This essay attempts to give substance to the claim that the liar''sparadox shows the truth predicate to be context sensitive. The aim ismodest: to provide an account of the truth predicate''s contextsensitivity (1) that derives from a more general understanding ofcontext sensitivity, (2) that does not depend upon a hierarchy ofpredicates and (3) that is able to address the liar''s paradox. Theconsequences of achieving this goal are not modest, though. Perhapssurprisingly, for reasons that will be discussed in the last section (...) ofthis essay, a natural account of the truth predicate''s contextsensitivity appears to lead naturally to a version of the correspondencetheory of truth according to which the truth predicate can be understoodas a relation holding between a sentence and a salient set of contexts.The plan of this essay is as follows. Section 1 contains a generalaccount of context sensitivity. The purpose of this section is toisolate certain features of context sensitivity and formal methods oftreating them, which we will then apply to the truth predicate. Section 2then outlines two minimal conditions to be satisfied by a truthpredicate. In Section 3, I present a version of the liar paradoxthat results from these conditions and the assumption that the truthpredicate is not context sensitive in the sense described in sectionone. Finally, in section four, I provide what appear to be naturalconsequences of a truth predicate''s context sensitivity. Section 4 isadmittedly speculative and points in the direction for future research. (shrink)

In this paper I want to explore the arguments for so-called ‘unarticulated constituents’ (UCs). Unarticulated constituents are supposed to be propositional elements, not presented in the surface form of a sentence, nor explicitly represented at the level of its logical form, yet which must be interpreted in order to grasp the (proper) meaning of that sentence or expression. Thus, for example, we might think that a sentence like ‘It is raining’ must contain a UC picking out the place at which (...) the speaker of the sentence asserts it to be raining. In §1 I will explore the nature of UCs a little further, and, in §2, suggest that we can recognise two different forms of argument for them.. (shrink)

This paper argues for the importance of the concept of purported reference in understanding linguistic meaning and reference.

This paper evaluates arguments presented by John Perry (and Ken Taylor) in favor of the presence of an unarticulated constituent in the proposition expressed by utterance of, for example, (1):1 1. It's raining (at t). We contend that these arguments are, at best, inconclusive. That's the critical part of our paper. On the positive side, we argue that (1) has as its semantic content the proposition that it is raining (at t) and that this is a location-neutral proposition. According to (...) the view we propose, an audience typically looks for a location when they hear utterances of (1) because their interests in rain are location- focused: it is the location of rain that determines whether we get wet, carrots grow, and roads become slippery. These are, however, contingent facts about rain, wetness, people, carrots, and roads – they are not built into the semantics for the verb 'rain'. (shrink)

Indexicals are linguistic expressions whose meaning remain stable while their reference shifts from utterance to utterance. Paradigmatic cases in English are ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’. Recently, a number of authors have argued that various constructions in our language harbor hidden indexicals. We say 'hidden' because these indexicals are unpronounced, even though they are alleged to be real linguistic components. Constructions taken by some authors to be associated, or to ‘co-habit’, with hidden indexicals include: definite descriptions and quantifiers more generally (hidden (...) indexical refers to a domain – Davies (1981), Westerstahl (1985), Soames (1986), Higginbotham (1988), Stanley and Williamson (1995)), propositional attitude verbs (hidden indexical refers to a mode of presentation – Richard (1990)), comparative adjectives (hidden indexical refers to comparison classes – Partee (1989), Kamp (1975), Ludlow (1989)). An interesting recent addition is the view that all nouns are associated with a hidden indexical referring to a domain restriction (Stanley and Szabo (2000), Stanley.. (shrink)

A great deal of discussion in recent philosophy of language has centered on the idea that there might be hidden contextual parameters in our sentences. But relatively little attention has been paid to what those parameters themselves are like, beyond the assumption that they behave more or less like variables do in logic. My goal in this paper is to show this has been a mistake. I shall argue there are at least two very different sorts of contextual parameters. One (...) is indeed basically like variables in logic, but the other is very different, and much more like overt referring expressions. This result is of interest in its own right, to those of us who are concerned to map out the details of the semantic and pragmatic workings of language. But it will have some wider morals as well. One of the important issues behind the debate over hidden parameters has been how we can posit hidden structure in language, and how far such structure can stray from the intuitive forms and contents speakers see in communication. I shall argue that one sort of hidden parameter is surprisingly close to the contents and forms speakers find intuitive, while another is more remote. I shall show that the.. (shrink)

