The rationalist foundations of Chalmers's 2-d semantics

Philosophical Studies 118 (1-2):227-255 (2004)
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Abstract

In Epistemic Two-Dimensional Semantics, David Chalmers seeks to develop a version of 2-D semantics which can vindicate the rationalist claim that there are constitutive connections between meaning, possibility and a priority. Chalmers lays out different ways of filling in his preferred epistemic approach to 2-D semantics so as to avoid controversial philosophical assumptions. In these comments, however, I argue that there are some distinctively rationalist commitments in Chalmers's epistemic approach to 2-D semantics. I start by explaining why Chalmers's approach requires a canonical language that affords subjects accurate a priori access to the space of possibility. I then argue that traditional worries about rationalism will simply re-emerge as worries about whether there can be a canonical vocabulary and how we could come to recognize one if there were. The moral is that Chalmers's 2-D semantic framework builds in substantive metaphysical and epistemological commitments which stand in need of further defense

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Laura Schroeter
University of Melbourne

Citations of this work

The Foundations of Two-Dimensional Semantics.David J. Chalmers - 2006 - In Manuel Garcia-Carpintero & Josep Macià, Two-Dimensional Semantics. New York: Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 55-140.
Two-dimensional semantics.David J. Chalmers - 2006 - In Ernest LePore & Barry C. Smith, The Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Language. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Against A Priori reductions.Laura Schroeter - 2006 - Philosophical Quarterly 56 (225):562-586.
Carnap, the necessary a priori, and metaphysical anti-realism.Stephen Biggs & Jessica M. Wilson - 2016 - In Stephan Blatti & Sandra Lapointe, Ontology after Carnap. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 81-104.

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References found in this work

Two Dogmas of Empiricism.W. Quine - 1951 - [Longmans, Green].
New work for a theory of universals.David K. Lewis - 1983 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):343-377.
Does conceivability entail possibility.David J. Chalmers - 2002 - In Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne, Conceivability and Possibility. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 145--200.

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