Recently, several scholars have argued in support of the idea that folk psychology involves a primary capacity for regulating our mental states and patterns of behavior in accordance with a bunch of shared social norms and routines :259–281, 2015; Zawidzki, Philosophical Explorations 11:193–210, 2008; Zawidzki, Mindshaping: A new framework for understanding human social cognition, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2013). This regulative view shares with the classical Dennettian intentional stance its emphasis on the normative character of human socio-cognitive capacities. Given those similarities, (...) it makes sense to assess the regulative view by considering some of the classical arguments against the normative nature of the intentional stance :76–100, 1985; Stich, Philosophical Topics 12:39–62, 1981; Stich, The fragmentation of reason: Preface to a pragmatic theory of cognitive evaluation, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990). The aim of this paper is to argue that the priority that the regulative view lays on the pluralistic and regulative character of folk psychology leaves the theory well-placed to resist these arguments. In this sense, the regulative view possesses better theoretical options to defend the normative character of human social cognition. (shrink)

John Locke’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities of objects has meet resistance. In this paper I bypass the traditional critiques of the distinction and instead concentrate on two specific counterexamples to the distinction: Killer yellow and the puzzle of multiple dispositions. One can accommodate these puzzles, I argue, by adopting Thomas Reid’s version of the primary/secondary quality distinction, where the distinction is founded upon conceptual grounds. The primary/secondary quality distinction is epistemic rather than metaphysical. A consequence of Reid’s primary/ (...) secondary quality distinction is that one must deny the original version of Molyneux’s question, while one must affirm an amended version of it. I show that these two answers to Molyneux’s question are not at odds with current empirical research. (shrink)

La tesis de la privacidad linguitica nace con el gesto fundador de la filosofía moderna que apoya toda legitimidad en la subjetividad y la conciencia. Ello da origen a dos problemas filos�ficos fundamentales, concernientes al mundo y al solipsismo. El siglo XX creyó encontrar en el lenguaje una salida a estos problemas. Wittgenstein es allí una pieza clave. Sin embargo las interpretaciones más influyentes de Wittgenstein enfocaron la crítica del lenguaje privado de tal modo que la salida debía permanecer en (...) el terreno epistemológico de las garantías o criterio de corrección (Malcolm, Fogelin, Kenny, Canfield, Tugendhat). Sostenemos que la interpretación propuesta por Kripke se apoya un un agudo diagnóstico de la fuente de estas dificultades, dándose cuenta que la refutación del lenguaje privado requería abandonar toda una concepción, la del realismo, que afectaban por igual al lenguaje privado y al público. Su argumentación, centrada en la semántica, irradia consecuencias más allá de la misma. Su "solución escéptica" al establecer que los juicios de corrección, entendidos como básicos y primitivos, sólo poseen sentido en el marco de una comunidad uniforme en sus juicios, coloca al discurso filosófico en un nuevo terreno. (shrink)

Semantic normativism, which is the view that semantic properties/concepts are some kind of normative properties/concepts, has become increasingly influential in contemporary meta-semantics. In this paper, I aim to argue that semantic normativism has difficulty accommodating the causal efficacy of semantic properties. In specific, I raise an exclusion problem for semantic normativism, inspired by the exclusion problem in the philosophy of mind. Moreover, I attempt to show that the exclusion problem for semantic normativism is peculiarly troublesome: while we can solve mental-physical (...) exclusion by adopting the so-called ‘autonomy approach’, a similar autonomy solution to semantic exclusion is implausible if semantic properties are understood as normative properties. (shrink)

There has been much debate over whether to accept the claim that meaning is normative. One obstacle to making progress in that debate is that it is not always clear what the claim amounts to. In this paper, I try to resolve a dispute between those who advance the claim concerning how it should be understood. More specifically, I critically examine two competing conceptions of the normativity of meaning, rejecting one and defending the other. Though the paper aims to settle (...) a dispute among proponents of the claim that meaning is normative, it should be of interest to those who challenge it. After all, before one takes aim, one’s target needs to be in clear view. (shrink)

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 (...) shall argue that the objections are unsuccessful, they are worth attending to, not only because the normativity thesis is so widely accepted and is thought to have such ramifications but, most importantly, because doing so offers the opportunity to help clarify how it is to be understood. (shrink)

A number of prominent philosophers advance the following ideas: (1) Meaning is use. (2) Meaning is an intrinsically normative notion. Call (1) the use thesis, hereafter UT, and (2) the normativity thesis, hereafter NT. They come together in the view that for a linguistic expression to have meaning is for there to be certain proprieties governing its employment.1 These ideas are often associated with a third.

