Social and Behavioral Sciences | Open Access Articles

Full-On Stating, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

What distinguishes full-on stating a proposition from merely communicating it? For instance, what distinguishes claiming/asserting/saying that one has never smoked crack cocaine from merely implying/conveying/hinting this? The enormous literature on ‘assertion’ provides many approaches to distinguishing stating from, say, asking and commanding: only the former aims at truth; only the former expresses one’s belief; etc. But this leaves my question unanswered, since in merely communicating a proposition one also aims at truth, expresses a belief, etc.

My aim is not to criticize extant accounts of the state-vs.-merely-convey contrast, but rather to draw on clues from Dummett, functional linguistics and moral …

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Introduction To The Semantics-Pragmatics Boundary In Philosophy, Maite Ezdurdia, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

An introductory survey of the nature and importance of the semantics-pragmatics boundary.

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In Defense Of Public Languages, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

My modest aim in this note is to sketch three interrelated critiques of public languages, and to respond to them. All allegedly support the same conclusion: that, insofar as they even exist, the study of public languages is not a viable scientific project. (Related critiques of semantics, understood as involving word-world relations, will be touched on as well.)

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