| Eligibility and inscrutability (2006) | |||||||||||||||
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| Inscrutability arguments threaten to reduce interpretationist metasemantic theories to absurdity. Can we find some way to block the arguments? A highly influential proposal in this regard is David Lewis ’ ‘eligibility ’ response: some theories are better than others, not because they fit the data better, but because they are framed in terms of more natural properties. The purposes of this paper are (1) to outline the nature of the eligibility proposal, making the case that it is not ad hoc, but instead flows naturally from three independently motivated elements; and (2) to show that severe limitations afflict the proposal. In conclusion, I pick out an element of the eligibility response that is responsible for the limitations. 1 The philosophy of intentionality asks questions such as: in virtue of what does a sentence, picture, or mental state represent that the world is a certain way? The sub-question I focus upon here concerns the semantic properties of language: in | |||||||||||||||
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