Kenneth Taylor

Kenneth Taylor: Reference and Jazz Combo Theories of Meaning

Cognition and Language: Claire and John Radway Research Workshop Monday, December 7, 2009 | 5:15pm

The Event

Talk by Stanford Philosophy Professor Kenneth A. Taylor

Location: Cordura Hall, Rm. 100

 

Reference and Jazz Combo Theories of Meaning

Kenneth A. Taylor 

In this talk I discuss a family of views about the nature of linguistic meaning  (and propositional attitude content)  that I call Jazz Combo Theories of Meaning.  In this family I count theorists as diverse as Quine, Davidson, Brandom, Rorty, and Wittgenstein.  To a first approximation, jazz combo theorists hold that the initial constitution of linguistic content is simultaneous with the institution of a set of mutually owned norms.  Just as it is only against a backdrop of mutually endorsed musical norms that what would otherwise be mere noise is constituted de novo as music, the jazz combo theorist holds, so it is only against a backdrop of mutually owned linguistic or discursive norms that what would otherwise count as productions of meaningless strings are constituted de novo as determinate  linguistic acts, with determinate propositional contents.  On this sort of view, to confer propositional content, just is to confer liability to determinate patterns of normative assessment.  And this makes propositional contents and the norms governing linguistic production two faces of the same coin.  I shall argue that although Jazz Combo theories are right to place the phenomenon of what I call discursive community at the heart of the theory of meaning, nonetheless, Jazz Combo theories cannot explain how our thoughts and our words manage to refer to a largely mind-independent world.  Consequently,  Jazz Combo approach needs to be supplemented, I argue,  with an independent theory of reference.

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