Semantics, pragmatics and all that

PhD defense: "Use theories of meaning: between conventions and social norms"

2010-11-28T13:27:00.001+01:00

Event: PhD defense of Marc Staudacher, 2 December 2010, 12:00 (sharp!), Agnietenkapel (Oudezijds Voorburgwal 231, 1012 EZ Amsterdam)

A short Dutch press release by the UvA Persvoorlichting is available from:
http://www.uva.nl/actueel/promoties-oraties/promoties.cfm/7B035942-A6F1-472D-B85ABEFDFF88FA47

Register now: Amsterdam Graduate Philosophy Conference 2010

2010-09-29T19:14:00.001+02:00

The Amsterdam Graduate Philosophy Conference starts tomorrow. Be there. But register now! The program is full of very promising talks in the areas philosophy of language, truth, meaning, and normativity. I'm sure that it will be fun!

The conference venue: The Allard Pierson Museum

Thesis approved for defense

2010-09-22T09:20:00.000+02:00

Short but good news: The members of my "promotiecommissie" have all approved my manuscript for printing; now it can - and indeed will - be defended: The public defense is Thursday December 2nd, 2010 at 12:00 h in the Agnietenkapel in Amsterdam. More details to follow. A late but not yet finalized version of my thesis can be downloaded from the following link:

http://staff.science.uva.nl/~mstaudac/words/PhdThesis.pdf

AGPC 2010: Preliminary conference program is online!

2010-09-10T15:52:00.000+02:00

The third installment of the Amsterdam Graduate Philosophy Conference is approaching. With its themes truth, meaning, and normativity, the conference is devoted to continue the discussions that were raised in the previous two conferences, as well as to lay the ground for new ones. We are happy to announce the preliminary conference program which you can find here.

The conference will be held between Thursday the 30th of September and Saturday the 2nd of October. If you want to participate (as a graduate speaker or a hearer), please don't forget to register as soon as possible!

41. Quote of the Day: Sprouse and Almeida

2010-07-27T16:33:00.000+02:00

While being on "maternity leave" (I submitted my thesis last week), a Quote of the Day might not harm. Especially, if one considers the topic: the so-called "linguistic methodology" which tends two divide researchers into two camps, based on the ideology they accept. For this reason, well-designed studies are more than welcome. As far as I can tell, the one documented in the new article by Prof. Jon Sprouse and Diogo Almeida (PhD) is of this kind:

We conclude that there is no empirical, logical, or statistical reason to think that the informal experiments routinely performed by linguists are unreliable. In fact, we show evidence that these experiments might be, in some circumstances, much more powerful than formal experiments with naïve participants. Given the lack of evidence of problems with traditional linguistic methodology, we hypothesize that one potential reason for the recurrence of this debate is that the phenomena critics are particularly interested in often elicit effects that are very small and hard to detect in formal acceptability judgment tasks. This suggests that critics may be mistaking a property of specific phenomena for a property of the methodology. Taken as a whole, these results suggest that broad criticisms of linguistic theory based on the reliability of linguistic data are unfounded, and that methodological concerns should not influence the relationship between linguistic theory and other domains of language research.
(Sprouse, Jon; Almeida, Diogo (submitted 2010): A quantitative defense of linguistic methodology, lingBuzz/001075, last access: 2010-07-27.)

Question about Signaling Games: Proposals with infinitely many structured signals?

2010-06-23T10:05:00.002+02:00

This is a quick question about Signaling Games: Are there proposals (i) that aim at explaining the meanings of signals, (ii) whose Signaling Games have ESS, (iii) whose Signaling Games have infinitely many signals (iv) that are syntactically structured and (v) whose meanings are also combinatorial?

The context is this: Signaling Games, as applied to philosophy, are often criticized for having unstructured signals. Hence, it is claimed that we cannot explain the combinatorial features of language and assign meanings directly to words.

I wonder whether this criticism is too quick. For there are extensions of and results on Signaling Games with infinitely many signals. Even the classical papers from economy work with infinitely many signals (e.g. Crawford/Sobel: Strategic information transmission). Typically, the signals are reals from the unit interval [0,1]. But language is discrete and we are dealing with countable infinity. Moreover, what we'd like to have is a Montogovian architecture: (i) signals are from a syntactic algebra, (ii) meanings are from a semantic algebra, and (iii) the syntax/semantics-mapping is a homomorphism. - It's not obvious to me that such a special architecture is "just a special case" of the general model.

The rejoinder I have in mind to the "no structure"-objection against Signaling Games is so simple that there must be someone that has proposed this: The limitation of Signaling Games to explain linguistic structure can be overcome by generating the signal set by a grammar. The signal set is then countably infinite. Moreover, we assume that each agent has a mentally realized grammar (not necessarily the same) generating this set of messages but possibly associating different meanings to them.

If this idea worked, then there would a simple and general communication model that suits philosophical needs. It could be easily be adapted to one's favorite account of speaker meaning and linguistic understanding. Moreover, it would be formally well understood and would have solid theoretical foundations.

So, the question for the specialists out there is: Are there such proposals? (I haven't found any so far. The closest matches were the works from Prof. Martin Nowak. From what I've seen, recursive rules are not studied. The syntax is basic and only allows recombination of finitely many parts effecting finitely many recombinations. That is to say that there is nothing like an "and" in the syntax.)

Update to MiKTeX 2.8 version 3807 (2010-06-04): install "expl3" and "xpackages"

2010-06-05T12:10:00.000+02:00

There are new unresolved dependencies among the packages if one updates MiKTeX 2.8 to version 3807 (2010-06-04). Install "expl3" and "xpackages". Then it works again. (I guess this only applies to XeLaTeX users but haven't bothered to check.)

Amsterdam Graduate Philosophy Conference 2010 - Call for Papers

2010-05-08T15:08:00.001+02:00

I'm pleased to announce the third Amsterdam Graduate Philosophy Conference on 'Truth, Meaning, and Normativity', organized by María Inés Crespo, Dimitris Gakis, and Galit Weidman-Sassoon.

Call for Papers

Theme: Truth, Meaning and Normativity
The 3rd Amsterdam Graduate Philosophy Conference on 'Truth, Meaning, and Normativity' is devoted to continue the discussions that were raised in the previous two conferences, as well as to lay the ground for new ones.

We invite submissions from graduate researchers conducting novel philosophical research into any of the three conference topics. We also encourage submissions that inform the discussion about truth, meaning, and/or normativity by offering a philosophical interpretation of results from other fields such as logic, cognitive psychology and linguistics (including formal semantics and sociolinguistics).

Areas of interest include but are not restricted to: formal theories of truth; deflationism; vagueness; proof-theoretic versus truth-theoretic conceptions of meaning; meaning as use; the semantics-pragmatics interface; compositionality; criteria and evidence for evaluating competing theories of truth and/or meaning; semantic normativity with respect to meaning, use, content, and context; syntax and logical form.

Since the topics of truth, meaning, and normativity naturally feed into each other, we also welcome contributions whose particular aim is to explore any of the many intricate ways in which these notions relate to one another. Submissions on the role that these notions have played, or play, in the broad (analytic) tradition or, more specifically, within the linguistic turn are also of interest to the conference.

Confirmed invited speakers

Paul Egré (Paris)
Jeroen Groenendijk (Amsterdam)
Max Kölbel (Barcelona)
Hannes Leitgeb (Bristol)
Åsa Wikforss (Stockholm)

Submission information

We invite submissions in the form of short papers (not longer than 4000 words) accompanied by short abstracts (not longer than 150 words). The deadline for submission is 18 July and it should follow the on-line submission form, available here. Candidates eligible for submission are graduate students and those who have completed a doctoral dissertation within the last three years.

Successful candidates will be allotted a 45-minute time slot, comprising of a 25-minute presentation, a short commentary by an appointed speaker and discussion with the audience. Candidates will be notified by August 30 of whether their paper has been accepted for presentation. The speakers will have the chance to send a revised version of their paper, as well as a revised version of their abstract for publication in the conference book of abstracts.

Please note that submitting a a paper does not automatically count as registration for the conference. Those who wish to participate must formally register for the conference; full details on how to do so can be found here.

For further information, please contact agpc-at-uva.nl

Important dates

Submission Deadline: 18 July 2010
Notification of Authors: 30 August 2010

Proceedings of the Amsterdam Graduate Philosophy Conference: Meaning and Truth

2010-03-15T17:45:00.000+01:00

We, the organizers, are happy to announce that the proceedings of the conference are now available online at:

http://www.illc.uva.nl/Publications/ResearchReports/X-2010-01.text.pdf

40. Quote of the day: Putnam

2010-02-05T11:40:00.000+01:00

Prof. Hilary Putnam about his hallucinations when it comes to Sellars:

Sellars's theory, as Dennett reconstructs it, is that a hare is a tortoise in rabbit's clothing. I must say that I'm in somewhat worse shape than Dan. I did not get six papers in advance. I got this one on Tuesday night and I left on Wednesday morning for North Carolina, so this comment is perhaps even more hallucinatory. I wish my hallucinations were as cogent as Dan's.
(Putnam, Hilary (1974): Comment on Wilfrid Sellars. In: Synthese, 27(3-4), p. 445–455, p. 445)

Upcoming talk: Meaning, conventions, and social norms (Feb 8, A'dam)

2010-02-01T21:32:00.000+01:00

On Monday, Feb 8, 19:00 (sharp), I will give a talk on meaning, conventions and social norms in the Senaatzaal of UvA's Roeterseiland complex.

The talk is part of the Cafe Cognitive series: "The Cafe Cognitive is a series of talks for anyone interested in Cognitive Science. The series covers a large variety of topics reflecting the interdisciplinary character of the Cognitive Science Center Amsterdam."

39. Quote of the day: Harnish

2010-01-29T10:23:00.000+01:00

Prof. Robert Harnish offers a pointed summary of the recurrent phrase "(imposing) conditions of satisfaction on conditions of satisfaction") in Searle's "Rationality in action" (MIT Press: 2001):

There are a number of puzzling features in this collection of ideas[.]
(Harnish, Robert M. (2005): Commitments and speech acts. In: Philosophica, 75(1), pp. 11–41, p. 27)

Talk: Two conceptions of conventions and social norms

2010-01-13T14:03:00.000+01:00

On Friday, 09:50 (sharp), I will give a short talk on two conceptions of conventions and social norms in the Doelenzaal. I argue against a popular conception according to which conventions are identical to social norms and show that it's worthwhile to distinguish between them in a certain way.

The talk is part of the GLoRiClass Farewell Event. There will be keynote talks from Samson Abramsky (Oxford), Alexandru Baltag (Oxford), Dietmar Berwanger (Cachan), Erich Grädel (Aachen), Jérôme Lang (Paris), Alain Louveau (Paris), Bernhard Nebel (Freiburg), Ian Pratt-Hartmann (Manchester), Reinhard Selten (Bonn), and Robert Stalnaker (Cambridge MA).

38. Quote of the day: Savage

2009-12-28T11:43:00.000+01:00

In Dr. Leonard Jimmie Savage's beautiful "The foundations of statistics" we also find advances in the logic of proverbs:

The point of view under discussion may be symbolized by the proverb, “Look before you leap,” and the one to which it is opposed by the proverb, “You can cross that bridge when you come to it.” When two proverbs conflict in this way, it is proverbially true that there is some truth in both of them, but rarely, if ever, can their common truth be captured by a single pat proverb.
(Savage, Leonard J. (1954/1972): The foundations of statistics. 2. ed. Toronto: Dover Publications, p. 16)

37. Quote of the day: Doerge

2009-12-22T08:00:00.012+01:00

Dr. Friedrich Christoph Doerge points out that there is a "double-digit number of different definitions of the term "illocutionary act"":

Technical terms, I argued elsewhere, should not be re-defined without a profound reason; for such a re-definition furthers misunderstanding and is therefore undesirable. If my argument is on the right track, then we have reason to acknowledge the original definition of ‘illocutionary acts’ established by John L. Austin; any subsequent re-definition, unless it is specially justified somehow, must count as a terminological mistake. I use this argument, in order to proceed against what appears to me a highly problematic terminological situation, namely, the present existence of a double-digit number of different definitions of the term "illocutionary act."
(Doerge, Friedrich Christoph (2009): A scholarly confusion of tongues, or, is promising an illocutionary act? In: Lodz Papers in Pragmatics, 5(1), pp. 53–68, p. 53)

(As a teaser: My thesis will contain a section called "Around 20 notions of conventions" containing material I've promised Pelle for ages.)

36. Quote of the day: Searle/Vanderveken

2009-12-18T12:00:00.000+01:00

Unbeknownst to many, Prof. John Searle and Prof. Daniel Vanderveken seem to promote atheistical ideas in their classic on standard speech act theory, "Foundations of illocutionary logic":

A speaker cannot successfully apologize for the law of modus ponens or the elliptical orbit of the planets, for example.
(Searle, John R.; Vanderveken, Daniel (1985): Foundations of illocutionary logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 16)

So, if there is a language using being who can influence the orbits of planets, then standard speech act theory does not apply to it. Maybe, then, what we need is an additional celestial speech act theory for the speech acts of divine beings.

Conventional Sunday fun with Answers.com

2009-12-13T12:17:00.001+01:00

Answers.com lists interesting compound words for the term "convention*":

conventional energy, conventional crimes, convention hotel, conventional home, constitutional convention, Geneva conventions, convention current, conventional research, narrative convention, conventional medicine, generic convention, provincial convention, conventional financing, epic conventions, marking out conventions, conventional morality, non conventional sources, conventional types of teaching, conventional art, unconventional machining, conventionalism theory, conventional cakes

I was also very deligthed to see some sentences using "convention*":

An example of convention is boiling rice.
A convention is the things that structure a particular text type.
Actual/360 is the day-count convention used for commercial paper.
Modeling conventions exist to discover new talent, provide networking opportunities and allow aspiring models, actors and singers.
The conventional form of love poetry is called a sonnet.
Is conventional education a waste of time?

Now compare and contrast:

Is electrical energy conventional or non conventional? (from Answers.com)
Is meaning conventional or non conventional? (not from Answers.com)

35. Quote of the day: Harms

2009-12-08T11:19:00.003+01:00

In his book "Information and meaning in evolutionary processes" Dr. William F. Harms provides an interesting account about how evolved conventions determine the meanings of signals used in a population. He makes it clear right from the beginning that we shouldn't expect that evolutionary science will overridde our intuitions about how meaning is determined:

Given the general consensus that this sort of project [=the project of conventionalist use theories, M.S.] cannot work, it behooves me from the start to be completely clear about my own aspirations with respect to a theory of the normative. I argue that a full knowledge of the functional history of signaling systems of all sorts, including especially the system-stabilizing consequences of signaling behavior, is sufficient to establish the conventions governing meaning and truth for all sorts of signals, from hormonal secretions to scientific hypotheses to pronouncements of moral and epistemic justification. The point, however, is purely academic in that the sorts of historical facts relevant to determining meaning-conventions are so difficult to come by that we should not ever expect to see our own intuitions on such matters overridden by pronouncements of evolutionary science.
(Harms, William F. (2004): Information and meaning in evolutionary processes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge studies in philosophy and biology), p. 7)

34. Quote of the day: Schiffer

2009-12-02T17:51:00.002+01:00

Being a distinguished philosophy professor, as Prof. Stephen Schiffer is, seems to imply certain rights which freshmen are not granted. Notice the use of "absolutely crucial", "must have some quite substantial property", and "in some suitably strong sense of 'sufficient'":

What is absolutely crucial to the idea that a person thinks in L is that his believing p is realized by his having tokened in his belief box a sentence that means p in L. In order for a neural sentence s thus to realize a belief p it must have some quite substantial property F such that in some suitably strong sense of “sufficient” it is sufficient for one's believing p that s both has F and is tokened in one's belief box.
(Schiffer, Stephen R. (1993): Actual-language relations. In: Philosophical Perspectives (7), pp. 231–258, p. 249) [Symbols and formatting have been changed for web publishing]

33. Quote of the day: den Hartogh

2009-11-27T10:26:00.002+01:00

We all have our ambitions and Prof. Govert den Hartogh was certainly not shy when he started his book project "Mutual expectations":

The basic ambition is to find a point of view from which ideas usually held to be mutually hostile - public reason and convention, game theory and virtue ethics, perhaps even discourse ethics and autopoiesis - can be integrated in a natural, unconstrained, non-eclectic way.
(Hartogh, Govert A. den. Mutual expectations: A conventionalist theory of law. Law and philosophy library 56. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2002, ix)

I'm glad to see the result.

