Abstract
The idea that experts (especially scientific experts) play a privileged
role in determining the meanings of our words and the contents of our
concepts has become commonplace since the work of Hilary Putnam, Tyler
Burge, and others in the 1970s. But if experts have the power to
determine what our words mean, they can do so responsibly or
irresponsibly, from good motivations or bad, justly or unjustly, with
good or bad effects. This paper distinguishes three families of
metasemantic views based on their attitudes towards bad behaviour by
meaning‐fixing experts, and draws a series of distinctions relevant for
the normative evaluation of meaning‐determining actions.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Ratio |
Volume | Early View |
Early online date | 4 Feb 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 4 Feb 2020 |
Keywords
- Anti-individualism
- Experts
- Metasemantic ethics
- Metasemantics
- Semantic externalism
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Derek Nelson Ball
- Philosophy - Senior Lecturer
- Arché Philosophical Research Centre for Logic, Language, Metaphysics and Epistemology
Person: Academic