(Received in Revised Form 3 April 2000) : Steven Yalowitz

STEVEN YALOWITZ
INDIVIDUALISM, NORMATIVITY AND THE

EPISTEMOLOGY OF UNDERSTANDING
(Received in revised form 3 April 2000)
We commonly think that it is by virtue of a shared language that

one person understands another’s words. Shared language seems
sufficient, other things being equal, for understanding. But is it
necessary? Can we think of linguistic understanding as occurring
between speakers who do not share a language? This question is
not mere idle, counterfactual speculation; it bears directly on the
initial common thought, that shared language is the typical explana-
tion of paradigm cases of understanding. Does that common thought
harbor or instead mask over a deep truth about language and under-
standing? According to a powerful and influential line of argument,
the common thought is forced on us because of the very nature of
linguistic meaning. A speaker’s meanings are constituted by norms
– conditions of correct and incorrect usage; and according to this
argument, such norms can be publicly accessible – understand-
able to others – only if they belong to a linguistic practice that is
shared. This paper formulates that argument, uncovers controversial
assumptions on which it depends, and responds to it by offering a
conception of linguistic meaning and understanding that does not
require shared language but that nonetheless accounts for the norm-
ative and public nature of meaning. In doing so, it defends a form of
individualism about meaning.
As understood here, individualism is the view that the meanings
of a speaker’s expressions are determined by her linguistic and non-
linguistic dispositions and behavior, specifiable without embedding
that speaker in some larger, shared linguistic practice. Individualism
is not committed to internalism – the view that the nature or exist-
ence of the external environment is not relevant to the individuation
of meanings. The important question for the purposes of this paper
Philosophical Studies 102: 43–92, 2001.

© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
44 STEVEN YALOWITZ
is whether individuals’ dispositions need to be individuated relative

to a surrounding linguistic practice in order for their utterances to
be attributed publicly accessible meaning, and that question is not
decided simply by the appeal to external factors in individuating
meanings.1 Individualism is also not committed to essentialism –
environmental causes that determine a speaker’s meanings are not
necessarily to be described in the language of current or future
science. Finally, individualism is not committed to reductionism.
While there are constraints on the resources that individualism can
appeal to in determining the meaning of a speaker’s utterances
– these cannot presuppose shared language – any extra-semantic
norms or intentional resources are allowable (see §§V and VIII).2
Individualism locates the notion of a speaker’s idiolect at the
basis of semantics. Opposing this, anti-individualism holds that
unless a speaker’s linguistic behavior is embedded within such a
shared practice, her expressions cannot justifiably be attributed any
meaning. The anti-individualist argument I will discuss is typic-
ally put in terms of the insufficiency of an individual’s dispositions
to ground ascriptions of meaning. Opposing this, I shall argue
that speakers’ inclinations to use expressions in the way they do,
considered within the wider context of concerns about first-person
authority and rationality, take on the status of necessarily reliable
(though defeasible) guides to the norms governing usage (§§IV–
V); and inclinations are a central feature of dispositional accounts
of meaning (§VI). That status of inclinations also underwrites an
entitlement interpreters have to their putative understanding of each
other despite the perennial possibility, according to individualism,
of misunderstanding; this helps provide for the public accessibility
of meanings (§§VII–IX).
I start by motivating and formulating the anti-individualist argu-
ment (§I). The question of the possibility of individualistically-
realized norms is momentarily bracketed, and attention is focused
on an apparent difficulty faced by individualism in accounting for
public accessibility. I explain how this difficulty is generated by two
crucial assumptions in the anti-individualist argument, concerning
the justification and nature of claims to understand others (§II).
The argument holds that since individualism is committed to the
possibility of mistaken attributions of meaning, an interpreter can
INDIVIDUALISM, NORMATIVITY AND THE EPISTEMOLOGY 45
never justifiably attribute meanings to a speaker; having ruled out

skeptical alternatives is thus assumed to be required for justified
attributions of meaning. The argument further holds that since the
interpreter can never rule out the possibility of mistaken attribution,
she can never claim to have understood the speaker; this second
claim depends upon the assumption that understanding is all or
nothing phenomenon and thus requires conclusive evidence. I argue
that this latter assumption is ungrounded (§§III–IV), and in conflict
with the intuitively plausible idea that understanding can be partial.
In the process of arguing this, I begin to develop the key features of
the dispositional account of meaning sketched above. That account
provides for the normativity of meaning, by explaining how facts
about how individuals are inclined to use expressions necessarily
reflect how they should, ceteris paribus, use expressions. It also
grounds an entitlement to putative understanding in interpretation,
which displaces the anti-individualist assumption about the sort
of justification needed for meaning-attributions. This entitlement,
together with the possibility of partial understanding, provides an
adequate account of the public nature of meaning. In illustration of
this, the notion of partial understanding is then used to account for
some of the central cases (‘arthritis’, ‘grue’) that have been thought
to be especially problematic for individualism (§IX).
Individualism is committed to, indeed highlights, the possibility of

misunderstanding in everyday interlocution. If individual speakers’
meanings are determined in ways which do not depend upon how
their interlocutors use language, then it will always be possible that
an interpreter can mistakenly attribute some incorrect meaning to
a speaker’s utterance. To a first approximation (see below), this
can be seen from the fact that the interpreter only has access to
a finite amount of the speaker’s behavior, and so even assuming
that the speaker has used some particular expression correctly on
those occasions, there is more than one meaning to which that
usage can be projected. Wittgenstein’s discussions of continuing
a series of numbers by inferring the underlying rule provides a
useful illustration: ‘2, 4, 6, 8 . . . ’ allows for an infinite number of
46 STEVEN YALOWITZ
continuations which are entailed by rules compatible with the initial

segments of the series [Wittgenstein 1958, §§143ff]. Assuming for
the moment that the rule – the expression’s conditions of correct-
ness – is available to the speaker, and that there are therefore
norms in place (on which see §§IV–VI), it can seem that individu-
alism is then stuck with a problematic third-person epistemology.
For if the speaker does go off in unexpected ways relative to the
interpreter’s projection from past instances (‘. . . 14, 18 . . . ’), then
even assuming a stable propensity on the speaker’s part, it can
seem that the interpreter must withdraw any claim to have initially
understood the speaker; the wrong rule has been inferred from the
behavior, and this impugns both present (‘. . . 14,. . . ’) as well as past
(‘. . . 8,. . . ’) claims of understanding. Since the possibility of this
sort of divergence from expectations generalizes across a speaker’s
lexicon according to individualism, it is difficult to see how we could
ever justifiably claim to understand each other. Individualism thus
seems to conflict with a plausible condition of adequacy on accounts
of meaning and understanding – a Publicity Principle, according
to which there must be circumstances under which understanding
others can reasonably be thought to occur.
Clearly, however, mere inductive skepticism is not sufficient to
defeat individualism, since the sort of underdetermination which
underwrites that skepticism is an epistemological problem that will
plague every theoretical enquiry if it plagues any. And the objection
so far is simply an appeal to underdetermination. Anti-individualism
holds that there is something special about the case of meaning and
understanding that makes individualism unacceptable. It is thus the
fact that underdetermination arises with respect to this particular
sort of entity – meanings – that tells against individualism. Now,
what makes meanings special compared with other entities is their
normative nature. In order to classify the usage of some expres-
sion on a given occasion as expressing some particular meaning,
we need to know under what conditions that expression’s usage
counts as correct usage. But if it is an open question, not just what
meaning is being expressed – as individualism holds by definition –
but whether some particular usage is a correct usage, then it would
appear that interpretation cannot get off the ground. The interpreter
needs to know, not just how an expression has and will be used
by the speaker, but how he should use it, in order even to be in a

position to project from past use to some particular meaning. That
projection has to start with normatively characterized usage – uses
characterized as correct – and this seems to require already knowing
what counts as correct usage; and if this is known, the expression’s
meaning must already, it seems, be in hand. The interpreter thus
already needs to know which meaning is being expressed before the
projection problem – and underdetermination – arises. It comes to
the same thing to say that the interpreter cannot justifiably project
from correct but uninterpreted applications of an expression to the
meaning and to say that the interpreter cannot justifiably attribute
a meaning to any particular instance. And this means that underde-
termination, while a useful prop, is not the real issue; rather, it is
the apparent impossibility of justifiably attributing a meaning to an
expression in the first place, if one is confined to uses whose mean-
ings are not transparently available. The interpreter might well have
attributed the correct meaning; but nothing currently or conceivably
available to her could ever lead her justifiably to believe this. For
nothing in the speaker’s behavior is incompatible, according to the
individualistic picture, with having attributed the wrong meaning,
in which case claims to have understood present and past usage of
the expression are mistaken. And since such mistaken claims can
never be ruled out as impossible in any given case, the interpreter
cannot justifiably attribute any meaning to the speaker. How then
can she claim to have ever understood him? The impossibility of
justifiably claiming to have understood him is tantamount to saying
that his meaning is inaccessible. Thus, given the normative nature
of meaning, individualistically-constituted meanings are subject to
a radical form of skepticism that goes beyond mere inductive skep-
ticism; they cannot therefore be thought of as publicly accessible in
the intuitive sense described by the Publicity Principle.3
This line of reasoning can be taken to suggest that the epistem-
ology of meaning cannot be modeled upon the epistemology of
the non-normatively characterized natural world. For if we do
understand each other, and this is inexplicable on the individu-
alist’s picture of inferring meaning from finite exposure to non-
normatively characterized usage, then we need another model to
explain how understanding can occur. Since it is not plausible to
48 STEVEN YALOWITZ
think, in responding to the difficulty, either that we can encounter an

infinite number of uses or that this would really help – we still would
not know which uses are correct uses – then, the anti-individualist
concludes, our understanding of each other must be understood to
depend upon exposure to normatively characterized uses. On this
view, we cannot claim to know the meaning of another’s utterances
by inference from or hypotheses concerning entities or events which
are non-normatively characterized; no inferential epistemology can
explain the possibility of understanding. But since this is not simply
a corollary to inductive skepticism, no generalized worry about
inferential epistemologies of the natural world is in place.4
The anti-individualist takes this point about the impossibility of
an inferential epistemology of meaning to bear directly upon the
status of individualism. For if, as individualism holds, it is always
an open question whether we have assigned the correct meaning
to an individual’s utterance, then there is always an inference (if
only tacit5 ) involved in that assignment. And it is this inferen-
tial underpinning of individualism which leads to the problem of
ever justifiably claiming to know whether we have assigned the
correct meaning, and therefore whether we ever understand another.
The anti-individualist then concludes, from the fact that inferential
epistemologies of meaning are ruled out, that the interpreter must
then take the speaker to share her language. She must characterize
the particular uses of expressions by the speaker in the normative
terms – the conditions of correctness – that the interpreter attaches
to those expressions. And this seems equivalent to saying that the
speaker must share the language of the interpreter in order to be
understandable. Publicly accessible meanings thus require shared
linguistic norms – precisely what individualism denies.
Now, an individualist could concede this conclusion and simply
reject public accessibility as a constraint on the concept of meaning,
perhaps insisting that debates in semantics – and thus the ques-
tion of idiolects or sociolects – are of a metaphysical and not an
epistemological nature. I want to take a more ambitious route. I
think the argument against individualism fails to show that individu-
alistic meanings cannot be publicly accessible. As I shall explain in
§II, the argument depends upon two tacit premises, that justifica-
tion of a certain kind is required for attributions of meaning, and
that understanding is an all or nothing phenomenon. And I shall

argue that individualism is not required to accept either premise. I
will then begin to develop a more positive characterization of indi-
vidualism; for even if the anti-individualist argument fails, it is still
an important question how individualism can account for publicly
accessible norms.
II
There are two crucial steps of the anti-individualist argument on

