The yummy and the yucky: Expressive language and the agreeable

Zangwill, Nick

Abstract

I probe the judgments of the agreeable that we make about food and drink. I ?rst separate different concerns that we might have with food and drink. After that, I address expressive language by ?rst sketching an evolutionary language-game-theoretic approach for referential language. I then try to extend it to expressive language, showing how expressive signaling might be likely to evolve. Given an account of expressive prediction, and its point, I turn to the Frege-Geach problem for the agreeable. I show how a proper understanding of what expression is, in the evolutionary language-game-theoretic framework, allows us to side-step a central aspect the problem.

Citation

Zangwill, N. (2018). The yummy and the yucky: Expressive language and the agreeable. The Monist, 101(3), 294–308. https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/ony007

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 22, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Jun 8, 2018
• Publication Date: 2018-07
• Deposit Date: Jan 24, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 9, 2020
• Print ISSN: 0026-9662
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 101
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 294–308
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/ony007
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/555179
• Publisher URL: https://academic.oup.com/monist/article/101/3/294/5034668