Semantics Without Meanings? Sellars ian "Patterned Governed Behavior " and the Space of Meaningfulness

Abstract: While the traditional view was that in order to understand language and our linguistic practices we must explain meaning, the 'pragmatic turn' emerging within the writings of various philosohpers of the second half of the twentieth century caused a basic change of the perspective: the tendency is to concentrate directly on explaining the linguistic practices and leave the need for e)""Plaining meaning to emerge (or, as the case may be, not to emerge) subsequently. I argue that after this turn we should explai.n the peculiar kinds of'meaningfulness ' that characterizes our expressions in terms of what Sellars called "pattern governed behavior". Furthermore, I argue tllat the turn should not make us discard meanings, but only to reappraise them: to see them as the roles of expressions vis-a-vis the rules that govern our language games. Meaning as an imprint of the mind In his On Interpretation, Aristotle famously claimed that "spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words". "Just as all men, " he continues, "have not the sam