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    Carmelics

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

    It is not the case that Without a principled criterion distinguishing semantic 'oughts' from practical or social ones, inferring meaning from 'ought'-statements commits a category error.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Meaning is constitutively social: what speakers ought to do with words partly determines their semantic content. The distinction collapses on examination.
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    • 2.Many legitimate semantic inferences use normative premises: 'words ought to be used consistently' grounds inferences about what speakers mean.
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    • 3.The claim assumes but never establishes that no principled criterion exists. Linguistic conventions plausibly provide exactly such criteria.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Semantic meaning concerns what words refer to; practical oughts concern how agents should act. These address fundamentally different domains.
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    • 2.Conflating domains leads to absurdity: inferring 'red means stop' from 'you ought to stop at red lights' confuses linguistic with behavioral norms.
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    • 3.Without explicit criteria distinguishing these oughts, we cannot justify why any particular social norm determines what a term semantically means.
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