Reply to Jackendoff

TL;DR: The authors pointed out that the point of NS was not to establish the nature of semantics or, more specifically, to defend referential semantics, but rather to clear away some unconvincing philosophical arguments that might stand in the way of assessing referentual semantics on empirical grounds.

Abstract: NS criticized two arguments Jackendoff offers against referential semantics. The first argument was that reference relations would be examples of intentionality, but one cannot make naturalistic sense of intentionality. The second argument was that there is something “suspect” either about the alleged objects to which a reference relation would relate representations or in the very notion of object such a semantics assumes. I criticized both of these arguments as failing to establish their conclusions and, in particular, as resting on dubious philosophical assumptions. (Jackendoff does not take up these criticisms in his reply, so I will not elaborate further upon them here.) The point of NS was not to establish the nature of semantics or, more specifically, to defend referential semantics. It was to clear away some unconvincing philosophical arguments that might stand in the way of assessing referential semantics on empirical grounds. Jackendoff’s reply suggests that the point of NS was not apparent to him, in part as a result of his misunderstanding how I see the relations among referential semantics, conceptualist semantics, physicalism, and methodological naturalism. Before I turn to his remarks, it will be useful to review these labels.