Search results for " Contextualism"
showing 4 items of 4 documents
The language game of lost meaning: Using literal meaning as a metalinguistic resource
2019
AbstractBy literal meaning (LM) we usually refer to a theoretical notion which is at the center of a big debate involving philosophers and linguists with various orientations. At the same time, LM is rooted in a linguistic intuition of the speaker, which we could formulate as follows: words taken in isolation have a meaning. Adopting this general take on LM, we are using a notion of LM that seems incompatible with any research program of a contextualist type; I will show, instead, that in a radically contextualist (and Wittgensteinian) perspective, this notion of LM can have legitimate circulation in particular types of language games. I will propose a recovery of the notion of LM saving th…
Polysemy and gestaltist computation. some notes on gestaltist compositionality
2019
The paper is devoted to the concept of Gestaltist Compositionality. It is divided into two parts. The first part will introduce a minimal definition of «Gestaltist Compositionality». Moreover, it will prove that the computations implemented by this model of compositionality are sufficiently flexible to ensure the presence of several orders of semantic determination. The second part will be devoted to an investigation of the consequences of this result with particular reference to the identification of some versions of compositionality which relax the condition of semantic atomism without weakening the links of determination between understanding of the compounds and understanding of the com…
Il gioco linguistico del significato letterale
2018
Literal Meaning is a widely used notion, which seems to be well rooted in the strong intuition that words have a meaning in themselves. However, as pointed out in previous literature (e.g. RECANATI 2004), this theoretical notion seems to be problematic in accounting for some aspects of the nature of linguistic meaning. Embracing these criticisms, we will show how the heuristic power of this notion becomes apparent when looking at some specific types of contexts, namely those language games where it is necessary to retrieve the meaning of words in isolation. This will allow us to argue in favour of consistency of this notion with theoretical framework with a strong focus on the contextual na…
Penal Contextualism and Ideational Frameworks: A Guide for the Perplexed
2017
In my paper, I attempt a critical review of Nicola Lacey’s book In Search of Criminal Responsibility, by arguing, firstly, that she gives the categories of “character responsibility” and “capacity responsibility” an over-inclusive account, which results from her filling each of them with views that are not only disparate but also based, at least in part, on conflicting principles; and, secondly, that Lacey’s spelling out of various conceptions of “criminal responsibility” necessarily entails an underlying unitary definition of its subject matter, that is, the concept of “criminal responsibility,” which seems to conflict with her (version of) penal contextualism.