Information, relevance, and social decisionmaking: some principles and results of decision-theoretic semantics

Abstract

Abstract. I propose to treat natural language semantics as a branch of pragmatics, identified in the way of C.S. Peirce, F.P. Ramsey, and R. Carnap as decision-theory. The notion of relevance plays a key role. It is explicated traditionally, distinguished from a recent homophone, and applied in its natural framework of issue-based communication. Empirical emphasis is on implicature and presupposition. Several theorems are stated and made use of. Items analyzed include ‘or’, ‘not’, ‘but’, ‘even’, and ‘also’. I conclude on parts of mind. This paper submits an approach to meaning, with a focus on broadly nontruth-conditional aspects of natural language. Semantics is treated as a branch of pragmatics, identified as decision-theory in the way of C.S. Peirce, F.P. Ramsey, and of Rudolf Carnap in his later work. A key theoretical notion, distinguishable from, but intelligibly related to, information is the positive or negative relevance of a proposition or sentence to another. It is explicated in the probabilistic way familiar from Carnap and traditional in the philosophies of science and rational action. This makes it a representation of local epistemic context-change potential that is directional in a precisely specifiable sense and naturally related to utterers ’ instrumental intentions. Relevance so defined is proposed as an explicans for Oswald Ducrot’s insightful ‘valeur argumentative’. In view of possible confusion among some students of language, it is contrasted with a more recent and idiosyncratic pretender to the appellation, due to Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. The latter proposal turns out, at best, to paraphrase H.P. Grice’s non-directional concepts of ‘informativeness ’ and ‘perspicuity’. (More informative designations are suggested for it, and for the eponymous linguistic doctrine emanating from parts of CNRS Paris and of UC London.)

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