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  1. Let ‘Let n be such an x’ Be: A Reply to Meléndez Gutiérrez.Tristan Grøtvedt Haze - forthcoming - Philosophia:1-6.
    I defend Haze’s argument against the Breckenridge-Magidor theory of instantial reasoning from an objection by Meléndez Gutiérrez. According to Breckenridge and Magidor, in reasoning like ‘Some x is mortal. Let n be such an x…’, the ‘n’ refers to a particular object but we cannot know which. This surprisingly defensible view poses an obvious threat to widespread notions in the philosophy of language. Haze argues that the theory leads to absurdity in cases like ‘Some x is unreferred-to by any expression. (...)
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  2. Truth and imprecision.Josh Armstrong - 2024 - Analytic Philosophy 65 (3):309-332.
    Our ordinary assertions are often imprecise, insofar as the way we represent things as being only approximates how things are in the actual world. The phenomenon of assertoric imprecision raises a challenge to standard accounts of both the norm of assertion and the connection between semantics and the objects of assertion. After clarifying these problems in detail, I develop a framework for resolving them. Specifically, I argue that the phenomenon of assertoric imprecision motivates a rejection of the widely held belief (...)
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  3. Nominalism and the Infinite Knowledge It Implies.Beppe Brivec - manuscript
    Being able to apply grue-like predicates would allow one to instantly solve an infinite number of mysteries (historical, scientific, etc.). In this paper I’ll give a couple of examples. It is still a mystery whether George Mallory and Andrew Irvine managed to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1924. The predicate “greverest” applies to an object if either the object is green and Mount Everest was scaled in 1924, or the object is not green and Mount Everest was not (...)
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  4. Processing adjunct control: Evidence on the use of structural information and prediction in reference resolution.Jeffrey J. Green, Michael McCourt, Ellen Lau & Alexander Williams - 2020 - Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 5 (1):1-33.
    The comprehension of anaphoric relations may be guided not only by discourse, but also syntactic information. In the literature on online processing, however, the focus has been on audible pronouns and descriptions whose reference is resolved mainly on the former. This paper examines one relation that both lacks overt exponence, and relies almost exclusively on syntax for its resolution: adjunct control, or the dependency between the null subject of a non-finite adjunct and its antecedent in sentences such as Mickey talked (...)
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  5. Linguistic Luck beyond Loar Cases.Axel Barceló - manuscript
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  6. (1 other version)Who Is Afraid of Truth Gaps? Wittgenstein and Kripke on the Standard Meter.Jakub Mácha - 2023 - In Martin Gustafsson, Oskari Kuusela & Jakub Mácha (eds.), Engaging Kripke with Wittgenstein: The Standard Meter, Contingent Apriori, and Beyond. New York: Routledge. pp. 127-140.
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  7. Conant, James and Chakraborty, Sanjit (eds.), Engaging Putnam. Berlin: De Gruyter 2022, pp. viii + 372. [REVIEW]Pietro Salis - 2023 - Argumenta (17):217-222.
    Review of the book "Engaging Putnam".
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  8. Apulian Qualitative Binominal Noun Phrases.Angelapia Massaro - 2023 - Italian Journal of Linguistics 35.
    We investigate the morphosyntax of qualitative binominal constructions (QBCs) in a Southern Italo-Romance language from the Apulian town of San Marco in Lamis. QBCs are complex noun phrases like ‘a jewelN1 of a villageN2’, appearing here prepositionally (with the preposition də, ‘of’, allowing definites, indefinites, and demonstratives) and non-prepositionally (only allowing definites with definite articles and not proper names). We propose that in the latter, a categorial match in the determiner layer, which we call ‘match D’, relates N1 and N2. (...)
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  9. Is Dickie's Account of Aboutness‐Fixing Explanatory?Jessica Pepp - 2020 - Theoria 86 (6):801-820.
    Imogen Dickie's book Fixing Reference promises to reframe the investigation of mental intentionality, or what makes thoughts be about particular things. Dickie focuses on beliefs, and argues that if we can show how our ordinary means of belief formation sustain a certain connection between what our beliefs are about and how they are justified, we will have explained the ability of these ordinary means of belief formation to generate beliefs that are about particular objects. A worry about Dickie's approach is (...)
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  10. Arbitrary reference, numbers, and propositions.Michele Palmira - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 26 (3):1069-1085.
    Reductionist realist accounts of certain entities, such as the natural numbers and propositions, have been taken to be fatally undermined by what we may call the problem of arbitrary identification. The problem is that there are multiple and equally adequate reductions of the natural numbers to sets (see Benacerraf, 1965), as well as of propositions to unstructured or structured entities (see, e.g., Bealer, 1998; King, Soames, & Speaks, 2014; Melia, 1992). This paper sets out to solve the problem by canvassing (...)
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  11. Sainsbury on Thinking about an Object.Tim Crane - 2008 - Critica 40 (120):85-95.
    R.M. Sainsbury's account of reference has many compelling and attractive features. But it has the undesirable consequence that sentences of the form "x is thinking about y" can never be true when y is replaced by a non-referring term. Of the two obvious ways to deal with this problem within Sainsbury's framework, I reject one and endorse the other. This endorsement is also within the spirit of Sainsbury's account of reference. /// La explicación que ofrece R.M. Sainsbury de la referencia (...)
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  12. Ontological Commitments, Thick and Thin.Harold T. Hodes - 1990 - In George Boolos (ed.), Method, Reason and Language: Essays in Honor of Hilary Putnam. Cambridge University Press. pp. 235-260.
    Discourse carries thin commitment to objects of a certain sort iff it says or implies that there are such objects. It carries a thick commitment to such objects iff an account of what determines truth-values for its sentences say or implies that there are such objects. This paper presents two model-theoretic semantics for mathematical discourse, one reflecting thick commitment to mathematical objects, the other reflecting only a thin commitment to them. According to the latter view, for example, the semantic role (...)
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  13. Inostensible Reference and Conceptual Curiosity.Ilhan Inan - 2010 - Croatian Journal of Philosophy 10 (1):21-41.
    A lot has been said about how the notion of reference relates to the notion of knowledge; not much has been said, however, on how the notion of referencerelates to our ability to become aware of what we do not know that allows us to be curious. In this essay I attempt to spell out a certain type of reference I call ‘inostensible’ that I claim to be a fundamental linguistic tool which allows us to become curious of what we (...)
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  14. Identificational Sentences.Friederike Moltmann - 2013 - Natural Language Semantics 21 (1):43-77.
    Based on the notion of a trope, this paper gives a novel analysis of identificational sentences such as 'this is Mary','this is a beautiful woman', 'this looks like Mary', or 'this is the same lump of clay, but not the same statue as that'.
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  15. The tao of metaphysics.Philipp Keller & Elena Cassetta - 2008 - Swiss Philosophical Preprints.
    We present a unified diagnosis of three well-known puzzles about proper names, based on a new view of the metaphysics of words and proper names in particular adumbrated by David Kaplan in “Words”. While our solution comes at some metaphysical price, we think it is worth being considered a serious contender and may illustrate the promise of taking more seriously the metaphysical foundations of our semantic theories.
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  16. Specificity, automatic designation, and 'I'.Varol Akman & Aylin Koca - 2003 - Direct Reference and Specificity Workshop, 15th European Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information (ESSLLI 2003), Vienna, Austria.
    This paper studies the context-dependence of the first-person indexical 'I,' while attempting to make the identifiability criteria for specificity and definiteness clearer for this important indexical. Having been influenced by John Perry's work on indexicals, we'll show that this (seemingly) clearest case of an indexical poses a difficulty.
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  17. L'autoriferimento si spiega da sé.Achille C. Varzi - 2001 - Rivista di Estetica 41 (18):5-7.
    A dialogue among statements that try to explain to each other the mechanisms and peculiarities of self-referential assertions and, particularly, of their context-dependence.
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Indeterminacy and Inscrutability of Reference
  1. Rule-Following, Private Language, and (Self-)Correction Practice: A Case of Local Quaddition Function.A. Nekhaev - 2022 - Tomsk State University Journal of Philosophy, Sociology, and Political Science 16 (69):32–43.
