CUNY Pragmatics Workshop
Relevance, Games, and Communication
Tuesday, October 14 (Room 9207)
10:15 Coffee
10:30 Rohit Parikh (CUNY) “Grice, Hoare and Nash: contributions to pragmatics from game theory and program semantics”
11:30 Peter Godfrey-Smith (CUNY) “What do generalizations of the Lewis signaling model tell us about information and meaning?”
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Prashant Parikh (CUNY) “Deriving illocutionary meaning”
2:30 Student Presentations:
Ignacio Ojea (Columbia) “Credibility and the stability of what is conveyed”
Todd Stambaugh (CUNY) “Implicatures, etchings, and coffee”
Cagil Tasdemir (CUNY) “Influencing behavior by influencing beliefs”
3:30 Coffee
4:15 Ariel Rubinstein (Tel Aviv/NYU) “A Typology of Players”
5:30 Reception
7:00 Speakers’ dinner
Wednesday, October 15 (Room 9207)
9:15 Coffee
9:30 Daniel Harris (CUNY) “Act-theoretic semantics for pragmatics”
10:30 Larry Horn (Yale) “Trivial pursuits: on being orderly”
11:30 Stephen Neale (CUNY) “All meaning is natural meaning?”
12:30 Lunch
1:30 Robyn Carston (UCL) “Systematicity, optionality and relevance”
2:30 Student Presentations
Elmar Unnsteinsson (CUNY) “The pragmatics of malapropisms”
Marilynn Johnson (CUNY) “Why we implicate: revising Pinker’s game-theoretic proposal”
Jesse Rappaport (CUNY) “Parsimony in linguistic theorizing: a double-edged razor”
3:30 Coffee
4:15 Keynote Talk & Philosophy Colloquium
Deirdre Wilson (UCL/Oslo) “Explaining Metonymy”
6:00 Reception
7:30 Speakers’ dinner
The CUNY Pragmatics Workshop is funded by a CUNY Collaborative Incentive Research Grant (CIRG# 2033) with additional support from the Program in Philosophy and the John H Kornblith Fund.
CUNY Linguistics Colloquium
Spring 2015
SPECIAL ADDED TALK!
Sven Lauer (University of Konstanz)
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Time: 4:15pm
Room: C205
Model-theoretic pragmatics and obligatory implicatures
The model-theoretic approach to semantics has enabled the development of articulated, formally explicit theories of natural language meaning. At the same time, pragmatic explanations are still frequently given informally, or in terms of rather rough schematic inference schemes. I show that a model-theoretic approach to pragmatics is feasible, and that it significantly improves our understanding of pragmatic inference.
To that end, I present a model-theoretic pragmatic theory, the Dynamic Pragmatics of Lauer (2013), and show that it makes rather unexpected predictions: There are pragmatic inferences, which, though Gricean in nature, arise necessarily whenever an expression is used, and when such an inference is known to be false, this makes the expression infelicitous. This goes against conventional wisdom in pragmatics, according to which Gricean inferences are, by necessity, optional and cancelable.
I argue that the prediction is nonetheless correct, reviewing a range of cases where an arguably non-semantic inference is non-optional and robust enough to trigger infelicities. The model-theoretic analysis shows that these inferences are not just pragmatic in a vague sense, but neatly fit into the Gricean fold: They arise in exactly the same way as classical examples of implicatures. The only difference between the better-studied optional implicatures (such as the familiar scalar ones) and obligatory implicatures is that the former are driven by pragmatic pressures that are context-dependent in a particular way, while the latter are driven by pressures that apply equally in all contexts.
All are welcome. Please come!
CUNY Graduate Center – 365 Fifth Avenue – New York (between 34th and 35th Streets) Phone: 212-817-8500. Email: linguistics@gc.cuny.edu website: www.gc.cuny.edu/linguistics
Friday, April 15th
The Graduate Center (365 5th Ave), rm. 5409
11:30 – 11:45am. Welcome, Coffee and Snacks
11:45 – 12:45pm. JJ Lang (Stanford University) “Semantic Ambiguity, Presuppositions, and the Offensiveness of Out-Group Uses of Appropriated Slurs”
12:45 – 3:15pm. Lunch Break
We invite you to attend the Cognitive Science Speaker Series talk (1:00 – 3:00pm, rm. 7102):
Hedda Hassel Mørch (Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, NYU) “The Evolutionary Argument that Phenomenal Properties Are Intrinsically Powerful”
3:15 – 4:15pm. Ian York (San Francisco State University) “A Limit to Camp’s Semantic Account of Slurs”
4:15 – 4:30pm. Coffee and Snacks
4:30 – 6:00pm. KEYNOTE. Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers) “Conventions, Complicity, and Conflict”
6:00 – 7:00pm. Meet & Greet (rm. 7113: Philosophy Lounge)
Saturday, April 16th
The Graduate Center (365 5th Ave), rm. 5409
10:00 – 10:30am. Coffee and Snacks
10:30 – 11:30am. Kayleigh Doherty (Arizona State University) “Making It So: Social Identity and Hate Speech”
11:30 – 1:30pm. Lunch Break
1:30 – 2:30pm. Cassie Herbert (Georgetown University) “Talking about Slurs”
2:30 – 2:45pm. Coffee & Snacks
2:45 – 3:45pm. Adam Simon (Stanford University) “Pragmatizing Pejoratives”
3:45 – 4:00pm. Coffee & Snacks
4:00 – 5:30pm. KEYNOTE. Rachel McKinney (MIT)
5:30 – 6:30pm. Meet & Greet (rm. 7113: Philosophy Lounge)
New York Workshop for the Cosmos of Dōgen Presents
Dōgen in Dialogue with Analytic Philosophy
Dōgen (1200-1251) is a Japanese Zen master and one of the most original and intriguing philosophers in the entire history of Japan. In this workshop, some important themes of Dogen’s philosophy such as self, time, reality, causation, ineffability of the ultimate truth & etc., are reinterpreted, mainly but not exclusively, from the perspectives of analytic philosophy. Those analytic Dōgen studies purport to shed new lights to his thoughts as well as the contemporary philosophical debates on those topics. The workshop also features contemporary philosophical talks on Self, that are inspired by Dōgen’s insights. So, overall it aims to revive Dōgen as a fruitful dialogical partner for contemporary philosophy.
