INTRODUCTION

The Problem

Semantics is a veritable Balkans of the intellectual world. Localists war with holists, truth conditionalists with verificationists, deflationists with substantivists, direct-reference theorists with Fregeans, one-factor theorists with two-factor theorists, and so on. An army of enthusiasts for narrow content have occupied the territory formerly held by the proponents of wide content. Finally, no settlement of these disputes seems to be in sight.

One sound stands out in these battles: the clash of semantic intuitions. Indeed, sometimes that is the only sound to be heard. Intuitions are almost always aired in “thought experiments.”

This reliance on intuitions may be untroubling from some perspectives because it seems to exemplify the characteristic method of “armchair” philosophy. Yet it is surely troubling from the naturalistic perspective that I favor. According to naturalism, semantics is an empirical science like any other. Intuitions and thought experiments do not have this central role elsewhere in science. Why should they in semantics?

This question leads to the general ones that are the main concern of this chapter: How should we get to the truth in semantics? How should we go about settling semantic disputes? What is the right methodology for semantics?

A naturalistic approach to these questions can only hope for modest answers. We cannot expect to make more progress with the methodology of semantics than has been made with scientific methodologies in general. And we know how limited that progress is. It has turned out to be very difficult to say how we should get to the truth and settle disputes in science. My hope is only to bring semantic methodology close to other scientific methodologies.