which I want to focus. They follow upon the observation that, for
individualism, it is possible that any particular ascription of meaning
to a speaker’s utterance might be mistaken. The first conclusion
from this is that the interpreter would then never be in a position
to attribute a meaning justifiably, since nothing available in her
experience rules out the possibility of its falsity. The subsequent
conclusion is that she therefore could not claim to understand him.
There are problems with each of these steps; I will return to certain
issues about the nature of justification relevant to the first conclu-
sion in §IV. For now, I shall grant it and concentrate on the second
conclusion. Suppose, then, that the possibility of error entails that
the interpreter can never justifiably claim to have attributed the
correct meaning. How does that impugn claims to have understood
particular uses of the expression?
It is useful, in considering this question, to work with the
underdetermination formulation of the anti-individualist objection.
Assume that we can pick out correct uses of an expression, and that
the question is what meaning is being expressed by those uses. The
speaker’s subsequent usage could always diverge from the expect-
ations that we form given some meaning-attribution. It is granted
that we can thus never justifiably claim to have attributed the correct
meaning. Does it follow that we have never understood past uses
of the expression? That depends on what notion of understanding
is being assumed. If it is assumed that in order to understand the
use of an expression we must fully understand it, then it is clear
how the anti-individualist conclusion follows. ‘Full understanding’
simply amounts to having grasped the correct meaning – the full
conditions of correctness for application of that expression. When
50 STEVEN YALOWITZ
one has grasped the full conditions of correctness, one understands

what correct usage consists in for any applications of the expression.
Suppose, then, that we need to understand fully another’s use in
order to understand it at all. Then since full understanding is, by
definition, incompatible with mistaken attribution of meaning; and
we are currently granting that, according to individualism, one can
never justifiably claim to have attributed the correct meaning; we
consequently can never justifiably claim to have understood another
at all within the framework of individualism. And this conclusion
is straightforwardly in conflict with the presumption that meaning
is publicly accessible – the Publicity Principle; it is equivalent
to a radical skepticism about the possibility of understanding and
communication.
Suppose, however, that we read the anti-individualist argu-
ment such that ‘partial’ understanding (however this is best to be
construed – see §IX) is allowed for by the anti-individualist. Then,
at the crucial juncture in the argument on which we are presently
focusing, neither the actuality nor the possibility of mistaken attri-
bution of meanings, and subsequent inability justifiably to claim to
have attributed the correct meaning, would entail the sort of lack
of understanding that could lead to skepticism. For in the case of
actual mistaken attribution, it is still possible to say that there was
partial understanding of particular uses of the expression; attributing
the wrong meaning is compatible with having understood part of
the meaning, and so the conclusion would not follow that the inter-
preter did not understand the speaker at all. And while the perennial
possibility of mistaken attribution, within the individualist frame-
work, might be taken to prevent the possibility of justified claims to
have attributed the correct meaning to, and thus fully understood,
someone in any particular case (given that we are currently granting
the first conclusion), this would not thereby entail that no claims to
understanding could be justified. This is because justified claims of
partial understanding are compatible with there being no justified
claims of full understanding. Once the possibility of partial under-
standing is recognized, the descent to full-blown skepticism about
communication on which the anti-individualist argument depends
no longer follows. So the anti-individualist argument’s success does
indeed depend upon the requirement of full understanding.
It is worth pointing out here that the notion of partial under-

standing has an initial, intuitive plausibility that is lacking in the
more rarefied requirement of full understanding. Our ability to both
communicate with and explain the behavior of children directly
invites the notion of partial understanding, and seems to stand
in tension with the requirement of full understanding. However,
that is not sufficient to rule out the requirement; and appeal to
partial understanding by itself cannot answer all questions about the
epistemological status of individualism. I will formulate and address
some of these later. We need a much clearer understanding of the
scope and nature of partial understanding, and how it figures in the
still needed individualist account of norms. But the fact that the
force of the anti-individualist argument depends upon an assumption
that grates against common sense is not trivial, and suggests that the
burden of proof is on the anti-individualist’s shoulders. So at this
point we need to see whether there are compelling arguments in
favor of the requirement of full understanding. I shall discuss three:
the first two are explicit defenses of the requirement by Michael
Dummett, and they are the only such explicit defenses of which I
am aware. I shall reject both of these considerations. The third, on
which I shall focus in §IV, can be developed out of the second of
Dummett’s defenses, and answering it will lead me to spell out in
more detail the foundations of the individualism I am defending.
III
Dummett, in the process of criticizing truth-conditional theories

of the meaning of sentences which transcend our ‘recognitional’
abilities, writes that
a knowledge of what it is for that sentence to be true is a knowledge which
cannot be fully manifested by a disposition to accept the sentence as established
whenever we are capable of recognizing it as true: it is a knowledge which cannot,
in fact, be fully manifested by actual linguistic practice; and therefore it is a
knowledge which could not have been acquired by acquiring a mastery of that
practice.6
I shall return to the notion of ‘recognition’ below. For current

purposes, the relevant claim here is that the only knowledge that
we can acquire of another’s language is knowledge which is ‘fully’
52 STEVEN YALOWITZ
manifest’ in the practitioners’ usage of that language; we cannot get

more out of our exposure to that language than what is exposed in
its actual usage. (Full manifestation is simply the correlate on the
speaker’s side to full understanding in the hearer.) Dummett’s claim
is that if what was being manifested in particular cases of instruction
and communicative behavior (for the reasons given in §I, nothing
new is introduced by compilation of particular cases) was not the
full content and meaning, then there could be no understanding at
all. But why is that? It can only be because an extrapolation from
what, in such a case, was manifest in the instruction (something
compatible with mistaken attribution) would be required. Now, such
an extrapolation might be objected to by Dummett on the grounds
that it would not be justified; but that would clearly simply beg the
question at issue.7 We want to know why, if such an extrapolation is
not justified, that impugns all claims to understanding; and I have
already argued (§II) that it does so only if partial understanding
has already been ruled out. Read this way, the argument thus does
nothing to ground the requirement of full understanding.
Dummett must, then, be understood to be making a different
point about extrapolation than simply that it would be unjusti-
fied. His point is that, for sentences with ‘recognition-transcendent’
meanings, the needed extrapolation is not so much unjustified
(which extrapolation?) as unavailable (how extrapolated?). How can
the learner/hearer come to conceptualize contents which outstrip
her recognitional abilities? This much stronger point focuses on
acquisition of one’s first language, where it is not questions of
justification but of concept-formation that are at issue. Now, the
objection clearly depends upon insisting on the centrality of recog-
nition in our concept-forming abilities. However, it seems clear that
such insistence will very quickly lead to skepticism about induction
generally: how can we conceptualize generalizations over unsurvey-
able domains with the constraint of recognition in place? But in thus
depending upon a constraint – recognition – that calls into question
our inductive practices, the requirement of full understanding and
subsequent objection to individualism rests upon too controversial
and general a claim (recall the point about underdetermination in
§I). The requirement should not rely upon considerations which
have such radical consequences; indeed, most anti-individualists
will not buy into Dummett’s verificationist insistence on recogni-

tion. Some other justification for the requirement is thus needed.
In Dummett’s thinking, the recognition constraint is tied to
the idea that there must be some one situation from which one
can conclusively establish another’s meaning. On the face of it,
this is surely no less questionbegging against individualism than
an ungrounded insistence on the requirement of full manifesta-
tion itself; why is conclusive evidence required in order for either
concept-formation or an extrapolation that leads to understanding to
be possible? Indeed, the requirements of full understanding and of
conclusive evidence amount to the same thing. However, in a recent
defense of the requirement of full manifestation, Dummett speaks
of this demand for ‘conclusive evidence for the attribution of any
. . . specific understanding of [some] expression’,8 and he seems to
suggest that the demand derives from the need to avoid a dilemma.
On one horn is someone who believes in the ‘infinite character of
meaning’; on the other, the ‘Wittgensteinian’ view that applying
an expression to new cases involves an ineliminable element of
‘decision’. On the first horn, the view is that ‘it is not possible
that the actual uses [a speaker] has made up to any given time
should reveal how he would classify every conceivable borderline
case’. Seeing such borderline cases as anticipated in an expression’s
meaning would seem to prevent any ‘conclusive’ evidence for attri-
bution of that meaning. On the second horn, the ‘Wittgensteinian’
holds that ‘there is nothing in whatever constituted [the speaker’s]
attaching a certain meaning to [some] word that logically entails
that, if he fails to apply it to some one or another object, he will
be attaching a different meaning to it’. This lack of constraint – of
determinate conditions of correctness – likens usage to the result of
a stipulative decision. On this view, there could be no ‘conclusive’
evidence for attribution of some meaning if that entails having in
hand a criterion for judging future applications of that expression
as correct. Neither horn, then, would grant Dummett’s demand
for ‘conclusive’ evidence. And the suggestion is that rejecting that
demand forces one onto one or the other of the two horns.
Dummett then responds to the first horn by arguing that ‘to
demand that the meaning someone attaches to a word should
determine in advance the application he will make of it in every
54 STEVEN YALOWITZ
future case, or would make of it in every hypothetical case, however

bizarre, is to demand too much: meanings, however precise, are
almost always to some degree indeterminate’. And he seems to
respond to the second horn by noting that our ordinary practices of
meaning-attribution do allow for criticism and revision, and that this
could only be intelligible on the assumption that how a person goes
on to apply an expression is not unconstrained in the way suggested
by the ‘decision’ imagery. Both horns must, then, be rejected,
forcing a concession to the requirement of full understanding.
Now, it is hard to disagree with Dummett’s rejection of the
second horn; the ‘decision’ imagery wreaks havoc on our ordinary
conceptions of meaning and objectivity. But it is equally hard to
see how Dummett’s (surely correct) view of ‘bizarre’ cases, in
response to the first horn, bears upon the point about the ‘infinite
character of meaning’. Hard cases may not be anticipated in what
a speaker understands by an expression, so in these cases some
element of ‘decision’ is involved. But this does not rule out the
possibility that there are cases which are not ‘hard’ for the speaker,
and thus in which nothing like a decision is involved, though
nothing in his previous behavior can provide ‘conclusive evidence’
to an interpreter as to how he will respond to them. Indeed, such
cases might just seem ‘hard’ from the interpreter’s limited eviden-
tial perspective; they need not be assimilated to ‘bizarre’ cases, as
Dummett suggests. The point is that the interpreter’s not needing to
derive rules from the speaker’s finite behavior that cover ‘bizarre’
cases does not thereby rule out the possibility of the need for an
extrapolation which underwrites the attribution of some meaning.
And we have not been given a reason for deeming such extrapola-
tions as illicit or problematic by anything in Dummett’s reasoning
here. This leaves ungrounded Dummett’s demand for conclusive
evidence and emphasis upon our ‘recognitional abilities’ in under-
writing attributions of meaning, and thus also the requirement of full
manifestation and understanding for making sense of the Publicity
Principle.
IV
Though I have rejected both of Dummett’s defenses of the require-

ment of full understanding, I think the second points in the direction
of the most powerful motivation for the requirement; it also intro-
duces important questions about how the normativity of meaning
is to be accommodated within the individualist framework which
have been bracketed to this point. Dummett’s concern to avoid
both overly strong and weak imputations of semantic knowledge
to speakers raises the question of the asymmetry between first
and third-person semantic knowledge which lies at the heart of
individualism. In particular, individualism’s picture of third-person
access as essentially (though tacitly) inferential raises the ques-
tion of the correlative picture of first-person access. Speakers are
taken to know their meanings non-inferentially and, presumably,
unproblematically. And interpreters must, in similar fashion, depend
upon knowledge of their own concepts and beliefs in inferring the
speaker’s meanings. Drawing upon remarks in the later Wittgen-
stein, the anti-individualist might then question this assumption; she
might ask whether one’s own understanding of a rule can really be
said to exceed what one can get across in explanation or commu-
nication generally [Wittgenstein 1958, §§208–211].9 Is there really
anything available in the first-person perspective, in one’s grasp of
one’s own meanings and concepts, which is genuinely privileged
over one’s grasp of another’s? If there is nothing suitably avail-
able to the speaker with respect to her own meanings, then the
assumption that we have heretofore bracketed, about norms being
in place for the speaker which are only indirectly available to the
interpreter (§I), must be given up; so what is at stake at this point is
how individualism can account for the normative nature of meaning.
Now, this objection raises complex questions about the authority
of self-ascription; I shall touch on some of these in what follows,
but I cannot do justice to them here [for extended discussion, see
Yalowitz 2000].10
To begin with, the objection as it stands simply begs the question
against the idea of partial understanding. For to move from ‘one’s
own grasp of a concept cannot exceed what one can get across in
communication or explanation’ to ‘therefore partial manifestation
or understanding is impossible’ requires the intermediate step ‘one
56 STEVEN YALOWITZ
can only get across in communication or explanation what can be