Abstract: A current debate in semantics and pragmatics is whether all contextual effects on truth-conditional content can be traced to logical form, or 'unarticulated constituents' can be supplied by the pragmatic process of free enrichment. In this paper, I defend the latter position. The main objection to this view is that free enrichment appears to overgenerate, not predicting where context cannot affect truth conditions, so that a systematic account is unlikely (Stanley, 2002a). I first examine the semantic alternative proposed by (...) Stanley and others, which assumes extensive hidden structure acting as a linguistic trigger for pragmatic processes, so that all truth-conditional effects of context turn out to be instances of saturation. I show that there are cases of optional pragmatic contributions to the proposition expressed that cannot plausibly be accounted for in this way, and that advocates of this approach will therefore also have to appeal to free enrichment. The final section starts to address the question of how free enrichment is constrained: I argue that it involves only local development or adjustment of parts of logical form, any global developments being excluded by the requirement for the proposition expressed to provide an inferential warrant for the intended implications of the utterance. (shrink)

Indexicals are linguistic expressions whose meaning remain stable while their reference shifts from utterance to utterance. Paradigmatic cases in English are ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’. Recently, a number of authors have argued that various constructions in our language harbor hidden indexicals. We say ’hidden’ because these indexicals are unpronounced, even though they are alleged to be real linguistic components. Constructions taken by some authors to be associated, or to ‘co-habit’, with hidden indexicals include: definite descriptions and quantifiers more generally (hidden (...) indexical refers to a domain – Davies (1981), Westerstahl (1985), Soames (1986), Higginbotham (1988), Stanley and Williamson (1995)), propositional attitude verbs (hidden indexical refers to a mode of presentation – Richard (1990)), comparative adjectives (hidden indexical refers to comparison classes – Partee (1989), Kamp (1975), Ludlow (1989)). An interesting recent addition is the view that all nouns are associated with a hidden indexical referring to a domain restriction (Stanley and Szabo (2000), Stanley (2002)). (shrink)

An important debate in the current literature is whether “all truth-conditional effects of extra-linguistic context can be traced to [a variable at; LM] logical form” (Stanley, ‘Context and Logical Form’, Linguistics and Philosophy, 23 (2000) 391). That is, according to Stanley, the only truth-conditional effects that extra-linguistic context has are localizable in (potentially silent) variable-denoting pronouns or pronoun-like items, which are represented in the syntax/at logical form (pure indexicals like I or today are put aside in this discussion). According to (...) Recanati (‘Unarticulated Constituents’, Linguistics and Philosophy, 25 (2002) 299), extra-linguistic context can have additional truth-conditional effects, in the form of optional pragmatic processes like ‘free enrichment’. This paper shows that Recanati’s position is not warranted, since there is an alternative line of analysis that obviates the need to assume free enrichment. In the alternative analysis, we need Stanley’s variables, but we need to give them the freedom to be or not to be generated in the syntax/present at logical form, a kind of optionality that has nothing to do with the pragmatics-related optionality of free enrichment. (shrink)

