Metasemantics and imaginability

In support of an analogical conception of natural language, linguistic meaning occurs, the paper claims, when we associate Vorstellung, understood as mental, iconic variation of perception, with linguistic expressions under the control of the ‘linguistic linkage compulsion’. In this sense meaning is argued to be indirectly public aboutness. To cater for the mental, phylogenic, and social aspects of language I emphasise three necessary theoretical perspectives: psychologism, ethology, and conventionalism. The second part of the paper applies the proposed metasemantic principles to sketching a resolution of Locke’s paradox of private meanings in the face of public discourse, a repair of Husserl’s ideality of meaning; the re-insertion of Vorstellung in Wittgenstein’s meaning as ‘use’; and a review of the Davidsonian conflation of imaginability and truth.

► Imaginability is the metasemantic ground of language. ► Imaginability is defined as perceptual modification and semantic aboutness. ► Psychologism, ethology, and conventionalism are indispensable perspectives. ► Linguistic performance is regulated by the ‘linguistic linkage compulsion’. ► Imaginability in Locke, Husserl, Wittgenstein, and Davidson.