conclusively established (or ‘recognized’) as what one was trying to
get across’; and that step is precisely what is at issue. In order to see
what is at stake in this required intermediate step, it will be useful
to take the core of the objection slightly further.
In assuming that first-person access is unproblematic, and that
our meanings are not ‘fully’ manifest in our behavior – so that
another must make a potentially mistaken inference to what rule
one is following – the individualist takes it for granted that we
know what rule we are following; or, equivalently but more usefully,
that we know what constitutes accordance or compliance with that
rule.11 Having such knowledge is a necessary condition for positing
an asymmetry between self and other-ascription of meaning. After
all, according to the individualist, we do not have ‘conclusive’ evid-
ence for how the speaker will apply an expression if he applies
it correctly. But if he does not have ‘conclusive’ evidence (i.e.
knowledge) as to how he should apply some expression if he is to
apply it correctly, then no asymmetry exists. Further, it can then be
wondered what it is that he is trying to get across, and that we are
attributing, in communication. Without a grasp of what correctness
consists in for one’s own expressions, there is simply no content to
the idea that one is attributing a determinate rule to either oneself or
the speaker. According to the individualist picture, particular applic-
ations of expressions point toward the meaning being manifested,
but require an inference by the interpreter. The best that the speaker
can do, in attempting to get across his meaning, is use the expression
in particular cases and then say ‘. . . and so on’; the interpreter must
guess as to the content expressed by this ‘. . . and so on’ in order to
grasp the meaning being manifested. And the objection now is that
there is no substantive content being expressed by ‘. . . and so on’;
and so nothing that the speaker has directly available to him that
is only problematically available to his interlocutor [Wittgenstein
1958, §208]. The point is completely general, applying equally to
our meanings and our concepts/contents.
In evaluating this objection, the question immediately arises
as to the status of first-person authority, in particular with
respect to meaning, in the debate between individualists and anti-
individualists. Anti-individualists might produce some argument
purporting to show that first-person authority somehow depends

upon sharing a language with others, and so it can be an open
question whether individualism can account for such authority. But
a stand has to be taken on whether authority is a fact, the condi-
tions of which are then to be debated; or, rather, whether one needs
to establish the fact of authority. Now, I do think that there are
considerations that can be given for motivating the presumption that
speakers do have such authority, having to do with conditions for
rational agency.12 But that is a large topic in its own right. It also
would considerably weaken the anti-individualist argument to make
it depend upon the controversial assumption that authority is not the
case. And many anti-individualists in fact are unwilling to make this
assumption.13 Given these considerations, I propose assuming that
authority is the case; we should then see the Wittgensteinian objec-
tion stated above as a challenge to produce an individualist account
of such authority. That is what I shall now do; one important payoff
of this is that it will turn out that such an account in fact provides
simultaneously for the normative element of meaning within the
individualist framework.
The key to responding to the ‘Wittgensteinian’ objection comes

from taking seriously the moral of Wittgenstein’s own rejection, in
his later writings, of the possibility of a substantive epistemology for
the self-ascription of meaning. That rejection rests on the impossib-
ility of there being a test the application of which could confirm
that one is acting in accordance with the dictates of one’s meaning.
For one would need a test for determining that one had applied the
original test correctly. And a vicious regress results from the fact
that anything that might be proposed as a standard against which
to evaluate our actual practice in the use of an expression – be it
some internalized rule or correction by others – will itself need inter-
preting and thus require in turn some further standard against which
to evaluate the interpretation. The regress closes off this avenue of
response to the question of how we can successfully follow rules
and thus self-ascribe meanings.
58 STEVEN YALOWITZ
What is needed is a model for grasping a rule which is not

an interpretation [Wittgenstein 1958, §201]. Now, to know one’s
meaning, as we have seen, is to know what counts as compliance
with its conditions of correctness. To authoritatively know one’s
meanings is, minimally, for it typically to be the case that one’s
judgments concerning successful compliance be true. For if those
judgments were not typically true, then one would not typically
successfully grasp the conditions of correctness for an expression;
and how could one be said to know its meaning if one typically
misjudged how it was correctly to be applied? The question then
arises as to what explains the veracity of these judgments; if their
truth does not depend upon there being some successfully applied
test, then on what does it depend? There seems to be no alternative,
in answering this question, other than seeing a speaker’s judgments
concerning what counts as successful compliance with his rule’s
dictates as having a ‘positive-presumptive’ status [Wright 1989b,
251]. On this view, authority issues in a general, but defeasible,
presumption that any such judgment is correct, unless there are
specific grounds for calling it into question. The truth of such judg-
ments does not need to be established by some test; rather, it is
challenges to their truth that need establishing. Given the rejec-
tion of substantive epistemologies of self-ascription, this positive-
presumptive status of judgments of compliance appears to be the
only way of articulating and explaining first-person authority over
meanings. The only alternative to this view of judgments of compli-
ance would be a form of Platonism which held that our judgments
could go completely off the rails dictated by some concept while
we were still correctly thought of as subject to it. On this view, our
judgments would provide no clue as to which rule we are attempting
to follow; and that would directly call into question any presumption
of authority, since, as we have seen, knowledge of what rule one is
following is constituted by knowledge of what counts as compli-
ance with that rule. So since first-person authority translates into
the positive-presumptive status of self-ascriptions of concepts and
meanings, and thus for what counts as complying with such states,
‘the way in which we are inclined to go on’ must, generally, be ‘the
way we ought to go on’ (for refinements of this point, see §VI).14
Such a presumption accounts for the needed distinction between

correct and incorrect usage without providing a test for picking
out correct uses, in the sense that what it is to be a correct use is
explained.15 Correct use just is use under normal conditions, and
with the presumption in place, there is no burden to determine
whether, in particular cases, conditions are normal in order justi-
fiably to claim to have correctly applied an expression. On this
view, how we do apply an expression is, ceteris paribus, how we
ought to apply it (for more on these ceteris paribus conditions see
directly below). Correct uses are those that occur when no condi-
tions obtain which interfere with the successful grasping of one’s
meaning – when cetera are paria. (For the bearing of this point on
dispositional accounts of meaning, see §VI.) Within the framework
of first-person authority over meanings, it is difficult to see how else
criteria of correctness – the distinction between seeming to be right
and being right – can be accounted for once it is conceded that no
test is forthcoming.
I have moved between talking about actual practices in the use of
an expression and judgments of compliance; this can be explained
by the natural thought that such judgments explain the practices,
which after all are not sui generis. But the notion of ‘judgment’ runs
the risk of overintellectualizing the phenomenon of rule-following,
and thus suggesting a regress-inviting model. What really lead to
actual usage are our semantic inclinations with respect to use of
the expression: its seeming right to use an expression under certain
conditions is what leads us to do so. Since it is difficult to see how
anything of substance, with respect to first-person authority, can
hang on whether inclinations are acted upon, the inclinations them-
selves take on the most basic positive-presumptive status needed in
order to account for authority. Our semantic inclinations to apply
expressions as we do thus have the default status of correctness.
I propose the following correctness biconditional as a way of
articulating this normative status of semantic inclinations.16
An expression ‘E’ is correctly applied to condition c by speaker S on a particular
occasion if and only if S is inclined intentionally to apply ‘E’ to c on that occasion,
and is sincere in doing so, and would reflectively endorse that inclination, and has
suffered no recent or persisting physical or psychological trauma . . . and so on.17
60 STEVEN YALOWITZ
In another paper I have discussed and defended this proposal in

detail [Yalowitz 2000]; in particular, its incomplete specification of
conditions, its non-reductive nature, the function of the reflective
endorsement condition, and its bearing on the distinction between
meaning and theory-change. Here I only have space for a brief illus-
tration. Consider a speaker who utters ‘There’s a horse’ on a dark,
rainy night, with only a cow in view. Assume that there is no reason
for questioning his sincerity, the intentional nature of the utterance,
or his physical or mental health. Assume as well that the speaker
has applied ‘horse’ to horses on other occasions. Is the interlocutor
forced to conclude that the speaker thereby means cow or horse
(or some such disjunctive meaning) by ‘horse’, given the positive
presumption? The reflective endorsement condition kicks in here,
in the following way. If the speaker were to take a closer look at
the cow, and were to continue to have inclinations to apply ‘horse’,
then the reflective endorsement condition should be presumed satis-
fied, the utterance should be presumed correct, and cow or horse
ought to stand as the presumed meaning of ‘horse’ (so long as there
continues to be no independent reasons for questioning the condi-
tions of sincerity etc.). Should, however, the speaker withdraw the
previous utterance (‘It’s not a horse!’), then the presumption that
the previous inclination is correct is to be dropped. Of course, the
reflective endorsement condition is openended, so future uses can
always impact on verdicts concerning previous uses. But because
the default status of inclinations is positive, that openendedness does
not result in a situation where inclinations cannot be taken seriously
as guides to meaning.18
Before turning to the bearing of this picture of semantic inclin-
ations on authoritative semantic self-knowledge, I want to explain
how it bears upon the anti-individualist objection that I have formu-
lated in this section. That objection depended upon the claim that
our grasp of our own meanings – their conditions of correctness
– is no better off than our grasp of another’s, undermining the
epistemic asymmetry at the bottom of the individualist’s picture.
The individualist’s claim that we cannot have ‘conclusive’ evid-
ence of another’s meaning, according to this objection, applies
equally to self-knowledge; we cannot have ‘conclusive’ evidence
of our own meanings, due to the impossibility of a substantive
inner epistemology of the norms of correctness. But the line of

thought I have sketched in response to this objection provides a
way of justifying the individualist’s claim of epistemic asymmetry.
So long as we accept the presumptive authority attaching to self-
ascriptions, individuals must be granted grasp of the patterns of
usage which constitute correct usage for their utterance; and that
grasp is constituted by their access to their inclinations to go on as
they do (recall that knowing what rule one is following amounts
to knowing what constitutes compliance on particular occasions).
And it is those inclinations which may not be ‘fully’ manifested
by finite usage. Only I can feel the pull of my inclinations.19 That
grounds the epistemic asymmetry underlying the individualist’s
position, providing the crucial element that cannot ‘conclusively’
be gotten across in explanation and communication, but to which
the individual himself has unproblematic access.20
The question that needs to be addressed at this point is whether
what is available to the individual is actually sufficient to underwrite
the claim that he has authoritative grasp over his meaning. Perhaps
positive-presumptive semantic inclinations are necessary for such
authority; but unless they are also sufficient, something crucial will
have been left out of the picture that is required in order to justify
my claim that individualism can fully account for access to norms
and thus the epistemic asymmetry at issue in this section. And it will
remain an open question whether what is left over can be accounted
for in individualistic terms. I now turn to these issues.
VI
The first point to note is that semantic inclinations are not sui
generis, but derive from one’s overall dispositional structure.
Semantic dispositions issue in semantic inclinations. This is not a
point of debate between dispositionalists and their critics. The issue
is whether these resources are sufficient for grounding normativity –
whether semantic dispositions can account for conditions of correct-
ness – and whether semantic inclinations can provide access to these
conditions of correctness. Now, if a positive presumption attaches
to semantic inclinations, it also attaches to the semantic disposi-
tions that yield those inclinations. What this means is that how a
62 STEVEN YALOWITZ
speaker is disposed to use an expression is, ceteris paribus, how

he should use that expression. Thus, the conditions under which a
speaker is disposed to apply an expression are, ceteris paribus, the
correctness conditions for that expression; these semantic disposi-
tions are meaning-constituting dispositions. And error is the result
when cetera are not paria. The widespread assumption that disposi-
tional conceptions of meaning are unable to account for normativity
– for conditions of correctness and the possibility of error – has
depended upon bracketing the presumption of first-person authority
(see Yalowitz 2000). Without that presumption, there is no way to
move from actual usage to the conditions of correctness constituting
an expression’s meaning, due to extensive underdetermination: an
indefinite number of different meanings, with compensating degrees
of mistaken and correct usage, are consistent with one’s semantic
dispositions and uses, making arbitrary the selection of any partic-
ular semantic dispositions as meaning-constituting ones. In the case
of any given use, there would be as much reason to take the semantic
disposition that yields it to be meaning-constituting as not. But the
presumption of authority provides a substantial constraint that helps
to overcome this underdetermination, by making the default status
of the semantic-dispositions productive of use meaning-constituting
dispositions.
Two related questions remain unanswered by the picture so
far provided, concerning my response to the underdetermination
problem and the nature of individuals’ access to their meanings.
In saying that I have first-person authority over my meanings, it is
implied not only that I know what my inclinations are and that they
reflect correct usage. It is also implied that I know what meaning
my inclinations correctly reflect. But how can I read the specific
norm that I am supposedly acting in accordance with off of my
inclinations, when the inclinations that have been engaged so far
are finite?21 Kripke’s rule-following skeptic can be understood to be
making a version of this point when he notes that there is always
some arithmetic example that I have never before encountered, and
which can be used to query my own knowledge of what I mean by
‘plus’. But the point does not seem to depend upon bracketing first-
person authority, as Kripke’s own formulation does; the question is
whether inclinations can be sufficient fully to account for authority.
The point is that my finitely engaged inclinations underdetermine

what I mean, and the gesture ‘and so on . . . ’ (§IV) seems unable to
fill the gap. And what else can I do in order to state what I mean, as
opposed to stating that something is merely a correct application of
an expression (whatever exactly it means)?
In responding to this, it first should be noted that it is not obvious
that this is really an objection to individualism, since an analogous
point can arguably be made against any view which claims to
explain access to norms, wherever those norms are claimed to be
located. For simple predicates, all that one can do to distinguish the
norm conformed to from others which are compatible with engaged
inclinations (actual use of the expressions) so far, other than add
‘. . . and so on’, is to use the term: I mean plus and not quus. I cannot
verbalize the relevant norm in any other way that can be guaranteed
to get it across to another; and I cannot verbalize it to myself except
by either engaging instances of it in my inclinations or, trivially, by
using the term. That is the moral of Wittgenstein’s regress argument
against the picture of grasping meaning as a form of following some
rule by grasping a mental object or propositional formulation (§V –
see Yalowitz 2000).
Though the difficulty at issue is not unique to individualist or
dispositionalist approaches to meaning, I nonetheless want to offer
a response that I think silences Kripke’s skeptic and also shows
how the picture of semantic inclinations so far developed is not
only necessary but also sufficient for authoritative knowledge of
meaning. Kripke’s skeptic offers proposals for what one’s meaning
actually is in a given case that lead to shock and indignation. Reac-
tions such as these are impotent within Kripke’s framework, since
he has bracketed first-person authority. But with a presumption of
authority in place, those reactions form the basis for a principled
rejection of those proposals. For the proposals could then be true
only if speakers had the semantic inclinations that, ceteris paribus,
constitute successful grasp of the conditions of correctness under-
lying those proposals. Once it becomes clear what the proposals are
– by being told what correct usage comes to in a particular case
that differentiates the competing candidates – and it also becomes
clear that one does not have the appropriate semantic inclinations,
then the presumption in favor of one’s actual inclinations rules out
64 STEVEN YALOWITZ
the proposals. One’s disinclinations (also positive-presumptive) to

apply expressions as one would have to according to the skeptical
proposals show that the proposals do not capture one’s meaning.
What this means is that one’s semantic inclinations are sufficient
for individuating the meanings of one’s expression – for distin-
guishing the meaning of any expression from that of all semantically
inequivalent expressions. The fact that this individuation condition
is met, together with the fact that one knows how correctly to apply
one’s expressions (i.e. the positive presumption), is sufficient for
holding that one has authoritative access to one’s meanings through
one’s semantic inclinations. The point here can be put as follows:
there is nothing more that one can ask of an individual, in deciding
whether he successfully grasps the meaning of an expression, than
that he have the abilities both to use it correctly and authoritatively,
and to distinguish it from all semantically inequivalent expressions,
thus silencing any alternative semantic hypotheses.22
Let us take stock of the discussion to this point. I have just
argued that positive-presumptive semantic inclinations are not
merely necessary but also sufficient for accounting for authorit-
ative semantic self-knowledge. And I noted the connection between
dispositional conceptions of meaning and this point about semantic
inclinations. How one ought to apply an expression is, ceteris
paribus, how one is disposed to apply an expression. The presump-
tion of authority has allowed me to exploit the basic idea of the
dispositional conception – that under normal conditions disposi-
tions manifest themselves – in order to account for the normative
nature of meaning and explain how these norms – the conditions of
correctness – are authoritatively known to speakers. This constitutes
my response to the Wittgensteinian concern, initially formulated in
§IV, that individualist views uncritically assume an epistemic asym-
metry between first and third-person grasp of meanings without
explaining how one’s meanings can be unproblematically accessible
to oneself.23
VII
Thus far I have argued that the anti-individualist argument depends

upon assuming the requirement of full understanding; I have
responded to central considerations that have been thought to

motivate the requirement; and in the process of responding to the
objection that individualism depends upon a questionable asym-
metry between first and third-person access to meanings, I have
explained how individualism can account for both the normativity
and first-person accessibility of meaning. It remains to be seen how
individualism can account for third-person accessibility – for the
public nature of meaning. And for this we need first to go back
to the question of justification for claims of understanding and the
role that it plays in the anti-individualist argument. Recall that the
anti-individualist argument moves from the observation that, for
individualism, it is possible that any particular ascription of meaning
to a speaker’s utterance might be mistaken, to the conclusion that the
interpreter would then never be in a position justifiably to attribute
a meaning, since nothing available in her experience rules out the
possibility of false attribution (the argument then moves from this
point to the claim about lack of understanding discussed in §§III–
VI, which depends upon the requirement of full understanding).
Some anti-individualists have claimed that in order to block this
move, we must contrapose and thus hold that a person’s experi-
ence can in some sense rule out the possibility of falsity – that we
can ‘directly perceive’ another’s meaning; and it is further claimed
that it is only be appeal to shared communal language that this
response is intelligible.24 Elsewhere I have argued that this simple
contraposition fails to meet the objection, and that even if it did,
this would not establish the need for shared language, since the
contraposition is consistent with individualism.25 But in any case,
as I shall now argue, individualism has another way of blocking this
move in the anti-individualist argument. For present purposes we
can put aside the possibility of partial understanding and think just in
terms of full understanding, which involves attribution of the correct
meaning, although partial understanding will enter into the picture at
a certain point. In §§VIII–IX I will then explain how partial under-
standing, in combination with the results of the following discussion
of justification, provides an adequate account of the public nature of
meaning.
The possibility of mistaken attribution will not undermine inter-
preters’ capacities for making justified attributions to others if there
66 STEVEN YALOWITZ
is a general entitlement to take one’s putative understanding of

others – what one is inclined to understand them as saying – to
have positive-presumptive status. This would entitle an interpreter
to project a speaker’s meanings along her own lines – to, in effect,
assume her own understanding – unless she had information to the
contrary concerning the speaker’s history of interaction with the
world.26 I shall call this the ‘Understanding Principle’; it describes
an entitlement to assume one’s putative understanding of another
as the default condition in interlocution.27 The Understanding Prin-
ciple can be formulated as follows:
An interpreter is entitled to presume her putative understanding of a speaker’s
utterance to capture the speaker’s understanding of that utterance, unless she has
specific reasons not to attribute this putative understanding.
When we hesitate in attributing our putative understanding of some

speaker to him, and override the positive presumption attaching
to it, it is because we are aware of some feature of our inter-
locutor – his cognitive or perceptual apparatus, education, culture,
political affiliation, history of usage, pattern of reflective endorse-
ment etc. – that might provide for difference of understanding. But
absent such specific beliefs on our part, the positive presumption
is the default status; we are entitled to our putative understanding
unless we have special reason to call it into question. Generally,
this putative understanding will consist in our own idiolectal under-
standing of an expression in our own language, but it need not. A
corrected understanding of another may stand as the new default
putative understanding; and this will generally not be the inter-
preter’s own idiolectal understanding. The overriding reasons can
include evidence about specific interlocutors as well as knowledge
of how we have been evaluated by others with respect to certain
of our linguistic dispositions. The entitlement extends to a more
general level, in the case of explicit interpretation (for instance,
in cases of genuine radical interpretation); one’s general sense of
similarity – one’s set of projective inclinations – takes on the default
status (see discussion of ‘grue’ in §IX).
In this section I will offer and defend arguments for the Under-
standing Principle that are compatible with individualism. However,
I want first to emphasize one prima facie reason why a positive
presumption concerning one’s putative understanding of others
threatens neither individualism nor the semantic first-person/third-

person asymmetry to which it is committed. Individualism, recall,
is a thesis concerning the constitution of meaning – it holds that
a speaker’s meanings are determined by his linguistic and non-
linguistic dispositions, specifiable independently of any surrounding
linguistic practices and dispositions of his interlocutors. Its epistem-
ological commitment to the possibility of misunderstanding and
mistaken attribution is compatible with the positive presumption
described in the Understanding Principle, in similar fashion as an
analogous presumption regarding beliefs about the external world
or belief gained via testimony would be compatible with false belief
– the entitlement is defeasible. The entitlement does not entail that
interlocutors either must or do share a language in the strong sense
required by anti-individualism – actual identity of language. The
entitlement is only concerned with the initial epistemic attitude in
interlocution, not with the ultimate metaphysical constitution of
meaning. And with respect to the semantic asymmetry between
first and third-person ascription, the sorts of conditions which over-
ride the default status of putative understanding are quite different
in the first and third-person cases, and the possibility of defeat is
consequently much greater in the latter cases (compare the examples
of third-person defeating conditions listed above to the condi-
tions in the correctness conditional (§V)).28 On its face, then, the
Understanding Principle is neutral between individualism and anti-
individualism; the central question is whether arguments that ground
the principle can avoid adverting to shared communal language. I
will keep this question in view throughout my discussion.
I will offer two different arguments for the Understanding Prin-
ciple that depend upon the following three premises: the require-
ment of first-person authority, the requirement that there are circum-
stances under which understanding others can reasonably be thought
to occur (the Publicity Principle (§I)), and the fact that interpreters
typically do attribute their putative understanding of a speaker’s
utterance to the speaker. Two points need to be made about these
premises before turning to the arguments for the Understanding
Principle. First, the fact that interpreters typically attribute their
putative understanding to speakers is neutral between individualism
and anti-individualism. What needs to be shown is that there some
68 STEVEN YALOWITZ
explanation of this data that does not advert to shared language.