    The article contains a critical analysis of the skeptical solution to the rule- following problem. The skeptical solution denies the existence of “superlative” R-facts that would make statements of the form “P means R by ‘+’ ” true. The role of the sources for the meaning of ‘+’ here is played by the patterns of solidarity behavior of members of some community to which P belongs. The correct use of ‘+’ would be one that is approved by the competent majority (...)
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  2. Why the Causal Theory of Reference Fails to Immunize Metaphysical Realism Against Putnam’s Model-Theoretic Arguments.Pietro Lampronti - 2024 - Dissertation, London School of Economics
    In the 1980s, Putnam famously launched a series of model-theoretic attacks on Metaphysical Realism, aimed at establishing a dilemma for the view and ultimately leading to its dismissal. The present work evaluates whether adopting the Causal Theory of Reference saves Realism from Putnam's attacks. As it turns out, the outcome of the analysis revolves around two questions: (a) whether language has an intended reference relation with the world, or in model-theoretic terms, whether theories have an intended model; and (b) if (...)
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  3. Reference Magnetism Beyond the Predicate: Two Putnam-Style Results.Rohan Sud - forthcoming - Journal of Philosophy.
    Many accept David Lewis's (1983) claim that, among the candidate meanings for our predicates, some are more natural than others -- they do better or worse at ``carving nature at its joints''. Call this claim predicate naturalism. Disagreement remains over whether the notion of naturalness extends ``beyond the predicate'' (à la Sider, 2011). Are the candidate meanings of logical vocabulary also more or less natural? Call this claim logical naturalism. -/- One motivation for predicate naturalism comes from its supposed ability (...)
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  4. Radical parochialism about reference.Will Gamester & J. Robert G. Williams - 2023 - Noûs 57 (3):600-617.
    We can use radically different reference‐schemes to generate the same truth‐conditions for the sentences of a language. In this paper, we do three things. (1) Distinguish two arguments that deploy this observation to derive different conclusions. The first argues that reference is radically indeterminate: there is no fact of the matter what ordinary terms refer to. This threat is taken seriously and most contemporary metasemantic theories come with resources intended to rebut it. The second argues for radical parochialism about reference: (...)
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  5. The structuralist approach to underdetermination.Chanwoo Lee - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-25.
    This paper provides an exposition of the structuralist approach to underdetermination, which aims to resolve the underdetermination of theories by identifying their common theoretical structure. Applications of the structuralist approach can be found in many areas of philosophy. I present a schema of the structuralist approach, which conceptually unifies such applications in different subject matters. It is argued that two classic arguments in the literature, Paul Benacerraf’s argument on natural numbers and W. V. O. Quine’s argument for the indeterminacy of (...)
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  6. Explaining Away Kripke’s Wittgenstein.Derek Green - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (3):991-1011.
    The paradox of rule-following that Saul Kripke finds in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations purports to show that words and thoughts have no content—that there is no intentionality. This paper refutes the paradox with a dilemma. Intentional states are posited in rational explanations, which use propositional attitudes to explain actions and thoughts. Depending on which of the two plausible views of rational explanation is right, either: the paradox is mistaken about the a priori requirements for content; or, a fatal flaw in content (...)
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  7. The Indeterminacy of Translation and Radical Interpretation.Ali Hossein Khani - 2021 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    The Indeterminacy of Translation and Radical Interpretation The indeterminacy of translation is the thesis that translation, meaning, and reference are all indeterminate: there are always alternative translations of a sentence and a term, and nothing objective in the world can decide which translation is the right one. This is a skeptical conclusion because what it … Continue reading The Indeterminacy of Translation and Radical Interpretation →.
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  8. The Metaphysical Commitments of Logic.Thomas Brouwer - 2013 - Dissertation, University of Leeds
    This thesis is about the metaphysics of logic. I argue against a view I refer to as ‘logical realism’. This is the view that the logical constants represent a particular kind of metaphysical structure, which I dub ‘logico-metaphysical structure’. I argue instead for a more metaphysically lightweight view of logic which I dub ‘logical expressivism’. -/- In the first part of this thesis (Chapters I and II) I argue against a number of arguments that Theodore Sider has given for logical (...)
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  9. Turning Aboutness About.Alexander Sandgren - 2021 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (1):136-155.
