CRS might suggest that this sort of categorizations plays a role within a proto-biology of the natural world, according to which cats are animals, that are similar in their internal make-up, with similar organs arranged similarly, with similar more or less specified behaviors, this proto-.
Sometimes people seem to categorize things in terms of function, artifacts like knives, watches, and pencils, for example. Parts of artifacts are also often categorized functionally, for example, the steering wheel and brakes of a car. CRS might suppose that the content of such categorizations depends in part on the way they facilitate the appropriate use of such artifacts.
Parts of living things are often categorized functionally, for example, eyes, hearts, and lungs. People are classified functionally as having certain occupations, as doctors, farmers, soldiers, teachers, and burglars. Such functional categorizations facilitate understanding of what things do and how they work. Functional categorizations connect with evaluation and CRS might treat such connections as important to the meanings of the functional categories and the evaluational concepts. A good X is an X that functions well.
Good eyes are good for seeing. A good knife cuts well. A cars brakes are good if they enable the car to stop quickly. A good safe-cracker is quick and quiet at getting a safe open. There is something wrong with an X that does not function well. An X ought to function in a certain way.
There is something wrong with a teacher whose students do not learn. A bad farmer does not do well at farming. An X that does not function well is not a full or good X. A knife that doesnt cut is not a good knife. A good teacher is one who inspires students to learn. These same conceptual connections apply also to evaluations of people as people: a coward is not a full or good person, for example. Of course, it is less clear in the moral case how to treat being a person as a functional role.
We note some complications about functional classifications in the next section, below. Investigating Conceptual Role We have now described some of the ways we use representations to think with. We will mention others as we go along. CRS is concerned with the various roles that aspects of our representations play in such thinking, supposing that the content of those representations is determined by these roles.
For example, one aspect of Mabels use of concepts is her firm belief that all cats are animals. Other aspects include her firm beliefs that there are cats now, there have been cats in the past, and there will be cats in the future. Another aspect is the way she. In order to assess the relative importance of these aspects of Mabels use we might ask her how she would describe the imaginary discovery that all the things that people like Mabel have ever called cats are really radio-controlled robots from Mars Putnam , Unger In this kind of example, the way that the thinker describes certain imaginary possibilities is itself an aspect of the thinkers use of the concept.
Rather than putting the point in terms of evidence, we could say that the way in which Mabel describes certain imagined cases plausibly makes an certain contribution to the content of her concept.
We do not consider here the different question of the possible relevance to content of what Mabel would do if the imagined cases became actual. A similar issue arises about Mabels concept of a witch. Mabel applies this concept to various people and also accepts some general views about witchcraft, including the view that witches have magical powers of certain specified sorts. We can ask Mabel how she would describe the possible discovery that no one has the relevant magical powers.
Would she describe this as showing that there are no witches or as showing that witches do not after all have magical powers? If Mabel says that this sort of discovery would show that there are no witches, that is some evidence that her acceptance of the general views is more important to the content of her concept of a witch than her judgments that various people are witches. In sum, her characterization of such imagined cases might show that Mabels acceptance of certain theoretical assumptions is more central to the content of her concept of a witch than it is to the content of her concept of a cat.
So, another way in which CRS might study how conceptual role determines meaning is to see how it might determine good translation.
This too is a useful heuristic. Unger, , discusses some of the factors involved in ordinary judgments about these and other more complicated possibilities. If Mabel applies certain words to objects on the basis of perception in ways that match your applications of your color terminology, that may be a reason to translate Mabels words into your corresponding color words.
If a bears color perception works similarly to that of humans, allowing bears to make discriminations of color of the sort that humans make, that may be a reason to translate their color experience into oursthat is, to understand them as seeing colors much as we do.
To the extent that a rabbits color perception works in some other way, perhaps enabling the creature to make different sorts of discriminations among objects from the ones we make, it may be hard to translate rabbits experience into ours and hard to gain understanding of how things look to them. Since there are such differences even among people, who may have one or another form of color blindness, or may be totally blind, a similar point holds there also.
A congenitally blind person may have at best a very impoverished understanding of what perception of color is like for someone with normal human color perception. What about the color words used by a congenitally blind person who relies on others for information about color? One kind of CRS might interpret the blind persons use of red as meaning something like having the perceptual feature that sighted members of my community call red. But CRS need not take this position.
A different version of CRS might hold that the blind persons conceptual role for red, though different from a sighted persons, nevertheless manages through reliance on sighted members of the community to determine the same content had by sighted persons red. What about someone who has normal color perception and terminology at one time but then loses color vision?
CRS might allow that the person still remembers how red looks. Perhaps CRS would understand this as a case in which the conceptual roles are still there but are blocked, as in a sighted person wearing a blindfold. Some versions of CRS assume that there is a non-conceptual content of mental states that is not determined by considerations of conceptual or functional role Block, ; Peacocke, Other versions of CRS claim to apply to all aspects of the phenomenal content of mental states.
Consider these latter versions and consider a possible interpretation of Mabels visual experience that attributes an inverted spectrum to her. This interprets the experience Mabel has looking at something red as like the experience you have when you are looking at something green, and similarly for other colors. Without special reasons for such an interpretation, a CRS for phenomenal content would speak against it, holding that, if color concepts and words are functioning in the same way for both Mabel and you with respect to the external colors of objects, that contributes to making it the case that the noninverted interpretation is the correct one.
There might be a consideration on the other side if Mabels internal mechanisms were somehow inverted, so that what happens internally when Mabel sees red is like what happens internally when you see green.
Or this might not be relevant. If you accept this sort of CRS, you might approach this. Imagine Dreier, that the Amarras make two contrasts, using the words ret and wreng for one contrast and rit and wrig for the other.
The things the Amarras take to be ret are of the sort that you and other people in your society tend to consider morally right and the things the Amarras take to be wreng are of the sort you and yours tend to consider morally wrong.
However, the Amarras do not take themselves to have reasons to be motivated toward what they take to be ret and do not take themselves to have reasons to be motivated to avoid what they take to be w r e n g. On the other hand, the Amarras do take themselves to have reasons to be motivated toward what they call rit and to avoid what they call wrig, although what they consider rit and wrig are quite different from what you and yours consider right and wrong, respectively.
How should you interpret their words ret, wreng, rit, and wrig? Which best correspond to your right and wrong? Should you translate them as agreeing with you about what is right and wrong while lacking your interest in doing what is right? Or should you translate them as thinking that different things are right or wrong from you?
Suppose the latter option is better, so that rit and wrig are better translated as right and wrong than are ret and w r e n g. CRS can use that as an indication that the connection with motivational reasons is an important aspect of the meaning of moral terms like right and wrong.
Would this conclusion imply that people cannot believe certain things are right and wrong without being motivated to do what is right? What about someone who uses moral concepts and terminology in your way for years but eventually decides that morality is bunk and loses the motivations?
And what about psychopaths who lack the sort of human sympathy that seems important for moral motivation Blair, ? For CRS, such issues are similar to those that arise about the color concepts of non-normal perceivers and similar methods might deal with them. For example, Hare suggests that a moral sceptics use of moral terminology might be such that the sceptics good is best interpreted as the sort of thing you call good.
On the other hand, Greenberg MSc describes a normative conceptual role theory in which a sceptic's use of 'good' could have the same content as the others if the sceptic ought to have the relevant motivations. Suppose you are trying to determine the meaning of a symbol T in Zekes thought.
Zeke tends not to apply T to something unless it has the function of collecting dust, crumbs, or other relatively small particles or objects from floors or other surfaces. This observation may suggest the hypothesis that T should be translated as broom. However, Zeke also uses T for anything that has that function, regardless of its construction or composition.
For example, Zeke uses T for vacuum cleaners and sticky sheets of paper that are used to pick up dust. If you are inclined to conclude that T does not mean broom, that would indicate that your concept of a broom is not a purely functional concept. By contrast, suppose Zeke tends not to apply U to an object unless the object has the function of slowing or stopping the system of which it is a part.
This observation raises the hypothesis that U means brake. Also, Zeke uses U for anything that has that function regardless of its construction or composition. For example, Zeke uses U for tennis shoes when they are given the function of slowing bicycles and for electromagnetic fields when they are given the function of slowing space ships. If you are inclined to think that this aspect of Us conceptual role does not undermine the hypothesis that U means brake, that would suggest that your concept of a brake is more of a functional concept than your concept of a broom.
There seems to be a spectrum of artifact concepts from predominantly functional ones, of which brake or clock may be examples, to concepts that are not only functional but have additional aspects. Although a typewriter, a drill, or a stapler has a certain purpose, not just anything with that purpose is a typewriter, a drill, or a stapler.
For some concepts, composition or construction seems to matter. For others, history is important. For example, arguably a musical instrument that is very like an oboe doesnt count as an oboe if it was independently developed by Australian aborigines. It is not part of the historical family of oboes. Thus, if Oscar uses a term for all oboelike musical instruments, that term does not mean oboe.
Similarly a historical line of descent may be especially relevant to the concept damask. In this section, we have illustrated how one can investigate conceptual role by considering imaginary possibilities and by asking how to translate expressions. A remaining question for CRS is whether it is possible and if so, how to give a systematic account of what determines which aspects of conceptual role are relevant to content and what their precise relevance is.
We have also mentioned that some CRS theorists propose to limit the relevant factors to perceptual input, relations of inference, and output in the form of action. The first and third of these are concerned with relations between symbols and the world, the middle is concerned with relations of.
This might cover all the cases we discussed, perhaps with some stretching to allow the imagining of possibilities, as well as other things done with mental models, to count as cases of inference.
In this section, we turn to special versions of CRS that restrict the relevant conceptual role to the first of the three factors, namely perceptual input.
Verification theories of meaning e. We will be concerned with the more recent information-based or indication theories Dretske, , ; Fodor, ; ; Stalnaker, ; Stampe, There is an active debate between such theories and CCRS.
We will suggest that information-based theories encounter a range of difficulties that push them to include inferential relations and actions in the relevant conceptual role.
So, an internal occurrence of a token of red indicates or carries the information that there is something red in the environment, where such indication might be analyzed as a kind of counterfactual, causal, or nomic dependence. One problem for such views is that it is difficult for them to do without intentional notions such as the application of a symbol to an object see Greenberg The straightforward way to give an information-based account is to say, roughly speaking, that a symbol has the content of the property whose instantiations normally or optimally covary with the symbols application e.
Many things other than water deserts, thoughts of deserts may covary with the occurrence of my mental symbol for water. But, leaving aside mistakes, only water covaries with the application of the relevant mental symbol. A different problem for standard informational theories is that they have fewer resources than other versions of CRS for dealing with such problems as necessarily co-referring expressions and necessarily coinstantiated properties. For example, an informational theory cannot appeal to inferential or implicational considerations to distinguish the concept of a unicorn from the concept of a gremlin assuming unicornhood and 5.
We here ignore the different problem for information-based theories of what makes it the case that a symbol means water rather than, for example, certain patterns of nerve cell stimulations, or some other more proximal or distal correlate of the symbols occurrence. And, similarly, an informational theory cannot appeal to a concepts role in reasoning to solve the problem Quine of whether the concept refers to rabbits, undetached rabbit parts, or temporal stages of rabbits.
It is also natural to appeal to internal aspects of conceptual role to address the problem that not everything that carries information has meaning or content. For example, for a creature to have a concept of, say, red, it is not enough that there be some state or condition of the creature whose instances or tokens carry the information that there is something red in the environment. The relevant tokens must figure appropriately in the creatures psychology.
In response to this kind of problem, some theorists move away from pure information-based accounts by taking into account how the internal tokening of a symbol relates to other internal states in a way that might affect how the creature acts to satisfy its needs Dretske , ; see also Fodor , p. There are other issues on which even the purest information-based theories tend to appeal to internal aspects of conceptual role.
For example, Fodor , p. Another example is that it is difficult to see how to give an account of the content of logical constants without appeal to internal relations Fodor , pp. Fodors asymmetric-dependence theory, perhaps the bestknown informational theory, attempts to deal with some of the problems discussed in this section,6 but it has generated a battery of objections Loewer and Rey and few if any adherents, and we think it is fatally flawed Greenberg Fodor and Lepore have argued that CRS must give up the extra resources available to versions of CRS that are not purely informational; we criticize this argument in the next section.
