Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS
Semantics in Context
by Jason Stanley
Source: lingBuzz/000024
(...)The explanation for our ability to report about the truth and falsity of what is said by an utterance ofSome philosophers are from New York
in various possible situations is as follows. Competent English speakers know the meanings of the words used, and understand how they are combined. Their grasp of the truth-conditions of the utterance of that sentence is due to their ability to combine the meanings of the words, relative to the context of utterance.
With this explanation in mind, consider an utterance of the sentenceEvery philosopher is from New York,
made at a small philosophy conference. It is natural to take this utterance to say something that is true if and only if every philosopher at the conference is from New York. If we cleave to the model of understanding just described, we will seek to explain our understanding of the truth-conditions of this utterance by appeal to a process of combining the elements of the sentence "Every philosopher is from New York", using our understanding of the words used in the sentence. But of course, there appears to be no expression in the sentence "Every philosopher is from New York" that corresponds to the understood constituent expressed by "at this conference".
Similarly, suppose, pointing at a 5 foot tall seven year old child, I utter the sentence "He is tall." I am most naturally understood as saying something that is true if and only if the child in question is tall for a seven year old child. Preserving the model of understanding we began with, according to which our intuitions about the truth-conditions of an utterance are due to a process of combining meanings of the parts of the sentence uttered, would require us to find some constituent in the sentence that could be taken to supply the understood property of being a seven year old child. But again, it appears that the sentence "He is tall" contains no such constituent. So, we have a predicament. If we look at certain sentences, there seems to be a clear and elegant explanation of why we have the intuitions we do about the truth conditions of utterances of those sentences. But if we consider utterances of other sentences, the explanation appears to break down. The first response to this predicament is to attempt to preserve the clear and elegant explanation in the face of the apparently recalcitrant data. The second is to abandon the clear and elegant explanation of the source of our truth-conditional intuitions in favor of a different one.
My concern with the second response to the predicament is that the suggestions I am aware of for dealing with the additional complexity essentially end up abandoning the project of giving a systematic explanation of the source of our intuitions. They invariably involve appeal to unconstrained and non-explanatory notions or processes (cf. Stanley (2002a)). I have therefore been inclined to pursue the first of these options (cf. Stanley (2000)). My purpose in this paper is to continue the project of defending the clear and elegant explanation of the source of our intuitions about the truth-conditions of utterances. I will do so by considering some replies to previous arguments in favor of it. I will argue that proponents of abandoning the clear and elegant explanation have not yet made their case.
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Posted by Tony Marmo
at 19:31 BST