Semantics and the Place of Psychological Evidence

Abstract

My aim in this chapter is to explore one point of similarity between an approach to semantic theorizing known as minimal semantics and an earlier approach to meaning proposed by Paul Grice. Before I set out the structure of the chapter in more detail, however, I would like to say something by way of an introduction to minimal semantics. Minimal semantics follows in the tradition of formal approaches to meaning of the kind put forward by Frege, early Wittgenstein, Carnap, Davidson, and others. Although the term ‘formal semantics’ is itself somewhat vague, it seems that what unites theorists on this side of the divide is, first, the belief that semantic content attaches to objects which can be formally described (so sentences or, more probably, sentences relativized to contexts of utterance) and, second, the expectation that linguistic meaning will be amenable to study via scientific methods of inquiry, broadly construed. This formal approach is of course diametrically opposed to the other main tradition in philosophy of language: speech act or use theories of meaning. The classic advocates of speech act theories include Austin, later Wittgenstein and Searle, but more recently the approach has re-emerged under the label of ‘contextualism’, as advocated by Recanati, Travis, and the relevance theorists Sperber and Wilson, and Carston, amongst many others. The age-old debate between formal theories and speech act theories has thus metamorphosed into the debate between minimalism and contextualism in the contemporary domain.¹