Una concepción pragmatista sobre las reglas

La defensa de la normatividad del significado ha derivado en el debate sobre la prioridad metafísica de las reglas o del significado (cfr. Glüer & Wikforss, 2018). Sin embargo, la defensa de la prioridad de las reglas no es más que una variante del intelectualismo y, por ende, está sujeta a las mismas críticas que éste, mientras que la defensa de la prioridad del significado deja sin respuesta a la pregunta metasemántica ¿cómo es qué el lenguaje es significativo? Una concepción pragmatista sobre las reglas permite superar el debate evitando el intelectualismo y proporcionando una respuesta a la pregunta metasemántica. Defending the normativity of meaning has led to the debate about the metaphysical priority either or rules or meaning (cfr. Glüer & Wikforss, 2018). On the one hand, defending priority of rules is just a variant of intellectualism and, therefore, it is subject to the same criticisms. On the other hand, defending priority of meaning leaves unanswered the meta-semantic question: how is it that language is significant? A pragmatic conception of rules makes it possible to overcome the debate by avoiding intellectualism and providing an answer to the meta-semantic question.

Replies to Kirk Ludwig and Alexander Miller

ABSTRACTThis paper is a reply to Kirk Ludwig's and Alexander Miller's comments on the first part of Donald Davidson's Triangulation Argument: A Philosophical Inquiry. It addresses concerns Ludwig expresses about the triangulation argument's success in establishing the social character of language and thought. It answers Miller's invitation to compare Davidson's non-reductionism with that of Crispin Wright, as well as the social aspect of Davidson's view with the social aspect of Saul Kripke's. And it addresses Miller's worries concerning my claims about the normativity of meaning.

Verheggen on Davidson and Kripke on Rule-Following and Meaning

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses Claudine Verheggen's account of what she takes to be Donald Davidson's response to the sceptical paradox about rule-following and meaning developed in Saul Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein's ‘rule-following considerations.’ It focusses on questions about the normativity of meaning, the social character of meaning, and the role of triangulation in Davidson's account of the determination of meaning, and invites Verheggen to compare the non-reductionism she finds in Davidson with that developed in Crispin Wright's judgement-dependent account of meaning.

The Normativity of Meaning Revisited

The question of whether meaning is inherently normative has become a central topic in philosophy and linguistics. It also has crucial implications for anthropology and for understanding the evolution of language. This chapter defends the normativity of meaning against some recent challenges. Anti-normativists contend that while there are “semantic principles”—aka explanations of meaning—specifying conditions for the correct application of expressions, these are either not genuinely normative or they are not in fact constitutive of meaning. This dilemma can be defused if one clarifies the notions of norm, rule, and convention, distinguishes different dimensions of semantic normativity, and pays attention to different types of mistakes that can afflict linguistic behaviour. One needs to keep apart: norms of truth and of meaning, regulative and constitutive rules, rules and the reasons for following or disregarding them, pro tanto and all things considered obligations. On that basis the chapter argues that correctness is a normative notion and that constitutive rules in general and explanations of meaning in particular play various normative roles in linguistic practices. Furthermore, while speakers may conform to and occasionally violate semantic principle for defeasible prudential reasons, this is perfectly compatible with the principles having a normative status. The final section discusses the question of whether human communication requires communally shared rules or conventions and the age-old problem of circularity: how could such conventions be essential to language, given that the latter appears prerequisite for establishing and communicating conventions in the first place?

Cognitive Psychology and the Metaphysics of Meaning

This chapter distinguishes the clusters of psychologically real heuristics that govern our use of terms—the “psi-concepts”—from the “phi-concepts” or meanings that are the semantic determinants of the extensions of the terms in question, and hence of the truth-conditions of the sentences that contain those terms. Concerning the psi-concepts the chapter proposes a new, empirically motivated, and philosophically consequential amendment to both the theory-theory and the prototype theory, namely the generic encoding hypothesis: the heuristics which typically guide our use of terms by exploiting prevalence, cue-validity, and causal explanatory structure are properly formulated in generic terms. The chapter then explores the philosophical consequences of the generic encoding hypothesis, exploring its destructive impact on the method of cases (with particular attention to its use in the philosophy of personal identity), philosophical analysis, the “normativity of meaning,” and the idea that we know how to use terms by grasping meanings.

The Normativity of Meaning

One way to argue that meaning is normative, familiar from Kripke, is to hold that facts about meaning determine how we ought to speak. Another way to argue that meaning is normative, familiar from Davidson, is to hold that facts about meaning are determined by facts about rationality. I survey the prospects for these attempts to vindicate the normativity of meaning. I then step back and consider the relationship between normativity and metasemantics.