IngentaConnect 5. Attributions of Meaning and Content

Author: Field, Hartry

Source: Truth and the Absence of Fact, March 2001 , pp. 157-175(19)

Publisher: Oxford Scholarship Online Monographs

Abstract:

Is concerned with the special epistemological status possessed by attributions of meaning to sentences we understand: such attributions seem a priori, in a strong sense that includes empirical indefeasibility. What explains this special status? One explanation involves the idea that attributions of meaning (and of belief, etc.) express relations between an expression (or an agent) and a linguistic item in one's own language; in the special case of a meaning attribution to one's own language, the attribution is trivial. Argues that this linguistic view of attributions can be defended against well-known objections. Also argues that alternatives in terms of propositions are perfectly acceptable, if suitably understood; they can even be developed in a way that accommodates Quinean doubts about interpersonal comparison, by viewing the propositions as ‘local entities’. But (whether or not one accepts the Quinean doubts), it is essential to view the assignment of propositions in a somewhat deflationary spirit, not altogether removed from a linguistic view of them, if the special epistemological status is to be explained.

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