My paper examines the popular idea, defended by Kripke, that meaning is an essentially normative notion. I consider four common versions of this idea and suggest that none of them can be supported, either because the alleged normativity has nothing to do with normativity or because it cannot plausibly be said that meaning is normative in the sense suggested. I argue that contrary to received opinion, we don’t need normativity to secure the possibility of meaning. I conclude by considering the (...) repercussions of rejecting semantic normativity on three central issues: justification, communication, and naturalism. (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)

I argue that our procedures for determining whether ascriptions of a predicate represent things as being a certain way are ultimately pragmatic. Pragmatic procedures are not subject to validation by the referential procedure – determining whether there is a property playing the role of its referent. Predicates can represent even if we can't provide an independent identification of its referent. For these predicates, the speakers’ knowledge of how they represent objects as being would have to be construed in terms of (...) the ascription practices they associate with the predicates. The same approach can be applied to semantic predicates, such as ‘is representational’ or ‘refers to’. They can be treated as representational even if we can't provide an independent identification of their referents. The availability of this position undermines accounts of the referents of semantic predicates in naturalistic terms. (shrink)

I argue that a target of the rule - following considerations is the thought that there are mental episodes in which a consciously accessible item guides me in my decision to respond in a certain way when I follow a rule. I contend that Wittgenstein’s position on this issue invokes a distinction between a literal and a symbolic reading of the claim that these processes of guidance take place. In the literal sense he rejects the claim, but in the symbolic (...) sense he sees nothing wrong with it. I consider some arguments that Wittgenstein deploys against the literal sense of the claim. (shrink)

Two readings of Wittgenstein's rule-following paradox dominate the literature: either his arguments lead to skepticism, and thus to the view that only a deflated account of meaning is available, or they lead to quietism, and thus to the view that no philosophical account of meaning is called for. I argue, against both these positions, that a proper diagnosis of the paradox points the way towards a constructive, non-sceptical account of meaning.

In Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke articulates a form of scepticism about meaning. Even though there is considerable disagreement among critics about the reasoning in which the sceptic engages, there is little doubt that he seeks to offer constraints for an adequate account of the facts that constitute the meaningfulness of expressions. Many of the sceptic's remarks concern the nature of the guidance involved in a speaker's meaningful uses of expressions. I propose that we understand those remarks (...) as seeking to give shape to the idea that to use an expression under the guidance of one's understanding is to have a reason for that use, which one's understanding allows one to discern and act on. Any philosophical elucidation of meaning must adequately capture the rational nature of our linguistic acts. (shrink)

Paul Horwich has argued that Kripke's Wittgenstein's 'sceptical challenge' to the notion of meaning and rule-following only gets going if an 'inflationary' conception of truth is presupposed, and he develops a 'use-theoretic' conception of meaning which he claims is immune to Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical attack. I argue that even if we grant Horwich his 'deflationary' conception of truth, that is not enough to undermine Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical argument. Moreover, Horwich's own 'use-theoretic' account of meaning actually falls prey to that sceptical (...) challenge. (publisher). (shrink)

Paul Horwich has argued that Kripke's Wittgenstein's 'sceptical challenge' to the notion of meaning and rule-following only gets going if an 'inflationary' conception of truth is presupposed, and he develops a 'use-theoretic' conception of meaning which he claims is immune to Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical attack. I argue that even if we grant Horwich his 'deflationary' conception of truth, that is not enough to undermine Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical argument. Moreover, Horwich's own 'use-theoretic' account of meaning actually falls prey to that sceptical (...) challenge. (publisher). (shrink)

I critically discuss two claims which Hannah Ginsborg makes on behalf of her account of meaning in terms of ‘primitive normativity’: first, that it avoids the sceptical regress articulated by Kripke's Wittgenstein; second, that it makes sense of the thought—central to Kripke's Wittgenstein—that ‘meaning is normative’, in a way which shows this thought not only to be immune from recent criticisms but also to undermine reductively naturalistic theories of content. In the course of the discussion, I consider and attempt to (...) shed light on a number of issues: the structure of the sceptical regress; the content of the thought that ‘meaning is normative’, and its force against reductive theories; the connection between meaning and justification; and the notion of ‘primitive normativity’. (shrink)

The paper puts forward a new skeptical solution to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s rule-following paradox, a solution which revolves around the idea that human communication does not require meaning facts - at least as defined by Kripke. After a brief discussion of the paradox, I explain why I think that Kripkenstein’s solution needs revision and argue that the main goal of a skeptical solution to the rule-following paradox should be that of showing that communication does not require meaning. After that, I offer (...) two arguments for the thesis that communication does not require meaning. The first argument instantiates a rather direct strategy and focuses on the description of a concrete case of communication without meaning. The second one is more indirect in that I start by describing a world in which, although there are meaning facts, communication does not depend on them. The paper’s last section deals with the issue of meaning talk. (shrink)

