Terry Horgan
Publications
Philosophy of Language: Contextual Semantics
Psychologism, Semantics, and Ontology, Nous 20 (1986), 21-31.
Truth and Ontology, Philosophical Papers 15 (1986), 1-21.
I argue that truth is best understood as correct assertibility; that correct assertibility is distinct from the pragmatist notion of warranted assertibility; that norms of correct assertibility are variable and context-relative, rather than monolithic; that this conception of truth is compatible with Tarskian truth theory; and that the account renders plausible an austere ontology, even though discourse putatively "about" the eschewed entities often is not systematically paraphrasable into a more austere idiom.
Psychologistic Semantics and Moral Truth, Philosophical Studies 52 (1987), 357-70.
I propose an account of moral truth that differs significantly from each of the traditional accounts in metaethics, and I argue that the potential virtues of this account make it worthy of further examination and elaboration. The proposed falls within what I call "psychologistic semantics," a broad orientation toward the workings of natural language that, though compatible with a metaphysical realism which eschews referential semantics, has much in common with the antirealist views of philosophers like Dummett, Goiodman, Putnam, and Rorty.
Psychologistic Semantics, Robust Vagueness, and the Philosophy of Language, in S. L. Tsohatzidis, ed., Meanings and Prototypes: Studies in Linguistic Categorization (Routledge, 1990), 535-57.
Metaphysical Realism and Psychologistic Semantics, Erkenntnis 34 (1991), 297-322.
I propose a metaphysical position I call limited metaphysical realism, and I link it to a position in the philosophy of language I call psychologistic semantics. Limited metaphysical realism asserts that there is a mind-independent, discourse-independent world, but posits a sparse ontology. Psychologistic semantics construes truth not as direct word/world correspondence, and not as warranted assertibility (or Putnam's "ideal" warranted assertibility), but rather as correct assertibility. I argue the virtues of this package deal over each of the two broad positions that have recently dominated metaphysics and philosophy of language—positions I call package deal metaphysical realism, and package deal anti-realism.
Metaphysical Naturalism, Semantic Normativity, and Meta-Semantic Irrealism (with M. Timmons), Philosophical Issues 4 (1993), 180-203.
We describe and motivate a version of meta-semantic irrealism, situated within a broad orientation toward language-world relations we call contextual semantics. According to contextual semantics, truth is semantically-correct assertibility, a normative feature; and other semantic notions are also normative. The most plausible way to accommodate semantic normativity within a broadly naturalistic metaphysical worldview, we argue, is a version of meta-semantic irrealism which preserves semantic discourse rather than eliminating it, and which eschews semantically reductionist treatments of moral sentences that treat them as equivalent to nondeclarative sentences such as imperatives or ejaculations.
Naturalism and Intentionality, Philosophical Studies 76 (1994), 301-26.
I argue for three principle claims. First, philosophers who seek to integrate the semantic and the intentional into a naturalistic metaphysical worldview need to address a task that they have thus far largely failed even to notice: explaining inter-level connections between the physical and the intentional in a naturalistically acceptable way. Second, there are serious reasons to think that this task cannot be carried out in a way that would vindicate realism about intentionality. Third, there is much to be said for an irrealist, noneliminativist, naturalistic approach to intentionality that I call preservative irrealism.
Reply to Egan, Philosophical Studies 76 (1994), 339-47. Reply to F. Egan's commentary on `Naturalism and Intentionality'.
Frances Egan's paper, a commentary on my "Naturalism and Intentionality," poses important challenges both for the general approach to language/world relations I call contextual semantics, and for the philosophical treatment of intentionality I propose to wed to contextual semantics-preservative irrealism. I address various of her concerns, taking up points about (1) contextual semantics and ontological commitment; (2) the irrealist accommodation of commonsense presumptions about intentionality, (3) my analogy between irrealist positions in meta-ethics and preservative irrealism about intentionality; and (4) naturalism and the explanation of supervenience.
Transvaluationism: A Dionysian Approach to Vagueness, Southern Journal of Philosophy 33 (1995), Spindel Conference Supplement, 97-125. [HTML]
Transvaluationism asserts (1) that vagueness is logically incoherent, but (2) that vagueness is also an essential feature of human language and thought. I situate transvaluationism within a general approach to language/world relations I call contextual semantics, which asserts (1) that truth is semantically-correct assertibility and (2) that often our statements are rendered true (correctly assertible) by virtue of indirect, not direct, language/world correspondences. Although vague predictions are often true under contextually operative semantic standards, they are never true under maximally strict standards involving genuine ontological commitment. There is no vagueness in the world itself, but only in language and thought.
The Perils of Epistemic Reductionism, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (1996), 891-97. Symposium essay on C. Wright's Truth & Objectivity.
This is a contribution to a symposium on Crispin Wright's Truth and Objectivity. I distinguish between (1) Wright's generic approach to truth and to realism/antirealism debates about various kinds of discourse (e.g., humor discourse, moral discourse, mathematical discourse) and (2) an epistemically reductionist implementation of the generic view that he apparently favors. I sketch an alternative, nonepistemic, implementation and I argue against epistemically reductive versions. According to the view I sketch, truth is correct assertibility. Unlike Putnam's "ideal warranted assertibility" or Wright's "superassertibility," correct assertibility is not a concept constructible from the notion of epistemic warrant.
Actualism, Quantification, and Contextual Semantics, Philosophical Perspectives 12 (1998), 503-09. Invited reply to J. Tomberlin, “Actualism, Naturalism, and Ontology.”
Contextual
Semantics and Metaphysical Realism: Truth as Indirect Correspondence. Invited for M. Lynch (ed.), The Nature of Truth:
Classic and Contemporary Perspectives. MIT Press (2001), 67-95.
Truth as Mediated Correspondence. (with Robert Barnard). Draft [HTML]
