EPISTEMIC VOCABULARY · Context-sensitivity and the semantics of epistemic vocabulary in natural languages
7РП — „Хора“ (Действия „Мария Кюри“)
- Период
- 2014-01-01 → 2016-05-06
- Финансиране от ЕС
- 231 283 €
- Участници
- 1
- Схема
- MC-IIF
Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.
Накратко на български
Значението на думи като „знам“, когато се използват в различни ситуации, се анализира чрез новия модел PEC. Това помага за преодоляване на езикови противоречия и по-добро разбиране на философски проблеми, свързани с познанието.
Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.
Резултати накратко
Context-sensitivity and the semantics of epistemic vocabulary in natural languages
Contextualist approaches to the semantics of knowledge attributions have fallen into significant disrepute in recent years. According to much of the literature in the area, contextualist semantics of ‘knows p’ are subject to a variety of serious philosophical and linguistic objections, leaving little credibility to the view. This research project has formulated conditions of adequacy for a satisfactory account of epistemic contextualism and critically evaluated alternative approaches in the literature. Since none of the views currently defended has been found to be viable from either a linguistic or a philosophical point of view, this project has developed a novel contextualist semantics of knowledge attributions, which postulates a close semantic link between the content of ‘knows p’ at a context of utterance C and what is pragmatically presupposed in C. The resulting view is called Presuppositional Epistemic Contextualism (PEC). PEC provides us with a semantics for knowledge attributions that avoids and resolves the objections leveled against contextualist semantics in the literature and that is, therefore, significantly more attractive than its competitors. Moreover, PEC is well-motivated from both a linguistic and a philosophical point of view, modelling the semantics of ‘knows p’ by means of a presuppositional constraint on the domain of an implicit quantifier over possible worlds (or ‘relevant alternatives’). The resulting view not only avoids the most familiar linguistic objections to contextualism (syntactic gradability objection, semantic blindness objection), but also allows for a fruitful resolution of a number of philosophical problems in epistemology. For instance, PEC provides us with an elegant solution not only of skeptical puzzles, but also of the Gettier problem, lottery paradoxes, and the Moorean puzzle. The resulting view has, therefore, a far-reaching impact on debates in epistemology, the philosophy of language, philosophical linguistics, and the natural language semantics of epistemic terms. Many of the epistemological problems that philosophers have been grappling with since the 1950s appear, from the point of view of PEC, in an entirely new light and allow for simple, elegant, and independently motivated solutions. Results of the research project have been published in the form of two monographs (Oxford University Press) and a number of articles and book chapters.
Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз
Цел на проекта
The proposed research project develops a novel approach to Epistemic Contextualism, the view that the content of the verb ‘know’ can change with the speaker’s context of utterance. More intuitively, I shall defend the view that there are contexts with high standards for ‘knowledge’, in which it is difficult to ‘know’ something, and contexts with low standards for ‘knowledge’, in which it is considerably easier to obtain ‘knowledge’. The main ideas leading to this position stem (a) from the idea that ‘knowledge’ is sensitive to the speakers’ context and practical situation and (b) from a comprehensive formal account of other context-sensitive expressions. Consider, for instance, the gradable adjectives ‘flat’ and ‘empty’, which function--as I argue--semantically in a similar way to ‘know’: just as what counts as ‘flat’ or ‘empty’ in one context does not necessarily do so in another, who counts as ‘knowing p’ in one context does not necessarily do so in another.In the second phase of the project the emerging account will be employed in providing innovative solutions to classical philosophical problems, such as the problems of scepticism and induction, and will be located in a broader epistemological framework by relating it to other central epistemological issues concerning epistemic justification, evidence, and testimony. Besides offering solutions to philosophical problems, however, the project will also address the role of knowledge in public policy debates such as debates about climate change. Additionally, the project will be of great importance to any discipline concerned with the generation and administration of knowledge: by shifting focus and looking at the notion of knowledge from a linguistic perspective--namely, by looking at the way in which epistemic terms are used in particular conversational contexts--the project will achieve a deeper understanding of the notion of knowledge that is central to the knowledge society of the 21st century.
Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).
Участници
- THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE · CAMBRIDGEКоординаторОбединеното кралство
Връзки
Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз