The main question of metasemantics, or foundational semantics, is why an expression token has the meaning (semantic value) that it in fact has. In his reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later work, Saul Kripke presented a skeptical challenge that threatened to make the foundational question unanswerable. My first contention in this paper is that the skeptical challenge indeed poses an insoluble paradox, but only for a certain kind of metasemantic theory, against which the challenge effectively works as a reductio ad absurdum (...) argument. My second contention is that as a result of rejecting the theory which entails a paradoxical outcome, we will see that the foundational question essentially involves a temporal dimension. After arguing that the skeptical challenge gives us a strong reason to adopt a historical view of meaning, I shall further argue against certain authors who claim that meanings not only have histories but futures as well, or that the meaning of a word may change retroactively in time as a consequence of counterfactual change in its future use. The major aim of the paper is thus to bring together the arguably interrelated debates about the skeptical challenge and temporal externalism in philosophy of language. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to critically examine the concept of semantic objectivity inherent in Robert Brandom`s works, most importantly Making It Explicit. Concerning Brandom`s theoretical aims, I shall argue that there is some discrepancy between his formal and informal characterisations of the criteria by which his account is to be judged as adequate. After expounding on the discrepancy, I shall propose to reconstruct a mostly implicit line of argument in MIE, highlighted by the more recent developments of Brandom`s (...) work, which I think suffices to smooth it over. (shrink)

According to the causal-historical theory of reference, natural kind terms refer in virtue of complicated causal relations the speakers have to their environment. A common objection to the theory is that purely causal relations are insufficient to fix reference in a determinate fashion. The so-called hybrid view holds that what is also needed for successful fixing are true descriptions associated in the mind of the speaker with the referent. The main claim of this paper is that the objection fails: reference (...) fixing of natural kind terms can be purely causal. The main argument draws inspiration from recent theoretical advances made in metaphysics of kinds by Marion Godman, Antonella Mallozzi, and David Papineau. The main claim is that their notion of super-explanatory properties may explain how reference of many kind terms can be fixed purely causally. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Is meaning essentially normative, and what does claiming that amount to? One popular interpretation is that in virtue of their nature meanings are capable of guiding subjects in their applications of concepts, for meaning is constituted by norms. However, the guidance view has been met with criticism to the effect that if semantic norms constitute facts about meaning, then they cannot simultaneously guide subjects in their applications. In response, some normativist authors have proposed that the key sense of ‘normative’ (...) in the claim that meaning is essentially normative is not ‘guidance’ but ‘assessment’. In this paper, I shall argue that switching from guidance to assessment offers no respite from the anti-normativist argument that normativity in the sense of prescriptivity emerges not from meaning as such but from the attitudes of subjects insofar as the normativist is unable to offer a plausible account of what makes assessment appropriate. (shrink)

Artikkeli käsittelee Saul Kripken Ludwig Wittgensteinin myöhemmistä töistä koostamaa merkityskeptistä haastetta, erityisesti niin kutsuttua äärellisyyden ongelmaa. Pääargumentti on, että skeptisen haasteen pääasiallinen vastaaja, semanttinen dispositionalismi, ei uusimmistakaan yrityksistä huolimatta ole kyennyt ratkaisemaan äärettömyyden ongelmaa. Ratkaistakseen ongelman dispositionalistin tulisi selittää, kuinka on mahdollista, että äärellinen puhuja voisi omata disposition käyttää jotain termiä äärettömässä määrässä tapauksia määrätyllä tavalla. Monet dispositionalistit esittävät, että ratkaisu löytyy niin kutsutuista ceteris paribus -ehdoista, joita vastaan Martin Kusch on argumentoinut. Jatkan Kuschin kritiikkiä ja osoitan ceteris paribus -strategian (...) keskeiset ongelmat, minkä lisäksi vastaan myös kahteen näistä ehdoista riippumattomaan dispositionalistiseen strategiaan. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson famously argued that assertion is constituted either by the knowledge rule or some similar epistemic rule. If true, the proposal has important implications for criticism of assertions. If assertions are analogical to other rule-constituted kinds like games, we can criticize assertions either on external or internal grounds, depending on whether the criticism draws from the necessary norms of assertion or some contingent ones. More recently, authors like Goldberg and MacFarlane have argued against other theories of assertion on the (...) grounds that they cannot explain the possibility of internal criticism for assertions. This paper raises methodological problems with these arguments. The main idea is to show that alternative, non-normative accounts of assertion can also explain the apparent differences in grounds of criticism without assuming that assertion is necessarily governed by some epistemic norm. (shrink)

As the title suggests, this paper is something of a leftover – or perhaps a new branch – to my "Meaning in Time: on temporal externalism and Kripkenstein’s skeptical challenge". In that work I essayed to portray my understanding of the sceptical challenge uncovered by Saul Kripke’s reading of Wittgenstein’s later works in a nutshell as to its nature and resolution. Here, my task is to dig a little deeper into the key phrase of the earlier paper, namely the claim (...) that meanings, facts grounding meaning facts, and ascriptions of meaning have an important historical dimension to them. In particular, I explore the ideas that (i) the problem of finitude is fundamentally a logical and not a metaphysical problem and (ii) Devitt's development of Kripke's causal-historical theory of reference implies a natural explanation for how at least the meanings of some terms can have a historical dimension. (shrink)

