Meaning as a Normative Concept An interview with Allan Gibbard

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GUNNAR BJORNSSON, Goteborg University and ARVID BAVE, Stockholm University

I N LATE S P R I N G 2007,

professor Allan Gibbard (AG) gave the Hagerstrom Lectures at Uppsala University, Sweden, under the title of Meaning as a Normative Concept. He met up with Gunnar Bjornsson (GB) and Arvid B k e (AB) to talk about the views he develops and defends in the lectures.

1. The normativity of meaning GB: In your 1990 book Wise Choices,Apt Feelings, you gave what might still be the best-developed expressivist account of normative thought, building on evolutionary hypotheses about the origin of such thought and explaining its content in terms of what it is to accept sets of what you call factual-normative worlds. Simplifying somewhat, to think that it was rational for Anthony to give battle is to accept a system of norms and a set of factual beliefs, such that the set of beliefs includes the belief that the set of norms permits giving battle in Anthonys circumstances. Furthermore, and still simplifying, to accept a norm is to be disposed to act, think or feel accordingly. In developing that account, you took a naturalistic explanatory perspective for granted, and assumed that facts of meaning - such as your own expressivist analysis - belonged to the naturalistic domain. In your latest book, Thinking How to Live, you approach normative thought from a slightly different angle. There, you develop a concept of planning, and suggest that normative thought can be understood as plan-laden. To think that giving battle was the thing to do for Anthony, or what he should do, is to plan to do the same if in Anthonys shoes. You were also stressing quasi-realist themes much harder in the latter book, arguing at length that an expressivist can say just about everything that a non-naturalist realist like G. E. Moore wanted to say about the normative domain; in particular, that there are normative facts that hold independently of what

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we think about them. There are many deep similarities between your two accounts, of course: the norms of the earlier account do pretty much the same job as the plans of the latter. But in Thinking How to Live you were no longer taking for granted that facts of meaning are naturalistic facts. This, of course, is the main thesis of your Hagerstrom lectures: meaning is a normative and therefore a non-naturalistic concept. Now, the claim that meaning is normative can be understood in different ways. The norms can be of different sorts and they can be tied to meaning in different ways. What do you mean by this claim, that meaning is normative? AG: Well, at a minimum, its that meaning claims analytically entail certain normative consequences. So, from the claim, for instan!e, that the word something means something, that its meaning is the existential quantifier, it follows that if one ought to believe that snow is yhite, then one ought to believe Something is white. And that would be enough to establish that if normative claims are not naturalistic, the meaning claims are not naturalistic. GB: What made you change your mind from the position of Wise Choices, Apt Feelings to your present view? AG: One of the readers for Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, who turned out to be John McDowell, said something like, Doesnt Gibbard realize that meaning is normative?. I didnt accommodate that possibility in Wise Choices, Apt Feelings because the book was really written at that point. But I began to look into the possibility, and found it worth pursuing. Thinking How to Live also has a difference in emphasis from Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, namely in that its not trying to get the psychology of normative judgments right. It is interested in the logic - but I also changed to being agnostic about whether this claim was right or not. The view I take in the Hagerstrom lectures is that there may be both normative and non-normative concepts of meaning. Brandoms book Making It Explicit gave some indications of how to understand meaning as a normative concept, but closely related to naturalistic concepts. So, it seemed possible that something like Brandoms structure works. GB: What is your theory of the normative concept of meaning, briefly? AG: Well, in a nutshell, its that the meaning of a word is how one ought to use it in forming ones beliefs. GB: We will talk more about the details of your view, but let me first

