Abstract

The thesis proposes an account of a notion of ‘practice’, which provides an understanding of how the world is made intelligible by having thought which is object-involving. The thesis investigates an ontology of practice, the nature of which is characterized in terms of object-engagement. On this account, practice provides content because a subject engages with objects in the world. My main argument is this: if the notion of practice is required in order to account for the possibility of content, then we need an account of practice in which norms are immanent. The basis of my account is McDowell’s reading of Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. I then develop a further supporting argument that if such an account of meaning is to provide the possibility of content, then we need an account of thought which ‘directly’ engages with objects in the world. That is to say, the only sort of thought which provides such an account of meaning and thereby provides content is the neo-Fregean idea of singular thoughts, namely, the idea that thought content is individuated by particular objects in the world. To gain such a notion of content, the neo-Fregean view provides an account of thought which satisfies two basic constraints on content, namely, the objectivity constraint and the rationality constraint. The notion of practice characterized under the neo- Fregean view requires an account of demonstrative thought the content of which is derived from the way a subject engages with objects in his environment. On this basis, the notion of practice which I propose captures both aspects of what constitutes content, namely, the aspect of the object the identification of which requires the idea of engagement in thought and the aspect of the subject the characterization of which requires an idea of agency whose engagement is with objects in the world.