Author: Administrador
Company: Universitat de Barcelona

Normativism and the Mental:

	A Problem of Language Individuation

.  I wish to thank Tyler Burge, Keith Donnellan, David Kaplan, John Perry, John Pollock, François Recanati, Ed Stabler, the members of the UCLA Philosophy Department Colloquium, the members of the Philosophy Department at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and the members of the Research Group on Cognition of the CREA, for useful criticism and stimulating discussions.  They should not all be assumed to endorse my conclusions. 
The paper was written at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the Centre de Recherche en Epistemologie Appliquee in Paris.  I am grateful to both institutions, and to the Government of France and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, for their support.

	Adèle Mercier
	UCLA & Stanford (CSLI)

My aim in this paper is two-fold.  I start by contrasting three versions of externalist arguments based on etiological considerations, whose differences are not often appreciated.  My purpose in doing so is to isolate one of these versions of externalism as most supportive of current anti-individualist attitudes toward the mental.  My second aim is to show that this version, which I call (for reasons soon to be clear) Dialectal Etiology, is marred to a greater extent than the other two by an important problem of language individuation.

.  In a personal communication, John Pollock maintains that no version of Communal Etiology withstands my objections, in particular, not Scientific Etiology.  For the moment, I am content to make the weaker claim and direct my criticism just or mostly to Dialectal Etiology.  For a criticism of Scientific Etiology along the lines that Pollock proposes, see my "Indexicality and the Homonymy View:  Is 'Water' an Indexical Term?" (forthcoming).

We can first distinguish two broad sorts of externalist arguments by their respective metaphysical commitments.  One sort, which I call Natural Etiology, is committed to realism.  Roughly, this is the view that natural kinds are (to borrow the expression from Wiggins) "self-individuating," or, if we can make sense of that, individuated by Nature.  Another sort, which I call Communal Etiology, is committed instead to one or another form of conceptual relativism.  Roughly, this is the view that kinds are individuated by humans, and hence that kind-individuation is relative to culture, community, etc.  (Hence the name.)  
Among Communal Etiological views, we can further distinguish  

two sub-sorts, according to the domain over which the conceptual relativism is taken to apply.  One such view we can call Scientific Etiology.  Roughly, this is the view that scientific kinds are individuated by The Scientific Community.  This view has nothing to say about kinds other than those denoted by terms in the language of Science.  The second Communal view is what we call Dialectal Etiology.  Roughly, this is the view that kinds are individuated by The Linguistic Community.  This view is much broader than its Scientific counterpart, extending as it does to kinds of all kinds.  (Nomenclature here is chosen mostly for mnemonic value).  

.  I am grateful to John Pollock for improvements on my terminology.

	*  *  *
Natural Etiology is the view that we get from "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" by substituting metaphysical realism to Putnam's conceptual relativism.  This is the following naive view (not the sophisticated one that is actually Putnam's):  
   Take the word 'water' as it functions in my idiolect, namely as a label for the actual stuff flowing in rivers and lakes, with which I am causally related.  'Water,' in my idiolect, means this stuff.  Were the world different, and were I, knowingly or unbeknownst to me, causally related to some different substance, then (all else being equal) 'water' in my idiolect would mean that stuff.
   Now scientists know, but I don't, what this stuff 
is.  They know that it's H2O.  That is, scientists know something about the referent of my word that I don't know.  They know that I am causally related to H2O, and that I have never been causally related to the substance XYZ, a substance which, had I been causally related to it, and left to my own devices, I would have found indistinguishable from H2O.  They know this because XYZ does not exist (or exists only in a vial locked up in their laboratory, or in the abstract).  To the extent that what I want is more of the stuff with which I have causally interacted before, what I want cannot be XYZ.  So scientists understand better than I do the satisfaction conditions of my request for water, in this sense that they know that what I want is H2O and cannot be XYZ.  

.  Ignore for now --what is Putnam's real point-- that the same stuff might have been analyzed differently had our scientific theories been different.  Ignore also that, as a consequence, what would have counted as falling in the extension of the kind term 'water' would then have varied accordingly.  Assume if you will that natural kinds are metaphysically real, that is, objective "from the point of view of the universe" as the phrase goes.

