Inferential role semantics (also conceptual role semantics, functional role semantics, procedural semantics, semantic inferentialism) is an approach to the theory of meaning that identifies the meaning of an expression with its relationship to other expressions (typically its
inferential relations with other expressions), in contradistinction to denotationalism, according to which
denotation
In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of an expression is its literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of being warm. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning including connotation. For insta ...
s are the primary sort of meaning.
Overview
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends ...
is considered an early proponent of what is now called inferentialism.
[P. Stekeler-Weithofer (2016)]
"Hegel's Analytic Pragmatism"
University of Leipzig, pp. 122–4. He believed that the ground for the axioms and the foundation for the validity of the inferences are the right consequences and that the axioms do not explain the consequence.
[
In its current form, inferential role semantics originated in the work of Wilfrid Sellars.
Contemporary proponents of semantic inferentialism include Robert Brandom, Gilbert Harman, Paul Horwich, Ned Block, and Luca Incurvati.
Jerry Fodor coined the term "inferential role semantics" in order to criticise it as a holistic (i.e. essentially non-compositional) approach to the theory of meaning. Inferential role semantics is sometimes contrasted to ]truth-conditional semantics Truth-conditional semantics is an approach to semantics of natural language that sees meaning (or at least the meaning of assertions) as being the same as, or reducible to, their truth conditions. This approach to semantics is principally associate ...
.
Semantic inferentialism is related to logical expressivism and semantic anti-realism.[ R. Ramanujam, Sundar Sarukkai (eds.), ''Logic and Its Applications'', Springer, 2009, p. 260.] The approach also bears a resemblance to accounts of proof-theoretic semantics in the semantics of logic, which associate meaning with the reasoning process.
References
External links
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Theories of deduction
Theories of language
Semantics
Philosophy of language
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