In their target article, Hutto and Satne eloquently articulate the failings of most current attempts to naturalize mental content. Furthermore, we think they are correct in their insistence that the only way forward is by drawing a distinction between two kinds of intentionality, one of which is considerably weaker than—and should be deployed to explain—the propositional variety most philosophers take for granted. The problem is that their own rendering of this weaker form of intentionality—contentless intentionality—is too weak. What’s needed is (...) a species of intentionality distinct from both the industrial-strength version beloved by philosophers and the intentionality lite recommended by Hutto and Satne. We briefly motivate and sketch this alternative, and say a few words about the account of cognition that it spawns. (shrink)

Davidson’s 1974 argument denying the possibility of incommensurable conceptual schemes is widely interpreted as entailing a denial of metaphysical pluralism. Speakers may group objects differently or have different beliefs about the world, but there is just one world. I argue there is tension arising from three aspects of Davidson’s philosophy: the 1974 argument against conceptual schemes; Davidson’s more recent emphasis on primitive triangulation as a necessary condition for thought and language; and Davidson’s semantic approach to metaphysics, what he calls ‘the (...) method of truth in metaphysics’. After elucidating the tension, I argue the tension can be resolved while preserving at least two major tenets of Davidson’s philosophy: conceptual schemes do not carve an uninterpreted reality into different worlds and truth is objective and non-epistemic. I argue Davidson is implicitly committed to a plurality of worlds. (shrink)

Quine and Davidson employ proxy functions to demonstrate that the use of language (behaviouristically conceived) is compatible with indefinitely many radically different reference relations. They also believe that the use of language (behaviouristically conceived) is all that determines reference. From this they infer that reference is indeterminate, i.e. that there are no facts of the matter as to what singular terms designate and what predicates apply to. Yet referential indeterminacy yields rather dire consequences. One thus does wonder whether one can (...) hold on to a Quine--Davidson stance in semantics-cum-metaphysics and still avoid embracing referential indeterminacy. I argue that one can. Anyone adhering to the behaviouristic account pivotal to the Quine--Davidson stance is bound to acknowledge certain facts about verbal behaviour -- that some utterances are tied to situations, that some utterances are tied to segments in situations, that some predicates have non-contextualised conditions of application, and that use involves causal dependencies. The restrictions from these facts ensure that only reference relations generated by means of rather exceptional proxy functions are compatible with verbal behaviour. I conclude that this allows one to rebuff the Quine--Davidson argument for the indeterminacy of reference, as it were, from within. I moreover tentatively conclude that the line of thought laid out provides good reason for just about anyone to hold that there are facts about reference after all. (shrink)

Millikan [2000] has levelled a number of persuasive criticisms against Cummins's [1996] theory of mental representation. In this paper, I pave a middle path in the debate between Cummins [2000] and Millikan [2000] to answer two questions. How are representations applied to targets? How is the content of a representation determined? The result is a new theory of mental representation, which I call narrow structuralism.

Quines ontological relativity is related to Tarskis theory of truth in two ways: Quine repudiates term-by-term-correspondence, as does Tarskis rule of truth; and Quines proxy argument in support of relativity finds exact formulation in Tarskis truth definition.Unfortunately, relativity is threatened by the fact that the proxy argument doesnt comply with the rule of truth (Tarskis celebrated condition (T)). Despite Quines express allegiance to (T), use of proxy schemes does not generate all of the true sentences condition (T) requires.

We use quotation marks when we wish to refer to an expression. We can and do so refer even when this expression is composed of characters that do not occur in our alphabet. That's why Tarski, Quine, and Geach's theories of quotation don't work. The proposals of Davidson, Frege, and C. Washington, however, do not provide a plausible account of quotation either. (Section I). The problem is to construct a Tarskian theory of truth for an object language that contains quotation (...) marks, without appealing to quotation marks in the metalanguage. I propose to supply Tarski's truth definition with one axiom that determines the denotation of all expressions containing quotation marks. According to this axiom, quotation marks create a non-extensional context. Since admitting such contexts does not lead to any difficulties in the recursive truth characterization, we may indeed dispense with extensionalism. (Section II). Finally, I argue that we classify and denote expressions in the very same way that we classify and denote extralinguistic entities. Both tokens and types of written signs can be easily incorporated into the naturalist's worldview. (Section III). (shrink)

