The boundary between semantics and pragmatics has been important since the early twentieth century, but in the last twenty-five years it has become the central issue in the philosophy of language. This anthology collects classic philosophical papers on the topic, along with recent key contributions. It stresses not only the nature of the boundary, but also its importance for philosophy generally.

One of the most important and, at the same time, most controversial issues in metasemantics is the question of what semantics is, and what distinguishes semantic elements (features, properties, phenomena, mechanisms, processes, or whatever) from the rest. The issue is tightly linked with the debate over the semantics-pragmatics distinction, which has been vibrant for a decade or two, but seems to be reaching an impasse. I suggest that this impasse may be due to the failure to recognize (...) a distinct realm that should not be subsumed either under semantics or pragmatics, but may be labeled "prepragmatics". My ultimate goal is to put forward and defend a novel picture of our language architecture, according to which: semantic content is strictly poorer than the lexically encoded content (and therefore does not involve any contextually determined material - not even the reference of demonstratives); pragmatic mechanisms require being able to reason about one's beliefs and intentions and do not affect truth-conditions or truth-value; and, finally, there is a distinct prepragmatic level, which takes into account various kinds of contextual information and makes it possible to evaluate a sentence (as used on a particular occasion) for a truth value. I shall take as a case study, one of the "stumbling stones" in the semantics-pragmatics literature: the case of demonstrative reference. The upshot will be to show that if there is indeed room for a family of linguistic phenomena that are neither semantic nor yet fully pragmatic, the resolution of demonstrative reference is a candidate par excellence to belong there. (shrink)

The Gricean distinction between saying and implicating suggests a clear division of labour between semantics and pragmatics. The standard view that a semantic theory delivers truth-conditions for every well-formed sentence of a language has been grafted onto a Gricean view of the semantics-pragmatics divide. Consequently, many believe that truth-conditions can be specified in a way that is essentially free from pragmatic considerations. This view has been challenged, by those who argue for pragmatic intrusion into truth-conditional content. (...) Others have argued in favour of preserving a pragmatically untainted conception of semantics, but for a more finegrained conception of pragmatics. This debate has led to different proposals as to how to draw the boundary between semantics and pragmatics. This philosophical debate has been conducted largely independently of the debate in linguistics about the interfaces between the various sub-systems of the language faculty in the mind/brain. (shrink)

In the study of contextualism, the most noticeable and at the same time ambiguous problem is how to ascertain the boundaries of context. This article tries to explore the boundaries of context and the significance of the contextualizing movement which began in the 1980s. The establishment of boundaries can be analyzed from three aspects: the syntactic boundary, the semantic boundary, and the pragmatic boundary. This differentiation offers meaningful perspectives for grasping the method of contextual analysis, strengthening its (...) position and influence in scientific explanation. (shrink)

This volume contains essays that explore explicit and implicit communication through linguistic research. Taking as a framework Paul Grice's theories on "what is said," the contributors explore a number of areas, including: the boundary between semantics and pragmatics; the concept of implicit communication; the idea of the logical form of our assertions; the notion of conventional meaning; the phenomenon of deixis, which refers to when an utterance require context in order to be understood fully; the treatment of (...) definite descriptions; and the different kinds of pragmatic processes. (shrink)

Pragmatics is the study of the role of context in communication. This chapter discusses experimental research in pragmatics. It provides clarity on pragmatics by contrasting the role of context in communication with the role of sentence meaning. There is some disagreement about which communicative effects are due to which thing, so there is some disagreement as to where to draw the boundary between semantics and pragmatics. The chapter considers a rich experimental research project in (...) pragmatics, which has developed primarily within linguistics and psychology over the course of the last several decades in response to the boundary disputes. Finally, it talks about a more nascent experimental research project, which, building upon insights from psychology, aims towards understanding survey pragmatics. These two projects are discussed and attention is paid to the methods unique to each project and the philosophical and linguistic underpinnings they share in common. (shrink)

