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Meaning, Modality and Mind: Essays Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Naming and Necessity (edited book)Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
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872Radical interpretation and decision theorySynthese 199 (3-4): 6473-6494. 2021.This paper takes issue with an influential interpretationist argument for physicalism about intentionality based on the possibility of radical interpretation. The interpretationist defends the physicalist thesis that the intentional truths supervene on the physical truths by arguing that it is possible for a radical interpreter, who knows all of the physical truths, to work out the intentional truths about what an arbitrary agent believes, desires, and means without recourse to any further empir…Read more
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11The Normativity of MeaningIn Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Wiley-blackwell. 1997.This chapter investigates the view that meaning is normative. Meaning is understood here in a broad sense to include such semantic properties as sense, reference, truth‐conditions, content, and the like. Normativity can either be viewed as a property of representations or as a feature of the world. The view that meaning involves rule‐following or a normative judgment of some kind is untenable, and in any case, has no bearing on the hard problem of intentionality. However, the view that meaning i…Read more
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60Logical Conventionalism and the Adoption ProblemAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 97 (1): 47-81. 2023.In this paper, I take issue with a core commitment of logical conventionalism: that we impose a logic on ourselves by adopting general linguistic conventions governing our use of logical terms, thereby determining the meanings of the logical constants and which of our inferences are valid. Drawing on Kripke’s ‘adoption problem’, I argue that general logical principles cannot be adopted, either explicitly or implicitly. I go on to argue that the meanings of our logical terms, and the validity of …Read more
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Expression and expressivism. What would an expressivist semantics be? / Mark Richard ; Hard cases for combining expressivism and deflationist truth : conditionals and epistemic modals / Mark Schroeder ; Expression : acts, products, and meaning / Dorit Bar-On ; Global expressivism and the truth in representation / Allan Gibbard ; The limits of expressivismIn Steven Gross, Nicholas Tebben & Michael Williams (eds.), Meaning Without Representation: Essays on Truth, Expression, Normativity, and Naturalism, Oxford University Press. 2015.
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Belief and Its BedfellowsIn Nikolaj Nottelmann (ed.), New Essays on Belief: Constitution, Content and Structure, Palgrave. 2013.
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38Can truth relativism account for the indeterminacy of future contingents?Synthese 200 (3): 1-23. 2022.John MacFarlane has recently argued that his brand of truth relativism provides the best solution to the puzzle of future contingents: assertions about the future that express propositions that are metaphysically neither necessary nor impossible. In this paper, we show that even if we grant all of the metaphysical, semantic and pragmatic assumptions in terms of which MacFarlane sets and aims to solve the puzzle, his truth relativism is not apt to solve the problem of future contingents. We argue…Read more
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96Substantive Radical Interpretation and the Problem of UnderdeterminationAnalysis 80 (4): 822-833. 2020.
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334John MacFarlane has recently argued that his brand of truth relativism – Assessment Sensitivity – provides the best solution to the puzzle of future contingents: statements about the future that are metaphysically neither necessary nor impossible. In this paper, we show that even if we grant all of the metaphysical, semantic and pragmatic assumptions in terms of which MacFarlane sets and solves the puzzle, Assessment Sensitivity is ultimately self-refuting
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426Assertion and the FutureIn Sanford C. Goldberg (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Assertion, Oxford University Press. pp. 481-504. 2018.It is disputed what norm, if any, governs assertion. We address this question by looking at assertions of future contingents: statements about the future that are neither metaphysically necessary nor metaphysically impossible. Many philosophers think that future contingents are not truth apt, which together with a Truth Norm or a Knowledge Norm of assertion implies that assertions of these future contingents are systematically infelicitous. In this article, we argue that our practice of assertin…Read more
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31Non-Reductive Realism, Primitivism, and the Reduction Argument: Commentary on Bart Streumer, Unbelievable ErrorsJournal of Moral Philosophy 16 (6): 697-706. 2019.In Unbelievable Errors, Bart Streumer defends the error theory by rejecting all competitors to it. My aim here is to defend one brand of realism from Streumer’s objections: primitivim. The primitivist holds that there exist sui generis normative properties that do not supervene on any descriptive properties. It is argued that Streumer’s objections to primitivism can be met.
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29The Limits of ExpressivismIn Steven Gross, Nicholas Tebben & Michael Williams (eds.), Meaning Without Representation: Essays on Truth, Expression, Normativity, and Naturalism, Oxford University Press. pp. 224-242. 2015.In his recent book, Meaning and Normativity, Allan Gibbard argues at length that meta-ethical expressivism can be profitably extended to semantic and intentional language: meta-linguistic discourse about meaning, reference, content, and the like. This chapter argues that the extension of expressivism to semantic discourse is unprofitable and—worse still—in a certain sense selfundermining. It is unprofitable because it sheds no light on the problem of intentionality; and it undermines itself beca…Read more
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55No, one should not believe all truthsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (9-10): 1091-1103. 2019.ABSTRACTIn a recent paper, Alexander Greenberg defends a truth norm of belief according to which if one has some doxastic attitude towards p, one ought to believe that p if and only if p is true. He responds, in particular, to the ‘blindspot’ objection to truth norms such as da: in the face of true blindspots, such as it is raining and nobody believes that it is raining, truth norms such as da are unsatisfiable; they entail that one ought to believe p, but if one does believe p, they entail that…Read more
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174Radical Interpretation and The Aggregation ProblemPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (2): 283-303. 2019.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.