This paper outlines a new approach to the epistemology of normative beliefs, based on a version of the claim that “the intentional is normative”. This approach incorporates an account of where our “normative intuitions” come from, and of why it is essential to these intuitions that they have a certain weak connection to the truth. This account allows that these intuitions may be fallible, but it also seeks to explain why it is rational for us to rely on these intuitions (...) in forming normative beliefs—although it is also rational for us to try to correct for these intuitions’ fallibility by revising our normative beliefs in such a way as to approach what Rawls called “reflective equilibrium”. (shrink)

I argue that the semantic content of thoughts and the linguistic meaning of expressions are things with a history in the sense that they can be made fully intelligible only from the point of view of the future. I defend this position by articulating a version of a view known in the philosophy of language as temporal externalism. Temporal externalism about content is the view that the content of a subject’s thoughts and utterances at a time t depends on features (...) of the linguistic practices of her community after t. There are two different ways in which temporal externalism can be developed. First, one can take it to be the view according to which the meaning of an expression is given by the whole pattern of use, including future ones, of that expression. Alternatively, one can interpret temporal externalism as the view that the meaning of a speaker’s utterance is determined by the norms that govern or constrain her linguistic behaviour. These norms, which may be instituted at a later date, place their authoritative stamp upon prior conduct. I show that the first version of temporal externalism faces severe objections from which the second version is immune. I also provide a defence of this second position through an extensive discussion of some thought experiments. (shrink)

There may be various reasons for claiming that meaning is normative, and additionally, very different senses attached to the claim. However, all such claims have faced fierce resistance from those philosophers who insist that meaning is not normative in any nontrivial sense of the word. In this paper I sketch one particular approach to meaning claiming its normativity and defend it against the anti-normativist critique: namely the approach of Brandomian inferentialism. However, my defense is not restricted to inferentialism in any (...) narrow sense for it encompasses a much broader spectrum of approaches to meaning, connected with the Wittgensteinian and especially Sellarsian view of language as an essentially rule-governed enterprise; and indeed I refrain from claiming that the version of inferentialism I present here is in every detail the version developed by Brandom. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the roles played by emotions in rationality, a topic which has been generally, but unjustifiably, ignored by epistemologists. Silence on this matter is, we believe, indicative of the overly narrow view that epistemologists have had of their field. Whatever else we might accomplish by considering the rational role of emotions, we hope to motivate a number of questions and philosophical contexts not commonly considered by epistemologists.Everyone knows that rationality depends on the doxastic state of the (...) individual. Thus, whether an action, decision, inference, or belief is rational depends on what other things the individual believes, or is justified in believing in the given situation. This holds not just for rationality, but for epistemic norms in general. Many such normative statuses apply directly to beliefs, and all depend at least indirectly on the background doxastic status of the agent. In this paper, it is our purpose to argue that rationality, and epistemic norms more generally, depend as well on the emotional states of the agent. (shrink)

Temporal externalists argue that ascriptions of thought and utterance content can legitimately reflect contingent conceptual developments that are only settled after the time of utterance. While the view has been criticized for failing to accord with our “ordinary linguistic practices”, such criticisms (1) conflate our ordinary ascriptional practices with our more general beliefs about meaning, and (2) fail to distinguish epistemically from pragmatically motivated linguistic changes. Temporal externalism relates only to the former sort of changes, and the future usage relevant (...) to what we mean reflects reason-driven practices that are rational for us to defer to. (shrink)

Many people claim that semantic content is normative, and that therefore naturalistic theories of content face a potentially insuperable difficulty. The normativity of content allegedly undermines naturalism by introducing a gap between semantic 'ought's and the explanatory resources of naturalism. I argue here that this problem is not ultimately pressing for naturalists. The normativity thesis, I maintain, is ambiguous; it could mean either that the content of a term prescribes a pattern of use, or that it merely determines which pattern (...) of use can be described as 'correct'. For the antinaturalist argument to go forward, content must be prescriptive. I argue, however, that it is not. Moreover, the thesis that content supplies standards for correct use is insufficient to supply a similar, a priori objection to naturalism. (shrink)