As an empirical inquiry into the nature of meaning, semantics must rely on data. Unfortunately, the primary data to which philosophers and linguists have traditionally appealed—judgments on the truth and falsity of sentences—have long been known to vary widely between competent speakers in a number of interesting cases. The present article constitutes an experiment in how to obtain some more consistent data for the enterprise of semantics. Specifically, it argues from some widely accepted Gricean premises to the conclusion that judgments (...) on lying are semantically relevant. It then endeavors to show how, assuming the relevance of such judgments, we can use them to generate a useful, widely acceptable test for semantic content. (shrink)

The article shows how McTaggart’s distinction between A- and B-series ways of locating events in time prompted and enabled the twentieth century’s most important advances in the philosophy of time. It argues that, even if the B-series represents time as it really is, because having A-series beliefs when they are true is indispensable to the causation of timely action, the A-series represents ‘the time of our lives ’.

Traditionally, philosophical inquiry into pedagogical issues has occurred far from the classrooms in which pedagogy materialises. However, an organised form of inquiry into issues of a normative nature and of an analytic nature, making use of ideas obtained in an empirical way in classroom and classroom-related situations, is both feasible and desirable. About desirability, this form of inquiry depends on the particularities of the local situations, and that helps to take them into account when deciding on how to improve pedagogical (...) practice. That is, it contextualises pedagogical decisions. About feasibility for normative issues, an analysis based on Donald Davidson’s philosophy of language shows that there is nothing that compels empirical observations to be descriptive and to not be normative. And normative occasional beliefs acquired empirically can serve as a general confrontation or testing field for ideas about the justification of pedagogical actions or strategies. About feasibility for analytic issues, as a consequence of giving up the analytic–synthetic distinction it is argued that they can also be explored by means of occasional beliefs acquired empirically, when confronted with the implications of the definition of any pedagogical concept. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the central arguments of my book Conversation and Responsibility in response to two critics, Dana Nelkin and Holly Smith.

Paraconsistent logics are characterized by rejection of ex falso quodlibet, the principle of explosion, which states that from a contradiction, anything can be derived. Strikingly these logics have found a wide range of application, despite the misgivings of philosophers as prominent as Lewis and Putnam. Such applications, I will argue, are of significant philosophical interest. They suggest ways to employ these logics in philosophical and scientific theories. To this end I will sketch out a ‘naturalized semantic dialetheism’ following Priest’s early (...) suggestion that the principles governing human natural language may well be inconsistent. There will be a significant deviation from Priest’s work, namely, the assumption of a broadly Chomskyan picture of semantics. This allows us to explain natural language inconsistency tolerance without commitment to contentious views in formal logic. (shrink)

Davidson and Burge have claimed that the conditions under which self-knowledge is possessed are such that externalism poses no obstacle to their being met by ordinary speakers and thinkers. On their accounts. no such person could fail to possess self-knowledge. But we do from time to time attribute to each other such failures; so we should prefer to their accounts an account that preserves first person authority while allowing us to make sense of what appear to be true attributions of (...) such failures.While the core idea behind Davidson’s and Burge’s accounts appears inadequate to this task, I argue that it can be deployed in such a way as to deliver the desired result. What makes this possible is that two attitude-types can differ as follows: the self-knowledge required for an utterance to be a Φing that p is different from the self-knowledge required for it to be a Ψing that p. (shrink)

Davidson and Burge have claimed that the conditions under which self‐knowledge is possessed are such that externalism poses no obstacle to their being met by ordinary speakers and thinkers. On their accounts, no such person could fail to possess self‐knowledge. But we do from time to time attribute to each other such failures; so we should prefer to their accounts an account that preserves first person authority while allowing us to make sense of what appear to be true attributions of (...) such failures.While the core idea behind Davidson's and Burge's accounts appears ioadequate to this task, I argue that it can be deployed in such a way as to deliver the desired result. What makes this possible is that two attitude‐types can differ as follows: the self‐knowledge required for an utterance to be a Oing that p is different from the self‐knowledge required for it to be a Ψfing that p. (shrink)

