Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://doi.org/10.25358/openscience-438
Authors: | Beyer, Christian |
Title: | Meaning, context, and background |
Online publication date: | 11-Nov-2016 |
Year of first publication: | 2015 |
Language: | english |
Abstract: | It is widely held that (truth-conditional) meaning is context-dependent. According to John Searle's radical version of contextualism, the very notion of meaning “is only applicable relative to a set of […] background assumptions” (Searle 1978, p. 207), or background know-how. In earlier work, I have developed a (moderately externalist) “neo-Husserlian” account of the context-dependence of meaning and intentional content, based on Husserl’s semantics of indexicals. Starting from this semantics, which strongly resembles today's mainstream semantics (section 2) I describe the (radical) contextualist challenge that mainstream semantics and pragmatics face in view of the (re-)discovery of what Searle calls the background of meaning (section 3). Following this, and drawing upon both my own neo-Husserlian account and ideas from Emma Borg, Gareth Evans and Timothy Williamson, I sketch a strategy for meeting this challenge (section 4) and draw a social-epistemological picture that allows us to characterize meaning and content in a way that takes account of contextualist insights yet makes it necessary to tone down Searle's “hypothesis of the Background” (section 5). |
DDC: | 100 Philosophie 100 Philosophy |
Institution: | Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz |
Department: | FB 05 Philosophie und Philologie |
Place: | Mainz |
ROR: | https://ror.org/023b0x485 |
DOI: | http://doi.org/10.25358/openscience-438 |
URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:77-publ-551531 |
Version: | Published version |
Publication type: | Buchbeitrag |
License: | In Copyright |
Information on rights of use: | https://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
Citation: | Open MIND Metzinger, Thomas |
Pages or article number: | Kap. 4(T) |
Publisher: | MIND Group |
Publisher place: | Frankfurt am Main |
Issue date: | 2015 |
Publisher URL: | http://dx.doi.org/10.15502/9783958570221 |
Publisher DOI: | 10.15502/9783958570221 |
Appears in collections: | JGU-Publikationen |