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Knowing who

Philosophical Studies 28 (5):299 - 344 (1975)

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  1. Hallucinating real things.Steven P. James - 2014 - Synthese 191 (15):3711-3732.
    No particular dagger was the object of Macbeth’s hallucination of a dagger. In contrast, when he hallucinated his former comrade Banquo, Banquo himself was the object of the hallucination. Although philosophers have had much to say about the nature and philosophical import of hallucinations (e.g. Macpherson and Platchias, Hallucination, 2013) and object-involving attitudes (e.g. Jeshion, New essays on singular thought, 2010), their intersection has largely been neglected. Yet, object-involving hallucinations raise interesting questions about memory, perception, and the ways in which (...)
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  • (1 other version)Knowing How and Knowing Answers.David Braun - 2011 - In John Bengson & Marc A. Moffett (eds.), Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press USA. pp. 244.
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  • Definite Knowledge and Mutual Knowledge.Herbert H. Clark & Catherine R. Marshall - 1981 - In Aravind K. Joshi, Bonnie L. Webber & Ivan A. Sag (eds.), Elements of Discourse Understanding. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. pp. 10–63.
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  • Desire considered as a propositional attitude.William G. Lycan - 2012 - Philosophical Perspectives 26 (1):201-215.
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  • (1 other version)Contrastive Knowledge.Adam Morton - 2013 - In Martijn Blaauw (ed.), Contrastivism in philosophy. New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 101-115.
    The claim of this paper is that the everyday functions of knowledge make most sense if we see knowledge as contrastive. That is, we can best understand how the concept does what it does by thinking in terms of a relation “a knows that p rather than q.” There is always a contrast with an alternative. Contrastive interpretations of knowledge, and objections to them, have become fairly common in recent philosophy. The version defended here is fairly mild in that there (...)
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  • (1 other version)Logical foundations for belief representation.William J. Rapaport - 1986 - Cognitive Science 10 (4):371-422.
    This essay presents a philosophical and computational theory of the representation of de re, de dicto, nested, and quasi-indexical belief reports expressed in natural language. The propositional Semantic Network Processing System (SNePS) is used for representing and reasoning about these reports. In particular, quasi-indicators (indexical expressions occurring in intentional contexts and representing uses of indicators by another speaker) pose problems for natural-language representation and reasoning systems, because--unlike pure indicators--they cannot be replaced by coreferential NPs without changing the meaning of the (...)
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  • Singular Thoughts and Singular Propositions.Joshua Armstrong & Jason Stanley - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 154 (2):205 - 222.
    A singular thought about an object o is one that is directly about o in a characteristic way—grasp of that thought requires having some special epistemic relation to the object o, and the thought is ontologically dependent on o. One account of the nature of singular thought exploits a Russellian Structured Account of Propositions, according to which contents are represented by means of structured n-tuples of objects, properties, and functions. A proposition is singular, according to this framework, if and only (...)
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  • The significance of names.Robin Jeshion - 2009 - Mind and Language 24 (4):370-403.
    As a class of terms and mental representations, proper names and mental names possess an important function that outstrips their semantic and psycho-semantic functions as common, rigid devices of direct reference and singular mental representations of their referents, respectively. They also function as abstract linguistic markers that signal and underscore their referents' individuality. I promote this thesis to explain why we give proper names to certain particulars, but not others; to account for the transfer of singular thought via communication with (...)
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  • Knowing the Answer.Jonathan Schaffer - 2007 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (2):383-403.
    How should one understand knowledge-wh ascriptions? That is, how should one understand claims such as ‘‘I know where the car is parked,’’ which feature an interrogative complement? The received view is that knowledge-wh reduces to knowledge that p, where p happens to be the answer to the question Q denoted by the wh-clause. I will argue that knowledge-wh includes the question—to know-wh is to know that p, as the answer to Q. I will then argue that knowledge-that includes a contextually (...)
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  • Frege's Theory of Sense and Reference: Some Exegetical Notes.Saul A. Kripke - 2008 - Theoria 74 (3):181-218.
    Frege's theory of indirect contexts and the shift of sense and reference in these contexts has puzzled many. What can the hierarchy of indirect senses, doubly indirect senses, and so on, be? Donald Davidson gave a well-known 'unlearnability' argument against Frege's theory. The present paper argues that the key to Frege's theory lies in the fact that whenever a reference is specified (even though many senses determine a single reference), it is specified in a particular way, so that giving a (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Contrastive knowledge.Jonathan Schaffer - 2005 - In Tamar Szabó Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology. Oxford University Press. pp. 235.
