Russellians, Relationists, and Fregeans disagree about the nature of propositional-attitude content. We articulate a framework to characterize and evaluate this disagreement. The framework involves two claims: i) that we should individuate attitude content in whatever way fits best with the explanations that characteristically appeal to it, and ii) that we can understand those explanations by analogy with other ‘higher-level’ explanations. Using the framework, we argue for an under-appreciated form of Russellianism. Along the way we demonstrate that being more explicit about (...) the framework in which debates about attitude content take place allows us to more precisely characterize the space of possible positions and the dialectic between them. (shrink)

This paper argues for a distinction between fictional characters, as parts of intentionally created abstract artifacts, and intentional objects, as nonexistent objects generated by referential acts that fail to refer. It argues that intentional objects as the nonexistent objects of imagination and other objectual attitudes are well-reflected in natural language, though in a highly restricted way, reflecting their ontological dependence on referential acts. The paper elaborates how that ontological dependence can be understood.

Modes of presentation (MOPs) are often said to have to be transparent, usually in the sense that thinkers can know solely via introspection whether or not they are deploying the same one. While there has been much discussion of threats to transparency stemming from externalism, another threat to transparency has gar- nered less attention. This novel threat arises if MOPs are robust, as I argue they should be according to internalist views of MOPs which identify them with represen- tational vehicles, (...) such as mental files. I explain how identifying MOPs with vehicles/files threatens trans- parency, provide empirical illustrations, and critically examine some attempts to dispel the threat. Rather than abandoning transparency, I outline a way of reconciling it with a robust view of mental files which takes seriously the idea that they are targets for investigation in cogni- tive science. Transparency does not require introspective access, and rather than as an incontrovertible principle for individuating MOPs, we can view it more modestly, as an open empirical hypothesis. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel theory of abstraction—what we call collective abstraction. The theory solves a notorious problem for noneliminative structuralism. The noneliminative structuralist holds that in addition to various isomorphic systems there is a pure structure that can be abstracted from each of these systems; but existing accounts of abstraction fail for nonrigid systems like the complex numbers. The problem with the existing accounts is that they attempt to define a unique abstraction operation. The theory of collective abstraction instead (...) simultaneously defines a collection of distinct abstraction operations, each of which maps a system to its corresponding pure structure. The theory is precisely formulated in an essentialist language. This allows us to throw new light on the question to what extent structuralists are committed to symmetric dependence. Finally, we apply the theory of collective abstraction to solve a problem about converse relations. (shrink)

It seems plausible that successfully communicating with our peers requires entertaining the same thoughts as they do. We argue that this view is incompatible with other, independently plausible principles of thought individuation. Our argument is based on a puzzle inspired by the Kripkean story of Peter and Paderewski: having developed several variations of the original story, we conclude that understanding and communication cannot be modeled as a process of thought transfer between speaker and hearer. While we are not the first (...) to reach this conclusion, the significance of our argument lies in the fact that it only relies on widely accepted premises, without depending on any especially controversial theory of mental and linguistic content. We conclude by drawing out the implications of that conclusion: if communication and understanding do not require thought identity, then one important motivation for the postulation of inter-personally shared thoughts is undercut. (shrink)

Among the virtues of relationist approaches to Frege’s puzzle is that they put us in a position to outline structural features of the puzzle that were only implicit in earlier work. In particular, they allow us to frame questions about the relation between the explanatory roles of sense and sameness of sense. In this paper, I distinguish a number of positions about that relation which have not been clearly distinguished. This has a few pay-offs. It allows us to shed light (...) on recent controversies about the ‘essential indexical’, and it also allows us to see what’s at stake between relationists and their opponents. When we see what’s at stake, we can see that we have reason to adopt an account of cognitive significance that incorporates elements of both relationist and Fregean approaches. (shrink)

In the core chapters 4–6, Iacona (2018) argues against the “Uniqueness Thesis” (UT), stating that “there is a unique notion of logical form that fulfils both the logical role and the semantic role” (39), where the former “concerns the formal explanation of logical properties and logical relations, such as validity or contradiction” (37), and the latter “concerns the formulation of a compositional theory of meaning” (ibid.). He argues for this on the basis of relations of coreference among referential expressions, names (...) and indexicals. From what I take to be a fundamental agreement on most relevant issues, here I will nonetheless press him to clarify the notions of intrinsicness and the logical and semantic role of logical form on which he relies. (shrink)

