Asoulin Eran. Language and scientific explanation: Where does semantics fit in?

Berlin: Language Science Press, 2020. — viii, 82 p. — (Conceptual Foundations of Language Science 5). — ISBN 978-3-96110-263-1.This book discusses the two main construals of the explanatory goals of semantic theories. The first, externalist conception, understands semantic theories in terms of a hermeneutic and interpretive explanatory project. The second, internalist conception, understands semantic theories in terms of the psychological mechanisms in virtue of which meanings are generated. It is argued that a fruitful scientific explanation is one that aims to uncover the underlying mechanisms in virtue of which the observable phenomena are made possible, and that a scientific semantics should be doing just that. If this is the case, then a scientific semantics is unlikely to be externalist, for reasons having to do with the subject matter and form of externalist theories. It is argued that semantics construed hermeneutically is nevertheless a valuable explanatory project.Acknowledgments.

Clarifications and methodological preliminaries.
Internalism.
E-language and I-language.
Internalist semantics.
What about mind-world relations?
Externalism.
The subject matter of externalism.
Externalism as a hermeneutic explanatory project.
The science of semantics: Aims, methods, and aspirations.
The nature of scientific explanations.
Externalism and scientific explanations.
References.
Index.
Name Index.