scholarly journals Two linguistic models of the context-sensitivity of ‘know’

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
Bojan Milunovic
Keyword(s):  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Epistemic Contextualism ◽  
Epistemic Position ◽  
Gradable Adjectives ◽  
Linguistic Support ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Knowledge Ascriptions ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Linguistic Practices ◽  
Linguistic Models

This article aims to assess the validity of two linguistic models of the context-sensitivity of the term ?know?: (I) indexical model, according to which knowledge ascriptions are context-sensitive due to an unstable Kaplanian character of the term ?know?, and (II) hidden-indexical model, that explains context sensitivity of ?know? by referring to its semantic similarities with gradable adjectives. This article is structured as follows. Section 1 briefly reviews contextualism as an epistemic position and introduces key features of both models. Section 2 establishes criteria for their evaluation: (A) their compatibility with our common linguistic practices, and (B) their compatibility with a contextualist solution to the problem of philosophical skepticism. Sections 3 and 4 examine two of the most prominent objections that aim to prove that each of these models fails to meet one or both of the aforementioned criteria. The article concludes that the hidden-indexical model, supplemented by Bloom-Tillman?s Modifiability Constraint, provides the more adequate linguistic support for the thesis of epistemic contextualism.

The Grammar of Prominence

2021 ◽  
pp. 171-186
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Gradable Adjectives ◽  
Domain Restriction ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
Model Context ◽  
The Way

This chapter draws theoretical conclusions and outlines directions for future developments. It summarizes the key theoretical and philosophical upshots of the account developed in the book and discusses further extensions of this framework. It discusses how the account can be applied to model context-sensitivity of situated utterances, in a way that can offer insights into puzzles concerning disagreement in discourse and communication under ignorance, which have plagued standard accounts of context and content. Further, it outlines the way the account is to be extended and applied to various types of context-sensitive items, including relational expressions, gradable adjectives, and domain restriction.

Discourse, Context, and Coherence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Linguistic Feature ◽  
Discourse Context ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Pure Indexicals

On the received view, the resolution of context-sensitivity is at least partly determined by non-linguistic features of utterance situation. If I say ‘He’s happy’, what ‘he’ picks out is underspecified by its linguistic meaning, and is only fixed through extra-linguistic supplementation: the speaker’s intention, and/or some objective, non-linguistic feature of the utterance situation. This underspecification is exhibited by most context-sensitive expressions, with the exception of pure indexicals, like ‘I.’ While this received view is prima facie appealing, I argue it is deeply mistaken. I defend an account according to which context-sensitivity resolution is governed by linguistic mechanisms determining prominence of candidate resolutions of context-sensitive items. Thus, on this account, the linguistic meaning of a context-sensitive expression fully specifies its resolution in a context, automatically selecting the resolution antecedently set by the prominence-governing linguistic mechanisms.

scholarly journals Epistemic evaluation and the need for ‘impure’ epistemic standards

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikola Anna Kompa
Keyword(s):  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Epistemic Standard ◽  
Epistemic Evaluation ◽  
Knowledge Ascription ◽  
Knowledge Ascriptions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Epistemic Standards

AbstractThat knowledge ascriptions exhibit some form of sensitivity to context is uncontroversial. How best to account for the context-sensitivity at issue, however, is the topic of heated debates. A certain version of nonindexical contextualism seems to be a promising option. Even so, it is incumbent upon any contextualist account to explain in what way and to what extent the epistemic standard operative in a particular context of epistemic evaluation is affected by non-epistemic factors (such as practical interests). In this paper, I investigate how non-epistemic factors come into play when knowledge is ascribed. I argue that knowledge ascriptions often serve the purpose of providing actionable information. This, in turn, requires that epistemic interests be balanced against non-epistemic interests. Moreover, it raises the question of whose interests matter, those of the ascriber, the addressee (of the knowledge ascription), or the subject of ascription. Eventually, an answer to the question is suggested.

scholarly journals TESTIMONY, RECOVERY AND PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY: A RESPONSE TO PEET