The shortest and most pointed evaluation of Lewis' Signaling Games-theory....

2009-11-26T12:23:00.004+01:00

...can be given with Roberto Benigni's words in Jarmusch's movie "Down by law": "It's a sad and beautiful world" - sad for the theory's many shortcomings, beautiful for its simplicity and its striking conceptual insights.

Not that it matters but according to IMDB, this classic line was the result of a mishap:

Roberto Benigni's line "It's a sad and beautiful world" was the result of a misunderstanding. The script read "That's sad and beautiful music", but Benigni said "It's a sad and beautiful word", but Waits and Jarmusch misheard it and though he said "WORLD", and so, the line stuck.

32. Quote of the day: Horwich

2009-11-03T10:40:00.004+01:00

Prof. Paul Horwich cuts a long story short:

The great simplicity of such an account is what justifies [it].
(Horwich, Paul (1998): Meaning. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 158)

[The account in question is about how the meaning of complex expressions is constituted in a use theory of meaning. The account is really simple and it's hard to see how it could be simpler. Horwich invokes the inference to the best explanation. So, there's clearly a point to his claim.]

Yet another talk this year...

2009-10-29T16:13:00.002+01:00

Tomorrow, 16:00 (sharp), I will give a LEGO-talk in room 645.A1.06 at the Science Park. Here's the abstract:

Conventionalist Use Theories of Meaning
That use determines meaning seems to be one of these homely truths that many philosophers take for granted without further questioning. Though clearly, in this form it is at best a slogan in which three rather involved notions figure: use, determination, and meaning.

In my talk, I won’t try to defend a more complete account. For this would amount to answering questions that cannot be answered in a single talk: 1. What is meaning?, 2. What is use?, 3. What is it to determine meaning?, 4. How might use do so?, and 5. Do we have reason to believe that such an account is indeed true?

Rather I will make a proposal how the project of the conventionalist use theory of meaning should be understood. In doing so, I will also indicate how those questions can be answered.

31. Quote of the day: Millikan

2009-09-02T15:46:00.002+02:00

Prof. Ruth G. Millikan about the importance of the simple and natural:

The fact that these conclusions are so simple and natural should not occasion scorn. Proving platitudes is not as exciting as posing paradoxes, but these platitudes have often been abandoned in the face of paradox.
(Millikan, Ruth G. (1984/1995): Language, thought, and other biological categories. New foundations for realism. Cambridge: MIT Press, p. 54)

How often need Lewis conventions be conformed to?

2009-08-26T12:48:00.005+02:00

- Not as often as you might think! The received view about Lewis conventions seems to be that the regularity of a Lewis convention must almost always be conformed to. For otherwise, the regularity ceases to be a convention since the members of the population in which the convention prevails wouldn't have a good reason to conform to it anymore. Consequently, they would start to deviate and the convention would vanish.

However, I think that that Lewis' account can be relaxed. Someone willing to defend a Lewisian conception of a convention does not need to claim that the conventional regularity must be almost always conformed to. This is interesting on its own. But it also has consequences for arguments against Lewis' notion and its use in the wild.

Certainly, Lewis gives the impression that a conventional regularity is almost always conformed to (see "Convention", p. 78, and "Languages and Language", p. 5). And it is also okay to criticize Lewis on that count, as people like Ruth G. Millikan ("Language conventions made simple") and Max Kölbel ("Lewis, language, lust and lies") did.

But they also seem to be convinced that a Lewisian couldn't endorse a weaker position allowing a less strict degree of conformity. And this is wrong. If we accept Lewisian notion of a convention the degree of conformity to a convention can be substantially less than perfect for a convention to continue to exist. At least, if we make certain idealizing but standard assumptions: Agents are Bayesians (or behave as if they were Bayesians and if they were to think hard enough they would tend to act as they actually act). Moreover, their probabilistic beliefs track their environment reliably.

Under such assumptions (the formal treatment needs some more!), it seems to me that the following degrees of conformity to a conventional regularity R are sufficient:

In a game of pure coordination with n proper coordination equilibria, the members of the population have to conform to a degree 1/n +x to do their part of R. A game of pure coordination has only 1's in the payoffs of the coordination equilibria and 0's at all other places. "x" is a small factor which should make up for the agents' possible "trembling". For example, in a simple game of pure coordination with two equilibria, the degree of conformity to do one's part of R can be around 51%. This is nowhere close to conform "almost always" to R.
More generally, in an (impure) coordination game, the minimal degree of conformity to R has to be defined for each role (or "agent") i in the game. The degree di to which agents in role i have done Ri (i.e. i's part of R) in the past has to be such that the expected utility EUi(Ri) of agents in role i to do Ri is bigger (to an amount x) than the expected utility EUi(Ri*) of agents in role i to do Ri* , for any of i's alternative behaviors Ri* of Ri. For example, in a 3x2 coordination game with two roles and two proper coordination equilibria, there is a payoff matrix such that the minimal degrees of conformity are around 80% for one role and 25% for the other role. This is also nowhere close to conform "almost always" to R.

The general idea is that the past degree of conformity is reflected in the probabilistic beliefs the agents have about the conformity and that these beliefs are used (together with the outcomes' payoffs) to calculate the expected utilities for each of the actions they can individually perform. Then, the past degree of conformity has to be so high that every agent concludes her deliberation about what to do by doing their part of the regularity. And this degree can be quite low as I've shown.

Insofar as this is convincing, Lewis conventions have been wrongly critized that they require almost perfect conformity. It is true that Lewis defined conventions in this way. But there is no good reason that one has to define them in this way. A Lewisian can relax the definition in the way I've sketched without losing anything important. Or so it seems to me.

This point about misguided criticism is important. Both Millikan and Kölbel (and others) have used it in arguments against conceiving conventions as Lewis did. Millikan used it to promote her notion of a convention. Kölbel used it to restate the Actual Language Relation of Lewis' later conventionalist account about meaning. So, both attacked crucial parts of Lewis' conventionalist account about meaning - but not quite convincingly for there is an obvious rejoinder along the lines: Hey, it's true that Lewis' definitions are quite strict with respect to the degree of conformity to the conventional regularity. But we can weaken that without losing much!

Pre-theoretic characterizations of notions of conventions (III/III)

2009-08-17T22:13:00.009+02:00

This is the third and last part in my series about pre-theoretic characterizations of notions of conventions (part I: rational convention; part II: rationally justifiable conventions).

Arguably, many people have a rationalistic conception of conventions and embrace a notion which does not imply that parties to a convention deliberate each time before they act in a conventional situation. What these people rather would say is that it's not of their interest how the agents act as they act. They insist that the important point is that the agents' actions could be rationally justified because the agents are, at least in principle, able to deliberate and justify their actions. This goes well with what I've characterized as J-conventions in my second part.

But what about agents who cannot rationally deliberate? Could they have conventions among them? – Clearly, they could neither have R- nor J-conventions. They cannot be party to a R-conventions since they cannot rationally deliberate. They cannot be party to a J-convention since the sense of rational justification used in the characterization of J-conventions presupposes that the agents in question are able to deliberate about what to do and to justify their actions.

Still, it seems to me that such "dumb" agents can be said to have conventions. An example I have in mind is the following:

(4) Safe in a swarm: There is a group of simple beings which are able to receive information about their environment and which show adaptive behavior. Some of them are red, the others blue. They tend to move in pairs. Thereby they maximize their chances to survive. There are predators in their environment which tend to target individuals and bigger swarms. The beings' adaptive behavior is due to some simple reactive mechanism which controls their behavior. The mechanism brings about a pattern which can be described as follows: Single beings tend to move in a direction where differently colored beings are. They also tend to move away from beings of the same color. If there are beings in a bigger swarm, then the swarm tends to split into two smaller swarms. But crucially, the beings cannot rationally deliberate in the demanding ways we humans can. For example, they have no language and no means to symbolically articulate their reasoning. Also, they cannot influence their disposition to behave in a certain way by reassessing again the situation they are in.

As I said, I think we should count (4) as an example of a convention. I don’t want to pretend that this might be implausible upon first presentation with the example. But it is in important respects similar to the examples in the first two parts of this series. This seems to me to be a reason to count it as an example of a convention. First, the swarm behavior is social. Second, there is a sense in which an agent conforms to the pattern and in which it deviates. Third, each agent in (4) has preferences in the sense that outcomes are possibly more or less beneficial for it in an evolutionary sense (e.g. in terms of expected number of offspring). Fourth, conforming behavior tends to be optimal for an agent iff the others conform as well. Fifth, the optimal behavior requires coordination. Sixth, assuming a relatively stable environment, little inter- and intra-generational variation, the pattern in their behavior tends to be relatively robust. Seventh, and finally, there is an alternative to the pattern which is equally optimal, namely pairing with beings of the same color.

From this description it follows, that such beings face a coordination problem which they solve in a a-rational way. The interesting features are three, four, five and seven. If they are present, we can ascribe to such a group of such simple agents a disposition of a certain type, “coordinative dispositions” as I’d like to call them.

A group has a coordinative disposition iff
i) the members of the group behave in a way which tends to bring about a certain outcome which is optimal for its members,
ii) the members of the group would behave differently if enough other members had behaved differently,
iii) also if the members behaved as in ii), the members of the group would behave in a way which tended to bring about a certain other outcome which is also optimal for its members, and
iv) if a member of the group behaved differently but the rest as in i), then the outcome tends to be worse for the deviating member than if it didn't behave differently.

Obviously, a group having a coordinative disposition is what solves their coordination problem. But how does this group level disposition relate to the individual agents? - A coordinative disposition of a group is realized by suitable behavioral dispositions of its members. The individuals' behavioral dispositions share some of the marks of a coordinative disposition. In particular, the members tend to have (acquired) different behavioral dispositions iff enough other members had also (acquired) different behavioral dispositions.

One thing to note here is that the expression “optimal” is ambiguous. In case of R-conventions it means “being a rational thing to do in the situation the agent is in”. In contrast, in case of example (4) “optimal” means “being an evolutionary beneficial way of behaving in the situation the agent is in”. But it seems to me that the ambiguity is not doing much harm as long we are aware of the different ways it can be understood.

Coordinative dispositions can be realized in different ways if we drop the drastic restriction I've made in the beginning of this post, namely that the agents cannot deliberate. In case of (4), the coordinative disposition of the group is realized by the simple reactive mechanisms of the group members. In the examples for R-conventions, the dispositions are realized by the highly sophisticated deliberating systems of the individual agents. In case of J-conventions, the dispositions are realized by (possibly complex) cognitive systems which can learn habits and which have a motivational or behavior-triggering role. So, we can also ascribe groups of (possibly) deliberating agents coordinative dispositions.

Let’s call a coordinative disposition “effective” if it brings about an optimal outcome often enough. Such effective coordinative dispositions capture the core of conventions – or so it seems to me. The agents in all examples considered so far have them. Thus, we should count (4) as an example of a convention.

The following characterization takes the considerations above into account:

D0 and D1: as R0 and R1.
D2. The existence of a convention to P implies that the members of G have (together) an effective coordinative disposition to behave in a way conforming to P.
D3: as R5.

Let’s call conventions satisfying D0-3 “D-conventions” (“D” for “dispositional”). Clearly, J-conventions are D-conventions. Thus, we have the small hierarchy I mentioned in my first post: Rs are Js and Js are Ds (and thus, Rs are Ds).

Wrapping up

I've distinguished three kinds of conventions - 1. rational conventions, 2. rationally justifiable conventions, and 3. dispositional conventions. The kinds of conventions correspond to three kinds of agents, namely 1. deliberating agents, 2. habitually acting agents which could but actually do not deliberate, and finally 3. dumb a-rational but adaptive agents.

Thereby, the taxonomy makes us aware that the parties to a convention can do their part in different ways. Deliberating agents deliberate. Habitually acting agents act habitually. Dumb agents behave in ways controlled by the simple reactive mechanisms they have (acquired).

The taxonomy also solves a small puzzle. There are potential cases of conventions where something was not common knowledge at some point and became commonly known afterwards but otherwise, all conventional marks are present. Are such cases cases of conventions? – Lewis thought not. Others disagreed. On my take, the answer is a “it depends” which is systematic and not ad hoc. Such cases cannot be R-conventions, but they can be J- and D-conventions.

The taxonomy also solves a small puzzle. There are potential cases of conventions where something was not common knowledge at some point and became commonly known afterwards but otherwise, all conventional marks are present. Are such cases cases of conventions? – Lewis thought not. Others disagreed. On my take, the answer is a “it depends” which is systematic and not ad hoc. Such cases cannot be R-conventions of a special kind, but they can be J- and D-conventions. I should hasten to add that I don't think that R-conventions require common knowledge. But I think that common knowledge about a convention can help to make it robust. We often make announcements that there is a certain convention to behave so-and-so to establish common knowledge about the convention (at least in a loose everyday sense of common knowledge). This helps the parties to the convention in their deliberation about what to do. For if the announcement is truthful, then they should just do as announced, that is, they should do their part according to the behavioral pattern to behave so-and-so. So, I would classify conventions among deliberating agents which are common knowledge as a sub-kind of R-conventions, say "R+CK-conventions".

With this terminology, it's correct to claim that the cases where something about a potential conventional was at some point not common knowledge are not conventions in the sense of R+CK-conventions but such cases could still be cases of other kinds of conventions, say R-, J- or D-conventions. And it's also correct to claim that such cases are cases of conventions, at least in the sense of a D-convention. This reminds us again that it is often interesting to distinguish between and to study the processes which bring about and sustain a convention.

Update: Small corrections and a little addition.

Pre-theoretic characterizations of notions of conventions (II/III)

2009-08-17T17:48:00.005+02:00

This is the second post of my series about pre-theoretic characterizations of notions of conventions, following the first one here. To recap, I want to distinguish between three notions of conventions: Rational (or "R-") conventions, rationally justifiable (or "J-") conventions, and dispositional (or "D-") conventions.

The topic of the first post was R-conventions. They clearly capture some of our talk about conventions. But they are rather restrictive in that they require that in the situations to which R-conventions apply, the agents' conventional behavior is the outcome of their rational deliberation about what to do. That is, the agents are assumed to go through a reasoning process in which each of them judges the conventional behavior to be among the best behavioral options she has and consequently acts in accordance to her part of the conventional pattern.

The requirement that each time a party to a convention has to deliberate in a conventional situation is rather strong. Should we impose it as a general requirement for something being a convention? - I think not. Let us consider some more examples.

