oughts and thoughts scepticism and the normativity of meaning jul 2007

[...]... conditions, and what it is to understand the meaning of a word is to grasp its correctness conditions Furthermore, the semantic realist typically holds that our ascriptions of meaning and truth conditions are themselves capable of truth or falsity There is a ‘fact of the matter’ whether the doctor meant ‘chicken pox’ to refer to chicken pox, so there is a ‘fact of the matter’ whether my ascription of meaning. .. specified the meanings of the doctor’s words by giving ¹ I will employ the convention of using italics when I specify meanings or contents 2 Oughts and Thoughts their correctness conditions For instance, I said that ‘Vikram’ refers to Vikram, which is to say that it correctly applies to Vikram and only Vikram Furthermore, my understanding of the truth condition of the doctor’s sentence (together with... determines which uses of an expression are correct and which incorrect I call the first principle, Normativity, and the second, Norm-Relativity, and argue that the distinction between these two principles is the crack in the keystone of the sceptical argument Norm-Relativity and Normativity are not equivalent the correctness of some use of an expression does not imply a categorical ‘ought’ And while Norm-Relativity... grass, and nothing else, ‘green’ is true of all and only green things Sub-sentential expressions, such as ‘grass’ and ‘green’ do not have truth conditions, but correctness conditions And if we add the assumption that truth conditions of sentences are a function of the correctness conditions of the words in them, then it is obvious that the truth conditional picture of the meanings of sentences bears the. .. true The upshot, then, is that scepticism about meaning is indefensible and leads inevitably to incoherence, and thus that the intuitive view that we can ascribe contents to our beliefs and utterances, that such ascriptions can be true or false, and that we often know the contents of our own minds, is not touched by the sceptical argument that Kripke finds in Wittgenstein 8 Oughts and Thoughts The structure... Oughts and Thoughts merely those that come directly under attack, nor even just those that have been hitherto presented However, without the thesis that meaning is normative, the sceptical argument amounts to no more than criticisms of a few theories of what constitutes meaning Even if we do not now have an adequate account of what constitutes meaning, the sceptic is not entitled to conclude that there... focuses on the meaning of the sub-sentential expression, ‘plus’, throughout, and the meanings of sub-sentential expressions, such as ‘grass’ and ‘green’ cannot be given by their truth conditions—because ‘grass’, on its own, is neither true nor false However, it is possible to give an analogous analysis of the meanings of sub-sentential expressions by looking at their semantic relations to the world:... assumption that the sentence was likely to be true) led me to act as I did All of this lends support to one of the dominant traditions in the philosophy of language and mind, according to which correctness conditions and truth conditions play an essential role in the theory of meaning and understanding I call this position ‘semantic realism’.² The semantic realist is someone who holds that many of the assumptions... dispositions, known or unknown If by these standards there are indeterminate cases, so much the worse for the terminology of meaning and likeness of meaning. ⁷ Quine imagined a linguist encountering a foreigner who speaks a language of which the linguist has no prior knowledge On Quine’s view, the linguist must begin by first making observations of the speaker’s utterances and the conditions under which those... alone committed the crime, we are not licensed to conclude that there is no fact of the matter who ¹⁹ Kripke 1982, p 15 ²⁰ Ibid., p 21 20 Oughts and Thoughts did it Kripke’s sceptical conclusion simply would not follow from the observation that the observable evidence does not justify our ascriptions of meaning This brings us to another observation about the nature of Kripke’s scepticism: the challenge . y0 w0 h0" alt="" OUGHTS AND THOUGHTS RULE-FOLLOWING AND THE NORMATIVITY OF CONTENT This page intentionally left blank Oughts and Thoughts Rule-Following and the Normativity of Content CLARENDON. Furthermore, the semantic realist typically holds that our ascriptions of meaning and truth conditions are themselves capable of truth or falsity. There is a ‘fact of the matter’ whether the. not touched by the sceptical argument that Kripke finds in Wittgenstein. 8 Oughts and Thoughts The structure of the book follows the structure of the argument presented above. In the next chapter,