On Interpreting Epistemic Modal Sentences:from The Perspective Of Moderate Contextualism

As a central issue of contemporary philosophy of language,the problem of "meaning of meaning" has long been explored and is still being extensively investigated today.To unravel this problem,researchers are devoted to developing multiple ways to elucidate the truth or falsity of utterances.In their processes of pursuing meaning,it seems quite natural for them to notice that some sentences are comparatively easier to evaluate than others.For instance,we can judge,without a moment's hesitation,the truth value of the sentence "Confucius is one of the greatest ancient Chinese sages" according to what we know about the relevant world,but may feel ill at ease when trying to adjudicate whether the sentence "Confucius might be the greatest ancient Chinese sage" is true or false in that this sentence seems to be more informative than the former one.The reasons may lie in the differences of these sentences to the effect that the former concerns a matter of fact in some possible world,while the latter concerns a matter of possibility due to containing an Epistemic Modal(henceforth EM)"might".The truth values of Epistemic Modal Sentences(henceforth EMSs),sentences containing EMs,are thus quite perplexing partly because their literal meanings are closely related with the information about the actual world and the personal background,and partly because the information does not always remain stable when we exchange our already-obtained information in the process of communication.As a consequence,the truth conditions of EMSs are not only relevant to the facts in the actual world,but bound up with somebody's epistemic information.And what's more,another problem arises: whose information counts? The speaker's? The hearer's? The by-standers' ? Or someone else's? It is extremely difficult to make a worked-out account for this intriguing problem and therefore,how to evaluate EMSs has been invoking constant concerns amongst philosophers,logicians and linguists as well.Minimalists,Contextualists,Expressivists,Invariantists and Relativists,the newly emerging camp,hereby vie heatedly with each other in providing a plausible treatment,but up to now in vain,at least in a sense of a one-time effort.Among these claims,Moderate Contextualism(henceforth MC),different from some other extreme stands,admits the fundamental significance of literal meaning of EMSs in the process of their meaning generation and evaluation,and simultaneously emphasizes the important role played by the context where these EMSs are uttered.The present study,therefore,intends to argue for MC,by means of modifying its explanatory route to contexts and the role context plays in the process of meaning generation and interpretation,constructing an MC model to illustrate the puzzle EMSs trigger,and then to provide a more justifiable account for truth conditions of EMSs.According to MC,at least most sentences in natural languages are context-sensitive in essence,expressing complete semantic contents relative to their utterance situations,and their truth values are conditional upon context to a great extent.On the basis of this account,the present study attempts to pinpoint the issues of major accounts of EMSs,examine their philosophical principles and basic stands,explore their theoretical routes and research methodologies,and to analyze their particular contributions and deficiencies.And then I will tentatively provide a four-level model of meaning and a three-level model of context and combine them to constitute an MC model of meaning interpretation and evaluation to illustrate context's effect on EMSs' meaning,which will be enlightening to the long-discussed issue of interface(distinction)between semantics and pragmatics.This dissertation conducts a general survey of the previous studies on the representative claims and their versions on the problem of interface(distinction)and relations between semantics and pragmatics.When it comes to EMSs,the particular uncertainty of EMs leading to the meaning evaluation is,to a great extent,conditioned by the contexts where they are uttered.To identify the truth condition of these sentences,different schools make diverse claims due to their respective attitudes towards context sensitivity,hence their heated debates with each other.By investigating respectively accounts on EMSs of Minimalism,Contextualism,Relativism,Expressivism and Invariantism,this study summarizes their primary claims and principles,and inspects their main diversities,which mainly concern four issues arousing heated discussion in the field of philosophy of language: semantic content,faultless disagreement,context and context dependency.These four problems will be elucidated respectively in the main body of this dissertation.The first divergence of these claims lies in their different understandings of semantic content: do EMSs express invariant semantic content? If yes,does the semantic content vary along with variation of context of utterance,or keep invariant always? Answers to the first question may differentiate Contextualism,Relativism,Invariantism and Expressivism: the former three insisting on existence of semantic content of EMSs,while the latter denying it.The second question may distinguish Contextualism and other claims: Contextualism insisting on variation of semantic content with variation of context,though others endorsing invariation of semantic content.To seek for a reasonable account for these questions,this study investigates the well-acknowledged models of semantic content in the history of philosophy of language,including the widely-accepted binary classifications of Kaplan and Dummet and tridimensional sorting of Recanati and Bach,discusses their contributions and shortcomings,and therefore provides a four-level model of semantic content on the basis of chronological order and hierarchy of meaning interpretation.In this model,the first level of semantic content identifies what is literally expressed by the sentence,including the exact literal meaning of the words and their grammatical relations.This elementary level,having nothing to do with contextual elements,is confined in literal meaning,so it only yields a "skeleton" to the meaning of the sentence,rather than a complete proposition.The second level in this model concerns what is said in a narrow sense,which is the part of meaning resulting from a particular pragmatic process of attaining contextual information related with demonstratives and indexicals,and therefore it is more fulfilled than the elementary level,but not sufficient enough to construct an evaluable complete proposition yet.The third level refers to what is said in a broad sense,the part of meaning achieved by supplementing situational information related with and triggered by the literal expressions to what is said(narrow).It finally expresses a complete and evaluable proposition,which is what we mean by "semantic/ propositional content".Finally,once the semantic content of the sentence is achieved,countless related contextual information will swarm into the process of meaning generation,providing the audience with various possibilities of discourse analysis.The audience,through the tertiary pragmatic process,picks up the alternative information and achieves the implied meaning of the sentence,which constructs the fourth level of meaning.It is inferred from the literal meaning of sentences,yet probably unrelated to it superficially due to robust effects of contexts in the process of inference.From what has been discussed,literal meaning itself cannot express a complete proposition.In fact,the literal meaning,with assistance of some pragmatic components like context,can be transformed to what is said(broad)through interaction of semantic and pragmatic components to express an evaluable proposition.Thus,at least to most sentences,complete propositions are results of interaction between semantic and pragmatic contents,whose truth values vary along with variation of their contexts.The second divergence,coming from a particular phenomenon "Faultless Disagreement"(henceforth FD),is investigated mainly to differentiate two of the most active schools indulging in discussion of the problems like EMSs: Contextualism and Relativism.It is the latter camp that has put forward the conception of FD,which is alleged to provide evidence for the deficiencies of Contextualist accounts on EMSs and other problem cases.According to Relativism,FD is,in natural languages,a common phenomenon,in which A believes(judges)that p and B believes(judges)that not-p and neither A nor B has made a mistake or is at fault.On the basis of FD,Relativism launches serious challenges to Contextualism.To clarify this confusing problem,I analyze further the distinctions between FD and Genuine Disagreement(henceforth GD)in natural languages and find that FD,directing at what is said(broad),results often in moderate retraction of the speaker,or even no retraction of the original statement.GD,however,focusing on what is said(broad),results in absolute retraction or flat insistence.As illustrated above,FD is not GD,but a superficial disagreement.Thus even if we retain this term,ignoring its vagueness,FD,in the case not only of predicates of taste and aesthetics but also of EMSs,is not GD at all.More often than not,it seems to be an illusion created by Relativists.The third divergence concerns context,the most significant concept in pragmatics.Both Contextualism and Relativism subsume assessment context of EMSs within the intension of context,while Expressivism and Invariantism have offered no treatment yet.Through individuating previous understandings of this concept and reflecting on the challenges they are confronted with,this dissertation,aiming to illustrate intension and effects of context on meaning interpretation and evaluation,develops an MC framework of context,which is essentially composed of three levels,i.e.literal,situational and supplemental contexts.Literal context provides contextual information like references of demonstratives and indexicals to transfer literal meaning to what is said(narrow).To achieve what is said(broad),semantic content of sentences,situational context then provides the information concerning conversational setting,attained cognizance and encyclopedia knowledge,which are directly stimulated by literal expressions and straightforwardly related with the conversation where the sentence is uttered.Finally,supplemental context yields further a great amount of information,which is not directly triggered by literal expressions to achieve what is implied by the sentences.This implied meaning may be possibly irrelevant with,but essentially inferred from the literal meaning of the sentences step by step.The assessment context,a core term proposed by Relativists,is included in my model of context,but it is not a concept paralleling with context of use as in the model provided by Relativists mainly in that these two concepts are not sufficient to cover the intension of context.In fact,when EMSs are uttered in a particular context,assessment has not been produced yet,so the context of assessment cannot play a role in the process of meaning generation.Not until assessment happens will the context of assessment provide information to take part in meaning generation and evaluation as a significant component.On the basis of the above discussion,this dissertation investigates context dependency,the fourth divergence.Through sorting accounts of different camps on the problems that result from EMSs and analyzing their superiorities and deficiencies,I adopt my MC model to assess its reasonability and feasibility,examine context's effects on meaning interpretation and evaluation of EMSs,and finally identify contextdependency of these sentences.It is found that different types of sentences and different levels of the same sentence have different degrees of context dependency,which construct the two dimensions of context dependency of sentences in natural languages.When it comes to the context dependency of EMSs,it has aroused heated debate partly because of complexity of EMs,partly because of their two phases of meaning interpretation and proposition evaluation: pre-assessment and post-assessment phases1,which are temporally separated and sequentially connected.The context dependency of EMSs is evidently divergent from that of other sentences in natural languages mainly in the post-assessment phase.When EMSs are confronted with assessment,the uncertainty of the EMs these sentences contain,will function again in assessing the propositions expressed by these EMSs and leave more room for intrusion of contextual information.Moreover,different levels of the same EMS and different EMSs have different context dependency to different extents.In a word,the present study has investigated the process of meaning interpretation and proposition evaluation of EMSs and the role context plays during this process,and has accordingly substantiated the claim that semantic content,at least of most sentences,is context-dependent.And then I attempt to formulate an MC model of meaning interpretation and evaluation,hoping to offer illumination for the long-discussed problems in the field of philosophy of language,like semantics/pragmatics interface(distinction),essence and classification of semantic content,concept and effects of contexts,hierarchy of context dependency,etc.