Natural language semantics : a naturalistic approach
Within linguistics, the dominant truth-conditional approach to semantics belongs to the Tarskian, model-theoretic tradition. Theories in this tradition offer an abstract, mathematical description of the truth conditions of natural language expressions in terms of their correspondence with the world. This thesis takes issue with existing modeltheoretic accounts of quantification on the basis that the specific abstract relations that they describe could not plausibly be models of natural language-to-world relations. Recent decades have seenmuch philosophical interest in naturalistic theories of reference and mental content. In one sense, these theories address the above concern by trying to identify something naturalistic for semantic correspondence to consist in, such as causalhistorical chains or ceteris paribus laws. In another sense, they fail to address the problem, since no account is given of either the semantic structure or the truth conditions of even the tiniest fragment of a natural language. Crucially, it is far from clear that modeltheoretic semantics, in anything like its present form, can accommodate the solutions proposed by naturalistic theories of content. If correspondence truth and naturalism
Underwood, Ian
semantics ; naturalism ; realism ; quantification ; relations
Natural language semantics : a naturalistic approach. Within linguistics, the dominant truth-conditional approach to semantics belongs to the Tarskian, model-theoretic tradition. Theories in this tradition offer an abstract, mathematical description of the truth conditions of natural language expressions in terms of their correspondence with the world. This thesis takes issue with existing modeltheoretic accounts of quantification on the basis that the specific abstract relations that they describe could not plausibly be models of natural language-to-world relations. Recent decades have seenmuch philosophical interest in naturalistic theories of reference and mental content. In one sense, these theories address the above concern by trying to identify something naturalistic for semantic correspondence to consist in, such as causalhistorical chains or ceteris paribus laws. In another sense, they fail to address the problem, since no account is given of either the semantic structure or the truth conditions of even the tiniest fragment of a natural language. Crucially, it is far from clear that modeltheoretic semantics, in anything like its present form, can accommodate the solutions proposed by naturalistic theories of content. If correspondence truth and naturalism
natural_language semantics naturalistic approach within linguistics dominant truth_conditional semantics belongs model theoretic tradition theories tradition offer abstract mathematical description truth_condition natural_language expression term correspondence world take_issue exist account quantification basis specific abstract relation describe could plausibly model natural_language world relation philosophical_interest naturalistic theory reference mental content sense theory address_concern try_identify something naturalistic semantic correspondence consist chain law another sense fail_address problem since account_give either semantic_structure truth_condition even fragment natural_language crucially far clear semantics anything like present form accommodate solution propose naturalistic theory content correspondence truth naturalism