IFL | Research Projects

Brief Description: An adequate explanation of verbal communication is a desideratum of Philosophy at least since Plato’s Cratylus and Aristotle’s De Interpretatione, through to the present day. Today, sophisticated logico-linguistic tools are available that may contribute decisively towards achieving that explanation.

In order to elaborate an adequate explanation of verbal communication, it is crucial to theoretically articulate meaning and context: meaning is the constant element between the different concrete contexts in which communication may take place; on the other hand, context is the element that indexes meaning to a communicative event. The leeway between the more fixed element (meaning) and the variable one (context) represents the range of possible philosophical theories of communication.

This issue is conspicuously present in the ongoing debate regarding the boundaries and relationships between Semantics and Pragmatics, a central topic in contemporary Philosophy of Language. A traditional conception of the relationship between Semantics and Pragmatics sees the former as concerning the study of “meaning”, and the latter the study of “use”, of linguist expressions – or, respectively, the study of sentences (regarded as context-independent), and the study of their utterances (contextually situated). One of the main consequences of the contemporary debate is the questioning of that traditional view, something which is manifest, for instance, in the idea of pragmatic “enrichment” of meaning.

In this regard, the debate around so-called “contextualist” positions gains special significance. According to contextualists, the truth conditions of the utterance of a sentence go well beyond the sentence’s meaning, and incorporate, in greater or lesser degree, contextual elements. On the opposite side are the “minimalists”, who claim that every utterance (once the references of a restrict set of context-sensitive expressions are fixed) expresses a “minimal” semantic content. This “minimal” semantic content would be communicated in all contexts in which the sentence is uttered. However, minimalists concede to contextualists that indefinitely many propositions are said in any given utterance. As it turns out, the main difference between contextualists and minimalists concerns the rejection or acceptance of this “minimal” semantic content.

Another important issue, if different in the questions it addresses and conceptual framework it mobilizes, is the issue concerning the importance of context in communicative argumentation. This issues belongs to Argumentation Theory and as to do with both Argumentation Schemes (that can be thought of as conceptual tools for analysing arguments contextually anchored) and Defeasible Logic, the best suited logic to model the interactions between an argument and its context.

Team
Scientific Coordinator: João Sàágua
Main Researchers: João Sàágua, Luiz Carlos Baptista, Erich Rast, Franck Lihoreau

The team will also include a junior research fellow (Master) to be hired with a grant

results

The current project intends to achieve the following results:

1. To offer a substantive contribution towards solving the problem of the articulation between meaning and context in verbal communication;
2. To establish interfaces at the academic as well as the institutional level with researchers and international institutions recognized as leaders in this field of inquiry;
3. To promote, among the national scientific community, the debate about contextualism, given its unquestionable philosophical significance. 4.To contribute to the creation of an Argumentation Lab whose headquarters will be at the Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem (in Lisbon), and where the study of real contextually situated argumentations can be done with cutting-edge resources (conceptual, methodological, technological, and others).