This paper contains a discussion of how the concept of compositionality is to be extended from context invariant to context dependent meaning, and of how the compositionality of natural language might conflict with context dependence. Several new distinctions are needed, including a distinction between a weaker (e-) and a stronger (ec-) concept of compositionality for context dependent meaning. The relations between the various notions are investigated. A claim by Jerry Fodor that there is a general conflict between context dependence and (...) compositionality is considered. There is in fact a possible conflict betwee ec-compositionality and context dependence, but not of the kind Fodor suggests. It turns on the presence of so-called unarticulated constituents, in John Perry’s sense. Because of this phenomenon, on some semantic accounts there might be a variation in the meaning of a complex expression between contexts without any corresponding variation in any of the syntactic parts of that complex. The conflict can be resolved in several ways. One way is to make the unarticulated context dependence explicit only in the meta-language, which makes it into an unarticulated constituent account. A recent argument by Jason Stanley against such accounts is discussed. According to Stanley, certain readings of English sentences involving binding of contextual variables, are unavailable in these theories. After considering a reply to Stanley by François Recanati, I present an outline of a fully compositional theory, of the unarticulated constituent variety, which does deliver these readings. Concluding remarks on, inter alia, the semantics/pragmatics distinction. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a defence of a Russellian analysis of the referential uses of incomplete (mis)descriptions, in a contextual setting. With regard to the debate between a unificationist and an ambiguity approach to the formal treatment of definite descriptions (introduction), I will support the former against the latter. In 1. I explain what I mean by "essentially" incomplete descriptions: incomplete descriptions are context dependent descriptions. In 2. I examine one of the best versions of the unificationist “explicit” approach (...) given by Buchanan and Ostertag. I then show that this proposal seems unable to treat the normal uses of misdescriptions. I then accept the challenge of treating misdescriptions as a key to solving the problem of context dependent descriptions. In 3. I briefly discuss Michael Devitt’s and Joseph Almog’s treatments of referential descriptions, showing that they find it difficult to explain misdescriptions. In 4. I suggest an alternative approach to DD as contextuals, under a normative epistemic stance. Definite descriptions express (i) what a speaker should have in mind in using certain words in a certain context and (ii) what a normal speaker is justified in saying in a context, given a common basic knowledge of the lexicon. In 5. I define a procedure running on contextual parameters (partiality, perspective and approximation) as a means of representing the role of pragmatics as a filter for semantic interpretation. In 6. I defend my procedural approach against possible objections concerning the problem of the boundaries between semantics and pragmatics, relying on the distinction between semantics and theory of meaning. (shrink)

Questa conferenza offre una presentazione semplificata del concetto di contesto nella filosofia analitica,in particolare nella filosofia del linguaggio. E' semplificata perché tralascia una serie di discussioni rilevanti per fermarsi alle grandi linee che segnano l'emergenza del concetto di contesto in filosofia del linguaggio. Inoltre mi concentro su un aspetto particolare del dibattito: la linea di confine tra pragmatia e semantica e il ruolo che il concetto di contesto ha in questo dibattito, cercando di evidenziare i punti di disaccordo tra le (...) parti in causa. Nel primo paragrafo riprendo brevemente alcune idee di Frege, mostrando come aiutano a individuare una tripartizione abbastanza standard del concetto di contesto. Nel secondo paragrafo riespongo una tripartizione fatta da John Perry, cercando di "generalizzare" quello che Perry chiama "contesto postsemantico". Nella serie di esempi che seguono, mostro dove si situa il punto di discrimine tra la teorie più vicine alla semantica tradizionale e le teorie contestualiste radicali, che danno maggior rilevanza agli aspetti cognitivi rispetto a quelli semantici. Riprendo quindi in generale le due strategie alternative che si contrappongono sul modo di considerare i rapporti tra semantica e pragmatica. Nell'ultimo paragrafo provo a indicare quali sono i principali problemi dell'assunzione di una prospettiva radicalmente contestualista. (shrink)

In what follows I consider the apparent contrast between two kinds of theories of context: a theory of objective context - exemplified in the works of Kaplan and Lewis - and a theory of subjective context -exemplified in the works of McCarthy and Giunchiglia. I consider then some difficulties for the objective theory. I don't give any formalization; instead I give some theoretical points about the problem. A possible result could be the abandon of the double indexing for a development (...) a multi-context theory (I give an example of a case). However other results could be possible and a challenge is posed to solve problems using the best results from each tradition of research. (shrink)

