Getting a Moral Thing into a Thought

2020 ◽  
pp. 140-169
Author(s):  
Preston Werner
Keyword(s):  
Important Implication ◽  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Positive View ◽  
Natural Properties ◽  
Conceptual Role Semantics ◽  
Conceptual Role ◽  
Reference Determination

Non-naturalism is the view that normative properties are response-independent, irreducible to natural properties, and causally inefficacious. An underexplored question for non-naturalism concerns the metasemantics of normative terms. Ideally, the non-naturalist could remain ecumenical, but it appears they cannot. Call this challenge the metasemantic challenge. This chapter suggests that non-naturalists endorse an epistemic account of reference determination of the sort recently defended by Imogen Dickie, with some modifications. An important implication of this account is that, if correct, a fully fleshed out moral epistemology will simultaneously rebut metasemantic objections to non-naturalism. Thus, both the metasemantic and the more widely discussed epistemological challenges in effect amount to one. Before setting out the positive view, the chapter considers why all of the traditional metasemantic theories cause trouble for the non-naturalist. This includes discussions of teleosemantics, conceptual role semantics, as well as Schroeter and Schroeter’s “connectedness” model.

Semantics, conceptual role

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ned Block
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Functional Role ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Procedural Semantics ◽  
Functional Roles ◽  
Conceptual Role Semantics ◽  
Conceptual Role

According to conceptual role semantics (CRS), the meaning of a representation is the role of that representation in the cognitive life of the agent, for example, in perception, thought and decision-making. It is an extension of the well-known ‘use’ theory of meaning, according to which the meaning of a word is its use in communication and, more generally, in social interaction. CRS supplements external use by including the role of a symbol inside a computer or a brain. The uses appealed to are not just actual, but also counterfactual: not only what effects a thought does have, but what effects it would have had if stimuli or other states had differed. Of course, so defined, the functional role of a thought includes all sorts of causes and effects that are non-semantic, for example, perhaps happy thoughts can bolster one’s immunity, promoting good health. Conceptual roles are functional roles minus such non-semantic causes and effects. The view has arisen separately in philosophy (where it is sometimes called ‘inferential’ or ‘functional’ role semantics) and in cognitive science (where it is sometimes called ‘procedural semantics’).

On a Semantic Argument against Conceptual Role Semantics

Analysis ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 298-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. A. Warfield
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Role Semantics ◽  
Conceptual Role
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