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Richard Heck has contested my argument that the equation of the meaning of a sentence with its truth-condition implies deflationism, on the ground that the argument does not go through if truth-conditions are understood, in Davidson's style, to be stated by T-sentences. My reply is that Davidsonian theories of meaning do not equate the meaning of a sentence with its truth-condition, and thus that Heck's point does not actually obstruct my argument.

In a recent article,1 I defend the claim that meaning is an intrinsically normative notion. To say that meaning is normative is, for present purposes, to say that from a statement of an expression’s meaning there follows immediately and without further ado a statement concerning how that expression should (not) or may (not) be used. Call this Normativism. In a reply,2 Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss (hereafter, G&W), both prominent anti-Normativists, 3 argue that I fail in my attempt to defend Normativism against the objections I consider.

Reply to Lasersohn, MacFarlane, and Richard.

Lance and Hawthorne have served up a large, rich and argument-stuffed book which has much to teach us about central issues in the philosophy of language, as well as sports trivia. I shall concentrate, not surprisingly, on points I either disagreed with or found unclear; there are many acute observations, particularly in the second half of the book, that fall into neither of these categories.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2007. Symposium on Insensitive Semantics. Reply to Kent Bach, John Hawthorne, Kepa Korta & John Perry, and Rob Stainton.

In Chapter 7 of IS we rely crucially on tests for how speakers share content across contexts. We claim these tests can be used to gather evidence both for and against claims about an expression being context sensitive. Many philosophers now rely on these and related tests – Hawthorne (2003) being early proponent (cf. also Egan, Hawthorne and Weatherson (2004), Lasersohn (2006), Macfarlane (2004), Richard (2004), and (arguably) Stanley (2005)). In his reply, Hawthorne raises interesting challenges to our use of such tests. We agree that the issues are important and that thinking them through will help clarify the nature of the evidence they provide. But we disagree with him about whether the challenges he raises threaten anything we assert in IS. We see Hawthorne’s comments as one more stage in an active research program of which IS is a part. Hawthorne's Examples: 'left' and 'nearby'.