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    One may be pessimistic about the prospects of foundationa... — Carmelics
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    One may be pessimistic about the prospects of foundational theories of meaning due to the underdevelopment of natural language semantics

    Philosophy of LanguageSkepticism
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Formal semantics for natural language routinely idealizes away from context-dependence, vagueness, and polysemy, which are pervasive features of ordinary meaning.
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    • 2.A foundational theory that explains only the idealized fragment cannot claim to explain meaning in the philosophically robust sense required by theories of understanding.
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    • 3.Since the hard cases—indexicality, vagueness, metaphor—remain formally intractable, the semantic facts most in need of foundational explanation are precisely those least illuminated.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Quine's indeterminacy of translation thesis shows that no behavioral evidence can uniquely fix semantic facts, leaving semantics without a stable empirical base.
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    • 2.Without a stable empirical base, semantic theories multiply underdetermined hypotheses, making foundational theories built on them similarly unstable.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Foundational theories of meaning are answerable to semantic theorizing, since a clear view of semantic facts is required before those facts can be explained
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    • 2.Natural language semantics is not yet advanced enough to provide a clear grip on the semantic facts that foundational theories of meaning aim to analyze
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    SkepticismPhilosophy of Language

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    Related

    A foundational theory that explains only the idealized fragment cannot claim to ...Formal semantics for natural language routinely idealizes away from context-depe...Foundational theories of meaning are answerable to semantic theorizing, since a ...Natural language semantics is not yet advanced enough to provide a clear grip on...
    +3 moreShow less
    Quine's indeterminacy of translation thesis shows that no behavioral evidence ca...Since the hard cases—indexicality, vagueness, metaphor—remain formally intractab...Without a stable empirical base, semantic theories multiply underdetermined hypo...

    Similar

    Natural language semantics is not yet advanced enough to provide a cle...85%Foundational theories of meaning are answerable to semantic theorizing...77%Fregean semantics is well-supported as a theory of meaning77%Davidson's foundational theory of meaning must be mistaken.75%

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    SEP: meaning
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    There is another reason why one might be pessimistic about the prospects of foundational theories of meaning. While plainly distinct from semantics, the attempt to provide foundational theories is clearly in one sense answerable to semantic theorizing, since without a clear view of the facts about the semantic contents of expressions we won't have a clear view of the facts for which we are trying to provide an explanation. One might, then, be skeptical about the prospects of foundational theorie
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit