Pragmatic Presupposition

Stalnakerian view: presuppositions are not properties of sentences but of speakers’ attitudes in a conversation; what’s presupposed is part of the Common Ground.

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Languages and Language - Lewis

Languages and Language

Reference: Lewis, D. K. (1975). Languages and Language. In K. Gunderson (ed.), Language, Mind, and Knowledge (Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 7, pp. 3–35). University of Minnesota Press. Reprinted in Philosophical Papers Volume I (Oxford UP 1983). URL (Minnesota Digital Conservancy)

Summary

“Languages and Language” is Lewis’s mature statement of the distinction between a language (an abstract function from sound-and-sign types to meanings, with no users) and language (a social phenomenon: a population’s practice of using a particular abstract language to communicate). The paper sharpens the framework introduced in Convention (1969) and rebuts an objection from Strawson and Searle that an account of language as convention — solving a coordination problem by mutual expectation — misses the normative heart of meaning. Lewis answers: it does not. A population uses an abstract language L iff there prevails in that population a convention of truthfulness and trust in L — a regularity by which speakers utter sentences of L only when they believe them true-in-L, and hearers respond by coming to believe the sentences uttered are true-in-L. The regularity is a convention in the technical Lewis 1969 sense: it solves a coordination problem (mutual intelligibility), it is sustained by mutual expectation (common knowledge that it is so sustained), and it has alternatives (some other abstract language could have played the same role).

The paper’s value over Convention is its precise account of the language–language relation. The abstract object L is a function from finite strings to truth-conditions (or, for non-declarative moods, to satisfaction-conditions). The social object — language — is the convention of truthfulness and trust in L. Different populations use different Ls; the same population can use several Ls for different domains. Meaning is not primarily a property of individual speakers’ minds: it is a property of the convention, fixed once we identify which L the population’s convention picks out. Speakers’ beliefs and intentions enter only via the convention-sustaining clauses (each speaker expects the others to be truthful-in-L and tries to be so themselves), not as the bearers of meaning.

For agent communication, “Languages and Language” is the cleanest philosophical statement of the public-semantics programme avant la lettre. The meaning of a wire-format performative is not the BDI state of the sender or receiver; it is the truth- or satisfaction-conditions assigned by the abstract language the protocol convention picks out. Two agents using FIPA-ACL are participating in a convention of truthfulness and trust in the abstract language defined by FIPA-ACL’s semantics. The convention requires only that agents act as if truthful-in-L; it does not require introspective access. This is exactly the dialect-and-protocol picture that Singh 1998 argues for, that commitment machines formalise, and that CBCL turns into a verified, self-extending wire format. Lewis 1975 is also the philosophical complement to Convention: where the 1969 book establishes the game-theoretic apparatus, the 1975 paper applies it to language and shows how to answer the standard objections from the speech-act tradition.

Key Ideas

Two senses of “language”: an abstract language L is a function from sentence-types to meanings (truth- and satisfaction-conditions); language (no article) is the social phenomenon — a population’s use of some L. Confusing the two is the source of much philosophy of language.
Convention of truthfulness and trust: a population uses L iff it has a convention (in the 1969 sense) of truthfulness in L (utter sentences only when believed true-in-L) and trust in L (hearers respond to such utterances by coming to believe the sentences true-in-L).
Meaning is a property of the convention, not the speaker: the convention picks out which L is in force; the meaning of a sentence in that population’s language is its meaning in L. Individual speaker mental states enter only as the conformity conditions of the convention.
Coordination problems and alternative languages: many abstract Ls could solve the population’s coordination problem; salience, precedent, and history pick one. Meaning is not arbitrary in function but contingent in particulars.
Reply to Strawson/Searle: the objection that convention-based accounts cannot capture the normative dimension of meaning is misplaced — the convention is itself a normative structure (it requires mutual expectation and conformity to be in force).
Multiple languages, one population: a population may use several Ls simultaneously — formal and informal registers, technical sub-languages, jargon — each sustained by its own convention.
Sentence moods and non-declaratives: imperatives and interrogatives are handled by extending the abstract L to assign satisfaction- and answerhood-conditions; the convention-of-truthfulness-and-trust generalises to a convention of acting as if the satisfaction-conditions held.

Connections

Conceptual Contribution

Claim: Sharpen the Convention 1969 picture into a precise account of how an abstract language L (a function from sentences to truth-/satisfaction-conditions) gets in force in a population: by a convention of truthfulness and trust in L. Meaning is a property of the convention, not of individual speakers’ mental states.
Mechanism: Define abstract languages as functions from sentence-types to truth- and satisfaction-conditions. Define use of L by population P as the prevalence in P of a convention (in the Lewis 1969 sense) of being truthful in L and trusting in L. Show how this answers Strawson’s and Searle’s normativity objection (the convention is itself normative) and how it generalises to non-declarative moods (satisfaction-conditions) and to populations using multiple Ls.
Concepts introduced/used: Abstract Language, Convention of Truthfulness, Convention of Trust, Truthfulness and Trust, Sentence Mood, Pragmatic Presupposition, Public Semantics.
Stance: foundational philosophical paper.
Relates to: Direct sequel to Lewis 1969 (Convention) — the 1969 book gives the game-theoretic foundations, the 1975 paper applies them to language. Operational complement to Stalnaker 1978: where Stalnaker gives the update mechanics of assertion, Lewis 1975 says what makes a particular abstract language the one the participants are updating in. For agent communication, this is the cleanest philosophical statement of the public-semantics programme: the meaning of an ACL performative is fixed by the protocol convention’s chosen L, not by speakers’ BDI states — exactly the picture Singh 1998 argues for, commitment machines formalise, and CBCL turns into a verified wire format. The view also locates Wittgensteinian meaning-as-use within an explicit game-theoretic setting (Lewis’s convention is the formal regulariser of Wittgenstein’s language-games), and is compatible with Brandomian inferentialism as a downstream layer (inferential articulation is what gives L its truth-conditions in the first place).