   I defer to scientists, on this view, not to fix the reference of my terms (the reference is fixed by the causal relation to the stuff to which the word is applied), nor to individuate the stuff (the stuff is individuated by Nature), but just to explicate the nature of the stuff. 

There is something beyond the merely naive in this naive view.  This sort of Natural Externalism exploits the pervasiveness of ostension in grounding reference in natural 
language.  It was indeed importantly insightful of Putnam to notice that there is "an unnoticed indexical component" in natural kind terms, though perhaps a "demonstrative component" would have been a more felicitous description.  What 'water' means as we use the word depends on what the stuff is to which we apply the word, in some of the same ways that what 'this' refers to as we use the word depends on what is being ostended by the person using it. 

.  Putnam's claim that natural kind terms have an indexical component has been challenged forcefully by Burge [cf. OB, pp.103-5].  Burge argues that, while it is part of the semantic function of mainstream indexicals such as 'I,' 'you,' 'now' and so on, to undergo shifts of reference, natural kind terms undergo referential shifts only at the expense of changing their semantic functions altogether.  
     However the fact, if it is one, that natural kind terms belong to a different semantic class than that of mainstream indexicals does not conflict with the claim that the reference of natural kind terms (as of other terms) is fixed partly by ostention.

But in the same way that when I use 'this,' there is always the possibility that someone understands what this is, its nature, better than I do, there is always the possibility that someone understands better than I do the kinds ostended by the natural kind terms that I use.  If anti-individualism about the mental is vindicated simply by the sort of externalism presupposed by our use of ostension, then it is as interesting as it is provocative, and we have to admit that it is hardly provocative.  

More provocative is the externalist theory of the mental argued for, in different ways, in Putnam and Burge.  This is the view that the meanings or extensions of our words (for Putnam), as well as the extensions of our concepts (for Burge), are fixed by our connection to communal norms.  The words or concepts of an individual are to be individuated by reference to the norms of the linguistic or epistemic community to which the individual belongs.  This is the view we call Communal Etiology.  
Communal Etiology differs crucially from Natural Etiology --where a connection is postulated between an individual and Nature (more precisely, a kind individuated by Nature)-- in involving a connection postulated to hold between an individual and the minds of other people.  It makes correspondingly more interesting claims in the direction of anti-individualism about the mental, since it does not rest the argument for externalism upon (individually individuatable) acts of ostension but rather upon (non-individually individuatable) normative commitments.
Communal Etiological views are themselves of two relevantly different kinds which we illustrate with the following examples, adapted from the thought-experiments in Putnam [MM] and Burge [IM], respectively.  

Example One:  Scientific Etiology
   There is a scientific practice, our Actual Science (AS), according to which atomic constitution is the crucial individuative feature of chemical kinds.  Our AS analyzes the stuff flowing in rivers and lakes in the light of its ontological categories, and discovers that it is composed of H2O.  Hence AS countenances as water all and only compounds of H2O, give or take impurities.  In the language of AS, 'water' means H2O.  So XYZ (which doesn't even contain H2O) does not count as water.  

   Our practice might have been different.  It might have been the (unlikely) counterfactual practice, CS, in which, for example, plant-sustainability, transparency, and like functional and phenomenological properties, were among the crucial individuative features of chemical kinds.  CS would have analyzed the stuff flowing in rivers and lakes in the light of its ontological categories, discovered its properties, and hence countenanced as water all and only such-propertied liquids.  In the language of CS, 'water' would have meant plant-sustainable, transparent, etc, liquid.  So XYZ, had it existed, would have counted as water.  Different theories, different kinds.
   Now, imagine me pointing to XYZ and thinking:  "This is water."  Given our actual scientific practice, the belief I hold is a false one.  Had our practice been the counterfactual practice, the belief I would have held would have been true.  Different scientific commitments, different thoughts. 

Example Two: Dialectal Etiology
   There is a community which speaks a language, French (FR), countenancing a word 'sofa' which applies all and only to things of the sort actually called sofas in English.  There might be another community speaking a language, Twench (TW), which is just like French, except whose word 'sofa' applies all and only to any 
sort of thing used to sit upon in a living room.  There is no (single) word in English that actually denotes the kind of which all these objects are instances.  (Let's call such a kind 'safo.')  'Sofa' in Twench thus denotes a kind (safos) of which 'sofa' in French merely denotes a subkind.  Different languages, different kinds.