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ask: If people in metaethics came to accept that view, would that change the way metaethics is done? AG: 1 find that an important and puzzling question. Perhaps formulating the questions as ones of how to use words make the answers seem clearer, but of course the answers to questions of how to use words depend heavily on various facts about how we are disposed to use words. So, on a view that the concept of meaning is a non-normative concept, well look for evidence about how people are disposed to use words. On the hypothesis that it is a normative concept, well still look for evidence about how people are disposed to use words, but then take our findings to bear on the question of how to use the words. Whether that is going to make us any less likely to gGt bogged down in muddles, Im really not sure. AB: We thought that a good summary of your view of synonymy would be this: on youraccount, two words a and b are synonymous if and only if they have the same normative profile, meaning that for any intelligible normative systeh N, any intelligible evidential state E, and sentence context s( ), S(a) ought to be accepted on N in E iff S(b) ought to be accepted on N in E. Would that be a ... AG: That looks good - better than I had formulated it. GB: Some would take both the sentence Pleasure is good and Bachelors are unmarried as unconditionally acceptable. A prima facie problem for your view is how to make sense of the fact that the latter is acceptable purely in virtue of meaning, but not the former. The solution given in terms of normative profiles consists in saying that denial of the latter is unintelligible, whereas denial of the former isnt. However, explaining this difference in meaning by reference to intelligibility looks circular. What is your solution to this problem? AG: Well, in the case of Pleasure is good, there is a proof (assuming my theory of what normative concepts are) that the possibility that pleasure isnt good is intelligible - namely that, clearly, it is possible to plan not to weigh pleasure in favor of doing things. And, anyone who does so, according to my theory of what ought means, thinks that pleasure ought to not be weighed favorably, which amounts to saying that pleasure is not good. In the case of something like The bachelors are the unmarried men, 1 dont have a proof that the supposition that that is false is unintelligible, but theres no proof that it i s intelligible, and so I am suggesting, methodologically, we should regard things as unintelligible until we have a proof that it is intelligible.

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GB: You define meaning in terms of what you call a primitive, costignoring ought. This is an ought which is employed whm we talk about what someone ought to believe while ignoring detrimental effects of such a belief. For example, it might be that someone ought, in this sense, to believe that her husband is having an affair, because he is having an affair, or because she has strong evidence to that effect, even though it would be better for her not to have this belief. And you firther explain this ought in terms of plans to believe certain things when in certain subjective states. But, ordinary plans, it seems, are not plans for what to do or believe in certain subjective states, but plans for what to do or believe in certain objective circumstances: a chemist might have plans for what to believe and what to do if the litmus paper is red. Why are plans for what to believe under objective circumstances not enough to give anormative account of meaning? AG: Well, my first worry about objective oughts explaining meaning is that for this cost-ignoring sense, to say that one objectively ought to believe that snow is white, say, seems analytically equivalent to just Snow is white. Snow is white is non-normative, if anything is, so in this particular application, the objective ought seems to produce something that is non-normative in that its analytically equivalent to something non-normative. Its puzzling why that is, and it seemed to me that we could explain objective oughts in terms of subjective oughts. Im lost, imagine, and the road to the right is shorter than the road to the left, but I dont have any reason to believe that it is. To say that I objectively ought to go right, we could say, is to say that subjectively, I ought to believe everything that is the case, then, subjectively, I ought to go right. And in the case of I objectively ought to believe that snow is white, that trivializes. Thats equivalent, on that pattern, to saying, If, subjectively, I ought to believe everything thats the case, then I ought to believe that snow is white, and thats clearly analytically equivalent to Snow is white. GB: At a first glance, defining meaning in terms of subjective states with certain contents seems to introduce circularity. Now, one way of trying to avoid the circularity would be to appeal to non-intentional aspects of subjective experience, but some people working on subjective states would suggest that all there is to subjective states is intentionality. If they were right, there would be no phenomenology, so to speak, apart from the intentional content of those states. Would this turn the apparent circularity into a deep or difficult problem for your theory?

