ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the viability of a dispositional account of the cognitive relationship between language speakers and the theory of meaning, arguing that the theory of meaning should be descriptive of speakers’ dispositions to make judgements about contents. Ascriptions of tacit knowledge of theories of meaning require, in addition to the speaker possessing certain dispositions, that the derivational structure of the axioms of the theory match or mirror certain features of the causal-explanatory structure of speakers’ competence as constituted by the underlying causal bases of their linguistic abilities. Dispositions have causal bases, dispositions and those bases are distinct and it is the bases rather than the dispositions themselves which are the causes of their manifestations. Evans stresses that the notion of disposition he invokes is to be taken in a ‘full-blooded’ sense. Evans justifies putting structure in the theory of meaning by suggesting that the theory is a theory of speakers’ linguistic competence.
