Browsing by Author "Wheeler, Samuel C."

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    Naturalist Structuralism’s Aporia? Essentialism, Indeterminacy, and Nostalgia - a response to Paul Livingston.
    (University of Oregon, 2009) Wheeler, Samuel C.
    This essay argues that what Livingston calls the “structuralist” project, combined with a naturalistic, external approach to language, does not in fact lead to a paradoxical failure to match lived language. Quine’s indeterminacy argument is not a consequence of naturalism and structuralism, but is rather a consequence of thorough anti-essentialism, a thesis he shares with Derrida and Davidson. Contemporary naturalism is in fact not committed to Quine’s thesis. Davidson’s views are a purification of the views of Quine, removing Quine’s empiricist appeal to stimulus meaning and Quine’s scientism. Davidson abandons the conventionalist conception of language but retains the “structuralist” conception of language, as captured by a truth-definition. The indeterminacy thesis is a consequence of antiessentialism applied to semantics, that is, the denial of transcendental signifieds. The essay concludes by arguing that Quine’s aporia (which is also Davidson’s and Derrida’s aporia) is a discovery rather than a paradox.
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    Response to Livingston's Response: What's Missing?
    (University of Oregon, 2009) Wheeler, Samuel C.
    At this point in the discussion, I am beginning to suspect that Livingston and I have different conceptions of what Davidson’s “framework” is. I take it to be quite a bit more than the idea that a theory of meaning is a recursive truth-definition. So this response will set out what I take Davidson’s view and framework to be, and explain why, on that understanding, the inadequacies Livingston and McDowell ascribe to Davidson’s framework are not genuine inadequacies. Of course it may well be that I am just not getting something. I will begin by discussing two peripheral points: First, my understanding of Davidsonian indeterminacy makes it something more than ambiguity that can be cleared up by determining the intention of the speaker or author. Second, addressing the remark at the bottom of footnote 14, I give an explanation of what I take to be the Quinean-Davidsonian approach to ontology. The main part of this response discusses the central issue of whether a Davidsonian account of language is adequate as a philosophical account of language.