METASEMANTICS WORKSHOP AT BERKELEY

This past weekend, 40 some philosophers of language (including SCLP visitors past Sam Cumming, John Macfarlane, and workshop organizer Seth Yalcin) descended on UCB’s Moses Hall for a spirited discussion on some of the foundational issues in the semantics of natural language at the Metasemantics workshop. Issues discussed included the division between semantics and pragmatics, the relationship between natural language content and the content of cognitive states, and the roles of convention and rule-following in natural language productivity. Our very own Amy Rose Deal delivered a talk on the degree to which various languages are expressively equivalent, given their differing semantic resources. In addition to Amy Rose, scattered among the philosophers were a number of card-carrying linguists: Pranav Anand, Ryan Bochnak, Peter Jenks, and alumna Line Mikkelsen.