Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS
Deferential Utterances
By Isidora Stojanovic, Philippe De Brabanter, Neftali Villanueva Fernandez and David Nicolas
Our aim in this paper is to clarify the distinctions and the relationships among several phenomena, each of which has certain characteristics of what is generally called "deference". We distinguish linguistic deference, which concerns the use of language and the meaning of the words we use, from epistemic deference, which concerns our reasons and evidence for making the claims we make. In our in-depth study of linguistic deference, we distinguish two subcategories: default deference (roughly, the ubiquitous fact, noted by externalists like Burge or Putnam, that the truth conditions of our utterances are determined with respect to the language parameter supplied by the context), and deliberate deference (roughly, the intentional, commu-nicative act of using a given expression the way it is used in some contextu-ally specified idiolect or dialect). We also discuss the phenomenon of im-perfect mastery, often associated with deference, and which we show to be independent both of linguistic deference and of epistemic deference. If our analysis is correct, then some recent debates on deference (e.g. between Recanati and Woodfield) can be shown to result from a failure to appreciate all the distinctions that we draw here.
Source: Jean Nicod Institute
Posted by Tony Marmo
at 00:01 GMT
Updated: Sunday, 13 March 2005 23:58 GMT