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AG: I think it may be a deep problem, but I dont know that it is intractable. Subjective states of mind involve things that are clearly beliefs, such as seeming memories of histories of evidence, and they involve quaha, which, as you say, are at least arguably comprised, somehow, of contentful states. Historical beliefs and the like may not be a severe problem for a normative treatment of the concept of meaning. If attributions of belief states are normative claims, then that will include attributions of seeming memories. How all this would operate needs much more investigation than I have given it, but I dont immediately see any contradiction in saying all this. As for phenomenal states, take observing the color of litmus paper, and lets allow thatseeing it as red (or seeming to see it as red) is a contentful state. There wont be subjective norms telling us when to see things as red, since seeing something as red isnt under normative control. There will, though, be norms saying what to believe if you do see the paper as red. These will be different from other norms of evidence or inference, like modus ponens whose norm says what to believe if you ought to believe the premises. Norms of evidence will say what to believe not if you oughr to see the litmus paper as red, but if you do see it as red. Yours is a very good question, and I dont at all know, at this point, whether they would in any way stymie understanding the concept of meaning as normative. Id like to have a better, deeper understanding of these matters. GB: Traditionally, the thesis that meaning is normative has been seen as a problem for anyone trying to give a naturalistic account of meaning. What you have argued in your previous works is that naturalism can accommodate normativity through expressivist accounts of normative concepts. If meaning is normative, or if the concept of meaning is normative, however, it seems that expressivist analyses of normative thought are themselves normative. Some critics of expressivism, such as Russ ShaferLandau, have taken this to be an objection to the expressivist program: since expressivism takes normative thought to be non-factual, expressivism itself would be a non-factual view. According to these critics, then, expressivism is self-effacing. What is your reply to such criticism? AG: Well, whether you want to call the view in its normative form expressivism of course doesnt matter much in itself. The view is that when we talk about meaning, were talking about how to use words, so when we say that the meaning of ought is such and such, were saying how to use the word ought. Now, this will have the structure that the

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account of how to use the word ought is an ought claim in itself, but it is going to be a feature of any account of meaning that the account of meaning is supposed to apply to itself. So, that isnt any special problem for an account that says that one ought to use the word ought to express states of planning. GB: Much of your work starts with laying out a naturalistic worldview, and tries to understand normativity and now meaning within that world-view. What do you take to be the main points in favor of this philosophical outlook or philosophical stance? AG: Well, the great successes of the broadly Galilean view of the world in explaining such things as what is going on in the brain electrically and how the neurons work together to produce speech, leads to the conjecture that in principle one could understand the causes of everything that goes on physically - including peoples words in the sense of the sound waves that come out of their mouths - in physical terms. So, in that sense, we can conjecture, physics leaves nothing firther to be explained. Now, there is still the matter of explaining patterns, just as in mathematical systems where we understand the basic rules perfectly well, there is a complex question of explaining mathematical patterns. So we can think of biology and naturalistic psychology and so forth as involving something beyond physics in that sense, in the same way as explaining mathematical patterns involves something more than saying what the simple rules are that generate those patterns. Well, once we have such a picture, then certain questions become quite urgent. What does warrant for belief has to do with it? What do beliefs and meaning and mental content have to do with it? And if, in the sense I just sketched, the physics of the world and of us is all there is, and if the concepts of warrant and meaning and things of that sort cant be expressed physicalistically, that creates a puzzle. Now, expressivism gave a pattern of how to resolve that puzzle for the case of normative concepts - except that it leaves open the question of how to understand concept and meaning and that sort of thing. So I thought that Kripkes treatment of Wittgenstein suggested ways that we might try to tackle meaning and the concept of a concept and that sort of thing in a way that extended the expressivist treatment of normative concepts. GB: You repeatedly stress the distinction between concepts and properties. Do you think that most theories of meaning should be understood as concerned with, so to speak, the natural phenomenon of meaning rather