    Does G. E. Moore know that he has hands? Yes, says the dogmatist: Moore’s hands are right before his eyes. No, says the skeptic: for all Moore knows he could be a brain-in-a-vat. Yes and no, says the contrastivist: yes, Moore knows that he has hands rather than stumps; but no, Moore does not know that he has hands rather than vat-images of hands. The dogmatist and the skeptic suppose that knowledge is a binary, categorical relation: s knows that p. (...)
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  • Epistemology.Matthias Steup - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? (...)
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  • Thought by description.Michael Mckinsey - 2008 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78 (1):83-102.
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  • What Mary Did Yesterday: Reflections on Knowledge-wh.Berit Brogaard - 2009 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78 (2):439 - 467.
    Reductionists about knowledge-wh hold that "s knows-wh" (e.g. "John knows who stole his car") is reducible to "there is a proposition p such that s knows that p, and p answers the indirect question of the wh-clause." Anti-reductionists hold that "s knows-wh" is reducible to "s knows that p, as the true answer to the indirect question of the wh-clause." I argue that both of these positions are defective. I then offer a new analysis of knowledge-wh as a special kind (...)
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  • (1 other version)Contrastive knowledge.Antti Karjalainen & Adam Morton - 2003 - Philosophical Explorations 6 (2):74 – 89.
    We describe the three place relation of contrastive knowledge, which holds between a person, a target proposition, and a contrasting proposition. The person knows that p rather than that q. We argue for three claims about this relation. (a) Many common sense and philosophical ascriptions of knowledge can be understood in terms of it. (b) Its application is subject to fewer complications than non-contrastive knowledge is. (c) It applies over a wide range of human and nonhuman cases.
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  • Resolving questions, I.Jonathan Ginzburg - 1995 - Linguistics and Philosophy 18 (5):459 - 527.
    The paper is in two parts. In Part I, a semantics for embedded and query uses of interrogatives is put forward, couched within a situation semantics framework. Unlike many previous analyses,questions are not reductively analysed in terms of their answers. This enables us to provide a notion of ananswer that resolves a question which varies across contexts relative to parameters such as goals and inferential capabilities. In Part II of the paper, extensive motivation is provided for an ontology that distinguishes (...)
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  • Varieties of believed-world semantics.Peter Alward - 2005 - Philosophia 32 (1-4):51-72.
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  • Consciousness, higher-order content, and the individuation of vehicles.Uriah Kriegel - 2003 - Synthese 134 (3):477-504.
    One of the distinctive properties of conscious states is the peculiar self- awareness implicit in them. Two rival accounts of this self-awareness are discussed. According to a Neo-Brentanian account, a mental state M is conscious iff M represents its very own occurrence. According to the Higher-Order Monitoring account, M is merely accompanied by a numerically distinct representation of its occurrence. According to both, then, M is conscious in virtue of figuring in a higher-order content. The disagreement is over the question (...)
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  • Skill-based acquaintance : a non-causal account of reference.Jean Gové - 2024 - Dissertation, University of St. Andrews
    This thesis provides an account of acquaintance with abstract objects. The notion of acquaintance is integral to theorising on reference and singular thought, since it is generally taken to be the relation that must exist between a subject and an object, in order for the subject to refer to, and entertain singular thoughts about the object. The most common way of understanding acquaintance is as a form of causal connection. However, this implies a problem. We seem to be able to (...)
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  • References.John Bengson & Marc A. Moffett - 2011 - In John Bengson & Marc A. Moffett (eds.), Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press USA. pp. 361-386.
    This compilation of references includes all references for the knowledge-how chapters included in Bengson & Moffett's edited volume. The volume and the compilation of references may serve as a good starting point for people who are unfamiliar with the philosophical literature on knowledge-how.
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  • What do propositions explain? Inflationary vs. deflationary perspectives and the case of singular propositions.Manuel García-Carpintero & Michele Palmira - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-21.
    In this paper we take up the question of the explanatory significance of the notion of propositional content. Our first goal is to disentangle two types of approach: According to what we call inflationism, propositions should be taken seriously enough to expect explanatory payoffs from them. The alternative deflationary approach rejects this claim. Our second goal is to explore the inflationism vs. deflationism contrast in depth by focusing on the distinction between singular and general propositions. We argue that inflationism fails (...)
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  • Philosophy is a Great Success, and We are Fooled into Thinking Otherwise.T. Parent - forthcoming - In Green Mitchell & Michel Jan (eds.), William Lycan on Mind, Meaning, and Method. Palgrave Macmillan.
