Knowing Way Too Much: A Case Against Semantic Phenomenology

Abstract

Proponents of so called “semantic phenomenology” claim that we are able to hear meanings when we hear meaningful utterances. Recently, Philip Goff has proposed his interpretation of semantic phenomenology that leads to the conclusion that the sceptical problem posed by Saul Kripke in his Wittgenstein on rules and private language must be solvable. My aim in this chapter is to question this view by showing that the way Goff conceives the epistemology of meanings is not compatible with the basic intuition about the possibility of linguistic error. Consequently, we cannot rightly say that our phenomenal experiences represent meanings. The conclusion is that the existence of the conscious phenomena described by semantic phenomenology is irrelevant to the ontological problem of existence of rules and meanings. At the end, I sketch an alternative picture of the role played by conscious experience in our use of language.