This is excellent Justin. I couldn't agree more. I agree that the phenomenon you are getting at here is not polysemy. It's more like ad hoc concepts in Robyn Carston's sense.
Would absolutely love to meet in London. I’m supposed to give a talk at KCL at some point later in the year, and at Southampton in September. Let’s see if we can meet and talk these issues through?
I have been working a bit on contextual underspecification, which is what makes me think about whether there is a unique concept picked out relative to context. My feeling is that usually there isn’t—we specify only as fully as we need to for conversational purposes. And even when we think we’ve picked out a unique intension, there will almost always be novel weird cases, which bring out the term’s open texture.
So I sort of doubt that communication or analysis ever involve, or require, full determinacy. Ludlow emphasizes this, although I didn’t realize it until I went through his book more carefully.
But the continued emphasis on conceptual analysis and necessary and sufficient conditions for ordinary concepts seems like a relic of the past—one way that linguists and philosophers have made real progress understanding how the lexicon works.
Thanks, Michelle! I agree, the phenomenon is similar to ad hoc concepts, but I definitely don’t want to say that we even build fully determinate concepts on the fly. They are still open textured. I’m not sure if full determinacy is a commitment of Carston’s or not.
In general, though, the picture I’m defending is very close to the one Ludlow argues for in _Living Words_, I just don’t think it’s been adequately appreciated or assimilated by philosophers.
Anyway, would love to talk more about this sometime. Hope you’re doing well!
I will ask Robyn about the determinacy issue. On the face of it, ad hoc concepts, as Robyn defined it in her book, seem to be fully determinate in the sense of picking out clear denotations in the world. They are supposed to be concepts proper in the Fodorian sense (i.e. atomic, denotational). Robyn has moved away from that picture in recent work. So I suspect that she would be happy to say that they are not always fully determined, especially in cases of metaphorical extensions, etc.
There is a lot of similarity between Ludlow's underdetermination view and Carston's/Recanati's view. Carston has worked out how this looks like lexically, to some extent. I felt that was missing in Ludlow's book. I do recall he mentions Relevance theory but I can't remember what he says. Maybe Ludlow is more radical.
I agree that analytical philosophers haven't really fully appreciated the picture you are articulating here. It's strange in a way, because that's so obvious as a picture of how words work!
I am working on things in relation to this too, mostly on the nature of lexical concepts and applying ad hoc concepts and polysemy to philosophical debates. I am in London for the rest of the year. Let me know if you are in London. It would be lovely to meet up:-)
This is excellent Justin. I couldn't agree more. I agree that the phenomenon you are getting at here is not polysemy. It's more like ad hoc concepts in Robyn Carston's sense.
Would absolutely love to meet in London. I’m supposed to give a talk at KCL at some point later in the year, and at Southampton in September. Let’s see if we can meet and talk these issues through?
I have been working a bit on contextual underspecification, which is what makes me think about whether there is a unique concept picked out relative to context. My feeling is that usually there isn’t—we specify only as fully as we need to for conversational purposes. And even when we think we’ve picked out a unique intension, there will almost always be novel weird cases, which bring out the term’s open texture.
So I sort of doubt that communication or analysis ever involve, or require, full determinacy. Ludlow emphasizes this, although I didn’t realize it until I went through his book more carefully.
But the continued emphasis on conceptual analysis and necessary and sufficient conditions for ordinary concepts seems like a relic of the past—one way that linguists and philosophers have made real progress understanding how the lexicon works.
Anyway, let’s talk more about it!
Sounds good.
Keep me posted about your talk at King's! Hope to chat more soon.
Thanks, Michelle! I agree, the phenomenon is similar to ad hoc concepts, but I definitely don’t want to say that we even build fully determinate concepts on the fly. They are still open textured. I’m not sure if full determinacy is a commitment of Carston’s or not.
In general, though, the picture I’m defending is very close to the one Ludlow argues for in _Living Words_, I just don’t think it’s been adequately appreciated or assimilated by philosophers.
Anyway, would love to talk more about this sometime. Hope you’re doing well!
I will ask Robyn about the determinacy issue. On the face of it, ad hoc concepts, as Robyn defined it in her book, seem to be fully determinate in the sense of picking out clear denotations in the world. They are supposed to be concepts proper in the Fodorian sense (i.e. atomic, denotational). Robyn has moved away from that picture in recent work. So I suspect that she would be happy to say that they are not always fully determined, especially in cases of metaphorical extensions, etc.
There is a lot of similarity between Ludlow's underdetermination view and Carston's/Recanati's view. Carston has worked out how this looks like lexically, to some extent. I felt that was missing in Ludlow's book. I do recall he mentions Relevance theory but I can't remember what he says. Maybe Ludlow is more radical.
I agree that analytical philosophers haven't really fully appreciated the picture you are articulating here. It's strange in a way, because that's so obvious as a picture of how words work!
I am working on things in relation to this too, mostly on the nature of lexical concepts and applying ad hoc concepts and polysemy to philosophical debates. I am in London for the rest of the year. Let me know if you are in London. It would be lovely to meet up:-)