Glüer and Pagin (2003) have claimed that autistic speakers are a counterexample to HOT theories of meaning and communication. Through analysis of their argument and a re‐examination of the literature, I show that autistic speakers are not a counterexample to HOT theories, but, conversely, that such theories are necessary to account for their communicative peculiarities.

Is linguistic understanding a form of knowledge? I clarify the question and then consider two natural forms a positive answer might take. I argue that, although some recent arguments fail to decide the issue, neither positive answer should be accepted. The aim is not yet to foreclose on the view that linguistic understanding is a form of knowledge, but to develop desiderata on a satisfactory successor to the two natural views rejected here.

According to Donald Davidson, linguistic meaning is determined by the principle of charity. Because of Davidson's semantic behaviourism, charity's significance is both epistemic and metaphysical: charity not only provides the radical interpreter with a method for constructing a semantic theory on the basis of his data, but it does so because it is the principle metaphysically determining meaning. In this paper, I assume that charity does determine meaning. On this assumption, I investigate both its epistemic and metaphysical status: is charity (...) a priori or a posteriori? And what kind of necessity does it have? According to Davidson himself, charity is an a priori truth and its necessity is conceptual: it is essential to, or constitutive of, our common concepts of meaning and belief. Not only does this generate tension within Davidson's own, Quine-inspired epistemology, but there is independent reason to think of charity as an empirical truth. Even so, charity might be essential to belief and meaning in the sense of being an a posteriori necessity. I conclude that our ordinary modal intuitions might well support charity's psychological-nomological necessity, but that they do not reach all the way to metaphysical necessity. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide further support for my earlier claim that the existence of high-functioning autistic speakers does not undermine Davidson's theory of radical interpretation. Andrews and Radenovic, in criticizing my arguments for this position, have presented fresh evidence from the clinical literature on autism for the existence of an individual who speaks but does not interpret, and maintain that the existence of such an individual seriously challenges Davidson's theory. I counter this claim by showing that the evidence they (...) point to in fact better supports the conclusion that this autistic speaker, and others like him, are Davidsonian interpreters. (shrink)