It is quite possible that the attacks to which the traditional notion of meaning has been subjected, from various sides, and the appearance of a whole series of doctrines or tendencies which could be grouped under the convenient general designation of " semantic skepticism ”appear afterwards as having constituted one of the major events, not to say the major event, of the philosophy of the second half of the twentieth century. By "semantic skepticism", I mean an attitude which can range from the simple challenge of the possibility of submitting a notion like that of "meaning" to a theoretical treatment appropriate to the outright negation of the existence of semantic facts that it might be a question of explaining with the help of some theory.On the other hand, it is only too fair to note that the recent period has also been distinguished, on the other hand, by forms no less typical of exaggerated confidence in the possibilities that the theory of signification offers to philosophy today. - the most remarkable of which being represented by the idea, of which Michael Dummett will have been the most convinced and the most talented defender, that the theory of meaning could have reached since Frege the status of new paradigm of first philosophy . |