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Language and Mind Seminar | Martin Abreu Zavaleta (Syracuse University) “Negotiated contextualism and disagreement data”

8th November 2022 @ 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

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Suppose I assert ”Jim is rich”. According to negotiated contextualism, my assertion should be understood as a proposal to adopt a standard of wealth such that Jim counts as ”rich” by that standard. Furthermore, according to negotiated contextualism, this is so in virtue of the semantic properties of the word ”rich”. Defenders of negotiated contextualism claim that this view is uniquely well-placed to account for certain disagreement data; for example, that if your standard for the application of the word ”rich” is more constraining than mine, you can sensibly assert ”no, Jim is not rich” without thereby making an incompatible claim. This paper offers a simpler explanation of the data: speakers can sensibly reject a given assertion provided that they think that the asserted sentence is false in the context which they take to be relevant to that sentence’s interpretation. I argue that, combined with standard semantic tools, this explanation can account for the original data and for new empirical results. Along the way, I present new empirical data to argue against negotiated contextualism.

Details

Date:
8th November 2022
Time:
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Venue

Online Meeting via Teams