[PLing] Invited talk at the WFAP: Friday, JUNE 22, 5 pm

[Dan Cristian Zeman]

Dear all,

This is to announce that on Friday, June 22 at 5 pm in room 3E of the 
NIG there will be an invited talk by Andrea Onofri (University of Graz) 
at the Wiener Forum für Analytische Philosophie. Here's the title and 
abstract of Andrea's talk:

Title: Communication and Similarity
Abstract: According to a widely endorsed picture of communication, a 
hearer understands an utterance just in case the content of the belief 
she forms as a result of that utterance is sufficiently similar to the 
content of the belief expressed by the speaker. I will argue that this 
picture is incorrect. Focusing on singular terms, and more specifically 
on indexicals, I will show that the similarity approach faces a dilemma: 
it either makes the conditions for understanding too loose, thus 
predicting understanding in cases where the hearer has not understood, 
or it makes them too strict, predicting failure of understanding in 
cases where the hearer has understood. To see why the dilemma arises I 
will present a pair of new cases based on famous thought experiments by 
Loar and Richard.  Having rejected the similarity approach, I will 
conclude by briefly sketching an alternative model of communication.

All welcome!

Best,

-- 
Dan Cristian Zeman, PhD
Lise Meitner Senior Postdoctoral Researcher

University of Vienna
Department of Philosophy
Universitätsstraße 7
1010 Wien
Room: A0322
dan.zeman at univie.ac.at
http://danzeman.weebly.com