Representation, Meaning, and C-Synonymy

This paper gives a brief critical discussion of some elements of the pragmatist view of language defended by José Zalabardo in his book Pragmatist Semantics [Zalabardo (2023)]. I argue that Zalabardo’s pragmatist theory is not clearly stronger than the other pragmatist theories already defended in the literature; partly this is because those other theories may be able to explain the same phenomena as Zalabardo’s view, and partly it is because Zalabardo’s view does not obviously explain those phenomena as well as we might hope.