Semantic Scepticism and the Possibility of Meaning

Nearly four decades ago, Saul Kripke articulated a semantic version of scepticism, according to which no finite goings-on, either mental or behavioural, can establish what someone means by an expression. The semantic sceptic reveals, among other things, the hopelessness of a deeply temptingand widely madeassumption, to the effect that we must be able to articulate what it is for a subject to use expressions meaningfully without presupposing meaning. According to a strain of thinking that is influential in contemporary philosophy, this suggests that there is no general story to be told about what it is for expressions to be used meaningfully

This dissertation seeks to contribute to the project of undermining the dichotomy between reductionism and quietist non-reductionism about meaning. It does this in the first instance by examining, and ultimately rejecting, a range of views offered in response to the challenge. Then, it proceeds to extract from the later writings of Donald Davidson a version of semantic non-reductionism that provides an answer to the challenge of the semantic sceptic. At the core of his view is the idea that we cannot shed light on what it is for expressions to be used meaningfully without shedding light on the special sort of active engagement characteristic of the simultaneous interaction of two subjects with each other and their shared world. Meaningfulness is grounded in such triangular transactions.

This dissertation also illuminates the connections between the philosophical conceptions of two thinkers who have made an enormous contribution to the project, central to analytic philosophy, of making philosophical sense of meaning. Davidson seems never to have been genuinely gripped by Kripkes challenge, and Kripke seems never to have engaged in any substantive way with Davidsons views on triangulation. And yet, Kripkes challenge about meaning and Davidsons overall conception of meaning can each be seen as lending support to the other. Furthermore, what Davidsons writings show is that endorsing semantic non-reductionism need not be the desperate move that Kripke takes it to be, for it does not force us to give up on the distinctively philosophical search for generality.