Second, the requirement that there are circumstances under which
understanding can reasonably be thought to occur is also neutral
between individualism and anti-individualism; again, what needs to
be shown is how that requirement can be made sense of without
invoking shared language in the anti-individualist’s sense. Anti-
individualists often try to lay sole claim to these two premises,
but the premises are really best thought of as raw data or condi-
tions of adequacy that any acceptable account of meaning must
respect. It is an undeniable fact that interpreters typically attribute
their putative understanding of a speaker’s utterance to the speaker,
so no argument is needed for this premise. And although I am
not aware of any compelling argument for the requirement that
there are circumstances under which understanding can reasonably
be thought to occur, its plausibility is overwhelming; as I have
noted, anti-individualists certainly help themselves to it, typically
without argument.29 What remains to be seen is how these premises
can support arguments for the Understanding Principle without
requiring shared communal language.
The first argument for the Understanding Principle focuses on
first-person authority. First, as we have seen, the presumption of
authority entitles individuals to presume that their applications of
concepts are positive-presumptive. Second, the data is that inter-
preters do attribute their putative understanding to speakers. In doing
so, they take themselves (albeit tacitly) to be correctly applying the
concept understanding others. Inclinations regarding the application
of that concept appeal to the interpreter’s putative understanding of
an expression on a given occasion. Conjoining these two premises,
interpreters are therefore entitled to the presumption that their
putative understanding in interlocution counts as an instance of
understanding the speaker – that is, that attributions of putative
understanding to speakers on particular occasions are correct applic-
ations of the concept understanding others. This directly yields the
Understanding Principle: an interpreter is entitled to attribute her
putative understanding to a speaker as what the speaker understands
by the utterance, because the interpreter authoritatively grasps the
content of her own concept understanding others, which dictates
that putative understandings are, ceteris paribus, instances of that

concept.
A natural response to this argument is to object that the issue
is not whether there is a presumption that the interpreter’s concept
of understanding others is correctly applied. Rather, the issue is
whether there is any reason to presume that the interpreter is actu-
ally understanding the speaker. Why should it be thought that the
former has anything to do with the latter? The reply to this objec-
tion highlights the Publicity Principle. The purported distinction
between the interpreter’s concept of understanding others and ‘the
facts’ of actual understanding on which the objection rests can
have no content for the interpreter. All she ever has is her putative
understanding on given occasions and her concept of understanding
others. There can be no question for the interpreter of whether
correct applications of her concept understanding others are ‘really’
correct applications of the concept understanding others. There is
just her conception to fill out the content of the concept. If there were
really two concepts here – a subjective and an objective concept of
understanding (or a chasm between individuals’ subjective concep-
tions and the objective concept) – they could possibly come apart to
the point where ‘genuine’ objective understanding of others never
occurred even though interpreters’ subjective conception that it
had was completely satisfied. This would directly contradict the
Publicity Principle. For if there are circumstances under which
understanding can reasonably be thought to occur, as that principle
holds, there ought to be considerations that one could appeal to
in justifying the claim that it occurs in given cases – and these
could come only from one’s ‘subjective’ conception that one had
understood another. An ‘objective’ concept of understanding others
that bore no internal relation to one’s ‘subjective’ conception of
understanding others would be completely idle. We would have
no reason to think it was ever instantiated. The point is that one
is entitled to whatever is necessary in order to make sense of the
requirement that there are circumstances in which understanding
can reasonably be thought to occur. That requirement presupposes
that one’s ‘subjective’ concept of understanding others cannot come
apart from the ‘objective’ facts of understanding others in the way
assumed in the present objection.
70 STEVEN YALOWITZ
There is a different objection to the Understanding Principle

that is worth considering at this point, since it helps to motivate a
second argument for the Understanding Principle, one that focuses
on the Publicity Principle by itself and does not depend upon the
previous points about first-person authority (see also a related objec-
tion further below). One consequence of the above argument for
the Understanding Principle is that unless interpreters were entitled
to rely on their putative understanding, no sense could be made of
the Publicity Principle. Now, one might instead counsel an agnosti-
cism about putative understanding, especially given the possibility
of mistaken attribution highlighted by individualism. Rather than
rely on putative understanding, perhaps one should engage in a form
of radical interpretation, and only attribute meaning to others’ utter-
ances after concluding a theoretical investigation into their behavior.
Only after such an investigation had been concluded could one reas-
onably think that one actually understood those utterances. Since
one would thus need no entitlement to putative understanding, one
could not justify such an entitlement, since it would not be necessary
in order to make sense of the requirement that there are circum-
stances under which understanding can reasonably be thought to
occur. Furthermore, with putative understandings now bracketed,
their internal relation to the concept understanding others would
be severed – interpreters would no longer in fact attribute their
putative understanding to speakers – thus undercutting the appeal to
first-person authority in the above argument for the Understanding
Principle.
Now, there is a rather obvious reply to this attempt to undercut the
Understanding Principle. The reason offered for remaining agnostic
about putative understanding and engaging in radical interpreta-
tion is that only then would one really have reasonable grounds
for thinking that understanding had occurred, given the possib-
ility of error emphasized by individualism. But since no amount
of theoretical investigation can definitively rule out the possibility
of mistaken attribution, there is no advantage to this procedure
over that of beginning with putative understandings; indeed, it faces
the very same objection that it makes against the latter. If one
ought to remain agnostic about putative understanding because the
possibility of error has not been ruled out, and only that can under-
write a reasonable claim that understanding has occurred, then one

ought to remain agnostic about the results of any particular stage
of a theoretical investigation. And we are then in conflict with the
Publicity Principle. It is thus a condition of making sense of the
Publicity Principle that putative understanding not be rejected as
positive-presumptive simply because it is compatible with mistaken
attribution of meaning – that rules out too much. But that is precisely
what is distinctive about the individualist conception of meaning and
understanding – the perennial possibility of mistaken attribution.
So it cannot simply be the fact that the Understanding Principle
is invoked on the behalf of individualism that it can be rejected.
Since there is no other apparent reason to reject the Understanding
Principle, it follows that the Understanding Principle is a necessary
condition for making sense of the Publicity Principle. As noted
above, this is a claim that anti-individualists often make in favor
of shared communal language, but the present argument makes it
clear that the claim cannot establish that strong a conclusion. Indi-
vidualism can accommodate the claim that the Publicity Principle
depends upon the Understanding Principle.
The moral of the argument here is an instance of a more
general one: interpreters have no choice in interlocution but to
apply and rely upon their own concepts in attempting to under-
stand others. Understanding is at bottom a first-person phenomenon;
third-person understanding depends first-person understanding [for
related discussion see Yalowitz 1999]. It needs to be emphasized
that the fact that one is entitled to attribute one’s putative under-
standing to one’s interlocutor, and this more general point about the
priority of first-person understanding, does not introduce a perni-
cious kind of relativism. It is not as though it is ‘up to me’ to decide
that another’s meaning can be taken as my putative understanding
dictates. One’s inclinations to apply the concept understanding
others to particular putative understandings (indeed, one’s putative
understandings themselves – see below) are the result of a complex
capacity that is informed by and sensitive to a multitude of factors,
present as well as past. The situation here is no different than with
one’s inclinations to apply expression like ‘horse’ to objects in the
environment. These inclinations are the result of a disposition that
has been formed and reinforced over time (answering to factors such
72 STEVEN YALOWITZ
as those that inform reflective endorsement (§V) of previous inclin-

ations). It is not ‘up to one’ to have such inclinations in particular
cases; one does not decide to have them or not. Similarly, one does
not ‘decide’ that others have been correctly attributed one’s putative
understanding.
I have claimed that the Understanding Principle is neutral
between individualism and anti-individualism. It is worth noting
that this point is conceded by Tyler Burge, a major proponent of
anti-individualism, who acknowledges that the Understanding Prin-
ciple does not presuppose shared communal language [Burge 1993,
487, n. 25]. And the rationalist framework that Burge develops for
thinking about a variety of epistemic entitlements – including the
Understanding Principle – is congenial to the arguments for the
entitlement to putative understanding that I have offered here.30
I do want to address one plausible concern about the individu-
alist credentials of the Understanding Principle that is similar to an
objection to the first argument for that principle already considered.
This will lead directly to issues connected to the idea of partial
understanding. Suppose one thought – as individualists do – that
different speakers’ use of the same expressions might well express
different meanings, depending upon the actual dispositions that
those speakers have with respect to those expressions. In the face of
this philosophical commitment concerning meaning, would it still
be rational to presume that one’s putative understanding of another
should be taken as his meaning? One might think that interpreters
convinced of individualism would be less inclined to attribute their
putative understanding to others, thus undercutting the appeal to
first-person authority in the argument above that yielded the enti-
tlement to attribute putative understanding. That appeal depended
upon the data that interpreters generally do attribute their putative
understanding. But perhaps this data really betrays a tacit anti-
individualist commitment, and without that tacit commitment on the
interpreter’s part, the data would be quite different. In particular,
interpreters might then lack the inclination to take their putative
understandings to be instances of the concept understanding others.
Without that inclination, the justification for the Understanding
Principle (at least as provided by the first argument) collapses.
I do not think that the data – one’s inclination to attribute

one’s putative understandings to one’s interlocutors – would be any
different if one is committed to individualism. One will continue
to take one’s putative understandings to be instances of the concept
understanding others. There are two points to note here. First, we
have already seen that one must rely on putative understanding in
order to make sense of the Publicity Principle. Second, actual prac-
tice (for instance, with children – see §II above) naturally leads one
to recognize that failure to have attributed the correct meaning to
the speaker does not entail complete failure of understanding. This
is a point on which I will be focusing in §§VIII–IX. But it is worth
noting here that if one does not think that understanding others is
an all or nothing concept (and we have found no reason why one
must think this (§§III–VI)), then failure to have attributed the correct
meaning is not inconsistent with correct application of the concept
understanding others. Since one therefore need not see misattribu-
tions of putative understanding to be mistaken uses of that concept,
occurrences of the former need not affect one’s inclinations to apply
the latter – i.e. to attribute one’s putative understanding to others.
The concern that commitment to individualism might affect one’s
application of the concept understanding others is plausible in one
respect. If one’s putative understanding of another creature’s utter-
ances turned out to be utterly useless – in the sense that the creature
always appeared to fail to reflectively endorse the semantic inclin-
ations yielded by one’s putative understanding – one would come
to be disinclined to attribute to him any putative understanding one
might have.31 What this shows is that our capacity to understand
another depends upon sharing a multitude of non-language-specific
physical and cognitive features, as well as a common environ-
ment (see §§VIII–IX). These shared elements underlie the fact
that putative understandings are not wildly out of sync with our
interlocutors’ actual understanding. As noted above, that we have
putative understanding is the result of capacity to detect these shared
elements. Without them, there would be no putative understanding,
and thus one’s application of the concept understanding others
would be restricted. But this does not call into question either the
Understanding or Publicity Principles. Rather, it calls into ques-
tion whether, in such cases, one’s interlocutor has language at all.
74 STEVEN YALOWITZ
Recognition of these shared elements and their constitutive role in

language in no way commits one to shared communal language.
Let me summarize the preceding discussion before turning to
focus more closely on the relation between the Understanding
Principle’s justification of individualistic claims to understand and
the failure to have motivated a requirement of full understanding
that was one of the morals of §§III–VI. The principle entitles
one to presume one’s putative understanding of a speaker’s utter-
ance to be the understanding that the speaker has of the utterance
(absent specific reasons not to). The justification for this entitle-
ment derives from the fact that interpreters typically rely on this
putative understanding in interlocution, together with the presump-
tion of first-person authority and the Publicity Principle. One’s
putative understanding establishes a default base line against which
others’ meanings are to be appreciated. The entitlement to one’s
putative understanding derives not from one’s particular language,
but from non-language-specific features of the nature of under-
standing. The Understanding Principle, then, blocks the move in
the anti-individualist argument from the possibility of error to the
impossibility of justifiable claims to understand, and it does so
without positing shared communal language as a necessary condi-
tion for understanding. With the entitlement in place, one needs
no positive justification – no ground for ruling out mistaken attri-
bution – in order to make reasonable attributions of meaning to
others. In the face of the individualist commitment to the possib-
ility of misunderstanding, the Understanding Principle is required
in order to make sense of the Publicity Principle. Indeed, this
connection between the Understanding and Publicity Principles is a
completely neutral constraint on conceptions of meaning and under-
standing, and so cannot decide the issue between individualism and
anti-individualism.32
VIII
The Understanding Principle provides a direct response to the anti-

individualist’s claim that the possibility of error entails that there can
be no justified claims to have understood another. As I have already
noted, the notion of understanding at issue here is ‘full’ under-
standing, since it involves the attribution of correct meanings. It is

time to put this point together with my previous discussion about
the failure of anti-individualism to motivate the requirement of full
understanding, in order to bring into full view the overall picture of
how meaning is publicly accessible according to the individualist
perspective that I have been defending and developing.
In response to the Understanding Principle, it might be
wondered: what good is the defeasible entitlement it confers if its
defeasibility is consistently engaged? When the entitlement is over-
ridden, no full understanding has occurred, and it is unclear why it
could not be overridden on a regular basis given the individualistic
picture of language and meaning. How then does the entitlement
conferred actually make sense of the Publicity Principle? Being
entitled to claims to have attributed the correct meaning is little
consolation if that entitlement is compatible with chronic failure of
understanding. It is at this point that recognition of partial under-
standing and a causal conception of content-determination enter and
earn their keep; it is also the point at which we need to focus on more
general normative considerations, and I turn first to these.
As noted at the beginning of this paper, individualism holds
that semantic norms are determined individualistically. But the
subsequent unavailability of communal semantic norms does not
entail that there are no non-semantic, extra-individual norms; and
that is the status of the norms of rationality that are appealed
to in applications of the ‘principle of charity’ in interpretation.
One such norm has already played a role in the preceding discus-
sion – the presumption of first-person authority. More generally,
norms of rationality play a crucial role in anchoring the beliefs
and desires of speakers to a degree which allows the interpreter
to fix the meanings of expressions within the speaker’s language.
These norms thus allow for the possibility of semantic variation –
to which individualism is committed – by exploiting cognitive and
conative invariances. Thus, while the principle of charity plays an
important role in the determination of semantic content, it is not
itself a semantic norm, and especially is not a norm that draws its
content from communal linguistic norms. The recognition of these
norms and their role in interpretation is one important part of the
explanation of why failure of full understanding of speakers’ utter-
76 STEVEN YALOWITZ
ances does not make for inaccessible meanings, and is compatible

