Use Against Scepticism Use Against Scepticism By Massimiliano Vignolo Use Against Scepticism, by Massimiliano Vignolo This book first published 2009 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2009 by Massimiliano Vignolo All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-1236-6, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1236-8 To my parents, for all their love and support. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction..............................................................................................ix 1. Background 2. Summary Acknowledgments...................................................................................xix Chapter 1: Meaning Scepticism...............................................................1 1. Meaning Scepticism......................................................................3 2. Two Conceptions of Meaning.......................................................6 3. Use and Empirical Adequacy......................................................12 4. Meaning Scepticism Rebutted.....................................................19 5. Twin Earth...................................................................................26 6. Realism and Convergence in Science..........................................35 Chapter 2: Abstracting Meanings..........................................................39 1. Abstraction..................................................................................40 2. Abstracting Meanings.................................................................43 3. Objections...................................................................................48 4. Solutions......................................................................................53 Chapter 3: Meaning and Realism..........................................................63 1. Meanings, Language and Semantic Realism...............................64 2. Truth-Conditions and Full-Bloodedness.....................................70 3. The Manifestation Argument......................................................75 4. The Intelligibility of Classical Logic...........................................80 5. Analyticity and Meaning Constitution........................................89 Chapter 4: Meaning and Truth..............................................................97 1. The Tarskian Definition of Truth in L.........................................98 2. The Status of the Tarskian Definition.......................................101 3. The Modal Objection................................................................104 4. The Explanatory Force Objection.............................................108 5. The Truth-Conditions Objection...............................................113 6. The Substantivity Objection......................................................116 viii Table of Contents Chapter 5: Meaning and Metaphysics.................................................123 1. Non-factualism and Deflationism.............................................125 2. A Tarskian Proposal..................................................................131 3. Objections and Replies..............................................................136 4. The Case of Faultless Disagreements........................................144 5. The Frege-Geach Problem........................................................152 Bibliography...........................................................................................159 INTRODUCTION 1. Background I make two main assumptions in the background of this essay. The first regards realism and the second naturalism. I accept realism in the formulation proposed by Michael Devitt:1 Tokens of most current common-sense and scientific physical types exist and most have the properties attributed to them by science and folk theories. Realism is a metaphysical doctrine about reality, about what there is and what its nature is. As Devitt maintains,2 realism can be justified by an inference to the best explanation. We infer the truth of realism from the need to posit it in order to explain the evidential character of experience. Why is our experience as if there is such and such a world out there? The best explanation is to say that the evidential character of our experience is as if there is such and such a world, because there actually is such and such a world out there; e.g. it looks as if there is a tree covered with green leaves outside my window, because there is a tree covered with green leaves outside my window. Admittedly, there is no compelling reason why the radical sceptic should accept such inference to the existence of the external world. The inference is not a valid deduction from indubitably true premises and leaves open the possibility of inferences to other explanations of the evidential character of our experience, like the evil influence of the Cartesian demon or the artificial stimulations of the brain in the vat. However, the inference looks convincing from within the approach of naturalised epistemology, according to which there is no privileged and a priori perspective from which our scientific, epistemic and methodological principles can be justified, apart from the standard scientific – operational and theoretical – canons like predictive adequacy and simplicity. So, radical scepticism remains ultimately unanswered since it imposes 1 Cf. Devitt (1984 p. 23, 2006 p. 102). 2 Cf. Devitt (1984 ch. 5).