Good and Bad Bach

Abstract

This paper is concerned with Bach�s stand on the �semantics-pragmatics� issue. A bit of Good Bach is his skepticism about the evidential role of intuitions. Another bit is his fi rm stand against the widespread confusion of what constitutes the meanings of utterances with how hearers interpret utterances. The paper argues at length against two bits of Bad Bach. (1) There is no sound theoretical motivation for his excluding the reference fi xing of demonstratives, pronouns and names from �what-issaid�. (2) His methodology for deciding what is �semantic� is fl awed in three respects: fi rst, in its commitment to the mistaken Modifi ed Occam�s Razor; second, in its placing inappropriate syntactic constraints on conventional meanings; and, third, in explaining many regularities in usage as standardizations rather than conventionalizations. This fl awed methodology has the conservative effect of ruling out new meanings. Show more