How to have a metalinguistic dispute

Mankowitz, Poppy

doi:10.1007/s11229-021-03038-2

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Here, I am not taking a stand on the exact mechanism that gives rises to these different readings. For different proposals, see Belleri 2017;Thomasson 2017;Kocurek et al 2020;Mankowitz 2021. This distinction is similar to Belleri's (2021) distinction between conservative inquiries, which require preserving the current meaning of 'F', and semantically progressive inquiries, which do not.…”

Section: The Solution Requires Making Explicit What the Topic Or Ques...mentioning

confidence: 77%

What topic continuity problem?

Kocurek

2022

Inquiry

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A common objection to the very idea of conceptual engineering is the topic continuity problem: whenever one tries to "reengineer" a concept, one only shifts attention away from one concept to another. Put differently, there is no such thing as conceptual revision: there's only conceptual replacement. Here, I show that topic continuity is compatible with conceptual replacement. Whether the topic is preserved in an act of conceptual replacement simply depends on what is being replaced (a conceptual tool or a conceptual role) and what the topic under discussion is. Thus, the topic continuity problem only arises from a failure to specify these two things.Also known as the "changing the subject objection" or "Strawson's challenge".

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Section: The Solution Requires Making Explicit What the Topic Or Ques...mentioning

confidence: 77%

What topic continuity problem?

Kocurek

2022

Inquiry

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“…However, it doesn't clearly extend to the cases I will discuss in Part 2, where the disputes do not hinge on a single term that plausibly has both normative and descriptive meanings. There are also Gricean accounts, from, e.g.,Belleri (2017),Mankowitz (2021). For considerations against these, and in support of incorporating interpretations into the theory of content as I do here, see, e.g.,Kocurek et al 2020, Einheuser 2006 on "counterconventional" conditionals, and Muñoz 2019, chap.…”

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confidence: 82%

Contested metalinguistic negotiation

Rudolph

2023

Synthese

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In ordinary conversation, speakers disagree not only about worldly facts, but also about how to use language to describe the world. For example, disagreement about whether Buffalo is in the American Midwest, whether Pluto is a planet, or whether someone has been canceled, can persist even with agreement about all the relevant facts. The speakers may still engage in "metalinguistic negotiation" -disputing what to mean by "Midwest", "planet", or "cancel". I first motivate an approach to metalinguistic negotiation that generalizes a Stalnakerian theory of communication by including linguistic commitments in the conversational common ground. Then, I turn to cases where the very status of a disagreement as metalinguistic or factual is unclear or contested. For example, after the publication of the New York Times Magazine's 1619 Project, some responses claimed to identify factual errors, while others took those same "errors" to be matters of interpretation. I'll consider how to extend our theorizing about metalinguistic negotiation to this type of (even more) "meta" disagreement, using the discussion following the 1619 Project as a case study. On my view, in most such cases, there will be a metalinguistic negotiation going on. Still, I explain several ways in which, despite a dispute being metalinguistic, the factualist side can sometimes receive important vindication. I also discuss why it can make sense for speakers to contest the status of a dispute.

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“…Sometimes one places more confidence in someone else's assessment of the most appropriate content to ascribe to a context-sensitive expression in a particular context than one places in one's own assessment of the same. In this case, one may use the other person's applications of the expression as a guide for determining what content to ascribe to the expression ( (Barker, 2002), (Mankowitz, 2021), (Mena, 2023)). For example, let's say Jansen is part of a hiring committee for a pluralistic department that covers both continental and analytic philosophy.…”

Section: Incentives To Defer: Authority and Powermentioning

confidence: 99%

Metacontexts and Cross-Contextual Communication: Stabilizing the Content of Documents Across Contexts

Davies

2023

The Philosophical Quarterly

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Context-sensitive expressions appear ill suited to the purpose of sharing content across contexts. Yet we regularly use them to that end (in regulations, textbooks, memos, guidelines, laws, minutes, etc.). This paper describes the utility of the concept of a metacontext for understanding cross-contextual content-sharing with context-sensitive expressions. A metacontext is the context of a group of contexts: an infrastructure that can channel non-linguistic incentives on content ascription so as to homogenize the content ascribed to context-sensitive expressions in each context in the group. Documents composed of context-sensitive expressions can share content across contexts when supported by an appropriate metacontext. The bible has its church, the textbook its education system, the form its bureaucracy, and the manifesto its social movement. Some metacontexts support cross-contextual content-sharing. Some don’t. A promising research programme (one with practical importance) would take metacontexts as its unit of analysis.

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How to have a metalinguistic dispute

Cited by 16 publications

References 38 publications

What topic continuity problem?

What topic continuity problem?

Contested metalinguistic negotiation

Metacontexts and Cross-Contextual Communication: Stabilizing the Content of Documents Across Contexts

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