Ernie LePore

According to Putnam, metaphysical realism is the view that world consists of a fixed totality of mind‐independent objects and properties; that truth involves some sort of correspondence relation between words and these objects; and that there is one true complete description of the way the world is. He goes on to argue that this view is incoherent and he wants to replace it with a view he labels internal realism. His views have not met with wide acceptance. The chapter offers an interpretation of his views that may make his conclusions more palatable.

This chapter explores Cartesian and more contemporary motivations for the view that there must be an internalist semantics for mental representations, including arguments that are intended to show various natural language expressions possess internalist semantics. The conclusion is that that semantics for English is so thoroughly externalist that even if thoughts have internalist contents they cannot be expressed in English. It is then argued that the most plausible theories of meaning for mental representations are also externalist. This discussion results in an apparent dilemma. There are Cartesian intuitions and other motivations for thinking that thoughts possess an internalist semantics but there are arguments that seem to show our usual ways of characterizing thought contents is externalist. The chapter concludes with some tentative remarks on how these two views might be reconciled.

The chapter evaluates various general criticisms of Davidson's semantic program as well as Davidson's own defense of it. One criticism that particularly interests them is that Davidson's semantics fails to assign a correct meaning to each sentence of its object language. Both Davidson and his critics thought that required response to such criticism is to add further constraints to ensure the desired goal. The chapter argues that this debate is misguided. Instead, the chapter seeks to show Davidson had available to him in his paratactic account of indirect discourse the means to dissolve the debate.

What form should a semantic theory assume? What kinds of procedures for presenting meaning and truth conditions should a semantic theory take if it is to characterize successfully the linguistic knowledge that distinguishes speaker form non‐speaker? Over the last several decades there has been a growing consensus among philosophers and linguists that model theory can provide an adequate theory of meaning for natural languages. This chapter argues that model theoretic accounts for natural languages are deficient as natural language semantics and that when one seeks to supplement them nothing short of an absolute truth theory will suffice.

__Insensitive Semantics_ is an overview of and contribution to the debates about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one._ Provides detailed and wide-ranging overviews of the central positions and arguments surrounding contextualism Addresses broad and varied aspects of the distinction between the semantic and non-semantic content of language Defends a distinctive and explanatorily powerful combination of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism Confronts core problems which not only run to the heart of philosophy of language and linguistics, but which arise in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy as well.

But the sort of context sensitivity exhibited in such sentences does not compromise the claim that meaning determines truth conditions, since recourse to context here is directed and restricted by conventional meaning alone. Anyone who understands sentence (2) knows that its utterances are true just in case whatever object is demonstrated in the context of utterance is nice; and he also knows that any utterance of (2) says of, or expresses about, whichever object is demonstrated that it’s nice. (Similarly, anyone who understands (3) knows that any utterance of it is true just in case whoever utters it has eaten. And every utterance says of, or expresses about, the speaker that he or she has eaten.) In sum, according to the thesis that meaning determines truth conditions, (indicative) sentences divide into two classes – those with truth conditions tout..

Many writers have expressed scepticism about the explanatory power of transformational generative grammar, but little of this scepticism has been aimed towards formal semantics for natural languages. To a large extent, this neglect is a consequence, not of widespread agreement, but of a lack of clarity, about the aims of philosophers and linguists who construct these semantic theories. Here I hope to make clear a sense in which these theories are explanatory. In short, I argue that the importance and legitimacy of semantics rests on its contribution to epistemology. First, I argue that what distinguishes someone who understands a language from someone who does not is not any linguistic or non-linguistic behavior but rather the capacity to acquire certain justified beliefs upon hearing another's utterances. It is this justificatory element which is the chief mark of understanding. Second, I argue that in order for someone to have this capacity to acquire certain justified beliefs he must have knowledge of the meanings (and not the truth conditions) of the sentences in question.

__Insensitive Semantics_ is an overview of and contribution to the debates about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one._ Provides detailed and wide-ranging overviews of the central positions and arguments surrounding contextualism Addresses broad and varied aspects of the distinction between the semantic and non-semantic content of language Defends a distinctive and explanatorily powerful combination of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism Confronts core problems which not only run to the heart of philosophy of language and linguistics, but which arise in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy as well.

__Insensitive Semantics_ is an overview of and contribution to the debates about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one._ Provides detailed and wide-ranging overviews of the central positions and arguments surrounding contextualism Addresses broad and varied aspects of the distinction between the semantic and non-semantic content of language Defends a distinctive and explanatorily powerful combination of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism Confronts core problems which not only run to the heart of philosophy of language and linguistics, but which arise in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy as well.