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Polish Journal of Philosophy

Volume 10, Issue 1, Spring 2016
Book Symposium

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Displaying: 1-7 of 7 documents


book symposium
1. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Maciej Witek Varieties of Linguistic Conventions: A book symposium on Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone's Imagination and Convention. Distinguishing Grammar and Inference in Language
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2. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Manuel García-Carpintero Indirect Assertions
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Imagination and Convention by Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone is a sustained attack on a standard piece of contemporary philosophical lore, Grice’s (1975) theory of conversational implicatures, and on indirect meanings in general. Although I agree with quite a lot of what they say, and with some important aspects of their theoretical stance, here I will respond to some of their criticism. I’ll assume a characterization of implicatures as theory-neutral as possible, on which implicatures are a sort of indirectly conveyed meanings, illustrated by some traditional examples. Then I will discuss the claim that one can make an assertion indirectly, through a mechanism essentially like the one envisaged by Grice in his account of implicatures. This is something that not just L&S have argued against, but other writers as well, for more or less related reasons. Since it will be clear that assertions, the way I will characterize them, “convey information inthe usual sense” and provide “information in the semantic sense of publicly accessible content that supports inquiry”, I will be thereby arguing for a claim clearly at odds with some of those made by L&S.
3. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska Conventions of Usage vs. Meaning Conventions
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In this paper I criticise some aspects of the view that Ernie Lepore and Mathew Stone propose in their book Imagination and Convention. I concentrate on their analysis of indirect speech acts and contrast it with the view held by Searle. I point out some problems that arise for Lepore and Stone’s ambiguity view and argue that admitting conventions of usage that are not meaning conventions allows one to avoid postulating global ambiguity, which in my opinion threatens the view proposed in Imagination and Convention. In addition, if one admits that there might be such conventions of usage, one is in a position to provide an adequate analysis of sub-sentential speech acts and semantic underdetermination as well as indirect speech acts.
4. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Marcin Matczak Does Legal Interpretation Need Paul Grice?: Reflections on Lepore and Stone’s Imagination and Convention
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By significantly diminishing the role intentions play in communication, in Imagination and Convention (2015) Lepore and Stone attempt to overthrow the Gricean paradigm which prevails in the philosophy of language. The approach they propose is attractive to theorists of legal interpretations for many reasons. Primary among these is that the more general dispute in the philosophy of language between Griceans and non-Griceans mirrors the dispute between intentionalists and non-intentionalists in legal interpretation. The ideas proposed in Imagination and Convention naturally support the non-intentionalist camp, which makes them unique in the contemporary philosophy of language.In this paper I argue that despite an almost universal acceptance for the Gricean paradigm in legal interpretation, a strong, externalist approach to language, one in which interpretation is based on conventions, not intentions, better reflects the nature of legal language. The latter functions in societies as a written, public discourse to which many individuals contribute; the number of contributions renders the identification of individual intentions impossible, making it badly suited to a Gricean, intention-based analysis. Lepore and Stone’s discourse-based, non-Gricean alternative provides a better tool for the theorist of legal interpretation to analyse legal language. In what follows, I first present an overview of the disputes in legal interpretation that may be affected by Imagination and Convention. In the second section, I analyze several of Lepore and Stone’s theses and apply them to issues in legal interpretation, paying particular attention to their concept of “direct intentionalism.” In the last section, I outline some proposals for finishing the anti-Gricean revolution, which involves Ruth Millikan’s idea of conventions as lineages.
5. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
K. M. Jaszczolt On Unimaginative Imagination and Conventional Conventions: Response to Lepore and Stone
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The article is a response to Lepore and Stone 2015 and offers a critical discussion of their claims that various aspects of discourse meaning can be ascribed togrammar and that the concept of semantic ambiguity can be defended in the light of the current debates on the semantics/pragmatics interface. It also addresses the question of the understanding of conventions and inferences and their place in the above interface. It ends with the claim that the role Lepore and Stone ascribe to grammar cannot be defended.
6. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Maciej Witek Accommodation and Convention
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The paper develops a non-Gricean account of accommodation: a contextadjusting process guided by the assumption that the speaker’s utterance constitutes an appropriate conversational move. The paper is organized into three parts. The first one reconstructs the basic tenets of Lepore and Stone's non-Gricean model of meaningmaking, which results from integrating direct intentionalism and extended semantics. The second part discusses the phenomenon of accommodation as it occurs in conversational practice. The third part uses the tenets of the non-Gricean model of meaning-making to account for the discursive mechanisms underlying accommodation; the proposed account relies on a distinction between the rules of appropriateness, which form part of extendedgrammar, and the Maxim of Appropriateness, which functions as a discursive norm guiding our conversational practice.
7. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Ernie Lepore, Matthew Stone Problems and Perspectives on the Limits of Pragmatics: Reply to Critics
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