This paper investigates the question of how to correctly capture the scope of singular thinking. The first part of the paper identifies a scope problem for the dominant view of singular thought maintaining that, in order for a thinker to have a singular thought about an object o, the thinker has to bear a special epistemic relation to o. The scope problem has it is that this view cannot make sense of the singularity of our thoughts about objects to which (...) we do not or cannot bear any special epistemic relation. The paper focuses on a specific instance of the scope problem by addressing the case of thoughts about the natural numbers. Various possible solutions to the scope problem within the dominant framework are assessed and rejected. The second part of the paper develops a new theory of singular thought which hinges on the contention that the constraints that need to be met in order to think singularly vary depending on the kind of object we are thinking about. This idea is developed in detail by discussing the difference between the somewhat standard case of thoughts about spatio-temporal medium-sized inanimate objects and the case of thoughts about the natural numbers. It is contended that this new Pluralist theory of singular thought can successfully solve the scope problem. (shrink)

In the Addenda to Naming and Necessity (1980), Kripke famously argues that it is false that there could have been unicorns, or more properly, that “no counterfactual situation is properly describable as one in which there would have been unicorns.” He adds that he holds similarly that ‘one cannot say of any possible person that he would have been Sherlock Holmes, had he existed.” He notes the “cryptic brevity” of these remarks and refers to a forthcoming work for elaborations—the work (...) being, of course, the John Locke Lectures (2013). Coming as it does at the end of Naming and Necessity, it is natural to read this discussion as drawing out consequences of Kripke’s non-descriptivist picture of proper names and names of natural kinds. In fact, so much is suggested there by Kripke himself. The question thus arises: can the contentious claims quoted from the Addenda be defended independently of Kripke’s rejection of descriptivism? I shall argue that, as appears from the John Locke Lectures, they can be. (shrink)

An assertion is existentially known if and only if: (i) the speaker knows that the sentence she uses to make the assertion expresses a true proposition; (ii) she makes the assertion based on that knowledge; and (iii) she does not believe, have justification for, or know the proposition asserted. Accordingly, if existentially known assertions could be made correctly—as argued by Charlie Pelling in his ‘Assertion and the Provision of Knowledge’—this would show that the norm of assertion cannot be the speaker's (...) belief in, justification for or knowledge of the proposition. In this paper, I try to show that Pelling's argument is inconclusive, as it rests on two assumptions which can be resisted. In turn, I offer a pair of alternative strategies to explain how we can deal with existentially known assertions under the assumption that the speaker's knowledge is the norm of assertion. (shrink)

Neste artigo, primeiramente, apresento tese de Kripke sobre a possibilidade de se adquirir conhecimento de verdades contingentes a priori e a crítica de Keith Donnellan a essa tese. Depois, exploro a distinção que Donnellan faz entre (a) saber que uma sentença é verdadeira e (b) conhecer a verdade que essa sentença expressa. Argumento que essa distinção não é relevante apenas no contexto de sua crítica ao contingente a priori, mas sim para nossa prática com nomes próprios de modo geral. Tento (...) mostrar que conhecer o significado de nomes próprios não se resume à nossa competência linguística com eles, mas depende de termos acquaintance com seus portadores. Se isso é verdadeiro, então a tese do contingente a priori, tal como formulada por Kripke, não pode estar correta. (shrink)

The primary aim of this paper is to provide the exact diagnosis of the contingent a priori debate so far by untangling complicated issues surrounding it, such as singular thought, linguistic stipulation, and epistemic justification. I will first maintain that most philosophers' arguments for or against the contingent a priori are ultimately based on one of two conflicting intuitions about linguistic stipulation: sceptics of the contingent a priori have appealed to the intuition that extra-linguistic knowledge cannot be acquired through the (...) stroke of a pen, whereas proponents of it have appealed to the other intuition that one is in a position to understand a name that one introduces by oneself into one's own language. Then I will reconstruct the sceptics' and proponents' positions in their strongest form respectively and examine where they disagree, and finally I will argue that the contingent a priori debate cannot help but end in a stalemate without further scrutiny into singular thought. From this diagnosis, I conclude that in order to appropriately judge whether a contingent proposition is knowable a priori, we must first independently investigate what the conditions for singular thought are: the contingent a priori rides on the singular thought debate. (shrink)

It is widely accepted among philosophers that there is a tension between acquaintance constraints on singular thought and the plausible assumption that the truths of singular attitude reports ensure the subject's having singular thoughts. From this, anti-acquaintance theorists contend that acquaintance constraints must be rejected. As a response, many acquaintance theorists maintain that there is good reason to doubt a strong connection between singular attitude reports and singular thoughts. In this paper, however, I defend the acquaintance theory by arguing that (...) there is in fact no tension at all. I consider three objections regarding singular attitude reports against the acquaintance theory: (i) ultra-liberal singular attitude reports, (ii) the “There is something that S believes to be F” locution, and (iii) infelicities of singular attitude reports. Then, I argue that none of them succeed in showing a genuine tension. (shrink)

Kripke maintains that one who stipulatively introduces the term ' one meter' as a rigid designator for the length of a certain stick s at time t is in a position to know a priori that if s exists at t then the length of s at t is one meter. Some (e.g., Soames 2003) have objected to this alleged instance of the contingent a priori on the grounds that the stipulator's knowledge would have to be based in part on (...) substantive metalinguistic knowledge. I examine Soames's argument for the a posteriority of the relevant metalinguistic knowledge, and I argue that its main premise is false. (shrink)

This paper deals with the two-envelope paradox. Two main formulations of the paradoxical reasoning are distinguished, which differ according to the partition of possibilities employed. We argue that in the first formulation the conditionals required for the utility assignment are problematic; the error is identified as a fallacy of conditional reasoning. We go on to consider the second formulation, where the epistemic status of certain singular propositions becomes relevant; our diagnosis is that the states considered do not exhaust the possibilities. (...) Thus, on our approach to the paradox, the fallacy, in each formulation, is found in the reasoning underlying the relevant utility matrix; in both cases, the paradoxical argument goes astray before one gets to questions of probability or calculations of expected utility. (shrink)

Both Russell and Donnellan proposed direct, non-descriptive cognitive relations between thinkers and objects. They agreed that such relations couldn’t be initiated in evidence cases, but Donnellan, unlike Russell, thought direct cognitive relations could be transmitted from person to person. Kaplan (2012) suggests the issues of initiation and transmission are separable—allowing one to deny that evidence yields direct cognition while believing direct cognition is transmittable. Here, cases involving transmission, evidence, ordinary perception, and perception aided by technology are considered. It is concluded (...) that the same mechanism is at work in each case, and that the initiation issue cannot be separated from the transmission issue since transmission cases are evidence cases. Finally, it is argued that this doesn’t threaten the directness of the cognitive relations involved. (shrink)

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 (...) we have knowledge of the world around us. In this paper, I offer an account of object-involving hallucinations. Specifically, I argue that they are an unusual species of perceptual remembering. (shrink)

This paper recalls some applications of two-dimensional modal logic from the 1980s, including work on the logic of Actually and on a somewhat idealized version of the indicative/subjunctive distinction, as well as on absolute and relative necessity. There is some discussion of reactions this material has aroused in commentators since. We also survey related work by Leslie Tharp from roughly the same period.

John McDowell has often emphasized the fact that the use of langauge is a rational enterprise. In this paper, I explore the sense in which this is so, arguing that our use of language depends upon our consciously knowing what our words mean. I call this a 'cognitive conception of semantic competence'. The paper also contains a close analysis of the phenomenon of implicature and some suggestions about how it should and should not be understood.

Hartry Field has suggested that we should adopt at least a methodological deflationism: [W]e should assume full-fledged deflationism as a working hypothesis. That way, if full-fledged deflationism should turn out to be inadequate, we will at least have a clearer sense than we now have of just where it is that inflationist assumptions ... are needed. I argue here that we do not need to be methodological deflationists. More pre-cisely, I argue that we have no need for a disquotational truth-predicate; (...) that the word true, in ordinary language, is not a disquotational truth-predicate; and that it is not at all clear that it is even possible to introduce a disquotational truth-predicate into ordinary language. If so, then we have no clear sense how it is even possible to be a methodological deflationist. My goal here is not to convince a committed deflationist to abandon his or her position. My goal, rather, is to argue, contrary to what many seem to think, that reflection on the apparently trivial character of T-sentences should not incline us to deflationism. (shrink)

The so-called missing explanation argument, put forward by Mark Johnston in the late 80’s purported to show that our ordinary concepts of secondary qualities such as the colours cannot be response-dependent. A number of flaws were soon found in the argument. Partly in response to the criticism directed at the original argument, Johnston presented a new version in 1998. In this paper I show that the new version fails, too, for a simple reason: the kind of explanation which Johnston claims (...) to be incompatible with a response-dependent account of the relevant concept is not an empirical explanation at all, but merely looks like one because of certain factors in Johnston’s stage- setting for the argument. (shrink)

