Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T11:07:17.300Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Skookumchuck, Kiidk’yaas, Gibbard: normativity, meaning, and idealization (critical notice of Allan Gibbard Meaning and Normativity)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Adam Morton*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia Department of Philosophy, 1866 Main Mall E370, Vancouver, BC, CanadaV6T 1Z11

Abstract

Gibbard argues that ‘meaning is normative’. He explains the claim with an account of the normative which bases it on the process of planning, taken in part as issuing instructions to oneself. It seems to entail that the right kind of plans make norms. One ought to continue adding with plus rather than quus in a Kripkenstein horror story. I focus on Gibbard’s characterization of normativity: it is not what one might expect. The main purpose of this review article is to present the way of understanding normativity that makes most sense of what he says, and which makes some otherwise implausible assertions defensible and perhaps even true. I give reasons for thinking that Gibbard’s understanding of normativity-through-plans cannot do the work he wants it to. I also argue that he is onto something right, and it opens interesting new questions.

Type
Critical Notice
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cherniak, Christopher. 1986. Minimal Rationality. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Field, Hartry. 1973. “Theory change and the indeterminacy of reference.” Journal of Philosophy 70 (14): 462–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbard, Allan. 2012. Meaning and Normativity. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glymour, Clark. 1972. “Topology, Cosmology, and Convention.” Synthese 24: 195218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morton, Adam. 2012. Bounded Thinking: intellectual virtues for limited agents. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morton, Adam. 2013. Emotion and Imagination. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Ori, Simchen. 2012. Necessary Intentionality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Mark. 1982. “Predicate meets property.” Philosophical Review 91 (4): 549590.CrossRefGoogle Scholar