Insensitive Semantics A Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism

by Cappelen, Herman; Lepore, Ernest

• ISBN13: 9780470755792
• ISBN10: 0470755792
• Edition: 1st
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2008-01-14
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Insensitive Semantics is an overview of and contribution to the debates about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one.

• Provides detailed and wide-ranging overviews of the central positions and arguments surrounding contextualism

• Addresses broad and varied aspects of the distinction between the semantic and non-semantic content of language

• Defends a distinctive and explanatorily powerful combination of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism

• Confronts core problems which not only run to the heart of philosophy of language and linguistics, but which arise in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy as well

Author Biography

Herman Cappelen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College and the University of Oslo. He has published extensively in philosophy of language and mind, including articles in Noûs, Mind, Mind & Language, Analysis, and Synthese.

Ernie Lepore is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He is author of Meaning and Argument (revised edition, Blackwell, 2003) and, with Jerry Fodor, of Holism (Blackwell, 1991). He is editor of Truth and Interpretation (Blackwell, 1989), and co-editor, with Zenon Pylyshyn, of What is Cognitive Science? (Blackwell, 1999), as well as general editor of the Blackwell series Philosophers and Their Critics.

Table of Contents

Preface.

Acknowledgements.

1. Overview.

Part I: From Moderate to Radical Contextualism.

2. Exegesis: The Methodology of Contextualism.

3. The Instability of Context Shifting Arguments.

4. Diagnosis: Why Context Shifting Arguments are Misused.

5. The Instability of Incompleteness Arguments.

6. Digressions: Binding and Hidden Indexicals.

Part II: Refutation of Radical Contextualism.

7. Objections to Radical Contextualism (I): Fails Context Sensitivity Tests.

8. Objection to Radical Contextualism (II):Makes Communication Impossible.

9. Objections to Radical Contextualism (III): Internal Inconsistencies.

Part III: Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism.

10. Semantic Minimalism.

11. Semantics and Metaphysics.

12. Semantics and Psychology.

13. Speech Act Pluralism.

References.

Index