Professor: Katherine Ritchie
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Key Concepts/Terms:
Argument: Premise and Conclusion
Valid: truth of premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion
Counterexample: A case with all T premises and a False conclusion.
Sound: Argument must be 1). valid, 2) all true premises.
Necessary (must have) & Sufficient (enough) Conditions
Syntax: Grammar (syntactic rule) What Chomsky was doing
Semantics: Meaning
Pragmatics: What language users can do with language
Use: The meaning of the word is what contributed to the sentence.
Mention: Word/Expression is being contributed to the sentence.
Type (kind) & Token (instance)
Intension(al): property associated with a word
Extension(al): The entities picked out/referred to
Intention(al): What one wants to get across, aims, goals
02/04/2016
SWA 1
due on or before 3/3
SWA 2
due on or before 4/12
SWA 3
due on or before 5/5
Reading: Grice-Meaning
Understand
Sarcasm
Hidden motives
Foundational Meaning Questions
1. how do words/sentences have meaning?
2. how do our utterances have meaning?
3. do our thoughts/intentions(speakers) determine what our words mean?[Grice]
4. Does our environment(audience...) determine what our words mean?[Putnam, Burge]
The Plan
The Aim: Foundational and descriptive meaning questions
The view: Grice's account of meaning
The problems
Two kinds of theory
1. Foundational meaning theory
2. descriptive meaning theory
Natural Meaning
How could we account for how spots, clouds have meaning?
features of natural meaning:
1. entailment
2. no entailment
3. nobody meant
4. No quotes
5. Factive
Nonnatural Meaning
Features:
1. No Entailment: x means p does not entails that p
2. entailment
3. somebody meant
4. quotes
5. not factive
The Gricean View
"x meant_NN that p" is true if, and only if,
1. x was intended by its utterer to induce a belief in some "audience' that p and
2. the utterer intended an "audience" to recognize her intention behind the utterance and
3. the utterer intended an "audience" to believe that p by means of recognition of the intention
Q: Do these require that the audience actually come to believe? Think back to what intentions are
What are Intentions?
Grice thinks intentions can also account for what we're doing when we make sounds and write marks on paper.
A First Pass View
Weak - X means P if A intends and to believe P
A Second Pass View
02/16/2016
Reading on Dorit Bar-On's "Meaning" Reconstructed: Grice and the Naturalizing of Semantics
Recall Gricean View:
Speaker intention-> Speaker Meaning -> Public Meaning
- A meant_NN that p by x
- x meant that p
- x means_NN (timeless) that p"
Problems with Gricean View, Not:
1. Psychologically realistic
2. sufficiency: X means P if (sufficient) and only if (necessary) S...P, response: Higher-order intention (Intention->intention), but less psychological realistic.
3. Necessity: X means P if (sufficient) and only if (necessary) 1). S intends audience believe P; 2). & do so given the recognition of (1).
My notes: Grice appears to put the burden of understanding on the audience.
Bar-On's Reconstrual
think of Grice's view as a rational reconstruction of how nonnatural meaning arises in a natural world in which there is already natural meaning.
'Genetic' Construal of the Gricean Program, evolutionary process by Gricean View.
02/17/2016
Steven Pinker (Language Instinct) beginning quote: words -> miracle we naturally forgot
Putnam's reading: Meaning and Reference
Externalism: Meanings just ain't in the head
Two traditional Assumptions
1. Psychological state (Putnam rejects, using twin earth thought experiment)
2. determines its extension
Dividing Linguistic Labor
-Language is more like a steamship than a hammer
-A hammer can be used by one person. A steamship requires the cooperative activities of a number of people.
-Language too requires the cooperative actions of a number of people.
03/03/2016
Ruth Millikan:
Why Convention is important
- Get across more info
- Community building
- Organize
- Signaling
- Build common knowledge
- Custom
- in population
My question on Millikan's objection to Lewis' convention requires Prescriptive Claim:
Wouldn't Lewis be open to language change/crossing of convention?
03/07/2016
Grice: Logic and Conversation
Descriptive
Prescriptive