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than the concept of meaning? AG: Yes. And presumably, one good thing to accomplish with an account of meaning is to develop a concept that is adequate to the phenomena. Im quite happy, then, to allow that there may be very useful scientific concepts that at least approximate the concept of meaning, and that those concepts will pick out certain properties that we could signify normatively also. GB: The distinction between concepts and properties and the claim that the concept of meaning is normative while the property is natural leads to the question of how the natural property of meaning is tied to our normative concept of meaning. Here is a way of pressing this question: will your coucept of meaning designate the same property of meaning as my concept of meaning, and is there a non-normative matter of fact about that, or is this a normative question, too? AG: Well, take the question of what property, naturalistically characterized, constitutes meaning that snow is white. If the concept of meaning is a normative concept, then this is a normative question. You and 1 might disagree on this normative question. If we do disagree, I have been proposing, our disagreement is normative, a disagreement over the oughts of the matter. The word meaning neednt then mean different things in your mouth from mine. It might, but it might also be that we mean the same things by our words, but one of us is right in his normative judgments and the other is wrong. Were still using the word meaning to mean the same thing, but were disagreeing in our judgments of what words mean, in that were disagreeing about the oughts of the case. AB: Would yousay that neglect of this distinction between the concept of meaning and the property of meaning has blocked progress in the theory of meaning? AG: Well, I thought some of the questions that Kripke raises in that wonderhl treatment of the rule-following paradox involved not distinguishing the metaquestion of what means means from the substantive question of what meaning consists in. So, my example of two meaning theorists who agree in their metatheory but disagree normatively, and thereby disagree on substantive questions of meaning, was supposed to separate the two questions, the substantive question of what Ursula means by the plus sign, and the metatheoretical question of whats at issue among the theorists who disagree on the substantive question. So, when Kripke says that there is no fact that settles what she means, I say that on

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any substantive view of meaning, there will be such a fact. Still, it may be controversial whether thats the fact that settles what she means. We have to distinguish, then, two questions: whether theres a fact that, as a substantive matter of meaning theory, settles what she means, and whats at issue if people disagree as to what the fact that settles meanings is. AB: Given the present dominance of truth-theoretic semantics, what do you think are the prospects for semantic theories operating rather with the notion of speakers acceptance, such as yours or Honvichs? AG: Im not really qualified to say. Ive gotten into questions about the normativity of meaning and mental content with the excuse that in order to study these issues, one needs to have a background both in an expanded metaethics and in philosophy of language. But Imnot a specialist in the philosophy of language, Im a dabbler. Anyone who works in this area will have to be a dabbler in some of the areas involved.,Ive been impressed with how far Honvich gets in trying to supplant truth-theoretic semantics. Ive been fascinated with Brandoms work in this regard also, but dont think I understand it as well as I understand Honvichs work. It seems to me, with my limited knowledge, that a lot of the evidence that linguists and philosophers who work on semantics appeal to seems really to be evidence about acceptance. So, when I consider this along with the need for an approach that doesnt take the notion of truth as primitive and unexplainable - since that wouldnt seem to be very scientific in itself - I think its worthwhile trying out acceptance-theoretical approaches. But I dont claim any authority in being able to assess what the comparative prospects are.

2. The case against naturalistic theories of the concept of meaning

AB: One obvious way to avoid the argument that expressivist views are self-effacing is to insist that claims about meaning are naturalistic claims. In your lectures, however, you say that a purely naturalistic theory of meaning faces problems that a normative theory might solve. As an example of a naturalistic theory, you use Paul Honvichs account, as presented in his works Meaning, from 1998, and Reflections on Meaning, from 2005. Honvich takes meaning-facts to reduce to facts about speakers dispositions to accept various sentences, facts that are to be explanatorily

