Relativism, metasemantics, and the future

Bibliographic Data

ID21334909
AuthorsDerek Ball (0000-0003-4766-9839, University of St Andrews)
Year2020
Volume63
Issue9-10
Pages1036-1086
Publication date2020-11-25
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-174X • E-ISSN: 1502-3923
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0020174x.2020.1805710
OpenAlexW3092849772
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited51

Contemporary relativists often see their view as contributing to a semantic/post-semantic account of linguistic data about disagreement and retraction. I offer an independently motivated metasemantic account of the same data, that also handles a number of cases and empirical results that are problematic for the relativist. The key idea is that the content of assertions and beliefs is determined in part by facts about other times, including times after the assertion is made or the belief is formed. On this temporal externalist view, speaker behaviours such as retraction of previous assertions play a role in making it the case that a past utterance has a given meaning

Assertion · Epistemology · Key (lock) · Linguistics · Meaning (existential) · Relativism · Utterance · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology

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