reflections on meaning jan 2006

[...]... nonetheless possess meanings in virtue of their familiar structures and the familiar meanings of their parts Thus compositionality and verificationism do not sit well together Davidson’s influential thesis (mentioned in section 2) is that compositionality may be accommodated only by identifying the meanings of sentences with truth conditions and the meanings of words with reference conditions; for one... (ed.), New Directions in Semantics 10 The Space of Issues and Options the meanings of its component words and on how those words have been combined with one another But there is little consensus on how this obvious fact should be incorporated within a full story about meaning A common assumption is that compositionality puts a severe constraint on an adequate account of how an expression’s meaning is engendered... Grammar of Meaning: Normativity and Semantic Content The Space of Issues and Options 13 In opposition to this conclusion it can be argued that the ‘factual’ effects of a word’s meaning (namely, someone’s disposition to accept certain sentences containing it) would be difficult to explain if meaning were evaluative rather than ‘factual’ And in opposition to the reasoning behind that conclusion, it can... expressed by a sentencetoken The notion of meaning in which “I am hungry” means different things depending, not on the speaker’s intentions, but on who is speaking, and on when the utterance is performed (c) The conventional pragmatic content of a term, its illocutionary force (going beyond the de dicto propositional constituent that is expressed by it) The respect of meaning in which “but” differs from... plausible as these considerations might be, the only solid argument for semantic reductionism would be an articulation and defence of some specific theory of that form Conversely, the best anti-reductionist argument is that no such account has been found despite strenuous attempts to construct one Reductionist approaches of various stripes will be the focus in what follows; so I won’t dwell on them now As... Why Concepts Arn’t Prototypes”, Cognition 58(2): 243–76 12 The Space of Issues and Options compositionality; for it would say that the meaning of a complex expression is constituted by the facts concerning its structure and the meanings of its words For example, the property, ‘x means theaetetus flies’, would be constituted by the property, ‘x is an expression that results from applying a function-term... McDowell, J (1984), “Wittgenstein on Following a Rule”, Synthese 58(3): 325–63; idem (1994), Mind and World ¹⁶ Davidson, D (1984), Truth and Interpretation His non-reductionist view of truth conditions is combined (as noted above) with a truth conditional analysis of meaning ¹⁷ Kripke, S (1982), Wittgenstein: On Rules and Private Language 8 The Space of Issues and Options communicate The central issue... following Kripke) a consequence of these normativity considerations is that meaning is an essentially social phenomenon; so a ‘private language’ is impossible For the implicit rule-following which must be involved in a person’s meaning something allegedly depends on activities of correction displayed within his linguistic community And this conclusion is independently supported by the observation (Kripke,³⁷... specified sentences containing it A singular virtue of this proposal is that we have a plausible model— namely inference—of how such a property might, in conjunction with other factors, explain a word’s overall use (i.e the acceptance-facts regarding every sentence containing the word) Consequently, we can see how the just mentioned condition on an adequate account of meaning constitution might be met Given... word-tokens? And if, on ⁷² Dummett, M (1991), The Logical Basis of Metaphysics The Space of Issues and Options 23 the contrary, type -meaning is indeed primary, then how—given the phenomenon of ambiguity—are we to account for the meanings of specific tokens? (II) We have been concentrating on our notion of ‘the meaning of a word in a given language’ But there are other meanings of meaning that also . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h0" alt="" REFLECTIONS ON MEANING This page intentionally left blank Reflections on Meaning PAUL HORWICH CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford. impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Horwich, Paul. Reflections on meaning / Paul. Davidson, D. (1984), Truth and Interpretation. There is some controversy as to whether Davidson himself advocates an elimination of meaning in favour of truth conditions, or an analysis of meaning