Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS
Semantic Minimalism and Non-Indexical Contextualism
By John MacFarlane
On this picture, the sentence Chiara is tall is not context-sensitive in the sense that it expresses different propositions at different contexts. But it is context-sensitive in the sense that the truth value of an utterance of it depends on features of the context—not just the world of the context, but the speaker’s intentions, the conversational common ground, and other such things. Accordingly, this brand of Semantic Minimalism might also be described as a Non-indexical Contextualism. This way of describing it brings out how close it is to Radical Contextualism. Too close, Cappelen and Lepore may feel! However, it is immune to their best arguments against Radical Contextualism, so if they are going to reject it, they need fresh reasons.
An advantage of the framework I have just sketched is that it offers a different (and perhaps deeper) diagnosis than Cappelen and Lepore’s of what goes wrong in Moderate Contextualists’ uses of Context Shifting Arguments. (Unlike Cappelen and Lepore’s diagnosis, this one does not require Speech Act Pluralism, though it is consistent with it.)
Posted by Tony Marmo
at 13:41 GMT