Second set of examples
Consider the following variations of (1-3):

(1') Rowing a boat: You and I sit in a boat and have a common interest in getting the boat move in one direction but the speed is not so important to us. As long as we both row with the appropriate frequency and strength, we will satisfy our interest. There are many combinations of individual frequencies and strengths which are in this sense equally good. We both row in a way satisfying the shared goal and we both would have rowed in another way if the other had done so in matching way as well.
(2') Redialing after being interrupted while phoning: You and I live in a city where phone connections are interrupted from time to time. We are talking on the phone and the connection is interrupted in the middle. We have a common interest to reestablish the connection. One of us has to redial and the other has to wait. If we both dial or both don’t dial, then the interest is not satisfied. We both settle on one such strategy and would have settled on another way if the other had done so in matching way as well.
(3') Driving right: Car drivers share an interest in efficient and safe conduct on the streets they drive. Among the many ways they could behave when they drive, two of them are particularly simple: Crossing drivers drive on their respective right (or left – the second option). By doing so, they further their common interest. They drive on their respective right and they would have driven on their respective left if the others had done so as well.

The examples (1’-3’) are as before except for the following differences. First, it’s not assumed that the agents deliberate about what to do and do what they do because they judge it to be the rational thing to do. Let’s assume, in addition, that the involved agents in fact don’t, won’t and wouldn’t deliberate and act on the basis of it. Rather, their behavior is the result of some kind of habitual, more or less automatic cognitive process (if you like this kind of process-talk). Second, the agents would have behaved differently in a way also satisfying their common interest if the others had done so as well.

Due to the first difference, the examples are obviously not R-conventions since they do not satisfy R2-4 and R6 of the characterization. But even so, I think that we should also count them as examples of conventions.

Why should we count (1’-3’) as examples of conventions? – Obviously, the agents are not acting rationally in the sense that they have gone through the reasoning which would justify and motivate (or trigger) their actual way of behaving. But the agents’ behavior is rationally justified in the sense that if they agent had gone through the reasoning, then their behavior would have been rationally justified and rationally motivated. That is, their behavior could be rationally justified. And it seems that for something to be a convention having a rational justification is enough.

From the old characterization for R-conventions we can easily arrive at a new one which reflects this change and also classifies (1’-3’) as conventions:

J0 and J1: as R0 and R1.
J2. A convention (to P) has a point in the sense that the existence of a convention (to P) implies that the individual conformity to P by members of G could be rationally justified iff the others conform to P as well.
J3. A convention (to P) requires coordination in the sense that the existence of a convention rules out that all relevant combinations of individual activities of the members of G could be rationally justified.
J4. A convention (to P) could be conformed to for reasons in the sense that the existence of convention (to P) implies that it could be that (certain) members of G conform to P since it is rational to do so.
J5: as R5.
J6. A convention (to P) has an alternative in the sense that the existence of a convention implies that there is another pattern P' distinct from P which also would have a point (J2), require coordination (J3), could be conformed to for reasons (J4), and would be relatively robust (J5).

This characterization can be simplified. If some behavior could be rationally justified, then a rational agent could also rationally act in this way. That is, J2 entails J4. Thus, J4 can be dropped (and J6’ be shortened in the obvious way). Let’s call such conventions “J-conventions” (“J” for “rationally justifiable”).

J-conventions include behavior in groups whose members behave accordingly out of being accustomed to it, that is, habitually.

The second set of examples suggests another direction of exploration: What about agents who cannot rationally deliberate? Could they have conventions among them? - This is the topic of the third post.

Update: Added a link and corrected some silly mistakes.

Pre-theoretic characterizations of notions of conventions

2009-08-17T11:47:00.006+02:00

After doing too much of the same for too long, a sanity check is in order. I propose pre-theoretic characterizations of three notions of a convention which I call "R", "J", and "D". It turns out that they form a hierarchy: The notions are in a subsumption relation in the sense that if something is a convention according to characterization R, then it's also a convention according to characterization J. Moreover, Js are Ds. And thereby, Rs are also Ds.

As you might have guessed, the letters "R", "J", and "D" are mnemonic. "R" stands for "rational", "J" for "rationally justifiable", and "D" for "dispositional".

In this first post I start with the most restrictive notion, R-conventions. R-conventions can only exist among rationally deliberating agents. The next two posts are about J- and D-conventions (part II is here and part III here). I introduce the characterizations by presenting some examples and by pointing out what I take to be their important properties. From this, I derive the pre-theoretic characterizations which are followed by a short discussion.

The point of this series is to get a discussion going what we should count as a convention. It seems to me that recently, the academic debates about conventions got overly technical by the use of game theory. A reflection on ordinary examples of conventions should help to fix the notions which we want to analyze - at some point. This is not to say that the many definitions of conventions which are on the market have defects. But without either linking them to pre-theoretic concepts or fixing their theoretical roles, there is little to recommend about them. For how should we possible know what such definitions are good for?

A first set of examples leading to R-conventions
The first set of examples is adapted from Lewis' book "Convention".

(1) Rowing a boat: You and I sit in a boat and have a common interest in getting the boat move in one direction but the speed is not so important to us. As long as we both row with the appropriate frequency and strength, we will satisfy our interest. There are many combinations of individual frequencies and strengths which are in this sense equally good. We individually deliberate about what to do and conclude that certain combinations are best, on condition that the other does her part of it as well. We both row in a way satisfying the shared goal and do so because we individually judge it to be rational to do so.
(2) Redialing after being interrupted while phoning: You and I live in a city where phone connections are interrupted from time to time. We are talking on the phone and the connection is interrupted in the middle. We have a common interest to reestablish the connection. One of us has to redial and the other has to wait. If we both dial or both don’t dial, then the interest is not satisfied. We individually deliberate about what to do and conclude that one such strategy is best, on condition that the other does her part of it as well. We both settle on one such strategy and do so because we individually judge it to be rational to do so.
(3) Driving right: Car drivers share an interest in efficient and safe conduct on the streets they drive. Among the many ways they could behave when they drive, two of them are particularly simple: Crossing drivers drive on their respective right (or left – the second option). By doing so, they further their common interest. The drivers individually deliberate about what to do and conclude that these two simple ways are best, on condition that the others do their part of it as well. They drive on their respective right and do so because we individually judge it to be rational to do so.

Important properties
Examples (1-3) are paradigmatic examples of conventions, in some ordinary sense of the word. They have several properties in common.

The examples involve a group, that is, at least two people. They are interacting in specific ways with each other to satisfy a common interest. That is, there is a behavioral pattern which is realized and according to which some persons of the group behave. Also, the structure of the situation is such that there is an alternative way to satisfy the common interest. The satisfaction of the common interest requires coordination. Whatever one does, it is only rational to do so, if other members of the group behave in a suitable way to satisfy the common interest. At least some uncoordinated ways of behaving lead to outcomes which are less preferred.
This is an important trait of all examples, namely what is best for a member to do depends on what the others do. Also, in the examples there was a regularity in the individual behavior. Example (1) required suitable actions from each of the two over some period of time, and likewise in example (2) and (3). The acting according to the pattern has a self-enforcing effect. It is rational for each agent who is doing her part to realize the full pattern to do so and this gives everyone a reason to behave accordingly in new situations of a similar kind. Also, the way each behaves is the outcome of a deliberation. Thereby, the agents are assumed to be rational ones acting on the basis what is rational for them to do, given their beliefs and desires.

In short, conventions have a point, an alternative, and a rational justification (Kemmerling,1976, p. 29 is the source of this concise characterization). Though, this might not be precise enough. Let me try a little bit more elaborately. On the basis of these commonalities, we can fix conventions in a preliminary way as follows:

R0. A convention is social in the sense that the existence of a convention implies that there is a group G of agents with at least two members.
R1. A convention is behavioral in the following sense: The existence of a convention implies that i) there is a pattern P of individual activities of at least two members of G, ii) P determines what it is to conform to (and to deviate from) P, and iii) at least on some occasions, members of G behave in a way conforming to P. We call "P" to be the characteristic element of a convention. We also say that there is a “convention to P”.
R2. A convention (to P) has a point in the sense that the existence of a convention (to P) implies that individual members of G judge it to be rational to conform to P iff the others conform to P as well.
R3. A convention (to P) requires coordination in the sense that the existence of a convention rules out that all relevant combinations of individual activities of the members of G are judged to be rational to do by the members of G.
R4. A convention (to P) is conformed to for reasons in the sense that the existence of a convention (to P) implies that members of G conform to P because it's an outcome of their rational deliberation about what to do.
R5. A convention (to P) is relatively robust in the sense that the existence of a convention (to P) implies that in all near futures, it exists as well.
R6. A convention (to P) has an alternative in the sense that the existence of a convention implies that there is another pattern P' distinct from P which also would have a point (R2), require coordination (R3), be conformed to for reasons (R4), and be relatively robust (R5).

Let’s call conventions which satisfy R0-6 “R-conventions” (“R” for “rational”). Clearly, if the agents don’t deliberate, they can’t be part of a R-convention. But couldn’t they be part of a convention at all? - It seems to me that we shouldn't rule out the possibility that not-deliberating agents have conventions among them. This is the topic of the next post.

Update: Small changes and addition of links.

30. Quote of the day: Darwin

2009-08-04T12:27:00.003+02:00

Charles R. Darwin, father of the modern theory of evolution, also had some inspiring thoughts about the development of human languages. He compares linguistic development to the process of speciation (the process that creates biological species from ancestral species). In the context where Darwin elaborates on his view about the classification of biological species, he draws the following analogy:

It may be worth while to illustrate this view of classification, by taking the case of languages. If we possessed a perfect pedigree of mankind, a genealogical arrangement of the races of man would afford the best classification of the various languages now spoken throughout the world; and if all extinct languages, and all intermediate and slowly changing dialects, were to be included, such an arrangement would be the only possible one. Yet it might be that some ancient languages had altered very little and had given rise to few new languages, whilst others had altered much owing to the spreading, isolation, and state of civilisation of the several co-descended races, and had thus given rise to many new dialects and languages. The various degrees of difference between the languages of the same stock, would have to be expressed by groups subordinate to groups; but the proper or even the only possible arrangement would still be genealogical; and this would be strictly natural, as it would connect together all languages, extinct and recent, by the closest affinities, and would give the filiation and origin of each tongue.
(Darwin, Charles R. (1876): The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. 6. ed. London: John Murray, pp. 370–371)

There is much to say about this analogy. For time being, I let Jerry A. Coyne comment on it (from his new (and splendid) book Why evolution is true):

Languages can diverge in isolated populations that once shared an ancestral tongue. And languages can change more rapidly when there is less mixing of individuals from different populations. While populations change genetically via natural selection (and sometimes genetic drift), human languages change by linguistic selection (appealing or useful new words get invented) and linguistic drift (pronunciations change due to imitation and cultural transmission). During biological speciation, populations change genetically to the extent that their members no longer recognize each other as mates, or their genes can't cooperate to produce a fertile individual. Likewise, languages can diverge to the extent that they become mutually unintelligible: English speakers don't automatically understand German and vice versa. Languages are like biological species in that they occur in discrete groups rather than as a continuum: the speech of any given person can usually be placed unambiguously in one of the several thousand human languages. The parallel goes even further. The evolution of languages can be traced back to the distant past, and a family tree drawn up, by cataloging the similarities of words and grammar. This is very like reconstructing an evolutionary tree of organisms from reading the DNA code of their genes. We can also reconstruct proto-languages, or ancestral tongues, by looking at the features that descendant languages have in common. This is precisely the way biologists predict what missing links or ancestral genes should look like. And the origin of languages is accidental: people don't start to speak in different tongues just to be different. New languages, like new species, form as a by-product of other processes, as in the transformation of Latin to Italian in Italy. The analogy between speciation and languages was first drawn by – who else? – Darwin, in “The Origin”.
But we shouldn't push this analogy too far. Unlike species, languages can “cross-fertilize,” adopting phrases from each other, like the English use of the German “angst” and “kindergarten”. Steven Pinker describes other striking similarities and differences between the diversification of languages and species in his engrossing book “The Language Instinct”.
(Coyne, Jerry A. (2009): Why evolution is true. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 192–193; italics in the original text have been replaced by quotation marks by me)

Amsterdam Graduate Philosophy Conference 2009: Accepted talks online

2009-07-15T21:17:00.001+02:00

This year's Amsterdam Graduate Philosophy Conference is again shaping up nicely. We are happy to announce the list of accepted talks which you can find here. The theme of the conference is meaning and truth.

If you want to participate (as a graduate speaker or a hearer), please don't forget to register as soon as possible!

29. Quote of the day: Shermer

2009-06-19T09:49:00.004+02:00

Dr. Michael Shermer, Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, goes at length to understand and critize the scientific attitude of Creationists. In this context, he provides a scary quote about an American* official:

[…] Judge Braswell Dean of the Georgia Court of Appeals noted in his opinion on whether creationism should be taught in public schools: “This monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of permissiveness, promiscuity, pills, prophylactics, perversions, pregnancies, abortions, pornography, pollution, poisoning, and proliferation of crimes of all types” (Times, March 16, 1981, p. 82). The alliteration is lovely. The sentiment is not.
(Shermer, Michael (2002): Why people believe weird things. Pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time. 2nd ed. New York: A.W.H. Freeman/Owl Book, p. 133.)

*) Clearly, this is intended as a rant by me. But I'm American, too, if you think that it matters.

28. Quote of the day: Young

2009-06-17T16:09:00.003+02:00

Prof. Peyton Young wrote some fascinating and recommendable books about the evolutionary dynamics of social behavior, one of them being "Individual strategy and social structure". To motivate his basic model, he discusses cases in the human history where groups switched very quickly from one social behavior to another. A case in point is driving:

Over time, we would expect a single convention to sweep across the board. While this intuition is essentially correct, it ignores the effect of idiosyncratic shocks, which can displace one convention in favor of another. Remarkably, just such a shock occurred in the history of European driving: the French Revolution. Up to that time, it was customary for carriages in France as well as in many other parts of Europe to keep to the left when passing. This meant that pedestrians often walked on the right to face the oncoming traffic. Keeping to the left was therefore associated with the privileged classes, while keeping to the right was considered more “democratic.” Following the French Revolution, the convention was changed for symbolic reasons. Subsequently Napoleon adopted the new custom for his armies, and it spread to some of the countries he occupied.
(Young, H. Peyton (1998): Individual strategy and social structure. An evolutionary theory of institutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 17)

27. Quote of the day: Bennett

2009-05-04T08:00:00.001+02:00

Prof. George Lakoff and Prof. Jonathan Bennett starts with saying almost nothing:

I therefore state my aim as that of analysing the notion of rationality, not the notion of judgment-making capacity. To say ‘I am to analyse the concept of rationality in some strong sense of “rationality” ’ is to say almost nothing. More precisely, then: [...]

(Bennett, Jonathan Francis (1967): Rationality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 4)

26. Quote of the day: Lakoff/Johnson

2009-04-30T08:00:00.000+02:00

Prof. George Lakoff and Prof. Mark Johnson provide a now classic example for metaphoric language use:

The ham sandwich is waiting for his check.

(Lakoff, George; Johnson, Mark (1980): Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 35)

25. Quote of the day: Ziff

2009-04-27T08:00:00.000+02:00

Paul Ziff is about to make an important observation:

There is much an adequate grammar of a natural language could not do, open an oyster, for example, but then, who would have thought it could?

