The Normativity of Semantic Correctness: A Davidsonian Perspective

Kripke (1982: 37) famously contrasts norms with mere
dispositions: although the manifest dispositions of a
person can tell us what she thought the right way of
following a rule was, they cannot point to what she should
have done. This implies that to be normative, the meaning
of a term must have consequences for how we should use
it. My concern is not the sceptical problem of how there
can be meaning-facts in the first place, but what sense can
be made of the claim that meanings have nromative
consequences for use. I start by examining three cases,
and asking which, if any, is analogical to speaking a
language.