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Linguistics as Out of This World : In Defense of Folieism| old_uid | 3172 |
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| title | Linguistics as Out of This World : In Defense of Folieism |
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| start_date | 2007/09/14 |
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| schedule | 11h-13h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | In a number of recent papers (Rey 2005, 2006a, 2006b), I’ve been defending what I’ve called a "Folieist" view of communication, according to which it is a kind of folie à deux in which speakers and hearers enjoy a stable and innocuous illusion of producing and hearing Standard Linguistic Entities (“SLEs” such as words, phonemes) that are seldom if ever actually produced. “They” are what Franz Brentano called "intentional inexistents," "things" that we represent and think of as "out there," but which do not exist. Oddly enough, a number of philosophers have taken exception to my views. Here I want to address what seems to be a particularly interesting issue that has emerged from exchanges with Alex Barber, Michael Devitt and Nenad Miscevic, who want to insist upon dispositional analyses of SLEs. As I hope to show, the crucial issue has to do with the locus of explanation in linguistics, whether it is in the world, as they and many others want intuitively to insist, or in the mind, as Chomksyans have urged (and with inexistent SLEs that are in neither, as I argue). |
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| responsibles | Stojanovic |
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