ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that, though contemporary 'contextualists' about linguistic sense have tended to be representationalist in how they think about language. The truth of semantic contextualism is, thus, a truth about perceived sense in general, not just linguistic sense. Travis' representationalism manifests itself not only in his tendency to think of sentences as instruments for expressing Fregean thoughts, and to think of sense first and foremost in terms of truth-conditions, but also in how he understands, and employs, the central Wittgensteinian notion of 'nonsense'. The philosopher's 'knowledge' refers to a philosophical construction, which may well be related in various ways to our ordinary and normal use of 'know' and cognates, but which has blinded us to important aspects and dimensions of that use, and has entangled us in difficulties that are extraneous to it. The contextualist's difficulties, just like those of the traditional philosopher, are difficulties not with the phenomenon, or set of phenomena.
