Abstract
In previous work (Johnson & Nado 2014) we proposed a sketch of a disposition-based metasemantictheory, which has recently been criticized by James Andow (2016). Andow claims, first, that our dispositionalmetasemantics threatens to render the meanings of our words indeterminate, and second, that our viewrisks a 'semantic apocalypse' according to which most of our terms fail to refer. We respond to Andow'scriticism by modifying and expanding our orignial, underspecified view. In particular, we propose that a viewthat appeals to actual dispositions rather than counterfactual dispositions avoids many difficulties that might confront a disposition-based metasemantics - issues even beyond those that Andow raises.
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Notes
Kripke discusses a wide variety of cases he means to include in the qualification, and the reader is referred there for discussion.
It is worth noting—it is not Othello’s disposition to apply ‘friend’ to Iago under normal circumstances that is finkish (say, when asked). Only his disposition to apply ‘friend’ to Iago under full information is finkish.
This helpful example was provided by an anonymous reviewer.
There are further objections to dispositional accounts in Kripke’s and Boghossian’s work – but these further objections are aimed at the project of providing a naturalistic reduction of intentionality, and concern the difficulty of avoiding intentional language in such a reduction. We are not engaged in that project, nor were we in our initial paper – the project here is merely to reduce linguistic intentionality to mental intentionality. Both CIDA and ReCIDA make use of intentional notions – and intentionally so. (See Johnson & Nado 2014, footnote 13).
An anonymous reviewer worries that our view threatens to become trivial: of course the semantic application conditions of S’s term T are the conditions under which S would speaker-apply T when S has all the relevant information and isn’t insincere, reticent, etc. There are two points to make. First, we’re not saying merely that the conditions here coincide, but we’re answering the metasemantic question: T semantically applies to O for speaker S in virtue of S’s disposition to apply T to O under full information. The second point is that if our view is so obvious as to be trivial, this is very surprising, since every other view that attempts to answer the metasemantic question is incompatible with even the coincidence claim. For example, on a classical descriptivist account, there is a description that S now and actually associates with a term T that determines the extension of T in S’s mouth. But this can come apart from what S is disposed to apply T to, when S has complete information, if that information is information S doesn’t now and actually possess. For example, all of S’s current descriptions might place whales in the extension of ‘fish’ but S might nevertheless be disposed to not apply ‘fish’ to whales under full information. Mutatis mutandis for causal-historical theories, for reference magnetism, and so forth – in each case, that which determines the metasemantic facts can come apart from a speaker’s dispositions under complete information. If our view is trivial, then all other metasemantic views are trivially false; and it seems clear to us that they are not.
Wilson, Jackman, and Andow all use “E. burchellii” rather than “E. quagga,” but we’ve updated to the current nomenclature. This is actually rather appropriate, because the fact that “E. quagga” is a name for the species is also a historical accident. It was initially thought that the quagga was a separate species, but recent genetic work has shown otherwise. Thus since the quagga was described first in the literature, that name takes precedence for the entire species. Had Burchell’s zebra (the source of “E. burchellii”) been first described, “E. burchellii” would be the name for the species.
See also Johnson & Nado (2016).
References
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Johnson, M., Nado, J. Actual vs. Counterfactual Dispositional Metasemantics: A Reply to Andow. Philosophia 45, 717–734 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9840-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-017-9840-1