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basic relative to the speakers overall use. So, the meaning of dog, on his account, is to be identified with certain facts about speakers use of the word given which their overall use of the word is best explained. Further, Honvich claims that certain idealizations are necessary in identifying these facts, in order to deal with various idiosyncrasies of use. What, in your opinion, are the main weaknesses of this theory? AG: I was suggesting that there were two problems that might be taken care of by a normative account of what means means. One is that the idealizations that best explain may not be unique, and different idealizations may lead to ascribing different meanings. That may not be a problem for exphnatory uses of the concept of meaning, but perhaps we can get more dbtkrminate ascriptions of meaning if we interpret the concept of meaning as a normative concept. The second problem was why certain norms seem td attach to meanings so automatically. If meaning such and such is simply constituted by certain norms applying, that would solve this problem, whereas otherwise, weve got the question of why these seem to be quik different sorts of norms from ordinary practical norms. AB: A central part of your discussion of Honvichs naturalistic theory concerns theoretical terms in Newtonian and Einsteinian physics. You argue that the naturalistic facts about a Newtonians use of her terms mass, momentum, etc., that Horwich focuses on dont determine which, if any, of the relativistic concepts these words express. For instance, such facts dont determine whether her term mass expresses the concept of rest mass, relativistic mass, or some other notion of mass. Honvich claims that the meaning of these words are determined by facts about which senknces the Newtonian takes as underived, i.e., meaninggiving, and which she takes as substantial. You claim that naturalistic facts about her use fail to determine this, even allowing various idealizations. The structure of your argument seems to be this: there is a datum that a meaning theory should have as consequence, and Horwichs theory doesnt. Is that a correct description? AG: I allow that there may be no fact of the matter whether the Newtonians terms are commensurable or incommensurable with ours, and if they are commensurable, in what ways. So if Honvichs account is indeterminate in the meanings it ascribes, this may not be an inadequacy of Honvichs theory for explanatory purposes. I was just claiming that it leaves a kind of indeterminacy that a normative concept of meaning might make determinate.

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AB: Concerning the case of the Newtonian, you say that if meaning is normative, we can determine what is at issue in disputes concerning what she means. We can determine which concept she uses mass to express by determining whether she ought to accept the sentence If there is something that has all features that the relativity theory ascribes to relativistic mass, then mass is constant with velocity. You go on to say that if she should, then she cant mean relativistic mass, and if she should not, then she cant mean rest mass. This settles what is at issue between two disputants concerning the meaning of her word mass, whereas this may be indeterminate on Honvichs theory. But couldnt the normative facts of the matter be indeterminate, just as the explanatory facts? Couldnt there be normative indeterminacy? AG: Well, the question of what one ought to accept in the Newtonians circumstances is just a question of what to accept. Its a questiqn that we come to a conclusion about by forming a plan. A person could, of course, be uncertain what to plan for that circumstance, but then, the person just regards himself as not knowing what the person means. To come to a conclusion on the question of meaning, you must have a plan, and having the plan amounts to regarding the matter as determinate. GB: But cant this just be a matter of just picking one interpretation, rather than choosing it, so to speak? In light of the naturalistic facts, I might find myself normatively indifferent as to whether one ought to accept the Newtonians utterances in various epistemic circumstances, and so indifferent as to what she means, on your account. To come to a conclusion about what she means, I would have to form a plan, but I would just have to pick one of two sets of plans arbitrarily. That would seem to leave room for a kind of normative indeterminacy as well. AG: Its an interesting question whether picking applies to belief, to accepting sentences. If you thought it did, you would have to think that it was arbitrary what to regard the word as meaning. That doesnt seem true to the way we plan for beliefs, and so Im inclined to think that picking applies to actions but not to beliefs. But Im not entirely sure about that. AB: We also interpreted you as claiming that two people could be in complete agreement about the naturalistic facts and about which facts about speakers acceptance of a sentence are explanatorily basic (the facts that, according to Honvich, constitute the sentences meaning what it does), and yet disagree about meaning. AG: Not exactly. My point is that they might agree on all the natural-

