Necessity and language: in defence of conventionalism

(2008)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Kalhat has forcefully criticised Wittgenstein's linguistic or conventionalist account of logical necessity, drawing partly on Waismann and Quine. I defend conventionalism against the charge that it cannot do justice to the truth of necessary propositions, renders them unacceptably arbitrary or reduces them to metalingustic statements. At the same time, I try to reconcile Wittgenstein's claim that necessary propositions are constitutive of meaning with the logical positivists' claim that they are true by virtue of meaning. Explaining necessary propositions by reference to linguistic conventions does not reduce modal to non-modal notions, but it avoids metaphysical accounts, which are incapable of explaining how we can have a priori knowledge of necessity.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 101,795

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Necessity and language: In defence of conventionalism.Hans-Johann Glock - 2007 - Philosophical Investigations 31 (1):24–47.
Necessity and language: The gap is still very real.Javier Kalhat - 2008 - Philosophical Investigations 31 (3):227–236.
Logic and conventions.Kai Michael Büttner & Hans-Johann Glock - 2024 - Philosophical Investigations 47 (4):523-542.
Neo-Conventionalist Accounts of Necessity.Cansu Yüksel - 2024 - Philosophy Compass 19 (11).
A new problem for the linguistic doctrine of necessary truth.Gillian Russell - 2010 - In Cory Wright & Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen (eds.), New Waves in Truth. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan. pp. 267--281.
Has the later Wittgenstein accounted for necessity?Javier Kalhat - 2007 - Philosophical Investigations 31 (1):1–23.
Necessity.Richard Swinburne - 1994 - In The Christian God. New York: Oxford University Press.

Analytics

Added to PP
2014-01-18

Downloads
95 (#223,233)

6 months
14 (#240,419)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

References found in this work

Philosophical Investigations.Ludwig Wittgenstein - 1953 - New York, NY, USA: Wiley-Blackwell. Edited by G. E. M. Anscombe.
Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics.Crispin Wright - 1980 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity.Gordon P. Baker & P. M. S. Hacker (eds.) - 1980 - New York, NY, USA: Blackwell.
Analyticity.Paul Artin Boghossian - 1997 - In Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 331-368.
How I see philosophy.Friedrich Waismann & Rom Harré - 1968 - New York,: St. Martin's Press. Edited by Rom Harré.

View all 12 references / Add more references