Max Deutsch: On the Prevalence of Metalinguistic Negotiation

Max Deutsch will present a talk titled "On the Prevalence of Metalinguistic Negotiation"

Abstract:  Some philosophers argue that there is a kind of dispute, metalinguistic negotiation (MLN), in which disputants appear to be disagreeing over a non-linguistic matter of fact, but are instead engaged in implicit normative disagreement over how to use a key term framing the dispute. In this talk, I will argue that MLN is not nearly as prevalent in philosophy or other areas of inquiry as some have suggested, and, hence, that MLN is considerably less metaphilosophically significant than it is sometimes taken to be. I will also discuss several ways in which the (non-)prevalence of MLN bears on broader theoretical issues such as (a) the nature of dispute and disagreement more generally, (b) the extent to which philosophy consists in trivial, “merely verbal” disputes, (c) the prevalence, in philosophy and other areas, of implicit “conceptual engineering”, and (d) the continuing fallout for philosophical methodology of the failure to properly distinguish between semantic and speaker’s meaning, and, relatedly, between meaning and use.

Max Deutsch is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong.  He has taught there (with a 2-1/2 year break at East Carolina University) since 2001.  He works in philosophy of mind, language, epistemology, and metaphilosophy.