Semantic Plasticity and Speech Reports

Datos Bibliográficos

ID10696402
AutoresCian Dorr (University of Oxford and New York University), John Hawthorne (0000-0002-6340-0242, University of Oxford)
Año2014
Volumen123
Número3
Páginas281-338
Fecha de publicación2014-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Philosophical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0031-8108 • E-ISSN: 1558-1470
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00318108-2683531
OpenAlexW2138981123
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas29
Referencias citadas33

Most meanings we express belong to large families of variant meanings, among which it would be implausible to suppose that some are much more apt for being expressed than others. This abundance of candidate meanings creates pressure to think that the proposition attributing any particular meaning to an expression is modally plastic: its truth depends very sensitively on the exact microphysical state of the world. However, such plasticity seems to threaten ordinary counterfactuals whose consequents contain speech reports, since it is hard to see how we could reasonably be confident in a counterfactual whose consequent can be true only if a certain very finely tuned microphysical configuration obtains. This essay develops the foregoing puzzle and explores several possible solutions

Counterfactual conditional · Counterfactual thinking · Epistemology · Expression (computer science) · Linguistics · Meaning (existential) · Physics · Plasticity · Proposition · Computer Science · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation