Description

Thursday, June 14th - Carlos Santamaría Builiding, Room A2. 

15.00 JP Grodniewicz (Logos - UB): Linguistic Understanding as a Cognitive Process.

Abstract: The paper offers a revision of the philosophical debate about linguistic understanding. It starts with an empirical motivation. Available philosophical theories of linguistic understanding cannot accommodate results of psycholinguistic studies on communicative turn-taking. The common weakness of these theories is that they focus almost exclusively on the state of understanding, characterized either as a knowledge-like, perception-like or a content-entertaining state. An alternative account is proposed. In this account, understanding is characterized primarily as a cognitive process taking place upon hearing an utterance in a language the hearer understands in the dispositional sense. For an occurring state to be a state of understanding it has to result from this process. It is argued that the new framework not only accommodates results of empirical research on language comprehension but also promises a unified answer to some central controversies in the philosophical debate about linguistic understanding.

Comments: Larraitz Zubeldia (ILCLI - EHU).

16.45 Eros Corazza (ILCLI - Ikerbasque): Frege on Identity and Co-Reference.

Abstract: In “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” (1892) Frege raises a problem concerning identity statements of the form a=b and he criticizes the view he holds in the Begriffsschrift (1879, § 8). In building on a suggestion by Perry (2001/12, ch. 7) I will show how Frege’s Begriffsschrift account can be rescued and how Frege’s 1892 criticism of his Begriffsschrift’s position somewhat miss the point. Furthermore, the Begriffsschrift’s view can be developed to account in quite an elegant way to the so-called Frege’s Puzzle without committing to the sense/reference (Sinn/Bedeutung) distinction Frege introduces in “Über Sinn und Bedeutung”. To do so we have, though, to give up the idea that all the relevant information conveyed by the utterance of a simple sentence is encapsulated into a single content. I will show of this can be done in adopting a Perry-style pluri-propositionalist model of communication.

Comments: Manolo Martínez (Logos - UB).

Friday, June 15th - Carlos Santamaría Building, Room A3.

9.30 Yolanda García (ILCLI - EHU): Wrong Targets and Innocents Victims of Irony.

Abstract: Most pragmatic theories of irony agree that ironic utterances involve the expression of an attitude: a generally critical, derogatory, mocking, sceptical or negative attitude that is directed towards something (what I will call the target) and towards someone (the victim of the ironic attitude). One of the most widespread approaches to irony, the relevance-theoretic approach that they label as the “echoic account” (Sperber and Wilson 1986/95; Wilson 2006, 2009; Wilson and Sperber 1992; 2012), associates the target and its victim with the attribution of a thought or utterance to some person or people. This theory claims that the ironic speaker echoes an utterance, thought or expectation she attributes to someone other than herself at the time of the utterance. Thus, they identify the target of the derogatory attitude with the attributed utterance or thought and the victim with the attributee of the utterance, thought or expectation. In this paper, I claim that these identifications often get the targets and victims of ironic utterances wrong. The target of an ironic utterance is a state of affairs (an event, an action or a situation, in general), and its victim (if any) is a person or people held responsible for the target; and not necessarily an attributed utterance, thought or expectation and their attributee. 

Comments: Mar Alloza (Logos - UB).

11.15 Michele Palmira (Logos - UB): Singular Propositions, Inflationary and Deflationary Approaches.

Abstract: In this talk I take up the question of what it is that makes propositions singular. I do so by contrasting two different types of approaches. According to those that I call inflationary, the singular/general divide is to be drawn on the basis of features of propositions themselves. The alternative deflationary approaches reject this claim either by denying the legitimacy of any explanatory demand in this area (call this bare deflationism), or by discharging the explanatory burden at the level of the vehicles, such as representational acts and states, to which propositions are ascribed (call this substantive deflationism). I aim to establish substantive deflationism. To this end, I first focus on the desiderata for an adequate account of the singular/general divide. I then turn to outline and defend the following: A proposition about an object x is singular wrt x iff p is the content of a vehicle containing a referential constituent [r] for x.

Comments: Ekain Garmendia (ILCLI - EHU).