    There are two families of influential and stubborn puzzles that many theories of aboutness (intentionality) face: underdetermination puzzles and puzzles concerning representations that appear to be about things that do not exist. I propose an approach that elegantly avoids both kinds of puzzle. The central idea is to explain aboutness (the relation supposed to stand between thoughts and terms and their objects) in terms of relations of co-aboutness (the relation of being about the same thing that stands between the thoughts (...)
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  10. Thinking about many.James Openshaw - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):2863-2882.
    The notorious problem of the many makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that almost coincident with any ordinary object are a vast number of near-indiscernible objects. As Unger was aware in his presentation of the problem, this abundance raises a concern as to how—and even whether—we achieve singular thought about ordinary objects. This paper presents, clarifies, and defends a view which reconciles a plenitudinous conception of ordinary objects with our having singular thoughts about those objects. Indeed, this strategy has (...)
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  11. Confused Terms in Ordinary Language.Greg Frost-Arnold & James R. Beebe - 2020 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 29 (2):197-219.
    Confused terms appear to signify more than one entity. Carnap maintained that any putative name that is associated with more than one object in a relevant universe of discourse fails to be a genuine name. Although many philosophers have agreed with Carnap, they have not always agreed among themselves about the truth-values of atomic sentences containing such terms. Some hold that such atomic sentences are always false, and others claim they are always truth-valueless. Field maintained that confused terms can still (...)
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  12. The Conflict of Rigidity and Precision in Designation.Daniele Bertini - 2020 - Logos and Episteme 11 (1):19-27.
    My paper provides reasons in support of the view that vague identity claims originate from a conflict between rigidity and precision in designation. To put this stricly, let x be the referent of the referential terms P and Q. Then, that the proposition “that any x being both a P and a Q” is vague involves that the semantic intuitions at work in P and Q reveal a conflict between P and Q being simultaneously rigid and precise designators. After having (...)
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  13. (1 other version)Physical Possibility and Determinate Number Theory.Sharon Berry - manuscript
    It's currently fashionable to take Putnamian model theoretic worries seriously for mathematics, but not for discussions of ordinary physical objects and the sciences. But I will argue that (under certain mild assumptions) merely securing determinate reference to physical possibility suffices to rule out nonstandard models of our talk of numbers. So anyone who accepts realist reference to physical possibility should not reject reference to the standard model of the natural numbers on Putnamian model theoretic grounds.
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  14. Quine l’extensionaliste. Entre naturalisme et esthétisme.Fabien Schang - 2005 - Philosophia Scientiae 9 (2):279-293.
    La position résolument extensionaliste de Quine a été appuyée par des arguments de nature différente, dans ses multiples articles destinés à rejeter le projet de logique modale. On peut classer ces arguments en trois catégories : un argument naturaliste, où l’auteur tente de baser le langage scientifique sur une notation tâchée de décrire la “structure ultime de la réalité” ; un argument esthétique, où Quine fait allusion à des raisons de clarté et d’efficacité démonstrative pour privilégier la théorie des fonctions (...)
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  15. (1 other version)Davidson, first-person authority, and the evidence for semantics.Steven Gross - 2012 - In Gerhard Preyer (ed.), Donald Davidson on truth, meaning, and the mental. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 228-48.
    Donald Davidson aims to illuminate the concept of meaning by asking: What knowledge would suffice to put one in a position to understand the speech of another, and what evidence sufficiently distant from the concepts to be illuminated could in principle ground such knowledge? Davidson answers: knowledge of an appropriate truth-theory for the speaker’s language, grounded in what sentences the speaker holds true, or prefers true, in what circumstances. In support of this answer, he both outlines such a truth-theory for (...)
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  16. A Simple Realist Account of the Normativity of Concepts.Elisabetta Lalumera - 2005 - Disputatio 1 (19):1-17.
    I argue that a concept is applied correctly when it is applied to the kind of things it is the concept of. Correctness as successful kind-tracking is fulfilling an externally and naturalistically individuated standard. And the normative aspect of concept-application so characterized depends on the relational (non-individualistic) feature of conceptual content. I defend this view against two objections. The first is that norms should provide justifications for action, and the second involves a version of the thesis of indeterminacy of reference.