A recent proposal by Quill Kukla and Mark Lance holds that surface appearances notwithstanding, gender ascriptions are closer to normative performatives than descriptions. As speech acts, they share more in common with pronouncing a marriage than a neutral description of a person, albeit this is not commonly recognized. This paper argues that the proposal faces a consistency problem. In order to affect social reality qua their illocutionary force, gender ascriptions must on average succeed. However, according to the authors most actual (...) second- and third person gender ascriptions in fact violate the success conditions of the speech act type, which include respect for the individual’s first-person gender ascriptions. Their main claim thus becomes that gender roles can be instituted as a series of misfires, though it is left open how this is possible. (shrink)

The paper argues that the naturalised version of semantic inferentialism advanced by Jaroslav Peregrin faces a problem which, following Michael Devitt, I call the incompleteness problem. The main issue has to do with how, according to inferentialism, language is connected to the world. My main claim is that Peregrin’s Protagorean account of correctness is in tension with the idea, made also by Robert Brandom, that language is embodied in the world analogically to how physical objects are embodied in games like (...) football. Against this, I show the two are in fact importantly disanalogical. To solve the incompleteness problem, I argue that naturalised inferentialism should learn the central lessons of semantic externalism, namely that the connection between language and the world must be fundamentally external to the mind, or in Peregrin’s case, to the society of normative attitudes. (shrink)

What was Saul Kripke’s personal stance on the sceptical challenge that he famously attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein? It will be argued that despite his statements to the contrary, we can, in fact, outline at least a rough sketch of Kripke’s own views on the challenge and its aftermath on the basis of the remarks he left in the text. In summary, Kripke (a) rejected the sceptical solution to the challenge and (b) leaned towards a non-sceptical primitivist solution. If this is (...) correct, it follows that there is a way in which Kripke's view makes his causal-historical picture of reference potentially able to solve the sceptical challenge. (shrink)

This is a work in the philosophy of language and metasemantics. Its purpose is to help answer the question about how words acquire their meanings. The work is divided into two parts. The purpose of Part One is to defend the claim that, despite numerous attempts, the so-called Kripkenstein’s sceptical challenge, and especially the problem of finitude, has not been offered a successful straight solution. The purpose of Part Two is to critically examine Robert Brandom’s philosophy, which can be treated (...) as an answer to the sceptical challenge in my interpretation. My main claim is that although Brandom’s so-called normativist approach does provide a principled solution to the sceptical challenge, the proposal faces a host of other problems in the light of which I reject it. -/- What is Kripkenstein’s sceptical challenge? The name 'Kripkenstein' is an abbreviation used in the literature for Saul Kripke’s reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later works, published in 1982. In the long essay, Kripke presents (that Wittgenstein presented) a sceptical challenge that demands an explanation of how any word can have a determinate meaning. The challenge is usually thought to consist of three interrelated problems: (1) the problem of finitude, (2) the problem of error, and (3) the problem of normativity. Following Martin Kusch, I view the problem of finitude as the most important one. According to the problem, briefly, since any actual subject is a finite being, i.e. capable of exhibiting only finite expressions of linguistic signs, it will always be possible to ask whether, in a given context, she is following a rule S1 or rule S2 that corresponds to the meaning of the sign. For example, supposing that the sign in question is '+', it can be asked whether the subject in a given context has followed the addition rule or an alternative quaddition rule, according to which any addition problem exceeding certain arbitrary cardinality results in five. According to the hypothesis, the actual use of '+' by any speaker is compatible with both rules. Since any speaker has only finite dispositions to the mathematical conduct, there will always be some limit after which there is no fact of the matter, according to the sceptic, which rule the subject will have turned out to have followed. Hence, it is indeterminate whether any actual subject has ever calculated according to the addition rule or the quaddition rule. -/- From my view, despite the work of Kripke and Kusch, the problem of finitude has not been taken as seriously as it ought to have been. This in turn has significant consequences for the metasemantic theory concerning the origin and nature of meaning. In particular, I claim that the way how the meaning of words is determined must be understood as temporal in nature. Moreover, I claim that Kripke’s causal-historical account of reference can work as a non-straight solution to the challenge that explains how at least the meanings of some words can be temporally determined. -/- One central aim of Brandom’s philosophy is to give a straight answer to the problem of finitude by providing an answer to the problem of normativity. However, I claim that Brandom’s version of the 'normativity of meaning' hypothesis cannot work as he intends. The key issues are difficult to summarise, but to put it succinctly, the crucial problem concerns Brandom’s ambition to give an answer to a version of Agrippa’s trilemma, or how a chain of justifications can end in anything else than (i) premises that have already been used, (ii) a primitive premise, or an (iii) infinitude of premises. My claim is that Brandom’s resolution to the trilemma is not sound. (shrink)