Context and content: Essays on intentionality in speech and thought

作者： Shizhen Xie

Stalnaker, R. C. (1999). Context and content: Essays on intentionality in speech and thought. Clarendon Press.


1 Pragmatics 语用学

semantics 语义学：关注命题proposition的真值条件

pragmatics 语用学：研究两个主要问题，

1. to define interesting types of speech acts and speech products. (e.g. the analysis of illocutionary acts) 言语行为的类型; 

2. to characterize the features of the speech content which help determine which proposition is expressed by a given sentence. (e.g. the study of indexical expressions) 言语内容的特征

有人主张：Sentence(Context) —> Truth-Values

作者论证：Sentence(Context) —> Propositions(Possible Worlds) —> Truth-Values




3 Indicative Conditionals

为条件句的语义给出一个语用的方案。




12  Mental Content and Linguistic Form

Doing research on the relationship between mental content and linguistic form.

X believes that P. 

问题： E.g. I can believe that Superman is strong without believing that Clark Kent is strong. 我相信（1）唐僧很聪明；（2）玄奘不聪明。为何二者同时成立？

作者认为，问题在于，speaker缺乏一个信息内容informational content: superman is Kent. 唐僧是玄奘。

Belief is about semantic structure. 

Stalnaker makes an important distinction between belief about semantic structure of a statement and belief about truth value of that statement. 【结构的正确vs内容的真?】

 



13, 14 The Problem of Logical Omniscience

My aim in this paper is to try to get clear about just what kind of idealization such normal epistemic and doxastic logics are making, and what the motivation is for idealizing in this way.


idealization理想化

idealized agent 例如，能够无穷地计算

belief in a special sense 由于例子不太好找

为什么会有这种理想化？有四种可能的动机：

(1) underlying mechanisms 例如，出于假设的需要

(2) simplify简化

(3) normative reason

(4) the best we can do


作者提出两个模型来解释knowledge and belief

(1) The sentence storage model (one's belief box)

(2) The Question-Answer Machine


知识与信念的理想与现实的差距。结论：理想化知识与信念的逻辑，这是因为我们的隐含知识implicit knowledge比可获得知识accessible knowledge更清晰。




Goldstein, S., Kirk-Giannini, C.D. Contextology. Philos Stud 179, 3187–3209 (2022).

本文反对Stalnaker。

摘要：语境学是一门研究对话语境动态的科学。语境学制定了对话者的共享信息状态如何随断言而演变的规律。更确切地说，语境学家试图构建一种函数，当只提供会话更新前的语境和断言内容时，就能提供会话更新后的语境。大多数语境学家都认为支配语境演变的函数很简单：更新后语境只是更新前语境与断言内容的交叉。我们认为这一假设是错误的：它不仅是错误的，而且在标准语境假设下也是不连贯的。此外，原则上也不可能修改它来正确描述语境的动态变化。我们的结论是，不可能有语境学这门科学。语境在回应断言时的演变规律必须从根本上参考对话者的私人信息状态。We conclude that there can be no science of Contextology. The laws governing the evolution of the context in response to assertion must make essential reference to the private information states of interlocutors.