Masters of our meanings

Philosophical Studies 118 (1-2):133-52 (2004)
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Abstract

The two-dimensional framework in semantics has the most power and plausibility when combined with a kind of global semantic neo-descriptivism. If neo-descriptivism can be defended on the toughest terrain - the semantics of ordinary proper names - then the other skirmishes should be easier. This paper defends neo-descriptivism against two important objections: that the descriptions may be inaccessibly locked up in sub-personal modules, and thus not accessible a priori, and that in any case all such modules bottom out in purely causal mechanisms, and that thus an externalist causal metasemantic theory will best account for them. I agree both that many descriptions are in some sense modularized, and that they bottom out in causal mechanisms. But I argue that these are not the relevant descriptions that two-dimensionalism trades in, and which make us, in an important sense, masters of our meanings

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David Braddon-Mitchell
University of Sydney

Citations of this work

Two-dimensional semantics.David J. Chalmers - 2006 - In Ernest LePore & Barry C. Smith, The Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Language. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
The Unique Groundability of Temporal Facts.John Cusbert & Kristie Miller - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 97 (2):410-432.
Two-dimensional semantics.Laura Schroeter - 2010 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

Naming and Necessity.S. Kripke - 1972 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 45 (4):665-666.
The Foundations of Two-Dimensional Semantics.David J. Chalmers - 2006 - In Manuel Garcia-Carpintero & Josep Macià, Two-Dimensional Semantics. New York: Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 55-140.
From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis.Frank Jackson - 1999 - Philosophical Quarterly 49 (197):539-542.

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