   Imagine a living room:  it contains chairs, armchairs, floor pillows, other pieces of furniture comfortable to human bodies in sitting position, but nothing that actual speakers of English would call a sofa.   
   Now, about this living room, I say in French (translating):  "I have sofas in my living room."  The belief I have expressed about the current state of my living room is false.  But if a Twench speaker, knowing all I know about the current state of the living room, said of it (translating) "I have sofas in my living room," the Twench speaker would be expressing a true belief.  Had I been a Twench speaker, I would have expressed that true belief too.  Different linguistic commitments, different thoughts. 

Both examples, on the face of it, are appreciably parallel.  In both, the interpretation of the thought contents of an individual is mediated by the epistemic practices of the 
community to which the individual belongs.  This is justified, according to Burge, because "People are frequently held, and hold themselves, to the standards of their community when misuse or misunderstanding are at issue" [Burge, IM, p.90].  
According to Communal Etiology, I defer to the community (or to relevant experts in the community), not just to explicate the respective natures of water and of sofas.  I defer to the community to frame those natures, that is, to fix the extensions of those terms by determining what is to count as belonging to the kind water and what is to count as belonging to the kind sofa.  The role of kind-individuation previously accorded to Nature is here handed over to the Community, as the commitment to metaphysical realism makes way for a commitment to what Putnam calls his "pragmatic realism."  

Since it is the community which individuates the kinds to which my words refer, it is the community which fixes the referential boundaries of my kind terms.  Hence, the community knows better than I which instances fall in the extension of my own kind terms. 
Underlying Communal Etiology is the view that when an individual reaches a certain degree of responsibility to the communal practice, or a responsibility to the precepts of the language of the community --so Burge excludes children and foreigners, for example [cf.IM]-- this sanctions the appeal to a principle of literal interpretation in interpreting the thoughts 
of individuals on the basis of what they say.
   There is a methodological bias in favor of taking natural discourse literally, other things being equal.  For example, unless there are clear reasons for construing discourse as ambiguous, elliptical or involving special idioms, we should not so construe it.  Literal interpretation is ceteris paribus preferred.  [Burge, IM, pp.87-8]
And it is clear from the fact that literal interpretation is required by an individual's responsibility to the precepts of the language that literal interpretation means:  interpretation in accordance with the precepts of the language.  
Now, in order to interpret an expression literally, it is of course necessary to know what the expression means in the language.  We know that the same expression (same word-form) can mean different things in different languages, as does for example the word-form 'sofa.'  So before we can use an expression to interpret its user's thoughts, we have to know on the basis of which language to interpret the expression, or to which linguistic or epistemic community the user of the expression belongs.  
What I want to do is raise the very simple question:  How do we know that?  

I want to point out, in particular, how much more difficult this question is to answer on the Dialectal Etiological picture 
than on either the Natural or the Scientific Etiological pictures.  Consequently, those so inclined can maintain strongly held externalist intuitions about natural and scientific kind terms without fear of commitment to the sweeping anti-individualist view of the mental implied by Dialectal Etiology.
One currently dominant answer to our question assigns an individual to a community by virtue of the individual's intentions to comply with certain communal norms.  This is the view we call Normativism.  
We get a better understanding of normativism by looking at the circumstances under which individuals are exempt from the bias favoring a literal interpretation of their words.  
   A person born and bred in the parent community might simply decide (unilaterally) [...] to fashion his own usage with regard to particular words, self-consciously opting out of the parent community's conventions in these particulars.  In such a case, members of the parent community would not, and should not, attribute mental contents to him on the basis of homophonic construal of his words.  Here the individual's intentions or attitudes toward communal conventions and communal conceptions seem more important than the causal antecedents of his transactions with a word.  [Burge, IM, p.114, italics mine]

