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Is Meaning Normative?

In Nimtz Christian & Beckermann Ansgar (eds.), Philosophy – Science – Scientific Philosophy. Main Lectures and Colloquia of GAP.5, Fifth International Congress of the Society for Analytical Philosophy, Bielefeld, 22–26 September 2003. Paperborn. pp. 205-218 (2005)

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  1. Normativity of Meaning: An Inferentialist Argument.Shuhei Shimamura & Tuomo Tiisala - 2023 - Synthese 202 (4):1-21.
    This paper presents a new argument to defend the normativity of meaning, specifically the thesis that there are no meanings without norms. The argument starts from the observation inferentialists have emphasized that incompatibility relations between sentences are a necessary part of meaning as it is understood. We motivate this approach by showing that the standard normativist strategy in the literature, which is developed in terms of veridical reference that may swing free from the speaker’s understanding, violates the ought-implies-can principle, but (...)
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  • Rules, practices, and assessment of linguistic behaviour.Bartosz Kaluziński - 2023 - Theoria 89 (4):471-482.
    In this paper, I focus on the idea that language is a rule‐constituted and rule‐governed practice. This notion has been criticised recently. It has been claimed that, even if linguistic meaning is determined by rules, these rules are not genuinely normative because they do not govern actions within the practice by themselves. It has been emphasised that one needs to consent (e.g., has relevant intention or desire) to be a part of that practice. First, I distinguish between two issues: (1) (...)
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  • Rule-Following and Intentionality.Alexander Miller & Olivia Sultanescu - 2022 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  • The fanciest sort of intentionality: Active inference, mindshaping and linguistic content.Remi Tison - 2022 - Philosophical Psychology 35:1-41.
    In this paper, I develop an account of linguistic content based on the active inference framework. While ecological and enactive theorists have rightly rejected the notion of content as a basis for cognitive processes, they must recognize the important role that it plays in the social regulation of linguistic interaction. According to an influential theory in philosophy of language, normative inferentialism, an utterance has the content that it has in virtue of its normative status, that is, in virtue of the (...)
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  • Yet another victim of Kripkenstein’s monster: dispositions, meaning, and privilege.Andrea Guardo - 2022 - Ergo 8 (55):857-882.
    In metasemantics, semantic dispositionalism is the view that what makes it the case that, given the value of the relevant parameters, a certain linguistic expression refers to what it does are the speakers’ dispositions. In the literature, there is something like a consensus that the fate of dispositionalism hinges on the status of three arguments, first put forward by Saul Kripke ‒ or at least usually ascribed to him. This paper discusses a different, and strangely neglected, anti-dispositionalist argument, which develops (...)
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  • Going on as one ought: Kripke and Wittgenstein on the normativity of meaning.Hannah Ginsborg - 2022 - Mind and Language 37 (5):876-892.
    Kripke’s thesis that meaning is normative is typically interpreted, following Boghossian, as the thesis that meaningful expressions allow of true or warranted use. I argue for an alternative interpretation centered on Wittgenstein’s conception of the normativity involved in “knowing how to go on” in one’s use of an expression. Meaning is normative for Kripke because it justifies claims, not to be saying something true, but to be going on as one ought from prevous uses of the expression. I argue that (...)
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  • Rules of Belief and the Normativity of Intentional Content.Derek Green - 2021 - Acta Analytica 36 (2):159-69.
    Mental content normativists hold that the mind’s conceptual contents are essentially normative. Many hold the view because they think that facts of the form “subject S possesses concept c” imply that S is enjoined by rules concerning the application of c in theoretical judgments. Some opponents independently raise an intuitive objection: even if there are such rules, S’s possession of the concept is not the source of the enjoinment. Hence, these rules do not support mental content normativism. Call this the (...)
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  • Epistemologia dell'educazione. Pensiero critico, etica ed Epistemic Injustice.Alessia Marabini - 2020 - Rome: Aracne editore.
    Contro una visione prettamente strumentale della razionalità, una tesi di questo libro è che il pensiero critico non può consistere solo di abilità di pensiero deduttivo o inferenziale, ma è più in generale espressione di abilità epistemiche e competenze etiche inerenti al processo della conoscenza intesa come questione complessa, poiché relativa alla formazione della persona che conosce e agisce nel mondo secondo determinati fini, valori, credenze. Una valutazione delle competenze che non tenga conto di questa differenza genera forme di ingiustizia (...)
