{"id":10689,"date":"2017-12-04T06:10:42","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T10:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=10689"},"modified":"2017-12-04T09:45:09","modified_gmt":"2017-12-04T13:45:09","slug":"lingphil-reading-group-124-on-pietroski-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2017\/12\/04\/lingphil-reading-group-124-on-pietroski-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"LingPhil Reading Group 12\/4 - on Pietroski 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Title:<\/strong> Discussion of Pietroski 2015: <a href=\"http:\/\/terpconnect.umd.edu\/~pietro\/research\/papers\/Framing%20Event%20Variables.pdf\">Framing Event Variables<\/a><br clear='none'\/>\n <strong>Date and time:<\/strong> Monday December 4, 1-2pm<br clear='none'\/>\n <strong>Location:<\/strong> 7th Floor Seminar room<br clear='none'\/>\n <strong>Abstract:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I find myself writing two papers that are due around the same time. This one develops an objection, based on Davidson\u0092s (1967a) analysis of action reports, to truth-theoretic accounts of linguistic meaning. The other one is about the relevance of Liar Paradoxes for such accounts; see Pietroski (forthcoming). In both papers, the first numbered sentence is (1).<\/p>\n<p>(1) The first numbered sentence in \u0093Framing Event Variables \u0094 is false.<\/p>\n<p>But here, (1) is simply a reminder of a familiar difficulty for the idea that declarative sentences of a Human Language have truth conditions; where for these purposes, a Human Language is a spoken or signed language that any biologically normal child can acquire given an ordinary course of linguistic experience. In my view, (2) and (3) present further difficulties for this idea.<\/p>\n<p>(2) Alvin chased Theodore gleefully and athletically but not skillfully.<\/p>\n<p>(3) Theodore chased Alvin gleelessly and unathletically but skillfully.<\/p>\n<p>Following Davidson and others, I think action reports have \u0093eventish \u0094 logical forms like (2a-3a).<\/p>\n<p>(2a) ?e[Chased(e, Alvin, Theodore) &amp; Gleeful(e) &amp; Athletic(e) &amp; ~Skillful(e)]<\/p>\n<p>(3a) ?e[Chased(e, Theodore, Alvin) &amp; Gleeless(e) &amp; Unathletic(e) &amp; Skillful(e)]<\/p>\n<p>We can stipulate that these existential generalizations\u0097sentences of an invented language\u0097have recursively specifiable truth conditions, and that \u0091Chased(e, x, y)\u0092 is true of &lt;?, ?, ?&gt; if and only if ? was an event of ? chasing ?. But as we\u0092ll see, there are good reasons for denying that (2) and (3) exhibit the specified truth conditions. There are potential replies. But I argue that they are implausible, especially given the many independent illustrations (e.g., via Kahneman and Tversky) of how human judgments are affected by linguistic framing.<\/p>\n<p>The discussion will be led by Christopher Baron.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Title: Discussion of Pietroski 2015: Framing Event Variables Date and time: Monday December 4, 1-2pm Location: 7th Floor Seminar room Abstract: I find myself writing two papers that are due around the same time. This one develops an objection, based on Davidson\u0092s (1967a) analysis of action reports, to truth-theoretic accounts of linguistic meaning. The other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10689"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10716,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10689\/revisions\/10716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}