This paper gives an outline of truthmaker semantics for natural language against the background of standard possible-worlds semantics. It develops a truthmaker semantics for attitude reports and deontic modals based on an ontology of attitudinal and modal objects and on a semantic function of clauses as predicates of such objects. It also présents new motivations for 'object-based truthmaker semantics' from intensional transitive verbs such as ‘need’, ‘look for’, ‘own’, and ‘buy’ and gives an outline of their semantics. This paper is (...) a commissioned 'target' article, with commentaries by W. Davis, B. Arsenijevic, K. Moulton, K. Liefke, M. Kaufmann, R. Matthews, P. Portner and A. Rubinstein, P. Elliott, G. Ramchand and my reply. (shrink)

Our aim in the present paper is to investigate, from the standpoint of truth-theoretic semantics, English tense, temporal designators and quantifiers, and other expressions we use to relate ourselves and other things to the temporal order. Truth-theoretic semantics provides a particularly illuminating standpoint from which to discuss issues about the semantics of tense, and their relation to thoughts at, and about, times. Tense, and temporal modifiers, contribute systematically to conditions under which sentences we utter are true or false. A Tarski-style (...) truth-theoretic semantics, by requiring explicitly represented truth conditions, helps to sharpen questions about the function of tense, and to deepen our insight into the contribution the tenses and temporal modifiers make to what we say by using them. (shrink)

The topic of this essay is “the slingshot,” a short argument that purports to show that sentences1 designate (stand for, refer to) truth values. Versions of this argument have been used by Frege 2, Church 3, Quine4 and Davidson5; thus it is historically important, even if it immediately strikes one as fishy. The argument turns on two principles, which I call substitution and redistribution. In “Semantic Innocence and Uncompromising Situations,”6 Jon Barwise and I rejected both principles, as part of our (...) attempt.. (shrink)

I look critically at accounts of human action which help themselves to a certain conception of the causal order when they treat actions as effects of mental states. Donald Davidson introduced such accounts in the shape of the “belief-desire theory.” By way of examining Davidson’s ideas about events, I undertake to show what conceptions of time and of causality are needed for understanding agency, and for a viable naturalism.

The paper is a critical reaction to M. Grygianiec’s discussion of the status of the epiphenomenalism objection to anomalous monism. Grygianiec argues that the objection does not arise for Davidson if one takes his nominalism seriously. I show that Grygianiec construes the epiphenomenalism charge as an internal one. I argue that it can be viewed as an external objection to anomalous monism, moreover one that is justified, adequate and charitable. I distinguish two interpretations of the objection and show that an (...) appeal to charity can explain why an apparently inadequate form the objection is often preferred. (shrink)

The thesis evaluates a contemporary debate concerning the very possibility of thinking about the world. In the first chapter, McDowell's critique of Davidson is presented, focusing on the coherentism defended by the latter. The critique of the myth of the given (as it appears in Sellars and Wittgenstein), as well as the necessity of a minimal empiricism (which McDowell finds in Quine and Kant), lead to an oscillation in contemporary thinking between two equally unsatisfactory ways of understanding the empirical content (...) of thought. In the second chapter, I defend Davidson's approach, focusing on his theory of interpretation and semantic externalism, as well as on the relation between causes and reasons. In the third chapter, the debate is analyzed in more detail. I criticize the anomalous monism, the way in which the boundaries between the conceptual and the non-conceptual are understood by Davidson, as well as the naturalized Platonism defended by McDowell. This thesis is mainly negative, and it concludes by revealing problems in both positions under evaluation. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the semantics of statements of the form ‘x is P at t’ vis-à-vis its metaphysical underpinnings. I begin by considering four main readings, corresponding to the four basic parsings of the temporal modifier ‘at t’: (1) at-t x is P, (2) x-at-t is P, (3) x is-at-t P, and (4) x is P-at-t. Each of these readings—which correspond to different metaphysical conceptions of the nature of temporal change—is found inadequate or otherwise problematic. In the second part (...) of the paper I therefore consider a fifth account whose advantages over (1)–(4), I argue, exceed its revisionary costs. This fifth account is based on a conception of objects as entia successiva held together by a nexus of temporal counterparthood and reads ‘x is P at t’ as ‘the t-counterpart of x is P’. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics is an area of Physics that deals with subatomic phenomena. It can be extracted from a vision of the physical world which contradicts many aspects of our everyday perception, prompting many philosophical debates and admitting different interpretations. Among the wide range of problems within the interpretation of quantum theory, there is the measurement problem. Some philosophical aspects of the problems concerning the notion of “measurement” in quantum mechanics are analyzed in order to identify how the problem arises in (...) discussions about the foundations of the interpretation of quantum theory and how it holds up even in the most recent interpretations, conflicting in various ways (including ontological) with a worldview that can be drawn from classical physics – assuming that it provides a worldview. Although Bohr has, on several occasions, addressed the measurement problem, he did not get to properly formulate a measurement theory. This was done by von Neumann, who presented an axiomatic formulation of a measurement theory along with a critique of the Bohrian model and, at the same time, an alternative grounded in the introduction of a dualistic notion of consciousness (nonphysical) with causal power in quantum measurement. It is precisely the introduction of the dualistic concept of consciousness within the scope of the concept of measurement that inserts into the philosophical discussion as an ontological problem insofar as it comes to the introduction of a new entity in the universe. The first subjetivistic interpretations, proposed by London and Bauer, are analysed, passing through the solipsistic difficulty to this subjectivist interpretations placed through Wigner’s work, up to the interpretations inspired by the late work of the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, which proposes a monistic interpretation of the notion of “consciousness”. Some distinct attitudes towards measuring the philosophical problems are outlined very briefly in the form of sampling, to illustrate the plural character of the proposals for interpretation of the term “measurement” in quantum mechanics. Although strictly speaking there is no “best” interpretation of quantum mechanics, it is suggested that the formulation of an ontology that takes into account quantum mechanics could help in understanding certain concepts, such as “measurement” or “consciousness” without that philosophical difficulties – as dualism – or paradoxical situations – such as solipsism – necessarily accompany them. (shrink)

This paper introduces a new theory of moral responsibility that does not rely on any concept of human control. Since an understanding of determinism shapes the possible set of views one can take regarding control, and there is no account of control that could be held simultaneously by both compatibilists and libertarians, the “relational theory of responsibility” is meant to create a common ground between compatibilism and libertarianism which are held to be mutually exclusive. Since the relational account of responsibility (...) is to be a common ground, it must be neutral regarding the truth of determinism and indeterminism. Thus, it must also be indifferent concerning different concepts of control formed by compatibilists and libertarians. I argue that my view can be accepted by both compatibilists and incompatibilists. It makes the claim that, in order for a person to be responsible, she has to act in a certain type of situation that needs to be such that there is at least one relevantly similar situation in which the agent refrains from performing the action that was executed in the original case. A person cannot be held responsible for doing what she does if no person refrains from performing that action in a relevantly similar situation. I claim that the relational theory of responsibility itself is sufficient for grounding responsibility. Since the relational account expresses responsibility without relying on any concept of control, a choice between determinism and indeterminism does not have to be made in order to establish a proper concept of moral responsibility. (shrink)

It is a commonplace in philosophy of action that there is and must be teleologically basic action: something done on an occasion without doing it by means of doing anything else. It is widely believed that basic actions are exercises of skill. As the source of the need for basic action is the structure of practical reasoning, this yields a conception of skill and practical reasoning as complementary but mutually exclusive. On this view, practical reasoning and complex intentional action depend (...) on skill and basic action, but the latter pair are not themselves rationally structured: the movements a basic action comprises are not intentional actions, and they are not structured as means to an end. However, Michael Thompson and Douglas Lavin have argued that action that bears no inner rational structure is not intentional action at all, and that therefore there can be no such thing as basic action. In this paper, I argue that their critique shows that standard conceptions of basic action are indeed untenable, but not that we can do without an alternative. I develop an alternative conception of skill and basic action on which their basicness is not to be equated with simplicity: like deliberation and non-basic action, they are teleologically complex, but their complexity takes a different form. On this view, skill contrasts with deliberation—not because it is not a manifestation of practical reason, but because the two are specifically different manifestations of practical reason. (shrink)

This thesis is about the conceptualization of persistence of physical, middle-sized objects within the theoretical framework of the revisionary ‘B-theory’ of time. According to the B-theory, time does not flow, but is an extended and inherently directed fourth dimension along which the history of the universe is ‘laid out’ once and for all. It is a widespread view among philosophers that if we accept the B-theory, the commonsensical ‘endurance theory’ of persistence will have to be rejected. The endurance theory says (...) that objects persist through time by being wholly present at distinct times as numerically the same entity. Instead of endurantism, it has been argued, we have to adopt either ‘perdurantism’ or the ‘stage theory’. Perdurantism is the theory that objects are four-dimensional ‘space-time worms’ persisting through time by having distinct temporal parts at distinct times. The stage theory says that objects are instantaneous temporal parts (stages) of space-time worms, persisting by having distinct temporal counterparts at distinct times. In the thesis, it is argued that no good arguments have been provided for the conclusion that we are obliged to drop the endurance theory by acceptance of the B-theory. This conclusion stands even if the endurance theory incorporates the claim that objects endure through intrinsic change. It is also shown that perdurantism and the stage theory come with unwelcome consequences. -/- Paper I demonstrates that the main arguments for the view that objects cannot endure in B-time intrinsically unchanged fail. Papers II and III do the same with respect to the traditional arguments against endurance through intrinsic change in B-time. Paper III also contains a detailed account of the semantics of the tenseless copula, which occurs frequently in the debate. The contention of Paper IV is that four-dimensional space-time worms, as traditionally understood, are not suited to take dispositional predicates. In Paper V, it is shown that the stage theory needs to introduce an overabundance of persistence-concepts, many of which will have to be simultaneously applicable to a single object (qua falling under a single sortal), in order for the theory to be consistent. The final article, Paper VI, investigates the sense in which persistence can, as is sometimes suggested, be a ‘conventional matter’. It also asks whether alleged cases of ‘conventional persistence’ create trouble for the endurance theory. It is argued that conventions can only enter at a trivial semantic level, and that the endurance theory is no more threatened by such conventions than are its rivals. (shrink)

A lot of work in metaphysics relies on linguistic analysis and intuitions. Do we want to know what sort of things there are or could be? Then let’s see what sort of things there must be in order for what we truthfully say to be true. Do we want to see whether x is distinct from y? Then let’s see whether there is any statement that is true of x but not of y. And so on. In this paper I (...) argue that this way of proceeding is full of traps and is bound to be pretty useless unless we already have a good idea of what sort of things there are, and of how we are going to count them. (shrink)

Survey of issues pertaining to the semantics of mass and plural nouns.

In this thesis, I examine the metaphysical debate between the A-theory and the B-theory of time, first by elaborating upon its proper characterization, and then by examining the sorts of evidence that are often thought to be germane to it. This debate, as I see it, is about whether or not time passes in any objective sense: the A-theory holds that it does, while the B-theory holds that it does not. I identify two opposing conceptions of time—that of the “time (...) of ordinary experience” on one hand, and that of “scientific time” on the other—and argue that the tension between them is the driving force behind this debate. I then examine two aspects of “evidence” from the time of ordinary experience: the phenomenological experience of time and the linguistic experience of time. It is often supposed, by both A- and B-theorists alike, that these sorts of evidence lend credence to the A-theory of time, since ordinary experience suggests that time passes. I hope to discredit this presumption, and so challenge the very framework in which this debate is so often carried out. In particular, by closely examining both of these kinds of experience—phenomenological and linguistic—in turn, I hope to provide a partial argument to the effect that the ordinary experience of time as a whole does not favour the A-theory over the B-theory of time. In the case of the phenomenological evidence, this is because the A-theory is just as inconsistent with such evidence as is the B-theory of time; in the case of the linguistic evidence, this is because the B-theory is equally consistent with such evidence as is the A-theory of time, particularly once it is revealed that a certain key assumption is tacitly accepted by both sides of the debate. Because of the popularity of the claim that the ordinary experience of time favours the A-theory, I take this conclusion to be something of a modest defence for the B-theory of time. (shrink)

In a provocative book, Andrew Carstairs- McCarthy argues that the apparently universal distinction in human languages between sentences and noun phrases cannot be assumed to be inevitable for languages with the expressive power of human languages, but needs explaining. His work suggests, but does not explicitly state, that there is also no conceptual necessity for the distinction between basic types e and t, a distinction argued for by Frege and carried into formal semantics through the work of Montague. Pragmatic distinctions (...) among various kinds of speech acts, including asserting, questioning, commanding, and pointing things out are assumed in Carstairs- McCarthy ’s work, as are expressions of functional types; what is questioned is whether a syntacticized sentence-NP distinction is essential. (shrink)

The theory according to which most ordinary objects are mere “entia successiva”—sequences of distinct mereological aggregates, whose unity resides exclusively in our minds—is a variant of the standard, three-dimensional conception of objects. For the aggregates are, at bottom, endurants, i.e., entities that persist through time by being fully present at any time at which they exist. In this paper I compare this theory with the so-called “stage view”, according to which ordinary objects—indeed, all objects—are sequences of momentary entities that cannot (...) truly be said to persist through time. Both theories face a number of intuitive difficulties but the stage view, I argue, has a lot more to offer in return. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor has argued that virtually all lexical concepts are innate. I argue against this position, but not, as other have done, on the grounds that the arguments against lexical decomposition upon which Fodor relies are flawed. Rather, I argue that even if lexical concepts cannot be decomposed, the possession conditions for having lexical concepts are nonetheless not innately satisfied.

This paper gives a characterization of the ontology implicit in natural language and the entities it involves, situates natural language ontology within metaphysics, and responds to Chomskys' dismissal of externalist semantics.

This is one of a series of articles in which I examine errors that philosophers of language may be led to make if already prone to exaggerating the rôle compositional semantics can play in explaining how we communicate, whether by expressing propositions with our words or by merely implying them. In the present article, I am concerned less with “pragmatic contributions” to the propositions we express—contributions some philosophers seem rather desperate to deny the existence or ubiquity of—than I am with (...) certain types of traps that those who exaggerate the rôle of semantic convention and underestimate the rôle of pragmatic inference are apt to fall into. (shrink)

Average-NPs, such as the one in the title of this paper, have been claimed to be ‘linguistically identical’ to any other definite-NPs but at the same time to be ‘semantically inconsistent’ with these other definite-NPs. To some this is an ironclad proof of the irrelevance of semantics to linguistics. We argue that both of the initial claims are wrong: average-NPs are not ‘linguistically identical’ to other definite-NPs but instead show a number of interesting divergences, and we provide a plausible semantic (...) account for them that is not ‘semantically inconsistent’ with the account afforded other definite-NPs but in fact blends quite nicely with one standard account of the semantics for NPs. (shrink)

We are responsible for some things but not for others. In this thesis, I investigate what it takes for an entity to be responsible for something. This question has two components: agents and actions. I argue for a permissive view about agents. Entities such as groups or artificially intelligent systems may be agents in the sense required for responsibility. With respect to actions, I argue for a causal view. The relation in virtue of which agents are responsible for actions is (...) a causal one. I claim that responsibility requires causation and I develop a causal account of agency. This account is particularly apt for addressing the relationship between agency and moral responsibility and sheds light on the causal foundations of moral responsibility. (shrink)

En esta nota crítica (i) se hace una breve descripción de cada uno de los artículos que componen Orayen: de la forma lógica al significado, (ii) se señalan algunas cuestiones que no están claras en ellos o en las réplicas de Orayen y, (iii) en la medida de lo posible, se indica si los autores desarrollan ulteriormente los problemas abordados en sus artículos. The aim of this critical note is threefold: (i) it briefly describes and comments on each of the (...) articles of Orayen: de la forma lógica al significado; (ii) identifies some issues that may not be clear enough or not fully developed whether in the articles or even in Orayen's replies; (iii) as far as possible, it refers to further studies made by the authors themselves on the same, or quite related, subjects addressed by them in their papers. (shrink)

The distinction between telic and atelic predicates has been described in terms of the algebraic properties of their meaning since the early days of model-theoretic semantics. This perspective was inspired by Aristotle’s discussion of types of actions that do or do not take time to be completed1 which was taken up and turned into a linguistic discussion of action-denoting predicates by Vendler (1957). The algebraic notion that seemed to be most conducive to express the Aristotelian distinction appeared to be the (...) mereological notion of a part, applied to the time at which these predicates hold: atelic predicates, like push a cart, have the subinterval property, that is, whenever they are true at a time interval, then they are true at any part of that interval; this does not hold for telic predicates, like eat an apple, cf. Bennett & Partee (1972), Taylor (1977), and Dowty (1979)2. Bach (1986) integrated these insights into a semantics based on events. (shrink)

In previous work I have argued that talk about negative events should not be taken at face value: typically, what we are inclined to think of as a negative event (John’s failure to go jogging) is just an ordinary, positive event (his going to the movie instead); it is a positive event under a negative description. Here I consider more closely the difficulties that arise in those cases where no positive event seems available to do the job, as with putative (...) cases of causation by omission. In particular, I elaborate on Helen Beebee’s idea that not all causal explanations are reports of causation. When we mention John’s failure to turn off the gas as an explanans of why there was an explosion, we do not say what caused the explosion. We do not mention any of the relevant causes. We just remark that one sort of event that was supposed to occur, and whose occurrence would have prevented the explosion, did not in fact occur. (shrink)

An investigation into 'Austinian semantics'. Every utterance is said to express an 'Austinian proposition' consisting of a situation and a fact the situation is presented as supporting. A more recent statement of the theory is to be found in *Oratio Obliqua, Oratio Recta: an Essay on Metarepresentation* (MIT Press/Bradford Books, 2000).

Words have meaning. Sentences also have meaning, but their meaning is different in kind from any collection of the meanings of the words they contain. I discuss two puzzles related to this difference. The first is how the meanings of the parts of a sentence combine to give rise to a unified sentential meaning, as opposed to a mere collection of disparate meanings (UP1). The second is why the formal ontology of linguistic meaning changes when grammatical structure is built up (...) (UP2). For example, the meaning of a sentence is a proposition evaluable for truth and falsity. In contrast, a collection of the meanings of its parts does not constitute a proposition and is not evaluable for truth. These two puzzles are closely related, since change in formal ontology is the clearest sign of the unity of meaning. The most popular strategy for answering them is taking the meanings of the parts as abstractions from primitive sentence meanings. However, I argue that, given plausible psychological constraints, sentence meanings cannot be taken as explanatory primitives. Drawing on recent work in Generative Grammar and its philosophy, I suggest that the key to both unity questions is to distinguish strictly between lexical and grammatical meaning. The latter is irreducible and determines how lexical content is used in referential acts. I argue that these referential properties determine a formal ontology, which explains why and how formal ontology changes when grammatical structure is built up (UP2). As for UP1, I suggest that, strictly speaking, lexical meanings never combine. Instead, whenever grammar specifies a formal ontology for the lexical meanings entering a grammatical derivation, further lexical (or phrasal) meanings can only specify aspects of this recursive grammatical process. In this way, contemporary grammatical theory can be used to address old philosophical problems. (shrink)

When we perceive we are under the impression of being directly aware of concrete, mindindependent objects. We also consider perception as a basic, reliable source for acquiring beliefs and an effective means for coping with the environment. In the philosophical literature, this direct and basic character of perception is sometimes captured by saying that perception is openness to the world. Articulating, refining and vindicating as far as possible this commonsensical view of perception as openness to the world is the main (...) objective of this work. In order to make the metaphor of openness tractable in theoretical terms, I set up the dialectic in terms of a contrast between representationalism, which holds that perception represents things as being a certain way, and pure relationalism, which holds that perception can be openness to the world only by being a non-representational relation between a subject and objects in the world. The main thesis that I defend with several arguments in this work is that perception is both representational and relational. Indeed, it intelligibly relates us to the world in virtue of its representational content. In chapter one, I place perception in the broader context of intentional states. I articulate a view on which intentional states are directed toward their objects in virtue of having representational content, and show that prima facie the arguments for thinking that paradigmatic intentional states such as belief have content apply to perception too. I also explain why pure relationalists would reject the application of the content-model to perception. Chapter two is devoted to Charles Travis’s argument that perceptual experience does not have content. I counter his argument by offering a phenomenological account of perceptual constancy, and I show that content is necessary for capturing constancy in theoretical terms. Further, I argue that content helps us to better explain how the mind-independent nature of concrete objects is manifest in the phenomenology of perceptual experience. Chapter three concerns the question of how we should elucidate perceptual experience as openness to the world in the face of illusion and hallucination. I consider three possible approaches, and I argue that a view on which perceptual experience is both representational and relational can best make sense of the relevant phenomena. In the fourth chapter, I consider the debate on phenomenal character between representationalist and purely relationalist views in light of a distinction between particularity and generality. I show how representationalists are committed to there being an element of generality in perception, and how pure relationalists construe perception as wholly particular instead. I defend the representationalist view on the grounds that generality is necessary to make sense of the phenomenal and epistemic determinacy of perception. In the concluding remarks, I consider the question of whether my view can make room for the relationality of perception, and I argue again that only a distorted view of the metaphor of openness to the world could lead one to think that content and relationality are incompatible. (shrink)

Algorithms for NLG NLG is typically broken down into stages of discourse planning (to select information and organize it into coherent paragraphs), sentence planning (to choose words and structures to fit information into sentence-sized units), and realization (to determine surface form of output, including word order, morphology and final formatting or intonation). The SPUD system combines the generation steps of sentence planning and surface realization by using a lexicalized grammar to construct the syntax and semantics of a sentence simultaneously.

Paul M. Pietroski, University of Maryland For any sentence of a natural language, we can ask the following questions: what is its meaning; what is its syntactic structure; and how is its meaning related to its syntactic structure? Attending to these questions, as they apply to sentences that provide evidence for Davidsonian event analyses, suggests that we reconsider some traditional views about how the syntax of a natural sentence is related to its meaning.

Paul M. Pietroski, University of Maryland I had heard it said that Chomsky’s conception of language is at odds with the truth-conditional program in semantics. Some of my friends said it so often that the point—or at least a point—finally sunk in.

We think recent work in linguistics tells against the traditional claim that a string of words like (1) Every girl pushed some truck has two readings, indicated by the following formal language sentences (with restricted quantifiers): (1a) [!x:Gx]["y:Ty]Pxy (1b) ["y:Ty][!x:Gx]Pxy. In our view, (1) does not have any b-reading in which ‘some truck’ has widest scope.1 The issue turns on details concerning syntactic transformations and terms like ‘every’. This illustrates an important point for the study of natural language: ambiguity hypotheses (...) are indeed hypotheses—i.e., theoretical claims to be justified in light of various considerations, not theses whose truth can be directly observed by speakers. (shrink)

It is routinely observed in NLP that sentences seem to “evoke” situations (where I use this term comprehensively to cover events, episodes, eventualities, processes, etc.). Much like discourse entities evoked by explicit noun phrases, these evoked situations can be referred to anaphorically, as for instance in (1) and (3) below, and can be modified in various ways, for instance by supplying their duration and location, as in (2) and (4).

It is, I suppose, a truism that an adequate theory of meaning for a natural language L will associate each sentence of L with its meaning. But the converse does not hold. A theory that associates each sentence with its meaning is not, by virtue of that fact, an adequate theory of meaning. For it is also a truism that a semantic theory should explain the (interesting and explicable) semantic facts. And one cannot decree that the relevant facts are all (...) reportable with instances of schemata like ‘S means that p’ or ‘S, by virtue of its meaning, is true iff p’. Investigation suggests that there is much more for semanticists to explain: natural languages exhibit synonymies, ambiguities, and entailments; for any string of words, there are endlessly many meanings it cannot have; there are semantic generalizations, including crosslinguistic generalizations, that go uncaptured and unexplained by merely associating sentences with their meanings; etc. Initially, one might think these facts are “peripheral” and can thus be ignored if the aim is to explain why sentences mean what they do. But the study of natural language suggests otherwise. (One can’t tell, in advance of investigation, which facts are peripheral to a given domain. It was initially tempting to think that one could ignore falling bodies, and the tides, if the aim was to explain why planets move as they do.). (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to apply inductive logic to the field that, presumably, Carnap never expected: legal causation. Legal causation is expressible in the form of singular causal statements; but it is distinguished from the customary concept of scientific causation, because it is subjective. We try to express this subjectivity within the system of inductive logic. Further, by semantic complement, we compensate a defect found in our application, to be concrete, the impossibility of two-place predicates (for causal relationship) (...) in inductive logic. (shrink)

This paper clarifies Searle's account of we-intentions and then argues that it is subject to counterexamples, some of which are derived from examples Searle uses against other accounts. It then offers an alternative reductive account that is not subject to the counterexamples.

Statements about the behavior of biological entities, e.g. about the interaction between two proteins, abound in the literature on molecular biology and are increasingly becoming the targets of information extraction and text mining techniques. We show that an accurate analysis of the semantics of such statements reveals a number of ambiguities that is necessary to take into account in the practice of biomedical ontology engineering. Several concurring formalizations are proposed. Emphasis is laid on the discussion of biological dispositions.

In this paper I concern myself with The Superman Puzzle. I argue that the descriptive content associated with proper names, besides determining the proper name’s reference, function as truth-conditionally relevant adjuncts which can be used to express a manner, reason, goal, time or purpose of action. In that way a sentence with a proper name ‘NN is doing something’ could be understood as ‘NN is doing something as NN’. I argue that the substitution of names can fail on modified readings (...) because the different descriptive content of proper names modifies the main predicate differently. Here I present a formal representation of modified predicates which allows one to model intuitively the different truth-conditions of sentences from The Puzzle. (shrink)

In «Mancanze, omissioni, e descrizioni negative»,55 Achille Varzi esplora le conseguenze di una forma comune di ragionamento causale, quella in cui citiamo mancanze od omissioni nel fornire una spiegazione delle cause degli eventi. Tale forma appare di comune uso nei contesti normativi del diritto, nelle spiegazioni tipiche delle scienze sociali e, più in generale, nel ragionamento ordinario. Ciò che accomuna questi casi è l’idea intuitiva secondo cui le cause possono anche consistere in eventi negativi. L’intuizione non è però metafisicamente innocua, (...) poiché per affermare che una spiegazione come "C’è stata un’esplosione perché Gianni non ha spento il gas" sia una buona spiegazione, occorre assumere che gli eventi negativi come “il non aver spento il gas da parte di Gianni” esistano al pari di eventi come l’esplosione e dal momento che, solo se sono entrambi eventi, può tra questi sussistere una relazione casuale. Dovremmo pertanto concludere che (1) è perfettamente intellegibile e rispecchia le nostre pratiche linguistiche. Spesso parliamo assumendo che ci siano cose che le persone non fanno: il gas che Gianni non ha spento, la passeggiata che non abbiamo fatto, il treno che non è arrivato, ecc. La sensatezza di questi usi esige pertanto il dover riconoscere una certa legittimità al vocabolario delle omissioni e delle descrizioni negative. Varzi sostiene che questo modo di parlare solleva tuttavia degli scrupoli ontologici,56 poiché non è possibile assumersi alcun serio impegno ontologico nei confronti di eventi negativi, ancor meno quando le nostre asserzioni richiedono di quantificare su eventi “inesistenti”. Una strategia per ovviare a questo scrupolo è sostenere che queste pratiche linguistiche sono analoghe a quelle in cui parliamo di oggetti “inesistenti”, ossia di oggetti che è come se ci fossero, ma che riconosciamo esistere soltanto in un contesto finzionale. Dunque l’analogia con gli oggetti finzionali può rendere in qualche modo espliciti i vincoli ontologici, giustificando quegli usi linguistici. Sebbene questo argomento abbia la sua plausibilità, Varzi nota che «ad un esame più attento, gli eventi non accaduti si rivelano ben più resistenti al rasoio di Occam di quanto l’analogia con gli oggetti non esistenti suggerisca » poiché il nostro linguaggio causale ci induce spesso a ritenere che «il riferimento o la quantificazione nei confronti di eventi non accaduti sia da intendersi in senso stretto e letterale»,57 in contrasto con quanto suggerisce l’analogia con gli oggetti finzionali. La difficoltà nasce dall’argomento per cui, se la causazione è una relazione tra eventi, occorre prendere sul serio l’idea che gli eventi negativi siano negativi stricto sensu. La tesi di Varzi è che questa tesi sia una contraddizione genuina e che l’unico modo di risolverla sia di rinunciare all’idea che gli eventi negativi esistano in un qualsiasi senso. In questo articolo intendo analizzare un aspetto di questa forma di parsimonia ontologica. Il mio intento è di valutare le conseguenze della tesi di Varzi dal punto di vista della spiegazione causale in contesti controfattuali e nei casi di omissione del diritto. (shrink)

