A plea for radical contextualism

Bibliographic Data

ID10814913
AuthorsMinyao Huang (University of Cambridge, corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume194
Issue3
Pages963-988
Publication date2017-03-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSynthese (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0039-7857 • E-ISSN: 1573-0964
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11229-015-0982-z
OpenAlexW2302686169
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited35

Extant contextualist theories have relied on the mechanism of pragmatically driven modulation to explain the way non-indexical expressions take on different interpretations in different contexts. In this paper I argue that a modulation-based contextualist semantics is untenable with respect to non-ambiguous expressions whose invariant meaning fails to determine a unique literal interpretation, such as ‘lawyer’ ‘musician’ ‘book’ and ‘game’. The invariant meaning of such an expression corresponds to a range of closely related and equally basic interpretations, none of which can be distinguished as the literal interpretation. Moreover, what counts as a literal interpretation as opposed to a non-literal one is arguably vague. The nonuniqueness of the literal interpretation and the vagueness in the literal/non-literal divide doubly challenge a modulation-based semantics, for modulation is supposed to operate on a unique literal interpretation to generate a clearly non-literal interpretation. Lastly I contend that non-ambiguous expressions which lack determinate literal interpretation are amenable to a Radical Contextualist semantics, according to which the invariant meaning of such an expression directs its interpretation to congruent background information in context. Thereby, these expressions exhibit semantically driven context sensitivity without displaying indexicality

Context (archaeology) · Contextualism · Epistemology · Indexicality · Interpretation (philosophy) · Linguistics · Literal (mathematical logic) · Literal and figurative language · Meaning (existential) · Metaphysics · Philosophy of language · Vagueness · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science

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