A terminological caution: Fodor and Lepore use the term conceptual role semantics or inferential role semantics for roughly the views that we are calling CCRS; thus, in their terminology, information-based theories of contents are rivals to conceptual role theories, rather than as in our terminology special versions of them.
Fodors asymmetric dependence theory is designed to do without the notion of an application of a concept see Fodor , For Fodor on co-extensive and co-instantiated symbols, see his , pp.
We have so far argued that it is not easy to see how meaning or content could be explained entirely in terms of information or indication without appeal to internal uses of terms. They begin by assuming plausibly that that no two people accept exactly the same internal inferences and implications. Given that assumption, they argue that CCRS faces the following dilemma.
Either a every such internal aspect of the way one uses ones terms is relevant to the terms content, or b only some such internal aspects are relevant.
If a , according to Fodor and Lepore it follows that no two people ever mean the same thing by any of their terms or ever have thoughts with the same contents. This conclusion, they maintain, has the following implications, which they take to be absurd: c1 that no two people can ever agree or disagree with each other about anything c2 that intentional explanation collapses since no two people ever fall under the same intentional laws.
If b , according to Fodor and Lepore it follows that CRS is committed to the analytic-synthetic distinction, a distinction that according to them has been decisively undermined by Quine. However, Fodor and Lepores presentation of their alleged dilemma is flawed. Consider their argument if horn a of the dilemma is chosen. That argument rests on, among other things, the following assumption: aa that, if all aspects of internal use are relevant to meaning and the aspects of one persons internal use are not exactly the same as those of another persons, then the two people do not mean the same thing by their terms, and Assumption aa is indefensible because, as we emphasized at the beginning of this chapter, even if all aspects of internal use are relevant to meaning, there can be differences in such use without a corresponding difference in meaning.
To say that a given aspect of internal use is relevant to meaning is to say that there is a possible case in which a difference in that aspect makes for a difference in meaning, not to say that a difference in that aspect always makes for a difference in meaning. Similarly, whether the number of students in a class is odd or even depends on the number of students in the class, but that does not imply that two classes with different numbers of students cannot both have an even number of students.
For further development of this point, see Greenberg MSb. In response, Fodor and Lepore might try to argue that no plausible version of CCRS has the consequence that differences in the determinants of content do not imply differences in content.
But such a response would require. It is also worth noting that two people who mean different things by their terms can still use those terms to agree or disagree with each other. Mary can disagree with John by saying something that they both know is true only if what John said is false.
Mary can agree with John by saying something that they both know is true only if what John said is true. To take a very simple example, suppose that Mary and John do not mean exactly the same thing by their color terms in that the boundaries between what counts for them as red and orange are slightly different and the boundaries between what counts for them as green and blue are slightly different.
Still, they disagree about a color when John calls it red and Mary calls it green. The claim that intentional explanation collapses if no two people have the same contents can also be disputed.
It may be that intentional explanation requires only a notion of similarity of content Harman ; ; Block Fodor , has objected that, according to CRS, to have similar content is to be related to at least many of the same contents, which presupposes sameness of content. But CRS is not in fact committed to any such account of similarity of content. Thus, horn a of the alleged dilemma for CCRS is harmless.
According to horn b of the alleged dilemma, the claim that only some aspects of internal conceptual role are relevant to meaning commits the CCRS theorist to an analytic-synthetic distinction of a sort that Quine is supposed to have shown to be untenable.
We have three things to say about this horn. First, there are coherent versions of CCRS that do not accept an analytic-synthetic distinction yet take some but not all aspects of internal conceptual role to be relevant to meaning. As we have observed in discussing aa , from the claim that a given aspect of conceptual role, a certain belief for example, is part of what determines that a symbol has a given meaning, it does not follow that someone without the belief cannot have a symbol with the same meaning.
Thus, the beliefs relevance to the meaning of the symbol does not imply that the belief is analytic. Second, various distinctions may qualify as some kind of analyticsynthetic distinction.