with substantial understanding. For the constitutive role of these
norms entails the basic accessibility of another’s mental contents,
and this will be in place through all and any instances of linguistic
misunderstanding; indeed, it is only through the application of such
norms that instances of misunderstanding can even be recognized.33
The constitutive nature of such norms provides the resources for the
claim (see below and §IX) that there can (indeed, must) be shared
concepts, and thus overlap of beliefs, between speakers of different
languages. And the very same points that underlie the Under-
standing Principle warrant interpreters to assume their own putative
understanding of another’s concepts and beliefs as the default posi-
tion in understanding others generally. As has already been made
clear, the presumption that others are rational is constitutive of
linguistic and psychological attribution. Since one’s own conception
of rationality necessarily is one’s guide to rationality (see previous
discussion in §VII of one’s concept understanding others), and
these cannot come apart without threatening the Publicity Principle,
the presumption of shared concepts and thus beliefs is a condi-
tion of attributing semantic content to another. This clearly involves
no concession to anti-individualism, given the distinction between
semantic norms and extra-linguistic norms of rationality.
The second part of the story about public accessibility of mean-
ings comes from the fact of a shared environment noted in §VII;
that fact is captured semantically in a causal thesis about content-
determination. If what an expression means, in basic cases, is
determined in part by what causes utterances of those expressions,
then an interpreter not subject to inductive skepticism (§I) is in a
perfectly good position to determine, by a combination of charity
and investigation into causes, the meaning of those utterances. It
must be emphasized that at this point skepticism about the possib-
ility of extracting semantic norms from generalizations about causes
is no longer an issue. For I have already argued that norms are
unproblematically accessible to speakers through their own dispos-
itions, and we are merely looking at the third-person perspective
on that same set of facts when we ask how an interpreter attributes
meanings on the basis of causal connections between utterances and
objects and events in the world. Since we already know that those
facts are sufficient for determining conditions of correctness for the

speaker’s utterances, any further questions about access from the
third-person perspective can only be questions about inductive infer-
ence. According to the causal thesis about content-determination,
what causes an utterance-type in basic cases generally determines its
content; and since causes of utterances march in step with speaker’s
inclinations to use expression, and these inclinations by their very
nature are norm-tracking, assignments of causes by the interpreter
are assignments of normative meanings (§VI). Since inductive skep-
ticism is not in place, our ability to determine these causes is
accounted for, and in that sense another’s meanings are accessible
even when their attribution is defeasible.
The final component of the individualist story about how failure
of full understanding does not entail inaccessible meanings comes
from recognition of the phenomenon of partial understanding. We
have already seen that withdrawal of claims to have attributed the
correct meaning is compatible with claims that partial understanding
has occurred (§§II and VII). I want now to explain how some-
thing stronger than mere compatibility – actual plausibility – can be
demonstrated for claims of partial understanding in absence of full
understanding. That will complete the story of how individualism
can account for publicly accessible meanings.
IX
Three very different kinds of case need to be distinguished in

considering the possibility of partial understanding. Wittgenstein
himself (followed by Kripke) focused upon very pure cases of rule-
following involving the continuation of a numerical series. As has
been noted by many people, the point of these examples is to focus
on cases of understanding and use in as much isolation as possible
from the input of belief [Wright 1989b, 255–56; McDowell 1992,
40–41]. In considering how to continue a series like ‘2, 4, 6, 8 . . . ’,
nothing but one’s own grasp of the underlying principle is involved;
no sensitivity to the surrounding layout of the empirical world is
required in order to decide how to ‘go on’. For that very reason,
these cases are the exception rather than the rule and thus raise
special interpretative problems, and I do not propose discussing
78 STEVEN YALOWITZ
them further here; in any case, they are the least interesting sort of
challenge for individualism to handle.34 The more important cases
involve predicates discussed by Nelson Goodman [1983, 59–124]
– ones in which a quite important sort of misunderstanding would
occur – and those, discussed by Burge [1979], involving more local
idiosyncracies of usage and more minor misunderstanding. I begin
with the latter.
Burge asks us to imagine a man named Bertrand whose use
of the expression ‘arthritis’ deviates in important ways from the
usage of medical experts in his linguistic community. Bertrand’s
behavior, linguistic and otherwise, manifests his not believing that
‘arthritis’ names a disease that can strike only joints.35 He utters
sentences like ‘The arthritis in my hip has spread to my thigh’,
and rubs anti-arthritis balm on his thigh (and he of course believes
that his thigh is not a joint). The medical experts believe that ‘arth-
ritis’ names a disease that can only strike joints, and eventually
Bertrand becomes apprised of this feature of their usage. According
to Burge, the expression ‘arthritis’ means the same thing for both
Bertrand and the experts; Bertrand expresses the same concept as
they do, even with his differentiating belief. The claim that they
mean the same thing rests on two separable points: first, Bertrand’s
(purported) subsequent pattern of deference when apprised of the
differences in their respective usage, and second, the neologization
that individualism envisages to explain the case would lack any
method for determining the actual meaning. The implication is that
no understanding would have occurred, at least not any that speaks
significantly to the concern about the public accessibility of meaning
[Burge 1979, 94 – see also note 37 below]. I propose putting aside
the issues raised by the question of deference; it is controversial
whether deferring to ‘experts’ is in fact always the rule in the face of
correction, and it is not at all obvious that individualism is impugned
by those cases in which it does occur – this depends upon the motiv-
ations behind and consequences of the deference.36 I instead want
to focus upon the more central question of the public availability
of individualistically-constituted meanings in cases where defer-
ence is absent. What follows, then, is simply an illustration of the
individualist conception of such a case.
Suppose, then, that Bertrand is an individualist, and consider his

perspective on his family physician before any correction or criti-
cism has occurred: Bertrand in effect attributes to the doctor his
own concept of arthritis (the meaning of ‘arthritis’ in his idiolect),
as he is entitled to by the Understanding Principle. For Bertrand,
correct application of this expression does not involve discrimin-
ating between joints and limbs. Later discussion with the doctor,
and criticism or correction, leads Bertrand to realize that his attri-
bution did not capture all features of the doctor’s potential usage;
the fact that the doctor only considers application of ‘arthritis’ to
joints, and never limbs, to be correct becomes salient, whereas prior
to correction Bertrand had no reason to think that the doctor was
disposed to make that distinction. Having not attributed the disposi-
tion which ‘fully’ captures the doctor’s actual inclinations, Bertrand
clearly did not ‘fully’ understand her. Is there any difficulty in saying
that Bertrand partially understood the doctor?37
Let us assume that Bertrand and the doctor do not deviate in other
relevant linguistic dispositions (this is not necessary, but it simplifies
discussion). Prior to correction, then, Bertrand would have under-
stood some of the doctor’s utterances as expressing the belief that
‘arthritis’ names an inflammatory ailment that strikes joints and
limbs, and has such and such symptoms, and responds in such and
such ways to such and such treatment (and so on); that is what
Bertrand’s putative understanding of ‘arthritis’ consists in, and the
Understanding Principle entitles him to attribute it to the doctor. On
the basis of this understanding, Bertrand bought certain medicines
and did certain exercises for his hip, and had begun the same for his
thigh. For the doctor, this last activity was, as she might put it, based
upon a misunderstanding; but the former activities were not sheer
accidents, and are explainable only by Bertrand’s having partially
grasped the doctor’s meaning.
At the most concrete level, the notion of partial understanding
can be explicated in terms of the fact that in many particular cases
Bertrand has the same semantic inclinations as does his doctor with
respect to the expression ‘arthritis’. Thus, their putative understand-
ings of each other overlap to the extent that they yield such similar
inclinations. Both know what correct usage consists in relative to the
other’s meaning in such cases – they agree in particular semantic
80 STEVEN YALOWITZ
inclinations. The intuition that partial understanding is occurring

between Bertrand and his doctor is owed in the first instance to the
fact of these shared semantic inclinations. After all, the claim that
they do not understand each other fully is tied to the fact that there
are semantic inclinations that they do not share. The shared semantic
inclinations will in turn underlie shared metalinguistic beliefs about
when ‘arthritis’ is correctly to be used in particular cases. Degree
of partial understanding can, to a first approximation (see below),
be measured in terms of the degree of coincidence of these meta-
linguistic beliefs. This can also be described in terms of overlap
of their respective concepts: overlap is not identity, and it is mani-
fested by coincidence of semantic inclinations in particular cases
and is compatible with divergence of inclinations in other cases.
The fact that Bertrand has attributed the wrong meaning does not
then cancel, but rather qualifies, previous claims to understanding; it
means that partial and not full understanding has occurred. The sorts
of considerations appealed to in determining the meaning of ‘arth-
ritis’ for the doctor, notice, flow from applications of the principle
of charity: non-semantic norms of rationality, theory-formation and
action explanation, are what allow the question of which particular
semantic norms is in play to both arise and receive an answer. For
it is only through having noticed that the initially ascribed meaning
makes the explanation of some of the doctor’s actions problematic
that it is brought into question and subsequently modified.
When an interpreter does not fully understand a speaker’s expres-
sion, he does not know the conditions under which any application
of that expression in the speaker’s language is correct. To the extent
that there nonetheless is partial understanding, what the interpreter
putatively understands entails the grasp of conditions under which
some applications are correct. His putative understanding does not
yield the entire set of semantic inclinations that, under normal condi-
tions, the speaker has with respect to that expression. Bertrand does
not have this sort of grasp of the doctor’s meaning, and it shows up
in their respective expressions of surprise and defeated expectation.
To say that partial understanding has occurred is to say that, despite
this lack of full knowledge of correctness conditions, the interpreter
nonetheless knows conditions which are relevantly similar to the
full conditions – his putative understanding yields some but not all
of the correct inclinations (see below on ‘relevantly similar’). In

particular cases of use where the semantic inclinations of interpreter
and speaker coincide, there is still only partial understanding of each
by the other, since there is lack of coincidence in other cases, and
the meaning transcends particular uses. For the same reason, there is
partial understanding in cases where semantic inclinations diverge.
A necessary condition for there being partial understanding in these
latter cases is, of course, that there are cases of the former type.
While necessary, however, mere coincidence of semantic inclin-
ations is not itself sufficient for partial understanding, at least not
partial understanding of any significant sort. One can easily imagine
cases analogous to Humean ‘accidental constant conjunctions’,
where sheer fortuity turns up coinciding semantic inclinations that
derive from such radically different meanings that no appeal to
partial understanding would be convincing. Now, cases of fortu-
itous overlap might go on for a significant period of time – during
which both claims of full as well as partial understanding will
be false – but they cannot go on forever. There will always be
potential evidence that turns up the fortuity for what it is (other-
wise, no empirical significance could be given to the claims that no
understanding is going on, which would undermine them). So such
cases are discoverable. And the longer they do go on – the greater
the coincidence of semantic inclinations – the more convincing
it becomes to say that partial understanding of some significance
is occurring. So it seems plausible that enough coincidence of
semantic inclinations is sufficient for (some degree of) partial under-
standing. However, I do not propose offering some quantitative
threshold beyond which overlap of semantic inclinations is suffi-
cient for significant partial understanding, because it seems clear
(and the case of ‘grue’ below will illustrate this) that there is a
second factor that plays an important role in our intuitions about
understanding – some notion of semantic importance of coinciding
or diverging semantic inclinations. (Other, more contextual factors
such as ‘usefulness’ of coinciding or diverging semantic inclinations
will be discussed below.) Different semantic inclinations can be
more or less relevant to understanding, and the flexibility inherent in
the notion of ‘relevance’ suggests that no criterion for determining
degree of understanding is forthcoming.
82 STEVEN YALOWITZ
How to determine degree of semantic importance in particular