This programmatic paper is an attempt to connect some worries in the philosophy of language with some traditional views in artificial intelligence. After a short introduction to the notion of context in philosophy (§1), starting from the inventor of mathematical logic, Gottlob Frege, I list three debates in the philosophy of language where the solution is strongly undecided: §2 treats the debate between holism and molecularism; §3 describes the debate on the boundaries between semantics and pragmatics; §4 hints (...) at a solution of the debate between explicit and implicit view of incomplete descriptions. These debates may be considered case studies on what is happening to the notion of context in philosophy in the first two decades of XXI century; they push us to look for a unifying framework in which to frame those worries: I propose to shift the attention towards a representation of the basic abilities required to navigate across contexts (§5). In the conclusion, I use some suggestions from computer sciences as a contribution towards a better definition of what is meant by “pragmatic competence”, strictly connected to the philosophical enterprise (§6). (shrink)

The ‘question under discussion’ (or ‘QUD’) framework is a pragmatic framework that draws on work in the semantics of questions to provide an appealing account of a range of pragmatic phenomena, including the use of prosodic focus in English and restrictions on acceptable discourse moves (Roberts 1996). More recently, however, a number of proposals have attempted to use the framework to help to settle issues at the semantics/pragmatics boundary, fixing the truth-conditions of what is said by (...) a speaker (which many theorists take to be a semantic matter). In this discussion piece, we suggest that this kind of putative extension of the work to be done by the QUD framework is illegitimate, as the framework ultimately seems to depend on a prior grip on semantic content. To see this, we first outline the QUD framework and then raise our concern. (shrink)

This book offers a semantic and metasemantic inquiry into the representation of meaning in linguistic interaction. Kasia Jaszczolt offers a new contextualist take on the semantics/pragmatics boundary, and argues that this is the only promising stance on meaning. This approach allows the selection of the cognitively plausible object of enquiry - namely the intended, primary meaning - and its adoption as a unit of semantic analysis despite the varying provenance of the contributing information. The analysis transcends the (...) said/implicated distinction and heavily relies on the dynamic construction of meaning in discourse, using truth conditions as a tool and at the same time conforming to pragmatic compositionality. Meaning in Linguistic Interaction builds on the author's earlier work on Default Semantics, and adds new arguments in favour of radical contextualism, particularly with regard to the role of salience, the dynamic nature of the unit that forms a basis of the interpretation process, and the flexibility of word meaning. It is illustrated with examples from a variety of languages and offers formal representations of meaning in the metalanguage of Default Semantics. (shrink)

This is a collection of nine papers dealing with the topic of reporting on beliefs and other attitudes, and in particular with the issue of the semantics-pragmatics boundary dispute which is the core topic of research in the field.

This article has two aims. The first is to introduce some novel data that highlight rather surprising pragmatic abilities in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The second is to consider a possible implication of these data for an emerging empirical methodology in philosophy of language and mind. In pursuing the first aim, we expect our main audience to be clinicians and linguists interested in pragmatics. It is when we turn to methodological issues that we hope to pique the interest of (...) philosophers. Still, the methodological issue becomes pressing precisely because of the empirical finding—thus the first part is important for the philosophical readers as well. The game plan is as follows. Given our intended dual audience, we begin with background on autism and pragmatics. Some of this material will be familiar to some of our readership, but few will know all of it. (Those who do are invited to skip these sections.) We then present some results from our pilot study on a corpus of speech by people with ASD. The heart of our finding is that certain speakers with ASD, who have severe trouble with familiar pragmatic phenomena such as metaphor and conversational implicature, exhibit surprising abilities with respect to what is often called “pragmatic determinants of what is said.” We turn next to a possible implication of this finding: It seems to suggest that hitherto seemingly promising evidence from ASD about the semantics/pragmatics boundary is.. (shrink)

