🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <agnar.aamodt-101192192202@129.241.164.107>,
agnar.aamodt@ifi.unit.no (Agnar Aamodt) writes: 

>Several philosophers of science and AI researchers (among others)
>have taken the stance you are asking for.  The difference between
>this view and a mathematical-logical one lies basically in the
>perspective on semantics which is taken - a perspective leaning
>towards syntax, or towards pragmatics, respectively. 

What do you mean by "leaning toward" syntax or pragmatics? For that
matter, what do you mean by "pragmatics"?

I'm not really sure, but I'm guessing that you're talking about
which way to push the grey area between syntax and pragmatics. In
other words, Is semantics more like pragmatics or syntax? Can we
describe it in terms of rigorous rules or do we have to resort to
fuzzy generalizations and hand-waving?

But these questions are not what I'm driving at just yet. In fact, the
syntactical theories I've encountered (basically McCawley's, go
figure) succumb to the same problem as any other theories of meaning
based on symbolic primitives. This follows if you suppose that
transformational rules bear meaning. (If not meaning, then what?)
I mean, if you have a declarative utterance S1, it will convey a
different meaning than S1 transformed into a yes/no question S2 by
transformation T. A syntactic analysis of S2 does not describe this
difference adequately merely because it contains "--> T -->" (though
of course it does manage to contrast this meaning with that of S1). I
see this as exactly the same problem that plagues any theory of
meaning based on symbolic primitives, including semantic primitives,
including truth functional logic.

This is speculation, but I think that pragmatic theory is so fuzzy and
hand-wavy in comparison simply because (so far (as I know)) we have
not even managed to analyze situations / contexts into neat isolated
atomic concepts that we can name with symbols. I believe the same is
true to a lesser extent for semantic theory.

Let's face it, or at least let me posit: Whatever STUFF the meaning of
a speech act consists of, some of it is syntactic, some is semantic,
and some is pragmatic. Though we have some theories that name some
proposed quanta of meaning, we don't really have any clear idea how
this thing works yet.

I'm quite open to feedback, and now have lots of books to read that
might quiet me down.

By the way, I'll post an annotated bibliography as soon as I don't
think I'll receive any more reading suggestions.

Jake.

-- 
"What's so interdisciplinary about studying lower levels of thought process?"
				  <-- Jacob Galley / gal2@midway.uchicago.edu