Foundational problems for attentive content

The essay can be divided in two parts, each dedicated to each of the problems mentioned above. I begin by introducing inquisitive semantics, doing so by inserting it on what I dub ‘Weak Dynamic Approaches’ to meaning, focusing on what is specific on the inquisitive approach. The notions of informative and inquisitive content will be introduced, as the recursive definition of a proposition. I proceed to introduce attentive content, showing how a natural modification to the definition of a proposition allows for a treatment of attentiveness. Afterwards, the extension of the semantics to attentive content is put on the background of the semantics’ weak dynamic approach to meaning. I will argue that speech-acts of drawing attention should be understood as having as their primary aim to affect the shared epistemic state of the participants in a conversation in a particular way, and that this constitutes a departure from the mainstream inquisitive framework where the relevant speech-acts aim at affecting the common ground, which is but one part of the shared epistemic state. An account of how a shared epistemic state should be represented will thus be provided, and of how it gets updated by the performance of speech-acts. In the last section of the first part of the essay I will argue that the background provides the tools for the rejection of Seth Yalcin’s claim to the effect that the explanation for epistemic contradictions is not pragmatic, but semantic. This will provide an example of how the theoretical background being proposed has ‘philosophical bite’.