Normativism is consistent with individuals having some latitude in choosing which communal norms by which to abide, so that the principle of literal interpretation does not apply in cases of deliberate, self-conscious opting out.  But except in these cases (and in the cases of children and foreigners), we are to interpret individuals' words, and attribute thoughts to them, by reference to the communal norms by which they intend to abide.
A refinement of normativism is offered by Kaplan, who suggests that this intention to abide not be interpreted as the intention to abide by the norm of the person from whom one learned, or first learned, the word, but rather as the intention to use the word with its meaning [AT, p.602].  My intention is to abide by the communal norm.  
On the refined view, even if everybody with whom I had transacted in acquiring a word happened not to have used the word with its meaning, or happened not to have used the word of the community, my intention could still be to do so.  From this it follows that the connection between the norm (the word) and the intention to abide that I have toward it, is not a function of any actual transactions I have with any words.  The etiological connection I have is to a community, and my intentions intend its norms (its words) whether or not I am ever causally related to these norms any more concretely than by my desire to conform to the community.  This makes it all the more crucial to know which community it is to which I am connected, or with which I intend to conform, since the words with which I actually interact might 
all fail to correspond to the norms with which I intend to conform.  

A refinement along similar lines can be inferred from Burge's views concerning persuasion.  My intention in using the word 'sofa' is not to abide by the meaning of the word assigned to it by just anybody in causal transaction with whom I might have acquired that word (that word-form).  My intention is, rather, to abide by the word 'sofa' that is used by those who are the most persuasive --"the most competent," according to Burge-- about sofas.  I intend the word 'sofa' of the experts, of the interior decorators, let us say.
The problem plaguing this view is one that we can call (just to give it a name) the problem of Dialectal Overlap.  Normativism requires an appeal to intentions whose conditions of well-formedness can be met only at the cost of denying dialectal overlap, or so I shall argue.  And since dialectal overlap is a mainstay of normal language change, and language change is a fact with which any theory has to contend, normativism is in serious conceptual trouble.   
On the normativist view, it is my intention to abide by my community's standards which serves to individuate which of the two words: 'sofa_FR' or 'sofa_TW,' is the word I am using when I utter "sofa."  The thought-experiment tacitly presupposes that which word I use is self-evident:  since I speak French, it is the former;  had I spoken Twench, it would have been the latter.  The thought-experiment takes entirely for granted that it is the French community to which I am committed.  How could it be otherwise, since the Twench community does not exist for me to which to be committed?  
Barring the case where I "deliberately and self-consciously" opt out of the French convention in some particular, and hence set out, self-aware, to invent Twench myself, I am to be held, it is assumed without apparent problem, to the standards of the French community when misuse or misunderstandings are at issue. 

There is a good deal of tension, I wish to suggest, between such presuppositions and the fact that natural languages (and hence linguistic communities) are in a constant, natural, but unconscious state of change.  The tension affects Dialectal Etiology specifically.  Whereas Science abhors disagreement and strives for singularity, the evolution of language is locked inexorably into diversification.
Consider an important similarity between Natural Etiology and the Scientific version of Communal Etiology characterized under Example One above.  Whether metaphysical realism is true and hence kinds are individuated by Nature, or whether Putnam is right and hence scientific kinds are individuated by Science, either way, in the actual world (at least in the present), it's easy to assign an individual to a set of normative commitments, or to a language.  There is, ordinarily speaking, only one language to choose from:  'the language of Nature' on the metaphysical realist picture, 'the language of Science' on the "pragmatic realist" picture.  This is the sense in which, at least in its scientific usage, the word 'water' is the same word in every actual natural language:  it's the word that denotes H2O (on the Science view) or the word that denotes whatever objective kind it is "from the point of view of the Universe" to which the stuff that flows in rivers and lakes belongs (on the Nature view).  Either way, there is only one Nature (on the metaphysical realist picture) and there is only one dominant scientific paradigm (on the pragmatic realist picture) to which to commit everyone using the term 'water.'

This makes these cases significantly different from the Dialectal Etiological view characterized under Example Two above.  Though the languages in Burge's examples are presented for heuristic reasons as counterfactual counterparts, the examples in fact are plausibly interpretable as simply representing actual dialectal diversity.  With respect to kind terms like 'sofa,' there are in the actual world many coinhabiting languages.  It is indeed a defining feature of dialectal variation that two languages can be alike (as are French and Twench) except with respect to some property such as the extension of one or more words. 
So when you learn the word 'sofa' and intend to abide by its meaning, which 'sofa' is it that you have learned?:  'sofa_FR'? or 'sofa_TW'?  Which dialect is it towards which your intention is directed?  
It's not as if there were fences around linguistic communities such that you could infer to which community you belong just by looking around you.  You just hear 'sofa' in the street (by someone, remember, who might not master any normative precept) and you want to abide by the normative precept of your community in using it yourself.  
As long as there is only one language to choose from, as in both versions of Putnam's case, that's easy:  the world you're in, or the dominant scientific paradigm, individuates your language.  The problem is when there is more than one language from which to choose.  But on a realistic picture of natural language, with respect to certain kind terms (especially those, like 'sofa,' which have no crucial role to play in our quest for a unified theory of the world), there is always at least potentially more than one language from which to choose.  Any claim to the contrary flies in the face of Babel.

