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Jazz Redux: a reply to Möller

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Abstract

This paper is a response to Niklas Möller’s (Philosophical Studies, 2013) recent criticism of our relational (Jazz) model of meaning of thin evaluative terms. Möller’s criticism rests on a confusion about the role of coordinating intentions in Jazz. This paper clarifies what’s distinctive and controversial about the Jazz proposal and explains why Jazz, unlike traditional accounts of meaning, is not committed to analycities.

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Notes

  1. The account grew out of a general critique of neo-Fregean and two-dimensional approaches to meaning and concept identity as involving implausible epistemic and psychological commitments (Schroeter 2003, 2004, 2006, 2012; Schroeter and Bigelow 2009). The case of evaluative terms was developed as a particularly compelling case study (Schroeter and Schroeter 2009, 2013, Ms).

  2. Möller (2013, p. 6). Möller also alters MHC’s psychological dispositions in two key ways. We stipulate (i) that MHC is only focused on hand-clasping and has no interest in normal human goals like health and shelter, and (ii) that MHC lacks higher-order deliberative capacities that might lead him to alter his hand-clasping plans. Möller removes these two further stipulations on the grounds that they are psychologically implausible (2013, p. 5, fn. 8).

  3. (Möller (2013, pp. 6–11). The bulk of this argument focuses on whether MHC* meets the second requirement of the Jazz model, Congruence.

  4. It’s worth noting also that the MHC example was never intended to bear any heavy theoretical weight in our paper: the point of the MHC example was simply to establish the prima facie implausibility of minimalism.

  5. According to a resemblance model of public language, sameness of meaning within a community is normally maintained by tacit linguistic conventions which ensure that all speakers associate the same topic-fixing conceptual roles with particular expressions (Lewis 1969).

  6. This distinction is inspired by Christopher Peacocke’s account of possession conditions and determination theories for theorizing about concepts (Peacocke 1992). A determination theory is also known as a metasemantic theory (Kaplan 1989) or a foundational semantic theory (Stalnaker 1997).

  7. It’s worth emphasizing that as a general theory of competence, Jazz has no structural commitment about the nature of the semantic values assigned to particular expressions. In particular, Jazz is compatible with the possibility of a purely expressive account of the semantic values of an evaluative predicate like ‘is right’. Schroeter and Schroeter (2009) might have been misleading in this respect, since the paper treats it as common ground among the theorists discussed that evaluative predicates pick out properties. Although minimalists like Wedgwood (2001) and Gibbard (2003) endorse referential semantic values, some theorists who share their commitment to motivationalist competence conditions will insist that expressions like ‘is right’ determine expressive roles as semantic values.

  8. For further details about this structural distinction between resemblance and connectedness models, see Schroeter (2012) and Schroeter and Schroeter (Ms).

  9. For the causal chain theory see Kripke (1980) and Devitt (1981). More generally, theories of content with an essential causal-historical component should be construed as connectedness theories. Ruth Millikan, for instance, has proposed a naturalistic connectedness model that relies on relations of reproduction and natural selection, rather than relations of interlocking intentions (Millikan 1984). According to Millikan, natural selection relations linking you and your ancestors can help explain how basic concepts like that expressed by ‘food’ manage to single out specific categories. This sort of teleosemantic theory allows different speakers to pick out the same semantic value with a term, despite extreme and rationally irreconcilable differences in the criteria and motivational roles they associate with it.

  10. On this account, there is no ‘core’ reference-fixing understanding that must be shared by all competent participants in the representational tradition with the proper name. Not even a ‘meta-linguistic’ or ‘deferential’ reference-fixing criterion is necessary, since speakers can have different understanding of the precise nature of the meta-linguistic or ‘deferential’ reference-fixing conditions and still count as latching onto the same interpersonal representational tradition.

  11. See Schroeter and Schroeter (2009: §5, especially p. 14) for holistic rationalizing interpretation in the case of an individual representational practice, and §6 (especially p. 17) for the case of an intersubjective representational practice.

  12. It’s worth emphasizing that Jazz is not committed to Davidson’s claim that Swampman does not manage to have any contentful thoughts whatsoever. The point at issue here is about shared meanings—not about the determination of semantic values.

  13. Schroeter and Schroeter (2009, p. 23). It’s worth emphasizing that the epistemic roles of coordination on a common subject matter will be the same even if the semantic value picked out by a normative predicate is as an expressive role, rather than as a property.

  14. For the specific application of these points to the case of normative concepts, see Schroeter and Schroeter (Ms). For a general overview of epistemic roles played by sameness of meaning and the advantages of connectedness accounts, see Schroeter and Bigelow (2009) and Schroeter (2012). For the importance of intra-personal connections for concept identity, see Schroeter (2013).

  15. For these points, see Schroeter and Schroeter (2009, p. 5) and Jackson (1998, 2000).

  16. See Merli (2008) for an extended defense of this point. The strict motivational requirements for competence posited by minimalists seem to violate commonsense assumptions about semantic coordination just as much as the descriptive requirements posited by neo-descriptivists.

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Schroeter, L., Schroeter, F. Jazz Redux: a reply to Möller. Philos Stud 170, 303–316 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-013-0219-2

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