The meaningfulness of meaning questions

Contra an expanding number of deflationary commentators on Wittgenstein, I argue that philosophical questions about meaning are meaningful and that Wi ttgenstein gave us ample reason to believe so. Deflationists are right in c laiming that Wittgenstein rejected the sceptical problem about meaning alle gedly to be found in his later writings and also right in stressing Wittgen stein's anti-reductionism. But they are wrong in taking these dismissals to entail the end of all constructive philosophizing about meaning. Rather, I argue, the rejection of the sceptical problem requires that we abandon the questions that philosophers have traditionally addressed and that we repla ce them with more appropriate ones, to which constructive answers are forth coming. However, though quietism is not the only alternative to reductionis m, the rejection of reductionism does oblige us seriously to revise our sen se of what constructive philosophy can achieve.