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istic facts and still disagree about meanings. If so, they would have to be disagreeing about what basic acceptance properties words have, since on Horwichs account, a words basic acceptance property just is its meaning. They might agree on all the naturalistic facts and disagree about basic acceptance properties, since they might disagree on what idealization best serves to explain the naturalistic facts. The basic acceptance property of a word, after all, is defined as the property that explains its use in the best explanatory idealization, and what idealization best explains isnt itself a naturalistic fact. AB: The case of the Newtonian is supposed to show that there might be an issue concerning what someone means that transcends the explanatory facts that a naturalistic theory of meaning can hope to capture. But couldnt a naturalist explain the feeling that there might be such an issue left if she insists that the concept of meaning is a cluster concept, that is, one determined by various criteria not analytically connected to meaning. For if that is so, one can, for any conceivable proposal for what the meaning of a word consists in, intelligibly disagree, but this will not show that something is missing from the account. It just shows that there are no analytic principles capturing the concept of meaning. AG: Perhaps, but my argument wasnt that something is missing from Honvichs account. There may just be no causal-explanatory fact of the matter what the Newtonian means, in which case the theory would be adequate for causal-explanatory purposes. My claim was that, couched as a question concerning meaning in a normative sense, the matter might be determinate, whereas in a causal-explanatory sense, it is indeterminate. But also, note, even if the concept of meaning is a cluster concept, theres still a puzzle as to whats at issue among people who disagree about meanings. One of them stresses one set of elements in the cluster and the other stresses different elements. But they presumably agree on what happens if you stress elements in the one way, and on what happens if you stress them in another way. What they disagree on is which way of stressing elements gives us meaning - and we still must ask what this issue amounts to. AB: You use Honvichs theory as an example of a naturalistic theory, so your suggestion must be that the argument generalizes to other naturalistic theories. What reasons do we have to think that it does generalize in this way? AG: Well, that would really require examining various theories. I dont

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claim to have a proof in general. Its well known, I think, that the theory of meaning has been a hard thing to do naturalistically. 1 dont claim to have any original arguments showing that its impossible, but I take the lesson of philosophical experience to be that its difficult enough that there might be a systematic problem.

3. Automaticity and the intrinsiclinstrumental distinction

AB: You think that a normative meaning theory solves not only the idealization problem, but also what you call the automaticity problem, which is that ought claims seem to follow from meaning claims in a very direct, automatic way. The debate between Honvich and the normativists, if you will, is perhaps best described as one not about whether meaning is normative but about whether it is intrinsically or merely instrumentally normative. This is a point Horwich has reason to emphasize since he agrees that meaning claims have normative consequences, but tries to accommodate this by taking the norm to be parasitic upon an instrumental truth-norm, which derives from the general pragmatic value of speaking and believing the truth. It seems that you and Honvich agree that among the data to be accommodated by a meaning theory are normative claims, but that he just explains them differently. Why couldnt the norm be derivative and pragmatic in the way Honvich proposes? AG: Honvich, when he discusses the possibility that the concept of meaning is a normative concept considers, I think, two sorts of norms. One is moral norms, and the other is prudential norms. Now, if we consider moral norms, prudential norms, or norms for action all told, then Im in complete agreement with Honvich. I was saying, however, that there is another kind of norm that we need to consider, namely this primitive, cost-ignoring kind of norm that, in its application to beliefs, is a purely epistemic norm. And for this kind of norm, I find it impossible to make sense of the claim that the normative tie, say, between believing that snow is white and believing that something is white is one that a person competent in the language can doubt. This connection seems to have an automaticity that views that morally you ought to believe the truth dont have - and that views that, morally, you ought to believe in accordance with evidence dont have. These dont seem indubitable and automatic in the same way as does the claim that you ought to believe in accordance