According to Chomsky and his followers, language as a biological phenomenon is a property of individual minds and brains; its status as a social phenomenon is merely epiphenomenal and not a proper object of scientific study. On a rival view, the individual's biological capacity for language cannot be properly understood in isolation from the linguistic environment, which it both depends on for its operation and—in collaboration with other speakers—builds and shapes for future generations. I argue here for the rival view (...) by demonstrating firstly its greater consonance with several themes in current biological theory, and secondly its ability to answer two well‐known philosophical challenges to generative linguistics due to Quine and Kripke. (shrink)

Descriptive semantic theories purport to characterize the meanings of the expressions of languages in whatever complexity they might have. Foundational semantics purports to identify the kind of considerations relevant to establish that a given descriptive semantics accurately characterizes the language used by a given individual or community. Foundational Semantics I presents three contrasting approaches to the foundational matters, and the main considerations relevant to appraise their merits. These approaches contend that we should look at the contents of speakers’ intuitions; at (...) the deep psychology of users and its evolutionary history, as revealed by our best empirical theories; or at the personal‐level rational psychology of those subjects. Foundational Semantics II examines a fourth view, according to which we should look instead at norms enforced among speakers. The two papers aim to determine in addition the extent to which the approaches are really rival, or rather complementary. (shrink)

The paper distinguishes two approaches to understanding the representational content of sentences and intentional states, and its role in describing people, predicting and explaining their behavior, and so forth. It sets forth the case for one of these approaches, the “egocentric” one, initially on the basis of its ability to explain the near‐indefeasibility of ascriptions of content to our own terms (“‘dogs’ as I use it means dogs”), but more generally on the basis of its providing an attractive overall picture (...) of the descriptive and explanatory role of representational content. In doing this, the paper relates the egocentric view to an “immanent” or “deflationary” view of reference and truth conditions, and also to the view of reference‐talk and truth‐talk as anaphoric devices. It discusses the indeterminacy of content ascriptions to those in communities with radically different theories, a phenomenon that is unsurprising on the egocentric approach, and connects this to the thesis of the normativity of meaning. (It does all this in rather broad brush: many strands of the egocentric account will be familiar, and are the subject of familiar controversies; the point of the paper is less to address these controversies individually than to tie the strands together into what is hoped to be an appealing package.). (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to defend the claim that “the intentional is normative” against a number of objections, including those that Georges Rey has presented in his contribution to this volume. First, I give a quick sketch of the principal argument that I have used to support this claim, and briefly comment on Rey’s criticisms of this argument. Next, I try to answer the main objections that have been raised against this claim. First, it may seem that the (...) claim that “the intentional is normative” is just hopelessly Panglossian: doesn’t this claim just wilfully ignore all the mountains of evidence that we have for the sheer ubiquity and pervasiveness of human irrationality? Secondly, the claim that intentional mental states are essentially normative seems to be intended as a purely philosophical, non-empirical account of the nature of these mental states: but why should we think that purely philosophical reflection can tell us anything interesting about the nature of the mind -- shouldn’t we look to empirical psychology to enlighten us about such matters? I argue that neither of these objections succeeds in undermining my version of the claim that "the intentional is normative". (shrink)

Another paper exploring the relation between Temporal externalism and Epistemicism about Vagueness, but with slightly more emphasis on the role of constitutive norms relating to our concept of truth.

Ziel der Arbeit ist zu zeigen, dass sich in der theoretischen Philosophie David Humes Ansätze zu einer therapeutischen Methode finden, wie sie von Ludwig Wittgenstein angewandt und beschrieben wurde. Im ersten Teil wird Wittgensteins Konzeption der Philosophie und ihre Anwendung anhand einer genauen Textexegese dargestellt. Der zweite Teil untersucht primär die Humeschen Überlegungen zu Kausalität und Induktion, seine methodologischen Aussagen sowie seine Perzeptionstheorie und argumentiert für die These, dass Hume ebenfalls, wenn auch mit Einschränkungen, Elemente einer therapeutischen Methode und eine (...) entsprechende Konzeption der Philosophie zugeschrieben werden können. (shrink)