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,” (...) e.g., Kanizsa figures, rainbows, words and phonemes, as well as hosts of at best metaphysically problematic “objects,” such as properties, numbers, ceremonies, contracts, symphonies, “the sky,” “the rain.” Indeed, reflection on what seems to be the boundless diversity of “things” about which we seem to be able to have singular thoughts strongly suggests that there may be no general metaphysics of objects, much less “acquaintance” and “epistemically rewarding” relations that would distinguish singular from non-singular thought. We recommend that Recanati and other mental file theorists confine the theory to a metaphysically neutral account of singular thought as specific kind of internally “focused” computational state, and not seek any general account of the relation of thought to reality. (shrink)

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 (...) methodology, which I call the tracking assumption: that an attitude-ascription which states that s Φ's that P is true iff s has an attitude, of Φ-ing, which is an entertaining of the content P (with entertain used in a stipulated sense). I argue that the tracking assumption must be rejected, not because it has deflationary consequences, but because it leads to unstable commitments. I also show that there are independent reasons to reject it, because ordinary attitude ascriptions underdetermine even the truth-conditions of the mental-states they ascribe. However, I argue, this does not involve rejecting the claim that attitude-ascriptions express relations between agents and contents. Instead, they state different relations depending on contextual factors other than the nature of the mental-states ascribed. (shrink)

In his 2022 article ‘A puzzle about the fixity of the past’, Lampert argues that standard views concerning knowledge and the semantics of ‘actually’ conflict with a widely held principle concerning the fixity of the past. I show that his attempt to establish the conflict fails, as it rests on the implicit assumption that a past mental state or utterance involving a modal indexical must have the same content across worlds with a shared past, when in fact it must, given (...) its character, differ in content. (shrink)

This paper argues for a version of metalinguistic descriptivism, the Mill-Frege view, comparing it to a currently popular alternative, predicativism. The Mill-Frege view combines tenets of Fregean views with features of the theory of direct reference. According to it, proper names have metalinguistic senses, known by competent speakers on the basis of their competence, which figure in ancillary presuppositions. In support of the view the paper argues that the name-bearing relation—which predicativists cite to account for the properties that they take (...) names to express—depends on acts of naming with a semantic significance. Acts of naming create particular words specifically designed for referential use, which they perform whether or not the language has other words articulated with the same sound or orthography. Like other forms of metalinguistic descriptivism, the Mill-Frege view affords responses to Kripke’s semantic and epistemic arguments against descriptivism. The view is prima facie more complex than predicativism; but the additional complexity is independently attested in natural languages and well-motivated. Finally, the Mill-Frege proposal deals well with Kripke’s modal argument, and accounts for modal intuitions about names, both issues that pose serious trouble to predicativism. (shrink)

On standard versions of supervaluationism, truth is equated with supertruth, and does not satisfy bivalence: some truth-bearers are neither true nor false. In this paper I want to confront a well-known worry about this, recently put by Wright as follows: ‘The downside . . . rightly emphasized by Williamson . . . is the implicit surrender of the T-scheme’. I will argue that such a cost is not high: independently motivated philosophical distinctions support the surrender of the T- scheme, and (...) suggest acceptable approximations. (shrink)

Russell’s theory of memory as acquaintance with the past seems to square uneasily with his definition of acquaintance as the converse of the relation of presentation of an object to a subject. We show how the two views can be made to cohere under a suitable construal of ‘presentation’, which has the additional appeal of bringing Russell’s theory of memory closer to contemporary views on direct reference and object-dependent thinking than is usually acknowledged. The drawback is that memory as acquaintance (...) with the past falls short of fulfilling Russell’s requirement that knowledge by acquaintance be discriminating knowledge – a shortcoming shared by contemporary externalist accounts of knowledge from memory. (shrink)

What are the conditions for fixing the reference of a proper name? Debate on this point has recently been rekindled by Scott Soames, Robin Jeshion, and others. In this paper, I sketch a new pragmatic approach to the justification of reference-fixing procedures, in opposition to accounts that insist on an invariant set of conditions for fixing reference across environments and linguistic communities. Comparing reference to other relations whose instances are introduced through "initiation" procedures, I outline a picture in which the (...) procedures that are successful for fixing the reference of proper names depend in part on regularities in the actual environment. (shrink)

