Standard semantic theories predict that non-deictic readings for complex demonstratives should be much more widely available than they in fact are. If such readings are the result of a lexical ambiguity, as Kaplan (1977) and others suggest, we should expect them to be available wherever a definite description can be used. The same prediction follows from ‘hidden argument’ theories like the ones described by King (2001) and Elbourne (2005). Wolter (2006), however, has shown that complex demonstratives admit non-deictic interpretations only (...) when a precise set of structural constrains are met. In this paper, I argue that Wolter’s results, properly understood, upend the philosophical status quo. They fatally undermine the ambiguity theory and demand a fundamental rethinking of the hidden argument approach. (shrink)

In combining a pluri‐propositionalist framework (Bach‐style) concerning alleged conventional implicatures, and a pluri‐propositionalist framework (Perry‐style) distinguishing various levels of content associated with a single utterance, I defend a Grice‐inspired model of communication. In so doing, I rely on the distinction between what is said, i.e. what is semantically encoded, and what is pragmatically implicated. I show how the notion of same‐saying plays a central role in dealing with problems pertaining to communication insofar as it permits us to posit a stability (...) of content among interlocutors. I also show how people can be classified as same‐sayers in different ways, viz. if they express the same (minimal) proposition/content or if they utter the same sentence. If A utters ‘I'm happy’ and B replies: ‘C said that too’, what B said can mean either that C said that A is happy—thus C and A expressed the same proposition—or that C utters the same words—they both utter ‘I'm happy’ and in so doing express different propositions, i.e. that A is happy and that C is happy respectively. (shrink)

We defend the view that an indexical uttered by an actor works on the model of deferred reference. If it defers to a character which does not exist, it is an empty term, just as ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Ophelia’ are. The utterance in which it appears does not express a proposition and thus lacks a truth value. We advocate an ontologically parsimonious, anti-realist, position. We show how the notion of truth in our use and understanding of indexicals (and fictional names) as (...) they appear within a fiction is not a central issue. We claim that our use and understanding of indexicals (and names) rests on the fact that their cognitive contribution is not exhausted by their semantic contribution. (shrink)

This paper presents a number of objections to Jeffrey King's quantificational theory of complex demonstratives. Some of these objections have to do with modality, whereas others concern attitude ascriptions. Various possible replies are considered. The debate between quantificational theorists and direct reference theorists over complex demonstratives is compared with recent debates concerning definite descriptions.

This paper presents a semantic and pragmatic theory of complex demonstratives. According to this theory, the semantic content of a complex demonstrative, in a context, is simply an object, and the semantic content of a sentence that contains a complex demonstrative, in a context, is a singular proposition. This theory is defended from various objections to direct reference theories of complex demonstratives, including King's objection from quantification into complex demonstratives.

Jeffrey King has famously argued that there are several prima facie problems with the direct reference theory of the semantics of complex demonstratives, three of which apparently resist solution. King concludes by observing that, if these outstanding problems cannot be solved, then the prospects for a direct reference semantics for complex demonstratives will be poor. I shall focus on just one of these outstanding problems—the objection from belief attributions—and suggest that it, at least, can be answered.

Following Neale, I call the notion that there can be no such thing as a structured referring expression ‘structure skepticism’. The specific aim of this paper is to defuse some putative counterexamples to structure skepticism. The general aim is to bolster the case in favor of the thesis that lack of structure—in a sense to be made precise—is essential to reference.

In this paper, I discuss some of Maximilian de Gaynesford’s arguments regarding indexicals. Although I agree with his treatment of the first singular personal pronoun as a prototype of demonstrative expressions, I challenge his refusal to treat indexicals as complex demonstratives. To offer an alternative to this refusal I try to develop a common ground from different theories that consider indexicals as linguistic constructions that embed a nonlinguistic element, following an original idea in Frege’s latest writings. These views form the (...) backdrop on which we can put forward the claim of treating all indexicals as complex demonstratives. In the central part of the paper, I criticize each of de Gaynesford’s arguments against the reduction of indexicals to complex demonstratives. Besides, I propose a new definition of the concept of “demonstration” as a nonlinguistic feature of all indexicals in their referential uses, to contrast de Gaynesford’s rejection of the idea that demonstrations are an essential feature of indexicals. Eventually, I strengthen my claim by distinguishing indexicals from proper names and definite descriptions on the ground that only perceptual indexicals necessarily require an accompanying demonstration. However, the main point of the paper is a negative one, that is the rejection of de Gaynesford’s arguments against the reduction of indexicals to complex demonstratives. More work is needed to reach a positive conclusion on this topic. (shrink)