We began by distinguishing Tarskian and Fitchean notions of universality in such a way that the claim that no language is universal in the sense of Tarski is compatible with accepting Fitchean universality. Then we examined a proposal involving two truth concepts — one that fit the Fitchean notion and another that followed Tarski's views on truth — finding little advantage in such generosity. We attempted a reformulation of Herzberger's argument for the negative view — the view that no language (...) is universal in Tarski's sense — but found it unsuccessful when the language of the argument's formulation was brought under consideration. A more persuasive argument for EI was found, free of the defect of the previous one. EI was then shown to have unsettling consequences, prompting us to inquire about avoiding it. We found this possible, noting that EI is itself a solution to the semantic paradoxes, to which there are alternatives that avoid the unwelcome aspects of EI. However, whether any such alternative is ultimately preferable to EI remains to be seen. (shrink)

Las afirmaciones verdaderas reciben su justificación de creencias que tienen al conocimiento como base, por lo que para su formulación y comprensión se necesita asumir una posición fundacionalista. En este artículo se propone un fundacionalismo confiabilista, inspirado en Goldman, aunque con cambios importantes respecto a su teoría. A diferencia de Goldman, considero que no todas las creencias tienen que ser verdaderas, ni toda justificación de las creencias requiere de la verdad. Adicionalmente, las creencias verdaderas, expresadas mediante oraciones asertóricas, estarían fundadas (...) en creencias aún más básicas, cuya justificación proviene del uso del lenguaje. (shrink)

A common strategy amongst realists grants relativism at the level of language or thought but denies it at the level of fact. Their point is that even if our concept of an object is relative to a conceptual scheme, it doesn't follow that objects themselves are relative to conceptual schemes. This is a sensible point. But in this paper I present a simple argument for the conclusion that it is false. According to what I call the T-argument, relativism about content (...) entails a relativism about fact. (shrink)

Davidson holds that thinkers cannot employ radically different conceptual schemes, but he does not deny the fact that small-scale conceptual divergences are possible. He defends the former claim against Quine by appealing to interpretivism, the idea that ascriptions of intensional states to a speaker do no more than systematically record facts about the speaker’s behavior. From interpretivism it follows that it is theoretically irrelevant which set of concepts an interpreter uses to state her theory of meaning. This is what allows (...) Davidson to avoid conceptual relativism while accepting Quine’s thesis that behavioral evidence necessarily underdetermines assignments of meaning to speakers. However, as Davidson seems not to have realized, interpretivism also rules out the possibility of uncontroversial, small-scale conceptual differences. This fact, I argue, should lead us to reject interpretivism. (shrink)

This book's purpose is to detail the anatomy of linguistic meaning, showing how the various elements of meaning fit together. part 1 defends the truth-theoretic conception of semantics, taking the notion of a sentence's truth-condition as the core of meaning. part 2 explores the complex interconnections between syntax, semantics and various pragmatic notions and attempts to reconcile the apparent differences between natural and formal language. part 3 examines the relation between semantics and psychology.

The truth-condition theory of meaning is, naturally, thought of an as explanatory theory whose explananda are the meaning facts. But there are at least two deductive arguments that purport to establish the truth of the theory irrespective of its explanatory virtues. This paper examines those arguments and concludes that they succeed.

Whether or not deflationism is compatible with truth-conditional theories of meaning has often been discussed in very broad terms. This paper only focuses on Davidsonian semantics and Brandom's anaphoric deflationism and defends the claim that these are perfectly compatible. Critics of this view have voiced several objections, the most prominent of which claims that it involves an unacceptable form of circularity. The paper discusses how this general objection applies to the case of anaphoric deflationism and Davidsonian semantics and evaluates different (...) ways of responding to it (Williams 1999, Horisk 2008 and Lance 1997). Then, three further objections to the compatibility of these theories are assessed and eventually dismissed (Horisk 2007, Patterson 2005 and Collins 2002). It is shown how these considerations shed light on core issues of the debate. (shrink)

‘Drawing Metaphysical Consequences from a T-theory’. Pubblicato come quarto capitolo di Semantics, Tense, and Time: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Natural Language, Cambridge, Massachussetts, MIT Press, 1999. Per gentile concessione dell’autore e dell’editore. Traduzione italiana di Carlotta Pavese. L’idea che lo studio del linguaggio possa illuminare certe questioni metafisiche ha radici lontane nella storia della filosofia. Questa assunzione sembra già operante ai tempi del filosofo pre-soc...

