Contextualism and Relativism

语境主义和相对主义将研究语言哲学中最近的，潜在的圣像主义思想之间的相互作用领域，以及一个古老的，备受唾骂但顽固的关于真理本质的思想。前者是语义语境论。某些语言哲学家认为，传统观念认为话语的内容取决于/除了像时态和指示词这样的手段之外/纯粹取决于其内部语义组成是没有希望的：说话者字面上所说的通常取决于，此外，一系列言语语境的特征/像说话者和听众的需要，意图和关注。概括地说，这种观点似乎危及任何令人满意的系统的自然语言语义理论的前景，它似乎，将不得不在最好的远比传统的设想更详细。这种语境主义“转向”的基本论点看似简单而有力。它通过例子说明，要想知道某人说了什么，你（总是）需要知道关于这句话的上下文。（问题：冰箱里还有牛奶吗？）要知道如何回答，你可能需要知道说话者是否打算煮咖啡，或者想知道破碎的牛奶瓶是否已经被妥善清理。一种普遍的反应是试图坚持认为，这种上下文敏感性，严格地说，语义，并可以容纳由复杂的语用学的通信补充传统的语义。我们将仔细研究语境主义“数据”的细节和对它的语用解释的稳定性。其他有趣的回应认为，数据被误解了更激进的方式。其中一个可以说明如下。在没有什么利害关系的情况下，我们可以自己知道，火车将在阅读的基础上进行连接的时间表和顺利进展的旅程，到目前为止。但是，如果携带潜在的救生用品进行紧急行动，同样的信息可能会被认为不足以证明同样的知识主张。(What晚点的可能性有多大？最近有没有什么问题？）语境主义认为，如果“知道”在语义上是上下文敏感的，这是可以预期的。但另一种解释是，知识本身应该被视为利益相关的，有点类似于爱因斯坦的观点，即运动或运动性是相对于参考系的，正是我们在两种情景之间不断变化的利益解释了相关知识主张的真值变化。事实上，还有一种更为激进的反应。语义语境主义的证据与同一句话中话语真值的明显差异有关。不同的内容可以解释这个。但也有这样一种观点的理论可能性，即不是内容而是真理本身与语境有关：具有同一内容的同一话语在一种语境中可能是真的（当问题是“冰箱是否被适当地清理”时），但在另一种语境中可能是假的（当问题是咖啡Au lait时）。这个特别有趣的建议实际上把这些现代辩论转了一圈，把它们与哲学相对主义的古老传统联系起来，这种传统起源于普罗泰戈拉和柏拉图的泰阿泰德斯（Theaetetus），即上面提到的“被唾骂但又顽强地恢复”的思想。我们的项目旨在通过各种主题来定义、提炼和追求这些思想之间的辩论，包括知识论、语言哲学和理论语言学、关于道德和品味的基本分歧的性质、时间和变化的形而上学以及模糊表达的语义学。

Contextualism and Relativism will study the areas of interaction between a recent, potentially iconoclastic idea in the philosophy of language, and an ancient, much reviled but stubbornly resilient idea about the nature of truth. The former idea is semantic contextualism. Certain philosophers of language have argued influentially that the traditional conception of an utterance's content as depending/apart from devices like tenses and demonstratives/purely on its internal semantic composition is hopeless: that what a speaker literally says typically depends, in addition, on an array of features of the speech context / like the needs, intentions and preoccupations of speaker and audience. Generalised, this view seemingly jeopardises any prospect of a satisfyingly systematic semantic theory for natural language, which, it appears, would have to be at best vastly more elaborate than traditionally envisaged. The basic argument for this contextualist 'turn' is simple and powerful-seeming. It makes a case, by examples, that to know what someone has said, you (always) need to know things about the context of the saying. (Consider the question: Is there still milk in the 'fridge? To know how to answer, you may need to know whether the speaker intends to make a coffee or wants to know whether the broken milk bottle has been cleaned up properly.) A common reaction has been to try to maintain that this kind of context-sensitivity is not, properly speaking, semantic and may be accommodated by traditional semantics supplemented by a sophisticated pragmatics of communication. We shall study carefully both the detail of the contextualist 'data' and the stability of pragmatic explanations of it. Other interesting responses argue that the data have been misunderstood in more radical ways. One may be illustrated as follows. With little at stake, we may take ourselves to know that the train will make the connection at Reading on the basis of the timetable and smooth progress on the journey so far. But if carrying potentially life-saving supplies for an emergency operation, the very same information may be felt insufficient to justify the same knowledge-claim. (What are the chances of delays later? Have there been recent problems with the track?) Contextualism will maintain that this is to be expected if 'knows' is semantically context-sensitive. But an alternative explanation is that knowledge itself should be viewed as interest-relative, somewhat in analogy with the Einsteinian idea that motion, or simultaneity, are relative to frame-of-reference, and that it is our changing interests between the two scenarios that explain the change in truth-value of the relevant knowledge-claim. Indeed, there is a yet more radical response. The data suggestive of semantic contextualism have to do with apparent differences in truth-value of utterances of the same sentence. Different content would explain that. But there is also the theoretical possibility of the view that not content but truth itself is relative to context: that one and the same utterance, with one and the same content, can be true in one context (when the issue is whether the 'fridge has been properly cleaned up) but false in another (when the issue is café au lait.) This particularly intriguing suggestion in effect turns these modern debates back full circle to connect them with the ancient tradition of philosophical relativism concerning truth and knowledge which originated with Protagoras and Plato's Theaetetus / the 'reviled but stubbornly resilient' idea referred to above.Our project will aim to define, refine and pursue the debates between these ideas through a variety of subject matters, including the theory of knowledge, the philosophy of language and theoretical linguistics, the nature of fundamental disagreements concerning morals and taste, the metaphysics of time and change, and the semantics of vague expressions.