Together with the volume “Inquiries in philosophical pragmatics: Linguistic and theoretical issues,” this book collects selected contributions to the conference Pragmasophia II held in Lisbon in 2018. This first volume intends to contribute to the dialogue between philosophers and linguists, trying to broaden the boundaries of this discipline defined by the crucial notions of context and verbal action. To this purpose, the contributions are collected in an order that reflects the core and the frontiers of pragmatics, the former (...) constituted by the classical and more philosophical topics as quantifiers, semantic intentions and semantics, and common knowledge, and the latter exploring areas such as the relationship between pragmatics and other fields, such as argumentation and discourse analysis. Between these two poles of theoretical developments, we can find new theoretical challenges to some basic pragmatic problems, such as pure indexicals, deferred reference, polysemy, explicatures and indirect reports. (shrink)

Together with the volume “Inquiries in philosophical pragmatics: Linguistic and theoretical issues,” this book collects selected contributions to the conference Pragmasophia II held in Lisbon in 2018. This first volume intends to contribute to the dialogue between philosophers and linguists, trying to broaden the boundaries of this discipline defined by the crucial notions of context and verbal action. To this purpose, the contributions are collected in an order that reflects the core and the frontiers of pragmatics, the former (...) constituted by the classical and more philosophical topics as quantifiers, semantic intentions and semantics, and common knowledge, and the latter exploring areas such as the relationship between pragmatics and other fields, such as argumentation and discourse analysis. Between these two poles of theoretical developments, we can find new theoretical challenges to some basic pragmatic problems, such as pure indexicals, deferred reference, polysemy, explicatures and indirect reports. (shrink)

Recently the CJEU decision in the case of ‘Ewa Glawischnig-Piesczek v. Facebook Ireland Limited’ has raised the issue of the transcultural/trans-territorial signification of hate speech and hate crimes. Taking a cue from this decision and the related semiotic/legal implications, the paper proposes an analysis of the semio/pragmatic conditions for the production of performativity inherent in hate speech across different cultural universes of discourse. Given that web-based digital communication is global—at least, potentially—regardless of any spatial/political compartmentalization, it crosses different semio-cultural circuits. (...) This trans-spatiality implies transcultural crossings that can multiply and even transfigure the semantic implications of the original signifier and the related prognoses of ‘semantic effectiveness.’ Cultural boundaries therefore may function as a kind of ‘horizon of events’ for hate speech and, more inclusively, all linguistic acts and their legal signification/classification. The question then arises regarding whether and to what extent the performativity of hate speech is able to withstand the variation of cultural boundary conditions. Insofar as cultures are universes of experience, the issue to be investigated broadens, and ends up invoking the question of whether or not the production of performativity implicitly presupposes and tacitly epitomizes the semio-pragmatic implications/consequences (or, in Peircean terms, ‘bearings’) coextensive with cultural universes of experience. Were this the case, it would seem to call into question the very possibility of ‘making things only with words,’ or more explicitly, the alleged meaning of ‘linguistic acts.’. (shrink)

Introduction. The universality of modern technol- ogy testifies to a certain mode of its existence. It manifests itself in the fact that there is practically not a single segment of the modern world, not a single sphere of culture where technology has not spread its influence - direct or indirect / anony- mous. On the basis of the study, the authors come to the conclusion that technology is both a tradition and a logic built into the tradition, and the realiza- (...) tion of a special existential orientation, an embodi- ment of a special kind. The purpose of the study is to reveal whether its essence is connected only with the pragmatic func- tion of technology, or whether there is a special symbolic beginning in technology, which takes technology beyond the scope of rational use. Methods. The authors apply the structuralist method that makes it possible to reveal structures behind the everyday understanding of technology that can generate semantic layers. The structuralist method is complemented by the phenomenological method, since the identified structures constitute the symbolic foundations of technical reality. The phenomenological method makes it possible to reveal the “hidden care” of a person, the target reason for the existence of technology. Scientific novelty of the research. The article reveals the deep meaning of the target cause of the technique. The technical is aimed at overcom- ing natural barriers, creating artificial natures, with its own special logic of existence. The material properties of things allow the permeability and conditionality of all qualitative obstacles. Quantita- tive homogeneity, the permeability of all qualities makes the boundaries between the types of living things conditional. There is no line of demarca- tion not only within life (the theory of evolution is based on this), but also between the living and the non-living. It is possible that there is no boundary between the temporal and the immortal. Results. The desire of mankind to overcome time is embodied in the being of technology. Mankind strives to conquer nature, to overcome all the bar- riers that the natural world continues to put up, in order to bypass natural laws to enter the realm of absolute freedom, which connects with immortal- ity. The created technical things themselves have certain laws for implementing a technical idea and limit technical creativity, but the meaning of technical creation is to overcome any restrictions. Man is a technician, because he is the self-willed transformer of the world. There is a revolutionary charge in technology that changes the world to hu- man request. The technique embodies the struggle of a desperate being with the rejection of his fate, his mortal fate. Conclusions. Despite the fact that science positions itself as rational, sober knowledge, nevertheless, the old dream of overcoming the barrier of death has not gone away. At the present stage, technol- ogy is trying to realize this dream through imple- menting safety, comfort, quality medical care, and an increase in life expectancy. Everything technical is centered on the problem of “life and death”. (shrink)

The boundary between analytic and synthetic sentences is well definable. Quine’s attempt to make it vague is based on a misunderstanding: instead of freeing semantics from shortcomings found, e.g. in Carnap’s work, Quine actually rejects semantics of natural language and replaces it by behavioristically articulated pragmatics. Semantics of natural language as a logical analysis is however possible and it can justify hard and fast lines between analyticity and syntheticity.

This chapter contains sections titled: Appendix: Necessary Truths.

We provide a defense of our insensitive semantics: that is, the combination of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism argued for at more length in our book Insensitive Semantics.

Conflicts in Interpretation applies novel methods of constraint interaction, derived from connectionist theories and implemented in linguistics within the framework of Optimality Theory, to core semantic and pragmatic issues such as polysemy, negation, (in) definiteness, focus, anaphora, and rhetorical structure. It explores the hypothesis that a natural language grammar is a set of potentially conflicting constraints on forms and meanings. Moreover, it hypothesizes that competent language users not only optimize from an input form to the optimal output meaning for this (...) form, or vice versa, but also consider the opposite direction of optimization, thus taking into account the speaker as a hearer and taking into account the hearer as a speaker. The book aims to show that such a bidirectional constraint-based grammar sheds new light on the relation between form and meaning, within a sentence as well as across sentence boundaries, within a single language as well as across languages, and within competent adult language users as well as during language development. An important dimension of the book is the structured investigation of issues at the interface of semantics with syntax and pragmatics, such as the effects of distinguishing between speaker's perspective and hearer's perspective in comprehension and production, stable and instable patterns of form and meaning across languages, and the development of a coherent pattern of form and meaning in children. Conflicts in Interpretation will be of interest to any researcher or advanced student in linguistics, cognitive science, language typology, or psycholinguistics who is interested in the capacity of our human mind to map meaning onto form, and form onto meaning. (shrink)

It has long ben recognised that there are referential uses of definite descriptions. It is not as widely recognised that there are atttributives uses of idexicals and other such paradigmatically singular terms. I offer an account of the referential/attributive distinction which is intended to give a unified treatment of both sorts of cases. I argue that the best way to account for the referential/attributive distinction is to treat is as semantically underdetermined which sort of propositions is expressed in a context. (...) In certain contexts the proposition expressed will be a descriptive one, and in others it will be an object-dependent one. I appeal to Sperer and Wilson's (1986) idea that the recovery of the content of an utterance involves pragmatic processes of enrichment of a representation of the logical form of utterance. According to the account I offer, the first-level descriptive meaning associated with an expression (whether this is an indexical or a definite description) is pragmatically enriched and then used either to track an individual in the context, or is taken to lay down a condition of satisfaction for an individual. The proposition that the listener takes the speaker to have expressed is recovered on the basis of considerations of relevance and contextually available information about the speaker's directive intentions. Although my account has affinities with those of Recanati (1993) and Nunberg (1993), it also differs from theirs in crucial ways. Each of these authors sees asymmetries where I see none. I give reasons for preferring my symmetrical account. (shrink)

This book contains an advanced debate on the nature of scalar implicatures, one of the most popular topics in philosophical linguistics over the past 20 years. Leading authorities in the study of the semantics–pragmatics interface have contributed chapters from a range of perspectives; they address the crucial components of scalar implicatures, including the exhaustivity operator, alternatives and contextual optionality. The book offers an up-to-date presentation of the phenomenon of scalar implicatures in a way that will help readers to (...) orient themselves within the vast literature on the topic. It will be of great interest to students and researchers of semantics, cognitive science, psychology and philosophy of language. (shrink)

A traditional problem with the performative hypothesis is that it cannot assign proper truth-conditions to a declarative sentence. This paper shows that the problem is solved by adopting a multidimensional semantics on which sentences have more than just truth-conditions. This is good news for those who want to at least partially revive the hypothesis. The solution also brings into focus a lesson about what issues to consider when drawing the semantics/pragmatics boundary.

The formal semantics that we have proposed for definite and indefinite descriptions analyzes them both as variable-binding operators and as referring terms. It is the referential analysis which makes it possible to account for the facts outlined in Section 2, e.g. for the purely ‘instrumental’ role of the descriptive content; for the appearance of unusually wide scope readings relative to other quantifiers, higher predicates, and island boundaries; for the fact that the island-escaping readings are always equivalent to maximally wide (...) scope quantifiers; and for the appearance of violations of the identity conditions on variables in deleted constituents. We would emphasize that this is not a random collection of observations. They cohere naturally with each other, and with facts about other phrases that are unambigously referential.We conceded at the outset of this paper that the referential use of an indefinite noun phrase does not, by itself, motivate the postulation of a referential interpretation. Our argument has been that the behavior of indefinites in complex sentences cannot be economically described, and certainly cannot be explained, unless a referential interpretation is assumed. It could be accounted for in pragmatic terms only if the whole theory of scope relations and of conditions on deletion could be eliminated from the semantics and incorporated into a purely pragmatic theory. But this seems unlikely. (shrink)

Grice’s distinction between what is said and what is implicated has greatly clarified our understanding of the boundary between semantics and pragmatics. Although border disputes still arise and there are certain difficulties with the distinction itself (see the end of §1), it is generally understood that what is said falls on the semantic side and what is implicated on the pragmatic side. But this applies only to what is..

Does context and context-dependence belong to the research agenda of semantics - and, specifically, of formal semantics? Not so long ago many linguists and philosophers would probably have given a negative answer to the question. However, recent developments in formal semantics have indicated that analyzing natural language semantics without a thorough accommodation of context-dependence is next to impossible. The classification of the ways in which context and context-dependence enter semantic analysis, though, is still a matter of (...) much controversy and some of these disputes are ventilated in the present collection. This book is not only a collection of papers addressing context-dependence and methods for dealing with it: it also records comments to the papers and the authors' replies to the comments. In this way, the contributions themselves are contextually dependent. In view of the fact that the contributors to the volume are such key figures in contemporary formal semantics as Hans Kamp, Barbara Partee, Reinhard Muskens, Nicholas Asher, Manfred Krifka, Jaroslav Peregrin and many others, the book represents a quite unique inquiry into the current activities on the semantics side of the semantics/pragmatics boundary. (shrink)

Leading scholars in the philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics present brand-new papers on a major topic at the intersection of the two fields, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics. Anyone engaged with this issue in either discipline will find much to reward their attention here. Contributors: Kent Bach, Herman Cappelen, Michael Glanzberg, Jeffrey C. King, Ernie Lepore, Stephen Neale, F. Recanati, Nathan Salmon, Mandy Simons, Scott Soames, Robert J. Stainton, Jason Stanley, Zoltan Gendler Szabo.

