On Complete Information Dispositionalism
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On Complete Information Dispositionalism Mons Nyquist 1 Received: 3 September 2019 / Revised: 12 February 2020 / Accepted: 18 February 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In a trio of recent articles, Johnson and Nado (2014, 2016, Philosophia, 45, 717– 734, 2017) defend a form of metasemantic dispositionalism, arguing for a novel approach to the “error”-problem, based on speakers’ dispositional states under what they call a state of “full information”. In this article, I argue that their brand of dispositionalism fails to solve the “error”-problem, because of what I think of as counterexamples to it. In the final sections, I propose a way to amend the theory to shield it from some of the counterexamples, based on the idea that what determines meaning is not only dispositions to apply words under full information, but also dispositions to evaluate one’s prior usage, under full information. Keywords Kripkenstein . Dispositional theory of meaning . Disjunction problem .
Complete information . Idealization . Meaning change
1 Metasemantic Dispositionalism and the Error-Problem Metasemantic dispositionalism is a family of views, formulated in response to the Kripkensteinean sceptical paradox, that hold that there is a constitutive relationship1 between the meanings and reference of our terms, and how we are disposed to apply them to things (objects, properties, relations, kinds etc.) in the world. Traditionally, metasemantic dispositionalism is the view that what a speaker ‘Constitutive relationship’ is deliberately vague. Some theorists take the relation to be that of supervenience, others property identity, grounding etc. Many metasemantic theories are put forward not only as theories of linguistic meaning, but also of mental content. Johnson & Nado restrict their theory to hold only of linguistic meaning.
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* Mons Nyquist [email protected]
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Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Sør-Trøndelag, Trondheim, Norway
Philosophia
means by a word is determined by her dispositions to apply the word to things in the world.2 To a first approximation: For all speakers (S), words (w), objects, properties, kinds, relations etc. (X) S Means X by w iff S is disposed to apply w to X3 The main challenge for dispositionalism has always been that of dealing with counterexamples to this thesis. One of these problems, and the one Johnson & Nado attempt to solve, is the so-called “Error-Problem” (sometimes called the “disjunction problem”)4: For many, or most, of the words we use, we are disposed to apply them both to things that are in their extensions and things that are outside their extensions. In other words, we sometimes make mistakes, and can be disposed to do so, perhaps systematically so. But if words’ extensions were fully determined by how we are disposed to apply them, it would be impossible to apply words to things outside their extensions; in other words, impossible to make mistakes.5 In that case, the dispositionalist would be forced to say that all of our
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