This is a review of Kathrin Gluer's Donald Davidson: A Short Introduction. A dispute about the grounding of the Principle of Charity is discussed, and some resources Davidson has for responding to a criticism of his theory of action.

‘Drawing Metaphysical Consequences from a T-theory’. Pubblicato come quarto capitolo di Semantics, Tense, and Time: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Natural Language, Cambridge, Massachussetts, MIT Press, 1999. Per gentile concessione dell’autore e dell’editore. Traduzione italiana di Carlotta Pavese. L’idea che lo studio del linguaggio possa illuminare certe questioni metafisiche ha radici lontane nella storia della filosofia. Questa assunzione sembra già operante ai tempi del filosofo pre-soc...

_ Source: _Page Count 21 The “Context Principle”, as the author understands it in this paper, is the claim that sub-sentential linguistic expressions have meaning only in the context of complete meaningful sentences. The author reconstructs the version of the Context Principle that Wittgenstein holds in the _Tractatus_, shows that it has intuitive plausibility and can be defended against alleged counterexamples, and develops an argument for its truth that can be found in the _Tractatus_. In short, the author argues that (...) the “fit” between the meanings of sentences and the meanings of the expressions they contain can only be adequately explained if one acknowledges that for a sub-sentential expression to have meaning _is_ for it to make a contribution to the meaning of a sentence. (shrink)

I articulate and defend a necessary and sufficient condition for predication. The condition is that a term or term-occurrence stands in the relation of ascription to its designatum, ascription being a fundamental semantic relation that differs from reference. This view has dramatically different semantic consequences from its alternatives. After outlining the alternatives, I draw out these consequences and show how they favour the ascription view. I then develop the view and elicit a number of its virtues.

Despite increasing studies and applications of Vygotsky’s theory of learning and development, little has been written connecting Vygotsky specifically to moral education. The most comprehensive attempt at formulating such an account is given by Mark Tappan. I critically evaluate Tappan’s account before raising several problems for his approach. I then offer suggestions for resolving these issues by turning to research in socialization theory and recommending additional sociocultural artifacts that can supplement moral education.

The general question to be considered in this paper points to the nature of the world described by chemistry: what is macro-chemical ontology like? In particular, we want to identify the ontological categories that underlie chemical discourse and chemical practice. This is not an easy task, because modern Western metaphysics was strongly modeled by theoretical physics. For this reason, we attempt to answer our question by contrasting macro-chemical ontology with the mainstream ontology of physics and of traditional metaphysics. In particular, (...) we introduce the distinction between stuff-ontology, proper of chemistry, and individual-ontology, proper of physics. These two ontologies differ from each other in the basic categories of their own structures. On this basis, we characterize individual-ontology in such a way that the features of stuff-ontology will arise by contrast with it. (shrink)

What knowledge would suffice to yield an interpretation of an arbitrary utterance of a language when such knowledge is based on evidence plausibly available to a nonspeaker of that language? it is argued that it is enough to know a theory of truth for the language and that the theory satisfies tarski's 'convention t' and that it gives an optimal fit to data about sentences held true, Under specified conditions, By native speakers.

Complex demonstratives, expressions of the form 'That F', 'These Fs', etc., have traditionally been taken to be referring terms. Yet they exhibit many of the features of quantified noun phrases. This has led some philosophers to suggest that demonstrative determiners are a special kind of quantifier, which can be paraphrased using a context sensitive definite description. Both these views contain elements of the truth, though each is mistaken. We advance a novel account of the semantic form of complex demonstratives that (...) shows how to reconcile the view that they function like quantified noun phrases with the view that simple demonstratives function as context sensitive referring terms wherever they occur. If we are right, previous accounts of complex demonstratives have misconceived their semantic role; and philosophers relying on the majority view in employing complex demonstratives in analysis have proceeded on a false assumption. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend Davidson's program in truth-theoretical semantics against recent criticisms by Scott Soames. We argue that Soames has misunderstood Davidson's project, that in consequence his criticisms miss the mark, that appeal to meanings as entities in the alternative approach that Soames favors does no work, and that the approach is no advance over truth-theoretic semantics.

