(as part of its Departmental Colloquium series)
by
Zsofia Zvolenszky (ELTE, CEU)
on
`The Word According to David Kaplan`
Tuesday, 6 March, 2012, 5.30 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 412
ABSTRACT
We hear someone talk in English about a job, in German about der Job and in French about le job. Are these performances of the same word or of different words? What is at stake in answering this question? How should we individuate words? David Kaplan (1990) proposed various constraints on word individuation, which John Hawthorne and Ernest Lepore (2011) criticized and revised. I will argue that relating words and their performances (written or oral) to one another involves considerably more complexity than what participants in the debate have been recognizing. Via the added complexity, we can highlight some crucial insights from Kaplan about intentions accompanying performances of words.
Hawthorne, John and Ernest Lepore (2011). On Words. Forthcoming in Journal of Philosophy.
Kaplan, David (1990). Words. Aristotelian society Supplementary Volume 64, 93–119.