"The Meaning of 'Meaning is Normative' ". (26th February 2012)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fennell, John
• Is Part Of: Philosophical investigations. Volume 36:Number 1(2013:Jan.)
• Page Start: 56
• Page End: 78
• Publication Date: 2012-02-26
• Subjects: Philosophy -- Periodicals; 100
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9205.2011.01461.x
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0190-0536

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" xml:lang="en"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>This paper defends the thesis that meaning is intrinsically normative. Recent anti‐normativist objectors have distinguished two versions of the thesis – correctness and prescriptivity – and have attacked both. In the first two sections, I defend the thesis against each of these attacks; in the third section, I address two further, closely related, anti‐normativist arguments against the normativity thesis and, in the process, clarify its sense by distinguishing a universalist and a contextualist reading of it. I argue that the anti‐normativist position is successful only against the universalist reading but point out that normativists do not require this reading of the thesis; the contextualist one is both possible and desirable for them. Furthermore, I argue that anti‐normativists require the contextualist reading of the normativity thesis to make their case, as well as to avoid meaning relativism. In the final two sections of the paper, I explain how a contextualist understanding of the normativity thesis is compatible with Quine's elimination of analyticity, thus undermining a key underlying reason for anti‐normativism, and I respond to the objection that a contextualist reading of the normativity thesis is either self‐contradictory or else trivial.</p> </abstract>