Volume 45, Issue 2, Fall 2017
Philosophy of Language
Carlotta Pavese
Pages 65-96
A Theory of Practical Meaning
This essay introduces the notion of practical meaning by looking at a certain kind of procedural system—the motor system—that plays a central role in computational models of motor behavior. I suggest that a semantics for motor commands has to appeal to a distinctively practical kind of meaning. Defending the explanatory relevance of motor representation and of its semantic properties in a computational explanation of motor behavior, my argument concludes that practical meanings play a central role in an adequate explanation of motor behavior that is based on these computational models. In the second part of this essay, I generalize and clarify the notion of practical meaning, and I defend the intelligibility of practical meanings against an important objection.