Natural language semantics is not yet advanced enough to provide a clear grip on the semantic facts that foundational theories of meaning aim to analyze

There is another reason why one might be pessimistic about the prospects of foundational theories of meaning. While plainly distinct from semantics, the attempt to provide foundational theories is clearly in one sense answerable to semantic theorizing, since without a clear view of the facts about the semantic contents of expressions we won't have a clear view of the facts for which we are trying to provide an explanation. One might, then, be skeptical about the prospects of foundational theorie