cases is an important problem that an extended discussion would
have to address; but that is not a burden of the present paper. For
however semantic importance, and thus degree of partial under-
standing, is to be gauged, it is reflected in interpreters’ judgments
concerning the import of particular cases of diverging semantic
inclinations and the sorts of compensatory revisions in their putative
understanding that are in turn judged as required (as is seen in
the ‘arthritis’ case discussed above). Interpreters are entitled to
these judgments by the Understanding Principle, since they are
nothing more than further cases of putative understandings. And,
as argued in §VI, applications of the Understanding Principle
do not presuppose shared communal language. Thus, judgments
concerning degree of semantic importance are legitimately available
to individualism, and so thus is the idea of partial understanding.
I turn now, briefly, to cases of more substantial misunder-
standing, and the question of how individualism’s appeal to partial
understanding handles them. Consider the sort of misunderstanding
involved in mistaking a speaker who actually means grue by ‘green’
as meaning green.38 The evidence for the thought that he in fact
means grue is what, from the interpreter’s perspective, will at first
look like a simple notational shift in usage; but such a diagnosis of
mere meaning change can be overridden, as noted in §V, by evidence
of reflective endorsement and judgments of constancy of meaning
by the speaker (if there is no such evidence, and therefore no reason
to rule out the meaning-shift diagnosis, then there is no problem
generated from such cases that individualism needs to solve). Now,
the Understanding Principle entitles the ascription of green to the
speaker’s expression; when the evidence shows that that ascription is
defeated, what sort of residual partial understanding can be claimed
for those earlier interactions? As with the ‘arthritis’ case, partial
understanding of his past use of ‘green’ will have occurred because
of the substantial coincidence of semantic inclinations. From the
interpreter’s perspective, the objects causing utterances of ‘green’
have mostly been green, underwriting her putative understanding
that the speaker means green. A further feature of partial under-
standing is brought out by the point that in many of those past
contexts the ‘remainder’ of her concept (which manifests itself at
that later point) is simply irrelevant to useful communication within

those contexts. When the speaker asked for ‘green’ apples and we
brought her Granny Smiths, she was satisfied; when we told her to
stay away from cheeses with ‘green’ mold, and she subsequently
threw out the (very) aged cheddar, she understood us, and we had
communicated with her, as fully as needed for the purposes of those
contexts. The fact that the range of objects picked out by her expres-
sion ‘green’ would change (from our perspective) at some future
time in no way impeded successful interaction in these contexts.
Of course, the as yet unsuspected peculiarities of the speaker’s
concept may not be irrelevant to other contexts. For many general-
izations made involving the expression ‘green’, and any discourse
before the divergence about ‘green’ objects after that time, our
misunderstanding will produce serious impediments to successful
interaction. Assuming a stable putative understanding on our part
through such different contexts (there is no reason to revise it as
of yet), degree of partial understanding will also remain stable.
Thus, the same degree of understanding can be more or less useful
in different contexts of communication. Just as with judgments
of semantic importance and degree of understanding, degree of
‘usefulness’ will be gauged by interpreter’s judgments (again, these
are cases of putative understanding), without commitment to shared
communal language.
It is very difficult to deny that partial understanding is occur-
ring in the case under discussion, and this is partly explained by
the fact that it is trivial to define ‘grue’ in terms of blue, green
and the temporal index.39 What the discussion in this section of
this and the ‘arthritis’ case has shown is just how natural and
useful it is to describe some cases of misunderstanding in terms of
partial understanding; and how this diagnosis of these cases, when
embedded within the context of considerations of rationality and
the causal thesis of content-determination, supports the individu-
alist point that full understanding is not a necessary condition for
any understanding. As noted, partial understanding will not always
produce useful communication and interaction; that simply reflects
the facts of ordinary practice. Appeal to partial understanding is not
a panacea; but taken within the wider framework provided in this
paper, it provides a necessary and natural component to a satis-
84 STEVEN YALOWITZ
fying epistemology of understanding. Individualists need it, and

anti-individualists – with no rationale for the requirement of full
understanding (§§III–VI) – have no grounds for rejecting it.
The individualism that I have developed in this paper in response

to the anti-individualistic argument turns crucially on the capa-
city of linguistic dispositions to deliver semantic norms, accessible,
in different ways and with differing epistemic status, to the first
and third-person perspectives. The positive-presumptive status of
an individual’s semantic inclinations, deriving from first-person
authority, entitles the individual to the thought that he tracks his
own meanings. This status of inclinations, reflected now in the
mirror of interpretation and in the light of the Publicity Principle,
further entitles the individual to his putative understanding of others,
and thus to the thought that he tracks others’ meanings. The prin-
ciple of charity and the causal determination of content stand ready
to explain how the individual might discover and redress defi-
ciencies in his putative understanding; and the notion of partial
understanding explains how understanding occurs even with such
deficiencies in place. Individualism is thus shown to be compat-
ible with both the public and normative nature of meaning. The
anti-individualist argument relies on assumptions concerning the
justification and nature of claims to understanding that are either
unmotivated or false, and plausible alternatives to them exist which
are compatible with individualism and the Publicity Principle.
The third-person account of understanding I have sketched
depends upon placing interlocution within a wider framework of
rationality; and I have already suggested (§IV) that the presumption
of first-person authority and thus first-person understanding derives
from conditions of rational agency. Embedding a general account of
understanding within this framework helps to answer longstanding
objections to individualistic dispositional conceptions of meaning.
Hard questions remain about the nature of idiolects and the use of
the notion of partial understanding in explaining phenomena asso-
ciated with theory-change.40 The demise of the anti-individualist
argument accords legitimacy to the projects involved in answering

these pressing questions.41
NOTES
1 Since the dispositions are individuated in terms of distal objects and events in
the external world, individualism as understood here is, strictly speaking, different
than the position called ‘individualism’ by Burge [1979, 1982], though Burge
is committed to rejecting the position I defend here. ‘Externalist individualism’
is perhaps an appropriate characterization of the views of Davidson [1978] and
Bilgrami [1992]. But Davidson [1992] (and possibly Bilgrami [1992, 118–122])
subscribes to a social externalist view, according to which actual social interaction
(though not shared language) is a necessary condition for an individual’s words to
have meaning. I have discusses and criticized this position at length in Yalowitz
1999.
2 I have discussed the question of why accounts of meaning (as well as content)
ought not to be saddled with reductionist strictures (see Boghossian 1989a) in

Yalowitz 1998 and Yalowitz 2000.
3 This argument, with differences of nuance but not substance, has been put forth
by a number of writers. It is made most forcefully in McDowell 1984; see also

McDowell 1981, esp. 243–244; and McDowell 1987, esp. 67. See also Kripke
1982; Burge 1979, 94; Dummett 1978, 424; and more recently, Brandom 1994,
Chapter 1, esp. 26–30. There are considerable differences between these writers’
views, as well as changes in view, that would need attention in an extended
discussion. (In particular, Burge’s views are complex, and in places he clearly
seems to deny that belonging to a shared linguistic practice is necessary condition
for a speaker’s words to have meaning [Burge 1982, 116; Burge 1989, 175].
See note 37 below. McDowell [1992] has recanted on the claims of McDowell
1984 concerning this issue (his cautionary remark in 1992, note 6, that the 1984
paper is ‘too hospitable’ to being read along the lines described in the text is
surely an understatement). But I think the argument in the text captures a shared
core thought, which is often claimed to have its source in Wittgenstein’s ‘rule-
following considerations’; that thought continues to have a pervasive influence on
discussions of these issues.
4 McDowell puts this point about a non-inferential epistemology of meaning in
terms of the idea that we directly perceive others’ meanings [see, e.g. McDowell
1984, 348]. But not all proponents of the anti-individualist argument commit
themselves to this idea, and it is not essential for making the anti-individualist
point against inferential epistemologies.
5 How the notion of ‘tacitly inferential’ here is to be understood is a delicate
matter; for related discussion, see Yalowitz 1999a, and note 10 below.
6 Dummett 1973, 467 (emphasis added). This passage is referred to by McDowell
in the course of his anti-individualist argument; see McDowell 1984, 361, n. 37.
7 This is how Dummett’s point is put in McDowell 1987, 67.
86 STEVEN YALOWITZ
8 Dummett 1993, xiv; all subsequent quotations in the next few paragraphs are
from xiv–xv. Dummett also writes that ‘to make understanding rest upon an
inner mental grasp . . . that can never be made fully explicit is to render it incom-
municable in just that way objected to by Frege in psychologistic accounts of
understanding’ (xiv). This, of course, just begs the question: either Dummett is
identifying ‘being made fully explicit’ with ‘being communicable’, or he is not
allowing for an extrapolation, from something which itself does not make the
understanding fully explicit, to the actual understanding. In the latter case, no
argument against the extrapolation is offered, which is precisely what is needed
in order to ground the requirement of ‘full’ manifestation. In the former case, he
is just showing a blindness to the possibility of partial understanding.
9 It is not credible to think that Wittgenstein’s own point in raising such
issues was to call into question the intuitive asymmetry between first and third-
person ascription; indeed, his non-cognitivism [1958, §§246–247] concerning
self-ascription seems to suggest that he endorsed some version of the asymmetry,
even if it is drawn in non-traditional terms.
10 For the purposes of this paper I am assuming that individualism is committed
to the sort of epistemic asymmetry between first and third-person ascription of

meaning described in the text. I actually do not think individualism requires such
a commitment, nor that anything like the standard ways of articulating such an
asymmetry are adequate. But since both of these claims are controversial, and I
think that individualism is defensible even with the commitment, I will assume it
throughout the present paper; for extended discussion of these issues, see Yalowitz
1999a.
11 For this construal of understanding, see Wright 1989, 243.
12 See Shoemaker 1988, 186–188; and Boghossian 1989b, 8–11.
13 See, for instance, McDowell 1991, 166–167; McDowell 1986, 154, 169; and
Burge 1988. The argument of Kripke 1982 against individualism, however, does
depend upon bracketing any presumption of first-person authority. There are well-
known hard questions about how anti-individualism can actually accommodate
authority; I address some of them in Yalowitz 1999c.
14 Wright [1987, 393] equates a rejection of Platonism (as characterized in the
text) with a rejection of the objectivity of meaning. It is not clear to me that the
intuitive notion of objectivity requires the Platonistic chasm between subjects’
responses and correctness, but that is largely definitional. However, Wright also
holds that rejection of Platonism is in conflict with the ‘realist’ idea that currently
undecided issues already possess determinate answers, regardless of our powers
to decide them [393]. But this realist idea can be adequately captured by dispos-
itional conceptions of meaning, once one grants a point Wright himself makes –
that dispositions are tied to ceteris paribus conditions. See related discussion at
the end of §VI, and in note 20 below.
15 Wright [1989a, 624] usefully distinguishes between ‘operationalist’ accounts,
which attempt to provide a test, and ‘non-operationalist’ accounts which state

what the distinction between correct and incorrect use consists in without
providing such a test. The model offered in the text is of the latter sort. I have
discussed aspects of this distinction in Yalowitz 1999.
16 Wright [1987, 401; 1989, 252] offers similar formulations for self-ascriptions
of intentions. Wright distinguishes between ‘detective’ and ‘constitutive’ readings

of these biconditionals: on the former, the subject’s inclinations track independent
correctness conditions, while on the latter they constitute, in an ongoing fashion,
correctness conditions. The issue at stake here is whether an independent state of
affairs – the correctness condition – is being cognized or not. Wright argues for
the constitutive reading; I discuss and criticize this move in Yalowitz 2000.
17 The condition that no recent or persisting physical or psychological trauma
may well be redundant in light of the reflective endorsement condition; I have

retained it since it constitutes a salient reason for calling into question particular
uses.
18 The question of the bearing of interpreters’ own semantic inclinations on
the ceteris paribus conditions, and its relation to the status of individualism, is
touched on in note 32 below.
19 Of course, people can share basic perceptions of similarity (and must, if
communication is to be possible – see §§VII–IX), and therefore can have similar

inclinations. But this point does not tell against the individualist. First, my point in
the text is not meant by itself to establish individualism, but only to show, in reply
to the objection under consideration, that we can have substantive knowledge
expressed in locutions like ‘. . . and so on’ which an interlocutor needs to latch on
to. Second, the point about the need for shared perceptions of similarity applies at
a very general level, and is compatible with interesting deviations; and it is here
that individualism earns its keep. For related discussion, see §IX below.
20 See note 10 above. Wright [1989, 239–245] claims that there is an inextricable
link between the sort of epistemic asymmetry I am defending here and a Platon-
istic conception of meanings (see note 14 above) according to which correctness
is ‘response-independent’. It should be clear that my discussion here tells against
Wright’s claim.
21 I am indebted to Dick Moran for forcing me to be clearer on my response to
this objection.
22 Kripke’s objection that dispositional accounts are saddled with circularity in
their specification of ceteris paribus conditions (1982, 27–28) depends upon

failing to specify skeptical alternative meanings; for detailed discussion, see
Yalowitz 2000.
23 For discussion of Kripkean concerns about whether dispositions can have the
infinite fecundity and account for the self-accessibility required of meanings, see
Yalowitz 2000.
24 This is McDowell’s view, most notably in McDowell 1984. The epistemology
behind this move is worked out in general form in McDowell 1982.