Now, in order for my intention to use a word with its meaning to be a well-formed intention, it has to be the case that the word about which I have that intention is indeed one word.  It can't be the case, for instance, that everybody is in fact using the same word-form with different meanings; for then the word about which I take myself to have an intention is nothing over and above a set of homonyms indistinguishable to me.  In such a limit case, or even in cases of lesser prolificacy, absent a communal notion, my intention to abide by the meaning of the word would not be --could not be-- a well-formed intention.  A condition of the well-formedness of my intention to abide by the communal precept is that there be a communal precept, in the sense of one per dialect (genuine homonyms, eg. 'bank,' notwithstanding).  Indeed, that is precisely how we individuate dialects.  Different word meanings, different dialects.
This homonymical individuation of dialects is precisely the view tacitly endorsed by Burge in his complaint against Putnam's view that 'water' is an indexical term (cf. MM, p.234):  
   The fact that Twin-Earthians apply 'water' to XYZ is not a reflection of a shift in extension of an indexical expression with a fixed linguistic (English) meaning, but of a shift in meaning between one language, and linguistic community, and another.  [IM,p.105]
By this principle of dialect individuation, persuasive decorators who differ on the meaning of the word 'sofa' belong to different communities.  They speak a different dialect. 

Now as we have seen, my intention in using the word 'sofa' is not the intention of meaning by 'sofa' what this (even my favorite) decorator means by 'sofa.'  My intention is to abide by the concept of, or use the same word as, the persuasive decorating community (as Burge would put it), or to use the right word 'sofa' (as Kaplan would put it).  But by "decorating community" or "right word 'sofa'," we don't mean --we can't mean-- just the actual decorators that we customarily find persuasive, or the word that these people actually use.  Our intention is not an intention to abide by those people.  For nothing guarantees, first, that these people are correct about the communal precept governing sofas.  And secondly, nothing guarantees that they all speak the same dialect and hence are using and intending to use the same word 'sofa.'
The question must then be raised:  What makes the community mean what it means?  What makes some word the word of the community?  Another way of formulating this question is:  What makes the community --or the association of actual people by whose judgments I intend to abide and whom I would find equally persuasive with respect to a given word or concept-- a community --that is, an association of people sharing the same concept or using the same word?  What guarantees that those on whom I would rely (the experts) all speak the same language?
Suppose that 'sofa_FR' and 'sofa_TW,' though differing in extension and hence belonging to distinct dialects, differed in such a way that their applications didn't easily reveal the differences in their respective extension.  For instance, suppose that 'sofa_FR' denoted things of the kinds:  A,B,C,D,E, while 'sofa_TW' denoted things of the kinds:  B,C,D,E,F.  Suppose furthermore that things of the kinds A and F were in fact scarce in the universe, such that the applications of 'sofa_FR' and 'sofa_TW' that most anyone was likely to encounter were ones where the words were applied de facto and indistinguishably to things of the same kinds, namely:  B,C,D,E.  In such unhappy circumstances, we would fail to notice that not all decorators spoke the same dialect, or belonged to the same community.

