Description

Shannon Bain (LinkedIn). Reflexive Content, Use Conditions, and Modal Normativism

March 8, 2023. 3 p.m.

Venue: Carlos Santamaria Building, Room 2

Attendance is free, but please confirm attendance to ekaingar@gmail.com.

Abstract

We try to develop a more complete story of the content available given an uttered expression's conventional meaning than the orthodox propositional account typically allows. Our account escapes some semantic puzzles and respects the meaningfulness, and thus the contentfulness, of not strictly or exclusively truth-conditionally explicable utterances. We start with John Perry & Kepa Korta’s multi-content approach which addresses the semantic paradoxes by positing a continuum of reflexive contents alongside official referential content. Reflexive content can profitably be seen as a specific flavor of use-conditional content. We go on to integrate reflexive content into an augmented version of Stefano Predelli’s use-conditional framework for handling non-truth-conditional aspects of conventional meaning, or what he calls bias. Finally we consider in-depth how the mechanics we’ve developed along the way can put a different spin on some neo-pragmatist discussions of modality, particularly Amie Thomasson’s recent normativist approach to metaphysical modality.