In a recent book, Logical Form: between Logic and Natural Language, Andrea Iacona argues that semantic form and logical form are distinct. The semantic form of a sentence is something that (together with the meanings of its parts) determines what it means; the logical from of a sentence is something that (all by itself) determines whether it is a logical truth. Semantic form does not depend on context but logical form does: for example, whether ‘This is this’ is a logical (...) truth depends on whether the two occurrences of ‘this’ are used to demonstrate the same individual. I respond by claiming that logical form is indifferent to reference and is sensitive only to obligatory co-reference. When the speaker intends both occurrences of ‘this’ to be interpreted the same way the logical from of ‘This is this’ is a=a, while in a context where the speaker has no such intention it is a=b. This proposal allows a much more conservative revision of the traditional picture than the one suggested by Iacona. Instead of identifying the logical form of a natural language sentence by seeking a formalization in an artificial language, we obtain it through abstraction from its syntactic analysis: replacing the non-logical expressions by schematic letters, making sure that we use identical ones if and only if the speaker intended co-reference. (shrink)

We draw attention to a series of implicit assumptions that have structured the debate about Frege’s Puzzle. Once these assumptions are made explicit, we rely on them to show that if one focuses exclusively on the issues raised by Frege cases, then one obtains a powerful consideration against a fine-grained conception of propositional-attitude content. In light of this consideration, a form of Russellianism about content becomes viable.

De jure coreference in a discourse is typically understood as explicit coreference that speakers are required to recognize in order to count as having correctly understood the discourse. For example, in an utterance of the sentence ‘Tom went to the market because he needed soy milk’, the two underlined terms are typically coreferential in a way that appreciating their coreference is required to fully understand the utterance. Often, de jure coreference is understood as an equivalence relation, so in particular it (...) is thought of as a transitive relation. However, Pinillos (Philos Stud 154(2):301–324, 2011) provides examples that apparently challenge the transitivity of de jure coreference. In this paper, I argue for two claims. First, while it is inconclusive whether the relevant terms in Pinillos’s examples satisfy his third condition, it is much clearer that they fail to satisfy his first two conditions. Given that Pinillos’s conditions capture important characteristics of de jure coreference, his examples do not successfully show the non-transitivity of de jure coreference. Second, I present an alternative account of his examples, one that shows which representation the anaphoric pronoun in an example of the sort that he presents is de jure coreferential with. (shrink)

Sentences in context have semantic contents determined by a range of factors both internal and external to speakers. I argue against the thesis that semantic content is transparent to speakers in the sense of being immediately accessible to speakers in virtue of their linguistic competence.

In the mental files framework, mental files contain pieces of information. Then, how can we explain the fact that multiple pieces of information are stored in a single mental file? This fact can be called ‘co-filing’. Recanati recommends an account of co-filing as a way to avoid the circularity that can occur when one attempts to explain co-filing in terms of the fact that pieces of information are taken to be about the same object. I argue that his account is (...) far from being satisfactory and that co-filing needs to be regarded as a primitive fact. In other words, co-filing is not what needs to be explained within the mental files framework. The right question to be dealt with is what we can explain based on co-filing. (shrink)

There is much to be said for a diachronic or interpersonal individuation of singular modes of presentation (MOPs) in terms of a criterion of epistemic transparency between thought tokens. This way of individuating MOPs has been discussed recently within the mental files framework, though the issues discussed here arise for all theories that individuate MOPs in terms of relations among tokens. All such theories face objections concerning apparent failures of the transitivity of the ‘same MOP’ relation. For mental files, these (...) transitivity failures most obviously occur because mental files can merge or undergo fission. In this paper I argue that this problem is easily resolved once mental files are properly construed as continuants, whose metaphysics is analogous to that of persons or physical objects. All continuants can undergo fission or fusion, leading to similar transitivity problems, but there are well-established theories of persistence that accommodate this. I suggest that, in particular, the stage theory best suits the purposes of a continuant theory of MOPs. (shrink)