Some philosophers, like Kripke, Williamson, Hawthorne, and Turri, have offered examples of claims that are allegedly contingent and a priori justifiable. If any of these examples is genuine, this would upend the traditional epistemological classification on which (a) all and only a priori justifiable claims are necessary and (b) all and only a posteriori ones are contingent. I argue here that these examples are not genuine. This conclusion is not new, but the strategy pursued here is to formalize these muchdiscussed (...) examples in symbolic logics. Once formalized, a perspicuous representation of their logical form will bring into sharp relief that these examples are not both contingent and a priori. Two takeaways are (1) that the traditional epistemological classification remains plausible and (2) that one’s proposed examples of contingent a priori claims should be supported by a formalization in one’s preferred background symbolic logic. (shrink)

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 (...) allow it. I argue that we should think of attitude formation like we do (practical) choices among options. I motivate this view linguistically, extending "relevant alternatives'' theories of the attitudes to both belief and to the other, non-doxastic attitudes. Given a natural principle governing choice, and some important differences between doxastic and non-doxastic "choices'', we can explain these puzzling phenomena. (shrink)

I develop and argue for a kind of externalism about certain kinds of non-doxastic attitudes that I call policy externalism. Policy externalism about a given type of attitude is the view that all the reasonable policies for having attitudes of that type will not involve the agent's beliefs that some relevant conditions obtain. My defense primarily involves attitudes like hatred, regret, and admiration, and has two parts: a direct deductive argument and an indirect linguistic argument, an inference to the best (...) explanation of some strange ways we use certain conditionals. The main thought throughout is that attitudes we reason with, like belief, are very different from attitudes we don't reason with, in a way that constrains the former but not the latter. Finally, I investigate some consequences of policy externalism, including that it secures the possibility of genuine conditional apologies. (shrink)

Kripke’s examples of allegedly contingent a priori sentences include ‘Stick S is exactly one meter long’, where the reference of ‘meter’ is fixed by the description ‘the length of stick S’. In response to skepticism concerning apriority Kripke replaced the meter sentence with a more sophisticated variant, arguing that the modified example is more immune to such skepticism. The case for apriority is examined. A distinction is drawn between apriority and a broader notion, “qua-priority,” of a truth whose epistemic justification (...) is dependent on no experience other than that required to justify belief of the deliverances of pure semantics. It is argued that Kripke’s examples are neither a priori nor qua-priori. (shrink)

De re or singular thoughts are, intuitively, those essentially or constitutively about a particular object or objects; any thought about different objects would be a different thought. How should a philosophical articulation or thematization of their nature look like? In spite of extended discussion of the issue since it was brought to the attention of the philosophical community in the late fifties by Quine (1956), we are far from having a plausible response. Discussing the matter in connection with the status (...) of the Kripkean category of the contingent a priori, Donnellan (1979) argued that what can be properly classified as knowable a priori about utterances like those involving ‘one meter’ or ‘Neptune’ famously proposed by Kripke (1980) cannot be the very same singular content that is contingent he distinguished to that end between knowing a true proposition expressed by an utterance, and knowing that an utterance expresses a true proposition. Evans (1979) replied that, for a very specific sort of cases involving “descriptive names”, a related proto-two-dimensionalist account should be preferred, on which it is not the singular contingent content, but rather a general descriptive one which is knowable a priori. In a series of papers, Robin Jeshion (2000, 2001) has recently attacked Donnellan's proposal, arguing in favour of the most straightforward interpretation of Kripke's claim: in the relevant cases, the very same singular content can be both contingent and knowable a priori. This paper appeals to a generalized version of two-dimensional semantics to advance an account of the Kripkean cases along the lines of Evans's, and argues that Jeshion's compelling arguments against Donnellan's view do not apply to this version. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to and elaborate on some of the ideas put forth on my book The Philosophy of Curiosity (2012) as well as its follow-up “Curiosity and Ignorance” (2016) by Nenad Miščević, Erhan Demircioğlu, Mirela Fuš, Safi ye Yiğit, Danilo Šuster, Irem Günhan Altıparmak, and Aran Arslan.

