University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Under what conditions are two utterances peformances of the same word?

Morasch, Nathalie

Content Files
Morasch_Nathalie.pdf

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/24398

Description

Title
Under what conditions are two utterances peformances of the same word?
Author(s)
Morasch, Nathalie
Issue Date
2011-05-25T14:38:52Z
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Ebbs, Gary
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Ebbs, Gary
Committee Member(s)
  • Wagner, Steven J.
  • McCarthy, Timothy G.
  • Lasersohn, Peter N.
Department of Study
Philosophy
Discipline
Philosophy
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Date of Ingest
2011-05-25T14:38:52Z
Keyword(s)
  • Kaplan
  • words
  • anti-individualism
  • Kripke puzzle
  • self-knowledge
Abstract
Starting from the fact that people sometimes use the “same” words to talk about a given topic, I want to clarify what word-sameness comes to in those uses. I will adopt an epistemic framework, in which words are primarily instruments that render the inter-subjective transfer of knowledge possible. In the course of my dissertation I refine Kaplan’s notion of words to propose an account that occupies the middle ground between (social) anti-individualism and the kind of individualism that individuates a speaker’s words without input from the speaker’s linguistic community. I make the case that speakers keep track of the various performances of a given word w via a mental register. According to my proposal, the conceptions the speaker comes to associate with her mental register over time may play a role in whether we ought to identify her idiolectal word w with the public word w’. I will argue that in the end we must leave it up to the speaker’s own (informed) judgment whether she interprets her word w as repeating a particular public word w’. According to Kaplan the individual speaker’s word w is referentially bound to the public word w’ through her intentions to repeat w’. I stress that the intention to repeat her own words w trumps the intention to repeat the word w’ produced by some other speaker. I attempt to solve Kripke’s Paderewski puzzle and problems of self-knowledge by arguing that the speaker cannot be wrong about how she keeps track of her own words.
Graduation Semester
2011-05
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/24398
Copyright and License Information
© Copyright 2011 Nathalie Morasch

Owning Collections

Graduate Dissertations and Theses at Illinois PRIMARY
Graduate Theses and Dissertations at Illinois
Dissertations and Theses - Philosophy