Oughts and Thoughts

In Oughts and Thoughts, Anandi Hattiangadi provides an innovative response to Saul Kripke's famous argument for meaning scepticism. Kripke asks what makes it the case that anybody ever means anything by any word, and argues that there are no facts of the matter as to what anybody ever means. Kripke's argument has inspired a lively and extended debate in the philosophy of language, as it raises some of the most fundamental issues in the field: namely, the reality, privacy, and normativity of meaning. Hattiangadi argues that in order to achieve the radical conclusion that there are no facts as to what a person means by a word, the sceptic must rely on the thesis that meaning is normative, and that this thesis fails. Since any 'sceptical solution' to the sceptical problem is irremediably incoherent, Hattiangadi concludes that there must be a fact of the matter about what we mean.