[Inquiry] Re: Attribute, Impute, Represent -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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AIR.  Discussion Note 7

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BB = Bill Bailey
JA = Jon Awbrey
JC = John Collier

Re: AIR-DIS 6.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/002393.html
In: AIR-DIS.    http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2393

JA: For my part, I think that we have to give up on the essentialist notion
    that we are classifying signs according to some essence that they possess,
    and realize once and for all that the proper unit of classification is the
    entire sign relation, that is, a collection of triples of the form <o, s, i>.

BB: I'm glad to read that.  As a novice here I'm always worrying that I'm
    misunderstanding something.  There seems to be a great deal of concern
    here with sign types as if they were entities with specific attributes,
    but  I thought that was probably a result of having to name and talk
    about names in discursive language.

JC: Interestingly, this appears to be the key issue on which a proponent of
    formal semantics of the Montague school (Kaplan, Stalnaker, Thomason) and
    I disagree.  In discussing a recent paper of ours, which will appear in a
    forthcoming issue of Philosophica that he is editing on formal pragmatics,
    he complains that we do not distinguish properly between utterance types
    (what we say, in his terms) and specific utterances.  We don't, therefore,
    distinguish between what is said (the meaning of the type of utterance)
    and what is meant in the specific index.  So we dismiss formal semantics
    too quickly, even though it is well-suited to deal with what is said.
    He refers to Austin and Grice for the distinction.  We also replace
    utterance types in the Barwise and Perry situational semantics with
    utterances, since otherwise B&P's representation of meaning mixes
    metaphysical categories, contrary to their general approach that
    types are parasitic on instances (don't read nominalism into this!)
    At stake, I think, is whether or not sign types are primarily a
    reflection of generalities of usage, or they play some sort of
    role in determining semantic and pragmatic rules (which is what
    the Kaplan approach tries to recover).  I suspect that in some
    cases such rules concerning types do play a role (we all learn
    rules about proper usage, e.g., Fowler's work) in our use of
    language.  The dispute seems to be over whether they are of
    primary or secondary importance.

JC: So I agree with Jon and Bill, I think, and I am
    looking for stronger arguments for our position.

John,

Thanks for the interesting reflections on the contemporary scene.
I guess I gave up on the "ignorers of Peirce" literature back
when it became the fashion to use the word "modern" in front
of the word "pragmatics" in lieu of any other argument for
failing to do the requisite homework.  When it comes to
strengthening arguments for the pragmatic point of view,
I think that will largely depend on the applications
that a particular user of a particular theoretical
framework has in mind.  I recall being dynamited
out of my essentialist-intensionalist armchair
by the need to carry out the grubby semiotics
of real data programming work, and I'm not
sure that I could have been forced to it
any other way.

Jon Awbrey

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