Open Compositionality: Toward a New Methodology of Language

Abstract

This book is a defense of the view thatnatural languages, like English and Spanish, are not only systems ofrepresentation useful for communication but also, and most importantly, highlyinteractive cognitive capacities allowing humans to engage in complex forms ofcognition. This view goes against the orthodoxy in philosophy of language,which considers natural languages to be specialized systems consisting of onlylinguistic elements and functioning in a closed compositional manner, allowingfor a fully formal, algebraic descriptions. The longstanding principle ofcompositionality, according to which the meaning of any complex expression isfully determined by its parts and the way they are combined, is rejected andsubstituted by an alternative, open and interactive one. After presenting adetailed account of the orthodox view and its endorsement of the principle ofcompositionality, Garcia-Ramirez presents an elaborate empirical argumentagainst it, showing that its empirical commitments all fail to obtain. Tobetter account for the evidence a novel view of the nature of language,including a new conception of semantics, is offered. Natural languages areconceived as supermodular cognitive capacities allowing for interaction amongmultiple distinct areas of human cognition. From this perspective, as thetheory of meaning, semantics becomes an account of the decision-making processby means of which competent speakers determine the most appropriate andeconomical interpretation of a given expression. To do so speakers make use offast and frugal heuristic strategies, as well as traditional compositionalprocedures. This is the view of "opencompositionality", which is accompanied by the cognition first methodology. Given the complex and interactivenature of language, the methodology advises to get a clear understanding of theunderlying cognitive processes before attempting to account for any problematiclinguistic phenomenon. The explanatory success of this novel proposal and itsaccompanying methodology are tested by the author's attempt to offer an accountof three enduring philosophical problems: substitution failure, empty names,and the nature of moral discourse.