has important consequences for thinking about intentionality. I solve the challenge presented by a foundational indeterminacy of reference argument to the effect that the meaning of linguistic expressions is radically indeterminate. Happily, my solution doesn’t require positing natural properties as “reference magnets”. Non-deflationist rivals to interpretationist metasemantics include various kinds of causal theories such as Fodor-style asymmetric-dependence accounts and Millikan-style teleosemantics. These accounts face their own indeterminacy challenges (...) that have yet to be solved, as well as similar indeterminacy of reference challenges at the level of individual words. Moreover, they must contend with our apparent reference to things that we are not plausibly causally acquainted with. If indeterminacy of reference arguments can be answered and we can avoid dubious use of natural properties, an interpretationist account like my own will be the strongest contender.. (shrink)

Near the end of 'Naming the Colours', Lewis (1997) makes an interesting claim about the relationship between linguistic and mental content; we are typically unable to read the content of a belief off the content of a sentence used to express that belief or vice versa. I call this view autonomism. I motivate and defend autonomism and discuss its importance in the philosophy of mind and language. In a nutshell, I argue that the different theoretical roles that mental and linguistic (...) content play suggest these kinds of content should be understood as sensitive to different things. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that it’s impossible for there to be a single universal theory of meaning for a language. First, I will consider some minimal expressiveness requirements a language must meet to be able to express semantic claims. Then I will argue that in order to have a single unified theory of meaning, these expressiveness requirements must be satisfied by a language which the semantic theory itself applies to. That is, we would need a language which can express (...) its own meaning. It has been well-known since Tarski that theories of meaning whose central notion is truth can’t be expressed in a language which they apply to. Here, I develop Quine’s formulation of the Liar Paradox in grammatical terms and use this to extend Tarski’s result to all theories of meaning. This general version of the paradox can be formalised as a special case of the Lawvere Fixed-Point Theorem applied to a categorial grammar. Taken together with the initial arguments, I infer that a universal theory of meaning is impossible and conclude the paper with a brief discussion on what alternatives are available. (shrink)

In everyday talk about language, we distinguish between what someone said and what they implied, or otherwise conveyed. This distinction has been carried over into theorising about language and communication, resulting in much debate about how the notion of what is said should be defined. Against the underlying assumption of these disputes, Nothing is Said argues that it is a mistake to import the notion of saying into our models of basic linguistic communication. -/- Rather than belonging to our basic (...) linguistic competence, the notion of saying is a reflective one resulting from a higher-order metacommunicative competence that is relatively late-developing. This competence allows us to reflect simultaneously on the form and content of an utterance, and hence characterise it as an act of saying. The study shows how this notion of saying can be accounted for without assuming that identifying what is said is a necessary step in basic utterance interpretation. -/- The idea that linguistic interpretation relies on identifying what is said is deeply ingrained. Mark Jary considers the consequences for semantic and pragmatic theory of dropping this assumption, focusing on lexical pragmatics, scalar implicature, assertion, lying, and other topics that have received significant attention in the recent literature. The claims made are supported by reference to empirical data from experimental psychology. (shrink)

In virtue of what does a sign have meaning? This is the question raised by Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations. Semantic dispositionalism is a (type of) theory that purports to answer this question. The present paper argues that semantic dispositionalism faces a heretofore unnoticed problem, one that ultimately comes down to its reliance on unanalyzed notions of repeated types of signs. In the context of responding to the rule-following paradox—and offering a putative solution to it—this amounts to simply assuming a solution to (...) the problem in one domain and using it to solve the same problem in another. Given, moreover, the level at which the rule-following paradox undercuts dispositionalism—the level of the notion of a sign's repetition—the objections made to the view also rule out causal/informational theories of meaning as well as communitarian/assertion-theoretic ones as potential solutions to the rule-following paradox. (shrink)

I reconstruct the notion of significance [_Sinnhaftigkeit_] in the later Husserl, with attention to his conceptions of judgment and transcendental logic. My analysis is motivated by the idea that an account of significance can help to connect analytic, Anglo-American conceptions of meaning as a precise, law-governed phenomenon investigated via linguistic analysis and Continental European conceptions of meaning in a broader “existential” sense. I argue that Husserl’s later work points to a transcendental-logical conception of a founding level of _significance_ [_Sinnhaftigkeit_] prior (...) to language, and that this conception meets characteristically analytic demands for precision and governance by logical constraints. At the same time, since it is based in descriptions of perceptual intentionality at the level of essential possibility, it leaves room for an account of meaning as a partially undetermined phenomenon of lived experience, and not just of our language and concepts, and thereby meets the characteristically Continental demand to take at face value meaning’s vagueness and indeterminacy in everyday human life. (shrink)

Various theorists contend that we may live in a computer simulation. David Chalmers in turn argues that the simulation hypothesis is a metaphysical hypothesis about the nature of our reality, rather than a sceptical scenario. We use recent work on consciousness to motivate new doubts about both sets of arguments. First, we argue that if either panpsychism or panqualityism is true, then the only way to live in a simulation may be as brains-in-vats, in which case it is unlikely that (...) we live in a simulation. We then argue that if panpsychism or panqualityism is true, then viable simulation hypotheses are substantially sceptical scenarios. We conclude that the nature of consciousness has wide-ranging implications for simulation arguments. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss a puzzle involving accommodation. The puzzle is based on three assumptions. The first assumption is that accommodation takes place after an utterance. The second assumption is that accommodation can make a difference to the truth-value of an utterance even if the utterance is not about the future. The third assumption is that something that takes place after an utterance cannot make a difference to the truth-value of the utterance unless the (...) utterance is about the future. Since these assumptions are jointly inconsistent, one of them must be false. The question is which one we ought to reject. The majority of the discussion is devoted to discussing each of the options, and the tentative conclusion is that the most plausible strategy is to reject the third thesis. That amounts to saying that something that takes place after an utterance can make a difference to the truth-value of the utterance even if the utterance is not about the future. (shrink)

