The Burman lectures 2025. Lecture 2: Disagreement and Meaning

The Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies invites you to the annual Burman lectures in philosophy. This years invited lecturer is Professor John Macfarlane, UC Berkeley. He will give three open lectures over three days. 

Lecture 2: Disagreement and Meaning

Thursday 9 October at 13.15-15.00 PM in Lecture Hall HUM.D.210

Abstract: Philosophers often argue from premises about disagreement to conclusions about meaning. For example, from the fact that a fan of brutalist architecture who calls a building “beautiful” thereby disagrees with a traditionalist who calls it “not beautiful,” we may infer that the two parties mean the same thing by “beautiful.” For if they did not, their claims would only have the surface appearance of inconsistency. This form of argument has played a central role in meta-ethics, aesthetics, and discussions of contextualism in epistemology and philosophy of language, but recently its validity has been challenged (most influentially by David Plunkett and Timothy Sundell). It has been argued that the two parties can disagree even while meaning different things by “beautiful” and asserting compatible claims; the locus of disagreement is not what they have asserted, but the competing normative views about how “beautiful” ought to be used they have thereby expressed. This sort of disagreement has been called a “metalinguistic negotiation.” I give reasons for doubting that any interesting cases of disagreement are metalinguistic negotiations in this sense. But I think there is something right about the idea that, in making assertions, we express normative proposals for the use of words. I argue that the expressivist theory sketched in Lecture 1 captures what is plausible in the metalinguistic negotiation account while avoiding its implausible features (and vindicating the argument from disagreement).

More Burman Lectures

Lecture 1: Felicitous Underspecification
Wednesay 8 October at 13.15-15.00 PM in Lecture Hall HUM.D.220

Lecture 3: Panvariabilism
Friday 10 October at 13.15-15.00 PM in Lecture Hall HUM.D.220

All interested are welcome to these lectures.

Learn more about the Burman Lectures

Learn more about Professor John Macfarlane

The 2025 Burman lectures are supported by a generous contribution from the Wenner-Gren Foundations.