Principia 64 Klimczyk.pdf

Principia, 2018

In his article "Is Meaning Fraught with Ought?" (2009), Daniel Whiting advanced quite a battery of refurbished arguments for the claim that linguistic meaning is intrinsically normative. He ended the paper with the conclusion that he had managed to achieve two of his stated aims: to defend normativism and to show how the normativist can turn the innocent platitude that meaningful expressions possess conditions of correct use into an argument in favour of normativism. In the present article, I show that Whiting failed on both counts, although his failure reveals an important issue which has been overlooked by both parties to the debate. The issue in question is one of methodology: the plausibility of semantic normativism turns on the theory of practical normativity to which a particular philosopher tacitly or explicitly subscribes. To put my main criticism in a nutshell: semantic normativism cannot be defended without a plausible account of the nature of semantic reasons.

Philosophical Approaches to Language and Communication (eds. P. Stalmaszczyk & M. Hilton), 2022

The objective of this paper is twofold. First, it aims to contribute to the debate about the normativity of meaning not by means of providing and defending new arguments, but by analysing and reflecting on some of the presuppositions and seemingly irresolvable dialectical points of disagreement. Second, it seeks to achieve the first aim by critically engaging with some of the objections raised against semantic normativity by anti-normativists like Kathrin Glüer, Anandi Hattiangadi and Åsa Wikforss as well as discussing some of the ideas defended by normativists like Hans-Johann Glock, Severin Schroeder and Daniel Whiting. The upshot of the discussion is meant to provide a clearer representation of some of the arguments and concepts that guide the debate, though the proposed analysis, if correct, should also add some support for the normativist’s case.

Problems of Normativity, Rules, and Rule-Following, 2015

In the three decades since the publication of Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language the claim that the meaning of linguistic expressions should be explained in normative terms has been one of the most debated issues in the analytic philosophy of language. A line of arguing against this claim that has gained prominence in the recent years starts off with the assumption that the norms that are involved in linguistic meanings must be either constitutive or prescriptive.

This paper sketches a particular line of criticism targeted at Scanlon's account of a normative reason, which is purported to kill two birds with one stone: to raise doubts about the plausibility of Scanlon's account of a normative reason and, next, to dismiss Scanlon's conception of what a normative reason is in the role of an argument for semantic normativism. Following Whiting I take semantic normativism to be the view, according to which linguistic meaning is intrinsi-cally normative. The key argument for semantic normativism is that a word or expression has conditions for its correct use which count, or speak in favour of using it in certain ways and not in others. Specifically, it has immediate implications for how a subject should or may (not) employ that expression. I shall argue that if the favouring format of the analysis of a normative reason is not a particularly happy proposal in itself, then it supplies a superficial support for semantic normativism.

Northern European Journal of Philosophy, 2017

Contemporary debate on the nature of meaning centres on whether meaning is normative. Agreement is widespread that meaning implies correct-ness, but disagreement on whether correctness is normative remains. Normativists argue that correctness implies obligations or permissions. Anti-normativists disagree and hold that correctness is a descriptive term. This paper argues that, fundamentally, meaning presupposes norms, but not in the generic normativist sense: a vocabulary is recognisable as part of a language if and only if it is part of a practice of committing and entitling to ask for and provide reasons for what is said. To commit and entitle is not obliged or permitted. It is a presupposition for speaking about obligations and permissions.

According normativism about meaning, an expression’s meaning has normative implications for how speakers ought or ought not to, how they may and how the mustn’t use it. However, some authors – notably Katrin Glüer, Peter Pagin, Asa Wikforss and Anandi Hattiangadi – contest the normativist claim. They do agree that the rules constituting an expression’s meaning establish a standard of correctness that sorts uses of the expression into correct and incorrect ones, and they agree that it is precisely this what distinguishes meaningful expressions from mere noises. But they insist that the obtaining of such a standard is a purely descriptive matter. I try to bring out why this is mistaken by making use of a distinction between two ways of understanding constitutive rules, introduced by John Haugeland, and by showing how these embody two irreconcilable perspectives on linguistic practice, which the anti-normativists run together.

