An Objective Communitarian Account of Semantic Content

Communitarian accounts of semantic content have been widely rejected in the literature on the rule-following paradox and related issues, for good reason. In this paper, I offer a game-theoretic account of semantic content and focus on how it can give replies to some of the most difficult and important objections to communitarian accounts, namely (i) Boghossian’s horsey cow case, (ii) the community version of the problem of error, as well as what I will call (iii) the logical problem of error. I also show how the account can handle a recent argument in the literature, the so-called privilege argument (Guardo 2022), as well as addressing a more fundamental worry that communitarian accounts of meaning cannot result in our judgements being objective, particularly, that our judgements would be infallible on such accounts. I argue that the specifics of the account under consideration show that such worries are misguided.