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  17. The underdetermination/indeterminacy distinction and the analytic/synthetic distinction.A. W. Moore - 1997 - Erkenntnis 46 (1):5-32.
    Two of Quine's most familiar doctrines are: that there is a distinction between underdetermination and indeterminacy; and that there is no distinction between analytic and synthetic truths. An argument is given that these two doctrines are incompatible. In terms wholly acceptable to Quine and based on the underdetermination/indeterminacy distinction, an exhaustive and exclusive distinction is drawn between two kinds of true sentences, which, it is argued, corresponds to the traditional analytic/synthetic distinction. An appendix is used to develop one aspect of (...)
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  18. Eligibility and inscrutability.J. Robert G. Williams - 2007 - Philosophical Review 116 (3):361-399.
    Inscrutability arguments threaten to reduce interpretationist metasemantic theories to absurdity. Can we find some way to block the arguments? A highly influential proposal in this regard is David Lewis’ ‘ eligibility ’ response: some theories are better than others, not because they fit the data better, but because they are framed in terms of more natural properties. The purposes of this paper are to outline the nature of the eligibility proposal, making the case that it is not ad hoc, but (...)
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  19. Gavagai Again.Robert Williams - 2008 - Synthese 164 (2):235 - 259.
    Quine (1960, "Word and object". Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, ch. 2) claims that there are a variety of equally good schemes for translating or interpreting ordinary talk. 'Rabbit' might be taken to divide its reference over rabbits, over temporal slices of rabbits, or undetached parts of rabbits, without significantly affecting which sentences get classified as true and which as false. This is the basis of his famous 'argument from below' to the conclusion that there can be no fact of the (...)
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  20. Permutations and Foster problems: Two puzzles or one?J. Robert G. Williams - 2008 - Ratio 21 (1):91–105.
    How are permutation arguments for the inscrutability of reference to be formulated in the context of a Davidsonian truth-theoretic semantics? Davidson takes these arguments to establish that there are no grounds for favouring a reference scheme that assigns London to “Londres”, rather than one that assigns Sydney to that name. We shall see, however, that it is far from clear whether permutation arguments work when set out in the context of the kind of truth-theoretic semantics which Davidson favours. The principle (...)
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  21. The Price of Inscrutability.J. R. G. Williams - 2008 - Noûs 42 (4):600 - 641.
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Intension and Extension
  1. Frege’s puzzle and the ex ante Pareto principle.Anna Mahtani - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (6):2077-2100.
    The ex ante Pareto principle has an intuitive pull, and it has been a principle of central importance since Harsanyi’s defence of utilitarianism. The principle has been used to criticize and refine a range of positions in welfare economics, including egalitarianism and prioritarianism. But this principle faces a serious problem. I have argued elsewhere :303-323 2017) that the concept of ex ante Pareto superiority is not well defined, because its application in a choice situation concerning a fixed population can depend (...)
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  2. Eliciting and Conveying Information.Heimir Geirsson - 2021 - In Heimir Geirsson & Stephen Biggs (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Reference. New York: Routledge. pp. 153-166.
    I argue that Frege's puzzle can extend beyond semantics and to, for example, pictures and scent. Accordingly, attempted solutions to the puzzle should not focus solely on semantics. Solutions that do so can at best provide a partial solution to the puzzle. They will not provide a solution that explains the broader phenomenon, including the one where I, as a child, learned the identity of Clark Kent and Superman without possessing their names. Below I will provide a solution that accounts (...)
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  3. What Is the Sense in Logic and Philosophy of Language.Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska - 2020 - Bulletin of the Section of Logic 49 (2):185-211.
    In the paper, various notions of the logical semiotic sense of linguistic expressions – namely, syntactic and semantic, intensional and extensional – are considered and formalised on the basis of a formal-logical conception of any language L characterised categorially in the spirit of certain Husserl's ideas of pure grammar, Leśniewski-Ajdukiewicz's theory of syntactic/semantic categories and, in accordance with Frege's ontological canons, Bocheński's and some of Suszko's ideas of language adequacy of expressions of L. The adequacy ensures their unambiguous syntactic and (...)
