Insensitive Semantics: A Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism

Since the end of the nineteenth century, philosophy of language has been plagued by an extensive and notoriously confusing literature on how to draw the distinction between semantic and non–semantic content. This debate, at its deepest level, is about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication. Insensitive Semantics is a book about this debate, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one. To this end, the authors defend a combination of two views: semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism . If these views are right, then many philosophers and linguists are guilty of some profound mistakes, with wide–ranging implications for philosophy of language but also epistemology, metaphysics, moral philosophy, and other branches of pilosophy.

Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Overview. Part I: From Moderate to Radical Contextualism . 2. Exegesis: The Methodology of Contextualism. 3. The Instability of Context Shifting Arguments. 4. Diagnosis: Why Context Shifting Arguments are Misused. 5. The Instability of Incompleteness Arguments. 6. Digressions: Binding and Hidden Indexicals. Part II: Refutation of Radical Contextualism . 7. Objections to Radical Contextualism (I): Fails Context Sensitivity Tests. 8. Objection to Radical Contextualism (II):Makes Communication Impossible. 9. Objections to Radical Contextualism (III): Internal Inconsistencies. Part III: Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism . 10. Semantic Minimalism. 11. Semantics and Metaphysics. 12. Semantics and Psychology. 13. Speech Act Pluralism. References. Index

Herman Cappelen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College and the University of Oslo. He has published extensively in philosophy of language and mind, including articles in Noûs , Mind , Mind & Language , Analysis , and Synthese . Ernie Lepore is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He is author of Meaning and Argument (revised edition, Blackwell, 2003) and, with Jerry Fodor, of Holism (Blackwell, 1991). He is editor of Truth and Interpretation (Blackwell, 1989), and co–editor, with Zenon Pylyshyn, of What is Cognitive Science ? (Blackwell, 1999), as well as general editor of the Blackwell series Philosophers and Their Critics .

“This book is an ingenious defense of two positions not widely thought to be compatible: truth–conditional semantics and semantic minimalism. Cappelen and Lepore’s highly controversial views are already, and will continue to be, at the center of inquiry into the nature of linguistic communication.” Jason Stanley, University of Michigan “Cappelen and Lepore have performed a singular service in bringing together the threads of the contextualist debate, and in formulating a minimalist alternative to some current trends.” James Higginbotham, University of Southern California “This is a pleasingly spare yet instructively sophisticated account of how Davidsonians can accommodate the massive context sensitivity of language use. Good stuff.” Paul Pietroski, University of Maryland “This is a book of considerable importance, which deals with a topic currently at the center of research in the philosophy of language. As a result, Insensitive Semantics has been and will continue to be widely discussed …This book pushes the discussion of context–sensitivity forward in new and useful directions. Read it and learn from it.” Journal of Linguistics