In this paper I inquire into the methodological status of one of the arguments that have figured prominently in contemporary debates about the semantics of a variety of expressions, the so-called “Binding Argument”. My inquiry is limited to the case of meteorological sentences like “It is raining”, but my conclusion can be extended to other types of sentences as well. Following Jason Stanley, I distinguish between three interpretations of the argument. My focus is on the third, weakest interpretation, according to (...) which postulating variables for locations in the logical form of meteorological sentences is the best available explanation of the binding phenomena that such sentences give rise to. My aim is to show that even in this weak interpretation, the argument cannot be reasonably taken to hold. I accomplish this by showcasing several alternative ways to account for the binding data that have not been, as of yet, ruled out as flawed. (shrink)

Plato did it. Aristotle did it. All the great philosophers did it. You do it and we do it: we draw philosophical conclusions from linguistic data. Although we all do it, the degree, manner, and intensity to which it is done varies. Some have made piecemeal observations about language (e.g., “all these different things have the same term predicated of them”) to draw metaphysical conclusions (e.g., “there is some one existing thing that all these different entities share”). Others have made (...) observations about how all people – or at least, some important subset of them – employ a term (e.g., “we don’t say an action is voluntary unless we wish to say that it was done for (or in) an unusual reason (or manner)”) to draw conclusions about human agency (e.g., “actions that are done in the normal way in the normal course of events are neither free nor compulsory”). And others have looked to how people would talk were certain actual conditions not to be true (e.g., “we would say that we were still talking about Aristotle even if it were to turn out that he didn’t teach Alexander the Great”) to infer necessary features of the semantic realm (e.g., that some propositions must contain an actual individual and not a description of an individual). Still others have looked to empirical results from the science of linguistics (e.g., “the types of complements allowed by the verbs believes and knows are different”) to draw epistemological conclusions (e.g., “knowledge of something does not imply belief of it”), or again “the distributional facts concerning knows that and knows how are the same” to draw the conclusion “practical knowledge is a kind of theoretical knowledge”. (shrink)

Roger Gibson has achieved as much as anyone else, indeed, more, in presenting and defending Quine’s philosophy. It is no surprise that the great man W.V. Quine himself said that in reading Gibson he gained a welcome perspective on his own work. His twin books The Philosophy of W.V. Quine and Enlightened Empiricism have no rivals. We are all indebted to Roger. The essay that follows is intended not only to honor him but also to continue a theme that runs (...) throughout his (and Quine’s) work, namely, the seamless division between science and philosophy. The techniques we invoke are consonant with the naturalistic conception of language that central themes of Professor Gibson’s writings, namely, that language is “a social art to be studied empirically” (Enlightened Empiricism, p. 64). (shrink)

Finite-state descriptions for temporal semantics are outlined through which to distinguish soft inferences reflecting manners of conceptualization from more robust semantic entailments defined over models. Just what descriptions are built (before being interpreted model-theoretically) and how they are grounded in models of reality explain (upon examination) why some inferences are soft.