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  • Ginsborg on a Kantian-Brandomian View of Concepts.Byeong D. Lee - 2020 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 28 (1):56-74.
    According to a Kantian-Brandomian view of concepts, we can understand concepts in terms of norms or rules that bind those who apply them, and the use of a concept requires that the concept-user be sensitive to the relevant conceptual norms. Recently, Ginsborg raises two important objections against this view. According to her, the normativity Brandom ascribes to concepts lacks the internalist or first-person character of normativity that Kant’s view demands, and the relevant normativity belongs properly not to concepts as such, (...)
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  • Inferentialism without Normativity.Krzysztof Poslajko & Pawel Grabarczyk - 2018 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 25 (2):174-195.
    In this paper we argue that inferentialist approach to meaning does not, by itself, show that meaning is normative in a prescriptive sense, and that the constitutive rules argument is especially troubling for this position. To show that, we present the proto-inferentialist theory developed by Ajdukiewicz and claim that despite the differences between his theory and contemporary inferentialism rules of language in both theories function more like classificatory devices than prescriptions. Inferentialists can respond by claiming that in their theory meaning (...)
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  • On the Logic of Permissiveness of Belief.Seyyed Ali Kalantari - 2013 - Journal of Philosophical Theological Research 15 (58):59-73.
    According to the theory of normativity of belief, understanding the idea that there is a normative relationship between the mental act of believing and the content of belief reinforces the concept of propositional attitude of belief. The issue of how to formulate the aforementioned normative relationship- which can also be called the issue of norm-based formulation, for short-is the one which is abundantly studied in relevant philosophical literature. In the philosophical literature of two or three recent years, two kinds of (...)
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  • Forgetski Vygotsky: Or, a plea for bootstrapping accounts of learning.Michael Luntley - 2017 - Educational Philosophy and Theory 49 (10):957-970.
    This paper argues that sociocultural accounts of learning fail to answer the key question about learning—how is it possible? Accordingly, we should adopt an individualist bootstrapping methodology in providing a theory of learning. Such a methodology takes seriously the idea that learning is staged and distinguishes between a non-comprehending engagement with things and a comprehending engagement. It suggests that, in the light of recent work in psychology with insights from Wittgenstein, there is rich scope for a bootstrapping account of learning. (...)
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  • Journal of Philosophical Investigations.M. Asgahri - 2015 - Journal of Philosophical Investigations 9 (17):1-227.
    open journal of Philosophical Investigations (PI) is an international journal dedicated to the latest advancements in philosophy. The goal of this journal is to provide a platform for academicians all over the world to promote, share, and discuss various new issues and developments in different areas of philosophy. -/- All manuscripts to be prepared in English or Persian and are subject to a rigorous and fair peer-review process. Generally, accepted papers will appear online. The journal publishes papers including the following (...)
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  • Is the Norm on Belief Evaluative? A Response to McHugh.Alexander Greenberg & Christopher Cowie - 2016 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly:128-145.
    We respond to Conor McHugh's claim that an evaluative account of the normative relation between belief and truth is preferable to a prescriptive account. We claim that his arguments fail to establish this. We then draw a more general sceptical conclusion: we take our arguments to put pressure on any attempt to show that an evaluative account will fare better than a prescriptive account. We briefly express scepticism about whether McHugh's more recent ‘fitting attitude’ account fares better.
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  • Brandom's Inferentialist Theory and the Meaning Entitlement Connection.Alessia Marabini - 2018 - In Mlika Hamdi (ed.), Lectures de Robert Brandom. Edilivre. pp. 51-90.
    According to Brandom’s conceptual role semantics, to grasp a concept involves a commitment to drawing certain inferences. This is a consequence of the inferentialist thesis that the meaning of a term is given by its justification through assertibility conditions. Inferential commitments come out from a material notion of inference which underwrites human rational discourse and activity. In this paper I discuss a problem of Brandom’s semantics allegedly exposed in an argument by Paul Boghossian against Dummett’s and Brandom’s substantive conception of (...)