(Ziff, Paul (1965): About what an adequate grammar couldn't do. Foundations of language, 1(1), pp. 5-13, p. 5)

24. Quote of the day: Grice

2009-04-23T08:00:00.002+02:00

Herbert Paul Grice about different things:

Well, this is the mystery package. First, a small anecdote. My sometimes mischievous friend Richard Grandy once said, in connection with some other occasion on which I was talking, that to represent my remarks, it would be necessary to introduce a new form of speech act, or a new operator, which was to be called the operator of quessertion. It is to be read as “It is perhaps possible that someone might assert that ...”, and is to be symbolized “?|-”; possibly it might even be iterable. I treasure this suggestion to just about the same degree as I treasure his dictum, delivered on another occasion, that I “can always be relied upon to rally to the defense of an ‘under-dogma.’” Everything I shall suggest here is highly quessertable.

(Grice, Herbert Paul (1989): Meaning revisisted. In: Grice, Herbert Paul (Hg.): Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 283–303, p. 297)

What (kinds of meanings) linguistic conventions might determine

2009-04-21T12:39:00.005+02:00

Look at meaning from this perspective: Meaning is conventional. Conventions give the expressions in the language we use the meanings they have. More specifically, one might say that regularities in the use of expressions in a community determine their meanings. - At least, this roughly Lewisian picture is what I presuppose in this post, ignoring the possibility that there might be different languages the community uses and also ignoring many other annoying details.

From this perspective, one might wonder what the conventionalist determination thesis is. Above, I stated it as follows: The conventional use of expressions in a community determines the meanings of the expressions. For this post, I want to consider the question what these meanings are which are determined. There is some pressure to answer this question since the semantics/pragmatics debate gave us many notions. In other words, the question is this:

(Q) If it is true that the conventional use of expressions in a community determines meanings M(e) of expressions e, of which kind is M?

Some candidates for M are:

A compositional literal word meaning scheme (minimally conceived, not a propositional meaning but rather something "with slots in it which have to be filled", e.g. for "it rains" something like "That it rains at time ___ in location ___")
What is said (minimally conceived, something like a minimal proposition or what we could call a "compositional literal word meaning", e.g. for "it rains" that there is a time t and a location l so that it rains at t in l)
What is said (pragmatically conceived, something enriched by mandatory and optional pragmatic processes, e.g. for "it rains" that it rains here now)
Conventionally established Ersatz-meanings (Say, there is regularity to use and understand "to take for granite" as meaning the same as "to take for granted", the “take for granted”-meaning is then the conventionally established Ersatz-meaning for “to take for granite”)
Averaged Gricean speaker meanings
Averaged Gricean hearer meanings

It seems to me that all these options have some plausibility. Moreover, can we really rule out that conventional use just determines one of these options? Couldn't it be that conventional use also determines more pragmatic kinds of meanings even while we are mostly interested in whether the conventional use ultimately determines the really interesting basic meanings in a theory about language and linguistic communication?

Let us focus on the expressions "I take it for granted that I have a hand" and "I take it for granite that I have a hand". Since "I take it for granite that" is among the "common errors" of English users, there is a sizeable share of uses of that expression which are meant (and often understood) in the same way as "I take it for granted that". Given a rich enough use of the constituents of these expressions, it also seems that the constituents have a meaning. But then, it seems not totally farfetched to assume that the expressions have all the meanings listed above. That is, up to some transformations and parameterizations, we can systematically construct the meanings using data about the conventional use as input.

A conventionalist might not even be inclined to protest. Nor people in the semantics/pragmatics debate. I think the interesting questions become partly empirical: Which meanings do we humans actually possess in such situations? How do we acquire them? Which meanings play actually a role in (linguistic) communication and understanding?

Another share of interesting questions is possibly more philosophical or technical: Which meanings must we postulate if the expression users are such-and-such and want to do with the expressions this-and-that? (Let us call such meanings as being "essential".) How should an ideal learner learn expressions? - Also, this share of questions might be worthwhile to consider for conventionalists and people in the semantics/pragmatics debate. But I think this second group of questions should be a central concern for conventionalists. Let me explain why.

If a conventionalist couldn't make a case that she can explain how essential meanings are determined, then her position would have a serious defect. If she can explain more, then it shall be for the better. But explaining the determination of essential meanings is a strict demand for providing an adequate conventionalist account. Since she takes conventional use as the main determinant, she is committed to the following thesis:

(C) The conventional use of expressions in a community determines the essential meanings of the expressions.

The merits of stating the conventionalist's determination thesis (or theses if there is more than one kind of essential meaning) in this way (C) are not clear, however. The reason is that we seem to lack agreement what the essential meanings are. Without such an agreement, accounts cannot be evaluated in an interesting way. If one account has to provide A to be adequate and another B, then both accounts might be adequate on their counts. Yet, the accounts might be incompatible and at least one of them false. But on which grounds shall we reject one of them? General theory evaluation criteria are much too loose to be decisive. Empirically, it also seems to be hopeless when it is about the meta-semantic project of providing a theory which explains how meaning is determined. For there is no agreed-on data to test the theories and the so-called “theories” are often too loose to yield empirically testable hypotheses.

Moreover, the obvious candidates for essential meanings are all contested. I take the obvious candidates to be the 1, 2, and 3. To provide some examples:

Récanati rejects 1 and 2
Borg rejects 3
Millikan and Davis reject 5 and 6
(And 4 does not seem to be a candidate for an essential meaning since in many cases, there is no such meaning.)

This suggests that there is no agreement what the essential meanings are. Now one might argue like this: But without such an agreement, there can’t be an interesting evaluation of conventional accounts. And without being able to evaluate in an interesting way, there is no scientific project in the first place. So, (to say it in the words of a famous TV series character,) I cannot help but wonder whether there is a scientific conventionalist project at all.

But maybe there is. The following strategies seem to me possible (and I believe some of them are actually endorsed by some conventionalists):

Ignorant: Forget about the semantics/pragmatics debate, and do as if there were only speaker meaning and word meaning. Then, the essential meaning is word meaning.
Speculator: Think a little bit about the semantics/pragmatics debate. Bet on a position and declare that the essential meaning notions are the ones of that position.
Fighter: Don't bet, argue! Argue for the right position and conclude what the essential meanings are.
Hard worker: Compile a list of candidates for essential meanings by taking every theory into account there is. Then show for each candidate that you can explain how it is determined by conventional use.
Considerate worker: Compile a list of candidates for essential meanings and show for some of them that you can explain how they are determined by conventional use.

It seems to me that that the first two strategies do not meet the standards of the current debate. So, even if their results are interesting, they are out. The third and fourth strategy is appealing but not the kind of work for a one-man-show. The amount of work they seem to require seems to be out of scope. This seems to leave only the “considerate worker”-strategy. And the strategy has some appeal.

If one can make the case (and I think that the case can be made) that for some major positions in the semantics/pragmatics debate, the conventionalist can defend a suitable conventionalist determination thesis, then I think that the considerate conventionalist has provided what one should demand from her. (Clearly, a conventionalist account has to satisfy other adequacy conditions like providing a suitable notion of a convention but this is another story.)

So, given a list of the major candidates of essential meanings, the thesis (C) becomes a scheme of theses instances. Instances are generated by replacing the placeholder “essential meanings” by a major candidate. And each instance has to be established. Establishing the instances seems to me to be among the main concerns for a conventionalist.

Some thoughts about the pragmatics of the first paragraph in a text :-)

2009-04-11T08:47:00.001+02:00

I'd like to think of the opening sentences of a piece as a pick-up line. If you're good, the reader is yours.

There are several sorts of first paragraphs in a text. Four often used sorts are the following ones:

The first sort could be called "the motivational start". The writer tells how she came to write what she wrote. Usually the reader learns a sequence of events which led the writer write the piece.
A second sort could be called "the top-down start". The writer does not start with what she actually did in the piece but rather from something highly general and then narrows the field, possibly in several iterations, until the real topic of the piece is reached.
A third sort is the "in-the-middle start". The writer confronts us with something expecting that the reader is able to adapt her mindset to what is at stake.
A fourth "leave it out" sort simply leaves out what is generally considered an introduction and addresses directly a topic of the piece.

This short list of first paragraph sorts should give us an impression about their variety. But what are their functions? - I think that there are at least three central functions, two of them are informational, a third one motivational. The first two functions are to get the reader to understand what your piece is about and how it is structured. In other words, the first paragraph has the function to inform the reader what the piece is about and how the writer proceeds. The third function is motivational and consists in motivating the reader to read on. Remember: Having someone’s attention is precious good. Don’t gamble with it!

Often, writers struggle with their first paragraphs. The paragraph feels hard to write. Why is that so? - It seems to me that there is a good explanation for it: The writer has to do so many things with so few words. This follows from the demand that a writer should (do her best to) satisfy the three aforementioned functions together with the demand that the first paragraph should be short.

Considering this difficulty, what is a good way to meet the demands? Or in practical terms: How can you, as a writer, write your first paragraph more easily in a good way? - I have not much to say on this and will restrict my attention to the four sorts mentioned above.

A first point is the observation that there are customs in different fields how to write your first paragraph. These customs lead to expectations of your audience. Their violation irritates. Unless you have a good reason, you should try not to irritate your reader. Otherwise you put at risk that your reader is properly motivated.

Second, you should know your readers and their expectations. If everyone is familiar with what you're going to do and it is not something totally new, then you don't need to write about it. In such situations, the "leave it out"-sort might be appropriate. But generally, it seems to me that this sort should be avoided. If a reader has different expectations, then she might soon be frustrated about what you write.

This leaves the first three sorts. Here, pro and cons have the weighted on an all things considered basis. Pure top-down starts tend to be clumsy and overly lengthy. Thereby you risk meeting both demands. This suggests that the in-the-middle start is to be preferred. But the danger with this sort is that you fail to satisfy the two informative functions of the first paragraph, namely to get your reader to understand what your piece is about and how it is structured.

Having reasons against three sorts already, this leaves only the motivational start. However, I think that there are also reasons against it. First, you risk your reader's motivation if you are going to tell a story without saying where it is leading. A reader has the right to know what your piece is about. But usually, this comes very late in a motivational start. So, you let your reader down on this count. Second, motivational starts tend also to be lengthy. As a consequence, you fail to meet the demand to be short. And the list you could go on.

So, are all these sorts crap? Clearly, their applicability is restricted (as the fourth sort illustrates) and there are (general) reasons against each of them. But it does not follow that they are not to be used. For one, there can be mixed sorts. E.g., one could start in the middle and then motivate what your piece is about. It seems to me that they can do considerably better in meeting the demands. However, they require careful crafting. A general advice seems to me at least this. The writer should make sure that her first paragraph meets the demands. Experimentation with alternatives and discussing them with your audience also seem to me to yield a good and cheap heuristic to achieve your goal.

What is a kind of meaning and how to count them?

2009-04-09T15:08:00.001+02:00

The questions I consider in this post is what is a kind of meaning and how to count kinds of meanings. In other words, what are the identity conditions of kinds of meanings?

Answering the question is part of bigger project: I want to argue that there are at least two kinds of literal meanings. Actually, I did so three days ago in Prof. Kemmerling's MoKo colloquium in Heidelberg. That there are differences between the meanings I distinguished wasn't seriously contested (while some were not accepted). However, it was contested that there is a difference in kind as I claimed. My reasoning was very blunt: If a kind of meaning A and a kind of meaning B do not have the same properties, then they must be different. Though, it was not considered to be inconsistent i) to grant that there are differences but ii) to deny a difference in kind.

It seems to me that the main difficulty is that it is not very clear what a kind of meaning is and how to count them. However, the task is not very complicated if we start by considering suggestive examples from which we can draw some morals. I suggest that these morals help us also to answer the initial questions.

The upshot is that what counts as being the same kind is relative to our interests and since we have many specialized interests about meanings, there are many ways to individuate kinds of meanings. Thus, it seems to me that the thing to do is to be explicit about what the interests are. In other words: To sensibly count kinds of meanings one must state what the goal of the classification is. This is an old insight about classification anyways.

For example, if we are interested in semantic values, "satisfaction conditions" as I like to call them, then their semantic types constitute kinds of meanings. But different ways constituting of a meaning might not make a difference in kind. However, if we are interested in the constitution of meanings, then the ways of constituting a meaning constitute kinds of meanings. Yet, differences in the semantic types of the satisfaction conditions the meanings fix can be irrelevant for the individuation of the kinds.

To make a long story short, by going through a list of cases, I came up with the following criteria:

Kind of entity of which the meaning is a property of
Way of constitution
Semantic type
Context-dependence
Allowance of borderline cases
Speech act potential

(This list is not meant to be exhaustive. Have I forgot any important ones?)

The first criterion let's us distinguish speaker-meaning (a property of utterances) from word meaning (a property of utterances. Depending on the story one has about properties, we can subsume this criterion under the second.

The second criterion distinguishes meanings based on their ways of constitution. Using this criteria we can distinguish again speaker-meaning from word meaning since the former is determined by audience-directed intentions of the speaker but the latter not. It also allows us to distinguish scalar implicatures from literal meanings since the former are constituting by certain rationality considerations (obeying the Gricean maxims) but the latter are not.

The third criterion let's us distinguish kinds of satisfactions conditions by considering their type. That is is it an individual (type e), a set (type et), and so on. Moreover, if there is a difference in type, then there is a difference in the kind of semantic operations that can be applied to these satisfaction conditions. So, this is an algebraic reason for being the same kind or a different kind.

The fourth and fifth criteria concern specific semantic phenomena such as indexicality and vagueness. If we are interested in these things, then we can use these criteria to distinguish meanings of indexical terms from meanings of non-indexical terms, and likewise for vague expressions.

The sixth and last criterion I consider allows us to distinguish kinds of meanings by their role in communication. We can for example distinguish scalar implicatures from literal meanings since the former are defeasable but the latter not. But also, the meanings of expressions which are coreferential in certain occasions can be used to group them together under one kind. Finally, not all meanings allow to perform spech acts of the same types. This presupposes a certain story about the meanings of things like imperative sentences, but on many of them the following is the case: An imperatival meaning cannot be used to perform assertive speech acts.

23. Quote of the day: Ramsey

2009-04-08T12:22:00.004+02:00

Frank Plumpton Ramsey about philosophy:

Philosophy must be of some use and we must take it seriously; it must clear our thoughts and so our actions. Or else it is a disposition we have to check, and an inquiry to see that this is so; i.e. the chief proposition of philosophy is that philosophy is nonsense. And again we must then take seriously that it is nonsense, and not pretend, as Wittgenstein does, that it is important nonsense!

(Ramsey, Frank P. (1929/1990): Philosophy. In: Ramsey, Frank P. (edited by D. Hugh Mellor): Philosophical papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–8, p. 1)

The Workflow Series: How philosophers work.

2009-04-04T23:52:00.000+02:00

This is the first entry in a new series of posts: The Workflow Series. The series is dedicated to sharing and gathering insight about academic work in philosophy. Questions which bother me are:

How can I be lazier and still get more things done?
Which tools make me the coolest kid on the block?

And more seriously, the point I ultimately want to make is that "soft science" researchers, and in particular philosophers, can learn a lot from software engineering. (If someone has an argument for the other direction - that programmers can learn from philosophers -, then let me know!)

The start of this series is polemical. I want to start with a popular myth: Philosophers work alone high up in an ivory tower and sit most likely in an armchair.

Romantic as it sounds, there is some truth in it: Philosophical work gets often done by a single author only. Compare this to experimental research. Some CERN report feature more than 50 authors (see for example this one). I don't know why this is so. Clearly, experimental work needs a lot of manpower. But this does not explain why books and articles in philosophy are most of the time written by a single person.

But while a typical paper in philosophy has one author, philosophers collaborate. They love to discuss, to argue and be it only for the reason to show that the others are wrong. So much is wrong about the myth. Besides, a typical work place is in a normal office space.

Another widespread belief about philosophers and maybe generally about people in the soft sciences is this. Philosophers are technology averse.

