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It can seem that the point of the finitude argument put forward by the meaning sceptic in Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is merely that of undermining a particular approach to meaning, the dispositionalist approach. I argue that Kripke’s remarks about finitude have a more universal purport than has been recognized. They supply the materials for a better understanding of the kind of creatures we are and of the kind of phenomenon meaning is.

Jaroslav Peregrin’s project in Normative Species: How Naturalized Inferentialism Explains Us is to provide an account of the emergence of normativity. He takes the project to be essential for understanding the kind of creatures we are, namely, normative creatures whose lives are governed by rules. My focus in this response is on linguistic meaning and on the variety of explanation that Peregrin favours. While I agree that meaning depends on the intersection of many cognitions, I have doubts about some aspects of Peregrin’s conception of this intersection. 

The concept of truth always had a special significance within Donald Davidson’s view of language and thought. For instance, Davidson always maintained that a basic requirement for understanding another individual is finding a great deal of truth in what she says and thinks. This captures his commitment to the principle of charity. What is the relationship between this principle and the constitutive claims about language and triangulation advanced in later work? My primary aim in this paper is not to provide a detailed answer to this question but rather to show that the triangulation argument assigns to the concept of truth, which is at the core of the conception of charity, a new role within the Davidsonian system. While the principle of charity entails that it is in the nature of the thinking mind not only to seek the truth but also to succeed, at least to some extent, in this aspiration, the triangulation argument entails that a concern for what is true is a requirement for being on the path to thought. Only individuals who embody such a concern, that is, only individuals who have an antecedent disposition to seek the truth, can count as speakers and thinkers, for only such individuals can be motivated to engage in the activity of triangulation. A secondary aim of the paper is to show that this expanded Davidsonian conception provides an attractive alternative to a family of views according to which the anchoring of thought and language to the world is to be explained primarily in terms of the distinctive features of one’s natural capacities.

In Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke articulates a form of scepticism about meaning. Even though there is considerable disagreement among critics about the reasoning in which the sceptic engages, there is little doubt that he seeks to offer constraints for an adequate account of the facts that constitute the meaningfulness of expressions. Many of the sceptic's remarks concern the nature of the guidance involved in a speaker's meaningful uses of expressions. I propose that we understand those remarks as seeking to give shape to the idea that to use an expression under the guidance of one's understanding is to have a reason for that use, which one's understanding allows one to discern and act on. Any philosophical elucidation of meaning must adequately capture the rational nature of our linguistic acts.

This paper examines Hannah Ginsborg's attempt to address the challenge raised by Saul Kripke's meaning sceptic. I start by identifying the two constraints that the sceptic claims must be met by a satisfactory answer. Then I try to show that Ginsborg's proposal faces a dilemma. In the first instance, I argue that it is able to meet the second constraint, but not the first. I then amend the proposal in order to make room for the first constraint. I go on to argue that, under this new interpretation, it cannot meet the second constraint. 

According to the sceptic Saul Kripke envisages in his celebrated book on Wittgenstein on rules and private language, there are no facts about an individual that determine what she means by any given expression. If there are no such facts, the question then is, what justifies the claim that she does use expressions meaningfully? Kripke’s answer, in a nutshell, is that she by and large uses her expressions in conformity with the linguistic standards of the community she belongs to. While Kripke’s sceptical problem has gripped philosophers for over three decades, few, if any, have been satisfied by his proposed solution, and many have struggled to come up with one of their own. The purpose of this paper is to show that a more satisfactory answer to Kripke’s challenge can be developed on the basis of Donald Davidson’s writings on triangulation, the idea of two individuals interacting simultaneously with each other and the world they share. It follows from the triangulation argument that the facts that can be regarded as determining meaning are irreducible. Yet, contra Kripke, they are not mysterious, for the argument does spell out what is needed for an individual’s expressions to be meaningful.

Book chapters:

In this introductory essay, I articulate a puzzle that is central for our understanding of ourselves as minded beings bound to live finite lives. I argue that our finitude is not something that can be set aside for the purposes of the philosophical inquiry into the mind. Grappling with it is an essential component of this inquiry.

In his treatment of the Wittgensteinian paradox about rule-following, Saul Kripke represents the non-reductionist approach, according to which meaning something by an expression is a sui generis state that cannot be elucidated in more basic terms, as brushing philosophical questions under the rug. This representation of non-reductionism aligns with the conception of some of its proponents. Meaning is viewed by these philosophers as an explanatory primitive that provides the basic materials for philosophical inquiry and whose nature cannot serve as an object for that inquiry. There is, however, an alternative way of conceiving of non-reductionism, which makes it possible to tackle philosophical questions about the nature of meaning head-on, and thus to respond to Kripke’s challenge in an illuminating manner.

This chapter addresses the question of what makes expressions meaningful according to the conception of meaning offered by Donald Davidson. It does so partly by examining Kathrin Glüer’s interpretation of this conception. I argue that Glüer misconstrues both the evidence for meaning that the radical interpreter must rely on and the way in which the principle of charity must be deployed. The articulation of the correct construal of the evidence and the principle reveals the thoroughly non-reductionist aspect of Davidson’s approach to meaning. This aspect becomes even clearer in his later work, through the articulation of the triangulation argument.

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