Whether Quines or others arguments undermine the particular distinction to which a given CCRS is committed depends on the details of each case. See Rey ; for discussion. For example, Peacocke has made out a strong case that Quines arguments do not apply to the particular kind of analytic-synthetic distinction to which Peacockes version of CCRS is committed. Similarly, Fodors own informational theory of content is committed to conceptual truth, though arguably not to an objectionable version of the analytic-synthetic distinction e.
Third, Quines attack is aimed at a traditional notion of analyticity. But CCRS need not accept that knowledge of conceptual role is a priori. As we noted above section 2. Searle , vigorously argues for the opposite view.
Searle argues that mental states have intrinsic content that explains and is not explained by the conceptual roles such states have in thinking. Other symbols have derivative content by virtue of having some relation to the intrinsic content of mental states. Linguistic representations are used to express peoples thoughts.
States of a computer program have derived content through people interpreting them as having content. A translation of a term into another language is good to the extent that the translation expresses an idea with the same intrinsic content as the idea expressed by the term being translated.
Although we can appeal to linguistic use in assessing translations, that is not because use determines content but because content determines use, in Searles view. According to CRS, use determines content, at least to the extent that use is identified with conceptual role in thought.
CRS denies that an explanation of conceptual role by appeal to intrinsic content has any force unless it reduces to some version of CRS. Perhaps explanations of particular occasions of the use of an expression E will invoke m, the meaning of the term.
But what explains Es meaning m? In order to explain why E has the role it has, Searle would have to explain why it means m , but his appeal to intrinsic intentionality has no resources to explain it though he thinks that biology may ultimately be able to explain intrinsic intentionality.
In particular, what is wanted is an explanation of why something has a particular meaning that also accounts for why something with that meaning has a given role. CRS has an explanation of Es meaning m that explains this though, as we discuss in section 6. We now consider some worries about this explanation. Consider the suggestion that the meaning of logical conjunction and is determined in part by the fact that one immediately recognizes that a conjunction implies its conjuncts.
Fodor MS objects that any such account. A defender of the suggestion might respond that the relevant recognition of implications does not involve such thoughts about symbols. It is enough that one is at home in using the symbols in the relevant way. One simply and directly treats a conjunction as implying its conjuncts. But in order to make such a response work it is necessary to show that the relevant conceptual roles can be specified without reference to the content of the symbols.
Peacocke offers a version of CRS that is explicitly circular in explaining aspects of conceptual role in terms of what a person is entitled to accept, where entitlement is a normative epistemological notion that is itself to be explained in terms of intentional content. More precisely, according to Peacocke, there is a large circle of interrelated notions, including entitlement, knowledge, and even intentional content itself, each of whose elucidations ultimately involves the others.
A related objection is that conceptual roles are interrelated and cannot be specified in isolation from one another. A structuralist like Saussure says that ones concept of red is partly defined in terms of colors like green that are in a certain respect excluded by somethings being red. Sellars , section 19 writes that one can have the concept of green only by having a whole battery of concepts of which it is one element.
Similarly, Wittgenstein says, When we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition but a whole system of propositions. Light dawns gradually over the whole. How can the conceptual roles of concepts be specified if they are interdependent in this way?
One response to this problem e. Of course, in the case of color concepts, there are connections through perception to items in the environment in addition to the interconnections among those concepts. Two people can be said to have the same color concepts to the extent that they both have systems of concepts that satisfy certain conditions. Compare our discussion above about when people might count as having the same color concepts.
This idea fits with Ramseys suggestion that references to theoretical states and processes be replaced with existentially quantified variables in an overall theory. It also fits with the idea that conceptual roles are analogous to roles played by symbols in the running of computer programs.
One is that, if conceptual roles can be specified in the manner suggested, then it should actually be possible to build a robot directed by a computer program in which 7. It should be noted, however, that, as Peacocke recognizes, his account makes use of contentful notions in a way that cannot be eliminated through Ramseys suggestion.
