Abstract
This paper defends the communitarian account of meaning against Boghossian’s (Wittgensteinian) arguments. Boghossian argues that whilst such an account might be able to accommodate the infinitary characteristic of meaning, it cannot account for its normativity: he claims that, since the dispositions of a group must mirror those of its members, the former cannot be used to evaluate the latter. However, as this paper aims to make clear, this reasoning is fallacious. Modelling the issue with four (justifiable) assumptions, it shows that Condorcet’s ‘Jury Theorem’ can be used to prove that the dispositions of the majority of the members of a group can differ from those of any individual member in a way that makes it possible to use communal dispositions as a standard with which individual dispositions can be assessed. Moreover, the argument of the paper is also shown to have general implications for the use of formal methods in the explanation of the nature of certain fallacious inferences.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Black D. (1958). The theory of committees and elections. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press
Boghossian P. (1989). The rule-following considerations. Mind 98: 507–549
Boghossian P. (1991). Naturalizing content. In: Lower B., Rey G. (eds). Meaning in mind: Fodor and his critics. Cambridge, Blackwell Publishing, pp. 65–86
Carey S. (1994). Does learning a language require the child to reconceptualize the world?. Lingua 92: 143–167
Condorcet M. (1785/1994). An essay on the application of probability theory to plurality decision-making Trans, I McLean and F Hewitt. In: McLean I., Hewitt F. (eds). Condorcet: Foundations of social choice and political theory. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, pp. 120–138
Dietrich F., List C. (2004). A model of jury decisions where all the jurors have the same evidence. Synthese 142: 175–202
Dretske F. (1981). Knowledge and the flow of information. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press
Fodor J. (1984). Semantics, Wisconsin style. In: Fodor J. (1990), A theory of content. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, pp. 31–50.
Fodor J. (1990). A theory of content. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press
Gillies D. (2000). Philosophical theories of probability. London, Routledge
Grofman B. (1975). A comment on Democratic theory: A preliminary mathematical model. Public Choice 21, 99–104
Grofman B., Owen G., Feld S. (1983). Thirteen theorems in search of the truth. Theory and Decision 15, 261–278
Kusch M. (2005). Fodor v. Kripke: Semantic dispositionalism, idealisation, and ceteris paribus clauses. Analysis 65, 156–169
List C. (2004). Democracy in animal groups: A political science perspective. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19: 1689–1699
Owen G., Grofman B., Feld S. (1989). Proving a distribution-free generalization of the Condorcet Jury Theorem. Mathematical Social Sciences 17, 1–16
Stampe D.W. (1986). Verificationism and a causal account of meaning. Synthese 69, 107–137
Stampe D.W. (1990). Content, context and explanation. In: Villanueva E. (ed). Information, semantics, and epistemology. New York, Basil Blackwell, pp. 134–152
Young H.P. (1988). Condorcet’s theory of voting. American Political Science Review 82, 1231–1244
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Schulz, A.W. Condorcet and communitarianism: Boghossian’s fallacious inference. Synthese 166, 55–68 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-007-9257-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-007-9257-7