The linguistic meaning of a word in a language is what fully competent speakers of the language have a grasp of merely in virtue of their semantic competence. The meanings of words sometimes change over time. 'Meat' used to mean 'solid food', but now means 'animal flesh eaten as food'. This type of meaning change comes with change of topic, what we’re talking about. Many people interested in conceptual engineering have claimed that there is also meaning change where topic is (...) retained. For example, they claim that the meanings of ‘fish’ and ‘pasta’ have undergone such change and that the meaning of 'marriage' would change this way after gay marriages become legal and widely accepted. In this paper I relate two sets of relatively independent literatures: mainstream philosophy of language and conceptual engineering to argue that on a plausible and widely accepted Minimalist view of meaning that is part and parcel of anti-descriptivism none of the above sorts of cases involve meaning change with topic retention. I do this by showing how to distinguish minimalism about meaning from the related theses of externalism and anti-individualism about intension and how to separate meaning from intension in a way that allows meaning and topic to remain the same despite changes in intension. The larger lesson is that much like we shouldn’t disregard the boundary between the narrowly meaning-related (“semantics”) and the more broadly communication-related (“pragmatics”), we shouldn’t disregard the boundary between the former and the more broadly thought-related, conceptual or cognitive (“cognition”). (shrink)

Explaining pragmatic phenomena -- Intentions and the limits of meaning -- Cognitive science connections -- New frontiers in semantics.

Meaning addresses the fundamental question of human language interaction: what it is to mean, and how we communicate our meanings to others. Experienced textbook writer and eminent researcher Betty J. Birner gives balanced coverage to semantics and pragmatics, emphasizing interactions between the two, and discusses other fields of language study such as syntax, neurology, philosophy of language, and artificial intelligence in terms of their interfaces with linguistic meaning.

Currently, there is a great number of approaches to the semantics-pragmatics distinction on the market. This book is unique in that it offers a comprehensive overview, comparison and critical evaluation of these approaches. At the same time, it covers a wide range of the key current topics in semantics and pragmatics (e.g., the saying/meaning distinction, minimalism vs. contextualism, (generalised) conversational implicatures).

This book presents a philosophical conception of logic -- "logical expressivism"-- according to which the role of logic is to make explicit reason relations, which are often neither monotonic nor transitive. It reveals new perspectives on inferential roles, sequent calculi, representation, truthmakers, and many extant logical theories.

This paper overviews some recent work on the semantics and pragmatics of arguments.

Nurses’ need to document activities is urgent. The panorama of available terminologies is heterogeneous. It seems necessary to understand the premises of available tools and their limits and benefits to make conscious choices and shape future development. Taxonomies (e.g., North American Nursing Diagnosis Association) and ‘pure terminologies’ (e.g., International Classification for Nursing Practice), or nursing languages, are available tools to document nurses’ activities and to produce theoretical models or reference systems. These tools respond first to a practical problem: ‘translating’ nursing (...) facts into linguistic descriptions. Taxonomies make reality describable through exhaustive definitions designed inductively. Thus, I argue that their philosophical basis is naïve semantics. Their framework is a closed hierarchy, that is, a system that provides defined levels of concepts, structured through dichotomous rules. This causes the problem of determining boundaries between concepts, and thus between phenomena, which I call the problem of ‘closing the concept enclosure’. Rigid metaphysical structures are unable to cope with the complexity of phenomena that nurses deal with, so they seem to be unable to describe them. I follow Wittgenstein's argument, from Philosophical Investigations, which is useful to understand this challenge: the definition of terms is not a problem of lack of suitable words or an agreed decision, but is achieved by training in practice. Pure terminologies give us another way to address the question. They are usually composed of a glossary of terms, paired with rules to combine them to manage meaning. They are more like natural language and this implies adapting more to phenomena. Then, I argue that their philosophical background is a pragmatic approach to language, and I discuss some consequences and objections. Finally, I find that the development of pure terminologies rather than taxonomies in documenting nursing activities allows us to achieve key objectives, such as improving nursing visibility and measurability in health records, without jeopardising person‐centred care. (shrink)

