Andrew Jorgensen

The starting point for this paper is the acceptance of Kripke’s sceptic’s case for scepticism about semantic notions: ‘There can be no such thing as meaning anything by any word.’ (Kripke 1982: 55). The thesis is restated, shown to be logically coherent, and taken as an invitation to provide an explanation of linguistic phenomena that does not make use of semantic relationships. The criteria of adequacy for such an account are that it provide some insight into the phenomena that the notions of meaning and reference were traditionally evoked to explain, for instance the phenomenon of communication and certain correlations between the linguistic and non-linguistic environments. It is claimed that the alternative picture of linguistic phenomena presented by Kripke’s sceptic can fruitfully be seen as a variety of inferential role account, but as an inferential role alternative to an account of meaning, not an alternative account of meaning, for inferential role accounts of meaning just as surely fall pray to the sceptical argument as truth-conditional rivals. Finally, certain objections to the coherence of semantic scepticism are considered and shown not to apply to the form scepticism takes here.