The Semantic Realism/Anti-Realism Dispute and Knowledge of Meanings
| Abstract | Here the relationship between understanding and knowledge of meaning is discussed from two different perspectives: that of Dummettian semantic anti-realism and that of the semantic externalism of Putnam and others. The question addressed is whether or not the truth of semantic externalism would undermine a central premise in one of Dummetts key arguments for anti-realism, insofar as Dummetts premise involves an assumption about the transparency of meaning and semantic externalism is often taken to undermine such transparency. Several notions of transparency and conveyability of meaning are distinguished and it is argued that, though the Dummettian argument for anti-realism presupposes only a weak connection between knowledge of meaning and understanding, even this much is not trivially true in light of semantic externalism, and that semantic externalism, if true, would thus represent a reason for rejecting the crucial assumption on which the Dummettian argument depends. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,672 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesDorit Bar-On (1996). Anti-Realism and Speaker Knowledge. Synthese 106 (2):139 - 166.
David Davies (1987). Horwich on 'Semantic' and 'Metaphysical' Realism. Philosophy of Science 54 (4):539-557.
Peter Carruthers (1985). Ruling-Out Realism. Philosophia 15 (1-2):61-78.
Mateusz Oleksy (2003). Od realizmu do arealizmu (III). Deflacyjne rozwiązanie problematyki realizmu w filozofii powittgensteinowskiej. Filozofia Nauki 2.
Katalin Farkas (2006). Semantic Internalism and Externalism. In Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language. Oxford University Press.
WR Stirton (1997). Anti-Realism, Truth-Conditions and Verificationism. Mind 106 (424):697-716.
T. Parent (2013). Externalism and Self-Knowledge. In Ed Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Kenneth R. Westphal (2003). ‘Can Pragmatic Realists Argue Transcendentally?’. In John Shook (ed.), Pragmatic Naturalism and Realism. Prometheus.
H. G. Callaway (1992). Meaning Holism and Semantic Realism (Reprinted in Callaway 2008, Meaning Without Analyticity). Dialectica 46 (1):41-59.
Alexander Miller (2003). The Significance of Semantic Realism. Synthese 136 (2):191 - 217.
J. Salerno (2000). Revising the Logic of Logical Revision. Philosophical Studies 99 (2):211-227.
Neil Tennant (1997). The Taming of the True. Oxford University Press.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2012-03-12Total downloads8 ( #123,037 of 549,065 )Recent downloads (6 months)2 ( #37,252 of 549,065 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