Most philosophers recognize that applying the standard semantics for complex demonstratives to non-deictic instances results in truth conditions that are anomalous, at best. This fact has generated little concern, however, since most philosophers treat non-deictic demonstratives as marginal cases, and believe that they should be analyzed using a distinct semantic mechanism. In this paper, I argue that non-deictic demonstratives cannot be written off; they are widespread in English and foreign languages, and must be treated using the same semantic machinery that (...) is applied to deictic instances. (shrink)

As a discipline of its own, the philosophy of science can be traced back to the founding of its academic journals, some of which go back to the first half of the twentieth century. While the discipline has been the object of many historical studies, notably focusing on specific schools or major figures of the field, little work has focused on the journals themselves. Here, we investigate contemporary philosophy of science by means of computational text-mining approaches: we apply topic-modeling algorithms (...) to eight major philosophy of science journals, from the 1930s up until 2017. Based on the full-text content of some 15,897 articles, we identified 25 research themes and 8 thematic clusters that show how the research agenda of the philosophy of science has changed in its content over the course of the last eight decades, up to the philosophy of science we now know. We also show how each one of the journals contributed in its own way to this thematic evolution. (shrink)

Semanticists often restrict their theories by imposing constraints on the parameters that can be employed for interpreting the expressions of a language. Such constraints are based on non-logical features of actual contexts of utterance, but they often have important effects on issues that do pertain to logic, like analyticity or entailment. For example, Kaplan’s restriction to so-called “proper contexts” was required in order to count “I am here now” as valid. In this paper I argue that constraints of this kind (...) are often posited in an arbitrary and non-consistent way, and that they yield the intended results only at the price of imposing ad hoc principles whose justification could in turn justify further, often undesirable restrictions into the theory. I also introduce a criterion for telling whether such constraints are imposed in a legitimate manner. (shrink)

