Constructing Meanings

Abstract

Chalmers’s philosophical work exploits a distinctive version of two-dimensionalism, a formal modal framework from the 1960s and 1970s that one can use to define two kinds of possible worlds semantic values. Chalmers presents this as the best form of a Fregean account of content. One of the principal aims of Constructing the World is to provide its metaphysical foundations. Chalmers presents himself as vindicating a Fregean account of meaning. I will be arguing that this is incorrect; the resulting theory of meaning is not properly regarded as Fregean, because it is not a plausible theory of cognitive significance How much this poses a problem for Chalmers depends upon whether his notion of content ultimately depends upon the Fregean theory of content, that is, the theory of content that does provide an account of cognitive significance. Although Constructing the World takes the form of a vindication of something like Carnap’s project in the Aufbau, my interest in this paper is in that part of Constructing the World that can be seen as vindication of another work of Carnap’s, namely Meaning and Necessity. The central notion in Meaning and Necessity was analyticity. The central notion in Chalmers’s Constructing the World is what Chalmers calls ‘a priori scrutability’, the basic characterization of which (40) is: S is a priori scrutable from C for s iff x is in a position to know a priori that if C, then S.