Value Talk and Thought: Reading group 2017-2018
(Every two weeks, alternating with Semantics & Pragmatics, Wednesdays 17:15-19:15)
Guiding questions
– What is it that makes a piece of language evaluative?
– Does evaluative disagreement concern more than whether a proposition is true?
– Does evaluative discourse place different requirements on context/common ground than descriptive language?
– How can these context updates be blocked/prevented?
– What is the role of expressive presuppositions/implicatures in communicating value, if any? And in guiding action?
– Is the expressive/motivational component semantically encoded (if so, how?) or pragmatically conveyed? If pragmatic: how is it calculated?
– What do the differences between thin and thick value terms reveal about their meanings (if any), and in turn how do they differ from pejoratives/laudatives?
– What are normative concepts?
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