    [For a planned Festschrift on William Lycan, edited by Mitch Green and Jan Michel.] Lycan (2022) sums up his (2019) _On Evidence in Philosophy_ as a “dolorous” book. This is primarily because the book claims that the field is infected with non-rational socio-psychological forces (fashion, bias, etc.) and that there is a persistent lack of consensus on philosophical questions. In this paper, I primarily rebut Lycan's second reason for dolorousness. For one, if we attend carefully to his text, his metaphilosophical (...)
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  • Giving the Value of a Variable.Richard Lawrence - 2021 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 35 (2):135-150.
    What does it mean to ‘give’ the value of a variable in an algebraic context, and how does giving the value of a variable differ from merely describing it? I argue that to answer this question, we need to examine the role that giving the value of a variable plays in problem-solving practice. I argue that four different features are required for a statement to count as giving the value of a variable in the context of solving an elementary algebra (...)
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  • Singular Reference in Fictional Discourse?Manuel García-Carpintero - 2019 - Disputatio 11 (54):143-177.
    Singular terms used in fictions for fictional characters raise well-known philosophical issues, explored in depth in the literature. But philosophers typically assume that names already in use to refer to “moderatesized specimens of dry goods” cause no special problem when occurring in fictions, behaving there as they ordinarily do in straightforward assertions. In this paper I continue a debate with Stacie Friend, arguing against this for the exceptionalist view that names of real entities in fictional discourse don’t work there as (...)
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  • The Attitudes We Can Have.Daniel Drucker - 2020 - Philosophical Review 129 (4):591-642.
    I investigate when we can (rationally) have attitudes, and when we cannot. I argue that a comprehensive theory must explain three phenomena. First, being related by descriptions or names to a proposition one has strong reason to believe is true does not guarantee that one can rationally believe that proposition. Second, such descriptions, etc. do enable individuals to rationally have various non-doxastic attitudes, such as hope and admiration. And third, even for non-doxastic attitudes like that, not just any description will (...)
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  • The Logical Structure of Intentional Anonymity.Michał Barcz, Jarek Gryz & Adam Wierzbicki - 2019 - Diametros 16 (60):1-17.
    It has been noticed by several authors that the colloquial understanding of anonymity as mere unknown-ness is insufficient. This common-sense notion of anonymity does not recognize the role of the goal for which the anonymity is sought. Starting with the distinction between the intentional and unintentional anonymity (which are usually taken to be the same) and the general concept of the non-coordinatability of traits, we offer a logical analysis of anonymity and identification (understood as de-anonymization). In our enquiry, we focus (...)
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  • Knowing What It is Like and Testimony.Yuri Cath - 2019 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (1):105-120.
    It is often said that ‘what it is like’-knowledge cannot be acquired by consulting testimony or reading books [Lewis 1998; Paul 2014; 2015a]. However, people also routinely consult books like What It Is Like to Go to War [Marlantes 2014], and countless ‘what it is like’ articles and youtube videos, in the apparent hope of gaining knowledge about what it is like to have experiences they have not had themselves. This article examines this puzzle and tries to solve it by (...)
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  • The generality problem for intellectualism.Joshua Habgood-Coote - 2018 - Mind and Language 33 (3):242-262.
    According to Intellectualism knowing how to V is a matter of knowing a suitable proposition about a way of V-ing. In this paper, I consider the question of which ways of acting might figure in the propositions which Intellectualists claim constitute the object of knowledge-how. I argue that Intellectualists face a version of the Generality Problem – familiar from discussions of Reliabilism – since not all ways of V-ing are such that knowledge about them suffices for knowledge-how. I consider various (...)
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  • Do Acquaintance Theorists Have an Attitude Problem?Rachel Goodman - 2017 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (1):67-86.
    This paper is about the relevance of attitude-ascriptions to debates about singular thought. It examines a methodology (common to early acquaintance theorists [Kaplan 1968] and recent critics of acquaintance [Hawthorne and Manley 2012], which assumes that the behaviour of ascriptions can be used to draw conclusions about singular thought. Although many theorists (e.g. [Recanati 2012]) reject this methodology, the literature lacks a detailed examination of its implications and the challenges faced by proponents and critics. I isolate an assumption of the (...)
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  • Other People.Kieran Setiya - 2023 - In Sarah Buss & Nandi Theunissen (eds.), Rethinking the Value of Humanity. New York, US: OUP Usa.
    Argues for the role of personal acquaintance in both love and concern for individuals, as such. The challenge is to say what personal acquaintance is and why it matters in the way it does. These questions are addressed through the work of Emmanuel Levinas. Topics include: the ethics of aggregation, the basis of moral standing, and the value of human life.
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  • Ricoeur’s Transcendental Concern: A Hermeneutics of Discourse.William D. Melaney - 1971 - In Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana. Dordrecht,: Springer. pp. 495-513.
    This paper argues that Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy attempts to reopen the question of human transcendence in contemporary terms. While his conception of language as self-transcending is deeply Husserlian, Ricoeur also responds to the analytical challenge when he deploys a basic distinction in Fregean logic in order to clarify Heidegger’s phenomenology of world. Ricoeur’s commitment to a transcendental view is evident in his conception of narrative, which enables him to emphasize the role of the performative in literary reading. The meaning (...)
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  • Singular Thought.Tim Crane & Jody Azzouni - 2011 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1):21-43.
    A singular thought can be characterized as a thought which is directed at just one object. The term ‘thought’ can apply to episodes of thinking, or to the content of the episode (what is thought). This paper argues that episodes of thinking can be just as singular, in the above sense, when they are directed at things that do not exist as when they are directed at things that do exist. In this sense, then, singular thoughts are not object-dependent.
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  • LOGOS Group-Universitat de Barcelona LanCog Group–Universidade de Lisboa 1st LanCog-LOGOS Workshop.Eduardo Castro - unknown
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  • Interrogatives: Questions, facts and dialogue.Jonathan Ginzburg - 1996 - In Shalom Lappin (ed.), The handbook of contemporary semantic theory. Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell Reference.
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  • Fitting attitudes de dicto and de se.Jason Turner - 2010 - Noûs 44 (1):1-9.
    The Property Theory of attitudes holds that the contents of mental states --- especially de se states --- are properties. The "nonexistence problem" for the Property Theory holds that the theory gives the wrong consequences as to which worlds "fit" which mental states: which worlds satisfy desires, make beliefs true, and so on. If I desire to not exist, since there is no world where I have the property of not existing, my desire is satisfied in no worlds. In this (...)
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  • Indexical belief.Robert C. Stalnaker - 1981 - Synthese 49 (1):129-151.
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  • Belief representation in a deductivist type-free doxastic logic.Francesco Orilia - 1994 - Minds and Machines 4 (2):163-203.
    Konolige''s technical notion of belief based on deduction structures is briefly reviewed and its usefulness for the design of artificial agents with limited representational and deductive capacities is pointed out. The design of artificial agents with more sophisticated representational and deductive capacities is then taken into account. Extended representational capacities require in the first place a solution to the intensional context problems. As an alternative to Konolige''s modal first-order language, an approach based on type-free property theory is proposed. It considers (...)
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  • (1 other version)Singular Thought: The Division of Explanatory Labor.Andrei Moldovan - 2015 - Journal of Mind and Behavior 36 (1/2):83-99.
    A tacit assumption in the literature devoted to singular thought is that singular thought constitutes a unitary phenomenon, and so a correct account of it must encompass all instances. In this essay, I argue against such a unitary account. The superficial feature of singularity might result from ver y different deep-level phenomena. Following Taylor (2010) and Crane (2013), I distinguish between the referential fitness and the referential success of a thought. I argue that facts responsible for referential fitness (e.g., mental (...)
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  • Cognitivism, Significance and Singular Thought.Rachel Goodman - 2016 - Philosophical Quarterly 66 (263):236-260.
    This paper has a narrow and a broader target. The narrow target is a particular version of what I call the mental-files conception of singular thought, proposed by Robin Jeshion, and known as cognitivism. The broader target is the MFC in general. I give an argument against Jeshion's view, which gives us preliminary reason to reject the MFC more broadly. I argue Jeshion's theory of singular thought should be rejected because the central connection she makes between significance and singularity does (...)
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  • Subjectivity and the Objects of Belief.Neil Philip Feit - 1996 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
    This dissertation is a study of the problem of beliefs about oneself, or so-called de se beliefs: for example, the beliefs that I would express by saying 'I am left-handed' or 'I am in Massachusetts'. The problem arises against the background conception of belief as a propositional attitude, i.e., as a relation between conscious subjects and abstract entities that are either true or false absolutely. ;Many philosophers have recently argued that the intentional objects of one's de se beliefs could not (...)
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  • Knowing‐Wh and Embedded Questions.Ted Parent - 2014 - Philosophy Compass 9 (2):81-95.