If we could have access to the word used by each decorator independently of any community, that is, if we could individuate each decorator's language individualistically, then we could construct communities that would guarantee word-commonality among their members:  anybody using the word 'sofa_FR' belongs to the French speakers, those using 'sofa_TW' belong to the Twench speakers, and so on.  In this way, we could distinguish the French decorators from the Twench decorators by looking inside their heads, as it were.
But the normativist claim is precisely that an individual's words cannot be individuated independently of the community.  Of course, if I can construct the community by whose precepts I intend to abide, by grouping together all and only like-worded people (in particular, those who share my word), then I can bypass the community altogether;  my intention merely becomes one of abiding by the precepts of the community of people all of whom have my precept --hardly a communalist stance.
But how do we assure word-commonality among members of a community?  How do we individuate communities of decorators in such a way as to guarantee that the decorators on whom I rely all belong to a single community --a condition of the well-formedness of my intention to abide by them?  How do we guarantee that they are not instead, unbeknownst to themselves as well as to me, speakers of different but yet undistinguished dialects --in which case my intention towards them is ill-formed?  
I now want to point out that the very description of the situation required to fulfill the well-formedness condition on my intention, constitutes a reductio of any (realistic) explanation of language change.
Suppose it were the case that the only way for any decorators to have in their vocabulary any homonym of 'sofa' were for them to have uniformly the same word 'sofa.'  Then anyone who is a decorator would ipso facto speak the same language (use the same word) as anyone else who is a decorator.  In such a case, it wouldn't matter that I might find any number of decorators equally persuasive, or that my intention intends them all indiscriminately, since they would all be using the same word, or sharing the same concept.

So let us imagine an Original Decorator --or if you prefer, an Original Homogeneous Decorating Community-- dubbing the first instance ever of the word 'sofa.'  We identify it as 'sofa_R1' to distinguish it from future possible competing homonyms.
On the normativist picture, anyone who learns 'sofa' is committed to complying with 'sofa_R1,' since it is the only word 'sofa' anywhere, hence the only word 'sofa' in the community.  A fortiori, any decorator who says 'sofa' means 'sofa_R1.'  For being a decorator is, among other things, mastering the word 'sofa_R1,' that is, knowing the communal convention which governs the use of that term.  
Mastering the word 'sofa_R1' implies knowing that it means this concept:  SOFA_R1, and not some other possible concept:  say, SOFA_R2.  A would-be decorator who can't discriminate the actual word 'sofa_R1' from the possible word 'sofa_R2' is in the same position as I am, namely, not a decorator.  Our intention to abide by the concepts of decorators is an intention to abide by the concepts of good decorators, that is, decorators who can be trusted to know the conventions governing the use of their terms, and not bad decorators, like me, who can't.
The normativist story leads to the conclusion that a perversion such as 'sofa_R2' could not penetrate the community of decorators.  There is no way on a normativist model to introduce a 'sofa_R2'-using person into the community of decorators by whose precepts I intend to abide.  This is so for two reasons.

First, suppose someone deliberately and self-consciously opts out of the communal convention 'sofa_R1' and invents instead 'sofa_R2.'  That person is not a decorator:  decorators --the original decorators-- master the communal convention and hence use 'sofa_R1.'  That's what it's like to be a decorator, to speak that language.  The opter-out is at best a Twecorator, that is, one who speaks a different decorating dialect.
Now, my intention in using 'sofa' is to comply with the norm.  Surely which norm it is with which I intend to comply remains unaffected by the fact that someone, somewhere opts out of the traditional convention to invent a new one.  So I can be interpreted as using 'sofa_R2' when I say "sofa" only if I too deliberately and consciously opt out of the traditional norm in favor of the innovative one.  My change of allegiance from the traditional to the innovative decorating community must also be conscious and deliberate.
Second, there is no way, on this model, for a decorator to fall upon 'sofa_R2' by mistake, that is, not consciously and deliberately.  That's because, failing conscious and deliberate opting out of the communal convention of decorators, the behaviour of anybody who shares the commitment to abide by the decorators' communal convention --so a fortiori any decorator's behaviour-- is to be individuated by reference to that convention.  The most one can say about a decorator who falls upon 'sofa_R2' by mistake, as I put it, is that such a decorator is simply engaging in incompetent 'sofa_R1' behaviour.  Nothing decorators can do can transform their 'sofa_R1'-using behaviour into 'sofa_R2'-using behaviour.  That's, again, because their behaviour is to be individuated by their intentions to abide, and, in the absence of conscious opting out, their intention is to be decorators.  

