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351The normativity of meaning and contentStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2022.Normativism in the theory of meaning and content is the view that linguistic meaning and/or intentional content are essentially normative. As both normativity and its essentiality to meaning/content can be interpreted in a number of different ways, there is now a whole family of views laying claim to the slogan “meaning/content is normative”. In this essay, we discuss a number of central normativist theses, and we begin by identifying different versions of meaning normativism, presenting the arg…Read more
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49Concepts and Communication: Comments on Words and Images. An Essay on the Origin of IdeasAnalysis 75 (1): 110-121. 2015.At the center of Gauker's book stands two inter-connected theses: First, that concepts are dependent on language; second, that this requires rejecting the traditional idea that linguistic communication involves a transmission of thoughts. I argue that we cannot afford to reject the traditional conception of communication and that Gauker's alternative ‘cooperative' conception is unsatisfactory. However, I also argue that Gauker is wrong to suggest that the language dependency thesis of concepts i…Read more
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301Naming natural kindsSynthese 145 (1): 65-87. 2005.This paper discusses whether it can be known a priori that a particular term, such as water, is a natural kind term, and how this problem relates to Putnams claim that natural kind terms require an externalist semantics. Two conceptions of natural kind terms are contrasted: The first holds that whether water is a natural kind term depends on its a priori knowable semantic features. The second
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163The Truth Norm and Guidance: a Reply to Steglich-Petersen: DiscussionsMind 119 (475): 757-761. 2010.We have claimed that truth norms cannot provide genuine guidance for belief formation. Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen argues that our ‘no guidance argument’ fails because it conflates certain psychological states an agent must have in order to apply the truth norm with the condition under which the norm prescribes forming certain beliefs. We spell out the no guidance argument in more detail and show that there is no such conflation.
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198Content Externalism and Fregean SenseIn P. Marvan (ed.), What Determines Content? The Internalism/Externalism Dispute, Cambridge Scholars Press. 2006.Can externalist concepts really capture an individual
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57On self-knowledge and grasping the content of one's own thoughtsInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 9 (2): 229-260. 2001.