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This chapter argues first that Horwich has failed to make the case that he isn't actually taking sides in the very debate that he rejects as meaningful. In particular, it takes Horwich to be committed to a form of non-reductive realism about all the ‘weird’ sorts of facts mentioned above. Second, the chapter claims that Horwich's arguments for his non-reductive realism are not compelling. Horwich moves too quickly from a point about language and concepts to a point about the world and the facts it contains.

This section presents bibliographic information on the original versions of Paul Horwich’s 10 essays included in this volume. These include the original titles of the essays, the journals where they were published, and publication dates. Essay 1 for instance, was initially published as the ‘Three forms of Realism’ in Synthese, 5 (1982), while Essay 2 was published as ‘Realism and Truth’ in Philosophical Perspectives, 10: ‘Metaphysics’ (1996). The same information for Essays 5-10 are provided.

This chapter argues that the counter-intuitive aspects of the epistemic theory of vagueness run deeper than is sometimes appreciated, and that Horwich's variant of epistemicism does not help with them. It considers the suggestion that we escape the problems with the epistemic theory by weakening the law of excluded middle as applied to vague language. It argues that standard ‘fuzzy logics’ are ultimately of no help with vagueness because they generate operators that draw sharp lines. But there are alternative ‘fuzzy logics’ that avoid these problems. Moreover, there are intuitive connections between the semantic paradoxes and the paradoxes of vagueness, and the fuzzy logics that avoid sharp lines seem to be just the ones that are compatible with making True() equivalent to p even in face of the semantic paradoxes. This chapter tentatively recommends treating vagueness and the semantic paradoxes together, using the same non-classical logic for both.

Some philosophers, who defend ‘pragmatic encroachment’ and ‘subject-sensitive invariantism’, argue that changes in the importance of being right and significant increases of the costs of error in given contexts can alter the standards of knowledge. If this view where correct, it could explain to some extent the practical value of knowledge. In this chapter it is argued that the pragmatic encroachment thesis is wrong. Three possible sources of encroachment on epistemic notions are discussed, relating to, respectively, belief, justification, and knowledge. The idea that epistemic standards change with practical stakes is rejected. Pragmatic factors can be relevant to the formation of belief and to the context of inquiry, although they are not relevant to epistemic evaluation. Epistemic value cannot depend upon such factors.

This paper discusses the idea, labelled as “the traditional connection” that implicit definitions aim to found a priori knowledge of logic and mathematics. In the first part, it discusses and rejects a specific understanding of certain constraints (existence, uniqueness, possession problem, and explanation problem) on the theory of implicit definitions, as suggested by Horwich, on the basis of it being committing to some robust Platonist version of meaning facts. In contrast, it motivates further new constraints on the success of implicit definitions, such as arrogance, conservativeness, Evan's generality constraint, and harmony. Then, the standard view of implicit definitions for scientific terms, which appeals to so called Carnap Conditionals is discussed and an alternative model, i.e. the inverse Carnap Conditional is proffered. Lastly, this latter model is then applied to Hume's Principle and the conditionalized version of Hume's Principle as offered by Field is rejected. Furthermore, the problem of the ontological commitments of Hume's Principle and its status as a meaning––conferring successful stipulation are further discussed.

Paul Horwich’s naturalistic theory of meaning expounded here happily eschews an unexplained notion of truth conditions. Meanings he explains via synonymy and deflation, with synonymy treated naturalistically. Context dependence, though, requires explaining coreference, so that truth and reference work correspondingly. Ideal use is on a par with truth in the explanatory burdens assumed. Horwich’s problem is to identify the role of meaning in psychology; meaning must be whatever plays this meaning role. As with many scientific explanations, Horwich’s idealizes, but multiple idealizations may be explanatory and ascribe different meanings. This Quine-like indeterminacy of meaning is illustrated by Newton’s and Einstein’s theories of mass. Oughts might remove some of this indeterminacy. Horwich explains some meanings with Ramsey sentences and Carnap conditionals, which is taken here as normative. Lessons are drawn that will apply to the book’s project.

Paul Horwich attacks meaning‐based approaches to a priori justification and puts forward a view that explains apriority in terms of innateness and psychological indispensability. He concludes that while our practice of designating certain basic a priori beliefs as justified cannot be given epistemic support, it can be described and explained.

This book focuses on the axiomatic theories of truth and presents the central concerns, questions, theories, and arguments perspicuously and concisely, without probing too far into argumentative exchanges that involve intangibles. It presents, as an example, Horwich’s book Truth, which established deflationism about truth as a central topic of philosophical investigation. Deflationism, at the time, was associated with an axiomatic theory of truth known as the disquotational theory. This theory was first found in the works of Tarski and is the earliest known axiomatic theory of truth that meets minimal adequacy conditions. Some of the questions that will be asked in this book include, “Is truth a property?” and “Of what is truth a property: sentences, theories, utterances, assertions, judgements, propositions, etc.?”

It might be thought that deflationary theories of the reference of concepts are too thin to explain the fact that concepts provide us with cognitive purchase on the world. To explain this fact, it might seem, it is necessary to see reference as a ‘thick’ relation that is reducible to a natural relation like is used to encode information about. But this idea quickly leads to paradox, because the deflationary approach is mandated by powerful arguments. In response to this problem, it is maintained that deflationism is the correct view of reference, but that deflationary reference tracks or covaries with certain natural relations, and that in at least some cases, the natural relations in question tie concepts uniquely to specific objects and properties. These conclusions lead to an account of the relationship between reference and epistemic properties like cognitive purchase.

Chapter 10 investigates the consequences of the singularity theory for deflationary theories in general and disquotational theories in particular. The chapter argues that if we accept the singularity theory, we must reject deflationary theories of truth, denotation, and extension. The phenomena of repetition and rehabilitation (introduced in Chapter 2, and discussed throughout the book) show that pathological expressions, such as Liar sentences, may be successfully assigned semantic values. As a consequence, there are truths from which ‘true’ cannot be disquoted away (and similarly with ‘denotes’ and ‘extension’). The chapter argues that one leading motivation for the deflationist-namely, the role that ‘true’ plays in expressing generalizations-is fully captured by the singularity theory.

This chapter argues that Paul Horwich’s theory of meaning as use is incompatible with both social externalist intuitions about meaning and natural externalist intuitions about reference. Horwich himself endorses both sets of intuitions; consequently, he argues—very briefly in the first case, at great length in the second—that the alleged incompatibility is only apparent. The chapter tries to show that Horwich’s attempt at reconciliation is unconvincing. In a final section, it is claimed that there is a general tension between theories of meaning based on use and standard varieties of externalism. Though use theories can be adjusted to take care of externalist objections, such adjustments strongly limit the appeal and motivation of a theory of meaning as use.