This chapter presents and provides motivation for a deflationary approach to the task of analyzing semantic concepts – an approach that I call “simple substitutionalism.” Simple substitutionalism is a first approximation to the approach that seems to me to be ultimately correct.

I begin with an account of Paul Horwich's theory of semantic concepts that is more comprehensive than the account offered in Chapter 1. Section II argues that Horwich's account has a couple of priceless virtues, and Section III presents an argument to the effect that, despite having these virtues, Horwich's theory is badly and irreparably flawed. Together these sections show that it is desirable to seek a theory that is structurally similar to Horwich's theory (so as to share the virtues described in Section II), but that mobilizes a more powerful conceptual framework (so as to be immune to the objection formulated in Section III). Sections IV and V describe an alternative version of deflationism that meets these conditions. This alternative view, simple substitutionalism, is further elaborated in Section VI, and is defended against two particularly pressing objections in Sections VII–IX. Two appendices spell out the reasons for my claims about the virtues of simple substitutionalism in some detail.

In the present chapter I will be concerned only to explain that portion of our semantic thought and talk that is concerned with nonindexical concepts and nonindexical thoughts. This is a substantial restriction.