We take it that Brandom’s sense of the geography is that our way of proceeding is more or less the first and his is more or less the second. But we think this way of describing the situation is both unclear and misleading, and we want to have this out right at the start. Our problem is that we don’t know what “you start with” means either in formulations like “you start with the content of words and proceed to the (...) content of sentences” or in formulations like “you start with the content of sentences and you proceed to the content of words.” Brandom’s official view seems to be that he’s talking about explanatory priorities (see the preceding quote); but we think that can’t really be what he has in mind, and we can’t find any alternative interpretation that seems plausible. Speaking just for ourselves, we’re inclined towards a relatively pragmatic view of explanation; what explanation we should “start with” depends, inter alia, on what it’s an explanation of and whom it’s an explanation for. But, in any case, we would have thought that explanatory priority is of more than heuristic interest only if it reflects a priority of some other kind: ontological, semantical, psychological, or whatever. In talking about what one “starts with”, Brandom must be claiming more than. (shrink)

Although most contemporary philosophers of language hold that semantics and pragmatics require separate study, there is surprisingly little agreement on where exactly the line should be drawn between these two areas, and why. In this paper I suggest that this lack of clarity is at least partly caused by a certain historical obfuscation of the roots of the founding three-way distinction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics in Charles Peirce’s pragmatist philosophy of language. I then argue for recovering and revisiting these (...) original roots, taking indexicality as a case-study of how certain questions connected with the distinction which are currently considered complex and difficult may be clarified by a ‘properly pragmatist pragmatics’. Such a view, I shall argue, upends a certain priority usually accorded to semantics over pragmatics, teaching that we do not work out what terms mean in some abstract overall sense and then work out to what use they are being put; rather, we must understand to what use terms are being put in order to understand what they mean. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Utilisant ce qu'on appelle l'argument du lance-pierres, Davidson soutient que la théorie correspondantiste de la vérité est intenable. Cet argument dépend de deux présuppositions, dont l'une est qu'une phrase vraie ne devrait pas, par substitution de termes singuliers coréférentiels, en venir à correspondre à quelque chose de différent. Je propose dans cet article un argument nouveau pour montrer que cette supposition n'est pas plausible, particulièrement lorsqu'elle s'applique à des énoncés d'identité, ceux-là mêmes dont dépend pour sa formulation l'argument du (...) lance-pierres. (shrink)

Leclerc-Andre_Spontaneous-linguistic-understanding.

The transformers that drive chatbots and other AI systems constitute large language models (LLMs). These are currently the focus of a lively discussion in both the scientific literature and the popular media. This discussion ranges from hyperbolic claims that attribute general intelligence and sentience to LLMs, to the skeptical view that these devices are no more than “stochastic parrots”. I present an overview of some of the weak arguments that have been presented against LLMs, and I consider several of the (...) more compelling criticisms of these devices. The former significantly underestimate the capacity of transformers to achieve subtle inductive inferences required for high levels of performance on complex, cognitively significant tasks. In some instances, these arguments misconstrue the nature of deep learning. The latter criticisms identify significant limitations in the way in which transformers learn and represent patterns in data. They also point out important differences between the procedures through which deep neural networks and humans acquire knowledge of natural language. It is necessary to look carefully at both sets of arguments in order to achieve a balanced assessment of the potential and the limitations of LLMs. (shrink)

The so-called “Slingshot” argument purports to show that an ontology of facts is untenable. In this paper, we address a minimal slingshot restricted to an ontology of physical facts as truth-makers for empirical physical statements. Accepting that logical matters have no bearing on the physical facts that are truth-makers for empirical physical statements and that objects are themselves constituents of such facts, our minimal slingshot argument purportedly shows that any two physical statements with empirical content are made true by one (...) and the same fact. It is well-known that Russell’s theory of descriptions may be employed to reveal a scope fallacy in the slingshot argument. This paper reveals that there is a quite independent Russellian criticism of the slingshot argument based on the thesis that facts are structured entities. (shrink)