In the tradition of Stalnaker (1978,2002, context can be regarded as a set of assumptions that are mutually shared by a group of epistemic agents.An obvious generalization of this view is to explicitly represent each agent’s assumptions in a given situation and update them accordingly when new information is accepted. I lay out a number of philosophical and linguistic requirements for using such a model in order to describe communication of ideally-rational agents. In particular,the following questions are addressed: -/- 1. (...) What is the logical status of assumptions as opposed to rational belief, how are these assumptions generated from an underlying belief base in a given interpretation situation,and how are assumptions revised/contracted? -/- 2.What kind of ideal reasoning processes underly the interpretation of ‘incomplete’ content that may for example be obtained by an agent from an utterance by deriving some literal meaning from the lexicon and a grammar? -/- Regarding the first set of questions, my proposal is to consider assumptions akin to rational belief, but not stronger than modal logic KD, since positive and negative introspection do not seem to hold for them.Given that, an obvious question is what the relation between beliefs and assumptions is. One possible answer is to generate an agent’s assumptions from an agent’s beliefs in a given interpretation situation by revising his beliefs with his beliefs about what the message sender believes in that situation. If such an account is based on AGM belief revision/contraction(Alchourrón 1985, Gärdenfors 1989)there is a number of well-known problems that need to be addressed, because revision of iterated belief modalities is required in this case. These problems have already been investigated in detail in recent works on DDL Leitgeb/Segerberg 2007)and DEL see e.g. Ditmarsch et. (2008) Another strategy would be to maintain and revise assumptions independently of the beliefs of an agent.I will briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each of these views. In both views, assumptions constitute the subjective context in which an agent interprets an utterance and encounters the world. The result of an interpretation is in turn checked against the agent’s original beliefs, and if the checking operation succeeds the agent revises his beliefs by the result in the normal way described by the AGM paradigm. -/- The second of the above questions needs to be addressed on the basis of concrete examples. Considering utterance like David is ready’ or ‘John is tall’that from a contextualist viewpoint express semantically incomplete content in the sense of Bach(2005, 2007, how may an agent arrive at interpretations of these utterances that are more complete? A first step is to presume that missing semantic ingredients are represented by missing argument places, which is a problematic assumption as it introduces a dependence on the semantic representation language. Given that, a default interpretation can be obtained by existentially quantifying over the missing argument and interpretation can then be regarded as an inference process. In case of the two examples mentioned,the assumptions of the agent allow him to obtain more specific readings by instantiating a value for the existentially bound variable.<span class='Hi'></span> As I will show,<span class='Hi'></span> this inference can be relatively straightforward in some cases like <span class='Hi'></span>‘John is tall’<span class='Hi'></span>, whereas it requires complicated encyclopedic background knowledge and a number of default reasoning steps in other cases.<span class='Hi'></span> -/- Based on more examples of this kind,<span class='Hi'></span> I argue that first,<span class='Hi'></span> belief revision with iterated modalities in a multi-agent setting is needed to generate an agent’s assumptions as laid out above.<span class='Hi'></span> Second,<span class='Hi'></span> default reasoning is needed.<span class='Hi'></span> Third,<span class='Hi'></span> a qualitative or quantitative representation of uncertainty <span class='Hi'></span>(‘degrees of belief’<span class='Hi'></span>) is needed in order to obtain a useful model of the checking step,<span class='Hi'></span> since fortunately not everybody believes everything that other people say.<span class='Hi'></span> These requirements put the theory of interpretation based on assumptions in the frontline of ongoing research on the implementation of belief revision and update in dynamic logics.<span class='Hi'></span> Such a theory might also be useful for contextualist accounts of strong knowledge,<span class='Hi'></span> as it can be argued convincingly that when a knowledge ascription appears to be context-sensitive,<span class='Hi'></span> this is so because the embedded proposition is context-sensitive and not because knowledge itself is context-sensitive.<span class='Hi'></span> Hence,the context-sensitivity of embedded propositions in knowledge claims and how different agents in the same situation arrive at different assessments about them may be explained by an inferential theory of interpretation similar to the one outlined here but with another underlying concept of assumptions.<span class='Hi'></span> -/- Literature <span class='Hi'></span> Alchourrón,<span class='Hi'></span> C.<span class='Hi'></span> E.<span class='Hi'></span>; Gärdenfors,<span class='Hi'></span> P.<span class='Hi'></span> &<span class='Hi'></span> Makinson,<span class='Hi'></span> D.<span class='Hi'></span> (1985)<span class='Hi'></span>, <span class='Hi'></span>'On the logic of theory change:<span class='Hi'></span> partial meet contraction and revision functions'<span class='Hi'></span>, Journal of Symbolic Logic(50)<span class='Hi'></span>, 510-530.<span class='Hi'></span> -/- Bach,<span class='Hi'></span> K.<span class='Hi'></span> (2007)<span class='Hi'></span>, <span class='Hi'></span>'Minimalism for Dummies:<span class='Hi'></span> Reply to Cappelen and Lepore'<span class='Hi'></span>, Technical report,<span class='Hi'></span> University of San Fransisco,<span class='Hi'></span> Department of Philosophy.<span class='Hi'></span> -/- Bach,<span class='Hi'></span> K.<span class='Hi'></span> (2005)<span class='Hi'></span>, Context ex Machina,<span class='Hi'></span> in án Gendler Szabó,<span class='Hi'></span> ed.<span class='Hi'></span>,'Semantics versus Pragmatics'<span class='Hi'></span>, Oxford UP,<span class='Hi'></span> Oxford,<span class='Hi'></span> pp.<span class='Hi'></span> 16-44.<span class='Hi'></span> -/- Ditmarsch,<span class='Hi'></span> H.<span class='Hi'></span> v.<span class='Hi'></span>; Hoek,<span class='Hi'></span> W.<span class='Hi'></span> v.<span class='Hi'></span> d.<span class='Hi'></span> &<span class='Hi'></span> Kooi,<span class='Hi'></span> B.<span class='Hi'></span> (2008)<span class='Hi'></span>, Dynamic Epistemic Logic,<span class='Hi'></span> Kluwer.<span class='Hi'></span> -/- Gärdenfors,<span class='Hi'></span> P.<span class='Hi'></span> (1988)<span class='Hi'></span>, Knowledge in Flux,<span class='Hi'></span> MIT Press.<span class='Hi'></span> -/- Leitgeb,<span class='Hi'></span> H.<span class='Hi'></span> &<span class='Hi'></span> Segerberg,<span class='Hi'></span> K.<span class='Hi'></span> (2007)<span class='Hi'></span>, <span class='Hi'></span>'Dynamic doxastic logic:<span class='Hi'></span> why,<span class='Hi'></span> how,<span class='Hi'></span> and where to?<span class='Hi'></span>',<span class='Hi'></span> Synthese155(2)<span class='Hi'></span>, 167-190.<span class='Hi'></span> -/- Stalnaker,<span class='Hi'></span> R.<span class='Hi'></span> (1978)<span class='Hi'></span>, Assertion,<span class='Hi'></span> in <span class='Hi'></span>. Cole,<span class='Hi'></span> ed.<span class='Hi'></span>,'Pragmatics'<span class='Hi'></span>, Academic Press,<span class='Hi'></span> New York,<span class='Hi'></span> pp.<span class='Hi'></span> 315-332.<span class='Hi'></span> -/- Stalnaker,<span class='Hi'></span> R.<span class='Hi'></span> (2002)<span class='Hi'></span>, <span class='Hi'></span>'Common Ground'<span class='Hi'></span>, Linguistics and Philosophy25(5-6)<span class='Hi'></span>, 701-<span class='Hi'></span>-721.<span class='Hi'></span> -/- . (shrink)

