“School of Philosophy”
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| Paper IPM / Philosophy / 15775 |
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In this paper, we will discuss what is called the âManifestation Challengeâ to semantic realism, which was originally developed by Michael Dummett and has been further refined by Crispin Wright. According to this challenge, semantic realism has to meet the requirement that knowledge of meaning must be publically manifested in linguistic behaviour. In this regard, we will introduce and evaluate John McDowellâs response to this anti-realistic challenge, which was put forward to show that the challenge cannot undermine realism. According to McDowell, knowledge of undecidable sentencesâ truth-conditions can be properly manifested in our ordinary practice of asserting such sentences under certain circumstances, and any further requirement will be redundant. Wrightâs further objection to McDowellâs response will be also discussed and it will be argued that this objection fails to raise any serious problem for McDowellâs response and that it is an implausible objection in general.
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