In this paper, I dwell on a particular distinction introduced by Ilhan Inan—the distinction between ostensible and inostensible use of our language. The distinction applies to singular terms, such as proper names and definite descriptions, or to general terms like concepts and to the ways in which we refer to objects in the world by using such terms. Inan introduces the distinction primarily as an epistemic one but in his earlier writings (1997: 49) he leaves some room for it to (...) have some semantic significance i.e., the view that in certain intensional de re contexts whether a term occurring in a sentence is ostensible or inostensible may have a bearing on the semantic content of the sentence. However, in his later writings e.g., The Philosophy of Curiosity, he appears to abandon his earlier thoughts regarding the semantic significance of his distinction. He says: “the ostensible/inostensible distinction is basically an epistemic one.... It is an epistemic distinction that has no semantic significance” (2012: 65). I argue that there are indeed such intensional contexts in which the distinction has some semantic significance, i.e., whether a term is ostensible or inostensible has in fact a bearing on what proposition is expressed by the sentence in which the term occurs. (shrink)

A lot has been said about how the notion of reference relates to the notion of knowledge; not much has been said, however, on how the notion of referencerelates to our ability to become aware of what we do not know that allows us to be curious. In this essay I attempt to spell out a certain type of reference I call ‘inostensible’ that I claim to be a fundamental linguistic tool which allows us to become curious of what we (...) do not know. In the first part, I try to explicate the notion of inostensible reference, both for singular and for general terms, as well as full declarative sentences, and in the second part, I argue that our capacity to enjoy conceptual curiosity is essentially based upon our aptitude for inostensible reference. (shrink)

Throughout this paper, we are trying to show how and why our Mathematical frame-work seems inappropriate to solve problems in Theory of Computation. More exactly, the concept of turning back in time in paradoxes causes inconsistency in modeling of the concept of Time in some semantic situations. As we see in the first chapter, by introducing a version of “Unexpected Hanging Paradox”,first we attempt to open a new explanation for some paradoxes. In the second step, by applying this paradox, it (...) is demonstrated that any formalized system for the Theory of Computation based on Classical Logic and Turing Model of Computation leads us to a contradiction. We conclude that our mathematical frame work is inappropriate for Theory of Computation. Furthermore, the result provides us a reason that many problems in Complexity Theory resist to be solved.(This work is completed in 2017 -5- 2, it is in vixra in 2017-5-14, presented in Unilog 2018, Vichy). (shrink)

semantic minimalism and moderte contextualism.

In “Naming with Necessity”, it is argued that Kripke’s thesis that proper names are rigid designators is best seen as being motivated by an individual-driven picture of modality, which has two parts. First, inherent in proper-name usage is the expectation that names refer to modally robust individuals: individuals that can sustain modal predications like ‘is necessarily human’. Second, these modally robust individuals are the fundamental building blocks on the basis of which possible worlds should be conceived in a modal semantics (...) intended to mirror the conceptual apparatus behind ordinary modal talk. The individual-driven picture is distinct from two views inspired by Kripke, direct reference theory and Millianism. The former covers only the first half of the picture, while the latter explicitly gives up on that half even, opting to remain neutral about what expectation expressions impose on the nature of their referents. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the view there are contingent a priori truths, and against the related view that there are contingent logical truths. I will suggest that in general, predicates ›a priori‹ and ›contingent‹ are implicitly relativized to circumstances, and argue that apriority entails necessity, whenever the two are relativized to the same circumstance. I will then criticize the idea, inspired by David Kaplan's framework, of contingent contents "knowable under a priori characters." I will also argue, against Kaplan, (...) that sentences of the form »The actual F is F« do not deserve the status of logical truths, since what they express is neither necessary nor a priori. (shrink)

The elements of the referential proposal of Kripke and Putnam are presented. The consequences of such semantics in regard to the theory of truth and epistemology are examined. Some critical arguments are commented and, finally, it concludes with a general evaluation of the proposal of Kripke and Putnam.

In the presented article, I have analyzed the famous Saul Kripke statement that some a priori truths are contingent. I show, that despite Kripke’s thesis, in the historical understanding of contingency, the notions of contingency and apriority are in deep conflict with each other. In this understanding of contingency, the past, which can be known a priori, is not contingent, and the future, which is contingent, has difficulty acquiring a priori knowledge. Having stated Kripke’s thesis more precisely, I propose three (...) means in order to defend it in the historical understanding of possibility: by introducing the notion of “factual” future, by replacing the notion of apriority with the notion of apriority-in-the-future; by replacing the notion of apriority with the notion of historical apriority, and the notion of contingency with the notion of once-apriority. In the annex of the article, I present the formal analysis of the problem that I have introduced and three solutions which I have proposed in the language of temporal-modal logic of predicates for models of indeterministic time. (shrink)