What is it for two people to think of an object, natural kind or other entity under the same mode of presentation (MOP)? This has seemed a particularly difficult question for advocates of the Mental Files approach, the Language of Thought, or other ‘atomistic’ theories. In this paper I propose a simple answer. I first argue that, by parallel with the synchronic intrapersonal case, the sharing of a MOP should involve a certain kind of epistemic transparency between the token thoughts (...) of the two thinkers. I then explain how shared words help bring about this transparency. Finally, I show how this account can be extended for thoughts expressed using demonstratives or indexicals. (shrink)

Conversational exculpature is a pragmatic process whereby information is subtracted from, rather than added to, what the speaker literally says. This pragmatic content subtraction explains why we can say “Rob is six feet tall” without implying that Rob is between 5'0.99" and 6'0.01" tall, and why we can say “Ellen has a hat like the one Sherlock Holmes always wears” without implying Holmes exists or has a hat. This article presents a simple formalism for understanding this pragmatic mechanism, specifying how, (...) in context, the result of such subtractions is determined. And it shows how the resulting theory of conversational exculpature accounts for a varied range of linguistic phenomena. A distinctive feature of the approach is the crucial role played by the question under discussion in determining the result of a given exculpature. (shrink)

An influential tradition holds that thoughts are public: different thinkers share many of their thoughts, and the same applies to a single subject at different times. This ‘publicity principle’ has recently come under attack. Arguments by Mark Crimmins, Richard Heck and Brian Loar seem to show that publicity is inconsistent with the widely accepted principle that someone who is ignorant or mistaken about certain identity facts will have distinct thoughts about the relevant object—for instance, the astronomer who does not know (...) that Hesperus is Phosphorus will have two distinct thoughts Hesperus is bright and Phosphorus is bright. In this paper, I argue that publicity can be defended if we adopt a relational account on which thoughts are individuated by their mutual relations. I then go on to develop a specific relational theory—the ‘linking account’—and contrast it with other relational views. (shrink)

‘On Reference’ is a collection of 18 original articles. While united in their concern with reference, they deal with a large variety of topics, ranging from questions concerning the nature of reference, through the interaction of reference and cognition, to more specific questions about the semantics of particular referring expressions. The contributions are of high quality: thought provoking, insightful and engagingly written. Many have the potential to substantially advance the debate in their field. In this critical notice I will do (...) two things. I will focus on a cluster of four essays (Chs. 10-13) that are concerned with a single topic: the view that proper names are predicates. Apart from illustrating the above mentioned virtues, these essays are well suited to be discussed in conjunction due to their tightly connected subject matter. Before I get to this though, I will give brief summaries of the remaining 14 articles, where space constraints prevent me from discussing them in the detail they deserve. (shrink)

Austere relationism rejects the orthodox analysis of hallucinations and illusions as incorrect perceptual representations. In this article, I argue that illusions of optimal motion present a serious challenge for this view. First, I submit that austere-relationist accounts of misleading experiences cannot be adapted to account for IOMs. Second, I show that any attempt at elucidating IOMs within an austere-relationist framework undermines the claim that perceptual experiences fundamentally involve relations to mind-independent objects. Third, I develop a representationalist model of IOMs. The (...) proposed analysis combines two ideas: Evans' dynamic modes of presentation and Fine's relational semantics for identity. (shrink)

This paper is about the meaning and function of identity statements involving proper names. There are two prominent views on this topic, according to which identity statements ascribe a relation: the object-view, on which identity statements ascribe a relation borne by all objects to themselves, and the name-view, on which an identity statement 'a is b' says that the names 'a' and 'b' codesignate. The object- and name-views may seem to exhaust the field. I make a case for treating identity (...) statements as sui generis instead of attempting to explain them by means of the idea that they ascribe a relation. My contention is that once we do this, no analysis is required. -/- I do not wish to insist that we stop saying that identity statements ascribe a relation. The point is that there is a fundamental disanalogy between identity statements and other two-termed statements which we overlook to our peril. This will be seen to parallel the more recognized disanalogy between existence statements and other one-termed statements. One way of registering the fundamental disanalogy is to say that identity statements are not relational, but this is not essential. Following my negative arguments in section 2, I employ some simple diagrammatical models in section 3 to exhibit the fundamental disanalogy. In a final section I respond to some possible objections which may be raised against this kind of approach. (shrink)

