Communication in Context
Contextualism, Relativism and Practical Conflicts and Disagreement
(from left) Peter Bosch, Åsa Wikforss, Jussi Haukioja, Sören Häggqvist, Daniel Cohnitz, Robert van Rooij, Peter Pagin, Teresa Marques, James Hampton, Steffen Borge
Communication in Context -- Shared Understanding in a Complex World, (CCCOM), is a new collaborative research project under the Eurocores programme of the European Science Foundation. One of the individual projects of CCCOM is based in Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa, with the LanCog group.
THE GENERAL PROJECT
The project CCCOM investigates the nature and preconditions of communicative success in the complex communicative situation that is the human predicament. The overall objective is to develop a new theory of communicative success, one that explains how communication is possible despite the obstacles posed by the cultural and contextual differences that form the backdrop of human interaction. The main hypothesis is that successful communication requires sufficient overlap in the message communicated (instead of identity). This hypothesis is developed by all of the disciplines involved in the collaborative research project (CRP): semantics, pragmatics, game theory, value theory, cognitive science, socio-linguistics, experimental philosophy and psychology. Three central themes provide focal points for the CRP and tie together its theoretical and experimental aspects: Communicative success, Context and Coordination ('CCC'). (i) A main goal is to develop a theory of communicative success, both with respect to the level of semantic content and with respect to the full pragmatic information. Theoretical groundwork is done in order to spell out the overlap thesis properly and experiments on speakers' categorization dispositions and on their use of referential expressions and natural kind terms are carried out. (ii) Language is rife with context dependent expressions and much pragmatic information is dependent on contextual features of the utterance situation. The CRP aims to account for the role of context and explain how communication succeeds despite the fact that the communicating subjects often do not share exactly the same context. (iii) Language is a conventional way to solve recurrent coordination problems, and as such serves a common interest. But language is also used when interests are in conflict, in which case there is often lying and deception. The CRP examines how linguistic practices remain stable despite non-cooperative behavior of this sort. A theory of value conflicts is also developed and applied to central cases.
Project Partners
- Communication in Context (Stockholm), Åsa Wikforss, Peter Pagin, Sören Häggqvist
- Words in Worlds (Trondheim/Turku), Jussi Haukioja
- Contextualism, Relativism and Practical Conflicts and Disagreements (Lisbon), Teresa Marques, Luís Duarte D'Almeida
- Communication and the possibility of deceit, a game theoretical analysis (Amsterdam), Robert van Rooij
- The Comprehension of Referential Expressions and its Impact on Communication (Osnabrück), Peter Bosch
- Social Categories Considered from Different Points of View (London), James Hampton
- Game Theoretical Linguistics (Tübingen), Gerhard Jäger
- Verbal Disputes and Reference (Tartu), Daniel Cohnitz
THE PROJECT IN LISBON
Contextualism, Relativism and Practical Conflicts and Disagreements
Reference: EuroUnders/0001/2010
Starting Date: July 2011
Duration of Project: 3 years
PI: Teresa Marques
Other project members:
Luís Duarte D'Almeida. Luis's Academia page.
From February 2012:
Fiora Salis. Fiora's LanCog page.
Bruno Jacinto. Bruno's Arché page.
José Mestre. Zé's LanCog page.
From June 2012:
Andreas Stokke. Andreas's personal webpage.
Project description
In the social sciences, cultural multiplicity has been taken as evidence for cultural relativism: the thesis that customs, aesthetic trends and values, and morality are relative to given cultural systems, systems that vary along time and from place to place, and in some cases, between social groups and even individuals. The plausibility of relativism acquires further support from the realization that it is implausible that there are objective truths about what is right or wrong, good or bad, either in morality, aesthetics or matters of taste, that are independent of there being humans who make judgements in such domains.
The coherence of relativism has been disputed by philosophers (starting with Plato), but even if relativism does not succumb to such attacks, some questions require an answer, namely:
(I) How do we explain the apparent existence of, for instance, moral progress?
(II) How are the notions of agreement and disagreement in these domains to be explained?
Recent proposals generalize semantic frameworks with centred propositions (propositions true not just at a world, but also at a centre: a time, or place, individual) to explain the perspectival nature of some areas of discourse. This project aims to offer an adequate account of the crucial notions of doxastic and practical disagreement in those problematic areas. A secondary aim is to apply the notion of practical disagreement, to be developed while the project runs, to some issues in the philosophy of law, focusing on sex- and gender based conflicts and discrimination, and developing an account of the notion of the grounds or basis of discrimination.
We believe there are essentially two types of agreement/disagreement (and retraction). Huw Price (2003) draws attention to the importance of “a fundamental practice of expression of attitudes of approval and disapproval, in response to perceptions of agreement and disagreement between expressed commitments.” (p. 180). Attitudes of approval or disapproval focus not only on the truth of given (context‑dependent or otherwise) contents conveyed, but also on other attitudes, choices and possible courses of action. The first type of attitudes correspond to standard doxastic agreements or disagreements over content. At the initial stage of this project, we will partly draw on the research results from our collaborative partners on communicative success and context-dependence. Disagreement over content does depend on the context-dependence of content, and requires a good measure of communicative success for there to be genuine disagreement, rather than misunderstanding between speakers. We believe, however, that doxastic disagreement does not account for patent conflicts and disputes between subjects with different social or cultural backgrounds, or simply with different perspectives on given issues. This depends on the second form of attitudes of approval and disapproval, attitudes that focus on other attitudes and possible courses of action, and it constitutes practical disagreement.
We aim to develop an explanation of practical disagreement that can fit with conflicts in areas like morality or aesthetics. Our hypothesis is that the notion of practical agreement or disagreement concerns people’s dispositions to coordinate or not their conduct towards a given goal. The alternative notion of practical disagreement we are contemplating accounts for the inclination for disapproval, not of the truth of a proposition (at someone else’s context), but for the disapproval of someone’s attitudes and conduct, their preferences, tastes, etc.
The idea of treating practical disagreement/agreement in these terms is inspired by Lewis’s 1969 Convention, and thereby by David Hume (A Treatise of Human Nature III.ii.2, p. 490), on convention and agreement. For Lewis, conventions are solutions to coordination problems. Agreements, likewise, can be seen as a kind of solution to coordination problems. Again, we will partly rely on the results of our collaborative research partners on coordination and cooperation.
The launch meeting of the EuroUnderstanding CRP projects took place from 14 to 16 October 2011, http://www.esf.org/activities/eurocores/running-programmes/eurounderstanding/events/launch-meeting.html
NEWS
CFP: Special Issue of Erkenntnis on “Disagreements”
People agree and disagree about a lot of things: what happens around them, what to do, about matters of taste, and, more generally, about world views, values, policies, theories, philosophies, etc. Some disagreements appear to be “faultless” — no party in such a dispute needs to be mistaken. Other disagreements, seem to be “merely verbal”, and perhaps no real disagreements at all. In both cases, philosophers have argued that this diagnosis should lead to deflationism about the subject-matter of the initial (apparent) disagreement. If disagreements about a certain subject matter are faultless, then there are no objective truths about that subject matter; if disagreements about a certain subject matter are merely verbal, then they concern a pseudo-problem. Still some other disagreements seem to involve less what people explicitly believe or think about something than their dispositions to act towards a given goal. This special issue of Erkenntnis is devoted to the varieties of disagreement that arise in different areas of discourse.
The special issue is edited by Teresa Marques (Lisbon) and Daniel Cohnitz (Tartu).
Papers should be emailed to mariateresamarques @ campus.ul.pt or cohnitz @ ut.ee no later than
April 1st, 2012.