This volume aims to offer an up-to-date indication of the on-going debate on the nature of logic. The focus is on questions pertaining to the existence and individuation of clear boundaries delineating the concerns of logic: What is their distinctive character? What makes logic a subject of its own, separate from (and generally in the background of) the concerns of other disciplines? What is it for an expression to be a logical constant? Or, perhaps equivalently, what is it for an (...) operation or a relation to be logical? Can these questions be addressed in a general setting, or are they intrinsically unanswerable except within specific frameworks of reference (e.g., a language, or a conceptual scheme)? How are they to be addressed—are they semantic, syntactic, pragmatic? And how do semantics, syntax, or pragmatics contribute to our understanding of these questions? Are the answers fully captured by extant systems of logic? Contributors: E. Bencivenga, J. van Benthem, D. van Dalen, M. García-Carpintero and M. Pérez Otero, A. P. Hazen, A. Koslow, G. Priest, G. Sher. (shrink)

In this paper I shall outline a short history of the ideas concerning sense and reference of a concept-word from Frege to model theoretic semantics. I claim that, contrary to what is normally supposed, a procedural view of sense may be compatible with model theoretic semantics, especially in dealing with problems at the boundary between semantics and pragmatics. A first paragraph on the paradox of the concept horse will clarify the attitude concerning the history of (...) ideas that I assume in this paper. In the second paragraph I will discuss some misunderstandings in the shift from the sense/reference distinction in Frege to the intension/extension distinction in model theoretic semantics. In the third I will show how a particular interpretation of the Fregean sense of a concept word may be of interest for model theoretic semantics. (shrink)

Answering machines and other types of recording devices present prima facie problems for traditional theories of the meaning of indexicals. The present essay explores a range of semantic and pragmatic responses to these issues. Careful attention to the difficulties posed by recordings promises to help enlighten the boundaries between semantics and pragmatics more broadly.

Contemporary recognition of the importance of divisions amongst pragmatic and semantic phenomena has its roots in earlier recognition of the importance of pragmatic phenomena. This chapter begins with the idea that semantics concerns the stable meanings of words and expressions while pragmatics concerns language use, or things done with words. It provides some grounds for rejecting, a defense of orthodoxy that sought to treat the variations that Charles Travis highlights as occurring only with respect to derivative illocutionary acts. (...) The chapter argues that the orthodox view comes under pressure from reflection on certain forms of variation in the illocutionary acts that speakers perform. It explores how the meanings of the words that the speaker used, which figure most directly in the locutionary act that they performed, figure less directly in the illocutionary act or acts that they perform, and less directly still in the further, perlocutionary consequences of the performance of that illocutionary act. (shrink)

The article examines the essence and relationship of aesthetic experience and aesthetic judgment. It is argued that philosophical aesthetics deals with constants that are fundamental to aesthetic experience. Such constants are phenomena and characteristics that have a fundamental ontological status in the aesthetic sphere. It was found that the ontological characteristic of aesthetic experience is that it is not reducible to “pure” rationality, that is, it is not something that is “adapted” to complete and final comprehension by the mind alone. (...) Therefore, a complete “absorption” of aesthetic experience by a certain semantic structure is impossible: such experience always goes beyond any discursive boundaries and simultaneously opens them. In addition, aesthetic experience serves as one of the means of a person’s “contact” with the world and society. Forming on the material of sensations, aesthetic experience extends from the most general ideas about the universe to the inner life of a person. The analysis also showed that the formulation of an aesthetic judgment is based on the concepts of the perfect and the imperfect. In turn, the mastery of such concepts is carried out in the process of correlating a certain aesthetic fact with the existing value scale. That is why aesthetic judgments have signs of normativity. They also create the basis for a common worldview and attitude, lay the foundation for mutual understanding between people of a certain culture. The study showed that the process of aesthetic assessment is a constant correlation of the existing state of affairs with something ideal, this is a permanent “demand” for perfection, as well as a tireless search for an opportunity to fulfill this “demand”. At the same time, ethical experience is dissociated from “pure” pragmatics, which personifies vital necessity, because the aesthetic sphere is always associated with a certain “redundancy” in human existence. Also, the results obtained in the course of the study suggested that philosophical aesthetics, which takes into account and investigates the specificity of the phenomenon of corporeality, as well as such phenomena of human existence as affective sensitivity and sensitive rationality, is able to overcome the limitation of “an-esthetic” naturalism in aesthetics. (shrink)