How and Why to Be a Moderate Contextualist

In G. Preyer (ed.), Context-Sensitivity and Semantic Minimalism: New Essays on Semantics and Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 111-132 (2007)
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Abstract

In recent work, Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore have argued that neither Radical nor Moderate Contextualism can explain how we regularly succeed in communicating with each other. In this chapter, I argue that their preferred view (Pluralistic Minimalism) encounters the same difficulty with respect to explaining communication. Further, I offer a characterization (different from the one offered by Cappelen and Lepore) of what is at issue between the Moderate and the Radical Contextualist. This way of drawing the distinction between the two Contextualist camps has the advantage of being stable, in the sense that it is immune to Cappelen and Lepore’s “collapse” arguments. I then sketch a version of Contextualism that is Moderate in my sense. I show that this version has the resources to explain how communication is successful across a wide range of contexts.

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Ishani Maitra
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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