Explaining genuine moral disagreement is a challenge for metaethical theories. For expressivists, this challenge comes from the plausibility of agents making seemingly univocal claims while expressing incongruent conative attitudes. I argue that metaethical inferentialism – a deflationary cousin to expressivism, which locates meaning in the inferential import of our moral assertions rather than the attitudes they express – offers a unique solution to this problem. Because inferentialism doesn’t locate the source of moral disagreements in a clash between attitudes, but instead (...) in conflicts between the inferential import of ethical assertions, the traditional problem for expressivism can be avoided. After considering two forms of inferentialism that lead to revenge versions of the problem, I conclude by recommending that we understand the semantics of moral disagreements pragmatically: the source of univocity does not come from moral or semantic facts waiting to be described, but instead from the needs that ethical and semantic discourses answer – a solution to the problems of what we are to do and how we are to talk about it. (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)

According to the orthodox account of meaning and translation in the literature, meaning is a property of expressions of a language, and translation is a matching of synonymous expressions across languages. This linguistic account of translation gives rise to well-known skeptical conclusions about translation, objectivity, meaning and truth, but it does not conform to our best translational practices. In contrast, I argue for a textual account of meaning based on the concept of a TEXT-TYPE that does conform to our best (...) translational practices. With their semantic function in view, text-types are Archimedean points for their respective disciplines. The text-type of philosophy is no exception. Culture-transcendent conceptual analysis can proceed on firm footing without having to deny the reality of radical cultural and linguistic difference by treating components of text-types as the concepts to be analyzed. Analyses of central philosophical concepts are provided as a means of adjudicating philosophical controversy. (shrink)

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 (...) its development and motivations. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-22 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9768-4 Authors Bernhard Nickel, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

Discussions of conservatism in epistemology often fail to demonstrate that the principle of conservatism is supported by epistemic considerations. In this paper, I hope to show two things. First, there is a defensible version of the principle of conservatism, a version that applies only to what I will call our basic beliefs. Those who deny that conservatism is supported by epistemic considerations do so because they fail to take into account the necessarily social, diachronic and self-correcting nature of our epistemic (...) practice. Second, I will attempt to show how our basic beliefs are justified via this principle of conservatism. (shrink)

In recent years, several systematic theories of linguistic meaning have been offered that give pride of place to linguistic practice, or the process of linguistic communication. Often these theories are referred to as neo-pragmatist or new pragmatist; I call them 'practice-based'. According to practice-based theories of meaning, the process of linguistic communication is somehow constitutive of, or otherwise essential for the existence of, propositional linguistic meaning. Moreover, these theories disavow, or downplay, the semantic importance of inflationary notions of representation. I (...) introduce the basic ideas and motives behind some practice-based theories of meaning, and offer some reasons why an eliminativist, non-quietist, epistemic practice-based approach to meaning that 1) disavows any explanatory role for the linguistic community as such, 2) prioritizes sentence meaning over word meaning, and 3) may , in the end, be naturalistic, should be favored over its practice-based competitors. (shrink)

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 (...) meaning is not the norm’s being followed, but the norm’s being applicable. On this reading, some standard arguments against the thesis lose their force. After discussing the alternative reading and its consequences, the paper goes on to sketch a model of how norms of meaning become applicable in the first place. This model supports the view that talk of meaning has its pragmatic home in contexts of linguistic calibration. (shrink)

According to a standard criticism, Robert Brandom's “normative pragmatics”, i.e. his attempt to explain normative statuses in terms of practical attitudes, faces a dilemma. If practical attitudes and their interactions are specified in purely non-normative terms, then they underdetermine normative statuses; but if normative terms are allowed into the account, then the account becomes viciously circular. This paper argues that there is no dilemma, because the feared circularity is not vicious. While normative claims do exhibit their respective authors' practical attitudes (...) and thereby contribute towards establishing the normative statuses they are about, this circularity is not a mark of Brandom's explanatory strategy but a feature of social practice of which we theorists partake. (shrink)

'Epistemic' theories of vagueness notoriously claim that (despite the appearances to the contrary) all of our vague terms have sharp boundaries, it's just that we can't know what they are. Epistemic theories are typically criticized for failing to explain (1) the source of the ignorance postulated, and (2) how our terms could come to have such precise boundaries. Both of these objections will, however, be shown to rest on certain 'presentist' assumptions about the relation between use and meaning, and if (...) allows that the meaning constitutive elements of our linguistic practices can extend into the future, the possibility of a new sort of 'normative epistemicism' emerges. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Our ascriptions of content to past utterances assign to them a level of conceptual continuity and determinacy that extends beyond what could be grounded in the usage up to their time of utterance. If one accepts such ascriptions, one can argue either that future use must be added to the grounding base, or that such cases show that meaning is not, ultimately, grounded in use. The following will defend the first option as the more promising of the two, though (...) this ultimately requires understanding the relation between use and meaning as ‘normative’ in two important ways. The first way is that the function from use to meaning must be of a sort that allows us to maintain a robust distinction between actual and correct use. The second sort of normativity is unique to theories that extend the grounding base into the future. In particular, if meaning is partially a function of future use, we can see our commitment to the ‘determinacy’ of meaning as a practical commitment that structures our linguistic practices rather than a theoretical commitment that merely describes them. (shrink)

