Abstract

The thesis examines a central and controversial question in the philosophy of mind and language: Is meaning normative? Are there rules we must follow for our words to have meaning? ;Philosophers are sharply divided over this question. One side, often associated with Wittgenstein and more recently Kripke, sees meaning as essentially normative. If a sign is to be meaningful, then surely, it is argued, there must be a distinction between the correct and incorrect use of that sign. The other side eschews the appeal to rules. This line of thought goes back to Quine, and has been vigorously defended by Davidson, who argues that linguistic rules are no more essential to speaking a language than the rules of etiquette at a dinner table are to consuming food. ;The dissertation proposes that we approach the question by asking whether there is a notion of linguistic incorrectness which is essential to meaning. Various common versions of the notion of linguistic incorrectness are considered, including the one appealed to by Saul Kripke in his discussion of Wittgenstein, the suggestion that going against the communicative conventions is making a linguistic error, and Tyler Burge's idea that we err when we violate certain constitutive community norms. Neither of these suggestions, it is argued, supports the idea that rules are essential to meaning. ;But we should not conclude from this, as does Davidson, that we can reject the notion of linguistic incorrectness altogether. If a speaker is to be interpretable there must be certain constraints on her linguistic use, and a plausible construal of these constraints, it is argued, presupposes a notion of linguistic incorrectness. The conclusion is that there is a notion of linguistic incorrectness which is essential to meaning, although this notion is not to be understood along the ordinary lines