Towards a Neutral Semantics (original) (raw)
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1999
The aim of this chapter is to give an introduction to some recent work on the application of game semantics to the study of programming languages. An initial success for game semantics was its use in giving the first syntax-free descriptions of the fully abstract model for the functional programming language PCF [1,16,29]. One goal of semantics is to characterize the "universe of discourse" implicit in a programming language or a logic.
THE SEMANTICS/PRAGMATICS DISTINCTION FROM THE GAME-THEORETIC POINT OF VIEW
I examine the conceptual interplay between semantic and pragmatic aspects of linguistic meaning from the game-theoretic standpoint, and find a negative result: that which is semantic and that which is pragmatic in language cannot be distinguished by rule-governed and structural features of game theory. The difference is whether players entertain epistemic relationships with respect to the solution concepts and strategy profiles in the game-theoretic analysis of linguistic meaning.
Semantic Games in Logic and Epistemology
We introduce the reader to game-theoretic semantics (GTS) and to chart some of its current directions in formal epistemology. GTS was originally developed by Jaakko Hintikka in the 1960s and became one of the main approaches in logical and linguistic semantics. I place games in a wider historical and systematic perspective within the overall development of logic, and explore some of the recent advances.
The philosophical interpretation of language game theory
Journal of Language Evolution, 2021
I give an informal presentation of the evolutionary game theoretic approach to the conventions that constitute linguistic meaning. The aim is to give a philosophical interpretation of the project, which accounts for the role of game theoretic mathematics in explaining linguistic phenomena. I articulate the main virtue of this sort of account, which is its psychological economy, and I point to the casual mechanisms that are the ground of the application of evolutionary game theory to linguistic phenomena. Lastly, I consider the objection that the account cannot explain predication, logic, and compositionality.
The evolution of semantics and language‑games for meaning
Interaction Studies, 2006
To understand evolutionary aspects of communication is to understand the evolutionary development of the meaning relations between language and the world. Such meaning relations are established by the application of the interactive systems of semantic games. Subsumed under the evolutionary framework of repeated games, semantics in such games refers to the cases in which stable meanings survive populations of strategically interacting players. The viability of compositionality, common ground and salience in such evolutionary games is assessed. Foundationally, the discussion is rooted in Charles S. Peirce’s pragmatist philosophy.