My answer will be ‘no’. And I’ll defend it by: distinguishing a concept’s having normative import from its being functionally normative; sketching a method for telling whether or not a concept is of the latter sort; responding to the antideflationist, Dummettian argument in favor of the conclusion that truth is functionally normative; proceeding to address a less familiar route to that conclusion—one that’s consistent with deflationism about truth, but that depends on the further assumption that meaning is intrinsically normative; and (...) arguing that this further assumption is mistaken. (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)

Against a broad consensus within contemporary analytic philosophy, Hattiangadi (Mind and Language 21(2):220–240, 2006 , 2007 ) has recently argued that linguistic meaning is not normative, at least not in the sense of being prescriptive. She maintains, more specifically, that standard claims to the effect that meaning is normative are usually ambiguous between two readings: one, which she calls Prescriptivity , and another, which she calls Correctness . According to Hattiangadi, though meaning is normative in the uncontroversial sense specified in (...) the principle Correctness , it is not normative in the sense specified by Prescriptivity . In this paper, I instead show that meaning is normative in the sense of being prescriptive. My argument for this claim takes the form of a classical disjunctive syllogism. I argue that either Correctness implies (because it presupposes) Prescriptivity , or linguistically meaningful items are ‘intrinsically intentional.’ But linguistically meaningful items are not intrinsically intentional, and thus Correctness implies (because it presupposes) Prescriptivity. (shrink)

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: (...) (1) If content is constituted by others' normative judgments, how can content be causally efficacious? (2) This account appears to make having contentful thoughts a matter of people having contentful thoughts about your thoughts. That appears to be viciously circular and so can't be naturalistic. (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)

Th is review article discusses Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lance’s (2009) book on normative speech act theory and Joseph Heath’s (2008) book on rule following, putting them into the context of the general problem of normativity of human discursive practices (and human practices in general). Th e upshot of the discussion is that while Heath’s book advances our understanding of the normative dimension of human life, prominently including human language, Kukla and Lance’s one presents a deeply interesting attempt at a (...) framework for the study of discourse taking normativity of language at face value. (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.

This dissertation proposes the central elements of a Social Enactive Theory of Perception. According to SEP, perception consists in sensory-based practices of interaction with objects, events, and states of affairs that are socially constituted. I oppose the representational view that perception is an indirect contact with the world, consists of the passive receiving and processing of sensory input, is in need of constant assessment of accuracy, and is a matter of individuals alone. I share the basic enactivist insight that perception (...) is a type of activity, but I depart from standard enactivism on the grounds of its individualistic bias and its limited conception of activity. Instead of motor actions, I formulate the concept of perceptual practices as the appropriate framework to understand perception. Perception is woven into socially informed, contextual, sensory-based everyday activities, such as food, dance, and dress, and even seemingly independent, basic perceptual activities and concepts are constituted by such practices. Perceptual individual interactions instantiate social perceptual practices but are not just repetitions of a script. We perceive objects in virtue of perspectives or appearances, not in spite of them, and on this basis I offer SEPâs take on experience, properties, and contents. I conceive perceptual experience as finely grained interactions between subjects and objects, both of which are spatially, temporally, and pragmatically situated. Objects and their sensory properties are perceived dynamically and always in multiple appearances. Perceptual content offers a pragmatic specification of the perceptual objects in the specific ways they appear to subjects. For SEP, perception is normatively structured. SEPâs perceptual normativity is not a worry about a supposed constant threat that our perceptions be nonveridical, but about the placement of perceptual things in a system of possibilities and expectations, cast in terms of degrees of fulfillment of expectations and in a horizon of pragmatic significance, both of which are functions of the socially constituted interactions between a perceiver and a rich theory of appearances. (shrink)

It has frequently been suggested that meaning is, in some important sense, normative. However, precisely what is particularly normative about it is often left without any satisfactory explanation, and the ‘normativity thesis’ has thus, justly, been called into question. That said, it will be argued here that the intuition that meaning is ‘normative’ is on the right track, even if many of the purported explanations for meaning’s normativity are not. In particular, rather that being particularly social, the normativity of meaning (...) may follow from the more logical/epistemic relations between use and meaning. Because of this, some use-based theories we still be able to accommodate the normativity of meaning by allowing that while meaning supervenes upon use, the function from use to meaning is a normative one. (shrink)