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with the evidence in the primitive sense of ought, the sense in which this amounts to saying that belief according to the evidence is warranted. And 1 dont think Horwich considers the primitive, cost-ignoring ought. AB: You said that taking the normativity attaching to meaning to be explained on this pragmatic model will not accommodate the intuition of an automatic implication from means to ought. Suppose, then, that one takes truth instead to be intrinsically normative. This may mean, for instance, that the principle that one ought believe the truth is hndamental in that it does not derive from any other ought. Next, we note the tight conceptual connection between what a sentence means and its truth-conditions, i.e., that it is necessary a priori that if a sentence means that p then it is true if and only if p. Couldnt this accommodate our intuition of automaticity? But this is consistent with taking meaning to be a non-normative concept. What would be wrong with this explanation? AG: Well, it seems wrong that one ought always to believe the truth in any sense except this cost-ignoring ought that is the objective version of the subjective primitive, cost-ignoring ought that Im using. For the reason I explained before, I think the claim that one ought to believe the truth in that objective sense trivializes. So that particular normative consequence would not show the concept of meaning or the concept of truth to be a normative concept, because it trivializes. Things like One ought not to accept both a sentence and its negation, though, doesnt trivialize in that way - that applies to the primitive, cost-ignoring, subjective sense of ought. And we have to account for the automaticity of things like that. AB: For a final clarification, are meaning norms epistemic norms, on your view, and vice versa? AG: Yes, Ive been trying to use epistemic norms to do the work of meaning. We can think of questions of meaning as pertaining to words, and questions of mental content as pertaining to thoughts expressible in words, where it doesnt matter what the words are as long as theyre synonymous. The conditions under which you should accept Here is a dog and Voici un chien are the same, and so asking about those questions is asking questions about mental content. There may be a distinction, then, between meaning norms that tell you about words, and content norms that tell you about meaning-types of words. I am trying, though, to get all of those to be epistemic norms applied in different ways. Trying to work that out is part of the project.

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GB: Is this the idea: we can explain the meaning of a word or expression with reference to another word which falls under the same epistemic norms; and we can explain a type of meaning or concept in terms of what epistemic norms govern expressions with that meaning, without saying what the expressions are that are so governed? AG: Yes, thats right. And Im trying to see whether I can use epistemic oughts to capture both claims about the meanings or words and claims about the content of thoughts. AB: 1 might return, then, to the issue of a pragmatic versus an intrinsic norm of truth. Isnt it a strange coincidence that something that is intrinsically normative is also pragmatically normative? How come these coincide in such a convenient way? Could this be an objection to the very idea of taking truth to be intrinsically valuable, or for there to be an intrinsic norm of truth? AG: So, what would the intrinsic norm of truth be? AB: For instance, the principle that one ought to believe the truth, where this principle isnt derived from any other ought. That is what 1 mean by intrinsic. AG: As I say, 1 think that that norm trivializes, and what we have to do is to see what the content is in terms of subjective norms. Valuing the truth is partly a matter of seeking out evidence, but, clearly, some evidence is worth seeking out and some isnt. There is no general principle that you ought to seek out all the evidence you can at whatever cost. So, what kind of intelligible norm of truth might there be? Well, there is the epistemic normative requirement to form ones degrees of credence in accordance with the evidence. But that too might trivialize, in that we can ask what we mean by evidence. People can quarrel about whether something is evidence, and what seems to be at issue is just whether it is something to weigh epistemically. So, I would think that we would really have to define evidence as what one should be responsive to. Again, then, Believe in accordance with the evidence! threatens to be empty. Theres Believe in ways that are coherent, in the ways that decision theorists have worked out - thats an epistemic norm with teeth, and I think it encompasses a lot of things that we mean when we talk about Believing in accordance with the evidence. And the arguments that that is a valid norm seems to me to fall out of decision theory, suitably interpreted. AB: Do you simply deny, then, that theres any sense to be made of talk of an intrinsic norm of truth?

