Insensitive Semantics A Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism

Since the end of the nineteenth century, philosophy of language has been plagued by an extensive and notoriously confusing literature on how to draw the distinction between semantic and non-semantic content. This debate, at its deepest level, is about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication. Insensitive Semantics is a book about this debate, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one. To this end, the authors defend a combination of two views: semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism. If these views are right, then many philosophers and linguists are guilty of some profound mistakes, with wide-ranging implications for not only philosophy of language but also epistemology, metaphysics, moral philosophy, and other branches of philosophy.

Herman Cappelen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Vassar College and the University of Oslo. He has published extensively in philosophy of language and mind, including articles in Noûs, Mind, Mind & Language, Analysis, and Synthese.

Ernie Lepore is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He is author of Meaning and Argument (revised edition, Blackwell, 2003) and, with Jerry Fodor, of Holism (Blackwell, 1991). He is editor of Truth and Interpretation (Blackwell, 1989), and co-editor, with Zenon Pylyshyn, of What is Cognitive Science? (Blackwell, 1999), as well as general editor of the Blackwell series Philosophers and Their Critics.