What is the cognitive value of the concept of truth? What epistemic difference does the concept of truth make to those who grasp it? This paper employs a new perspective for thinking about the concept of truth and recent debates concerning it, organized around the question of the cognitive value of the concept of truth. The paper aims to defend a substantively correct and dialectically optimal account of the cognitive value of the concept of truth. This perspective is employed in (...) understanding the critical discussion around what Hartry Field has called “the incorporation model” for extending a deflationary view of truth to foreign sentences. Field's original intentions in discussing the incorporation model were to defend the deflationary view from some counterintuitive consequences concerning the understanding of truth attributions to foreign sentences. However, more recently, philosophers unencumbered by deflationary commitments have taken over the incorporation model for their own inflationary purposes. In particular, and in my terms, these philosophers can be understood as making what I argue is the ultimately too radical suggestion that the cognitive value of the concept of truth is to allow the incorporation not only of the linguistically foreign, but also of the conceptually alien. I clarify this dialectic en route to explaining and arguing for the cognitive inflationary view, according to which the cognitive value of the concept of truth is is to make possible the proprietary kind and quality of knowledge allowed by reflective clarity over the concepts and thoughts that one already has. (shrink)

Imagism about Phenomenal Thought is (roughly) the view that there is some concept *Q* (for some sensory quality Q) that we can employ only while we experience the quality Q. I believe this view is theoretically significant, is or can be made intuitively appealing, and is explicitly or implicitly accepted by many contemporary philosophers However, there is no good reason to accept it. Or so I argue.

I argue that Frege Problems in thought are best modeled using graph-theoretic machinery; and that these problems can arise even when subjects associate all the same qualitative properties to the object they’re thinking of twice. I compare the proposed treatment to similar ideas by Heck, Ninan, Recanati, Kamp and Asher, Fodor, and others.

Object files are mental representations that enable perceptual systems to keep track of objects as numerically the same. How is their reference fixed? A prominent approach, championed by Zenon Pylyshyn and John Campbell, makes room for a non-satisfactional use of properties to fix reference. This maneuver has enabled them to reconcile a singularist view of reference with the intuition that properties must play a role in reference fixing. This paper examines Campbell’s influential defense of this strategy. After criticizing it, a (...) new approach is sketched. The alternative view introduces representational contents to explain perceptual individuation. After arguing that those contents are not satisfactional, it is concluded that there is room for a third view of reference fixing that does not fit into the singularist/descriptivist dichotomy. (shrink)

Among other virtues, Mental Files Theory provides a straightforward explanation of de jure coreference, i.e. identity of referent guaranteed by meaning alone: de jure coreference holds between terms when these are associated with the same mental file from which they inherit their reference. In this paper, I discuss an objection that Angel Pinillos raises against Mental Files Theory and other similar theories: the theory predicts that de jure coreference should be transitive, just like identity. Yet there are cases, involving ‘slash-terms’, (...) in which transitivity fails, or so it seems. In his book Mental Files, Recanati replies that the mental files theorist can accommodate Pinillos’ exceptions by offering a refined model of merging files, the ‘partial merging’ model. While agreeing with Recanati on the need for such a model, I contend that, pace Recanati and Pinillos, de jure coreference is transitive even in the presence of slash-terms. I will first show that paradoxical consequences ensue if slash-terms are said to de jure corefer with several basic terms at once. Then, building on two different accounts Recanati gives of referential confusion, I will show that on both views, de jure coreference cannot hold because of the behaviour of confused slash-terms. I will conclude that, in Mental Files Theory, a slash-term can, at most, de jure corefer with only one basic term per context. (shrink)

How can a statue and a piece of alloy be coincident at any time at which they exist and yet differ in their modal properties? I argue that this question demands an answer and that the only plausible answer is one that posits a difference in the form of the two objects.

Verdejo, Víctor_A Puzzle about Disagreement.

