In this paper I propose a partition semantics (Groenendijk and Stokhof in Studies on the semantics of questions and the pragmatics of answers, Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam, 1984) for sentences containing objective predicates that takes into account the phenomenon of occasion-sensitivity associated with so-called Travis cases (Travis in Occasion-sensitivity: Selected essays, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008). The key idea is that the set of worlds in which a sentence is true has a more complex structure as a result of different ways in which it is made true. Different ways may have different capacities to support the attainment of a contextually salient domain goal. I suggest that goal-conduciveness decides whether some utterance of a sentence is accepted as true on a particular occasion at a given world. The utterance will not be accepted as true at a world which belongs to a truth-maker which is less conducive to a contextually salient goal than other truth-makers. Finally, the proposed occasionsensitive semantics is applied to some cases of disagreement and cancellability.
Peter Hacker defends an interpretation of the later Wittgenstein's notion of grammar, according to which the inherently general grammatical rules are sufficient for sense‐determination. My aim is to show that this interpretation fails to account for an important contextualist shift in Wittgenstein's views on sense‐determination. I argue that Hacker attributes to the later Wittgenstein a rule‐based, combinatorial account of sense, which Wittgenstein puts forward in the Tractatus. I propose that this is not how we should interpret the later Wittgenstein because he insists that particular circumstances of use play a necessary role in determining the boundary between sense and nonsense.
On the most common interpretation of occasion-sensitivity what varies cross-contextually is the truth-conditional content of representations. Jerry Fodor argues that when extended to mental representation this view has some problematic consequences. In this paper I outline an approach to occasion-sensitivity which circumvents Fodor's objections but still maintains that the aspect of thought that guides deliberation and action is occasion-sensitive. On the proposed view, what varies cross-contextually are not truth conditions but rather the conditions for accepting a (true) representation as true relative to a practical goal that is pursued on an occasion. I show that although the proposal entails an error theory this theory is not problematic since it is meant to compensate for the over-generating nature of semantic competence, namely, the fact that not all of the representation's truth-makers are conducive to a given contextually salient goal.
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