Is Meaning Fraught with Ought?

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (4):535-555 (2009)
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Abstract

According to Normativism, what an expression means has immediate implications for how a subject should or may (not) employ that expression. Many view this thesis as imposing substantive constraints upon theories of linguistic meaning. In this paper, I shall not consider that view; instead, I shall address the prior issue of whether or not one should accept Normativism. Against certain recent prominent lines of attack common to a number of different anti‐Normativist discussions, I shall defend both the Normativist thesis and an attempt to appeal to a certain platitude in its support.

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Daniel Whiting
University of Southampton

Citations of this work

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What is the Normativity of Meaning?Daniel Whiting - 2016 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (3):219-238.
I—Hannah Ginsborg: Meaning, Understanding and Normativity.Hannah Ginsborg - 2012 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 86 (1):127-146.

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References found in this work

The Nature of Normativity.Ralph Wedgwood - 2007 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Wittgenstein on rules and private language.Saul A. Kripke - 1982 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 173 (4):496-499.
Reasons.John Broome - 2004 - In R. Jay Wallace (ed.), Reason and Value: Themes From the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz. Oxford University Press. pp. 2004--28.

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