Esteban Withrington

I articulate and defend an analysis of true content ascriptions proposed by Devitt, according to which they predicate worldly semantic properties instead of involving relations to abstract propositions. I develop the metaphysical case against treating contents as abstract propositions, addressing possible replies to Devitt’s argument based on the causal-explanatory roles of contents and offering further considerations. I explain how the Devittian analysis of content ascriptions can account for the validity of certain inferences often thought to require a propositional analysis. Finally, I argue that it also circumvents linguistic problems faced by the standard propositional analysis of ascriptions and offers a plausible alternative for capturing their logical form and meaning.

I propose a version of teleosemantics for simple animal representations that combines Millikan’s suggestion that they represent the most crucial “normal conditions” required for them to bring about their beneficial behavioral effects with Neander’s suggestion that they represent their “normal causes”. The content of a simple representation is the most crucial among the normal conditions responsible for its tokens having beneficial behavioral effects that also causes such tokens. I argue that this version delivers more plausible contents than other versions of teleosemantics. Frogs’ prey detectors represent the animals they prey on rather than nutritious or small moving things.

The meanings of utterances and thoughts are commonly regarded in philosophical semantics as abstract objects, called «propositions», which account for how different utterances and thoughts can be synonymous and which constitute the primary truth-bearers. I argue that meanings are instead natural properties that play causal roles in the world, that the kind of «One over Many» thinking underlying the characterization of shared meanings as abstract objects is misguided and that utterances and thoughts having truth-values in virtue of their meanings does not entail that meanings themselves are truth-bearers.