Submissions must be in English and conform to the submission standards of Erkenntnis (please consult the “instructions for authors” here: http://www.springer.com/philosophy/journal/10670#)
All submissions must be prepared for blind review.
WORKSHOP COORDINATION AND DISAGREEMENT ACROSS PERSPECTIVES, University of Lisbon, 10-12 September 2012. Info here.
Networking activity under the EUROCORES EuroUnderstanding programme of the ESF.
The problem of coordination (and lack thereof) across perspectives manifests itself in many guises: in communication, lying and misleading, in agreements and disagreements, in shared worlds and group actions, and in competition.
This networking event brings together researchers from three collaborative research projects (CCCOM, DRUST and NormCon) within the EUROCORES EuroUnderstanding Programme.
The workshop will be organized by the LanCog Group of the Philosophy Centre of the University of Lisbon.
It will be integrated with a graduate workshop (OFA8), locally organized by early career researchers. There will be 6 slots for graduate students, or researchers who have obtained their PhDs within the last 2 years, to present their work. A call for abstracts will soon be announced.
CFP: First PERSP Legal Philosophy WorkshopTopic: Perspectival Legal DiscourseFaculty of Law, University of Cambridge
July 5th and 6th, 2012
The organisers invite submissions for an international workshop on ‘Perspectival Legal Discourse’. The workshop will take place in Cambridge on July 5th and 6th, 2012.
Is legal discourse perspectival? Does the sincere utterance of statements of law hinge on the adoption of any particular point of view? Do we appeal to a distinctively legal viewpoint when we speak of our legal duties, rights, or powers? More generally, is the truth (or even the truth-value) of propositions of law dependent on any characteristic perspective, presupposition, fiction, or standpoint?
These have been important questions in legal theory and philosophy of law at least since HLA Hart’s 1961 The Concept of Law. Hart’s views on such issues were subject to much exegetical and critical scrutiny over the past decades, as were Hans Kelsen’s or Joseph Raz’s. This workshop aims to move the debate further by discussing original papers that directly tackle the general topic of perspectival legal discourse in any of its aspects.
Detailed abstracts (around 800 words) prepared for blind review should be submitted to perspworkshop@gmail.com until April 30th, 2012. Six to eight papers will be selected for presentation, and authors will be notified of decisions by May 11th, 2012. Drafts of the selected papers, to be circulated in advance among all the participants, are to be submitted by June 22th, 2012.
Accommodation (3 nights) and meals will be provided for accepted speakers. Very limited funding is also available to help fund speakers’ travel expenses; preference will be given to junior scholars. Candidate speakers who wish to be considered for this support should declare so (and briefly state their reasons) at the moment of submitting their abstracts.
This workshop is sponsored by:
The Consolider-Ingenio PERSP Project (WPS3)
The Cambridge Forum for Legal and Political Philosophy
The CCCOM (Communication in Context) Project
Organised by: Jordi Ferrer (Girona), José Juan Moreso (Barcelona), Luís Duarte d’Almeida (Girona and Cambridge), and Matthew H. Kramer (Cambridge)
For more information please contact:
perspworkshop@gmail.com
Papers & Talks & Events
- Luís Duarte D'Almeida, ‘Legal Statements and Normative Language’ (2011) 30 Law and Philosophy 167
- Teresa Marques. 'Doxastic Disagreement', II Logos-LanCog Workshop, Barcelona, October 2011.
- Teresa Marques. "Doxastic Disagreement", Disagreements Workshop, University of Tartu, Estonia. August 28 2011.
- Workshop "Disagreements", Tartu, August 28 2011.
- Teresa Marques & Manuel García-Carpintero. "The Presuppositional Account of Disagreement Data". Meaning, Context and Implicit Data Conference, Cerisy-La-Salle, France. May 31-June 7 2011.
- Teresa Marques. "Content Disagreement". Relativism and Disagreement Workshop, COGITO Research Center, University of Bologna, Italy, 20-21 May 2011.
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