1. Complex demonstratives (noun phrases of the form ‘that F’) often behave in devious ways which do not fit well with their traditional understanding as devices of direct reference. Namely, there a...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 34 (summer 2014): 67–78 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036–01631; online 1913–8032 c:\users\kenneth\documents\type3401\rj 3401 193 red.docx 2014-05-14 8:54 PM aiscussion THE STRUCTURE, SEMANTICS, AND USE OF DESCRIPTIONS Jolen Galaugher Philosophy / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4l6 [email protected] / [email protected] he division of designators into denoting expressions and referring expressions has become a familiar feature of the (...) Russellian orthodoxy in the philosophy of language. At a glance, expressions of the referring kind seem to be unstructured, lacking independently meaningful proper parts, while those of the denoting kind seem to be structured quantifiers, having molecular complexity. Most examples fit this pattern: proper names, indexicals, and demonstratives are unstructured, while definite descriptions and other quanti fier phrases are typically structured. On Russell’s 1903 theory of denoting, the semantic structure (independently meaningful proper parts) of denoting complexes had proved a source of difficulty for his logic of propositions. The early theory was not only incapable of explaining both how we are supposed to designate complex meanings and how complex meanings are supposed to denote, but was also at odds with the view that proposition and constituent are logically basic, introducing further functional complexes into the propositional complex. Russell’s 1905 theory of descriptions reconstrued these apparently structured referring expressions as quantified noun phrases. On the new theory, knowing the meaning of such expressions does not require acquaintance with a specific object, but rather a grasp of the truth-conditions of the sentences in which they occur.1 One might say that on the new theory, denoting is linked to object-independent truth-conditions, while referring is linked to object-dependent truth-conditions—a connection elaborated and extended by Kripke and Kaplan. This is the situation as Arthur Sullivan paints it in his new book, Reference and Structure in the Philosophy of Language: a Defense of the 1 Russell articulated the dichotomy in “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description” (1911), ML, p. 226; Papers 6: 158. For Sullivan’s use of this passage, see his anthology, Logicism and the Philosophy of Language, pp. 79–80, and Reference and Structure in the Philosophy of Language, pp. 13–14, 137, 140 n.15. q= 68 Discussion c:\users\kenneth\documents\type3401\rj 3401 193 red.docx 2014-05-14 8:54 PM Russellian Orthodoxy (2013). In this work, Arthur Sullivan defends a stronger set of claims than the denoting /referring distinction might historically have entailed. Building on Neale’s sharp distinction between semantically unstructured rigid referring expressions and semantically structured restricted quantifiers,2 Sullivan takes it to be crucial that these categories are exhaustive and exclusive, so that all and only referring expressions are unstructured designators, and all and only denoting expressions are structured designators (p. 13). Adopting a distinction from Bach,3 Sullivan maintains that the semantic mechanism of referring designators is simply to conventionally relate the utterance of the designator to the designatum, and hence to express object-dependent propositions, while the semantic mechanism of denoting designators is satisfactional, expressing a compositional condition which may or may not be satisfied by any object and which thus expresses object-independent propositions (p. 11). In Part 1, Sullivan articulates the orthodox theory of reference in terms of these two exhaustive and exclusive categories of designator and the distinct, corresponding semantic mechanisms by which they designate. In Part 2, he provides arguments in favour of the orthodoxy. In Part 3, he deals with apparent counter -examples, reinterpreting complex demonstratives and referential uses of definite descriptions to bring them into conformity with the strict referringversus -denoting dichotomy. In Part 4, he offers a synopsis and some general conclusions. Importantly, in Part 2, Sullivan argues that semantic structure is a necessary but not sufficient condition of non-rigidity, that only denoting designnators are non-rigid, that all unstructured designators are rigid designators, and that the lack of semantic structure is necessary and sufficient for status as a referring expression. Contrary to the view which is now popular, Russell regarded ordinary proper names as... (shrink)

We defend the view that an indexical uttered by an actor works on the model of deferred reference. If it defers to a character which does not exist, it is an empty term, just as‘Hamlet’and‘Ophelia’are. The utterance in which it appears does not express a proposition and thus lacks a truth value. We advocate an ontologically parsimonious, anti‐realist, position. We show how the notion of truth in our use and understanding of indexicals as they appear within a fiction is not (...) a central issue. We claim that our use and understanding of indexicals rests on the fact that their cognitive contribution is not exhausted by their semantic contribution. (shrink)

Object identification via a perceptual-demonstrative mode of presentation has been studied in cognitive science as a particularly direct and context-dependent means of identifying objects. Several recent works in cognitive science have attempted to clarify the relation between attention, demonstrative identification and context exploration. Assuming a distinction between ‘ demonstrative reference' and ‘perceptual-demonstrative identification', this article aims at specifying the role of attention in the latter and in the linking of conceptual and non conceptual contents while exploring a spatial context. First, (...) the analysis presents an argument to the effect that selection by overt and covert attention is needed for perceptual-demonstrative identification since overt/covert selective attention is required for the situated cognitive access to the target object. Second, it describes a hypothesis that makes explicit some of the roles of attention: the hypothesis of identification by epistemic attention via the control of perceptual routines. (shrink)

In this talk I present the main results from Anta (2021), namely, that the theoretical division between Boltzmannian and Gibbsian statistical mechanics should be understood as a separation in the epistemic capabilities of this physical discipline. In particular, while from the Boltzmannian framework one can generate powerful explanations of thermal processes by appealing to their microdynamics, from the Gibbsian framework one can predict observable values in a computationally effective way. Finally, I argue that this statistical mechanical schism contradicts the Hempelian (...) (1958) thesis that the predictive power of a scientific theory is directly proportional to its explanatory potential, and vice versa. (shrink)