Why care about lexical semantics?

I *love* formal semantics.  I love it because I love formal systems generally, especially set theory, and I love the structure of languages.  However, I can't see much value in it (besides the sheer fun of transcriptions, better than Xbox for sure). 

 

Philosophers should be interested in arguments.  An argument is a kind of assertion.  An assertion is a kind of speech act.  Thus arguments are a kind of speech act. 

 

But what is asserted has a tenuous tie to the lexical semantics of an utterance which is *used* to assert a certain proposition.  Depending on the context of utterance, there are almost no conceivable limits on what proposition can be asserted by a given utterance.  That is, we can *use* utterences in very creative ways to *assert* a wide variety of things.  

 

Note that grammatical categories don't always map nicely onto speech acts.  For example you can use a declarative sentence to issue a command: "There's the door!"  It can also go the other way around, you can use an imperative sentence to make an assertion: "Get that idea out of your head!"  You can also use an interrogative sentence to make an assertion: "Do you really think you can fool me?"

 

Then also consider how in different contexts of utterance the same sentence-type can have so many different "meanings" (to use the term in a quite natural way).  "It's hot" can express a sober assertion; an imperative "Don't touch it!"; a conditional "If you don't talk, I'll burn your arm!" or even ask a question given the intonation. 

 

I've heard one philosopher of language suggest that utterances express a plethora of propositions and context picks out which one we have asserted.  Expression is taken to be fixed by lexical semantics and context narrows the scope of what is asserted.  The expression relation is somewhat mysterious to me, but even leaving that aside, I think that on this view there would be so many propositions expressed that it would reduce the contribution of lexical semantics nearly to nil. 

 

Pragmatics and context is where the action is, it seems to me.

PS - #5 on Kent Back's Top Ten list of misconceptions about implicature is that "For what is implicated to be figured out, what is said must be determined first."  I think that helps what I'm saying here, though I think many would accuse me of being subject to #8.  That might be so, but I'm not so much concerned with the specific notion of implicature that Grice talked about as the general phenomenon of relying on extra-linguistic facts to use utterances to do all kinds of things not very tightly connected to lexical meaning.  

Bach's full piece is here.

A look at "Theory"

Here's an interesting one. "Theory" and "Theatre" are etymologically related. A theory is a "view" on a matter, and a theatre is where people view theatrical productions. The both have to do with contemplation: it's what a classical dramatist expected of on-lookers, and it's the chief occupation of philosophers, historians, and scientists. The stage is, respectively (but not with out overlap), the world of ideas, the deeds of the past, and nature. Interesting.

A Catechism of Logic

Here is the start, there are subtlties which could be brought up, but for the most part I think this is a nice foundation, and I intend to keep going with it.

Q: What is the Chief Aim of Logic?

 A: The Chief Aim of Logic is the avoidance of contradictions in one’s thoughts. 

 

Q: What is the Contradiction in Thought most to be avoided?

 A: The Contradiction in Thought most to be avoided is to deny the Conclusion of a logically valid argument without denying at least one of its Premises. 

 

Q: When is an argument Logically Valid?

 A: An argument is Logically Valid when it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false, that is, it is a matter of necessity that if the premises are true, the conclusion is as well.

Moore's Paradox doesn't support pragmatic encroachment

Why did a certain percentage of people vote they way they did?  I don't know. 

Note that the import of "I don't know" there isn't merely that I lack belief in a proposition having the lofty epistemic status knowledge. 

Rather, "I don't know" generally implicates that one has really no idea. 

This sets up quite the asymmetry with "I know."   I want to bracket one common usage of "I know" which is synonymous with "I am aware that."  Whether this is a loose "sense" of "know" or a loose *use* of "know" is not something I'll take sides about right now. 

In the usage philosophers are usually interested in "I know" implicates more than merely positive epistemic status.  If one is confident enough to assert not just "p" but "I know that p" then they represent themselves as having considerable evidence that p (though not necessarily that they know that they know, nothing forces that on us).  [Side note: It is often taken for granted that the pragmatic implications of assertions are always the same.  However, attention to details goes against this.  How much evidence a speaker represents themselves as possessing depends on *how confidently* the assertion is made.  This fact is conveyed by extra-linguistic features of the conversational context as well as quasi-linguistic features like tone of voice, facial features, and whether the assertion is an answer to a question or volunteered freely or only after some eliciting.]

 

So it seems interesting to me that "I know" and "I don't know" don't just implicate being on one side of a line of epistemic demarcation or the other, but tend to push the implications to the extremes. 

 

But back to Moore's paradox...

 

"p" generally implicates that one has good evidence that p

"I don't know" generally implicates that one has "no idea" whether the target proposition is true.

This is not, of course, a semantic entailment of "I don't know" but merely a conventional implication. 

But there is an entailment from this implicature to the negation of the implicature of the first conjunct.

You can't both have good evidence and no idea. 

This is sufficient to explain the infelicity of "p but I don't know that p."

 

It is also preferable to a standard interpretation which relies on the assumption that an assertion always represents the speaker as knowing what is asserted, for this assumption is at odds with the felicity of the following speech which, though not "utterly common" (a common, though perhaps not utterly so, phrase among those who buy the knowledge account of assertion) is relevantly similar to common speech and clearly appropriate enough.

 

"p"

"Ah, but do you know that p?"

"Perhaps not, no, but I have sufficient evidence to reasonably believe that p."

 

This should *never* be admissible if the knowledge account of assertion is true.  But it is sometimes admissible.  QED.

Quad Erat Explicandum: Carnap and Maher

I'm glad to see a renewed interest in metaphilosophy and methodology in contemporary analytic philosophy.  This is healthy for a number of reasons, and is related to the recent upswing in "experimental philosophy" but all I have time to say now, is that I think the concept of explication as treated by Carnap is the most important concept in the neighborhood.  

I am constantly trying to get more people to think about it and frequently point people to Patrick Maher's slides on the subject for a seminar in Philosophy of Science.  

I hope more people will devote more time to thinking about philosophical methodology, and I hope they will start by thinking about explication, and I hope they will do so by looking at Maher's notes.  (A little polysyndeton for you there.)