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96The normativity of meaning and the hard problem of intentionalityInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 61 (7): 742-754. 2018.This note addresses two of Gibbard's central contentions in Meaning and Normativity: first, that the concept of meaning is normative, and second, that an expressivist account of semantic concepts and statements can shed light on the hard problem of intentionality, the problem of explaining intentionality in naturalistic terms.
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215Moral supervenienceCanadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (3-4): 592-615. 2018.It is widely held, even among nonnaturalists, that the moral supervenes on the natural. This is to say that for any two metaphysically possible worlds w and w′, and for any entities x in w and y in w′, any isomorphism between x and y that preserves the natural properties preserves the moral properties. In this paper, I put forward a conceivability argument against moral supervenience, assuming non-naturalism. First, I argue that though utilitarianism may be true, and the trolley driver is permit…Read more
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32This chapter discusses the application of formal methods from social choice theory to the metasemantic question of whether radical interpretation is possible. Radical interpretation involves deducing semantic truths from non-semantic truths by appeal to certain a priori principles or criteria, such as the principle of charity. A familiar view is that the intended interpretation is the one that best meets a combination of constraints. It is suggested that this situation can be modelled as follows…Read more
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308Making it Implicit: Brandom on Rule FollowingPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (2): 419-431. 2003.In Making it Explicit, Brandom aims to articulate an account of conceptual content that accommodates its normativity—a requirement on theories of content that Brandom traces to Wittgenstein's rule following considerations. It is widely held that the normativity requirement cannot be met, or at least not with ease, because theories of content face an intractable dilemma. Brandom proposes to evade the dilemma by adopting a middle road—one that uses normative vocabulary, but treats norms as implici…Read more
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98The Rules of Thought By Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa and Benjamin W. Jarvis Oxford University Press, 2013Analysis 76 (3): 393-397. 2016.The Rules of Thought, by Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa and Benjamin Jarvis, is a dense and ambitious book whose principal aim is to defend the view that philosophical inquiry is a priori inquiry into essential natures. The book covers a broad range of philosophical issues spanning the philosophy of mind and language, the epistemology of metaphysical modality and the philosophy of philosophy. It will be of considerable interest to many, since there is something in it for just about everyone. That sai…Read more
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598Does thought imply ought?Analysis 67 (4). 2007.N.B. Dr Bykvist is now based at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. The full-text of this article is not currently available in ORA, but you may be able to access the article via the publisher copy link on this record page.
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312Some more thoughts on semantic oughts: A reply to Daniel WhitingAnalysis 69 (1): 54-63. 2009.1. IntroductionA considerable number of philosophers maintain that meaning is intrinsically normative. In this journal, Daniel Whiting has defended the normativity of meaning against some of my recent objections . 1 This paper responds to Whiting's arguments
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180[email protected]Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31 (4): 647-657. 2000.
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12Semantic normativity in contextIn Sarah Sawyer (ed.), New Waves in Philosophy of Language, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.
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481Is meaning normative?Mind and Language 21 (2): 220-240. 2006.Many people claim that semantic content is normative, and that therefore naturalistic theories of content face a potentially insuperable difficulty. The normativity of content allegedly undermines naturalism by introducing a gap between semantic 'ought's and the explanatory resources of naturalism. I argue here that this problem is not ultimately pressing for naturalists. The normativity thesis, I maintain, is ambiguous; it could mean either that the content of a term prescribes a pattern of use…Read more
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126The love of truthStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 41 (4): 422-432. 2010.It is frequently said that belief aims at truth, in an explicitly normative sense—that is, that one ought to believe the proposition that p if, and only if, p is true. This truth norm is frequently invoked to explain why we should seek evidential justification in our beliefs, or why we should try to be rational in our belief formation—it is because we ought to believe the truth that we ought to follow the evidence in belief revision. In this paper, I argue that this view is untenable. The truth …Read more
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598The open future, bivalence and assertionPhilosophical Studies 167 (2): 251-271. 2014.It is highly now intuitive that the future is open and the past is closed now—whereas it is unsettled whether there will be a fourth world war, it is settled that there was a first. Recently, it has become increasingly popular to claim that the intuitive openness of the future implies that contingent statements about the future, such as ‘There will be a sea battle tomorrow,’ are non-bivalent (neither true nor false). In this paper, we argue that the non-bivalence of future contingents is at odds…Read more
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202Oughts and thoughts: rule-following and the normativity of contentOxford University Press. 2007.In Oughts and Thoughts, Anandi Hattiangadi provides an innovative response to the argument for meaning skepticism set out by Saul Kripke in Wittgenstein on ...
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Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Meta-Ethics |