But if it were so, then wouldn't that be quite strange? - It would suggest that these people are neither interested in nor using the outcomes of scientific work. And if so, those people would not be unlike village idiots in the global village of science.

Personally, I'd venture to bet that a better part of this judgment is true. Though, it is certainly not fully true. To this end, I plan the following entries:

From Input (reading) to Output (publication): Technology assisted workflows
Reference and citation management
Document management
Note management

Contributed posts are welcome.

22. Quote of the day: Locke

2009-03-18T17:41:00.004+01:00

John Locke, a great philosopher of his day, was well informed about God's intentions when God designed Man and furnished him with Language:

§1. God having designed Man for a sociable Creature, made him not only with an inclination, and under a necessity to have fellowship with those of his own kind; but furnished him also with Language, which was to be the great Instrument, and common Tye of Society. Man therefore had by Nature his Organs so fashioned, as to be fit to frame articulate Sounds, which we call Words. But this was not enough to produce Language; for Parrots, and several other Birds, will be taught to make articulate Sounds distinct enough, which yet, by no means are capable of Language.
§2. Besides articulate Sounds therefore, it was farther necessary, that he should be able to use these Sounds, as Signs of internal Conceptions; and to make them stand as marks for Ideas within his own Mind, whereby they might be made known to others, and the Thoughts of Men's Minds be conveyed form one to another.
§3. But neither was this sufficient to make Words so useful as they ought to be. [...]
(Locke, John (1975): An essay concerning human understanding. edited with an introduction, critical apparatus and glossary by Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, III.I.1)

Proceedings of the Graduate Philosophy Conference on Normativity

2009-03-17T16:56:00.001+01:00

We, the organizers, are happy to announce that the proceedings of the conference are now available online at:

http://www.illc.uva.nl/Publications/ResearchReports/X-2009-02.text.pdf

21. Quote of the day: Bach

2009-03-11T19:39:00.003+01:00

Prof. Paul M. Postal made us aware of the fact that linguistics is hard work. (Thanks to Lars for the pointer!) But philosophy is not easier. At least this is what I've thought when I read about Prof. Kent Bach's method to come up with a classificatory scheme:

Some years ago I tried to make sense of the emotions as a class. Robert Solomon had forcefully argued in The Passions (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1976) that emotions are not feelings, but I was not thrilled with his sweeping statement that emotions are judgments. I was keen on finding something systematic to say, however complex. Seeking an illuminating classificatory scheme, I assembled over one hundred index cards, one emotion per card. Unfortunately, every hand was a misdeal. Shuffling and reshuffling didn't help. Eventually I gave up, concluding, as I had suspected initially, that emotions really are a messy subject.
(Bach, Kent (1988): Review: [untitled]. Reviewed work(s): The Structure of Emotions by Robert M. Gordon. In: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 49(2), pp. 362–366, p. 362)

I promise to post more on serious topics soon.

20. Quote of the day: Hedström

2009-03-09T12:57:00.002+01:00

I couldn't agree more with this assessment by Peter Hedström, a fine professor in analytical sociology:

In certain areas of the social sciences, most notably in economics, there is general agreement on the importance of abstract theories. But in these areas one also often finds rather instrumental attitudes towards theories: theoretical assumptions are often seen as mere instruments that can be freely tinkered with until one arrives at simple and elegant models. An important theme of this book is that one should resist such fictionalist temptations. An explanatory theory must refer to the actual mechanisms at work, not to those that could have been at work in a ficional world invented by the theorist.
(Hedström, Peter (2005): Dissecting the social. On the principles of analytical sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 3)

19. Quote of the day: Davidson

2009-02-27T13:45:00.002+01:00

Whilst I am still looking for a perspicious terminology to talk about public languages, idiolects, dialects, sociolects, variations, and what have you, it is still nice and reassuring to find other unexpected allies joining the rant:

For languages (as Quine remarks in a similar context in Word and Object) are at least as badly individuated, and for much the same reasons, as propositions. Indeed, an obvious proposal linking them is this: languages are identical when identical sentences express identical propositions.
(Davidson, Donald (1968): On saying that. In: Synthese, 19(1-2), pp. 130–146, p. 136)

18. Quote of the day: Kemmerling

2009-02-24T11:18:00.004+01:00

One could well question what is left of Searle's account if one tried to "nag and carp" Kemmerlings's "little things" and "minor points" which he either doesn't really understand or deems to be wrong, respectively:

I don’t have any serious quarrels with John Searle’s approach to speech act theory. There’s a lot of little things that I do not really understand. (Example: what is a direction of fit?) There are a few minor points which I think are wrong. (Example: the doctrine about "underlying rules" which are "manifested or realized" by conventions, and, to be frank, the whole thing about so called constitutive rules. Why should a statement like "Greeting in a normal context counts as a corteous recognition of the addressee by the speaker" be regarded as conveying a rule? How could one violate, or follow, the alleged rule? Maybe greeting is something which presupposes the existence of certain rules, or maybe statements of the type "x counts as y in context c" are true only in virtue of the fact that certain policies are accepted in the contexts in question, but the Statement above, concerning the essence of greeting, is not the statement of a rule.)
So instead of nagging and carping at this or that detail, I should like to concentrate in these precious ten minutes on a point in Searle’s account which I take to be of some interest, and not only for speech act theory. [...]
(Kemmerling, Andreas (2002): Expressing an intentional state. In: Grewendorf, Günther; Meggle, Georg; Searle, John R. (Eds.): Speech acts, mind, and social reality. Discussions with John R. Searle. Dordrecht: Kluwer (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, 79), pp. 83–91, p. 83)

17. Quote of the day: Plato

2009-01-29T15:00:00.004+01:00

As Plato wrote, poor Hermogenes didn't understand Cratylus who claimed that names are natural and not conventional. So, Hermogenes asked Socrates to explain to him what Cratylus meant. Helpful Socrates began as follows to answer his question:

Son of Hipponicus, there is an ancient saying, that "hard is the knowledge of the good." And the knowledge of names is a great part of knowledge. If I had not been poor, I might have heard the fifty-drachma course of the great Prodicus, which is a complete education in grammar and language- these are his own words- and then I should have been at once able to answer your question about the correctness of names. But, indeed, I have only heard the single-drachma course, and therefore, I do not know the truth about such matters...
(Plato: Cratylus. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/cratylus.html)

16. Quote of the day: Lepore and Pelletier

2009-01-28T18:12:00.003+01:00

This fresh quote from Ernest Lepore and Francis Jeffrey Pelletier comes right out of Wo's highly useful philosophy paper tracker:

Plato did it. Aristotle did it. All the great philosophers did it. You do it and we do it: we draw philosophical conclusions from linguistic data.
(Lepore, Ernest; Pelletier, Francis J. (2008): Linguistics and philosophy. In: Wrenn, Chase B.; Gibson, Roger F. (eds.): Naturalism, reference, and ontology. Essays in honor of Roger F. Gibson. New York, NY: Lang, pp. 183–215)

(This entry also excels in that the reference for the quote is longer than the quote.)

Is literal meaning conventional? (part 1)

2009-01-04T17:06:00.006+01:00

Is literal meaning conventional? - This is an interesting and important question in the debate about conventionalism about meaning, that is, the doctrine endorsing the slogan that meaning is conventional. Though, the question has hardly been asked and even less ever been systematically answered.

First, the question is interesting since its answer is not obvious. That is, it is not obvious that the literal meaning of an expression is determined by conventions. Or put differently, it's not obvious that the notion of literal meaning is identical to the notion of conventional meaning. And secondly, the question is important since it's part of what a conventionalist about meaning is claiming. And to assess the plausibility of the conventionalist's position, a conventionalist is committed to answer the question.

Though, all we usually get is an uniformative answer which is indeed: Yes, literal meaning is conventional according to the received view of conventionalism about meaning (a version of conventionalism à la Lewis/Schiffer/Bennett). But the problem is that philosophers usually treat the following terms as interchangeable: literal meaning, linguistic meaning, and conventional meaning. A case in point is from Récanati, a connaisseur of the many kinds of meanings:

Let us start with a sense of the phrase ‘literal meaning’ which is reasonably clear and raises no particular problem. In that sense, the literal meaning of a linguistic expression is its conventional meaning: the meaning it has in virtue of the conventions which are constitutive of the language. Thus understood literal meaning is a property of the expression-type: for it is the expression-type which the conventions of the language endow with a particular meaning.
(Récanati, F. (2004). Literal meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 68)

While this strategy to characterize the meaning of the term "literal meaning" might work in the context of neo-Gricean discussions about the semantics/pragmatics-distinction, it clearly doesn't work in the debate about conventionalism about meaning. For a conventionalist has to provide an answer to the question which kind(s) of meaning she holds to be conventional. And if conventional meaning is literal meaning, then obviously, literal meaning is conventional in the sense that it is conventional meaning. Moreover, if the characterizations of the notions i) conventional meaning and ii) literal meaning are that thin, the question whether literal meaning is conventional is not even worth answering.

However, initially the question seemed to be worth answering: Which of the many kinds of meaning is conventional? - Among the many kinds are: speaker meaning, literal meaning, intensions, extensions, what-is-said, enrichments, implicatures. Furthermore, to claim that literal meaning is conventional does indeed seem to be a question whose answer has some clear implications, like I1 and I2:

I1. If the relevant kind of meaning having this-and-this role is conventional, then the things having such a meaning could have meant something else.
I2. If the relevant kind of meaning having this-and-this role is conventional, then there is a certain meaning-related pattern in the behavior or thinking among certain beings conforming to the pattern often enough.

These implications are clearly not of the tautological kind we had above. They exploit conceptual claims about conventions: I1 is based on the conceptual claim that conventions are abitrary in some sense (it could have been otherwise in some sense). I2 is based on the claim that there being a convention entails there being certain patterns.

So, the problem in the question whether literal meaning is conventional does not consist in the problem to understand what a convention is but what literal meaning is.

There are other ways to characterize literal meaning. One is to claim that it is what a formal semantics for a particular language encodes. Davidson seems to be claiming that. Though, the problem with this answer is that we just shift the problem in a way which is not informative. For then we have to answer the question what a formal semantics is about and this question seems to be just a restatement of the former one.

A more promising way can be found in the neo-Gricean literature. More about that will be in part 2.

15. Quote of the day: US Supreme Court

2009-01-04T15:45:00.004+01:00

Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? - This question was settled by the US Supreme Court in 1983 in the case Nix V Hedden. The reason why this question was of the court's concern was that one had to pay a tax for imported vegetables but not for fruits. Moreover, there is a conflict between scientific classification of tomatoes (as a fruit) and the everyday concept of a tomato (classifying it as a vegetable).

Clearly, this court case does not only provide enough material for a joke but also for a philosophical reflection. So does Andrei Marmor who tries to convince us that "[o]ften our interest in a given speech context employing a natural kind predicate has very little to do with scientific or metaphysical accuracy":

An interesting example of this was presented by an old legal case, called Nix V Hedden, where a NY court had to rule on the question of whether tomatoes are fruit or vegetable (for the purposes of the application of a tariff act). In spite of the fact that tomatoes are scientifically defined as a fruit, and dictionary definitions reflect that, the court decided that in our everyday use of language, tomatoes are vegetables. The following quotation is the gist of the court’s reasoning; ‘in the common language of the people,... all these are vegetables, which are grown in kitchen gardens, and which, whether eaten cooked or raw, are, like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, and lettuce, usually served at dinner in, with, or after, soup, fish or meats which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not like fruits generally, as desert.’
(Marmor, A. (2008). Is literal meaning conventional? Topoi, 27(1-2), 101–113, p. 111)

14. Quote of the day: Stemmer

2008-12-10T13:39:00.002+01:00

While reading Peter Stemmer's excellent new book on normativity, I found the following gem for the German speaking audience of this blog:

Die Naturgesetze wirken gewissermaßen an unserem Kopf vorbei, das normative Müssen nur durch unseren Kopf hindurch.
(Stemmer, Peter (2008): Normativität. Eine ontologische Untersuchung. Berlin: de Gruyter, p. 55)

Ignoring style, the quoted sentence roughly means that while laws of nature operate independent of our minds, normative musts only operate through our minds. (Stemmer favors talk about "normative musts" over talk about "oughts".)

Hopefully, Stemmer's book will soon be translated to English, and not because of the gem above. For it offers a careful and provoking analysis of normativity. I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone interested in the topic.

Anecdotal evidence for the existence of a prescriptive rule and Fred Astaire dancing

2008-12-03T10:55:00.006+01:00

In a recent article of Ruth Millikan argues that phonetic regularities are not "expressions of prescriptive rules as they can be interrupted without incurring sanctions":

Regularities found in languages are often equated with ‘‘rules’’ by linguists. For example, typically the phonology of a language is described as containing rules that restrict phonetic combinations. In Japanese there are no final consonants, in English, every syllable has a vowel, the sound sequence PS doesn’t occur in initial position, NF doesn’t occur in final position, and so forth. [...] These regularities cannot be expressions of prescriptive rules as they can be interrupted without incurring sanctions. For example, we have brrr and psst and shhh—-surely just as good English words as ouch and yuck and shoo. And we are happy to talk, surely while speaking English, of the places Banff and Pskof. Departure from standard pronunciation is also common both in young children and foreigners. If the postulated ‘‘rules’’ are neither sanctioned nor universally followed, in what objective medium are they presumed to be ensconced?

(Millikan, R. G. (2008). A difference of some consequence between conventions and rules. Topoi, 27(1-2), 87–99, p. 89)

I think Millikan's conclusion is wrong. Though I do not have a strong objection against it. Nevertheless, I think her examples are telling. Notice what Millikan's evidence is: iconic expressions like "brrr" and "psst" and invented place names like "Banff" and "Pskof". The first observation is that both kinds of expressions are of a special kind. We all know that these expressions function differently.

A second observation concerns Millikan's claim about the lack of evidence for the existence of a prescriptive rule. She only considers explict sanctions, e.g., a language teacher's correcting their pupils or the parents' rewarding their kids for doing well. But there are other kinds of evidence for the presence of a prescriptive rule. Here are two: 1. The hearer has a "contra-attitude" (the counterpart to a "pro-attitude") towards the speaker's pronounication: "Gee, what was that! She shouldn't talk like that!". 2. The speaker would accept a correction if she was confronted with her pronouncation. To accept a correction is roughly a) to accept the norm on the basis of which the corrected behavior was counted as a deviation and b) to recognize the corrected behavior as counting as a deviation from the relevant norms being in force. (Maybe b) is unneeded. For endorsing a) seems to entail it. There might also be concerns about a). I am inclined to give it an expressivist analysis.)

The point is this. Even if a hearer does not explicitly sanction the speaker, there might still be a normative reaction or disposition to it. This also answers Millikan's rhetorical question "[I]n what objective medium are [these rules] presumed to be ensconced?"

A third observation is that Millikan does not mention the type of social situation of the possible utterances of her examples. I take it to be common knowledge that sanctioning behavior highly depends on the circumstances of the behavior evoking sanctions (or not evoking them). A teacher will sanction their pupils but not her husband, or - we might hope - at least not too often. The point is that the absence of a sanction in a certain type of social situation is not hard evidence that there is no rule. For, we might have looked at the wrong kind of situation.

I also take it to be common knowledge that language learners (like the "young children" and the "foreigners" Millikan mentions) are treated differently. They have special rights and duties. They are not treated as authorative about pronounication. They are expected to accept corrections. It's not expected that they get it right. Their status as language learners is to be taken into account in a charitable interpretation. And so on and so forth.

A forth observation is that there is conflicting evidence. I think it is hard evidence. It has even been filmed. And copies can still be borrowed. The evidence is the movie "Shall we dance":

The dialectical situation is now difficult. What we have reached is, I guess, this. Pronounciation allows for a great flexibility. Not all kinds of words have the same normative profile and the type of social situation is important when assessing claims whether a rule is in force or not. Though, I hope, the morale is clear: Millikan's argument is suggestive without passing superficial scrutiny. Thus, we shouldn't rely on her conclusion.

Update: I corrected some spelling mistakes and clarified my remarks about accepting a correction.

13. Quote of the day: Davidson and Carroll

2008-12-02T12:42:00.004+01:00

We all knew that philosophers have superbrains, didn't we? - But they really can't be as smart as Davidson claims them (and all other people) to be:

[M]ost of "The Jabberwock" is intelligible on first hearing.

(Davidson, D. (2005). A nice derangement of epitaphs, Truth, language, and history, pp. 89–107. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 90)

To remind you, "The Jabberwock" refers to a famous nonsense poem from Lewis Carroll:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

(Carroll, L. (1994). Through the looking glass. London: Penguin (Original work published 1872), pp. 28–29)

If we believe that Humpty Dumpty, a main character of the book, is right about the what the poem means, then Davidson's claim about the intelligibility of the poem is very very bold. For example "brillig" is supposed to mean four o'clock in the afternoon (see Carroll, 1994, pp. 102 ff.). How could we possibly know that? - We can't. So clearly, Davidson's claim can only be an exaggeration. Even Carroll's narrator in the book conveys to us that its not understandable:

"It seems very pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand!" (You see she didn't like to confess, ever to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.)

(Carroll, L. (1994). Through the looking glass. London: Penguin (Original work published 1872), p. 29)

While I am prepared to accept the claim that Davidson has a superbrain, I reject that one can possibly understand most of Carroll's poem on first hearing. And no, I don't buy Humpty Dumpty's rejoinder that of course we couldn't know until he tells us but really what he says is what the poem literally means (in English, I guess).

So, having your interest, I will abuse the Quote of the Day-column to advertise my upcoming thesis chapter featuring an objection against Davidson's argument in A nice derangement of epitaphs. I use the "there ain't no such superbrain"-insight as one of the keys to debunk what goes wrong in Davidson's argument: Hearers shouldn't be demanded to have superbrains in order to successfully interpret an utterance. And Davidson demands rather a lot.

12. Quote of the day: Gibbard

2008-11-20T10:09:00.004+01:00

Picking Allan Gibbard for the quote of the day is not very creative I admit. Though, I'm sure that everyone agrees that he has all that's needed for being a regular for this column. In his newest book Thinking how to live he expresses very vividly that there is no master argument against a certain sort of naturalistic approach in metaethics:

I haven't established that Moore is right in this. Moore may have thought he had shown that any version whatsoever of definitional naturalism falls before his catapults. In my own view, naturalistic analyses must be tackled case by case; I know of no argument that proves in advance that every such definition fails.

(Gibbard, A. (2003). Thinking how to live. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 35)

Speaking of Gibbard, I hope that I will soon find time to put together my thoughts about Gibbard's "normativity logic". By this I mean Gibbard's idea that worlds are structured entities, so called "fact-prac worlds", which do not only settle statements about what is the case (or not) but also claims about what is to do (or not). I think that it is interesting to see whether we can formalize this idea in such a way as to yield a recursive "truth"-definition.

Be aware of the Slovakian ministry of culture: Normativity of language use in reality

2008-11-18T15:59:00.003+01:00

It is still contested whether necessarily, linguistic communication has normative consequences or not, and if so, what exactly entails them. Though, turning to the sphere of contingent facts, the practical severity of violating the linguisitic norms in force seems to have reached a new climax in Slovakia. The renowned Swiss news paper NZZ writes today that the Slovakian government has plans to punish spelling mistakes and grammatical mistakes with fines up to € 5000,-!

11. Quote of the day: Kemmerling

2008-11-17T11:38:00.003+01:00

With his usual good sense of humor while making a noteworthy point, Andreas Kemmerling proposes an appeal to normativity to make sense of the notion of a shared language:

It is at this point that, with no aspiration towards originality, I want to bring in normativity as the theoretical saviour. The concept of normativity I want to bring in, at this point, is a surprise packet. It contains glamorous items like rights and duties, commitments to (and impositions of) truth conditions, acceptations of corrections, and intersubjective agreement. On closer inspection, it may turn out to be Pandora's box. But let's give it a try.

(Kemmerling, A. (1993). The philosophical significance of a shared language. In R. Stoecker (Ed.), Reflecting Davidson. Donald Davidson responding to an international forum of philosophers: Grundlagen der Kommunikation und Kognition (pp. 85–116). Berlin: de Gruyter, p. 113)

Request for information: How many Americans wear green on St. Patrick's day?

2008-10-29T17:10:00.003+01:00

Millikan argues against Lewis that conventions cannot be a kind of a regularity because there are things we are inclined to call a convention but which are not regularities:

That people need not regularly conform to noncoordinating conventions is clear. Few actually hand out cigars at the birth of a boy, nor does everyone wear green on St. Patrick's Day, or decorate with red and green on Christmas, or punt from the deck when on the Cam River.

(Millikan, R. G. (1998). Language conventions made simple. Journal of Philosophy, 95(4), 161–180, p. 170)

I am ready to grant Millikan these factual claims about the respective correlations, say of people living in USA wearing green on St. Patrick's day. Though, I wonder whether there is actually statistical data about such cases. Does anyone know?

Normativity conference: A short report

2008-10-29T16:47:00.001+01:00

The Reasoner has just published a short report about the Graduate Philosophy Conference on Normativity.

10. Quote of the day: Schelling

2008-10-12T12:05:00.002+02:00

Thomas Schelling argues in his "The strategy of conflict" that the notion of deterrence figures prominently in many areas of conflict other than international affairs. Among them is the upbringing of children:

It is not only criminals, however, but our own children have to be deterred. Some aspects of deterrence stand out vividly in child discipline: the importance of rationality and self-discipline on the part of the person to be deterred, of his ability to comprehend the threat if he hears it and to hear it through the din and noise, of the threatener's determination to fulfill the threat if need be – and, more important, of the threatened party's conviction that the threat will be carried out. Clearer perhaps in child discipline than in criminal deterrence is the important possibility that the threatened punishment will hurt the threatener as much as it will the one threatened, perhaps more. There is an analogy between a parent's threat to a child and the threat that a wealthy paternalistic nation makes to the weak and disorganized government of a poor nation in, say, extending foreign aid and demanding “sound” economic policies or cooperative military policies in return.

(Schelling, Thomas C. (2005): The strategy of conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 11)

Given his beliefs about child discipline, would like to be a child of him?

What Lewis's common knowledge is and what it is not

2008-10-09T16:03:00.013+02:00

David Lewis is usually attributed to have been the first person explicitly defining common knowledge. Though, what David Lewis defined as "common knowledge" in his dissertation "Convention" is not what people in philosophy, game theory, computer science, ... usually take it to be.

So, what then is common knowledge usually taken to be, or more precisely, common knowledge among a group G of agents that p (p being a proposition)?

The basic idea of many proposals is that there is common knowledge among a group G of agents that p iff for all agents A,A' of G:

A knows that p, and
A knows that A' knows that p, and
A knows that A' knows that A knows that p, and
so on, ad infinitum.

Many think (whether correctly or incorrectly) that the notion of common knowledge is central in explanations of social phenomena. For example, it has been proposed that because of there being common knowledge, people can coordinate their behavior when they want to do so. It has also interesting consequences in strategic interactions, when I know that you know ... what I know. In such cases, my strategy choice should better take this information into account. I shouldn't reckon that because you don't know (or don't know that I know ... what I know), I might be successful in manipulating you.

That has motivated a lot of research - and produced in part the misunderstanding I alluded to in the introduction. To have some handy names, let us call Lewis's notion "Lewis common knowledge" or "common reason to believe" and common knowledge in the sense of what people in the field usually take it to be "Aumann-style common knowledge".

One characteristic of Aumann-style common knowledge is that it is factive. That is, if a group has common knowledge (in Aumann's sense) that p, then p is the case. As we will see, this is not true for common knowledge in Lewis's sense. It is possible that in a group it is common knowledge (in Lewis's sense) that p, and yet p is false.

Though, it is understandable why people usually think that Lewis common knowledge is factive. After all, we expect that any definition of common knowledge should capture the basic idea outlined above. Since common knowledge in this sense is a combination of individual knowledge and such knowledge is generally taken to be factive, it is clear why people have this opinion.

Nevertheless, the point is that this is not true for Lewis's notion. The point is important because criticism against application of Aumann-style common knowledge does then necessarily carry over to Lewis common knowledge. Moreover, there are actually some mathematical formalizations of Lewis's notion which ignore this fact. Whatever they are formalizations of, they are not formalizations of Lewis's notion. Andreas Kemmerling is, to my knowledge, the only person who has ever made the point that Lewis common knowledge is not a kind of knowledge - and very clearly so! For some reason, Kemmerling's contribution has not been appreciated.

Before going through some differences between Aumann-style common knowledge and Lewis common knowledge, I'd like to point to some typical examples from the literature.

Some Examples in the literature

The concept was first introduced in the philosophical literature by David Kellogg Lewis in his study Convention (1969). It has been first given a mathematical formulation in a set-theoretical framework by Robert Aumann (1976).

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic), accessed 2008-10-08)

Folk knowledge is not factive as we know! The quote suggests that one at the same concept has been "formulated" in different ways. This would preclude that whether the claim that common knowledge is factive comes out true depends on the used "formulation".

Along similar lines also the Nobel prize committee suggests this:

In his paper “Agreeing to disagree” (1976), Aumann introduced to game theory the concept of “common knowledge,” a concept first defined by Lewis (1969). An event is common knowledge among the players of a game if it is known by all players, if all players know that it is known by all players, if all players know that all players know that it is known by all players etc., ad infinitum.

(The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: "Robert Aumann’s and Thomas Schelling’s Contributions to Game Theory: Analyses of Conflict and Cooperation", URL: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2005/ecoadv05.pdf, p. 20, last accessed: 2008-10-08)

And last but not least, we find it also in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Yet it was David Lewis (1969) who first gave an explicit analysis of common knowledge in the monograph Convention. Stephen Schiffer (1972), Robert Aumann (1976), and Gilbert Harman (1977) independently gave alternate definitions of common knowledge. Jon Barwise (1988, 1989) gave a precise formulation of Harman's intuitive account. Schiffer's analysis of common knowledge as a hierarchy of epistemic claims has become standard in the philosophical and social science literature. Lewis', Aumann's, and Barwise's accounts all imply the hierarchical account. In some contexts, Schiffer's, Aumann's, and Barwise's definitions of common knowledge are more convenient to use than Lewis' original definition. More recently, Margaret Gilbert (1989) proposed a somewhat different account of common knowledge which she argues is preferable to the standard account.

(Vanderschraaf, Peter and Sillari, Giacomo: "Common Knowledge", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/common-knowledge/)

I hope you agree that what Vanderschraaf and Sillari suggest is that one and the same thing was defined in different ways and that the only relevant differences between these definitions relate to their "convenience" when working with them.

Some differences between an Aumann-style definition and Lewis's definition

One of the characteristics of Aumann's definition is that "common knowledge in a group G that p" is defined as a non-primitive set-theoretic operator CK (for some group G assumed to be fixed). The operator is defined as a truth-preservative combination of individual knowledge that p. Individual knowledge is factive. Thus, common knowledge is factive.

Formal digression
A little bit more formally, propositions p are subsets of the set of possible worlds Omega. The individual knowlege operator Ki for an agent i is an operator from the powerset of Omega to the powerset of Omega. Ki maps propositions p to propositions p' of worlds in which i knows that p obtains. Agent i is said to have individual knowledge that p in world w iff w is an element of Ki(p).

For operators Ki the following axiom holds:

(F) For all agents i, for all propositions p: Ki(p) -> p.

Axiom (F) expresses that if an agent has individual knowledge that p, then p is the case. From the fact that common knowledge is a truth-preservative combination of individual knowledge it follows that the following is a theorem: For all propositions p: CK(p) -> p. This theorem expresses that if a group has common knowledge about some proposition p, then p is the case.

Back to topic
So, clearly, Aumann-style common knowledge is factive. I claimed that Lewis common knowledge is not. To see this, let us recall Lewis's definition:

A proposition p is common knowledge in the group G if a state of affairs A obtains such that
Everyone in G has reason to believe that A holds;
A indicates to everyone in G that everyone in G has reason to believe that A holds;
A indicates to everyone in G that p.

Assume that a group has Lewis common knowledge that p. What does follow from this? - Well, let us unpack the definition. Thereby we can reason that a state of affairs A obtained such that conditions 1. to 3. are satisfied.

Now observe that the knowledge is nowhere mentioned or used. The only epistemic states which are ascribed to agents in G are having reasons to believe and indications. So, clearly, if Lewis common knowledge were factive, then it would derive from one of these ascriptions.

Though, some agent i having a reason to belief that p does not even imply that i actually believes that p. This does only follow, according to Lewis, if we additionally assume that i is rational (in some sense to be explicated). "i has a reason to believe that p in a situation s" means roughly that i is in s in a situation in which she would be justified to believe that p if she believed that p in s. And even if we assume common rationality (that is, everyone is rational in the required sense and assumes that that everyone is rational in this sense and so on...), all we can derive is that agents in G believe that p. But beliefs are not factive.

What about the indications? And what is it to indicate something to someone anyway? - According to Lewis,

[l]et us say that A indicates to someone x that ___ if and only if, if x had reason to believe that A held, x would thereby have reason to believe that ___.

Without going into the details of this notion, observe that the only epistemic notion is - again - having a reason to believe. That is, we can't derive knowledge from indications either. Thus, it does not follow that Lewis common knowledge is factive.

To conclude, Lewis common knowledge is not the same as Aumann-style common knowledge. Once we realize this we can start asking another set of questions about Lewis common knowledge. I mentioned above that applications of Aumann-style common knowledge have been criticized. Now, an interesting question is whether Lewis common knowledge can do the jobs Aumann-style common knowledge is supposed to do and whether it can escape the criticism. Thrilling! Though, this is material for another post.

Update: Correction due to Lars' observation.

9. Quote of the day: Grice

2008-10-06T16:19:00.004+02:00

In an attack of perspicuousness, Grice defines "more fully" applied timeless meaning for unstructured utterances-types as follows:

D4': When U uttered X (type), X meant 'asterisk-sub-psi' =df. \exists A \exists q (U meant by uttering X that asterisk-prime q; and U intended A to recognize [? and to recognize that he was intended to recognize] that, by uttering X, U meant that asterisk-prime q via A's knowledge [assumption] that in U's repertoire is the procedure of uttering X if, for some A', U wants A' to psi-dagger that p)" ["p" may or may not, represent that propositional content to which indefinite reference is made in the existential quantification of "q"].

(Grice, Herbert Paul (1989): Utterer's meaning, sentence meaning, and word-meaning. In: Grice, Herbert Paul (Eds.): Studies in the way of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 117–137, p. 128)

If I may remind you: an applied timeless meaning '...' for an unstructured utterances-type specifies the correct reading of X for a given occasion of utterance. The specification has the following form: "X meant here (on a particular occasion) '...'". Though I assume that you had other difficulties grasping D4'.

8. Quote of the day: Hume

2008-10-04T11:19:00.001+02:00

Here comes Hume's characterization of a convention in all its beauty. In a quite ingenious way we find here (almost) all we struggle with these days: what conventions are, what conventions are for, how conventions come into existence, the stability of conventions, epistemic aspects of conventions, the required preference structures, the normative force of conventions, the relation between conventions and rules, learning a convention - to name but a few. Notice that "tis" is old for "it is" and "tho" for "though":

This convention is not of the nature of a promise: For even promises themselves, as we shall see afterwards, arise from human conventions. 'Tis only a general sense of common interest; which sense all the members of the society express to one another, and which induces them to regulate their conduct by certain rules. I observe, that it will be for my interest to leave another in the possession of his goods, provided he will act in the same manner with regard to me. He is sensible of a like interest in the regulation of his conduct. When this common sense of interest is mutually express'd, and is known to both, it produces a suitable resolution and behaviour. And this may properly enough be call'd a convention or agreement betwixt us, tho' without the interposition of a promise; since the actions of each of us have a reference to those of the other, and are perform'd upon the supposition, that something is to be perform'd on the other part. Two men, who pull the oars of a boat, do it by an agreement or convention, tho' they have never given promises to each other. Nor is the rule concerning the stability of possession the less deriv'd from human conventions, that it arises gradually, and acquires force by a slow progression, and by our repeated experience of the inconveniences of transgressing it. On the contrary, this experience assures us still more, that the sense of interest has become common to all our fellows, and gives us a confidence of the future regularity of their conduct: And 'tis only on the expectation of this, that our moderation and abstinence are founded. In like manner are languages gradually establish'd by human conventions without any promise. In like manner do gold and silver become the common measures of exchange, and are esteem'd sufficient payment for what is of a hundred times their value.

(Hume, David (2003): A treatise of human nature. Mineola N.Y.: Dover Publications, Book III. Part II. Section II.)

7. Quote of the Day: Loar

2008-08-22T10:28:00.003+02:00

Another reference to Quine, this time by Brian Loar who is dissenting from Davidson with regard to Davidson's extensional, truth-theoretic theory of meaning:

[T]he attack led by Quine against intensions might be granted success, without requiring the wholesale abandonment of intuitions that there exist some kind of semantical facts. But it is my view that this compromise makes no sense. Semantics without intensions is Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.

(Loar, Brian (1976): Two theories of meaning. In: Evans, Gareth; McDowell, John Henry (Eds.): Truth and meaning. Essays in semantics. Oxford , p. 138)

6. Quote of the Day: Gibbard

2008-08-21T10:14:00.001+02:00

Ever since Quine, examples involving tribesmen are fashionable. So, Allan Gibbard is in good company with this one:

Take Quine's stock plight of the anthropologist. The anthropologist finds that his subjects avoid killing pelicans, and a word they apply to pelicans they apply to their half-brothers. He concludes that these tribesmen think pelicans are their half-brothers. A kibbitzing philosopher points out that this word might be plausibly mean not half-brother, but half-brother or totem associate. In that case the tribesmen's concern must be not to kill half-brothers or totem associates.

(Gibbard, Allan (1994): Meaning and normativity. In: Philosophical Issues, 5, pp. 95–115, p. 103)

Are you more like the anthropologist or more like the kibitzing philosopher?

Conference Announcement: Graduate Philosophy Conference on Normativity

2008-07-17T15:55:00.004+02:00

Graduate Philosophy Conference on Normativity
http://www.illc.uva.nl/normativity/
Department of Philosophy - ILLC
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Amsterdam
The Netherlands
29 & 30 August 2008

It has been strongly argued that human rationality, language, and meaning are intrinsically normative, and that as such they cannot be described in purely naturalistic terms. But how are we to conceive of normativity? Taking this question as our starting point, we are interested in bringing together young researchers who are working towards a model that helps explain the nature of norms underlying human cognition and (linguistic) behaviour.

Invited speakers

Accepted talks

Joshua Beattie (UC Berkeley): Assessment-Sensitivity and the Naturalistic Fallacy
Anthony Booth (Utrecht University): The Sources of Epistemic Normativity
Lars Dänzer (University of Bielefeld): How meaning might be normative
Jennifer Frey (University of Pittsburgh): A Defense of Natural Normativity
Catherine Sophia Herfeld (Witten/Herdecke): The Role of Normativity in Explaining Norm-conformity
Camillia Kong (LSE): Hume's Social Standards of Practical Rationality
Christos Kyriacou (University of Edinburgh): Naturalism and Normativity
Andrea Lechler (University of Reading): The role of explicitness in assessing practical reasoning
Lars Leeten (Technische Universitaet Berlin): Normativity of Language: An Approach from Accountability
Manolo Martinez (Universitat de Barcelona): Adequate Explanations and the Disjunction Problem
Graham Peebles (University of Glasgow): Perception, Belief and Justification
Peter Schulte (University of Bielefeld): Moral and rational "oughts": The distinction between "demanding" and "recommending" normativity
Giedre Vasiliauskaite (Erasmus University Rotterdam): Only a Chapter of Psychology? The Defense of Normative Naturalism in Epistemology

Sponsors
The conference is sponsored by the ILLC, Research Training Site GLoRiClass, NWO-Project "The Origins of Truth, and the Origins of the Sentence", Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie, Leerstoelgroep Logica en Taalfilosofie of the Universiteit van Amsterdam.

For further information, you can visit the conference website at: http://www.illc.uva.nl/normativity or contact: normativity [the at thingy] science [point] uva [point] nl.

Early registration is strongly encouraged.

SDRT's update mechanism revisited

2008-07-15T18:04:00.004+02:00

I've written a short paper about the formalization of SDRT's update mechanism for a workshop. The point is minor and buried in ugly definitions. Though, it clarifies the inner workings of SDRT's formal core and that's why I think it's worthwhile to read if you are somewhat familiar with the theory. Maybe the most amusing part is that the ideas go back to thoughts I had a couple of years ago when I wrote a terrific 203 (sic!) page term paper.

Let me know what you think about the paper if you should read it. Feedback is always welcome!

Update: The link to the paper points now to a corrected version. In the version in print there is a mistake in section 3.4 on issue 3 ("Failed update sequences can undo the results of successful updates"). In the corrected version, I've repaired example (4) thereby making the argumentation in this section sound.

Graduate Philosophy Conference on Normativity: Accepted talks

2008-06-26T17:52:00.004+02:00

The Graduate Philosophy Conference on Normativity organized by Dora Achourioti, Edgar Andrade and me is shaping up nicely. We are happy to announce that the talks listed below have been accepted. If you want to participate (as a graduate speaker or a hearer), please don't forget to register as soon as possible!

Accepted talks:

Joshua Beattie (UC Berkeley): Assessment-Sensitivity and the Naturalistic Fallacy

Anthony Booth (Utrecht University): The Sources of Epistemic Normativity

Lars Dänzer (University of Bielefeld): How meaning might be normative

Jennifer Frey (University of Pittsburgh): A Defense of Natural Normativity

Catherine Sophia Herfeld (Witten/Herdecke): The Role of Normativity in Explaining Norm-conformity

Camillia Kong (LSE): Hume’s Social Standards of Practical Rationality

Christos Kyriacou (University of Edinburgh): Naturalism and Normativity

Andrea Lechler (University of Reading): The role of explicitness in assessing practical reasoning

Lars Leeten (Technische Universitaet Berlin): Normativity of Language: An Approach from Accountability

Manolo Martinez (Universitat de Barcelona): Adequate Explanations and the Disjunction Problem

Graham Peebles (University of Glasgow): Perception, Belief and Justification

Peter Schulte (University of Bielefeld): Moral and rational "oughts": The distinction between "demanding" and "recommending" normativity

Giedre Vasiliauskaite (Erasmus University Rotterdam): Only a Chapter of Psychology? The Defense of Normative Naturalism in Epistemology

Online Papers in Philosophy: RIP?

2008-06-24T15:35:00.004+02:00

It seems that the blog Online Papers in Philosophy is facing serious problems since the blog has been dead for more than a month (which comes close to eternity I wish to add). I really hope that Jonathan Ichikawa manages to find the time to fix the issues. WE NEED OPP! BRING IT BACK TO US! I guess many of us would be willing to support him. Maybe the current situation is a lesson that things need to be organized in a different way?

Speaker meaning and linguistic meaning: an analytic circle?

2008-06-11T22:35:00.011+02:00

In this post I discuss the implications of analyzing Gricean speaker meaning in terms of linguistic meaning plus rationality on the basis of the so called "Gricean programme" which I assume here to be true in a sense to be explained. The suggestion to do so has recently been made by Michael Franke, albeit very tentatively. So this post should be understood as an exploration of how the suggestion should be taken and not as an objection.

Michael gave yesterday an interesting Logic Tea talk based on his excellent ESSLLI contribution. It was about a iterated best response model for credible signaling. The rough idea is to use a signaling game with signals having linguistic meanings as a description of the relevant factors which together with a game theoretic solution concept determine the credible utterance meaning of a signal. The proposed solution concept is based on best response sequences which model the agents' rational deliberation of the form "If I expect you to do A, then the best thing I can do is B; thus I should do B. You can then replicate my reasoning, reassess the situation with the outcome that the best thing to do is C. Since I expect you to replicate my reasoning and to be rational, I expect you to switch to C. On this basis I assess the situation anew..." - and so on and so forth - up to a level k of such iterations.

Towards the end of the talk Michael suggested that we could characterize Gricean episodic speaker meaning in terms of such iterated best response sequences. That is to say that we can analyze speaker meaning in terms of linguistic meaning, beliefs, and rationality.

Do we want to do analyze speaker meaning in this way? - The idea to analyze speaker meaning along these lines has been in the air for a while and seems prima facie attractive for it gives raise to a conceptually clear theory and it also seems to be supported on empirical grounds. Though, let us consider whether it is compatible with another cornerstone of the (neo-)Gricean programme, the so called "second stage" which consists in analyzing linguistic meaning in terms of conventions about speaker meaning. It is exactly this part of the Gricean programme which I assume to be true here, that is, to repeat, that the analysis of linguistic meaning in terms of conventions about speaker meaning is true (correct).

Putting these two ideas together, what we have now is the following:

Speaker meaning is analyzed in terms of linguistic meaning, beliefs, and rationality.

Linguistic meaning is analyzed in terms of conventions about speaker meaning.

This looks fishy, since it our analyses are now flatly circular. For each term is analyzed in terms of the other. This point can be rendered more perspicuously if we introduce some notation.

"s-mean(a,e,m,c)" stands for "agent a speaker-means m by expression e in context c".
"l-mean(e,m)" stands for "the linguistic meaning of expression e is m".

We consider the language as fixed. Moreover, there is only one language in the relevant linguistic community. With this notation we can express the analytical claims as follows ("ASM" for "Analysis of Speaker Meaning" and likewise for "ALM"):

ASM. l-mean(e,m) iff there is a convention among agents a of the community in contexts c: s-mean(a,e,m,c)
ALM. s-mean(a,e,m,c) iff for agent a in context c it is rational to interpret expression e as m on the basis of l-mean(e,m')

The part "for agent a in context c it is rational to interpret expression e as m on the basis of l-mean(e,m')" in ALM is a gloss for what the iterated best response model determines. Since we don't need the details, I don't try to spell it out. Rather, I want to focus on what happens if we combine ASM and ALM. If we substitute the right part ASM into ALM, we get:

(1) l-mean(e,m) iff there is a convention among agents a of the community in contexts c: for agent a in context c it is rational to interpret expression e as m on the basis of l-mean(e,m')

Similarly we can substitute the right part of ALM into ASM:

(2) s-mean(a,e,m,c) iff for agent a in context c it is rational to interpret expression e as m on the basis of there being a convention among agents a of the community in contexts c: s-mean(a,e,m,c)

In this form it is obvious that both analysis proposals ASM and ALM use the analysandum in the analysans. Too bad. But the mistake should be clear if we remember that it is possible for a speaker to speaker-mean something without there being a convention. If you find your room in a mess and wonder who has done it, then I might show you the bracelet of your sister and thereby speaker-mean to you that it was your sister.

Thus, the point is that ASM is too strong; we shouldn't claim that it is a biconditional but only conditional. The right side of ASM is sufficient for speaker meaning but not necessary. Thereby, we can make it compatible to a neo-Gricean-account about linguistic meaning. A neo-Gricean is committed to ALM. I propose that she should claim the following:

In some cases which involve the use of a signal having a linguistic meaning, part of what determines the speaker meaning of an utterance of the signal is its linguistic meaning. However, there are also enough regular cases of speaker meaning involving signals which do not have a linguistic meaning (at least in the language under consideration) which make it possible that a convention about the prevailing speaker meaning could come into existence in the linguistic community.

Thereby ALM can be defended against the objection of entering a flat analytic circle. This is, by the way, compatible with the traditional neo-Gricean position as developed by Stephen Schiffer in his 1972 book "Meaning". Schiffer proposed to analyze "Speaker S means that P by uttering X to audience A" roughly in the following way: S thereby intends to realize a certain state of affairs E which is mutually known and is conclusive evidence for A to infer the content of X, that is P.

The relation of Schiffer's analysis to the proposal above is as follows. In cases which involve the use of a signal having a linguistic meaning, the state of affairs E is also about the linguistic information of the signal. In the other cases involving signals which do not have a linguistic meaning, the state of the state of affairs E only consists of non-linguistic information.

To conclude, ASM has been rejected by a weaker disjunctive analysis which distinguishes between utterances of signals having a linguistic meaning and such without. Thereby, the flat analytic circle can be escaped. And this, I guess, is the way how the idea to analyze speaker meaning has always been meant...

5. Quote of the day: Kipling

2008-06-11T14:29:00.005+02:00

Today's post is only loosely connected to philosophy but connected, after all, if you think of the lengthy narratives some philosophers (and other brave scientists) provide in order to explain how certain biological or cultural traits came about. The quote is from Rudyard Kipling's book "Just so stories" - a piece of beauty.

So the Whale swam and swam and swam, with both flippers and his tail, as hard as he could for the hiccoughs; and at last he saw the Mariner's natal-shore and the white-cliffs-of-Albion, and he rushed half-way up the beach, and opened his mouth wide and wide and wide, and said, 'Change here for Winchester, Ashuelot, Nashua, Keene, and stations on the Fitchburg Road;' and just as he said 'Fitch' the Mariner walked out of his mouth. But while the Whale had been swimming, the Mariner, who was indeed a person of infinite-resource-and-sagacity, had taken his jack-knife and cut up the raft into a little square grating all running criss-cross, and he had tied it firm with his suspenders (now, you know why you were not to forget the suspenders!), and he dragged that grating good and tight into the Whale's throat, and there it stuck! Then he recited the following Sloka, which, as you have not heard it, I will now proceed to relate--
By means of a grating
I have stopped your ating.

For the Mariner he was also an Hi-ber-ni-an. And he stepped out on the shingle, and went home to his mother, who had given him leave to trail his toes in the water; and he married and lived happily ever afterward. So did the Whale. But from that day on, the grating in his throat, which he could neither cough up nor swallow down, prevented him eating anything except very, very small fish; and that is the reason why whales nowadays never eat men or boys or little girls.
(Kipling, Rudyard: "Just so stories", London: Macmillan, 1902)

The book is also available online from: http://www.boop.org/jan/justso/.

4. Quote of the day: Dennett

2008-06-09T10:37:00.004+02:00

Even if you have not waited for the answer, there is an answer to the question what philosophy of language is: It is like a black hole. This is at least analogy Daniel C. Dennett proposed back then in the 80ies:

Contemporary philosophical theory of meaning is something of a black hole. One simply cannot hope to work effectively on the issues without becoming intimately familiar with the technical literature, but that literature is such an intricately interlocked, powerfully argued conglomeration of doctrines that once one has come to terms with it, one is typically caught in its embrace.

(Millikan, Ruth Garrett (1984): Language, thought, and other biological categories. New foundations for realism. Cambridge: MIT Press, Foreword, written Daniel C. Dennett)

What are you like?

An argument against the force-content distinction

2008-06-05T11:57:00.004+02:00

It has recently been argued by Rosja Mastop in a Logic Tea talk that we should give up the force-content distinction (e.g. see the SEP entry on speech acts) in philosophy of language. Since this distinction is central for the current philosophy of language, it is worth to have a closer look at it. My take is that Rosja's argument does not go through.

Rosja's main line of reasoning can be rendered as the following argument:

P0. Some variant of truth-conditional semantics is correct.
P1. If the force-content distinction is correct, then there is exactly one kind of content which every utterance of a sentence has.
P2. There is more than one kind of content utterances of sentences have.
C. Therefore, the force-content distinction is not correct.

This argument is valid but not sound. Let me explain why. Let us grant for the purpose of discussing this argument that P0 and P2 are true. For P0 just assume that it is. Even a rough justification would take us to far from the main point.

With regard to P2 there are well known reasons. General consensus is that utterances of indicatives have truth conditions which can be described in terms of a proposition. This kind of content is usually called "propositional". This already makes one kind of content.

Though there are more grammatical moods in human languages than indicatives. The work on semantics of questions and imperatives, in particular, has strongly suggested that we should describe their content not in terms of propositional content. How exactly is a matter of debate (and taste I'd say). For questions, one of the common ways to describe their contents is to use partitions, and for imperatives actions. So now we have three different kinds of contents.

Does it follow from P0 and P2 that the conclusion C is true? - No, of course not. Also P1 has to be true. But is it? - Here, I believe, the argument goes wrong. It presupposes a version of the force-content distinction which is too strong, namely FC1 ("1" for "1 kind of content"):

FC1. For human languages: There is exactly one kind of content C and a language dependent set of forces F such that there is a mapping from utterance types of sentences to tuples where f is a force being an element of F and c is a content of kind C.

I take it to be true that this is actually the popular way to understand the distinction. Though the force-content distinction does not loose its appeal if we weaken it to FCm ("m" for "many kinds of content"):

FCm. For human languages: There is set of kinds of content C and a language dependent set of forces F such that there is a mapping from utterance types of sentences to tuples where f is a force being an element of F and c is a content of a kind in C.

FCm is like FC1 except for the not requiring just one kind of content. It preserves the property that every sentential utterance has both a force and a content. And this property seems to me what constitutes the distinction.

One worry against FCm is that it is too weak. While FC1 shows that different utterance types have something in common, namely a content of the same kind, the same is not implied by FCm. Though nothing in FCm precludes that there are systematic relations between contents of different kinds and that there are systematic relations between different forces.

On the contrary, I think that we have good reasons to suppose so. With regard to contents, there is for example an obvious relationship between partitions and propositions. On the usual account, a question denotes the set of its true answers. In other words, both partitions and propositions are constructed over the set of possible worlds and the latter are a member of a partition of the former.

Concerning forces, there are also many relations. Consider questions which are in some sense satisfied by an answer. So, the systematic content relations between questions and indicatives has an analogue on the side of their forces. Also, many utterance types which have different forces have yet the same kind of content. Reports, testimonies, and assertions all have a propositional content. This reflects our judgment that they have something in common.

So I propose that if we endorse FCm, then we should also endorse the following to systematicity claims:

SC. There are systematic relations among contents of different kinds.
SF. There are systematic relations among different forces.

Endorsing these claims, it seems to me that there is no reason to endorse FC1 and not FCm. Moreover, FCm is supported by the work on formal pragmatics, in particular, accounts about question-answer-relations. Furthermore, since the force-content distinction has proven to be helpful in philosophy of language, we have reason to defend it. That is, C should not be entailed. Thus, we have no reason to accept P1 and have reason to consider P1 to be false. Consequently, C does not follow. In other words, the argument is not sound.

To conclude, the discussed argument only shows how not to understand the force-content distinction. Since the argument is not sound, it could not be established that the force-content distinction should be given up.

Graduate Philosophy Conference on Normativity: Last Call for Abstracts - Deadline: June 15

2008-06-05T10:06:00.007+02:00

Department of Philosophy - ILLC
Universiteit van Amsterdam
29 & 30 August 2008

Graduate Philosophy Conference on Normativity

Call for Abstracts

It has been strongly argued that human rationality, language, and meaning are intrinsically normative, and that as such they cannot be described in purely naturalistic terms. But how are we to conceive of normativity? Taking this question as our starting point, we are interested in bringing together young researchers who are working towards a model that helps explain the nature of norms underlying human cognition and (linguistic) behaviour.

We invite papers on a broad range on topics relating to this theme. Contributions may concern - but need not be limited to - the following questions:

What is normativity and what are its sources?
How do norms differ from causes?
How relevant is normativity in accounting for meaning in natural language?
What is the nature of norms in human reasoning and decision-making and how do they bind us?
How do social practices and individual factors determine or constrain norms underlying human reasoning?
What is the normative force of conventions in communication?

Invited speakers

We are happy to announce that the conference's two confirmed keynote speakers are:

Submission Information

Please submit an extended 2-page abstract (800 words including references) using the on-line submission form by June 15. Eligible candidates for submission are graduate students and those who have completed their doctoral dissertation within the last five years. Each presentation will be allotted a 40 minute time slot, which includes a short commentary and discussion. Candidates will be notified by June 25 whether their paper has been accepted for presentation. Speakers will have the chance to send a revised version of their abstracts for publication in the conference book of abstracts.

Please note that if you submit an abstract, you are not thereby registered for the conference. Submission alone is not sufficient for participation. So you should also register for the conference, if you want to participate.

For further information, you can visit the conference website at: http://www.illc.uva.nl/normativity or contact: normativity [the at thingy] science [point] uva [point] nl.

Sponsors

The conference is sponsored by the ILLC, Research Training Site GLoRiClass, NWO-Project "The Origins of Truth, and the Origins of the Sentence", Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie, Leerstoelgroep Logica en Taalfilosofie of the Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Conference Poster

We've sent out conference posters to various universities. If you wish, you can download high-quality versions from our website to create a personal copy.

3. Quote of the day: Rosenberg

2008-06-03T10:22:00.005+02:00

Having been reading Millikan's new book Varieties of meaning (Bradford Books: 2006) for some days, I've been hoping to get at least a Quote of the Day out of it. But not so. Me and that book, we won't ever be a thing. Though I've found another ally. Rosenberg's review of Millikan's book is not only insightful but also provides an illustrative tale why, after all, we shouldn't readily accept Millikan's thesis that "understanding language is simply another form of sensory perception of the world" (Varieties of meaning, p. 113). So the tale goes:

I’m sitting in my study, working at my computer, with my favorite Rolling Stones CD turned up full blast. My wife, who’s been puttering in the garden, enters, and the following dialogue ensues:

She: The game must be over, and I think we won. People are cheering, and horns are honking. Turn down your music.

I: Why?

She: So you can hear the people cheering and the horns honking, of course.

I: But I just did! The cheering people sounded like this:
‘People are cheering’, and the honking horns like this:
‘Horns are honking’.

If Millikan were right, my last remark would be literally true, but, even at best, it’s only a bad joke. I didn’t hear people cheering and horns honking. Those sounds were drowned out by the loud music. What I heard were my wife’s reports of the cheering and honking; I heard her testimony.

(Rosenberg, Jay F. (2007): Comments on Ruth Garrett Millikan’s 'Varieties of meaning'. In: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Jg. 75, H. 3, S. 692–700, S. 697-698)

Humpty Dumpty - totally different

2008-05-22T21:40:00.003+02:00

Humpty Dumpty apparently also serves cognitive science with an interesting case as the Telegraph reports:

2. Quote of the Day: Rosenberg

2008-05-21T09:46:00.002+02:00

Maybe it is too early to mention Rosenberg in a casual context like this, maybe not. I've opted for the latter and dedicate the Quote of the Day to his memory.

This book is nominally about linguistic representation. But, since it is we who do the representing, it is also about us. And, since it is the universe which we represent, it is also about the universe. In the end, then, this book is about everything, which, since it is a philosophy book, is as it should be.
I recognize that it is nowadays unfashionable to write books about everything. Philosophers of language, it will be said, ought to stick to writing about language; philosophers of science, to writing about science; epistemologists, to writing about knowing; and so on. The real world, however, perversely refuses to carve itself up so neatly, and, although I recognize that the real world is nowadays also unfashionable, in the end I judged that one might get closer to the truth of carious matters by going along with it. So I have done so.

(Rosenberg, Jay F. (1974): Linguistic representation. Dordrecht: Reidel (Philosophical studies series in philosophy), XI (Preface))

New Column: Quote of the Day

2008-05-20T16:06:00.005+02:00

Hereby I start a new column which aims for a daily quote, the quote of the day. I promise to miss this aim often enough but I expect no one to mind. The column is inspired by a friend's puzzlement who heard me giggle while I was reading philosophy texts. My secret hope is that he will understand some day what made me giggle.

1. Quote of the day: Bennett about challenges for a theory about goals

Another complexity is needed. Suppose that on one occasion A seeks food rather than sex, and on another sex rather than food; there are no relevant differences in physiological states (sexual satiety, blood-sugar, etc.) at the two times; and the discrepancy resists treatment in terms of goal-complexes, e.g. by saying that A preferred food-and-shelter to sex-without-shelter, and sex-and-drink to food-without-drink. The behaviour might still be explained, if on the first occasion A could get food by taking a short walk and could not get sex without climbing a tree, whereas on the second it could get sex just by rolling over and could not get food without swimming a river. Such explanations ought to be provided for in our theory.

(Bennett, Jonathan Francis (1976): Linguistic behaviour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 62-63)

Conference Announcement & Call for Abstracts

2008-04-25T23:06:00.004+02:00

What is normativity and what are its sources?
How do norms differ from causes?
How relevant is normativity in accounting for meaning in natural language?
What is the nature of norms in human reasoning and decision-making and how do they bind us?
How do social practices and individual factors determine or constrain norms underlying human reasoning?
What is the normative force of conventions in communication?

Invited speakers

We are happy to announce that the conference's two confirmed keynote speakers are:

Submission Information

Please submit an extended 2-page abstract (800 words including references) using the on-line submission form by June 15. Eligible candidates for submission are graduate students and those who have completed their doctoral dissertation within the last five years. Each presentation will be allotted a 40 minute time slot, which includes a short commentary and discussion. Candidates will be notified by June 25 whether their paper has been accepted for presentation. Speakers will have the chance to send a revised version of their abstracts for publication in the conference book of abstracts.

For further information, you can visit the conference website at: http://www.illc.uva.nl/normativity or contact: normativity [the at thingy] science [point] uva [point] nl.

Sponsors

The conference is sponsored by the ILLC, Research Training Site GLoRiClass, NWO-Project "The Origins of Truth, and the Origins of the Sentence", Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie, Leerstoelgroep Logica en Taalwetenschap of the Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Graduate conference on normativity (updated)

2008-03-30T17:25:00.006+02:00

norms, originally uploaded by . olivia ..

To promote yet another venue, let me mention that there will be a graduate conference on normativity from 2008-08-29 to 2008-08-30 in Amsterdam, organized by Dora Achourioti, Edgar Andrade, and me. We will have two invited speakers.

A proper announcement, CfP, and disclosure of the speakers will follow. Stay tuned!

Update: The conference dates have changed.

GLoRiClass Halftime Event

2008-01-28T12:41:00.000+01:00

As announced in December, the GLoRiClass Halftime Event will soon take place - only the names changed as the date approached. We are excited to have Johan van Benthem, Gerhard Jaeger, and Samson Abramsky as keynote speakers!

Here is the announcement from the ILLC news

The Marie Curie Research Training Site GLoRiClass took up its work in February 2006. Now it's coming up to the half-way point. So we shall have a public event to mark this: the GLoRiClass Half Time Event.
For more information, see
http://www.illc.uva.nl/GLoRiClass/index.php?page=11

GLoRiClass Half Time Meeting

2007-12-21T11:41:00.000+01:00

Since half of the planned project time for GLoRiClass is over, it's high time for a group event.
That's why we will have the

GLoRiClass Half Time Meeting on February 13 at the ILLC in Amsterdam.

It will be a full day event with presentations from all the current GLoRiClass fellows. Moreover, we will have two interesting guest speakers. I can't tell you more at the moment but stay tuned!

(A late) Announcement and CFP: 9th Szklarska Poreba Workshop on the Roots of Pragmasemantics, Szklarska Poreba, Poland, February 21-25, 2008

2007-12-21T11:35:00.000+01:00

9th Szklarska Poreba Workshop on the Roots of Pragmasemantics February 21--25, 2008 http://staff.science.uva.nl/~sjagerde/szklarska/

This is to announce the ninth installment of the workshop that takes linguists and experimental philosophers to the ski slopes. It will be held February 21--25 2008, on the mountaintop Szrenica, Poland (the same location as every year).

Submission of abstracts

We invite authors to submit a one-page abstract to Jakub Szymanik before January 1st, for a talk of between 30 and 45 minutes (including discussion). Authors will be notified of acceptance by January 15th. Very welcome would also be proposals for the non-scientific programme, preferably to Marc Staudacher.

Workshop themes

The workshop aims to bring together linguists, philosophers, logicians, and all others interested in the semantics and pragmatics of natural language. This year the theme is *Complexity and Language* -- as usual this 'hot topic' should not exclude submissions on other subjects, but talks relating typical Szklarska Poreba concerns to complexity are especially welcome. We prefer new and original ideas, even if the material is not fully ripe and the presentation still tentative.

Especially relevant topics include:

Definitions of complexity relevant to language
The relation of complexity to markedness
Pragmatics as a strategy for reducing complexity
Formal complexity of language learning
Cognitive complexity of linguistic competence
Complexity in computational linguistics

And more traditional Szklarska Poreba themes:

Explicatures and implicatures
Fossilization theory
Lexical pragmatics
Experimental pragmatics
The architecture of the syntax/semantics interface
Diachronic aspects of syntax
Quantum cognition
Language and computation
Grammaticalization studies
Information structure and prosody
Licensing of polarity elements, quantification, etc.
The evolution of communication and language
Language typology
Evolutionary foundations of general pragmatic principles.

Invited Speakers

Fritz Hamm
Laszlo Kalman

Early skiing request

The possibility exists to hire cross-country skis, however we need to know in advance who would be interested and (crucially) how big their feet are.

All the best, and see you on the mountaintop!

Organisation and programme committee:

Jakub Szymanik (chair)
Reinhard Blutner (accommodation)
Henk Zeevat (finances)
Nina Gierasimczuk (local coordinator)
Marc Staudacher (social programme)
Tikitu de Jager

Literature on conventions

2007-10-23T17:06:00.000+02:00

Since David Lewis developed his theory about conventions in the late 60s (in Conventions), an enormous amount of literature has been produced. Though until recently, there haven't been good introductions to this field. - Or so I thought. Actually, there are two rather good resources I would like to recommend to everyone interested in conventions:

A word of welcome

2007-09-06T15:28:00.000+02:00

Once in a while things change. In April I moved from Bielefeld to Amsterdam where I will spend my next few years to do a PhD in philosophy of language being part of the GLoRiClass. From to time to time I will blog here about my work. So, stay tuned! And by the way: I heartily welcome your comments!