Abstract
The chapter consists of two main parts. In the first part I look at the DTM from a contemporary point of view and position it amongst other theories of meaning. I explain the reasons why I call it a “semantic” theory even though it does not tell us anything about the reference of terms and the reasons behind calling it a “pragmatic” theory. In the second part I introduce 18 desiderata for theories of meaning and suggest that the best way of evaluating theories of this type is to see, how many of these desiderata does a given theory fulfill.
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Notes
- 1.
A very similar division was proposed in Rorty (1967).
- 2.
I consciously avoid the word “meaning” here, although it could very well be used instead of “sense”. The reason for this is that the English word “meaning” is ambiguous and can be understood both as “F-sense”, “M-sense”, the combination of both and as “reference”.
- 3.
Some scholars believe that this is one of the most important achievements of the DTM (for example Maciaszek 2007).
- 4.
Who try to clarify Fodor’s (1981) humorous distinction between the Right and Wrong theories (model theories being the wrong one).
- 5.
From now on I use the notion of “narrow content” and “content” interchangeably. It is important to remember this because many authors use the notion of “content” as an equivalent of “reference”. From this point of view, the notion of narrow, non-referential content becomes simply a contradiction in terms.
- 6.
It will be typically called a “semantic model”. I avoid this term because it does not relate to Fregean senses but rather to denotation.
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Grabarczyk, P. (2019). Aims and Ambitions of the DTM. In: Directival Theory of Meaning. Synthese Library, vol 409. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18783-5_2
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