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Scott Soames’ Reference and Description contains arguments against a number of different versions of two-dimensional semantics. After early chapters on descriptivism and on Kripke’s anti-descriptivist arguments, a chapter each is devoted to the roots of twodimensionalism in “slips, errors, or misleading suggestions” by Kripke and Kaplan, and to the two-dimensional approaches developed by Stalnaker (1978) and by Davies and Humberstone (1981). The bulk of the book (about 200 pages) is devoted to “ambitious twodimensionalism”, attributed to Frank Jackson, David Lewis, and me. After a quick overview of two-dimensional approaches, I will focus on Soames’ discussion of ambitious twodimensionalism. I will then turn to a system advocated by Soames that is itself strikingly reminiscent of a two-dimensional approach. Two-dimensional semantic theories are varieties of possible-worlds semantics on which linguistic items can be evaluated relative to possibilities in two different ways, yielding two sorts of intensional semantic values, which can be seen as two “dimensions” of meaning. The second dimension is the familiar sort of Kripkean evaluation in metaphysically possible worlds, so that necessarily coextensive terms (such as ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ or ‘water’ and ‘H2O’) always have the same semantic value. The first dimension behaves differently, so that there are typically at least some cases where necessarily coextensive terms have different semantic values on the first dimension. For this reason, the two-dimensional framework is sometimes seen as a way of granting many of the insights of a Kripkean approach to meaning (on the second dimension), while retaining elements of a Fregean approach to meaning (on the first dimension).

Two counterarguments, given by Scott Soames and Jos.

Christopher Pincock April 24, 2006 My goal in reviewing Soames’ book was to help readers of this journal evaluate his contribution to the history of analytic philosophy, with a special focus on his discussion of Russell.[1] Soames charges both that I misrepresent the contents of his book and that I make mistakes in the interpretation of various aspects of Russell’s philosophy. If I had committed any errors of the former sort, I would certainly apologize and thank Soames for bringing such a mistake to my attention. After explaining why I do not believe I have misrepresented the contents of his book, I will turn to the one substantive issue that he raises in his reply, namely the need for unperceived sense-data in Russell’s external world program. While disagreement here is more understandable, nothing Soames says in his book or in his reply has led me to revise my original remarks.

This paper discusses the coverage of ordinary language philosophy in Scott Soames' "Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century". After praising the book's virtues, I raise three points where I dissent from Soames' take on the history. First, I suggest that there is more to ordinary language philosophy than the rather implausible version of it that Soames sees to have been destroyed by Grice. Second, I argue that confusions between analyticity, necessity and priority are less important to the ordinary language period than Soames takes them to be. Finally, I claim that Soames' criticisms of Ryle turn in part on attributing reductionist positions to Ryle that Ryle did not hold.

This paper discusses the coverage of ordinary language philosophy in Scott Soames' Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century. After praising the book's virtues, I raise three points where I dissent from Soames' take on the history. First, I suggest that there is more to ordinary language philosophy than the rather implausible version of it that Soames sees to have been destroyed by Grice. Second, I argue that confusions between analyticity, necessity and priority are less important to the ordinary language period than Soames takes them to be. Finally, I claim that Soames' criticisms of Ryle turn in part on attributing reductionist positions to Ryle that Ryle did not hold.

In “What is History For?,” Scott Soames responds to criticisms of his treatment of Russell’s logic in volume 1 of his Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century. This note rebuts two of Soames’s replies, showing that a first-order presentation of Russell’s logic does not fit the argument of the Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, and that Soames’s contextual definition of classes does not match Russell’s contextual definition of classes. In consequence, Soames’s presentation of Russell’s logic misrepresents what Russell took to be its technical achievement and its philosophical significance.

This paper criticizes Soames’s main argument against a variant of two-dimensionalism that he calls strong two-dimensionalism. The idea of Soames’s argument is to show that the strong two-dimensionalist’s semantics for belief ascriptions delivers wrong semantic verdicts about certain complex modal sentences that contain both such ascriptions and claims about the truth of the ascribed beliefs. A closer look at the formal semantics underlying strong two-dimensionalism reveals that there are two feasible ways of specifying the truth conditions for claims of the latter sort. Only one of the two yields the problematic semantic verdicts, so strong two-dimensionalists can avoid Soames’s argument by settling for the other way.

In this book, Scott Soames defends the revolution in philosophy led by Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, and David Kaplan against attack from those wishing to revive ..