Meaning-proposals

Certain cases of open texture pose a problem for theories of meaning that assign extensions to terms (relative to worlds and contexts). This paper proposes a theory of meaning that accommodates open texture and does not assign extensions. I will argue that the word “plant” exhibits the problematic kind of open texture in light of the discovery in the 1960’s that fungi are not plants. The alternative theory of meaning that I will defend holds that when one makes a statement about the meaning of a linguistic expression, one is making a proposal about how the expression should be used. The rejection of extension-involving theories of meaning challenges us to formulate a semantic theory that allows us to define logical properties but which does not assign extensions. This challenge can be met by means of a semantic theory that formulates conditions under which sentences are acceptable in a context .