Abstract: Recent discussions of ‘felicitous underspecification’ – the fact that communication can be successful even though no single proposition can be singled out as the correct interpretation of an utterance in a fully specified context – have led some theorists to postulate that we communicate clouds of propositions rather than individual propositions. But how exactly do we communicate with clouds of propositions? This question raises two problems, or two aspects of a single problem: (i) how clouds are themselves determined; and (ii) how we coordinate on clouds. In this paper we outline a naturalistic and externalist account in terms of structural features of reality that we, following Ruth Millikan, call “clumps” and “peaks.” This account, we argue, can provide a solution to the former problem and, in so doing, pave the way for a solution to the latter.
Activities > Seminar > On the Nature of Propositional Clouds
