From Metaphilosophy to Semantics
Jonathan Berg (University of Haifa)

4 March 2022, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – GMT) | Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: I aim to show how a commonly accepted metaphilosophical assumption has important consequences for a hotly debated issue in the philosophy of language. The seemingly innocuous metaphilosophical claim is this: The Principle of Philosophical Thought Experiments – Philosophical theories must be compatible (ceteris paribus) with the intuitions elicited by philosophical thought experiments. The controversial semantic claim it supports is this: Strict Semantics – Every disambiguated sentence has a determinate semantic content, relative to an assignment of contents to its indexical expressions. After considering each of these claims individually, I shall suggest how the first provides evidence for the second.

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