Abstract
Building on their well-known act theory of propositions, Soames and Hanks have proposed a theory of what it is for sentences to express propositions, thereby answering a central question about the foundations of semantics. The basic idea is that for a sentence to express a proposition in a language is for speakers of the language to use the sentence to perform the act that is the proposition. I argue that this general account of expression fails to explain how incorrect usage is possible, how what sentences express differs from what they implicate, how unused sentences can express propositions, how compositional meanings are possible, and how to specify who the speakers of L are without circularity. I go on to show how these things can be explained within the structured cognitive proposition framework.
About the author
Wayne A. Davis, (B.A. in Philosophy, University of Michigan, 1973; PhD. in Philosophy, Princeton University 1977) is Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He is the author of An Introduction to Logic (Prentice-Hall, 1986), Implicature (Cambridge, 1998), Meaning, Expression, and Thought (Cambridge, 2003), Nondescriptive Meaning and Reference (Oxford 2005), Irregular Negations, Implicatures, and Idioms (2016), Indexical Meaning and Concepts (in preparation), and articles on logic, philosophy of science, philosophical psychology, philosophy of language and epistemology in Philosophical Review, Mind, Noús, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, American Philosophical Quarterly, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Linguistics and Philosophy, Journal of Pragmatics, Intercultural Pragmatics, and other journals. He is Editor-in-Chief of Philosophical Studies.
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