 If the sceptical argument is cogent, it seems to follow that there are no meaning-constituting facts, no facts in virtue of which linguistic expressions mean one thing rather than another. As noted above, this appears to imply the paradoxical conclusion that “the entire idea of meaning vanishes into thin air” (1982: 22). Kripke distinguishes between two broad ways in which one might attempt to avoid this conclusion (1982: 66–7). On the one hand, one might provide a straight response, by identifying some meaning-constituting fact of the sort called into question by the sceptic. The various proposals discussed briefly in  section 2  above are instances of straight responses. The two most prominent types of straight response in the literature—reductive dispositionalism and non-reductionism—are discussed in more detail in  section 4  and  section 5  below. On the other hand, one might provide a sceptical response. That is, one might concede that there are no meaning-constituting facts of the sort demanded by the sceptic but deny that this leads to a paradoxical conclusion. In this section, we shall focus on this strategy.