This is the first in a series of attempts to unveil the implications of the ontological difference between meaning and perception. I begin with general consideration regarding the tension between dualism and physicalism and move on some phenomenologically driven set of implications which will be later detailed and expanded in order to lay the grounds for the architecture of meaning. The main assumption at work is that meaning and perception are ontologically different but not disconnected in a sense that in (...) order for an act of meaning to be fulfilled, a “lifting above perceptual contents” must necessarily occur. The lifting above perceptual content is what confers the act of meaning a special ontological status but it also the reason for ongoing explanatory difficulties. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s “machines-as-symbols” are considered with respect to their historical sources and their symbolic and logical nature. Among these sources and precursors, along with Leonardo’s drawings of machines, there are illustrated “machine books”, a kind of book published in the period from the 16th to the 18th centuries which consist of pictures and descriptions of a variety of mechanical devices. Most probably, these books were one of Wittgenstein’s inspirations for his view of machines as components of language-games. The picture of homo (...) volans in Vrančić’s machine book possessed by Wittgenstein is taken as an example. In particular, homo volans is shown to contain patterns of logical laws and rules and to be abstractly interpretable as a logical symbol. A machine, taken as a symbol, is shown to be a precondition of a meaningful “overview” of a mechanical work that exceeds the limits of decidability, and to possess causal features if causality is understood teleologically and in a deeper sense of a “binding” life. (shrink)

In his 1975 paper “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’”, Hilary Putnam famously argued for semantic externalism. Little attention has been paid, however, to the fact that already in 1973, Putnam had presented the idea of the linguistic division of labor and the Twin Earth thought experiment in his comment on Wilfrid Sellars’s “Meaning as Functional Classification” at a conference, and Sellars had replied to Putnam from a broadly inferentialist perspective. The first half of this paper aims to trace the development of (...) Putnam’s semantic externalism, situate his debate with Sellars in it, and reconstruct the two arguments he presented against Sellars. The second half of this paper aims to reconstruct how Sellars replied to Putnam. I argue that Sellars not only accepts the social character of language but also suggests how inferentialists can accommodate the contribution of the world. Sellars’s key idea is that substance terms have a “promissory note aspect” which is to be cashed out in a successor conceptual framework. I reconstruct Sellars’s position as ideal successor externalism, and compare it with temporal externalism. (shrink)

The classic programme of conceptual engineering (Cappelen, Herman. 2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Eklund, Matti. 2021. “Conceptual Engineering.” In The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language, edited by Justin Khoo, and Rachel Sterken, 15–30. London: Routledge) envisages a two-stage ameliorating process. First, we assess ‘F’ and determine what the term should express. Second, we bring it about that ‘F’ expresses what it should express. The second stage gives rise to a (...) practical challenge: the implementation challenge. Engineering advocates need to explain by what means they can implement specific conceptual changes in the natural language shared by a community – a feat Herman Cappelen (2018. Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020; “Conceptual Engineering: The Master Argument.” In Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics, edited by Alexis Burgess, Herman Cappelen, and David Plunkett, 132–151. Oxford: Oxford University Press) argues to be beyond our understanding and control both on an externalist and on an internalist meta-semantics. I devise a new answer to the implementation challenge. Enlisting the influential theory of social norms by Cristina Bicchieri, I argue that engineering social norms in Bicchieri’s technical sense amounts to an effective, specific, and feasible means to implement specific conceptual change, at least on internalist premises. I also argue that Bicchieri’s social norms are an essential addition to the more familiar conventions and moral norms when it comes to conceptual engineering. (shrink)

I argue that assertoric content functions as a means for us to track the responsibilities undertaken by communicators, and that distinctively assertoric commitments are distinguished by being generated directly in virtue of the words the speaker uses. This raises two questions: (a) Why are speakers responsible for the content thus generated? (b) Why is it important for us to distinguish between commitments in terms of their manner of generation? I answer the first question by developing a novel responsibility based metasemantics. (...) I answer the second by reference to the conflicting pressures governing the resources we have available for appraising speech. (shrink)

In this chapter, I discuss some lesser-known aspects of Husserl’s concept of the phenomenological reduction in relation to his use of the notion of reflection, and indicate how these topics connect to concerns in contemporary philosophy after the analytic-continental divide. Empathy, collective intentionality, non-representationalism, non-cognitivism, and the focus on the lived body as a source of sense-making and knowing-how are all domains in which Husserl’s conception of the reduction anticipates recent philosophical trends after the analytic-continental divide. They are also interconnected (...) parts of a unified conception of philosophy that arises from the phenomenological reduction when we reflect radically on experience in its full breadth as an embodied phenomenon that is both historical and communal. (shrink)

This paper examines Hannah Ginsborg's attempt to address the challenge raised by Saul Kripke's meaning sceptic. I start by identifying the two constraints that the sceptic claims must be met by a satisfactory answer. Then I try to show that Ginsborg's proposal faces a dilemma. In the first instance, I argue that it is able to meet the second constraint, but not the first. I then amend the proposal in order to make room for the first constraint. I go on (...) to argue that, under this new interpretation, it cannot meet the second constraint. (shrink)