活動と意味

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that the meaning of a linguistic expression is defined by its role in the human activity, including the bodily movement. This view is opposed to the traditional truth-conditional semantics and the representationalist conceptual role semantics. We therefore start our discussions by summarizing their difficulties. In particular, we point out the lack of adequate theories of reference and inference role. We then present the new approaches to intelligent bahavior, prominent in recent cognitive science and artificial intelligence, to support our claim. They mark a clear departure from the dominant representationalist framework and emphasize the emergence of intelligent behavior from the interaction with the environment. Finally, we show that the problems in the truthconditional and conceptual role semantics can be solved, or at least explained, from this new viewpoint.