ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the intermediate stance that emerged from the critical appraisal of Dummettian full-bloodedness and modesty within a spectrum of views regarding what the aims of a theory of meaning that invokes the concepts of speakers’ knowledge and understanding should be. Although the intermediate stance does depart from the Dummettian position on the question of concept possession and manifestation more generally, it is, for all that, essentially Dummettian insofar as it attempts to meet the manifestation constraint originally introduced by Michael Dummett. The chapter suggests that the tension might be resolved by interpreting the cognitive status of theories of meaning as requiring that attributions of semantic knowledge are to be thought of as consisting in certain dispositions that speakers possess. Smith locates Dummett within the descriptive stance. On this view the theorist of meaning is concerned to provide an account of speakers’ knowledge of their language.
