The chapter is concerned with a commitment of the logical pluralist: if there are at least two correct logics, then these logics will either involve different logical vocabulary or they will assign different meanings to the shared vocabulary. A central question is how this plurality in meaning can be implemented within a pluralist framework. Pluralists typically endorse claims to the effect that (i) the connectives of the logics have different meanings or (ii) that the notion of validity employed by one logic may be relevantly different from the one employed by the other. A further important question is whether the plurality of meanings is confined to the theoretical level only or whether a corresponding plurality is postulated regarding the extra-systematic counterparts of the logical vocabulary of correct logics. I argue that both connectives pluralism and consequence pluralism are implausible when construed as pluralistic theories. Meta-contextualism–the view that the question of whether the meaning of the logical terminology is the same or different in different contexts is itself subject to semantic variability–is shown to have exceedingly radical implications.

This chapter summarises the main lessons gathered in the book. It explains that the arguments developed in the referentialist revolution, when properly understood, show that names have a Millian semantics. The main conclusions are that the metasyntactic interpretation of two-dimensionalism introduced in this book is the only form of descriptivism that remains compatible with this result, and that in turn the metasyntactic account will be compatible with an account of indexical thought inspired by David Lewis.

This chapter introduces the theoretical context for the compositional semantic framework to be developed in the book. A key innovation is to posit explicit representations of context – formally, variables for assignment functions – in the syntax and semantics of natural language. A primary focus is on a spectrum of linguistic shifting phenomena, in which the context relevant for interpretation depends on features of the linguistic environment. The proposed theory affords a standardization of quantification across domains, and an improved framework for theorizing about linguistic meaning and the role of context in interpretation. Comparisons with alternative operator-based theories are briefly considered. An outline of the subsequent chapters is presented.

This chapter applies the treatments of world-binding and assignment-binding from Chapter 3 to several examples with attitude ascriptions. Semantically modal elements such as attitude verbs are treated as introducing quantification over assignments. The account captures phenomena with intensionality, shifted interpretations of world pronouns, and local/global readings of context-sensitive expressions via general mechanisms of movement and variable binding. Topics of discussion include quantification and assignment modification in the metalanguage, de re and de dicto readings, binding with pronouns vs. traces, and shifted interpretations of modals and proper names. A speculative predicativist analysis of names is developed; bare singular uses are analyzed as predicates with an implicit choice-function pronoun.

This chapter takes stock of key developments in the book, and considers several avenues for future research.

Contextualist accounts of the Sorites Paradox are sometimes taken as claiming that vagueness just is (a form of) context-sensitivity, and that the paradox is solvable by appeal to that context-sensitivity alone.We argue that this interpretation is misleading.Certainly contextualist accounts often provide plausible diagnoses of the intuitive pull of the soritical premise, and, due to their dynamical nature, they are well-suited to explain linguistic behaviour in so-called forced-march versions of the puzzle.However, they usually have to be coupled with non-contextualist accounts in order to resolve the paradox proper.We begin by distinguishing various contextualist explanations of the appeal of the soritical premise.Then we point out three main virtues of these approaches and discusssome objections.Lastly we consider the prospects for a recent descendant of contextualism that is meant to solve the paradox proper as well as the forced march puzzle.