Description
Book SynopsisWhat does talk of meaning mean? All thinking consists in natural happenings in the brain. Talk of meaning though, has resisted interpretation in terms of anything that is clearly natural, such as linguistic dispositions. This, Kripke''s Wittgenstein suggests, is because the concept of meaning is normative, on the ''ought'' side of Hume''s divide between is and ought. Allan Gibbard''s previous books Wise Choices, Apt Feelings and Thinking How to Live treated normative discourse as a natural phenomenon, but not as describing the world naturalistically. His theory is a form of expressivism for normative concepts, holding, roughly, that normative statements express states of planning. This new book integrates his expressivism for normative language with a theory of how the meaning of meaning could be normative. The result applies to itself: metaethics expands to address key topics in the philosophy of language, topics which in turn include core parts of metaethics. An upshot is to lessen t
Trade ReviewThe book is rich in original ideas and arguments, and the topics canvassed or commented on are significant and bewildering in their number ... serious students of the relevant topics should find its study rewarding, and clearly it is essential reading for anyone working on meaning and normativity. * Teemu Toppinen, Ethics *
the most ambitious and innovative attempt to explain meaning since Paul Horwich and Robert Brandom developed their theories in the nineties ... I hope that this splendid book will find a wide audience. It is wonderfully stimulating, opening up vast new territories for investigation. * Christopher S. Hill, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
Table of Contents1. Introduction ; 2. Normativity and Community ; 3. Kripke's Wittgenstein on Meaning ; 4. Correct Belief ; 5. Horwich on Meaning ; 6. The Normative Meaning Role ; 7. Reference, Truth, and Context ; 8. Meaning and Plans ; 9. Interpreting Interpretation ; 10. Expressivism, Non-Naturalism, and Us ; Appendix 1: The Objects of Belief ; Appendix 2: Schroeder on Expressivism ; References ; Index