In a recent paper (Linguistics and Philosophy 23, 4, June 2000), Jason Stanley argues that there are no `unarticulated constituents', contrary to what advocates of Truth-conditional pragmatics (TCP) have claimed. All truth-conditional effects of context can be traced to logical form, he says. In this paper I maintain that there are unarticulated constituents, and I defend TCP. Stanley's argument exploits the fact that the alleged unarticulated constituents can be `bound', that is, they can be made to vary with the values (...) introduced by operators in the sentence. I show that Stanley's argument rests on a fallacy, and I provide alternative analyses of the data. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the thesis that alleffects of extra-linguistic context on thetruth-conditions of an assertion are traceable toelements in the actual syntactic structure of thesentence uttered. In the first section, I develop thethesis in detail, and discuss its implications for therelation between semantics and pragmatics. The nexttwo sections are devoted to apparent counterexamples.In the second section, I argue that there are noconvincing examples of true non-sentential assertions.In the third section, I argue that there are noconvincing examples of what (...) John Perry has called`unarticulated constituents''. I conclude by drawingsome consequences of my arguments for appeals tocontext-dependence in the resolution of problems inepistemology and philosophical logic. (shrink)

There are good reasons to think natural languages are compositional. But compound nominals (CNs) are largely productive constructions that have proven highly recalcitrant to compositional semantic analysis. I evaluate existing proposals to treat CNs compositionally and argue that they are unsuccessful. I then articulate an alternative proposal according to which CNs contain covert indexicals. Features of the context allow a variety of relations to be expressed using CNs, but this variety is not expressed in the lexicon or the semantic rules (...) of the language. This proposal accounts for the diversity of contents CNs can be used to express while preserving compositionality. Finally, I defend this proposal against some recent anti-contextualist arguments. (shrink)