Philosophical Topics , 2022

Platitudes about meaning -Using the word 'approximate' to say of a town that it is nearby, or using the word 'chordate' to refer to string musical instruments, is wrong: that is not what such words mean, hence, it is not how they ought to be used. Though there are many more, and quite different, ways of going wrong in using a natural language, it is probably platitudes like these that originate the idea of semantic normativity. The idea is that statements of meaning ("w means such and such") 1 are normative statements, or, perhaps, entail such statements. E.g. when we say that 'profligate' means completely given up to dissipation and licentiousness (Merriam-Webster's 1997), we assert (or imply) that a speaker may use 'profligate' only to describe people that are completely given up to dissipation and licentiousness (or perhaps, that the speaker believes to be such -more on this later). Views like this have been endorsed by many philosophers. 2 In recent decades, the normativity claim has been often identified with Saul Kripke's particular version of it (Kripke 1982), which, however, concerns speaker's meaning ("S means such-and-such by word w") rather than linguistic meaning ("w means such-and-such (in language L)"). In recent decades, the normativity claim has been challenged by philosophers such as Anandi Hattiangadi, Kathrin Glüer, Åsa Wikforss, and Paul Boghossian. Though I disagree with these authors, and side in many respects with critics such as Jaroslav Peregrin (2012) and Daniel Whiting (2009Whiting ( , 2016)), in this paper I will only occasionally discuss their views. Instead, I will focus on what I take to be a more powerful objection against the inherent normativity of meaning, stemming from the identification of meaning with use. I will propose an abstract model of the connection of social practices and social norms (partly inspired by Lewis 1975), and suggest reasons why such a model applies to natural languages. Finally, I will propose a new relational structure for meaning, normativity, and regular use. The thesis that meaning is a normative notion has been traditionally attributed to the later Wittgenstein. 3 However, as so often, it is not easy to find a clear, fully explicit statement of the thesis in Wittgenstein's later writings. No doubt, since the early Thirties Wittgenstein insisted that meaning (e.g. of a word) is "constituted" by "grammatical rules" (Moore 1993: 51). As a pawn in chess may be identified with the rules by which it is moved, 4 similarly "in language the rules of syntax define the logical element in a word" (Wittgenstein 1967a: 134); a word has no meaning previous to, or independent of such rules (Wittgenstein 2009, p.155, note(b)). Later, Wittgenstein admitted that a game need not be "everywhere bounded by rules" (2009, §68), which, however, does not entail that such a game would be "unregulated" ("No more are there any rules for how high one may throw the ball in tennis, or how hard, yet tennis is a game for all that, and has rules too", ib.). That meanings are constituted by rules (or even are rules) can be interpreted in two different ways. The claim may be that meanings can be identified by compact descriptions of regularities of use (of sounds and scripts); 5 or it may be that meanings should be identified with norms governing the use of such sounds and scripts. Wittgenstein appears to have inclined to the latter view: "Rules are -in a sense-statements: they say: you may do such and such, whereas that you may not do" (1967a: 119-20); "If a rule of the game prescribes that the kings are to be used for drawing lots before a game of chess, then that is an essential part of the game" (Wittgenstein 2009, §567, it. added). Of course, even if rules are understood as norms, they are not categorical norms: as there is no categorical obligation to play chess, neither is there a categorical obligation to speak some language L, hence to follow the rules that characterize L (cf. Wittgenstein 1969Wittgenstein , §133 [= 1967b, §320] 6 and 2009, §81). Norms of language are conditional upon the intention of speaking a language L and counting as speaking L. For contrast, consider a different view that has also been mentioned in connection with semantic normativity (e.g. Peregrin 2012, Glüer, Wikforss 2018), namely Wilfrid Sellars's (1974). Sellars sees the use of a language as pattern governed behavior that is induced by training: "The trainer knows the rules which govern the correct functioning of the language. The language learner begins by conforming to these rules without grasping them himself" (1974: 422, my italics). The linguistic abilities that are acquired (if the training is successful, as it normally is) engender behavior that is not just acquired as, but remains pattern governed behavior: it is correct or incorrect "not as actions are correct or incorrect, but as events that are not actions are correct or incorrect" (p.423). Sellars's example is "the correctness of feeling sorrow for someone who is bereaved". 4 "I cannot say, "This is a pawn and such-and-such rules hold for this piece". Rather, it is only the rules of the game that define this piece. A pawn is the sume of the rules according to which it moves". 5 E.g. by what Horwich calls 'acceptance properties', see below. 6 "You cook badly if you are guided in cooking by rules other than the right ones; but...if you follow grammatical rules other than such-and-such ones, that doesn't mean you say something wrong, no, you are speaking of something else". Such a firm (re-)statement of the essential connection between meaning such-and-such and following such-and-such rules comes from a typescript dictated in 1945 or 1946. This appears to contradict Glüer's and Wikforss's contention that the latest Wittgenstein came to believe that "the analogy between meaning and rule...spells disaster when taken literally" (2010: 164).

Organon F, 2015

The paper examines a central argument in support of the thesis that mean- ing is essentially normative. The argument tries to derive meaning normativism from the fact that meaningful expressions necessarily have conditions of correct application: Since correctness is a normative notion, it is argued, statements of correctness condi- tions for an expression have direct normative consequences for the use of that expres- sion. We have labeled this the 'simple argument', and have argued that it fails. In this paper we elaborate on our objections to the argument in response to Daniel Whiting's recent attempt to rescue it. We argue, first, that statements of correctness conditions simply allow us to categorize the applications of an expression into two basic kinds (for instance, the true and the false) without this having any normative implications; and, second, that the normativist has not provided any reasons to think that some further, normative notion of semantic correctne...

Philosophical Investigations, 2013

This paper defends the thesis that meaning is intrinsically normative. Recent anti-normativist objectors have distinguished two versions of the thesis-correctness and prescriptivity-and have attacked both. In the first two sections, I defend the thesis against each of these attacks; in the third section, I address two further, closely related, anti-normativist arguments against the normativity thesis and, in the process, clarify its sense by distinguishing a universalist and a contextualist reading of it. I argue that the anti-normativist position is successful only against the universalist reading but point out that normativists do not require this reading of the thesis; the contextualist one is both possible and desirable for them. Furthermore, I argue that anti-normativists require the contextualist reading of the normativity thesis to make their case, as well as to avoid meaning relativism. In the final two sections of the paper, I explain how a contextualist understanding of the normativity thesis is compatible with Quine's elimination of analyticity, thus undermining a key underlying reason for anti-normativism, and I respond to the objection that a contextualist reading of the normativity thesis is either self-contradictory or else trivial. Due principally to the influence of Kripke's book on Wittgenstein, it had become commonplace in the philosophy of language to hold the "normativity thesis": that meaning is intrinsically normative. 1 Adherents to this view I call normativists, and in addition to Wittgenstein and Kripke number amongst their ranks earlier Boghossian, Brandom, McDowell, Millar, Putnam, Tanney, Wedgewood and Whiting. 2 Recently, a growing number of anti-normativists have emerged who include Bilgrami, later Boghossian, Glüer, Hattiangadi, Horwich and Wikforss. 3 They distinguish two versions of the normativity thesis-correctness and prescriptivity

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2010