Kit Fine has replied to my criticism of a technical objection he had given to the version of Millianism that I advocate. Fine evidently objects to my use of classical existential instantiation in an object-theoretic rendering of his meta-proof. Fine’s reply appears to involve both an egregious misreading of my criticism and a significant logical error. I argue that my rendering is unimpeachable, that the issue over my use of classical EI is a red herring, and that Fine’s original argument (...) commits the straw-man fallacy. I argue further that contrary to Fine’s gratuitous attribution, what Kripke’s Pierre lacks and a typical bilingual has is not knowledge of a “manifest-making” premise, but the capacity to recognize London when it is differently designated. Fine’s argument refutes a preposterous theory no one advocates while leaving standard Millianism unscathed. The failure of his argument threatens to render Fine’s central notion of “coordination” redundant or empty. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that in contrast to natural languages, logical languages typically are not compositional. This does not mean that the meaning of expressions cannot be determined at all using some well-defined set of rules. It only means that the meaning of an expression cannot be determined without looking at its form. If one is serious about the compositionality of a logic, the only possibility I see is to define it via abstraction from a variable free language.

Sometimes two expressions in a discourse can be about the same thing in a way that makes that very fact evident to the participants. Consider, for example, 'he' and 'John' in 'John went to the store and he bought some milk'. Let us call this 'de jure' coreference. Other times, coreference is 'de facto' as with 'Mark Twain' and 'Samuel Clemens' in a sincere use of 'Mark Twain is not Samuel Clemens'. Here, agents can understand the speech without knowing that (...) the names refer to the same person. After surveying many available linguistic and pragmatic tools (intentions to corefer, presuppositions, meanings, indexing, discourse referents, binding etc.) I conclude that we must posit a new semantic primitive to account for de jure coreference. (shrink)

Abstract Timothy Williamson has recently proposed to undermine modal skepticism by appealing to the reducibility of modal to counterfactual logic ( Reducibility ). Central to Williamson’s strategy is the claim that use of the same non-deductive mode of inference ( counterfactual development , or CD ) whereby we typically arrive at knowledge of counterfactuals suffices for arriving at knowledge of metaphysical necessity via Reducibility. Granting Reducibility, I ask whether the use of CD plays any essential role in a Reducibility-based reply (...) to two kinds of modal skepticism. I argue that its use is entirely dispensable, and that Reducibility makes available replies to modal skeptics which show certain propositions to be metaphysically necessary by deductive arguments from premises the modal skeptic accepts can be known. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-19 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9784-4 Authors Juhani Yli-Vakkuri, Wolfson College, Oxford University, Oxford, OX2 6UD UK Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

I identify a notion of compositionality at the intersection of the different notions philosophers, linguists, and psychologists are concerned with. The notion is compositionality of expression content: the idea that the content of a complex expression in a context of its utterance is determined by its syntactic structure and the contents of its constituents in the contexts of their respective utterances. Traditional arguments from productivity and systematicity cannot establish that the contents of linguistic expressions are compositionally determined in this sense. (...) I present a novel argument for this thesis. (shrink)

Boghossian argued that externalism is incompatible with a transparency thesis according to which we can know a priori whether any two of our occurrent thoughts have the same or distinct content, and that this transparency thesis is integral to our commonsense conception of rationality, which requires the apriority of our logical abilities. Stalnaker offered a detailed compatibilist response to Boghossian. Boghossian criticized this response, and Stalnaker replied. But the outcome of that important discussion remained unclear, partly because it was unclear (...) how to understand the amended transparency thesis at which Stalnaker was gesturing. My aim in this paper is to settle the matter. I wish to clarify the terms of the debate, also by highlighting the relevant commitments of Stalnaker’s two-dimensionalist account, and to show that his compatibilist response, which appeals to diagonal propositions, is unsuccessful. (shrink)

Token-reflexive theories of indexicals – words like ‘I,’ ‘here,’ and ‘today’ – are widely thought to face a problem in account for intuitively valid arguments involving indexicals. Yet all discussions of the problem with which I am familiar focus on particular examples or on particular rules of inference. In this paper, I first state the problem in its full generality, and then argue that two recent attempts to reject the problem fail. Finally, I consider the proposal by García-Carpintero that demonstratives (...) – ‘this’ and ‘that’ – raise the same problem. I argue that while there are important similarities between the logic problem for token-reflexives and the role of demonstratives in logic, recent work on the logic of demonstratives can offer insights into logic that token-reflexive theories cannot. (shrink)