I Analytic Dōgen Studies
Yasuo DEGUCHI (Kyoto University): Self as Anyone
This talk will explore Dōgen’s ideas on self as well as time, being and reality in terms of analytic philosophy such as trope, formulating it as Self as Anyone.
Naozumi MITANI (Shinshū University): On the Elusiveness of Dōgen’s Ontology
This talk tries to explicate Dōgen’s Ontology that can be found in those chapters of Sōbōgenzō as Gebjōkōan, Busshō and Inmo, as non-monistic process philosophy, consulting philosophical ideas of contemporary philosophers such as W. Sellers and T. Nagel.
Shinya MORIYAMA (Shinshū University): Dōgen on Time and Self: Reflections on Uji
This talk will summarize the main theses of Sōbōgenzō’s Uji chapter as (1) time doesn’t pass, (2) time presupposes self that is to be reduced to everything in the world, and (3) time succeeds with each other without any gap between them. Then it tries to explicate Dōgen’ ideas on time and self that are encapsulated as those enigmatic claims in the light to contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of time.
Naoya FUJIKAWA (Tokyo Metropolitan University): Eloquence of Silence? : A Note on Dōgen on Silence
This talks will try to analyze Dōgen’ ideas on silence as the best way to convey Dharma in terms of contemporary pragmatics such as Gricean framework, mentioning to interpretations by Priest and Casati (forthcoming), Priest’s Fifth Corner of Four, Garfied’s Engaging Buddhism.
Hsun Mei CHENG (Kyoto University/National Taiwan University): The Knowledge of Reality and Reality in Dōgen’s Philosophy
Dōgen’s idea on our knowledge of the ultimate reality will be explored in terms of contemporary philosophical vocabularies such as knowing-that vs. knowing-how (G. Ryle, J. Stanley and T. Williamson), tacit knowledge (M. Planyi) and non-conceptual knowledge (F. Hoffman). Then it will be claimed that Dōgen’s knowledge should be understood as a tacit and non-conceptual knowing-how.
Hayato SAIGŌ (Nagahama Institute of Bio-Science and Technology): Dōgen on Interdependence: Nārgārjuna and Category Theory
Recently Yorizumi (2011) proposed a Saussurian reading of Dōgen’s idea of interdependence, following Toshihiko Izutsu’s interpretation of Buddhistic philosophy, interpretation it as an arbitrary construct of our minds. This talk tries to propose an alternative interpretation on his idea of interdependence in the light of
category theory in contemporary mathematics, focusing on reflexive features of Dōgen’s interpretation.
II Philosophy of Self a là Dōgen
Yasuo DEGUCHI (Kyoto University): Self as We: Toward a Revival of East Asian Holistic Self
This talks tries to argue for a new idea on holistic and somatic self; self as we, being inspired the speaker’s interpretation on Dōgen’s ideas on self; self as anyone.
Shigeru TAGUCHI (Hokkaido University): Self in Superposition: Husserl, Tanabe, and Dōgen
The aim of this talk is to compare Husserl’s concept of Ur-Ich with Tanabe Hajime’s concept of “species” in order to reconsider the basic state of “self” and its primordial relation to other selves. I claim that self is not a substance, but a kind of “mediation.”
Schedule
5 th Oct. 2018 Room 6300
Analytic Dōgen Studies I
10:00 – 11:30 Deguchi
Lunch
13:00 – 14:30 Mitani
14:40 – 16:10 Moriyama
16:20 – 17:50 Fujikawa
Dinner
6th Oct. 2018 Room 7113.XX
Analytic Dōgen Studies II
10:00 – 11:00 Hsun-Mei Cheng
11:00 – 12:00 Hayato Saigo
Lunch
II Philosophy of Self a là Dōgen
13:30 – 15:00 Deguchi
15:10 – 16:40 Taguchi
17:00 – 17:00 Lap Up Discussion
Dinner
The Saul Kripke Center is delighted to announce that Brian Cross Porter (PhD student, CUNY) will give the second talk in our Young Scholars Series, on October 11th, 2pm – 4pm, in room 3207.
The title is “Kripke’s Fixed Point Construction and the V-Curry Paradox.”
The series is an opportunity for graduate students and early career faculty from throughout the CUNY system to present material on philosophy, computer science and linguistics that is connected to Saul’s work.