Donovan Phillips

In this dissertation I examine metasemantic issues related to the phenomenon of homesign communication. Most children born with severe congenital hearing impairment are raised by caregivers who are not Deaf, and who are sometimes unable to provide their deaf children access to sign language education. Consequently, these children go through the period in which first-language acquisition normally takes place without learning a language. Still, deaf children in these unfortunate circumstances are not severed from all interpersonal communication. Over time they develop networks of gestures that serve their communicative needs. These gestural systems, unique to the individual children who are their primary creators and users, are known as “homesign”. Homesign has persistently been adduced as evidence for a nativist position in debates concerning the logical problem of language acquisition, what is sometimes called “Plato’s problem”. Here, I argue that homesign is pertinent to what I call “Plato’s Second Problem”, viz., the normativity of meaning. According to one tradition in the philosophy of language traceable through Kripke, Wittgenstein, and, ultimately, Plato’s Cratylus, meaningful linguistic expressions carry conditions of correct use that are plausibly accounted for in terms of the conventions of public languages. Analysing linguistic meaning in terms of public convention, however, would make impossible the meaningfulness of homesign gestures, since homesign is a form of communication that occurs in the absence of such conventions. While not all linguistic properties are present in homesign, given the abundance of linguistic structure in homesign revealed by empirical investigation, it would be far too hasty to deny that they are meaningful linguistic expressions on a priori grounds. Though some philosophers reject the normativity of meaning outright, I argue that homesign provides an opportunity to appreciate how the normativity of meaning is intimately linked to the Principle of Charity as it features in Davidson’s idea of radical interpretation. A consequence of reconciling the normativity of meaning with the meaningfulness of homesign gesture in this way is that convention is not essential to meaning in natural language.

This chapter considers how the adoption of autonomous weapons systems (AWS) may affect jus ad bellum principles of warfare. In particular, it focuses on the use of AWS in non-international armed conflicts (NIAC). Given the proliferation of NIAC, the development and use of AWS will most likely be attuned to this specific theater of war. As warfare waged by modernized liberal democracies (those most likely to develop and employ AWS at present) increasingly moves toward a model of individualized warfare, how, if at all, will the principles by which we measure the justness of the commencement of such hostilities be affected by the introduction of AWS, and how will such hostilities stack up to current legal agreements surrounding their more traditional engagement? This chapter claims that such considerations give us reason to question the moral and legal necessity of ad bellum proper authority.