Paper Titles and Abstracts: Robert Stalnaker (mit): Common Ground and Keeping Score

This paper is an attempt to address two of the workshop themes, namely the question as to what theoretical purposes semantic contents serve, and how theories that invoke semantic contents should deal with the phenomenon of context dependence. I assume that what is at issue is the role that semantic contents play in a theory of natural language semantics. I also assume that such a theory should enable us to address the questions as to how meanings are mentally represented and the roles they play in natural language production and comprehension. I survey some recent work in experimental semantics and pragmatics and argue that the picture that emerges is one in which semantic contents have an implicit dimension and that contextual information plays a crucial role in delineating that implicit content. Robert Stalnaker (MIT): Common ground and keeping score Conversational Score To the extent that conversational score is determined, given the history of the conversation and the rules that specify its kinematics, these rules can be regarded as constitutive rules akin to definitions. . . . . Alternatively, conversational score might be operationally defined in terms of the mental scoreboards – some suitable attitudes – of the parties to the conversation. The rules specifying the kinematics of the conversational score the become empirical generalizations, subject to exceptions, about the causal dependence of what the scoreboards register on the history of the conversation. . . . Both approaches seem to meet with difficulties. . . . It might be best to adopt a third approach – a middle way. . . . Conversational score is, by definition, whatever the mental scoreboards say it is; but we refrain from trying to say just what the the conversationalists mental scoreboards are. We assume that some or other mental representations are present that play the role of a scoreboard, in the following sense: what they register depends on the history of the conversation in the way that the score should according to the rules David Lewis, “Scorekeeping in a language game” We should “define speaker presupposition in such a way that it is conceptually tied to certain rules and conventions. Thus a social or conventional notion of acceptance, rather than a psychological one, seems to be needed.” Max Kölbel, “Conversational Score, Assertion and Testimony” If at time t something is said that requires presupposition P to be acceptable, and if P is not presupposed just before t, then – ceteris peribus and within certain limits – presupposition P comes into existence. Lewis’s rule of accommodation for presupposition (Lewis, “Scorekeeping”)