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  4. Reichenbach, Russell and the Metaphysics of Induction.Michael J. Shaffer - 2019 - Argumenta 8:161-181.
    Hans Reichenbach’s pragmatic treatment of the problem of induction in his later works on inductive inference was, and still is, of great interest. However, it has been dismissed as a pseudo-solution and it has been regarded as problematically obscure. This is, in large part, due to the difficulty in understanding exactly what Reichenbach’s solution is supposed to amount to, especially as it appears to offer no response to the inductive skeptic. For entirely different reasons, the significance of Bertrand Russell’s classic (...)
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  5. Quine l’extensionaliste. Entre naturalisme et esthétisme.Fabien Schang - 2005 - Philosophia Scientiae 9 (2):279-293.
    La position résolument extensionaliste de Quine a été appuyée par des arguments de nature différente, dans ses multiples articles destinés à rejeter le projet de logique modale. On peut classer ces arguments en trois catégories : un argument naturaliste, où l’auteur tente de baser le langage scientifique sur une notation tâchée de décrire la “structure ultime de la réalité” ; un argument esthétique, où Quine fait allusion à des raisons de clarté et d’efficacité démonstrative pour privilégier la théorie des fonctions (...)
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  6. Frege on Identity and Identity-Statements: A Reply to Thau and Caplan.Richard G. Heck - 2003 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33 (1):83-102.
    The paper argues, as against Thau and Caplan, that the traditional interpretation that Frege abandoned his earlier views about identity and identity--statements is correct.
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  7. Intensionality, Modality, Rationality: Some Presemantic Considerations.John-Michael Kuczynski - 2010 - Journal of Pragmatics 42 (8):2314-2346.
    On the basis of arguments put forth by (Kripke, 1977a) and (Kripke, 1980), it is widely held that one can sometimes rationally accept propositions of the form "P and not-P" and also that there are necessary a posteriori truths. We will find that Kripke's arguments for these views appear probative only so long as one fails to distinguish between semantics and presemantics—between the literal meanings of sentences, on the one hand, and the information on the basis of which one identifies (...)
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  8. Rigid general terms and essential predicates.Ilhan Inan - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 140 (2):213 - 228.
    What does it mean for a general term to be rigid? It is argued by some that if we take general terms to designate their extensions, then almost no empirical general term will turn out to be rigid; and if we take them to designate some abstract entity, such as a kind, then it turns out that almost all general terms will be rigid. Various authors who pursue this line of reasoning have attempted to capture Kripke’s intent by defining a (...)
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Nonreferring Expressions
  1. Against Descriptive Names.J. P. Smit & Jan Heylen - forthcoming - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy.
    Names like ‘Neptune’ and ‘Vulcan’ have lead some Millians to countenance a class of descriptive names. This is so, as, first, the closeness of the association between a descriptive name and its associated descriptive condition seems to show that the link between the name and the description must be semantic, and, second, as Millianism implies that names without bearers make no direct contribution to the propositions expressed by the sentences in which such names occur. In this paper we use the (...)
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  2. Fictitious Existence versus Nonexistence.Nathan Salmon - forthcoming - Grazer Philosophische Studien.
    A correct observation to the effect that a does not exist, where ‘a’ is a singular term, could be true on any of a variety of grounds. Typically, a true, singular negative existential is true on the unproblematic ground that the subject term ‘a’ designates something that does not presently exist. More interesting philosophically is a singular, negative existential statement in which the subject term ‘a’ designates nothing at all. Both of these contrast sharply with a singular, negative existential in (...)
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  3. Reality and Unreality.Nathan Salmon - manuscript
    A collection of ten previously published essays on existence, nonexistence, empty names, fiction and myth, and free logic.
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  4. Fictional domains.Dominic Gregory - 2024 - Noûs 58 (1):126-140.
    (Open Access.) Quantifiers frequently figure in works of fiction. But occurrences of quantificational expressions within fictions seem no more inevitably to be associated with real domains than uses of names within fictions seem inevitably to be associated with existing referents. The paper outlines some philosophical puzzles resulting from this apparent lack of associated domains, puzzles that are broadly analogous to more familiar ones raised by the apparently nonreferential nature of many fictional names. The paper argues, in the light of an (...)
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