    Do you know who you are? If the question seems unclear, it might owe to the notion of ‘knowing-wh’ (knowing-who, knowing-what, knowing-when, etc.). Such knowledge contrasts with ‘knowing-that’, the more familiar topic of epistemologists. But these days, knowing-wh is receiving more attention than ever, and here we will survey three current debates on the nature of knowing-wh. These debates concern, respectively, (1) whether all knowing-wh is reducible to knowing-that (‘generalized intellectualism’), (2) whether all knowing-wh is relativized to a contrast proposition (...)
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  • A counterexample to the contrastive account of knowledge.Jason Rourke - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 162 (3):637-643.
    Many epistemologists treat knowledge as a binary relation that holds between a subject and a proposition. The contrastive account of knowledge developed by Jonathan Schaffer maintains that knowledge is a ternary, contrastive relation that holds between a subject, a proposition, and a set of contextually salient alternative propositions the subject’s evidence must eliminate. For the contrastivist, it is never simply the case that S knows that p; in every case of knowledge S knows that p rather than q. This paper (...)
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  • Having Ideas and Having the Concept.Mark Crimmins - 1989 - Mind and Language 4 (4):280-294.
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  • Externalism and “knowing what” one thinks.T. Parent - 2015 - Synthese 192 (5):1337-1350.
    Some worry that semantic externalism is incompatible with knowing by introspection what content your thoughts have. In this paper, I examine one primary argument for this incompatibilist worry, the slow-switch argument. Following Goldberg , I construe the argument as attacking the conjunction of externalism and “skeptic immune” knowledge of content, where such knowledge would persist in a skeptical context. Goldberg, following Burge :649–663, 1988), attempts to reclaim such knowledge for the externalist; however, I contend that all Burge-style accounts vindicate that (...)
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  • Now you know who Hong oak yun is.David Braun - 2006 - Philosophical Issues 16 (1):24-42.
    Hong Oak Yun is a person who is over three inches tall. And now you know who Hong Oak Yun is. For if someone were to ask you ‘Who is Hong Oak Yun?’, you could answer that Hong Oak Yun is a person who is over three inches tall, and you would know what you were saying. So you know an answer to the question ‘Who is Hong Oak Yun?’, and that is sufficient for knowing who Hong Oak Yun is. (...)
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  • Questions, answers, and knowledge- wh.Meghan Masto - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 147 (3):395-413.
    Various authors have attempted to understand knowledge-wh—or knowledge ascriptions that include an interrogative complement. I present and explain some of the analyses offered so far and argue that each view faces some problems. I then present and explain a newanalysis of knowledge-wh that avoids these problems and that offers several other advantages. Finally I raise some problems for invariantism about knowledge-wh and I argue thatcontextualism about knowledge-wh fits nicely with a very natural understanding of the nature of questions.
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  • Files and Singular Thoughts Without Objects or Acquaintance: The Prospects of Recanati’s “Actualism”.Carsten Hansen & Georges Rey - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (2):421-436.
    We argue that Recanati burdens his otherwise salutary “Mental File” account of singular thought with an “Actualist” assumption that he has inherited from the discussion of singular thought since at least Evans, according to which singular thoughts can only be about actual objects: apparent singular thoughts involving “empty” terms lack truth-valuable content. This assumption flies in the face of manifestly singular thoughts involving not only fictional and mistakenly postulated entities, such as Zeus and the planet Vulcan, but also “perceptual inexistents,” (...)
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  • Questioning to resolve decision problems.Robert van Rooy - 2003 - Linguistics and Philosophy 26 (6):727-763.
    Why do we ask questions? Because we want tohave some information. But why this particular kind ofinformation? Because only information of this particularkind is helpful to resolve the decision problemthat the agent faces. In this paper I argue thatquestions are asked because their answers help toresolve the questioner's decision problem, and that thisassumption helps us to interpret interrogativesentences. Interrogative sentences are claimed to have asemantically underspecified meaning and thisunderspecification is resolved by means of the decisionproblem.
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  • De re desire.Peter J. Markie & Timothy Patrick - 1990 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 68 (4):432 – 447.
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  • Parataxis and parentheticals.Michael Hand - 1993 - Linguistics and Philosophy 16 (5):495 - 507.
    I have proposed that the complementizerthat has a pragmatic property of demonstrativity, analogous to that ascribed by demonstrative analyses of the semantics of the complementizer but not impinging on the syntactic analysis of sentential embedding. My account explains a number of phenomena, including the illocutionary peculiarities of parentheticals, the pragmatics ofthat-omission, and consequently the distributional statistics ofthat-omission and related grammatical features of embeddings reported in the literature. By this means these phenomena are theoretically unified under a single hypothesis.Furthermore, this demonstrativity (...)
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