Neglecting Hegel on the a priori yet again, Jason Stanley gave an exciting talk about contextual sensitivity and shared content yesterday.
The (alleged) problem of shared content for those who believe in rampant contextual sensitivity is that is that to the extent that the proposition expressed varies with context, it is harder to explain why people find it so easy to communicate (i.e. grasp what propositions others are expressing) .
Richard Heck has suggested that grasping the exact proposition expressed is not important - you just have to grasp one that is similar enough.
Jason proposed instead that one should respond by saying that it is not so hard as you might think to grasp the exact same proposition that one's interlocutor expresses. Adpoting a Russellian view of propositions enabled him to argue (if I got him right) that my grasping the exact proposition you express requires only a kind of de re understanding. It only requires that I know, de re of the things you were talking about and properties you ascribed, that you said that those things have those properties. Since the Russellian proposition expresed is just a construct out of those things and properties, not a Fregean sense, mode of presentation doesn't matter: it doesn't matter what descriptions of these objects and properties I have available, nor whether I can distinguish them from close relatives, as long as I end up with the appropriate piece of de re knowledge about them.
One question this raised in my mind is whether this move really addresses the spirit (as opposed to the letter) of the shared content problem. If we go Russellian about propositions, then arguably grasping the proposition expressed is not all that's important for communication. Modes of presentation ought to matter too.
Addendum: Thanks to Jason for correcting my spelling of 'Russellian'. I should have mentioned that the term 'problem of shared content' is due to Herman Cappelen.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hi Carrie,
Thanks for putting this up. Since I wasn't at the talk, perhaps you/someone else could clear some things up for me:
If I get this right, then my question would be 'What's left of the contextualist position after this move?' Perhaps this is what you're getting at yourself at the end of the post. It seems to be *necessary* for at least the kind of contextualism that run into the shared content problem that two tokens t1 and t2 of the same type may express different propositions even given very slight alterations in context - perhaps it's enough having different speakers (otherwise located at the same time and place) uttering t1 and t2, respectively.
But if it's somehow guaranteed that the same Russellian proposition can be grasped from the utterances of t1 and t2, then to retain what seems to be her fundamental sentiment the contextualist must either (i) say that depending on the context, the proposition expressed by an utterance/token may be different from the proposition grasped an adressee of that utterance/token; or (ii) house her variantism somewhere else than in the link between utterances/tokens and propositions.
I guess one way of providing a view of the latter sort is the one Stanley adopts for knowledge, where - as I understand his position - it is not the relation between tokens of knowledge ascriptions and their content that varies with context, what varies is whether or not the agent in question fulfills the conditions for knowledge inherint in that content.
Does that sound right?
Hi Andreas,
"It seems to be *necessary* for at least the kind of contextualism that run into the shared content problem that two tokens t1 and t2 of the same type may express different propositions even given very slight alterations in context"
I don't think Jason is denying this - he wants to say the proposition expressed by a token is very sensitive to context, but nevertheless it's pretty easy for someone else to grasp that exact proposition. So it's not that t1 and t2 express the same proposition; it's that although they express different propositions, other people can easily grasp each of those propositions.
Post a Comment