Talk About Luck! (Anti-)Fregeanism and Loar’s Puzzle for CommunicationValen Simpson (Universitat de Valencia)
January 23, 2025, 5:00pm - 7:00pm
This event is online
Organisers:
Warsaw University
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Details
The next meeting of the Sign-Language-Reality seminar in the academic year 2024/25 will take place:
Thursday, the 23rd of January 2025, 17.00, Central European Time
Valentine Simpson
(University of Valencia)
will deliver a talk:
Talk About Luck! (Anti-)Fregeanism and Loar’s Puzzle for Communication
Abstract:
: In the backdrop of a long-standing debate between Direct Reference theorists
and sense-based theorists over the right construal of the semantics of language, Loar (1976) presented a case which was meant to score a victory for the Fregeans. Recently, this conclusion has met resistance. As some Russellians have pointed out, they too have a stake in the discussion. A knowledge-based, neo-Russellian approach to communication has
recently emerged as a strong contender against the Fregean (Goodman, forthcoming; Onofri, 2019; Peet, 2019), claiming that the significance of Loar’s puzzle is due to an element of luck (as in Gettier cases), concluding that communication must be modelled on knowledge. The aim of my talk is to critically assess the viability of this anti-Fregean approach, by
showing that the epistemic Russellians’ knowledge-based view faces a problem. By
attending to an interesting case devised by Dickie (forthcoming), I show that there can be
cases of lucky linguistic understanding. If correct, this shows that drawing an epistemic
condition on communicative success from Loar cases is simply unwarranted.
The general upshot of my discussion is that the Fregean approach to communication is still
the stronger contender as a general view of communication. The seminar will be held online, to join the meeting, please use the information below: Join Zoom Meeting
https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/92716044372... Meeting ID: 927 1604 4372
Passcode: 697648 Seminar website (with a tentative list of meetings):
http://pts.edu.pl/seminarium-2024-2025-seminar-2024-2025... The meeting opens at 4:45 pm, the talk starts at 5 pm.
and sense-based theorists over the right construal of the semantics of language, Loar (1976) presented a case which was meant to score a victory for the Fregeans. Recently, this conclusion has met resistance. As some Russellians have pointed out, they too have a stake in the discussion. A knowledge-based, neo-Russellian approach to communication has
recently emerged as a strong contender against the Fregean (Goodman, forthcoming; Onofri, 2019; Peet, 2019), claiming that the significance of Loar’s puzzle is due to an element of luck (as in Gettier cases), concluding that communication must be modelled on knowledge. The aim of my talk is to critically assess the viability of this anti-Fregean approach, by
showing that the epistemic Russellians’ knowledge-based view faces a problem. By
attending to an interesting case devised by Dickie (forthcoming), I show that there can be
cases of lucky linguistic understanding. If correct, this shows that drawing an epistemic
condition on communicative success from Loar cases is simply unwarranted.
The general upshot of my discussion is that the Fregean approach to communication is still
the stronger contender as a general view of communication. The seminar will be held online, to join the meeting, please use the information below: Join Zoom Meeting
https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/92716044372... Meeting ID: 927 1604 4372
Passcode: 697648 Seminar website (with a tentative list of meetings):
http://pts.edu.pl/seminarium-2024-2025-seminar-2024-2025... The meeting opens at 4:45 pm, the talk starts at 5 pm.
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##languageandmind