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  • (1 other version)The argument from normativity against dispositional analyses of meaning.Andrea Guardo - 2009 - In Volker A. Munz, Klaus Puhl & Joseph Wang (eds.), Language and World – Papers of the XXXII International Wittgenstein Symposium. Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. pp. 163-165.
    In his well-known essay on Wittgenstein, Saul Kripke maintains that dispositional analyses of meaning cannot work mainly because the concept of disposition is descriptive, whereas that of meaning is normative. Unfortunately, neither Kripke nor his followers have ever spelled out this “argument from normativity” in full detail. As a result, the argument does not have good press. This paper offers an explicit version of the argument. In particular, (1) I try to explain what the claim that meaning is normative amounts (...)
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  • How Norms (Might) Guide Belief.Teemu Toppinen - 2015 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 23 (3):396-409.
    Belief normativism is roughly the view that judgments about beliefs are normative judgments. Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss suggest that there are two ways one could defend this view: by appeal to what might be called ‘truth-norms’, or by appeal to what might be called ‘norms of rationality’ or ‘epistemic norms’. According to G&W, whichever way the normativist takes, she ends up being unable to account for the idea that the norms in question would guide belief formation. Plausibly, if belief (...)
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  • Heidegger's Logico-Semantic Strikeback.Alberto Voltolini - 2015 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 22:19-38.
    In (1959), Carnap famously attacked Heidegger for having constructed an insane metaphysics based on a misconception of both the logical form and the semantics of ordinary language. In what follows, it will be argued that, once one appropriately (i.e., in a Russellian fashion) reads Heidegger’s famous sentence that should paradigmatically exemplify such a misconception, i.e., “the nothing nothings”, there is nothing either logically or semantically wrong with it. The real controversy as to how that sentence has to be evaluated—not as (...)
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  • La concezione epistemica dell'analiticità.Alessia Marabini - 2014 - Aracne editrice.
    La rinascita negli ultimi decenni di un nutrito dibattito intorno alla nozione di analiticità dopo le critiche a suo tempo mosse da Quine alla batteria di nozioni utilizzate da Rudolf Carnap (ad esempio, postulati di significato, regole semantiche, definizioni implicite, convenzioni e stipulazioni esplicite) prende le mosse da una riflessione critica sulle argomentazioni di Quine e tenta, da un lato, di approfondire meglio il legame fra analiticità e conoscenza a priori, e, dall’altro, di capire meglio il ruolo che la definizione (...)
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  • Correct language use: how syntactic and normative constraints converge.Florian Demont - unknown
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  • The Normativity of Meaning: From Constitutive Norms to Prescriptions.Matthias Kiesselbach - 2014 - Acta Analytica 29 (4):427-440.
    This paper defends the normativity of meaning thesis by clearing up a misunderstanding about what the thesis amounts to. The misunderstanding is that according to it, failing to use an expression in accordance with the norms which constitute its meaning amounts to changing the expression’s meaning. If this was what the thesis claimed, then it would indeed be easy to show that meaning norms do not yield prescriptions and cannot be followed. However, there is another reading: what is constitutive of (...)
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  • Kripkenstein and Non-Reductionism about Meaning-Facts.Florian Demont - unknown
    In 1982 Saul A. Kripke proposed a reconstruction of the central insights of Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks on rule-following. The reconstruction prominently featured a sceptical challenge which soon was recognised as a new and very radical form of scepticism. According to the challenge there is no fact of the matter which constitutes meaning. As there is no such fact, the first-person authority people intuitively seem to have concerning what they mean is also baseless. In response to the sceptic, many solutions have (...)
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  • A verisimilitudinarian analysis of the Linda paradox.Gustavo Cevolani, Vincenzo Crupi & Roberto Festa - 2012 - VII Conference of the Spanish Society for Logic, Methodology and Philosphy of Science.
    The Linda paradox is a key topic in current debates on the rationality of human reasoning and its limitations. We present a novel analysis of this paradox, based on the notion of verisimilitude as studied in the philosophy of science. The comparison with an alternative analysis based on probabilistic confirmation suggests how to overcome some problems of our account by introducing an adequately defined notion of verisimilitudinarian confirmation.
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  • Expressivism and Convention-Relativism about Epistemic Discourse.Allan Hazlett - 2014 - In Abrol Fairweather & Owen Flanagan (eds.), Naturalizing Epistemic Virtue. New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Consider the claim that openmindedness is an epistemic virtue, the claim that true belief is epistemically valuable, and the claim that one epistemically ought to cleave to one’s evidence. These are examples of what I’ll call “ epistemic discourse.” In this paper I’ll propose and defend a view called “convention-relativism about epistemic discourse.” In particular, I’ll argue that convention-relativismis superior to its main rival, expressivism about epistemic discourse. Expressivism and conventionalism both jibe with anti-realism about epistemic normativity, which is motivated (...)
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  • Intentional Normativism Meets Normative Supervenience and the Because Constraint.Daniel Laurier - 2011 - Dialogue 50 (2):315-331.
    ABSTRACT: I explain and rebut four objections to the claim that attributions of intentional attitudes are normative judgments, all stemming, directly or indirectly, from the widespread assumption that the normative supervenes on the non-normative.
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  • Replies to Paul Boghossian and Kevin Mulligan.Wolfgang Künne - 2010 - Dialectica 64 (4):585-615.
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  • Norms of intentionality: norms that don’t guide.Benjamin W. Jarvis - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 157 (1):1-25.
    More than ever, it is in vogue to argue that no norms either play a role in or directly follow from the theory of mental content. In this paper, I present an intuitive theory of intentionality (including a theory of mental content) on which norms are constitutive of the intentional properties of attitude and content in order to show that this trend is misguided. Although this theory of intentionality—the teleological theory of intentional representation—does involve a commitment to representational norms, these (...)
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  • Against Crude Semantic Realism.Florian Demont - 2009 - ILLC Technical Notes (X) Series.
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  • John Cook Wilson.Mathieu Marion - 2010 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    John Cook Wilson (1849–1915) was Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College, Oxford and the founder of ‘Oxford Realism’, a philosophical movement that flourished at Oxford during the first decades of the 20th century. Although trained as a classicist and a mathematician, his most important contribution was to the theory of knowledge, where he argued that knowledge is factive and not definable in terms of belief, and he criticized ‘hybrid’ and ‘externalist’ accounts. He also argued for direct realism in perception, (...)
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  • Free will and the necessity of the present.Roberto Loss - 2009 - Analysis 69 (1):63-69.
    Joseph Keim Campbell has recently criticized Peter van Inwagen's Third Argument against compatibilism for its reliance on the existence of a remote past. In response, Anthony Brueckner has offered a new version of the Third Argument showing that determinism and free will are incompatible for all times t relative to which there is a past . In this paper I argue that although Brueckner's retooled argument fails to prove anything in favour of incompatibilism, its conclusion can be exploited to provide (...)
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  • The use of ‘use’.Daniel Whiting - 2008 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 76 (1):135-147.
    Many equate the meaning of a linguistic expression with its use. This paper investigates prominent objections to the equivalence claim and argues that they are unsuccessful. Once one suitably distinguishes the kind of use to be identified with meaning, the two do not diverge. Doing so, however, requires employing terms that are cognates of ‘meaning’ (if not ‘meaning’ itself). Nonetheless, I stress, this does not count against the equivalence claim. Moreover, one should not assume that the circularity on this occasion (...)
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  • True, false, paranormal and 'designated'?: A reply to Jenkins.Colin Ready Caret & Aaron Cotnoir - 2008 - Analysis 68 (3):238–244.
    Jenkins (2007) charges that the language advanced in Beall (2007) is either expressively impoverished, or inconsistent. We argue that Jenkins’ objections are based on unreasonably strong constraints on formal theories of truth. Our primary concern is not to defend the ‘paranormal’ framework advanced in Beall, but to respond to a common – and implausible – ‘revenge’-style charge directed at a certain class of formal theories of truth and paradox.
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  • A Defense of Meaning Eliminativism: A Connectionist Approach.Tolgahan Toy - 2022 - Dissertation, Middle East Technical University
    The standard approach to model how human beings understand natural languages is the symbolic, compositional approach according to which the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meanings of its constituents. In other words, meaning plays a fundamental role in the model. In this work, because of the polysemous, flexible, dynamic, and contextual structure of natural languages, this approach is rejected. Instead, a connectionist model which eliminates the concept of meaning is proposed.
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  • Two epistemological arguments against two semantic dispositionalisms.Andrea Guardo - 2020 - Journal for the Philosophy of Language, Mind and the Arts 1 (1):13-25.
    Even though he is not very explicit about it, in “Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language” Kripke discusses two different, albeit related, skeptical theses ‒ the first one in the philosophy of mind, the second one in the philosophy of language. Usually, what Kripke says about one thesis can be easily applied to the other one, too; however, things are not always that simple. In this paper, I discuss the case of the so-called “Normativity Argument” against semantic dispositionalism (which I (...)
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  • Content and Meaning Constitutive Inferences.Mª Dolores García-Arnaldos - 2019 - Studia Semiotyczne 33 (1):29–47.
    A priori theories of justification of logic based on meaning often lead to trouble, in particular to issues concerning circularity. First, I present Boghossian’s a prioriview. Boghossian maintains the rule-circular justifications from a conceptual role semantics. However, rule-circular justifications are problematic. Recently, Boghossian (Boghossian, 2015) has claimed that rules should be thought of as contents and contents as abstract objects. In this paper, I discuss Boghossian’s view. My argumentation consists of three main parts. First, I analyse several arguments to show (...)
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  • Davidson’s Answer to Kripke’s Sceptic.Olivia Sultanescu & Claudine Verheggen - 2019 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 7 (2):8-28.
    According to the sceptic Saul Kripke envisages in his celebrated book on Wittgenstein on rules and private language, there are no facts about an individual that determine what she means by any given expression. If there are no such facts, the question then is, what justifies the claim that she does use expressions meaningfully? Kripke’s answer, in a nutshell, is that she by and large uses her expressions in conformity with the linguistic standards of the community she belongs to. While (...)
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  • Thoughts, oughts and the conceptual primacy of belief.Alexander Miller - 2008 - Analysis 68 (3):234-238.
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  • Reference, Truth, and Biological Kinds.Marcel Weber - 2014 - In: J. Dutant, D. Fassio and A. Meylan (Eds.) Liber Amicorum Pascal Engel.
    This paper examines causal theories of reference with respect to how plausible an account they give of non-physical natural kind terms such as ‘gene’ as well as of the truth of the associated theoretical claims. I first show that reference fixism for ‘gene’ fails. By this, I mean the claim that the reference of ‘gene’ was stable over longer historical periods, for example, since the classical period of transmission genetics. Second, I show that the theory of partial reference does not (...)
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  • Dynamics, Brandom-style.Bernhard Nickel - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 162 (2):333-354.
    Abstract This paper discusses the semantic theory presented in Robert Brandom’s Making It Explicit . I argue that it is best understood as a special version of dynamic semantics, so that these semantics by themselves offer an interesting theoretical alternative to more standard truth-conditional theories. This reorientation also has implications for more foundational issues. I argue that it gives us the resources for a renewed argument for the normativity of meaning. The paper ends by critically assessing the view in both (...)
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  • Between primitivism and naturalism: Brandom’s theory of meaning.Daniel Whiting - 2006 - Acta Analytica 21 (3):3-22.
    Many philosophers accept that a naturalistic reduction of meaning is in principle impossible, since behavioural regularities or dispositions are consistent with any number of semantic descriptions. One response is to view meaning as primitive. In this paper, I explore Brandom’s alternative, which is to specify behaviour in non-semantic but normative terms. Against Brandom, I argue that a norm specified in non-semantic terms might correspond to any number of semantic norms. Thus, his theory of meaning suffers from the very same kind (...)
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  • No norm for (off the record) implicatures.Javier González de Prado - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    It is widely held that there is a distinctive norm of assertion. A plausible idea is that there is an analogous, perhaps weaker, norm for indirect communication via implicatures. I argue against this type of proposal. My claim is that the norm of assertion is a social norm governing public updates to the conversational record. Off the record implicatures are not subject to social norms of this type. I grant that, as happens in general with intentional actions, off the record (...)
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  • No, one should not believe all truths.Anandi Hattiangadi - 2019 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (9-10):1091-1103.
    ABSTRACTIn a recent paper, Alexander Greenberg defends a truth norm of belief according to which if one has some doxastic attitude towards p, one ought to believe that p if and only if p is true. He responds, in particular, to the ‘blindspot’ objection to truth norms such as da: in the face of true blindspots, such as it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining, truth norms such as da are unsatisfiable; they entail that one ought to (...)
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  • Should I believe all the truths?Alexander Greenberg - 2020 - Synthese 197 (8):3279-3303.
    Should I believe something if and only if it’s true? Many philosophers have objected to this kind of truth norm, on the grounds that it’s not the case that one ought to believe all the truths. For example, some truths are too complex to believe; others are too trivial to be worth believing. Philosophers who defend truth norms often respond to this problem by reformulating truth norms in ways that do not entail that one ought to believe all the truths. (...)
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  • The normativity of meaning defended.Daniel Whiting - 2007 - Analysis 67 (2):133-140.
    Meaning, according to a significant number of philosophers, is an intrinsically normative notion.1 For this reason, it is suggested, meaning is not conducive to a naturalistic explanation. In this paper, I shall not address whether this is indeed so. Nor shall I present arguments in support of the normativity thesis (see Glock 2005; Kripke 1982). Instead, I shall examine and respond to two forceful objections recently (and independently) raised against it by Boghossian (2005), Hattiangadi (2006) and Miller (2006). Although I (...)
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  • The Normativity of Meaning: Guidance and Justification.Matthew Jones - 2015 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 23 (3):425-443.
    The thesis that meaning is normative has come under much scrutiny of late. However, there are aspects of the view that have received comparatively little critical attention which centre on meaning’s capacity to guide and justify linguistic action. Call such a view ‘justification normativity’. I outline Zalabardo’s account of JN and his corresponding argument against reductive-naturalistic meaning-factualism and argue that the argument presents a genuine challenge to account for the guiding role of meaning in linguistic action. I then present a (...)
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  • Meaning and the Emergence of Normativity.Aude Bandini - 2010 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 18 (3):415-431.
    Linguistic meaning has an essential normative dimension that prima facie cannot be reduced to descriptive, non-normative, terms. Taking this point for granted, this paper however aims at proposing a naturalist view of semantics - inspired by Wilfrid Sellars' original works - focused on the way the constitutive normative aspects of meaning might be properly explained and accounted for, rather than eliminated.
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  • Thoughts and oughts.Mason Cash - 2008 - Philosophical Explorations 11 (2):93 – 119.
    Many now accept the thesis that norms are somehow constitutively involved in people's contentful intentional states. I distinguish three versions of this normative thesis that disagree about the type of norms constitutively involved. Are they objective norms of correctness, subjective norms of rationality, or intersubjective norms of social practices? I show the advantages of the third version, arguing that it improves upon the other two versions, as well as incorporating their principal insights. I then defend it against two serious challenges: (...)
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  • Preskryptywna eksplikacja tezy o normatywności znaczenia i trudności z nią związane.Bartosz Kaluziński - 2015 - Hybris, Revista de Filosofí­A (28):94-115.
    PRESCRIPTIVE EXPLICATION OF THE NORMATIVITY OF MEANING THESIS The aim of this paper is to analyse prescriptive interpretations of the thesis that meaning is normative, which was introduced by Saul Kripke and later developed by Paul Boghossian. We are going to show that meaning prescriptivism is counter-intuitive and has implausible consequences. Attempts to save prescriptive interpretations by appealing to prima facie obligations or „normativity of judgment” are unsuccessful.
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  • Disbelieving the Normativity of Content.Víctor M. Verdejo - 2014 - Acta Analytica 29 (4):441-456.
    Adherents as well as detractors of the normativity of mental content agree that its assessment crucially depends on the assessment of a principle for believing what is true. In this paper, I present an alternative principle, which is based on possession conditions for pure thinking or mere entertaining. I argue that the alternative approach has not been sufficiently emphasised in the literature and has two important merits. First, it yields a direct analysis of the normativity of mental content, which is, (...)
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  • On the logic of aiming at truth.Seyed Ali Kalantari & Michael Luntley - 2013 - Analysis 73 (3):419-422.
    We argue that the debate about the normativity of belief thesis has been hampered by the slogan, ‘belief aims at truth’. We show that the slogan provides no content to the normativity of belief. The slogan encourages formulations of the norm as a prescriptive norm. There are well-known problems with such formulations. We provide a new formulation of the thesis as a prohibitive norm. This captures the key intuition most normativists about belief want to endorse.
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