Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Compositionality, linguistics, language philosophy: the thesis (originally by G. Frege, Grundlagen der Arithmetik, 1884) that the meaning of composite expressions, e.g. sentences, results from the meanings of the parts. It follows that a change of the parts, e.g. replacement of a single word by another, can change the meaning of the entire composite structure. See also Frege principle._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Stephen Schiffer on Compositionality - Dictionary of Arguments
I XVIII SchifferVsCompositionality: we must reject it because we must also reject the theory of relation (without which we cannot have the compositionality). >Frege principle, >Relation theory/Schiffer. Understanding/Schiffer: understanding must be explained otherwise: Solution: Schiffer thesis: conceptual role in neuronal lingua mentis without compositionality. >Conceptual role, >Lingua mentis, >Language of Thought. I 183 SchifferVsCompositionality: verbs for propositional attitudes can hardly be put into a compositional semantics. In addition e.g. "is a picture of", "true", "big", "toy"(soldier) - adverbs, evaluative terms like "should", "good", pronouns and demonstrative pronouns "everyone", "all" are problematic. Also counterfactual conditional and modal expressions represent a problem for compositional semantics. >Counterfactual conditionals, >Adverbs, >Adjectives. I 183 Compositional truth theoretical semantics/Schiffer: attributes truth conditions to sentences. >Truth conditions. I 184 Compositionality/SchifferVsCompositionality/SchifferVsFrege: natural language does not need any compositional semantics for understanding. >Understanding. For new sentences, we are not confronted with new words and even only with known constructions. Pro Frege: meaning theory must determine compositional mechanisms, but this does not lead to the fact that the meaning theory must be truth-theoretical (must determine truth conditions). >Meaning theory, >Truth-conditional semantics. I 208 SchifferVsCompositionality/SchifferVsFrege: E.g. "and": the everyday linguistic meaning is not captured by the truth value table. >Truth table. Compositional semantics would require that there is a non-logical axiom for each non-logical expression. - This is not possible. Propositions by E. Harveys spoken language receive their representational character via the connection with mental representation. >Mental representation. Therefore Mentalese does not need compositional semantics. >Mentalese, >Language of thought._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Schi I St. Schiffer Remnants of Meaning Cambridge 1987 |
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> Counter arguments against Schiffer
> Counter arguments in relation to Compositionality
Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2024-04-16