• Corpus ID: 5772758

In analogy with Moore’s founding question to metaethics, the central problem of a metatheory of meaning is the meaning of ‘meaning’. In answering the latter question, Gibbard’s Meaning and Normativ-

@inproceedings{Gibbard2013InAW,
  title={In analogy with Moore’s founding question to metaethics, the central problem of a metatheory of meaning is the meaning of ‘meaning’. In answering the latter question, Gibbard’s Meaning and Normativ-},
  author={Allan Gibbard},
  year={2013}
}

• A. Gibbard
• Published 2013
• Philosophy

In analogy with Moore's founding question to metaethics, the central problem of a metatheory of meaning is the meaning of 'meaning'. In answering the latter question, Gibbard's Meaning and Normativ-ity retains far-reaching Moorean ambitions about the main semantic concept: it applies classical metaethical arguments, strategies and distinctions to reach inviting, non-naturalistic conclusions about the concept of meaning. At the outset, Gibbard interprets the normativity of meaning in two senses. On the weak reading, 'means' implies 'ought', understood in a Moorean, non-naturalistic sense. On the strong reading, however, any 'means' entails 'ought' and the concept of meaning can be fully defined in normative and naturalistic terms. After the introductory chapter, outlining the main concepts and aims of the project, Chapters 2 and 3 go on to discuss the weak normativity thesis. The starting point is Kripke's classic work on Wittgenstein, which is interpreted as defending the thesis. As often discussed in the literature, in arriving at his non-naturalistic conclusion, Kripke attacks a rather weak dispositional account. However, if Gibbard is right, Kripke could have taken a different route by both keeping the weak normativity thesis and retaining a naturalistic, dispositional account of meaning. To this extent, Gibbard proposes more refined dispositional theories of the solipsistic and communitarian type: the former claims that meaning is entirely in the head, whereas the latter contends that it is in part inherent in the community. The key to reconciling dispositional accounts and the weak nor-mativity thesis is to distinguish between properties and concepts. Like Moore, Gibbard locates normative dimension in the latter: while both the brain property and the community property are natural , the concept of meaning is normative. No contradiction arises, for the former tells us something about the world, the latter about our thinking about the world. The two dispositional views are substantive theories of meaning and disagree about the correct naturalistic rendering of the meaning