Semantic structure, syntax, and rule-following

The article discusses Andrei Nekhaev’s article “Katz’s Good Angel vs. Kripke’s Evil Demon: The Priviledge Argument, Algorithms, and Semantic Platonism”. The author proposes, as an alternative to semantic dispositionalism, the program of semantic Platonism, which supposedly successfully copes with the solution of the skeptical problem of rulefollowing. Although recent trends in analytic philosophy can in no way be defined as antimetaphysical, there is still no place for radical forms of idealism in the focus of researchers’ attention. This determines the significance of Professor Nekhaev's research, which actualizes the program of semantic Platonism as possessing high potential for solving the most pressing issues of modern analytic philosophy. Nekhaev rejects the epistemological nature of the rulefollowing problem, considering it exclusively as metaphysical. However, I argue that a metaphysical successful overcoming of the skeptical challenge must also be epistemologically relevant. Nekhaev does not specify the essence of meanings, the “grasping” of which ensures the possibility of following a rule. This raises a reasonable question, which is closely related to the remark that the problem of following a rule must also imply epistemological content: how is the reliability or truth of the agent’s knowledge of meaning ensured? Equally significant is the fact that Nekhaev does not specify the mechanism of decomposition of meaning. This last observation is related to the fact that Nekhaev somewhat simplifies Katz’s approach to language. The definition of meaning is literally impossible without or outside of knowledge of the object. Moreover, meaning as a semantic component of a linguistic expression is precisely formed on the basis of grammar, but is not reducible to grammar. The construction of an ontology bypassing the referential function of language, where the primacy of “grasped” meanings is established without taking into account extensional objects, is undesirable. Katz does not imply a break with objective reality, but seeks to construct a semantic project that could claim to be the difference between the perception and description of the same objects in different forms of givenness. The connection between reference and intensional object should not be rejected or ignored. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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