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AG: 1 think that an intrinsic truth norm amounts to an epistemic coherence norm. Also, I argue in my article, Rational Credence and the Value of Truth, that we can see how to vindicate epistemic rationality as aimed at truth by ones own lights for the guidance value of truth, but there is a puzzle about how to vindicate epistemic rationality as aimed at truth for its own sake. My intuition is that truth has a value for its own sake, and that people who appreciate this value will strive to be epistemically rational, but I dont know how to work out that intuition coherently. AB: That meaning is a normative concept, you say, means that for any meaning claim, an ought claim follows conceptually. But it seems that which ought claim follows from a meaning claim depends on which normative epistemic system one adopts. Doesnt that make the conditional If x means so and so, one ought to accept such and such substantial, hence not meaning-giving? But then the implication cannot be conceptual. For example, it seems that someone could say that if chien means dog, then it should be applied to horses. This is a crazy plan, but it seems intelligible, and if so then it must be substantial. And then it seems to follow that the implication from means to ought is not conceptual. AG: Right, we do need to ask whether the tie between the meaning of a sentence and the oughts that apply to it is conceptual or substantive. Now, there are at least two ways of designating a concept. One can designate it as the concept that I express by my word dog, and in that case the oughts that follow are substantial. Thats how it is with the dispute about what I mean by or that I discussed in the lectures. It is quite possible to debate whether for what I mean by my word or disjunctive syllogism is valid. On the other hand, I can designate the same concept as the concept with such-and-such normative properties, including that disjunctive syllogism is valid for it, and then, although there can be dispute about whether there is any such concept, the question of whether ifthere is such a concept, disjunctive syllogism is valid for it i s unintelligible. I have had some further thoughts on this question since the lectures, however. You are right that it is possible for me to entertain alternative plans for how to use my word or, and so which norms apply to my word or is an intelligible issue. We must distinguish, though, two ways this can be so. On the one hand, the issue may be purely a linguistic one, entirely a matter of what my word or means. On the other hand, it may be a dispute that goes beyond sheer questions of meaning. Take, for instance, disagreement on whether to apply the word good to Schadenfreude. This

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might at base be a non-linguistic disagreement, on the question of whether to favor Schadenfreude. Whats needed, then, is a normative account of what this difference amounts to, the difference between pure questions of meaning and questions that are at least partly non-semantic. Some of the devices that Horwich uses in his naturalistic account of meaning may work as well to make this distinction in an account of the concept of meaning as normative. AB: You make an interesting point about the difference between being warranted in believing something and being warranted in wanting to believe it. Philosophers, I suppose, often suspect people of believing things that they are only warranted in wanting to believe. The theory of evolution and theism might be cases in point. Do you believe that philosophers should try to spread the norm of believing only on evidence and not for practical reasons? AG: Ifwe want to figure out what to want to believe, we need to assess evidence about what the effects of believing various things would be. So even if we say that we dont care about responsiveness to evidence, all we care about, say, is happiness, in order to form warranted assessments of prospects for happiness of various alternative policies, were back to having to assess evidence in epistemic terms. Now, of course, we can muddle along, and some people are very good at being happy but not very good at thinking. I dont suppose that we should come along and change those into people that arent very good at being happy but are very good at thinking. Happiness is probably more important than being good at thinking. But being good at thinking has an important role to play in the pursuit of happiness, and philosophers have a special responsibility to cultivate both being able to think well and being able to use thinking well to produce good results. Bibliography
GIBRARD, ALLAN1990. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory qf Normative Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P. GIBBARD ALLAN , 2003. Thinking How to Live Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P. GIBBARD ALLAN , 2007. Rational Credence and the Value ofTruth, in T. S. Gendler and J. Hawthorne (eds.), 0.rford Studies in Epistemologv, Vol. 2, Oxford: Oxford U. P. (Estimated publication date December 2007) HORWICH, PAUL 1998. Meaning, Oxford: Oxford U. P. HORWICH, PAUL2005. Reflections on Meaning, Oxford: Oxford U. P.

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Theoria interviews in previous issues

Martin L. Jonsson and Ingar Brinck Compositionality and Other Issues in the Philosophy of Mind and Language. An interview with Jeny Fodor Theoriu vol7 I , 2005, part 4 Anna-Sofia Maurin and Ingar Brinck Revisionary Metaphysics. An interview with D. M.Armstrong Theoria vol7 1,2005, part 1 Anna-Sofia Maurin and Johannes Persson Realistic Metaphysics. An interview with D. H. Mellor Theoriu ~ 0 1 6 7 , 2 0 I0, part 3 Lars Bergstrom An interview with W. V. 0.Quine An interview with D. Davidson Theoriu vol60, 1994, part 3