Although Kripke’s œuvre has had a major impact on analytic philosophy and nearly every aspect of his studies has been thoroughly examined, this does not hold for his schmidentity argument, which, so far, has been widely neglected. To the extent to which it has been treated at all, it has been for the most part radically misunderstood. I hold that this argument, in its correctly reconstructed form, has general relevance for a treatment of Frege’s Puzzle and points towards a fundamental (...) methodological restriction for philosophy of language and especially for semantics, as far as informativity and the general topic of cognitive significance are concerned. To show this, I will briefly set out the context of the schmidentity argument and, in Sects. 2 and 4, sketch a reconstruction thereof, including some criticisms of the argument, and an excursion about Kit Fine’s semantic relationism, which stands in stark contrast to this paper’s central claim. Moreover, I will draw a genuinely new and probably quite unexpected conclusion from all the above, to finally give a glimpse at a bigger picture of where this conclusion should lead our thinking about a theoretical treatment of informativity and a linguistic expression’s cognitive value. (shrink)

In his paper “Flaws of Formal Relationism”, Mahrad Almotahari argues against the sort of response to Frege's Puzzle I have defended elsewhere, which he dubs ‘Formal Relationism’. Almotahari argues that, because of its specifically formal character, this view is vulnerable to objections that cannot be raised against the otherwise similar Semantic Relationism due to Kit Fine. I argue in response that Formal Relationism has neither of the flaws Almotahari claims to identify.

I argue that the act-based accounts of propositions, like the one defended by Soames, cannot be used to address Frege’s Puzzle without also giving up the Millian view of names. I begin by identifying two puzzles—both of which have been called Frege’s puzzle—and discuss the act-based theorist’s solution to the first puzzle. I then raise an objection against the solution and argue that it cannot be overcome unless a concession is made. Making the concession, however, would make it impossible for (...) the act-based theorist to solve the second puzzle. I further argue that any attempt to solve the puzzle while also maintaining a commitment to the Millian view will force such theoretical commitments on the act-based theorist which seriously undermine the scope and motivation of the act-based approaches. Thus, any solution to Frege’s puzzle on the act-based account is bound to conflict with the Millian view of names. (shrink)

This paper will critically examine two solutions to Frege’s puzzle: the Millian-Russellian solution proposed by Salmon and Braun, which invokes non-semantic modes of presentation (guises, ways of believing or the like); and Fine’s relationalist solution, which appeals to semantic coordination. Special attention will be devoted to discussing the conception of modes of presentation as mental files and to elucidating the nature of coordination. A third solution to Frege’s puzzle will be explored which, like Salmon’s and Braun’s, adopts the Millian-Russellian semantics (...) but, like Fine’s, involves coordination instead of modes of presentation; however, coordination will not be conceived as a semantic relation but as a cognitive and subjective relation, which provides no contribution to semantic content. This novel Millian-Russellian account involving cognitive coordination will be labelled cognitive relationism. (shrink)

Does the epistemology of disagreement have significant consequences for theories of conceptual understanding? I argue that it does. I argue that the epistemology of disagreement manifests the existence of a special kind of concept, perspectival modes of metarepresentation, a kind of concept instances of which figure in the thinking about thoughts that occurs in deep disagreement. These perspectival modes of metarepresentation are de re modes of presentation of thoughts themselves – hence de re modes of metarepresentation – in which one (...) and the same thought is presented to higher‐order thinking about thoughts in different ways. These modes or ways are de re and perspectival because they are individuated by facts about whether the thought being thought about is the grasped or understood propositional object of one's own or another's thinking. I outline a broadly Fregean framework for theorizing conceptual understanding and draw out three significant consequences of the existence of perspectival modes of metarepresentation for theories of conceptual understanding: they (1) constitute a new philosophical motivation for a restricted fragment of what Terence Parsons calls a “libertine” hierarchy of Fregean sense; (2) provide, against David Chalmers, examples of a priori equivalences that are nevertheless cognitively significant; and (3) constitute a novel and pervasive example of Kripkean ‘Paderewski’‐type designators. (shrink)

The idea that language is a homogeneous code is a massive simplification. In actual fact, we constantly use a wide array of codes, be they other languages, dialects, registers, or special purpose codes . In this paper we provide a formal analysis of code switching.

