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On the normativity of semantic norms and intentions

Date

2013

Authors

Keyzer, Jonathan, author
Losonsky, Michael, advisor
Kasser, Jeff, committee member
MacDonald, Brad, committee member

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Abstract

This thesis clarifies the assumption that meaning is normative and defends this assumption from recent criticism by Anandi Hattiangadi and Akeel Bilgrami. Against Hattiangadi, I argue that the paradigmatic examples of moral and semantic obligations are strictly-speaking more like 'limit' hypotheticals in that having an obligation is contingent on some conditions, but these conditions are quite different than that those of the typical examples of means-end hypotheticals. I argue that the conditions relevant to limit hypotheticals are widely-satisfied by constitutive facts about beings with certain rational and linguistic competence like us. The 'limitation' is that being this kind of thing isn't something one chooses, but is a constitutive for what one is. Against Bilgrami, I argue that a meaning intention is a normative state of commitment. Having a meaning intention means that one is prepared to speak and being prepared to speak is something one must live up to by having and maintaining a plan. I argue that part of this plan is to make some minimal effort to be interpretable to others.

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Subject

meaning
Kripke
language
normativity
rule-following
Wittgenstein

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