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    Carmelics

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    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that More ambitious arguments for meaning, thought, and selfhood being strongly socially constituted may not succeed, and Herder's original empirical-causal version may be the correct one.

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    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations show that no private mental act can fix the normative correctness conditions that meaning requires.
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    • 2.Herder's empirical-causal account, relying on individual psychological acquisition of language, cannot explain this normativity without invoking social practice.
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    • 3.Therefore, the stronger social-constitution thesis is not an overreach but a necessary condition for any account of meaning Herder's own framework presupposes.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Burge's thought experiments demonstrate that content individuation depends on community linguistic standards, not on what is in the head of any individual.
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    • 2.Herder's empirical-causal version, which locates the genesis of thought in individual cognitive development shaped by social input, conflates causal origin with constitutive dependence.
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    • 3.A thesis that is merely causal-genetic cannot account for the modal force of semantic content, leaving Herder's version explanatorily weaker, not more defensible.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Subsequent stronger versions of the social-constitution thesis (e.g., in Hegel, Wittgenstein, Kripke, Burge, and Brandom) attempt to go beyond Herder's empirical claim.
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    • 2.It may well be that these stronger versions do not work.
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