Overview

This book criticizes the methodology of the recent semantics-pragmatics debate in the theory of language and proposes an alternative. It applies this methodology to argue for a traditional view against a group of “contextualists” and “pragmatists”, including Sperber and Wilson, Bach, Carston, Recanati, Neale, and many others.  The author disagrees with these theorists who hold that the meaning of the sentence in an utterance never, or hardly ever, yields its literal truth-conditional content, even after disambiguation and reference fixing; it needs to be pragmatically supplemented in context. The standard methodology of this debate is to consult intuitions. The book argues that theories should be tested against linguistic usage. Theoretical distinctions, however intuitive, need to be scientifically motivated. Also we should not be guided by Grice’s “Modified Occam’s Razor”, Ruhl’s “Monosemantic Bias”, or other such strategies for “meaning denialism”. From this novel perspective, the striking examples of context relativity that motivate contextualists and pragmatists typically exemplify semantic rather than pragmatic properties. In particular, polysemous phenomena should typically be treated as semantic ambiguity. The author argues that conventions have been overlooked, that there’s no extensive “semantic underdetermination” and that the new theoretical framework of “truth-conditional pragmatics” is a mistake.

Full Product Details

Author:   Michael Devitt
Publisher:   Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Imprint:   Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Edition:   1st ed. 2021
Volume:   29
Weight:   0.522kg
ISBN:  

9783030706555

ISBN 10:   3030706559
Pages:   326
Publication Date:   09 October 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

PREFACE CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1.1 Background1.2 Summary of Chapters CHAPTER 2: RELIANCE ON INTUITIONS:2.1 The Received View2.2 The Task?2.3 Experimental Semantics 2.4 “Cartesianism”2.5 A Priori Knowledge?2.6 Embodied Theory?2.7 Competence as a Skill2.8 Intuitions as Empirical Judgments2.9 Rejecting “Voice of Competence”2.11 Conclusion CHAPTER 3: THE SEMANTICS-PRAGMATICS DISTINCTION3.1 Introduction3.2 The Theoretical Motivation3.2.1 Human Thoughts3.2.2 Animal Communication3.2.3 Human Language3.2.4 Our Theoretical Interest in a Language3.3 Terminology3.4 Communication3.5 The Semantics-Pragmatics Dispute3.6 The Evidence3.7 Conclusion CHAPTER 4: SPEAKER MEANINGS AND INTENTIONS4.1 Intending to Refer4.1.1 Objection 1: Implausible Starting Point4.1.2 Objection 2: Incomplete4.1.3 Objection 3: Redundant4.1.4 Objection 4: Misleading4.2 Intending to Communicate4.3. Constraints on Intentions CHAPTER 5: LINGUISTIC CONVENTIONS AND LANGUAGEPART I: THE POSITION5.1 Conventions and Linguistic Meanings5.2 Linguistic ConventionsPART II: CONVENTION DENIERS5.3 Collins Against Conventions5.4 Chomsky Against Linguistic Conventions5.5 Chomsky against Common Languages5.6 Davidson, Malapropisms, Spoonerisms, and Slips CHAPTER 6: BACH AND NEALE ON “WHAT IS SAID”PART I: BACH6.1 Bach’s Notion6.2 Criticisms of Bach6.3 Bach’s ResponsePART II: NEALE6.4 Neale’s Notion6.5 Criticisms of Neale CHAPTER 7: CONFUSION OF THE METAPHYSICS OF MEANING WITH THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF INTERPRETATIONPART I: THE CONFUSION7.1 The Meaning/Interpretation Distinction7.2 Confusing Meaning and Interpretation7.3 Examples of the Confusion7.3.1 Jason Stanley and Zoltan Szabo7.3.2 Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson7.3.3 François Recanati 7.3.4 Anne Bezuidenhout7.3.5 Robert Stainton7.3.6 Kepa Korta and John Perry 7.4 A Principled Position?PART II: DEFENDING THE CONFUSION7.5 Elugardo and Stainton’s Defense7.6 Tidying Up the Defense7.7 Two Major Failings of the Defense CHAPTER 8: MODIFIED OCCAM’S RAZOR AND THE DENIAL OF LINGUISTIC MEANINGS8.1 Embracing the Razor8.2 The Falsity of the Razor (as Commonly Construed)8.3 The Explanatory Onus8.4 Objections to Semantic Polysemy8.4.1 The Failure of the tests8.4.2 Too Psychologically Demanding8.4.3 Distinguishing Polysemy From Homonymy8.4.4 Nunberg on the Arbitrariness of Meanings8.5 Bach on the Razor8.6 Bach’s “Standardization” CHAPTER 9: REFERENTIAL DESCRIPTIONS: A CASE STUDY9.1 Introduction9.2 The Argument from Convention9.3 The Incompleteness Argument Against Pragmatic Explanations9.4 Bach’s Pragmatic Defense of Russell9.5 Bach’s Response9.6 Three Further Arguments for Semantic or against Pragmatic Explanations9.7 Neale’s Illusion9.8 Conclusion CHAPTER 10: SATURATION AND PRAGMATISM’S CHALLENGE10.1 Introduction10.2 Truth-Conditional Pragmatics10.3 Meaning Eliminativism10.4 Implicit Saturation10.5 The Tyranny of Syntax10.6 Perry’s “Unarticulated Constituents” CHAPTER 11: POLYSEMY AND PRAGMATISM’S CHALLENGE11.1 Polysemy11.2 Semantic Polysemy11.3 Polysemy in Psycholinguistics                                11.3.1 “Represented and Stored”                11.3.2 An “Information-Rich” Lexicon?11.4 Objections to Semantic Polysemy11.5 Polysemy and the Experimental Evidence11.6 Whither Linguistic Pragmatism? CHAPTER 12: SUB-SENTENTIALS: PRAGMATICS OR SEMANTICS?12.1 Introduction12.2 Implicit Demonstratives12.3 The Role of Demonstrations12.4 Other Examples12.5. The Syntactic Ellipsis Objection12.5.1 Introduction12.5.2(A): The Syntactic Ellipsis Assumption12.5.3 (B): No Syntactic Ellipsis in (1) to (5)12.6. Stainton’s Other Objections12.6.1 Too Much Ambiguity12.6.2 No Explanatory Work12.6.3 Fails a Kripkean Test12.7. The Assertion of Propositional Fragments12.8 Conclusion

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Author Information

Michael Devitt is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of CUNY. He is the author of the following books: Designation (1981); Realism and Truth (1984/1991/1997); Language and Reality (with Kim Sterelny, 1987/1999); Coming to Our Senses (1996); Ignorance of Language (2006); Putting Metaphysics First (2010); Biological Essentialism (forthcoming). He has co-edited (with Richard Hanley) The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Language (2006)

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