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Derek Ball argues that disputes about matters of definition are not just about the meanings of words or our concepts, and they do not typically involve change of meaning. Instead, engaging in an investigation or a discussion helps determine the meanings of our words without changing them; what is determined is the meaning our words had all along.
List of contents
- 1: Introduction
- Part I: Conservatism about Practice and Meaning Sameness
- 2: Verbal Dispute and Metalinguistic Negotiation
- 3: Conceptual Engineering: Ambitious or Anodyne?
- 4: Why Are Paradoxes Hard? On the Explanatory Inecacy of Inconsistent Concepts
- Part II: Temporal Externalism
- 5: Definition: What and When
- 6: Stipulation Reconsidered: Temporal Externalism
- 7: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Backwards Deter- mination
- 8: Contextualism, Relativism, and Metasemantics
- 9: Temporal Externalism, Context Sensitivity, and Matters of Taste
- 10: Temporal Externalism: Choice Points
About the author
Derek Ball is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. His interests span a wide range of topics in philosophy of mind and psychology, philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, and moral philosophy. He holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, and has held visiting fellowships at the Australian National University and the University of Oslo.
Summary
Derek Ball argues that disputes about matters of definition are not just about the meanings of words or our concepts, and they do not typically involve change of meaning. Instead, engaging in an investigation or a discussion helps determine the meanings of our words without changing them; what is determined is the meaning our words had all along.