Episteme ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-38
Author(s):  
Alex Davies
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Linguistic Communication ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Epistemology Of Testimony ◽  
Public Responsibility

ABSTRACTAccording to telling based views of testimony (TBVs), B has reason to believe that p when A tells B that p because A thereby takes public responsibility for B's subsequent belief that p. Andrew Peet presents a new argument against TBVs. He argues that insofar as A uses context-sensitive expressions to express p, A doesn't take public responsibility for B's belief that p. Since context-sensitivity is widespread, the kind of reason TBVs say we have to believe what we're told, is not widespread. Peet doesn't identify any problem with his own argument though he does attempt to limit its sceptical potential by identifying special contexts in which TBVs stand a chance of success. A more general defence of TBVs can be provided by showing Peet's argument to be unsound. I argue that Peet's argument is unsound because it requires us to wrongly suppose that speakers do far less labour than their audiences in context-sensitive linguistic communication. I aim to show why – in the context of the epistemology of testimony and the philosophy of language – it's important to recognize the labour that speakers can do, and so can be held responsible for not doing, in episodes of context-sensitive linguistic communication.

Colour Categories in Context

2020 ◽  
pp. 83-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmina Jraissati
Keyword(s):  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Unified Framework ◽  
Colour Space ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Way

It is agreed that colour categorization is context sensitive, and that context plays a role in why colour categories are the way they are. Yet, the way context is supposed to influence colour categorization is never spelled out in the literature, the focus of which has mostly been to identify mechanisms at play in colour categorization, either perceptual and cognitive or, alternatively, linguistic. This chapter steers away from the wealthy categorization literature, and takes a different starting point by asking the preliminary question of how we categorize colour in our everyday interactions. The answer to this question makes important use of the notion of colour space and subspace. It leads to a unified framework that makes room for context sensitivity, while also accounting for colour categorization.

Skepticism and Objective Contexts: A Critique of DeRose

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-129
Author(s):  
Giovanni Mion
Keyword(s):  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Cartesian Skepticism ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Truth Value

In this paper I contrast my contextualist account of Cartesian skepticism with Keith DeRose’s account. I agree with DeRose that when the Cartesian skeptic and her opponent meet in the same context, their claims are truth-value-less. But I agree with him on the basis of a different conception of context sensitivity. According to DeRose, the content of context sensitive expressions in general, and of knowledge in particular, is personally indicated. By contrast, I think that the content of context sensitive expressions in general, and of knowledge in particular, is objectively determined by the goals of the conversation and the environment in which the conversation takes place.

scholarly journals Warm (for Winter): Inferring comparison classes for gradable adjectives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Henry Tessler ◽  
Noah D. Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Gradable Adjectives ◽  
Language Understanding ◽  
Comparison Class ◽  
Scale Free ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Bayesian Data Analysis ◽  
Production Experiment ◽  
Pragmatic Reasoning ◽  
Basic Level

The meaning of an utterance can change depending on the context. Yet, what counts as context is often only implicit in everyday conversation. The utterance “it’s warm outside” signals that the temperature outside is relatively high, but the temperature could be high relative to a number of different comparison classes: other days of the year, other weeks, other seasons, etc. Theories of context-sensitive language use agree that the comparison class is a crucial feature of meaning understanding, but little is known about how a listener decides upon a comparison class. We extend a Bayesian model of pragmatic reasoning to be able to reason flexibly about the comparison class intended by the speaker and test the qualitative predictions of this model using a large-scale free-production experiment. We then quantitatively synthesize the model and data using Bayesian data analysis, which further reveals that usage frequency and a preference for basic-level categories are two main contributors to comparison class inference. The methods and results we present open the door to studying richer aspects of context-sensitive language understanding.

scholarly journals Making pointer analysis more precise by unleashing the power of selective context sensitivity

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (OOPSLA) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Tian Tan ◽  
Yue Li ◽  
Xiaoxing Ma ◽  
Chang Xu ◽  
Yannis Smaragdakis
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
The State ◽  
Pointer Analysis ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Java Programs ◽  
One Step ◽  
The Difference

