Zalabardo, Jose; (2023) What is linguistic interpretation? In: Gert, Joshua, (ed.) Neopragmatism Interventions in First-Order Philosophy. (pp. 210-234). Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK.

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Abstract

This chapter presents an account of what makes meaning ascriptions have the meaning they have (their meaning grounds) in terms of the procedures that regulate their acceptance. The characterization of the procedures that play this role takes as its starting point the notion of Radical Interpretation, or Translation, as developed by W. V. O. Quine and Donald Davidson. On this basic proposal, meaning ascriptions have the meaning they have by virtue of the fact that their acceptance is regulated by the method of Radical Interpretation. This starting point is modified in important ways. The meaning-grounding procedure that’s put forward in the end combines a projection criterion (favouring interpretations that ascribe to speakers the beliefs that we would have in their epistemic situation), a familiarity criterion (favouring interpretations that use as referents properties corresponding to concepts that can be easily constructed in terms of our atomic concepts), and non-verbal evidence for belief ascriptions.

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