Change of belief or change of meaning?

Abstract

I should like to begin by noting that while I regard it as a considerable privilege that I should be addressing you at all this evening, it is to me a still greater one that I should be addressing you first rather than second. This is an order of speakers quite the reverse of what the printed program might have led you to suspect, and I want to comment on that to forestall a possible misapprehension. It is well known that the philosophy department here at the University of Western Ontario, and in particular its chairman, Robert Butts, and its Colloquium organiser, Glenn Pearce, are free creative spirits in no way restrained by the iron hand of custom. It might be thought therefore, that this reversal of speakers results from an undisciplined urge to novelty for its own sake. “Let us be the first”, you might be thinking they said to each other, “to have the commentary before rather than after the main paper”. I want to assure you that it is no such thing. We are all aware that the main speaker of the evening, Professor Sellars, has published many papers dealing in general with the topic of our colloquium, Conceptual Change, and in particular with the topic of this evening’s session, change of belief or change of meaning? All of that is to be taken as the main paper of the evening, and assumed read. My task is to comment upon it; Professor Sellars’ will then be to reply to my remarks, though the possibility cannot be ruled out that before the evening is over yet another card will have slipped from his sleeve onto the table.