More than ever, it is in vogue to argue that no norms either play a role in or directly follow from the theory of mental content. In this paper, I present an intuitive theory of intentionality (including a theory of mental content) on which norms are constitutive of the intentional properties of attitude and content in order to show that this trend is misguided. Although this theory of intentionality—the teleological theory of intentional representation—does involve a commitment to representational norms, these (...) norms are not problematic in the way critics have suggested they would be. In particular, these norms do not guide thinking by motivating intentional agents to (intentionally) accord with them; as a result, no obvious vicious regress threatens the theory. In the final section of this paper, I argue that accepting this teleological theory of intentionality need not commit one to thinking that intentionality is the product of natural selection. (shrink)

I argue that what speakers mean or express can be determined by their implicit or unconscious states, rather than explicit or conscious states. Further, on this basis, I show that the sincerity conditions for utterances can also be fixed by implicit states. This is a surprising result which goes against common assumptions about speech acts and sincerity. Roughly, I argue that the result is implied by two plausible and independent theories of the metaphysics of speaker meaning and, further, that this (...) is a robust basis on which to make an inference, with a fair degree of confidence, about the relationship between expression and implicit attitudes. (shrink)

In the process of natural language functioning, in the speech communication, new regulations and requirements are constantly emerging that become normative. In the paper, in focus are (1) the interaction of meaning and normativity, and 2) the process of norm construal through socio-linguistic practice, namely – through the concept of deference, the phenomenon of borrowing concepts, knowledge, information from other people, linguistic communities and sources of information is considered. With the help of deference, the other side of the meaningful relationship (...) is indicated and described when we rely on other people's thoughts, knowledge that we believe to be true and authoritative. This can happen both consciously (deliberately), and unconsciously (by default). The bearers of the norm we rely on can be individuals, groups and large linguistic communities. The deferential mechanism described in the paper captures the fact that the communication participants can effectively use and reason with the help of concepts, with little or no understanding of their true meaning. The tendency towards normativisation, unification of language and speech and corrections of all that does not agree with the common usage of words, meanings, norms in society is disclosed in the paper. A distinction is also parsed between how norms work in closed language communities and research expert groups capable of "structural cooperation" and functional definition of norms. Lastly, the author emphasizes that deference substantially complements the language in which we describe guidance, in relation to the real and symbolic worlds, where our view goes, what we remember and what we design; it is our habitual, conscious or unconscious, but not always correct, use of words, which is an important part of living communication between the social and linguistic communities. This is the case where, in some sense, a defect, a violation of norms, or a hindrance of speech communication becomes (may be) a creative means of distinguishing between what is and is not an extension of the term. (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)

ABSTRACTEcumenical Alethic Pluralism is a novel kind of alethic pluralism. It is ecumenical in that it widens the scope of alethic pluralism by allowing for a normatively deflated truth property alongside a variety of normatively robust truth properties. We establish EAP by showing how Wright’s Inflationary Arguments fail in the domain of taste, once a relativist treatment of the metaphysics and epistemology of that domain is endorsed. EAP is highly significant to current debates on the nature of truth insofar as (...) it involves a reconfiguration of the dialectic between deflationists and pluralists. (shrink)

Although Benjamin Schnieder’s theory of the “ordinary conception” of properties successfully handles paradoxical properties—particularly, the property of non-self-instantiation—it fails to account for ordinary, non-pathological cases. The theory allows the inference of ‘a has the property of being F’ only given F(a) and the prior assertibility of ‘the property of being F can exist’. While this allows us to block an inference to a contradiction, it also blocks all of the non-pathological instances of the inference from ‘a is F’ to ‘a (...) has the property of being F’. It thereby fails both as a theory of the ordinary conception and as a replacement of the ordinary notion, assuming the latter is defective. (shrink)