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Chapter
Evolutionary Debunking, Realism and Anthropocentric Metasemantics
DOI link for Evolutionary Debunking, Realism and Anthropocentric Metasemantics
Evolutionary Debunking, Realism and Anthropocentric Metasemantics book
Evolutionary Debunking, Realism and Anthropocentric Metasemantics
DOI link for Evolutionary Debunking, Realism and Anthropocentric Metasemantics
Evolutionary Debunking, Realism and Anthropocentric Metasemantics book
ABSTRACT
Evolutionary debunking arguments can be unnerving. This chapter offers a response to evolutionary debunking arguments on behalf of naturalist realists. But a firmly realist theory of content is consistent with a mind-dependent theory of reference and content-determination. Realists who think the Moral Twin-Earth (MTE) argument is no reason to abandon their semantic theories have no other reason not to avail themselves of this response exploiting the epistemic character of reference-determination. And if they do so avail themselves, they will have a metasemantic theory which makes it the case that moral terms refer only to those things to which they stand in an appropriate epistemic relation. David Hilbert's color theory provides a parallel. A first level of anthropocentrism is present insofar as different languages divide color space differently from one another. A second level of anthropocentrism comes into the picture because one has three kinds of color receptors, each sensitive to light within a certain range.