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Overlooking Conventions Michael Devitt

Overlooking Conventions By Michael Devitt

Overlooking Conventions by Michael Devitt


Summary

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.

Overlooking Conventions Summary

Overlooking Conventions: The Trouble With Linguistic Pragmatism by Michael Devitt

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 Grices Modified Occams Razor, Ruhls 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 theres no extensive semantic underdetermination and that the new theoretical framework of truth-conditional pragmatics is a mistake.

About Michael Devitt

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)

Table of Contents

Preface.- Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. Reliance on Intuitions.- Chapter 3. The Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction.- Chapter 4: Speaker Meanings and Intentions.- Chapter 5. Linguistic Conventions and Language.- Chapter 6. Bach and Neale on What is Said.- Chapter 7. Confusion of the Metaphysics Of Meaning With the Epistemology of Interpretation.- Chapter 8. Modified Occams Razor and The Denial of Linguistic Meanings.- Chapter 9. Referential Descriptions: A Case Study.- Chapter 10. Saturation and Pragmatisms Challenge.- Chapter 11. Polysemy and Pragmatisms Challenge.- Chapter 12. Sub-Sententials: Pragmatics or Semantics?.- Index.

Additional information

NPB9783030706555
9783030706555
3030706559
Overlooking Conventions: The Trouble With Linguistic Pragmatism by Michael Devitt
New
Paperback
Springer Nature Switzerland AG
2022-10-09
326
N/A
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