Context, Truth and Objectivity: Essays on Radical Contextualism [Hardcover]

The claim according to which there is a categorial gap between meaning and saying  between what sentences mean and what we say by using them on particular occasions  has come to be widely regarded as being exclusively a claim in the philosophy of language. The present essay collection takes a different approach to these issues. It seeks to explore the ways in which that claim  as defended first by ordinary language philosophy and, more recently, by various contextualist projects  is grounded in considerations that transcend the philosophy of language. More specifically, the volume seeks to explore how that claim is inextricably linked to considerations about the nature of truth and representation. It is thus part of the objective of this volume to rethink the current way of framing the debates on these issues. By framing the debate in terms of an opposition between ideal language theorists and their semanticist heirs on the one hand and communication theorists and their contextualist heirs on the other, one brackets important controversies and risks obscuring the undoubtedly very real oppositions that exist between different currents of thought.

1. Introduction

David Zapero

2. What is a Statement?

Jocelyn Benoist

3. Ordinary Language Philosophy Needs Situation Semantics (or Why Grice Needs Austin)

Krista Lawlor

4. Beyond Unnatural Doubts: Lessons from Wittgenstein

Michael Williams

5. Meaning and Ostension: from Putnam Semantics to Contextualism

Fran?ois Recanati

6. The Role of Intention in Truth