Kálmán László (MTA NYTI)

Neo-Lockean semantics (Discussion)

Idõpont: 2018. április 26., 17.00

Helyszín: MTA Nyelvtudományi Intézet (Budapest VI., Teréz krt. 13.), elõadóterem

Ez nem hagyományos elõadás, hanem egy cikknek a vitája. A cikk jelenleg nyilvánosan nem feltehetõ a netre, de azoknak, akik az elõadás iránt érdeklõdnek, és a MASZAT-listán nem kapták meg, Gyuris Beáta szívesen elküldi (gyuris.beata[kukac]nytud.mta.hu).

Absztrakt:

Locke’s view of ideas radically differs from Aristotle’s: they are more similar to what Frege calls “images”, or what contemporary psychology calls “memory traces” (in various modalities). For Locke, the primary function of linguistic signs is that they evoke such ideas. Thus, a semantic theory adopting the Lockean stance is radically different from the mainstream approach. In particular, it does not take reference to be the main explicandum of semantics, and it considers the relationship of utterances to logical assertions a rather indirect one. This type of approach, I argue, is a promising alternative of Frege and Carnap’s theory of model theoretic semantics and Montague’s compositional machinery. In particular, it is capable of explaining the role of association (a non-logical concept) in human communication, people’s diverging judgments concerning logical relations between utterances, and the non-bottom-up character of human interpretation.