Traditional context-sensitive pointer analysis is hard to scale for large and complex Java programs. To address this issue, a series of selective context-sensitivity approaches have been proposed and exhibit promising results. In this work, we move one step further towards producing highly-precise pointer analyses for hard-to-analyze Java programs by presenting the Unity-Relay framework, which takes selective context sensitivity to the next level. Briefly, Unity-Relay is a one-two punch: given a set of different selective context-sensitivity approaches, say S = S1, . . . , Sn, Unity-Relay first provides a mechanism (called Unity)to combine and maximize the precision of all components of S. When Unity fails to scale, Unity-Relay offers a scheme (called Relay) to pass and accumulate the precision from one approach Si in S to the next, Si+1, leading to an analysis that is more precise than all approaches in S. As a proof-of-concept, we instantiate Unity-Relay into a tool called Baton and extensively evaluate it on a set of hard-to-analyze Java programs, using general precision metrics and popular clients. Compared with the state of the art, Baton achieves the best precision for all metrics and clients for all evaluated programs. The difference in precision is often dramatic — up to 71% of alias pairs reported by previously-best algorithms are found to be spurious and eliminated.

Smoking, Implicit Attitudes, and Context-Sensitivity

2015 ◽  
pp. 138-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Glock ◽  
Ineke M. Pit ten-Cate
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Implicit Attitudes ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Outcome Expectancies ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Addictive Behaviors ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
External Cues ◽  
Nicotine Deprivation ◽  
Attitudes Toward Smoking

This chapter focuses on implicit attitudes toward smoking and provides the first systematic review of research in this domain. Implicit attitudes are suggested to guide automatic behavior, thereby playing a pivotal role for automatic processes inherent in addictive behaviors. This chapter further explores the extent to which implicit attitudes are context-sensitive. More specifically, it reviews studies that have focused on the differential effects of external cues such as warning labels and internal cues (e.g., deprivation). Results of 32 studies show that although smokers generally have more positive implicit attitudes than non-smokers, the valence of implicit attitudes varies as a result of the applied method or stimuli. Studies reveal that implicit attitudes toward smoking partly depend on external cues, especially outcome expectancies. Similarly, internal cues affect implicit attitudes whereby the level of nicotine deprivation seems vital. Implications for intervention and future research are indicated in the discussion.

2. Context Sensitive Acoustic Near-Neutralization in Tongue Twisters

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Brohan
Keyword(s):  
Recurrent Network ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Interesting Problem ◽  
Acoustic Data ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
The Asymmetry ◽  
Tongue Twisters ◽  
Articulatory Model

Tongue twisters present an interesting problem with respect to their implication to the interactions between phonology and phonetics. Only recently, however, have the articulations produced in tongue twisters been analyzed phonetically. The research presented is a preliminary study into the so-called /s/ → /∫/ neutralization occurring in English tongue twisters. Traditionally, it was believed that tongue slips in tongue twisters resulted in complete phoneme replacement, neutralizing the contrast. (Pronouncing “seashell” as “sheashell”). More recent studies suggest a differing phonetic account, in which the resulting sound is nearly-neutralized. This study examined the segments /s/ and /∫/ near-neutralizing in differing contexts. Acoustic data was collected from one speaker eliciting eight artificial tongue twisters repeatedly in various contexts. The central band of frequency of the sounds were analyzed using Praat. A near-neutralization effect was found, that the “neutralized" segment was significantly between a /s/ and a /sh/. This effect was observed in both a forwards and backwards direction (“sheashell” & “seasell”) were both present in the data, with a noticeably stronger right-to-left effect; in accordance with cross-linguistic studies of /s/ - /sh/ neutralization. A recurrent network articulatory model is presented in the discussion, which can account for the asymmetry and context sensitivity of results. Findings move us towards a greater understanding of the greater problem of sibilant harmony across languages.

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