MoL-2001-05: Intentional Identity and the Edelberg Asymmetry

MoL-2001-05: Paulékaité, Rasa Leijting - (2001) Intentional Identity and the Edelberg Asymmetry. [Report]

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Abstract

This thesis is about the Edelberg asymmetry, the phenomenon that shows
up in sentences containing attitude ascriptions. It concentrates on
explaining anaphoric relations in asymmetric conjunctions and the
possibility of interpreting a sentence, which is false, under certain
circumstances as true. On the rather strong semantic assumption that
our thinking has a certain logical structure, in the analysis of
complex sentences we permit commutation. However, this affects the
interpretation of sentences in particular contexts. By noticing the
importance of the role that a context plays in a sentence"s
interpretation, we suppose that Edelberg"s asymmetry should be
accounted for not only in semantic terms like Edelberg and van Rooy
suggest, but also in pragmatic terms. We explain anaphoric relations
in asymmetric conjunctions by using a more pragmatic notion of
interpretation instead of a more autonomous semantic notion of
content, a context, and an extended E-type approach. The extended
E-type approach suggests that the way in which the speaker conceives
of an intended individual in an asymmetric conjunction is indicated by
the information material of the first attitude attribution, and
sometimes by an immediately preceding context. A pragmatic account of
asymmetric conjunctions suits well with the idea of overriding
contexts, and it helps to explain how an intuitively false sentence in
a certain context can be taken to be true. Our approach to the
Edelberg asymmetry and the truth- falsity puzzle of asymmetric
conjunctions suggests that in the analysis of natural language
sentences the notion of context, in the process of a sentence"s
evaluation, deserves more attention than it receives in Edelberg"s and
van Rooy"s theories.

Item Type:	Report
Report Nr:	MoL-2001-05
Series Name:	Master of Logic Thesis (MoL) Series
Year:	2001
Date Deposited:	12 Oct 2016 14:38
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2016 14:38
URI:	https://eprints.illc.uva.nl/id/eprint/718

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