Formal relationism in the philosophy of mind is the thesis that folk psychological states should be individuated, at least partially, in terms of the purely formal inference-licensing relations between underlying mental representations. It's supposed to provide a Russellian alternative to a Fregean theory of propositional attitudes. I argue that there's an inconsistency between the motivation for formal relationism and the use to which it's put in defense of Russellian propositions. Furthermore, I argue that formal relationism is committed to epiphenomenalism about (...) singular mental content. (shrink)

I am grateful to Nathan Salmon [in Salmon (2012)] for being willing to spill so much ink over my monograph on semantic relationism (2007), even if what he has to say is not altogether complimentary. There is a great deal in his criticisms to which I take exception but I wish to focus on one point, what he calls my ‘formal disproof’ of standard Millianism. He believes that ‘the alleged hard result is nearly demonstrably false’ (p. 420) and that the (...) disproof contains a ‘serious error’ (p. 407). Neither claim is correct; and it is the aim of this short note to explain why.First some background. In some cases, we are justified (from an internalist standpoint) in inferring the singular proposition F&G(x) from F(x) and G(x) (as when I learn more and more about Obama, for example); and in other cases, we are not so justified (as when Peter, in Kripke’s puzzle case, knows that Paderewski is a pianist and that Paderewski is a politician but does not know that anyone is both a pianist and a poli. (shrink)

In this paper, I present and defend an explication of content in terms of the mathematical notion of information. In its most general formulation, the theory says that two states have the same content just in case they carry the same information, relative to a communication network. My account reifies content (it is the discrete counterpart to continuous information) and supports the idea that agents have internal means of comparing the contents of two thoughts. Further, it makes sense to say (...) that agents have communicated successfully when they coordinate on content in this sense; they have transmitted information without loss. (shrink)

There is a solution to the antinomy of the variable that does not call for semantic relationism. I argue that if we carefully distinguish between variable types and variable tokens or occurrences, and if we take the number of variable types involved properly into account, then coordination among variable tokens or occurrences is reducible to an intrinsic semantic feature of those tokens or occurrences. The fact that two tokens or occurrences of the same variable type contained in the same sentence (...) or context assume the same value at a time derives from an intrinsic semantic feature of a token or occurrence, namely from being a token or occurrence of a type whose tokens or occurrences must assume the same value at a time if contained in the same sentence or context. (shrink)

Millians sometimes claim that we can explain the fact that sentences like "If Hesperus exists, then Hesperus is Phosphorus" seem a posteriori to speakers in terms of the fact that utterances of sentences of this sort would typically pragmatically convey propositions which really are a posteriori. I argue that this kind of pragmatic explanation of the seeming a posterioricity of sentences of this sort fails. The main reason is that for every sentence like the above which (by Millian lights) is (...) a priori, seems a posteriori to most speakers, and would typically be used to convey a posteriori propositions, there is another which (again, by Millian lights) is a priori, seems a posteriori to most speakers, but can only typically be used to convey a priori propositions. (shrink)

In §93 of The Principles of Mathematics, Bertrand Russell observes that “the variable is a very complicated logical entity, by no means easy to analyze correctly”. This assessment is borne out by the fact that even now we have no fully satisfactory understanding of the role of variables in a compositional semantics for first-order logic. In standard Tarskian semantics, variables are treated as meaning-bearing entities; moreover, they serve as the basic building blocks of all meanings, which are constructed out of (...) variable assignments. But this has disquieting consequences, including Fine’s antinomy of the variable and an undue dependence of meanings on language. Here I develop an alternative, Fregean version of predicate logic that uses the traditional quantifier–variable apparatus for the expression of generality, possesses a fully compositional, non-representational semantics, and is not subject to the antinomy of the variable. The advantages of Fregean over Tarskian predicate logic are due to the former’s treating variables not as meaningful lexical items, but as mere marks of punctuation, similar to parentheses. I submit that this is indeed how the variables of predicate logic should be construed. (shrink)