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Intentionality :: The status of intentionality :: Meaning skepticism

• Paul Coates (1997). Meaning, mistake, and miscalculation.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:   The issue of what distinguishes systems which have original intentionalityfrom those which do not has been brought into sharp focus by Saul Kripke inhis discussion of the sceptical paradox he attributes to Wittgenstein.In this paper I defend a sophisticated version of the dispositionalistaccount of meaning against the principal objection raised by Kripke in hisattack on dispositional views. I argue that the objection put by the sceptic,to the effect that the dispositionalist cannot give a satisfactory account ofnormativity and mistake, in fact comprises a number of distinct lines ofargument, all of which can be satisfactorily answered by the dispositionalist.Two central problems raised by the sceptic consist in explaining (1) theextension of the term which a subject uses, and (2) the fact that the subjectintends to use the term with that extension, and is thus justified in her use.I adapt a suggestion of Blackburn's, that the extension of a word is fixed bya person's extended first-order dispositions to use it, and suggest that thereis no coherent possibility of a subject being disposed to makesystematic mistakes in connection with many ordinary words; the scepticalproblem does not apply in the same way throughout language. It is furtherargued that an account which appeals to a subject's second-orderdispositions to maintain a consistent pattern of extended first-orderdispositions to use words is able to provide a naturalistic basis to answerthe normative questions about justification of use. Three other variants ofthe mistake objection which are also revealed by a careful examination ofKripke's arguments are distinguished and it is shown that the dispositionalisthas adequate resources to meet them
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=TRD&recid=322379CI
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/mind/1997/00000007/00000002/00115554
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/content/w733451x30526003/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/w733451x30526003/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=115554&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/W733451X30526003.pdf
  
• Jussi Haukioja (2006). Hindriks on rule-following.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: This paper is a reply to Frank Hindriks’ paper “A Modest Solution to the Problem of Rule-Following”. Hindriks claims to find room for what he calls a modest solution to the Kripkensteinian problem of rule-following, different from both straight and sceptical solutions. Hindriks criticises Philip Pettit’s “ethocentric” solution and goes on to provide his own, “modest” one. My paper is in two parts. In the first part, I argue that there is no room for a “modest” solution to sceptical problems: depending on how one reads Kripke, Hindriks’ “modest” solution is always going to turn out either straight or sceptical. In the second part, I defend the ethocentric solution against Hindriks’ arguments. In particular, I argue that the topic-neutral specifications of favourable conditions which Pettit uses are superior to Hindriks’ topic-specific ones
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/phil/2005/00000126/00000002/00007818
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/73m4466166775411/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/73M4466166775411.pdf
  
• Jussi Haukioja (2004). Kripke's finiteness objection to dispositionalist theories of meaning.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: It is often thought that Blackburn and Boghossian have provided an effective reply to the finiteness objection to dispositional theories of meaning, presented by Kripke's Wittgenstein. In this paper I distinguish two possible readings of the sceptical demand for meaning-constitutive facts. The demand can be formulated in one of two ways: an A-question or a B-question. Any theory of meaning will give one of these explanatory priority over the other. I will then argue that the standard reply only works if B-questions are seen as prior, while the dominant dispositionalist theories of meaning see A-questions as prior
• Jakob Hohwy (2003). A reduction of kripke-wittgenstein's objections to dispositionalism about meaning.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:   A central part of Kripke's influential interpretation of Wittgenstein's sceptical argument about meaning is the rejection of dispositional analyses of what it is for a word to mean what it does (Kripke, 1982). In this paper I show that Kripke's arguments prove too much: if they were right, they would preclude not only the idea that dispositional properties can make statements about the meanings of words true, but also the idea that dispositional properties can make true statements about paradigmatic dispositional properties such as a cup's fragility or a person's bravery. However, since dispositional properties can make such statements true, Kripke-Wittgenstein's arguments against dispositionalism about meaning are mistaken
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/p56pn65126601048/fulltext.pdf
  
• Jakob Hohwy (2001). Semantic primitivism and normativity.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/rati/2001/00000014/00000001/art00141
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/rati/2001/00000014/00000001/art00001
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1467-9329.00141
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9329.00141
  
