School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 3 of 3
-
ItemMetasemantics and Metaethics(Routledge, 2018)Metaethicists disagree about the semantic content of normative and evaluative terms. To adjudicate such disagreements, we need consider different metasemantic theories, which seek to explain what makes it the case that certain words (and the thoughts they express) have the semantic contents they do. In this chapter, we explain how answers to this metasemantic question impact on debates within metaethics.
-
ItemRationalizing Self-Interpretation(PALGRAVE, 2015)
-
ItemJackson's Classical Model of Meaning(Oxford University PressOxford, 2010-05-01)Abstract Jackson often writes as if his account of public language meanings in terms of descriptivist conventions were just plain common sense. How else are we to explain how different speakers manage to communicate using a public language? And how else can we explain how individuals arrive at confident judgments about the reference of their words in hypothetical scenarios? This chapter shows just how controversial the psychological assumptions behind Jackson's semantic theory really are. First, it explains how Jackson's theory goes well beyond the commonsense platitudes he cites in its defence. Second, it sketches an alternative explanation of those platitudes, the improvisation model of meaning, which seems psychologically more realistic. The chapter concludes that the psychological picture presupposed by Jackson's semantic theory stands in need of a more substantial defence than he has so far offered.