Compositionality and Concepts—A Perspective from Formal Semantics and Philosophy of Language

It’s no secret that different of the subfields in cognitive science dispute what the correct solution is to various problems that they each investigate in their separate ways. Sometimes this is due to differing antecedent ideas about what is the appropriate way to investigate the phenomenon, other times it is due to differing antecedent ideas about what principles an adequate solution should embody, and still other times it is due to differing antecedent ideas concerning what the dispute is about...as for example when they use the same terminology for different phenomena. This paper is an investigation into these differing antecedent ideas in the realm of meaning and compositionality as they play out in linguistics, cognitive psychology, and philosophy of language. The focus is on the notions of subjective meaning and objective meaning, and a main conclusion is that there needs be a “two-factor semantic theory” to accommodate the overall goals of both sides. Some steps are made towards that end, but various previous attempts are argued to have missed the point. In the end it will be shown that, clearly, more work needs to be done along a number of specified dimensions, especially on the subjective side of the dispute.