What is wrong with this consequence of normativism is that it flies in the face of garden variety semantic drift.  When I say 'sofa,' I intend to be using the word 'sofa' with its meaning, the meaning it has in the community of decorators who master the convention governing its use.  And the people from whom I learned my word 'sofa' intended to be using the word 'sofa' with its meaning, the meaning it has in the community of decorators who master the convention governing its use.  And the people from whom these people learned their word 'sofa' intended to be using the word 'sofa'..., and so on.  And whenever I apply the word 'sofa' to anything, my behaviour is to be individuated, and hence my usage judged as more or less competent, relative to the usage of those at the end of this intentional chain.  Unless the chain is interrupted by some deliberate departure, according to the normativist, we are all engaged in the same (more or less competent) 'sofa_R1'-using behaviour.
Now, since none of the people along this transactional chain ever consciously or deliberately opted out of Arabic conventions anywhere along the way, I hate to tell you this, but most of the people we think of as decorators aren't decorators, and most of the things we think of as sofas aren't sofas.  For the word 'sofa' to which we are committed via a chain which has at no time been deliberately or self-consciously broken denotes (I'm not making this up) a cushion for a camel saddle.
Nor will it do for you now to opt consciously out of Arabic conventions, now that you know (and don't appreciate) that to which your own intention has committed you.  That's not following your normative intentions:  That's picking and choosing ways of individuating the intention you are following (the community to which you belong) based on what each such way commits you to meaning, which amounts to choosing your own meaning.  But the whole point of this view is that you don't choose your own meaning:  Your intention to abide chooses it for you.  Even the decorators can't choose their own meaning, for then the bad decorators become decorators too, and screw us all up (as apparently ours have).

Unless we follow the chain back to the Original Decorator, we can't guarantee that the community of decorators by which we intend to abide has maintained its homogeneity (in other words, that there is such a community).  But the homogeneity of the community is essential to the well-formedness of our intention to abide by it.
Our word 'sofa' is a classic victim of the very commonplace phenomenon of semantic shift.  Here is another illustration which nicely reveals the process of drift.
In Middle English, the word 'bead' meant prayer (from Old English 'biddan,' to pray --cf. the current verb 'to bid').  And praying folk used rosaries to "count their beads."  Now, at least one person, but probably many, misunderstood (or only partially understood) what the praying folk were doing (ie. counting their prayers) and misunderstood (or only partially understood) the priests who explained:  "They are counting their beads."  What they understood, or, if you don't like that way of putting it, what they took the praying folk to be doing, is counting the little doodads on the rosary.  Perhaps they even understood, or took, the very act of praying to consist in counting doodads on a rosary, in which case they lacked our concept of praying altogether.
The normativist is right to say that the people mistook (or misunderstood) the praying folk to be counting doodads on the rosary.  The praying folk are counting prayers, not doodads.  Imagine an anthropologist making that kind of mistake:  ("Every Sunday the natives gather and count doodads.")!
But the people are not simply failing to understand the situation correctly.  They are not just understanding the word 'bead' incompetently.  They don't know the word 'bead.'  If they did, they wouldn't misunderstand the situation.  The priests, those who know the word 'bead,' don't misunderstand the situation.

The people are in the circumstances of acquiring a word 'bead,' which is merely a homonym of the word 'bead.'  The word they are (unbeknownst to all) acquiring (inventing, or discovering) is the word 'bead_R2.'  This is the word they now have in their language.
It is the fact that they have this word and not the original word 'bead' which explains why they nonchalantly utter such otherwise semantically anomalous sentences as:
I wish I had a handful of colorful shiny beads.
It is the same fact which explains why it would be semantically anomalous for us today to utter:  
* I recited my beads very fervently this morning.
Our word is the same word as their (the misinterpreters') word.  And it is just as inappropriate to interpret them literally as meaning PRAYER by 'bead' than it would be thus to interpret us.
It is essential to countenance a change of word at some point, since the English word 'bead' comes uninterruptedly from the Middle English word 'bead,' and the latter does but the former does not mean PRAYER.  But if this change does not occur at the time the mistake is originally made, (on the grounds that the words of the person making the mistake should be individuated by reference to the words of the community from whom the person learned the words), then the change can never occur.  This is indeed how we all got stuck being deluded about having sofas in our living rooms.  