• John Humphrey (online). With factualist friends, Kripke's Wittgenstein needs no enemies: On Byrne's case for Kripke's Wittgenstein being a factualist about meaning attributions.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: _Private Language_ is that it almost universally sees KW as offering, in his sceptical solution, an account of meaning attributions (i.e., statements of the form, "X means such-and-so by 's'"; hereafter, MAs) which takes their legitimate attribution to be a function of something other than facts or truth conditions. KW is almost universally read as having rejected any account of meaning attributions which takes them to be stating facts or corresponding to facts. In a word, KW is understood as offering a nonfactualist account of MAs. And given that KW's sceptical challenge to the possibility of meaning rests on his negative assertions that there are no meaning facts, and that KW offers a sceptical solution to the sceptic's claim that meaning is impossible, i.e., a solution that by definition "begins . . . by conceding that the sceptic's negative assertions are unanswerable" (K, p. 66), it seems impossible that there would be any doubts about the accuracy of the "almost universal" reading of KW as a nonfactualist
• Henry Jackman (2003). Foundationalism, coherentism, and rule-following skepticism.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Semantic holists view what one's terms mean as function of all of one's usage. Holists will thus be coherentists about semantic justification: showing that one's usage of a term is semantically justified involves showing how it coheres with the rest of one's usage. Semantic atomists, by contrast, understand semantic justification in a foundationalist fashion. Saul Kripke has, on Wittgenstein's behalf, famously argued for a type of skepticism about meaning and semantic justification. However, Kripke's argument has bite only if one understands semantic justification in foundationalist terms. Consequently, Kripke's arguments lead not to a type of skepticism about meaning, but rather to the conclusion that one should be a coherentist about semantic justification, and thus a holist about semantic facts
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/./ftinterface~content=a713770268~fulltext=713240930
  
• Alexander Miller (1997). Boghossian on reductive dispositionalism about content: The case strengthened.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/00000001/art00033
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/mila/1997/00000012/00000001/art00001
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/1468-0017.00033
  http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-0017.00033
  
• Timothy Schroeder (2003). Donald Davidson's theory of mind is non-normative.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Donald Davidson's theory of mind is widely regarded as a normative theory. This is a something of a confusion. Once a distinction has been made between the categorisation scheme of a norm and the norm's force-maker, it becomes clear that a Davidsonian theory of mind is not a normative theory after all. Making clear the distinction, applying it to Davidson's theory of mind, and showing its significance are the main purposes of this paper. In the concluding paragraphs, a sketch is given of how a truly normative Davidsonian theory of mind might be formulated
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.doaj.org/abstract?id=8648&toc=y
  http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=abstract&id=8648
  http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=abstract&id=8648&recNo=1&toc=1
  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/phimp/images/3521354.0003.001.pdf
  
• Scott Soames (1998). Facts, truth conditions, and the skeptical solution to the rule-following paradox.   (More)
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/1998/00000032/A0120s12/art00122
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/nous/1998/00000032/A0020s12/art00122
  http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0029-4624(1998)32<313:FTCATS>2.0.CO;2-1
  http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2676152.pdf
  
• Mark Sprevak (forthcoming). Kripke's paradox and the church-Turing thesis.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract: Kripke (1982, Wittgenstein on rules and private language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) presents a rule-following paradox in terms of what we meant by our past use of “plus”, but the same paradox can be applied to any other term in natural language. Many responses to the paradox concentrate on fixing determinate meaning for “plus”, or for a small class of other natural language terms. This raises a problem: how can these particular responses be generalised to the whole of natural language? In this paper, I propose a solution. I argue that if natural language is computable in a sense defined below, and the Church–Turing thesis is accepted, then this auxiliary problem can be solved
  Additional links for this entry:
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/dun8737w3t401n4p/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/dun8737w3t401n4p.pdf
  
• Josefa Toribio (1999). Meaning, dispositions, and normativity.   (Abstract & more)
  Abstract:   In a recent paper, Paul Coates defends a sophisticated dispositional account which allegedly resolves the sceptical paradox developed by Kripke in his monograph on Wittgenstein's treatment of following a rule (Kripke, 1982). Coates' account appeals to a notion of homeostasis, unpacked as a subject's second-order disposition to maintain a consistent pattern of extended first-order dispositions regarding her linguistic behavior. This kind of account, Coates contends, provides a naturalistic model for the normativity of intentional properties and thus resolves Kripke's sceptical paradox.In this paper I argue that Coates' second-order dispositional account cannot solve the sceptic's problems regarding meaning and normativity. My main contention is that in order for second-order dispositions to be able to effectively regulate the coordinated responses constitutive of first-order dispositions, those first order dispositions must be independently identifiable. Yet that's precisely what Kripke's sceptical argument calls into question. I shall also argue, in a more positive fashion, that Coates' own appeal to practical breakdowns may suggest a different – and more effective – response to the sceptic's concern
  Additional links for this entry:
  https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/1368?mode=simple
  http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/klu/mind/1999/00000009/00000003/00206286
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/l5492h2436765017/fulltext.pdf
  http://www.kluweronline.com/article.asp?PIPS=206286&PDF=1
  http://www.springerlink.com/index/L5492H2436765017.pdf
  

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