Sascia Pavan - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Sascia Pavan

RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA, 2009

- This article is an exposition of W.V. Quine's doctrine of the indeterminacy of tran... more - This article is an exposition of W.V. Quine's doctrine of the indeterminacy of translation of terms. The aim is to provide a clear formulation of this doctrine, to distinguish it from the much stronger claim that the translation of sentences is indeterminate, and to outline the arguments put forward by Quine. The most systematic of these is reconstructed in detail, namely the argument from proxy functions. Finally, it is argued that the ultimate ground of the doctrine is the acceptance of the semantic primacy of sentences. The claim that meaning has to be identified with language use is also discussed.

Linguistics and Philosophy, 2014

Linguistics and Philosophy, 2013

The aim of this paper is to pursue the line of research initiated by Prashant Parikh which gives ... more The aim of this paper is to pursue the line of research initiated by Prashant Parikh which gives content and rigour to the intuitive idea that speaking a language is a rational activity. He employs the most promising tool to that end, namely game theory. I consider one of his examples as a sample case, and the model I build is a slight modification of the one developed by him. I argue that my account has some advantage, yet many of the key ideas employed are left unchanged. I analyse this model in detail, describing some of its formal features. I conclude raising a problem that has not been tackled before, sketching a plausible solution. 1.

The aim of this paper is to pursue the line of research initiated by Prashant Parikh which gives ... more The aim of this paper is to pursue the line of research initiated by Prashant Parikh which gives content and rigour to the intuitive idea that speaking a language is a rational activity. He employs the most promising tool to that end, namely game theory. I consider one of his examples as a sample case, and the model I build is a slight modification of that developed by him. I argue that my account has some advantage, yet many of the key ideas employed are left unchanged. I analyse this model in detail, describing some of its formal features. I conclude raising a problem that has not been analysed yet, sketching a plausible solution.

The aim of this paper is to pursue the line of research initiated by Prashant Parikh which gives ... more The aim of this paper is to pursue the line of research initiated by Prashant Parikh which gives content and rigour to the intuitive idea that speaking a language is a rational activity. He employs the most promising tool to that end, namely game theory. I consider one of his examples ...

Linguistics and Philosophy

Iterated admissibility can explain scalar implicatures in game-theoretic pragmatics. A generalisa... more Iterated admissibility can explain scalar implicatures in game-theoretic pragmatics. A generalisation of this claim is proposed, to the effect that forward induction is the most appropriate solution concept in pragmatics. The intuitive criterion can explain half of Horn’s division of pragmatic labor, while the other half is presumably due to the focal point effect. It is argued that the present account is superior to theories based on iterated best response in terms of conservatism and generality.

Linguistics and Philosophy, 2013

""Paul Grice has given an account of conversational implicatures that hinges on the hypothesis th... more ""Paul Grice has given an account of conversational implicatures that hinges on the hypothesis that communication is a cooperative activity performed by rational agents which pursue a common goal. The attempt to derive Grice's principles from game theory is a natural step, since its aim is to predict the behaviour of rational agents in situations where the outcome of one agent's choice depends also on the choices of others. Generalised conversational implicatures, and in particular scalar ones, offer an ideal test bed for this working hypothesis, since with this kind of implicatures the alternative choices available to the agents are less dependent on context, and they can be derived from the meanings of the sentences employed.

Some rival game-theoretic accounts of the same phenomena will be criticised. The present paper shows that scalar implicatures can be explained using iterated admissibility, but that some of these need an additional assumption in order to be accounted for.""

Erkenntnis, 2010

In the first exposition of the doctrine of indeterminacy of translation, Quine asserted that the ... more In the first exposition of the doctrine of indeterminacy of translation, Quine asserted that the individuation and translation of truth-functional sentential connectives like 'and', 'or', 'not' are not indeterminate. He changed his mind later on, conjecturing that some sentential connectives might be interpreted in different non-equivalent ways. This issue has not been debated much by Quine, or in the subsequent literature, it is, as it were, an unsolved problem, not well understood. For the sake of the argument, I will adopt Quine's background assumption that all the semantic features of a language can be reduced to the speakers' dispositions toward assent and dissent, as far as only the truth-conditional core of the meaning of sentences is concerned. I will put forward an argument to the effect that the speech dispositions of most, if not all, English (French, Italian, etc.) speakers constrain a unique translation of their connectives. This argument crucially relies on an empirical conjecture concerning the behaviour of these operators.

Conversazioni sul postmoderno, 2013

Talks by Sascia Pavan

In this talk I shall propose a game-theoretic account of quantity implicatures which models a con... more In this talk I shall propose a game-theoretic account of quantity implicatures which models a conversation as a signalling game. It is shown that methods usually employed for signalling games in the literature are effective solution concepts in this case. Attention will be focused on iterated admissibility (a.k.a. iterated weak dominance, see Fudenberg and Tirole 1991) and elimination of type-message pairs by dominance (Cho and Kreps 1987). In some cases, this approach will presuppose an additional assumption which will be defended providing some independent empirical evidence. Some rival game-theoretic accounts of the same phenomena will be criticised. It will be argued that the theories of Prashant Parikh (1992, 2001) and Gerhard Jäger (2011) lead to incorrect empirical predictions, while Robert van Rooij's theory (2008) will be criticised from a more abstract perspective. Finally, a possible improvement of the present account will be briefly explored, namely the employment of the much stronger notion of strategic stability (Kohlberg and Mertens 1986).

RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA, 2009

- This article is an exposition of W.V. Quine's doctrine of the indeterminacy of tran... more - This article is an exposition of W.V. Quine's doctrine of the indeterminacy of translation of terms. The aim is to provide a clear formulation of this doctrine, to distinguish it from the much stronger claim that the translation of sentences is indeterminate, and to outline the arguments put forward by Quine. The most systematic of these is reconstructed in detail, namely the argument from proxy functions. Finally, it is argued that the ultimate ground of the doctrine is the acceptance of the semantic primacy of sentences. The claim that meaning has to be identified with language use is also discussed.

Linguistics and Philosophy, 2014

Linguistics and Philosophy, 2013

The aim of this paper is to pursue the line of research initiated by Prashant Parikh which gives ... more The aim of this paper is to pursue the line of research initiated by Prashant Parikh which gives content and rigour to the intuitive idea that speaking a language is a rational activity. He employs the most promising tool to that end, namely game theory. I consider one of his examples as a sample case, and the model I build is a slight modification of the one developed by him. I argue that my account has some advantage, yet many of the key ideas employed are left unchanged. I analyse this model in detail, describing some of its formal features. I conclude raising a problem that has not been tackled before, sketching a plausible solution. 1.

The aim of this paper is to pursue the line of research initiated by Prashant Parikh which gives ... more The aim of this paper is to pursue the line of research initiated by Prashant Parikh which gives content and rigour to the intuitive idea that speaking a language is a rational activity. He employs the most promising tool to that end, namely game theory. I consider one of his examples as a sample case, and the model I build is a slight modification of that developed by him. I argue that my account has some advantage, yet many of the key ideas employed are left unchanged. I analyse this model in detail, describing some of its formal features. I conclude raising a problem that has not been analysed yet, sketching a plausible solution.

The aim of this paper is to pursue the line of research initiated by Prashant Parikh which gives ... more The aim of this paper is to pursue the line of research initiated by Prashant Parikh which gives content and rigour to the intuitive idea that speaking a language is a rational activity. He employs the most promising tool to that end, namely game theory. I consider one of his examples ...

Linguistics and Philosophy

Iterated admissibility can explain scalar implicatures in game-theoretic pragmatics. A generalisa... more Iterated admissibility can explain scalar implicatures in game-theoretic pragmatics. A generalisation of this claim is proposed, to the effect that forward induction is the most appropriate solution concept in pragmatics. The intuitive criterion can explain half of Horn’s division of pragmatic labor, while the other half is presumably due to the focal point effect. It is argued that the present account is superior to theories based on iterated best response in terms of conservatism and generality.

Linguistics and Philosophy, 2013

""Paul Grice has given an account of conversational implicatures that hinges on the hypothesis th... more ""Paul Grice has given an account of conversational implicatures that hinges on the hypothesis that communication is a cooperative activity performed by rational agents which pursue a common goal. The attempt to derive Grice's principles from game theory is a natural step, since its aim is to predict the behaviour of rational agents in situations where the outcome of one agent's choice depends also on the choices of others. Generalised conversational implicatures, and in particular scalar ones, offer an ideal test bed for this working hypothesis, since with this kind of implicatures the alternative choices available to the agents are less dependent on context, and they can be derived from the meanings of the sentences employed.

Some rival game-theoretic accounts of the same phenomena will be criticised. The present paper shows that scalar implicatures can be explained using iterated admissibility, but that some of these need an additional assumption in order to be accounted for.""

Erkenntnis, 2010

In the first exposition of the doctrine of indeterminacy of translation, Quine asserted that the ... more In the first exposition of the doctrine of indeterminacy of translation, Quine asserted that the individuation and translation of truth-functional sentential connectives like 'and', 'or', 'not' are not indeterminate. He changed his mind later on, conjecturing that some sentential connectives might be interpreted in different non-equivalent ways. This issue has not been debated much by Quine, or in the subsequent literature, it is, as it were, an unsolved problem, not well understood. For the sake of the argument, I will adopt Quine's background assumption that all the semantic features of a language can be reduced to the speakers' dispositions toward assent and dissent, as far as only the truth-conditional core of the meaning of sentences is concerned. I will put forward an argument to the effect that the speech dispositions of most, if not all, English (French, Italian, etc.) speakers constrain a unique translation of their connectives. This argument crucially relies on an empirical conjecture concerning the behaviour of these operators.

Conversazioni sul postmoderno, 2013

In this talk I shall propose a game-theoretic account of quantity implicatures which models a con... more In this talk I shall propose a game-theoretic account of quantity implicatures which models a conversation as a signalling game. It is shown that methods usually employed for signalling games in the literature are effective solution concepts in this case. Attention will be focused on iterated admissibility (a.k.a. iterated weak dominance, see Fudenberg and Tirole 1991) and elimination of type-message pairs by dominance (Cho and Kreps 1987). In some cases, this approach will presuppose an additional assumption which will be defended providing some independent empirical evidence. Some rival game-theoretic accounts of the same phenomena will be criticised. It will be argued that the theories of Prashant Parikh (1992, 2001) and Gerhard Jäger (2011) lead to incorrect empirical predictions, while Robert van Rooij's theory (2008) will be criticised from a more abstract perspective. Finally, a possible improvement of the present account will be briefly explored, namely the employment of the much stronger notion of strategic stability (Kohlberg and Mertens 1986).

Skepsis. La filosofia come ricerca. Vol. 3B