Boghossian, Miller and Lewis on Dispositional Theories of Meaning

Abstract

Paul Boghossian has pointed out a 'circularity problem' for dispositionalist theories of meaning: as a result of the holistic character of belief fixation, one cannot identify someone's meaning such and such with facts of the form S is disposed to utter P under conditions C, without C involving the semantic and intentional notions that such a theory was to explain. Alex Miller has recently suggested an 'ultra-sophisticated dispositionalism' (modelled on David Lewis's well-known version of functionalism) and has argued that this version of dispositionalism escapes Boghossian's 'circularity problem'. Miller argues, nonetheless, that another of Boghossian's criticisms of dispositionalism, 'the infinity problem', still applies to this 'ultra-sophisticated dispositionalism': C will still draw upon a potential infinity of mediating background clusters of belief. The present paper argues that the feature that 'the infinity problem' presents as problematic is a feature of a host of familiar explanations. Our fundamental difficulty in this area is not our inability to understand how a more general model can be applied to a particular domain (the intentional understood as dispositional) but our failure to understand that general model itself (dispositional explanation).

Mental Content Externalism and Social Understanding

“…After all, most philosophical accounts of language mastery and understanding have been dispositional. It has been a traditional view that questions about concept possession should be answered not only on the basis of reflections on how a person actually applies a concept, but also on assumptions about how he would have used it (Kripke, 1982;Cummins, 1989;Loewer, 1997;Fodor, 1998;McManus, 2000;Kusch, 2005). In fact, a striking feature of Burge's discussion of social externalism is that the understanding of the counterfactual community, as he describes it, could be a candidate for the alternative understanding to which the person in our community would have deferred.…”

“…The problem with this response is that it is inconsistent with analyses of meaning and understanding that assume that questions about concept possession must be answered on the basis of dispositional considerations. To be sure, dispositional accounts of meaning and understanding have been developed in different ways (Kripke, 1982;Guttenplan, 1994;McManus, 2000;Kusch, 2005), but for the purposes here these further differences are not crucial. My aim is merely to show that Burge's argument is unconvincing, and for this purpose it is sufficient that considerations about how a person is disposed to apply a term in counterfactual contexts seem relevant for questions of understanding.…”

“…When he discovers his mistake he will defer to the public meaning of "blue" and change his beliefs about the term, but that does not mean that he earlier expressed the concept blue by "blue". 7 There are well known challenges related to the need of specifying cases of application that determine the nature of a person's concepts (Loewer, 1997;McManus, 2000;Kusch, 2005). For instance, the concept I express by "dog" can be dog even if I mistakenly apply "dog" to a cat that from a long distance looks to me like a dog.…”

Reconciling Semantic Dispositionalism with Semantic Holism

“…That is, I shall argue for the failure of Boghossian's general point that no appeal to dispositions under appropriate conditions will 6 Miller (1997) attributes the Infinity Objection to Boghossian (1991). 7 It has been argued by McManus (2000) that the Infinity Objection makes the same basic assumption as any other ceteris paribus clause: namely, that any such clause is essentially openended. According to McManus, the strength of the Infinity Objection relies on this more general problem for a disposition qualified under a ceteris paribus clause, and is not uniquely motivated by holism.…”

Rules, Regression and the ‘Background’: Dreyfus, Heidegger and McDowell

“…(Cf. Boghossian 1990, Miller 1997, 1998, 2003 and, for critical discussion, McManus 2000.) Despite his occasional talk of ‘dispositions’ in characterising the ‘background’ (such as BITW 117 cited in the previous section), Dreyfus clearly doesn't see himself as anything like a typical dispositionalist, not least because the latter—far from seeing dispositionalism as requiring us to recognize a third way of being—sees it as making possible a parsimonious denial of the need for a (‘second’) way of being that is distinctively intentional.…”