Cognitive versus social aspects of pragmatic meaning: on the importance of identifying the subject as an ethical agent

Abstract

<p>Is it possible to reconcile the cognitive and the social aspects of pragmatic meaning? Or could it be that the two are doomed forever to be locked in a perennial tug-of-war? I argue in this paper that the radical versions of both these theses are faulty for the same reason: viz, that of seeking to capture in a handful of deterministic rules everything that takes place at the pragmatic level. Furthermore, I argue that there is an urgent need to look upon the subject of language as a conscientious agent just as much as a person endowed with consciousness. In other words, the ethical question is invariably present in the confrontation between the cognitive and the social.</p>

Keywords

• Pragmatic meaning
• cognitivism
• social aspect
• ethics