Assertion - Stalnaker

Assertion

Reference: Stalnaker, R. C. (1978). Assertion. In P. Cole (ed.), Syntax and Semantics 9: Pragmatics (pp. 315–332). New York: Academic Press. Reprinted in Stalnaker, Context and Content (Oxford UP 1999). PhilPapers record · SEP: pragmatics · SEP: presupposition

Summary

Stalnaker’s “Assertion” gives the canonical update-semantics account of what a speech act of asserting does, framed in terms of a common ground of mutually accepted propositions shared between conversational participants and a context set of possible worlds compatible with that common ground. To assert a proposition p is, prima facie, to propose that p be added to the common ground — equivalently, to propose that the context set be narrowed to its intersection with the set of worlds in which p is true. The hearer either accepts (the context set is updated) or challenges (the proposal stalls, the common ground is unchanged). The picture is symmetric, trace-checkable, and pragmatic: it tells you what an assertion does without taking a stand on the speaker’s inner mental state.

The paper develops three essential effects of assertion. (1) An assertion of p adds p to the common ground unless it is challenged. (2) The proposition asserted should be determinate — true or false at every world in the context set; if not, the context set must be re-coordinated first (anticipating the accommodation mechanism worked out in Lewis 1979). (3) The proposition asserted should partition the context set non-trivially: not be common-ground-true already, not be common-ground-false already, and not be context-incoherent. This third effect is the seed of Gricean informativeness as a built-in feature of the dynamics rather than a separately stated maxim. The framework anticipates the entire dynamic semantics tradition (Heim, Kamp, Veltman) and is the operational counterpart of Grice 1975: where Grice gives maxims governing rational conversation, Stalnaker gives the update mechanics conversation operates on.

For agent communication, Stalnaker is the philosopher who most directly anticipates trace-checkable assertion semantics. The common ground is a publicly observable object — what has been said and accepted — and assertion is a publicly observable update operation on it. There is no need to inspect any agent’s beliefs; the semantic content of an assertion is given by the update it proposes, and conformance with that semantics is checkable from a transcript. The natural pairing in this vault is with Singh 1998 on social-agency semantics, Fornara & Colombetti on commitment-based operational semantics, and ultimately CBCL — the common ground / context-set apparatus is precisely the kind of shared, monotone, trace-checkable object that monotone-verdict commitment protocols want.

Key Ideas

Common ground: the body of propositions mutually accepted (not necessarily believed) for purposes of conversation. The mathematical reflex is the context set — the set of worlds compatible with the common ground.
Assertion as context-set update: an assertion of p proposes narrowing the context set to the intersection with [[p]]. If accepted, the update goes through; if challenged, it stalls.
Three essential effects of assertion (the “essential effect” inventory): (i) the asserted proposition should be added to the common ground on acceptance; (ii) it must be determinate over the context set (true or false at each world); (iii) it must partition the context set non-trivially (informative).
Diagonalisation / two-dimensional accommodation: when an assertion’s content varies across worlds in the context set, the hearer can use the diagonal proposition — the function picking out, at each world, the content the assertion would have at that world — to recover a determinate update. This is the engine behind much of dynamic semantics’ treatment of indexicals and modals.
Pragmatic presupposition: a speaker presupposes q iff, in uttering an assertion, the speaker takes q to be in the common ground. Presupposition is a property of speakers in contexts, not of sentences in models — the move that allows accommodation to be modelled cleanly.
Context set is a public object: the framework is symmetric across participants — neither side has privileged access. Trace-checkability falls out.

Connections

Conceptual Contribution

Claim: Assertion is best modelled as a publicly observable update operation on the common ground of mutually accepted propositions. The semantic content of an assertion is determined by which possible worlds it eliminates from the context set, with no recourse to the speaker’s inner mental state required.
Mechanism: The common ground is the body of propositions the participants mutually accept for purposes of conversation; the context set is its set-theoretic reflex (worlds compatible with the common ground). An assertion of p proposes intersecting the context set with [[p]]. The three essential effects (informativeness, determinacy, acceptance-by-default) govern well-formed assertion; diagonalisation handles cases where content varies across the context set.
Concepts introduced/used: Common Ground, Context Set, Update Semantics, Diagonal Proposition, Pragmatic Presupposition, Accommodation, Essential Effect of Assertion.
Stance: foundational philosophical paper / canonical dynamic-pragmatic theory.
Relates to: Operational counterpart of Grice 1975 — where Grice supplies maxims of rational conversation, Stalnaker supplies the mechanics (context-set update) that conversation manipulates. Genealogically the foundation of the dynamic semantics tradition (Heim FCS, Kamp DRT, Veltman update semantics). For agent communication, the framework is the direct philosophical antecedent of public-semantics / commitment-based approaches: the common ground is a publicly observable, monotone, trace-checkable object — exactly the kind of state Singh’s social-agency semantics, Fornara & Colombetti’s operational commitment semantics, and CBCL’s ledger want. The deeper philosophical pair is Brandom: Stalnaker’s common-ground update is one of the two canonical formal models of deontic scorekeeping (the other being argumentation-style commitment stores after Hamblin).

Common Ground

Stalnakerian notion: the body of propositions mutually presupposed by participants in a conversation; sentences update the common ground when accepted. Foundational to Dynamic Semantics and to Pragmatic Presupposition.