On semantic normativity : toward a better understanding

Abstract

What is the normativity of (linguistic) meaning? What exactly does this thesis (that meaning is normative) amount to? Is meaning indeed normative, or can it be naturalistically reduced? The present thesis examines some arguments, for and against, the thesis that meaning is normative (i.e., the semantic normativity thesis), and through this process of examination it aims to arrive at a better understanding of how to adequately address the foregoing questions. The first chapter of the present work focuses on Kripke’s seminal views on the normativity of meaning, discussed in his influential book, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. A detailed analytical exposition of his so-called “sceptical argument” and “sceptical solution” is provided in the first chapter of this thesis, both of which contain Kripke’s key ideas on the normativity of meaning. The chapter then concludes with an analytical extraction and reconstruction of Kripke’s ideas on the normativity of meaning. The second chapter of this thesis examines an argument in support of semantic normativity, called the “simple argument.” It then proceeds to examine how Gluer and Wikforss attack this simple argument for the normativity of meaning. The chapter then presents a further criticism of Gluer and Wikforss’s criticisms of the simple argument. After this, two key distinctions, between use and application, and between performative application and application implied in use, are elaborated. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how these foregoing distinctions drawn help to explain a key step in Kripke’s sceptical argument, namely, the generalizing step. The third and last chapter of this thesis examines another argument in support of semantic normativity, called the “meaning proposal argument” (MPA). MPA, it is argued in this chapter, is untenable and should be discarded. Then, the chapter proceeds to discuss Gampel’s elaboration of a key feature of semantic normativity present in Kripke’s discussions, namely, the context of use. Finally, the last section of the chapter utilizes Gampel’s distinctions, as well as the distinctions that have been drawn in the previous (second) chapter, in approaching and addressing the central issue of whether or not meaning is normative. This final section argues that although meaning is not intrinsically normative, it is noncategorically normative, and furthermore, some considerations are given in support of the thesis that meaning is also essentially normative.