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 (...) some remarks first put forward by Paul Boghossian and Anandi Hattiangadi and revolves around the idea that semantic dispositionalists have no way to justify their privileging certain dispositions, the ones they take to be reference-determining, over all the others. After some background (Section 1) and a first presentation of the argument (Section 2), I discuss three ways a dispositionalist might try to answer it and find them all wanting (Section 3). (shrink)

The paper discusses Saul Kripke's Normativity Argument against semantic dispositionalism: it criticizes the orthodox interpretation of the argument, defends an alternative reading and argues that, contrary to what Kripke himself seems to have been thinking, the real point of the Normativity Argument is not that meaning is normative. According to the orthodox interpretation, the argument can be summarized as follows: (1) it is constitutive of the concept of meaning that its instances imply an ought, but (2) it is not constitutive (...) of the concept of a disposition that dispositions imply an ought, hence (3) no dispositional analysis of meaning can work. According to my alternative reading, the point of the argument is another one, namely that while (1) dispositionalism is committed to the thesis that speakers have non-inferential knowledge of their unmanifested linguistic dispositions, (2) speakers, as a matter of fact, do not have such a knowledge. A point that is in principle independent from the issue of the normativity of meaning. (shrink)

The paper discusses an objection, put forward by - among others - John McDowell, to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s non-factualist and relativist view of semantic discourse. The objection goes roughly as follows: while it is usually possible to be a relativist about a given domain of discourse without being a relativist about anything else, relativism about semantic discourse entails global relativism, which in turn entails subjective idealism, which we can reasonably assume to be false. The paper’s first section sketches Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s ideas (...) about semantic discourse and gives a fully explicit formulation of the objection. The second section describes and briefly discusses the formal apparatus needed to evaluate the objection - which is basically equivalent to John MacFarlane’s recent development of David Kaplan’s classic semantic framework. Finally, the third section explains in detail why the objection fails. I show that even though relativism about semantic discourse does entail a form of global relativism, the relativism in question does not entail anything like Berkeleyan or Fichtean idealism. This particular kind of relativism holds that which character (in Kaplan’s sense) is associated to a given utterance depends on what MacFarlane calls “the context of assessment”. (shrink)

Saul Kripke's influential ‘sceptical paradox’ of semantic rule-following alleges that speakers cannot have any justification for using a word one way rather than another. If it is correct, there can be no such thing as meaning anything by a word. I argue that the paradox fails to undermine meaning. Kripke never adequately motivates its excessively strict standard for the justified use of words. The paradox lacks the resources to show that its standard is truly mandatory or that speakers do not (...) frequently satisfy the well-motivated competitor I offer. So the paradox fails. (shrink)

I defend the normativity of meaning against recent objections by arguing for a new interpretation of the ‘ought’ relevant to meaning. Both critics and defenders of the normativity thesis have understood statements about how an expression ought to be used as either prescriptive or semantic. I propose an alternative view of the ‘ought’ as conveying the primitively normative attitudes speakers must adopt towards their uses if they are to use the expression with understanding.

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 (...) this represents a distortion of Wittgenstein’s conception of the normativity of meaning, and that Wittgenstein’s conception is preferable. (shrink)

The paper addresses the question whether semantic naturalism is undermined by the thought that semantic concepts are normative.

Normativism in the theory of meaning and content is the view that linguistic meaning and/or intentional content are essentially normative. As both normativity and its essentiality to meaning/content can be interpreted in a number of different ways, there is now a whole family of views laying claim to the slogan “meaning/content is normative”. In this essay, we discuss a number of central normativist theses, and we begin by identifying different versions of meaning normativism, presenting the arguments that have been put (...) forth for and against them. (shrink)

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 (...) take to be epistemological in nature) and argue that it is much stronger as an argument in the philosophy of mind than when it is construed as an argument in the philosophy of language. (shrink)

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 (...) been proposed. This thesis is about one family of solutions, according to which facts about meaning are sui generis and can neither be reduced to other facts about the world nor to non-semantic facts about the human mind. The non-reductionist proposals by Colin McGinn and Crispin Wright will be assessed in detail and arguments against both will be introduced. The arguments stem only partially from Kripke himself, some are based on recent literature, others are completely new. The emerging situation will be used as a basis to propose an alternative non-reductionism about meaning-facts. (shrink)