However, that slogan is misleading as an objection to CRS. The idea that syntax is not enough for semantics is obviously correct if what is meant is simply that expressions with different meanings might have exactly the same syntactic form. However, that obvious point by itself is no objection to computationally friendly CRS. CRS does not make the false claim that syntax in the ordinary sense is sufficient for semantics.
Searle takes conceptual role to be a purely syntactical matter in the following sense: conceptual role is to be defined entirely in terms of operations on certain symbols without any appeal to meaning or content. Of course, as emphasized above, conceptual role can also involve using symbols in relation to non-linguistic things in the world, as in perceptual responses or in motivating actions.
So Searle must understand purely syntactic operation to include these cases also. Searles famous Chinese Room argument tries to show that syntax in this second sense is not sufficient for understanding. The argument has a number of different targets. For our purposes, we can treat the argument as seeking to show by example that a person can know how to use symbols and be at ease with their use without having any understanding of what they mean.
The argument begins by supposing, for the sake of reductio, that a given person who speaks and understands only a dialect of Chinese thinks using a system whose elements have specifiable conceptual roles. According to CRS, this speakers understanding of Chinese consists entirely in his or her being at ease in the use of the elements of this system. So, CRS is committed to thinking that any other person would have the same understanding of Chinese if the other person used those elements in the same way and was at ease in so using them.
The argument continues as follows. We are assuming that the relevant conceptual roles are specifiable, so consider a specification of those roles. Given that specification, it would be possible in theory to construct a robot that would have a central processor running a program that would allow the robot to follow those rules. And, if that is possible, it is in theory possible to replace the central processor in the robot with a room containing a person knowing only English and so not knowing any Chinese, who nevertheless could blindly follow the rules.
Although the person doing the processing might be quite at ease in being able to use the symbols in accordance with the. So, it seems that, contrary to CRS, being at ease in ones use of symbols is not sufficient for understanding the meaning of those symbols.
Searles Chinese Room Argument has generated an enormous response beginning with the responses to Searle, , in the same issue of the journal. We will not try to summarize this response.
Instead we mention only the following possible response. Keywords: meaning , truth , reference , linguistics , syntax , semantics , pragmatics , psychology , logic , epistemology , metaphysics. Barry C. Smith, editor Barry C. Smith, Institute of Philosophy, London.
Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription. Please subscribe or login to access full text content. If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code. Suppose that the artist is assembling a scene for a still life that he wants to paint.
I offer to go home and fetch a mushroom that I think will fit in nicely. It is one of the brown ones with tiny red dots.
On the suggested account, my utterance is strictly and literally true. Well, I think this is a humorous story showing that there is something wrong about the proposals of Radical Contextualists.
Thus, it is not reasonable to say that a car is white just because a few tiny details of it are white. When we say that a car is white we mean that it is preponderantly white. The article by Segal on semantics is coupled with a good and instructive overview of semantic theories by another eminent philosopher of language, Jeffrey King.
Assuming that truth-conditional semantics is feasible, following Segal, I think we should worry about the fact that many speech acts other than assertions are not things about which we would spontaneously say that they are true or false.
A speech act like a directive makes things happen and does not obviously report the way things are. Boisvert and Ludwig in their article in the Handbook acknowledge that non-assertive speech acts are, prima facie, not truth-evaluable. Yet, they believe that a truth-conditional approach to natural language semantics can be rescued by positing that speech acts of all types have got fulfilment conditions.
Consider an utterance of 3 3 Put on your hat. Obedience conditions for imperatives are as follows: For any imperative w, for any u w , w is obeyed u iff A u the audience of u makes it the case that Core w is true u with the intention of fulfilling u.
Well, a natural objection to this approach is that an assertion is not fulfilled when it is true, but when the hearer comes to believe the asserted proposition. The assertion is fulfilled if knowledge or a belief is transmitted. Another problem I find in this approach is that the fulfilment of a speech act is said to depend on whether the audience will do something to comply with it.
Now, suppose my boss tells me to tell John to go and buy some stamps. I tell John 4 4 Go and buy some stamps. I gave him an order and the order is fulfilled even in the absence of an appropriate response. I do not really care whether John goes and buys some stamps for the boss. All I care of is that I complied with my order by giving John an order. Provided that he shows understanding of the speech act, that is enough for me. It was him, not me, who gave the order.
