Koncepcja pojęć ad hoc jako wytworów interpretacji aktów komunikacyjnych. Analiza krytyczna (The Conception of Ad Hoc Concepts as Products of the Interpretation of Communicative Acts: A Critical Analysis). In: J. Bremer, A. Chuderski (red.), Pojęcia. Jak reprezentujemy i kategoryzujemy świat, Kraków: Universitas 2011, 139-172.

Abstract

This chapter examines the post-Gricean conception of ad hoc concepts as products of the interpretation of communicative acts. The discussion is situated within truth-conditional pragmatics and is motivated by the thesis of linguistic underdeterminacy, according to which knowledge of conventional meaning is insufficient to determine the truth conditions of utterances. I reconstruct the theory of ad hoc concepts as developed primarily within relevance theory, focusing on the idea that pragmatic interpretation involves the context-driven modulation of lexically encoded concepts rather than the mere addition of unarticulated constituents. I then critically assess this approach, paying particular attention to its explanatory scope, its treatment of literal and non-literal meaning, and its reliance on a notion of concept modulation. I argue that taking the theory seriously leads to substantial revisions of standard semantic assumptions and motivates stronger positions, including meaning eliminativism and conceptual nominalism. On these views, words do not encode stable conceptual meanings, and all concepts involved in utterance interpretation are, in an important sense, ad hoc.