25 Yalowitz 1999c. McDowell seems to assume that rejection of the demand that
one have ruled out skeptical alternatives in order to make justified claims of under-
standing is available only to anti-individualism. But see discussion immediately
below in the text of the Understanding Principle.
88 STEVEN YALOWITZ
26 Sensitivity to the speaker’s history of evidence is one important component of

the principle of charity, and plays a role in Lewis’ account of radical interpretation
[1983, 112–113] as well as Grandy’s [1973, 443–444]. For related discussion, see
§§VIII–IX below.
27 Burge, in the course of arguing for the claim the one is entitled to accept beliefs
acquired through testimony, endorses such a principle [Burge 1993, 488]. As

noted below in the text, Burge also concedes that the entitlement to putative under-
standing does not depend upon any assumption of shared communal language
[Burge 1993, 487, n. 25]; indeed, it does not rule out the possibility of a solitary
thinker [Burge 1993, 469] or radical interpretation [Burge 1993, 479].
28 I have discussed this asymmetry with respect to defeating conditions in more
detail in Yalowitz 1999a and Yalowitz 1999b; see also note 10 above and note 32
below.
29 I put aside the numerous unsuccessful attempts to generate the requirement
from Wittgensteinian considerations about private language.

30 Burge does not always seem to me to distinguish clearly between the enti-
tlement to putative understanding [Burge 1993, 481 and 487–488] – my Under-

standing Principle – and an entitlement to one’s finding an interlocutor to be a
source of rationality [Burge 1993, 471] – what might be called an Intelligibility
Principle. (I sense a conflation of the two principles at 472, n. 12 and 477. Perhaps
this is due simply to an inconsistency in the use of the expression ‘finding intel-
ligible’ and ‘understanding’; but Burge does move directly from ‘a presumption
about the rational nature of a source’ and the fact of ‘prima facie understanding’
to an entitlement to that understanding [Burge 1993, 480; see also 479]. I do
not understand his reasoning here). Both the Understanding and the Intelligib-
ility Principles are presupposed by the primary focus of Burge’s discussion – an
Acceptance Principle, which entitles one to believe propositions presented to one
as true in interlocution (Burge 1993, 467 and 469). A number of arguments are
given for what I have called the Intelligibility Principle, but the only argument
for the equivalent of my Understanding Principle that I can detect (Burge 1993,
487–488) is quite brief and too abstract for the purposes of making clear the
individualistic credentials of that principle.
31 Indeed, one would come to fail to have putative understandings – see below in
the text.
32 I do not have the space here to discuss the relation between the respective
entitlements of the Understanding Principle and first-person authority, though it

is worth noting the following. As we saw in §V, in typical cases, when overriding
reasons are absent, the fact that a speaker’s particular use of an expression does not
fit the putative understanding of the interpreter is grounds for canceling the enti-
tlement described by the Understanding Principle. But there are conditions under
which interpreters can override the presumption that a speaker’s usage is correct,
and thus are entitled to their putative understanding even though it conflicts with
the speaker’s usage. For instance, an interpreter will trump a speaker’s usage
with her own putative understanding – and presume he is mistaken – when she
has reason to think that the reflective endorsement condition is not met. But
the grounds for thinking this cannot simply be that the interpreter’s semantic
inclinations diverge from the speaker’s. This would presume shared language in a
way that threatened the individualistic credentials of the Understanding Principle.
The interpreter must have extra-linguistic grounds for thinking that the reflective
endorsement is not satisfied, concerning the state of either the speaker or his
environment. I discuss this issue more fully in Yalowitz 2000 and Yalowitz 1999b.
33 In this respect, the anti-individualist argument considered in this paper differs
from Kripke’s skeptical argument against individualism. Kripke’s skeptic offi-

cially does not allow appeal to any intentional or normative facts in responding
to his skeptical challenge. (Kripke does, however, seem to allow for intention-
ally characterized applications of concept and uses of expressions.) As observed
in note 13, Kripke also brackets the presumption of first-person authority. In
Yalowitz 2000, I have discussed tensions between these two aspects of Kripke’s
discussion, and reasons for rejecting the burden of reductionism. I will simply
note here that there is no intrinsic connection between individualism and reduc-
tionism.
34 I will, however, say the following. Consider a case where an interpreter’s
putative understanding of the principle underlying a series produced by a speaker

like ‘2, 4. . . 998, 1000. . . ’ leads her to expect the continuation ‘1002, 1004’, but
instead the speaker continues with ‘1004, 1008’. Clearly a misunderstanding has
occurred. But is it plausible to think that there has been no understanding? The
principle underlying the interpreter’s putative understanding was ‘add 2’. The
principle underlying the speaker’s usage (let us assume) was ‘add 2 until 1000,
then add 4 until 2000 and so on . . . ’. Surely there is partial understanding here –
the concept of addition, and of adding 2, is an essential component of the speaker’s
meaning as well as the interpreter’s putative understanding.
35 This metalinguistic formulation of his belief is required so as not to confuse
the different concepts and meanings in play; it does not purport to exhaustively
capture object-level beliefs. As noted below, Bertrand and his doctor will each use
their own putative understanding to characterize the other’s beliefs and concepts,
as they are entitled to by the Understanding Principle.
36 I am persuaded by the remarks of Davidson [1987, 449] concerning these
issues.
37 Some of Burge’s Twin Earth anti-individualist arguments appeal to a notion of
‘incomplete understanding’ that may appear similar to the notion of partial under-
standing I am emphasizing. Two points tell against this, however: incomplete
understanding is only explicitly applied to self-understanding, not understanding
others [e.g. Burge 1979, 79]; and it is important to Burge that there is no determ-
inate way of spelling out the content of incomplete understanding [Burge 1979,
87–103]. Burge holds that communally shared meanings must be invoked in
describing speakers’ linguistic behavior, even when they manifest incomplete
understanding of those meaning, because (putting aside deference – see note
36 above and surrounding text) otherwise there will be no principled way to
attribute content. The point of the present paper has been to respond to this
particular anti-individualist argument. Since Burge has available to him a notion
90 STEVEN YALOWITZ
of incomplete understanding, he may seem not to be committed to the require-

ment of full understanding (§II) with respect to understanding others. However,
since for Burge what is incompletely understood cannot generally be determined
(see also Burge 1986, 711 and Burge 1989, 181–187), the notion of incomplete
understanding cannot play a central role in explaining how understanding others
is possible. Instead, emphasis is laid on the need for communally shared meaning
for understanding others. The notion of partial understanding in my individualist
picture, on the other hand, plays a crucial explanatory role. To the extent that
Burge is committed to the claim that attribution of communally shared meanings
is a condition for understanding others – for attributing any determinate content to
their utterances (see, however, note 3 above) – he is committed to the spirit, if not
exactly the letter, of the requirement of full understanding. Concerning the idea
of incomplete self-understanding, it is persuasively argued in Bilgrami [1992, 39–
49] that incompletely understood meanings and concepts stand in tension with the
rationality and first-person authority of speakers.
38 Goodman [1983, 74] defines ‘grue’ as applying to all things examined before
a certain time t just in case they are green but to other things just in case they are
blue.
39 A fuller treatment would have to attend to the distinction between speaker’s
meaning and literal meaning; it can be tempting to place the weight of explanation
in these cases on non-semantic, local intentions of speakers, thus obviating the
need to attribute partial understanding of literal meanings.
40 See Loar 1989. With respect to the theory-change issue, see Yalowitz
2000. The notion of ‘partial reference’ developed by Field (1973) is congenial

to the individualistic perspective developed here, and provides one important
component of the overall account required.
41 Distant ancestors of this paper were presented to colloquia at the University of
California, San Diego and Trinity College, Dublin, and I am grateful to those audi-
ences for helpful discussion. For useful discussion and encouragement at various
stages, I would especially like to thank David Brink Adrian Cussins, Michael
Hardimon, Jim Levine, Dick Moran, Charles Parsons, Gila Sher and Claudine
Verheggen, as well as several anonymous referees.
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Department of Philosophy
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Baltimore, MD 21250
USA

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STEVEN YALOWITZ

INDIVIDUALISM, NORMATIVITY AND THE

(Received in revised form 3 April 2000)

We commonly think that it is by virtue of a shared language that

Philosophical Studies 102: 43–92, 2001.

is whether individuals’ dispositions need to be individuated relative

never justifiably attribute meanings to a speaker; having ruled out

Individualism is committed to, indeed highlights, the possibility of

continuations which are entailed by rules compatible with the initial

by the speaker, but how he should use it, in order even to be in a

think, in responding to the difficulty, either that we can encounter an

that understanding is an all or nothing phenomenon. And I shall

There are two crucial steps of the anti-individualist argument on

one has grasped the full conditions of correctness, one understands

It is worth pointing out here that the notion of partial under-

Dummett, in the process of criticizing truth-conditional theories

I shall return to the notion of ‘recognition’ below. For current

manifest’ in the practitioners’ usage of that language; we cannot get

will not buy into Dummett’s verificationist insistence on recogni-

future case, or would make of it in every hypothetical case, however

Though I have rejected both of Dummett’s defenses of the require-

can only get across in communication or explanation what can be

purporting to show that first-person authority somehow depends

The key to responding to the ‘Wittgensteinian’ objection comes

What is needed is a model for grasping a rule which is not

Such a presumption accounts for the needed distinction between

In another paper I have discussed and defended this proposal in

inner epistemology of the norms of correctness. But the line of

speaker is disposed to use an expression is, ceteris paribus, how

The point is that my finitely engaged inclinations underdetermine

the proposals. One’s disinclinations (also positive-presumptive) to

Thus far I have argued that the anti-individualist argument depends

responded to central considerations that have been thought to

is a general entitlement to take one’s putative understanding of

When we hesitate in attributing our putative understanding of some

threatens neither individualism nor the semantic first-person/third-

explanation of this data that does not advert to shared language.

that putative understandings are, ceteris paribus, instances of that

There is a different objection to the Understanding Principle

write a reasonable claim that understanding has occurred, then one

as those that inform reflective endorsement (§V) of previous inclin-

I do not think that the data – one’s inclination to attribute

Recognition of these shared elements and their constitutive role in

The Understanding Principle provides a direct response to the anti-

standing, since it involves the attribution of correct meanings. It is

ances does not make for inaccessible meanings, and is compatible

facts are sufficient for determining conditions of correctness for the

Three very different kinds of case need to be distinguished in

Suppose, then, that Bertrand is an individualist, and consider his

inclinations. The intuition that partial understanding is occurring

of the correct inclinations (see below on ‘relevantly similar’). In

How to determine degree of semantic importance in particular

that later point) is simply irrelevant to useful communication within

fying epistemology of understanding. Individualists need it, and

The individualism that I have developed in this paper in response

argument accords legitimacy to the projects involved in answering

ought not to be saddled with reductionist strictures (see Boghossian 1989a) in

by a number of writers. It is made most forcefully in McDowell 1984; see also

to the sort of epistemic asymmetry between first and third-person ascription of

which attempt to provide a test, and ‘non-operationalist’ accounts which state

of intentions. Wright distinguishes between ‘detective’ and ‘constitutive’ readings

may well be redundant in light of the reflective endorsement condition; I have

communication is to be possible – see §§VII–IX), and therefore can have similar