I simply acted as a messenger. Well, this may well be, but the authors need to take this complication into account. Now, I think that a better way of dealing with these problems is to ask: what must be true for 4 to be felicitously uttered.
And the answer is that the speaker or someone whom he represents wants John to go and buy some stamps. Yet, it does not make sense to say that 4 is true if the speaker wants John to go and buy some stamps, since we simply tend not to accept that 4 is something that can be said to be true or false.
While the theory about fulfilment conditions is certainly a step in the right directions, I think that a more detailed theory is needed. That semantics needs to be complemented by pragmatics is an idea which has been around in philosophy of language and linguistics for a long time.
Grice, however, never explicitly talked of pragmatic intrusion, of pragmatics being indispensable to making a proposition truth-evaluable. Instead, Relevance theorists such as Sperber and Wilson and Carston have proposed that semantics is largely underdetermined and that pragmatics is essential to providing full propositions on the basis of semantic templates provided by semantics.
Carston and Powell outline Relevance theory on p. Quite generally, an utterance comes with the presumption of its optimal relevance; that is, there is an implicit guarantee that the utterance is the most relevant one the speaker could have produced, given her abilities and preferences, and that it is at least relevant to be worth processing p.
Carston and Powell give us some examples of how Relevance Theory can deal with lexical pragmatics. Thus, the interpretation process at work in 5 is a case of pragmatic broadening. Consider now an example such as 6 : 6 I have eaten.
Pragmatics provides the explication of the time of the utterance I have eaten at t , without positing variables or unarticulated constituents. I quite agree with the claim that the interpretation of definite descriptions is largely a pragmatic process but I find the attempt to provide a semantics for such expressions too vague.
The authors say: All these expressions, on this view, are marked as individual concept communicators by virtue of their linguistically encoded meaning. Surely there is a deep difference between the meaning Whoever is President must go to Rome now and The president Bush must go to Rome now.
The attributive reading need not involve existential quantification in the admittedly rare case when it has no existential presupposition. Contributions by relevance theorists in this area are particularly weak.
I have got two more points to make. In fact, the chapter does not have a reference to Blakemore. Book review The authors also try to address the question of modularity, but I think that Sperber and Wilson is more explanatory on this topic being more specific in character.
The science of language is thus restricted to describing the sub-personal, unconscious, automatic, cognitively impenetrable rules of the language faculty. Modularity claims that the mind is composed of a number of discrete or encapsulated modules, each dedicated to some aspect of human intelligence. According to Borg p. The interpretation of the utterance is a cognitive process whereby the addressee ascertains what the speaker meant in making the utterance.
In paradigm cases, interpretation begins with the recognition of a certain acoustic event and ends with knowledge about what the speaker meant in bringing that event about. In between the beginning and the end, the addressee relies on her ability to understand linguistic expressions her knowledge of their linguistic meanings and on her ability to track what is manifest in the situation her knowledge of the context of utterance.
When she does the former, she is engaged in semantic interpretation, when she does the latter, she is engaged in pragmatic interpretation. Well, I think that here the problem is that perlocutionary acts may be among the intended conversational implicatures and while I would agree with him that the illocutionary point should be part of what is said, it is dubious that the term meaning, generic as it is, could not encompass both illocutionary and perlocutionary effects.
The fact that the teacher said just this and not something else beyond the asserted content depends on knowledge of the context. On pp. I find that Bach, as always, produces very interesting and robust considerations. This article can be considered the starting point for further work on reference.
Presumably many of these materials are taken from Cappelen and Lepore The authors are aware that their ideas are unusual in philosophy of language as they explicitly say in Cappelen and Lepore, The basic claim of the book is that even if the same sentence, uttered in contexts C0 and C00 by distinct speakers expresses different assertions, at a level of generality it is possible to report that the same thing was said.
The authors attach special importance to disquotational indirect reports, as they serve to prove that in reporting what another person said we abstract away from many details of the original context of utterance and merely confine ourselves to reporting the essential structure of the original thought. This is not surprising, is it?
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