In a trio of recent articles, Johnson and Nado defend a form of metasemantic dispositionalism, arguing for a novel approach to the “error”-problem, based on speakers’ dispositional states under what they call a state of “full information”. In this article, I argue that their brand of dispositionalism fails to solve the “error”-problem, because of what I think of as counterexamples to it. In the final sections, I propose a way to amend the theory to shield it from some of the counterexamples, bas…
Read moreIn a trio of recent articles, Johnson and Nado defend a form of metasemantic dispositionalism, arguing for a novel approach to the “error”-problem, based on speakers’ dispositional states under what they call a state of “full information”. In this article, I argue that their brand of dispositionalism fails to solve the “error”-problem, because of what I think of as counterexamples to it. In the final sections, I propose a way to amend the theory to shield it from some of the counterexamples, based on the idea that what determines meaning is not only dispositions to apply words under full information, but also dispositions to evaluate one’s prior usage, under full information.