160152 PS Theory of Science and Linguistics (2019S)

Note 1: This is a joint seminar between the department of philosophy and the department of linguistics. Participants should have a general interest in, and knowledge of, natural language semantics.

Note 2: Due to the general philosophical tradition of not starting classes in week 1, and the Rektorstag on March 12, the class will start on March 19th. Conceivably, we will arrange for an extra or extended meeting for presentations towards the end of the class. This will be discussed (among other things) in meeting one.

In this seminar, we will be studying a series of very influential articles by David Lewis on natural language semantics, starting with his “General Semantics” from 1970, in which he articulates proposals as to how results from transformational and categorial grammar could be employed in the construction of compositional semantic theories for natural languages. This article is one of the founding documents of formal semantics. We are initially scheduling 3 session for discussing this text.

We will then move on to “Languages and Language”, in which Lewis states his view of what it is for a population to use a given language (as described by a semantic theory) in terms of his game-theoretic notion of a convention. In “Scorekeeping in a Language Game”, Lewis puts forward his own version of Stalnaker’s then budding theory of conversation, originally designed to provide explanations for presupposition phenomena. In “Context, Index and Context”, Lewis criticizes the approach advocated by the likes of Stalnaker and Kaplan of introducing “contents” as compositional semantic values. In “Attitudes De Dicto and De Se”, he argues for generalizing the conception of contents as sets of worlds (functions from worlds to truth-values) to a conception of contents as sets of centred worlds (functions from world-centre-pairs to truth-values).

Depending on progress in the seminar, we may modify the diet of papers to be discussed in the course of the semester.

In each session, we will be discussing the designated text. Participants are expected to prepare the reading by uploading a brief summary of the main theses of the text on Moodle. In each session, one or more participants will be responsible for moderating the discussion (i.e. structuring the discussion in such a way that all important aspects get covered). Towards the end of the semester, we will reserve some sessions in which each participant will give a short (8 mins) presentation with a Q&A period (12 mins) on a topic freely chosen from an official list of topics. Participants are then to use the feedback received in the Q&A after their presentation to write an essay (Seminararbeit) of maximally 2000 words length on the same topic.

1. Introduction

2. General Semantics, Part 1

3. General Semantics, Part 2

4. General Semantics, Part 3

5. Languages and Language

6. Scorekeeping

7. Index, Context and Content

8. Attitudes De Dicto and De Se

9. Short presentations:

10. Short presentations:

11. Short presentations:

12: Short presentations: