Asa Maria Wikforss

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 arguments that have been put forth for and against them.

I consider an individualist reply to Burge's well-known anti-individualist thought experiment. It is commonly assumed that the individualist has one of two options: accept that reference is socially determined and opt for a bifurcation of content ; or reject the conclusions of the thought experiment and insist that Burge's patient uttering "I have arthritis in my thigh" has her or his own "arthritis"-concept and utters a true belief. I suggest that neither of these options is very attractive and thus the individualist seems faced with a dilemma. However, Burge's thought experiment rests on problematic philosophical assumptions that the individualist need not accept. One such assumption is that the speaker uttering "I have arthritis in my thigh" makes a non-empirical error. This assumption, as Burge himself makes clear, is crucial if the thought experiment is to go through. So, Burge presents an account of the notion of a "non-empirical error" which is very problematic and fails to support the conclusions of the thought experiment. Once this account is questioned, the individualist can reject the claim that meaning is determined by the speaker's social environment without falling into the dilemma.

This book offers a truly interdisciplinary exploration of our patterns of engagement with politics, news, and information in current high-choice information environments. Putting forth the notion that high-choice information environments may contribute to increasing misperceptions and knowledge resistance rather than greater public knowledge, the book offers insights into the processes that influence the supply of misinformation and factors influencing how and why people expose themselves to and process information that may support or contradict their beliefs and attitudes. A team of authors from across a range of disciplines address the phenomena of knowledge resistance and its causes and consequences at the macro- as well as the micro-level. The chapters take a philosophical look at the notion of knowledge resistance, before moving on to discuss issues such as misinformation and fake news, psychological mechanisms such as motivated reasoning in processes of selective exposure and attention, how people respond to evidence and fact-checking, the role of political partisanship, political polarization over factual beliefs, and how knowledge resistance might be counteracted. This book will have a broad appeal to scholars and students interested in knowledge resistance, primarily within philosophy, psychology, media and communication, and political science, as well as journalists and policymakers. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The thesis examines a central and controversial question in the philosophy of mind and language: Is meaning normative? Are there rules we must follow for our words to have meaning? ;Philosophers are sharply divided over this question. One side, often associated with Wittgenstein and more recently Kripke, sees meaning as essentially normative. If a sign is to be meaningful, then surely, it is argued, there must be a distinction between the correct and incorrect use of that sign. The other side eschews the appeal to rules. This line of thought goes back to Quine, and has been vigorously defended by Davidson, who argues that linguistic rules are no more essential to speaking a language than the rules of etiquette at a dinner table are to consuming food. ;The dissertation proposes that we approach the question by asking whether there is a notion of linguistic incorrectness which is essential to meaning. Various common versions of the notion of linguistic incorrectness are considered, including the one appealed to by Saul Kripke in his discussion of Wittgenstein, the suggestion that going against the communicative conventions is making a linguistic error, and Tyler Burge's idea that we err when we violate certain constitutive community norms. Neither of these suggestions, it is argued, supports the idea that rules are essential to meaning. ;But we should not conclude from this, as does Davidson, that we can reject the notion of linguistic incorrectness altogether. If a speaker is to be interpretable there must be certain constraints on her linguistic use, and a plausible construal of these constraints, it is argued, presupposes a notion of linguistic incorrectness. The conclusion is that there is a notion of linguistic incorrectness which is essential to meaning, although this notion is not to be understood along the ordinary lines