Alien Structure, Language, and Maps

Abstract

Abstract This chapter continues the discussion of the relevance of ideas in the philosophy of language and linguistics to the topic of alien languages. The chapter discusses Paul Pietroski’s rejection of standard truth-conditional semantics. It discusses the project of natural language metaphysics, as carried out by for example Friederike Moltmann. It discusses Elisabeth Camp’s claim that maps have a different kind of content from ordinary linguistic representations and do not involve predication. One general point is that what may seem to be differences in content often can turn out to be mere differences in the kind of representational vehicle employed. The chapter also addresses the question of what it is for a language to presuppose a given metaphysics.