Hannah Ginsborg
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195381658
- eISBN:
- 9780199918317
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381658.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General, History of Philosophy
I argue that Stroud's nonreductionism about meaning is insufficiently motivated. First, given that he rejects the assumption that grasp of an expression's meaning guides or instructs us in its use, ...
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I argue that Stroud's nonreductionism about meaning is insufficiently motivated. First, given that he rejects the assumption that grasp of an expression's meaning guides or instructs us in its use, he has no reason to accept Kripke's arguments against dispositionalism or related reductive views. Second, his argument that reductive views are impossible because they attempt to explain language “from outside” rests on an equivocation between two senses in which an explanation of language can be from outside language. I offer a partially reductive account of meaning which appeals both to speakers’ dispositions to produce and respond to utterances in naturalistically specifiable ways, and to the normative attitudes they adopt, in so doing, to their own behavior. This account is supported, I argue, by Stroud's early treatment of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations and in particular of the agreement in primitive judgments or reactions which Wittgenstein takes to be required for linguistic communication.Less
I argue that Stroud's nonreductionism about meaning is insufficiently motivated. First, given that he rejects the assumption that grasp of an expression's meaning guides or instructs us in its use, he has no reason to accept Kripke's arguments against dispositionalism or related reductive views. Second, his argument that reductive views are impossible because they attempt to explain language “from outside” rests on an equivocation between two senses in which an explanation of language can be from outside language. I offer a partially reductive account of meaning which appeals both to speakers’ dispositions to produce and respond to utterances in naturalistically specifiable ways, and to the normative attitudes they adopt, in so doing, to their own behavior. This account is supported, I argue, by Stroud's early treatment of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations and in particular of the agreement in primitive judgments or reactions which Wittgenstein takes to be required for linguistic communication.
Christopher Gauker
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198714088
- eISBN:
- 9780191782527
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198714088.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Language
Many contemporary philosophers of language have given up on the idea that there will be a satisfactory analysis of the relation of reference in terms of which referential semantics explicates truth ...
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Many contemporary philosophers of language have given up on the idea that there will be a satisfactory analysis of the relation of reference in terms of which referential semantics explicates truth and meaning, and so have resolved to formulate their theories of meaning and communication without appeal to reference. Still, there is a resilient intuition to the effect that one knows what the terms of his or her language refer to, that is, their extensions. This chapter explicates that intuition without yielding to it. The intuition that one knows the extension is found to rest on the intuition that one knows the meanings of his or her words. But we can have a “skeptical” account of what it is to “know the meaning” of a word, a variety of meaning skepticism. It takes the form of an account of the status that is granted to a person in saying that he or she “knows the meaning” of a word.Less
Many contemporary philosophers of language have given up on the idea that there will be a satisfactory analysis of the relation of reference in terms of which referential semantics explicates truth and meaning, and so have resolved to formulate their theories of meaning and communication without appeal to reference. Still, there is a resilient intuition to the effect that one knows what the terms of his or her language refer to, that is, their extensions. This chapter explicates that intuition without yielding to it. The intuition that one knows the extension is found to rest on the intuition that one knows the meanings of his or her words. But we can have a “skeptical” account of what it is to “know the meaning” of a word, a variety of meaning skepticism. It takes the form of an account of the status that is granted to a person in saying that he or she “knows the meaning” of a word.
