paramount problem of semantic theory to one among many problems. What seems more basic here is the conditions
of satisfaction for referential constituents and how they interact with the f-knowledge base. In fact, a great deal of
research in“truth-conditional”semantics can easily be reconstrued as addressing this issue. For instance, the question
of whether sentence S 1 entails sentence S 2 has nothing to do with their truth values—they may describe thoroughly
fictional or hypotheticalsituations. Rather, S 1 entails S 2 if addingthesituation referred to by S 1 to an otherwise blank f-
knowledge base enablesthesituationreferred to byS 2 tobesatisfied. Thefactorsinvolved in such satisfaction, and the
for mof the rules of inference, may re main essentially unchanged fro ma truth-conditional account.
Above all, the conceptualist approach shifts the focus of semantics from the question“What makes sentences true?”
towhatI taketobe themore ecologicallysound question,“How do wehumans understand language?”—“ecologically
sound”in the sense that it permits us to integrate semantics with the other human sciences. I take this to be a positive
step.
10.11 Objectivity, error, and the role of the community
We'renotyet quitedone escapingtheaccusationofsolipsism. A good entry intotheremaining difficulty is throughthe
proble mof error. The proble mis usually stated so mething like this:
(26) a.Joe says“Look at that duck!”
b. But in actuality he points to a platypus.
c. How does his phrasethat duckmanage to refer?
d. Doesduckstill refer to ducks in (26a)?Within common-sense realisttheories of meaning, in whichwords refer to theworld,the problem liesin (26c, d): how
the phrase could refer to something it is not supposed to, or how the phrase could get its meaning despite being on
occasion misused.^170 Within a conceptualist theory this is not a problem: in Joe's conceptualization of the world, that
thing“out there”is a duck, so for Joe the phrase succeeds in referring.
The proble mfor the conceptualist theory lies rather in sentence (26b):But in
REFERENCE AND TRUTH 329
(^170) Famous cases in the literature that have the form of the argument in (26) include Putnam's (1975) “cats turn out to be robots radio-controlled fro mMars”scenario;
Putnam's (1975) “Twin-Earth”scenario; Donnellan's (1966) “‘the man with the martini’is really drinking water”scenario; and Kripke's (1979) scenario of Pierre who
thinks London is ugly and“Londres est jolie.”My case of the two Blooms (section 10.7) could also be couched in this form.