Normativism erects "the most competent speakers" as the standard of individuation for a language.  In doing so, it sets up a situation where the language can change, or, more precisely, where it can be decreed that a language change has taken place or a dialect split has occurred, only if the most competent speakers change their linguistic behaviour.  The problem with the structure of this argument is that unless and until the most competent speakers change their behaviour (their language), everyone's behaviour (everyone's language) is to be individuated by reference to the most competent speaker's behaviour (by reference to their language):  because it is that to which everyone's intentions are directed.
But save in the very marginal cases of Shakespearean solecisms and other such fringe events, natural language changes are not produced by conscious, deliberate optings out of communal conventions.  Language changes, by and large, are caused by mistakes.  People intend to abide by the word of their community, but they don't:  And in not doing so, they initiate a new word.  
But the most competent users are precisely those who do not make mistakes.  At least the people whom we entrust with the preservation of the standard, the people by whose precepts we intend to abide, don't make mistakes.  They can't make mistakes.  If they make mistakes, then they aren't the competent users by whose precepts we intend to abide.  Remember:  we don't intend to abide by any old so-called decorator's word 'sofa' (or concept of sofa).  We intend to abide by the good decorators' word 'sofa' (or concept of sofa).  But good is the decorator who does not make mistakes about the meaning of the word 'sofa'!

Now in actual fact, we all admit that the word 'sofa' has undergone a semantic shift since its inception.  What this semantic shift shows is that, in explaining what we mean today by 'sofa,' the intentional chain picture of the transmission of meaning which is at the core of the normativist view, does not always work by plugging us into the original dubbing of 'sofa.'  Sometimes, due to various mistakes that can infect the chain in various ways, like the original mistaking the household divan as falling in the extension of 'sofa,' we end up connected to a referent other than that originally dubbed, for instance, to sofas rather than to camel cushions. 
Another way of stating this is to say that at the time of the mistake, a homonym of the original 'sofa' was created, one denoting sofas, and it is the latter homonym to which we are intentionally connected.  The mistake has initiated a new chain.  And we all have the intuition that it is this new chain by which we are now committed to abide.
But normativism is completely at odds with our intuitions here.  For the person who committed the initial mistake belonged to a linguistic community in which 'sofa' denoted camel cushions.  Indeed, that's precisely why that person made a mistake.  How did we then end up exempt from the norms of that community?  Why aren't we simply replicating the same mistake?  After all, we have the same intention to comply as the person who made the mistake, namely to abide by the communal norm, to use the right word 'sofa.'  In particular, surely one intention we do not have is the intention to abide by whatever word 'sofa' is being created by the mistaken person.  How do we then end up correctly denoting sofas by 'sofa'?

Did the person who committed the mistake actually found a new linguistic community, one in which 'sofa_R2' has replaced 'sofa_R1,' and one to which we now belong?  (But how did our allegiance change without our awareness?)  If this is so, or even if the person both made a mistake and founded a new linguistic community, it is still the case that the founder of the new language is speaking the new language quite unintentionally.  So there exists at least one language that cannot be individuated by the intentions to comply of its speaker.  To find out what the word 'sofa' means in this new language, to find out which word 'sofa_R2' is, there is no one to consult other than the person who inadvertently brought it into existence.  There are only the person's subjective referential intentions to consult, not the person's intentions to comply with any standard.
Normativism runs into problems precisely at the moment that the mistake is made.  Language changes take place long before they are noticed, and long before they become integrated into any self-conscious normative standards.  Indeed, it is a precondition of the normativisation of a linguistic change that the same mistake occur independently in the idiolects of several people.  
There is an important gap between the occurrence of a change in a language, and the decree that a change has occurred.  Changing a language is not, by and large, the conscious, deliberate act that it would have to be in order to be produced by the most competent speakers.  The decree, it is true, is allowed only to experts, who typically endorse a change only once it is widespread, and more often than not as a desperate admission of their failure to curtail it.  But it is the incompetent, to borrow that terminology from the normativist, who cause the language to drift. 
Dialectal Etiology purports to avoid semantic indeterminacy by having the extensions of an individual's words or concepts fixed by communal norms, themselves fixed by communities of experts.  In so doing, it hypostasizes problems of idiolect individuation to problems about the individuation of expert communities, and hence of the communal norms these support.  While individuating expert communities may be moderately feasible in self-reflective enterprises like the developped sciences, individuating communities of natural language users is complicated by the constant semantic drift driven by the creative linguistic genius in all of us.

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