The Metaphysical Modesty of Narrowly Linguistic Semantics

Some foundational assumptions of the generative paradigm in linguistic semantics are outlined. It is argued that they do not suffice, on their own, to license the drawing of metaphysically immodest conclusions about the assigned semantic values on the basis of narrowly semantic premises. It is concluded that if we seek to establish metaphysical conclusions from semantic starting points, we need additional premises not provided by narrowly linguistic semantics alone. The possibility is bruited that we may be furnished such premises from some style or other of broadly philosophical semantics and metasemantics, setting the stage for a subsequent discussion of various alternative metasemantical theses about the proper dialectical role of semantic analyses vis-à-vis metaphysical inquiry.

Metaphysical Embarrassment, Indefinite Modifiability, and Rules of Use

This chapter addresses potential gaps between between developed encyclopedic representations of the metaphysical structure of the world and native semantic representations of the metaphysical structure of the world. It is argued that when our language is metaphysically embarrassed by the world we resort either to indefinite modifiability or mere rules of use to regulate ordinary language. It is also argued that when use is regulated by mere rules of use, rather than rules of truth, there is no reason at all to suppose that we can read much about the ultimate metaphysical structure of the Universe from facts about use.

Some Considerations against the Way of Ideas

In this chapter, I offer some considerations against the way of ideas. I do not claim that these considerations are ultimately decisive against all version of the way of ideas. Three different version of the way of ideas in metaphysics are presented and assessed, including Kant’s transcendental idealism, Frege’s aspirational Platonism, and Strawson descriptive metaphysics. Though none of the three is decisively refuted, some shortcomings of each are demonstrated. These shortcomings motivate a turn away from the way of ideas in metaphysics and toward the way of reference in metaphysics.

The Way of Ideas and the Way of Reference

In the current chapter, I consider two competing metasemantic outlooks and their consequences for the metaphysical modesty or immodesty of first order semantic analysis. The two metasemantic approaches are rooted in what I call referential semantics and what I call ideational semantics. The foundational assumptions of referential metasemantics and ideational metasemantics are outlined with a focus on how each approach attempts to solve the determination problem. It is argued that different approaches to the determination problem lead to two different approaches to the metaphysics of the assigned semantic values. Finally, the way of ideas in metaphysics is distinguished from the way of reference in metaphysics.

Modesty as Incompleteness

Metaphysical modesty may be thought to be a form of incompleteness. And incompleteness may be thought to be a bug rather than a feature. But it is argued that the incompleteness of a metaphysically modest semantics is a feature rather than a bug. It is a feature that both lightens the metaphysical burdens of the special science of semantics and thereby brings semantics into greater metaphysical alignment with the special sciences generally. It is argued that there is no more reason to think that a semantics not weighed down by metaphysical burdens is a bar to ever deepening metaphysical insight any more than a psychology or biology or economics not weighed down by heavy metaphysical burdens would be.

Semantic Analysis and Metaphysical Inquiry

This book is about the relationship between semantic analysis and metaphysical inquiry. Metaphysical theorizing is often bound up with semantic analyses of various target expressions, modes of discourse, forms of thought, or concepts. Semantic analyses of temporal language have played crucial dialectical roles in the debates over the metaphysics of time, while semantic analyses of belief and knowledge ascriptions have figured centrally in debates about the metaphysics of belief and knowledge. In this chapter, we take a brief initial tour of some of the ways in which semantic and conceptual analysis have been entangled with metaphysical inquiry throughout the history of philosophy. In the end, the very idea that semantic analysis can be expected to yield metaphysical insight is problematized by arguing that while semantic analysis may sometimes set the mood for metaphysics, it often raises metaphysical questions that it is powerless to answer.

Conclusion

Throughout this book, I have attempted to detail some ways in which the native syntactic and semantic structures of natural language may fail to recapitulate the ultimate metaphysical structure of reality. I argued, for example, that the thematic structures of argument-taking expressions may vary significantly from language to language even when they express the same real-world relations, properties, states of affairs, or event structures. I begin this chapter with a further argument that changes in our encyclopedic representations of the world typically are not reflected in our native semantic representations of the world. Finally, I close the chapter and the book by illustrating the potential of the way of reference in metaphysics with respect to achieving metaphysical insight into the true nature of human freedom.

Against the Metaphysical Transparency of Semantic Adicity

The argument of previous chapters is generalized from referring expressions to argument-taking expressions more generally. The focus is on potential mismatches between what I call the semantic (and syntactic) adicity of argument-taking linguistic expressions and the objective or metaphysical adicity of real-world properties and relations. Two main arguments are offered, the argument from underarticulation and the argument from cross-linguistic variation. It is argued that where there are such mismatches, we should not expect a priori semantic analysis to be a reliable guide to bridging such gaps and so should not expect a priori semantic analysis to reveal much about the metaphysical adicity of real-world properties, events, states, and relations.