engleski

Semantic Naturalism and Normativity

In traditional semantic theory the menaning of a world (or logical constant)is permeated with normativity. It is held that if one grasps the meaning of a word (or logical constant), one ought to behave in a certain way. This view is labelled as normativism here. Normativists hold that meaning is intrinsically and irreducibly normative. The naturalistic approach tosemantics, on the other hand, which tries to reconcile the traditional approach to meaning with a naturalistic world-view, has to naturalise the normative character of meaning. Naturalists employ several strategies of argumentation, two of which I deem to be particularly significant. These two strategiwes are exemplified by P. Horwich's revisionistic and C. Peacocke's reductionistic approahes. This paper elucidates and critiques the former. My criticism tries to show that Horwich's theory does not offer a successful answer to the normativist challenge.

meaning; semanticn normativism; naturalism

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