Standard approaches to possible-world semantics allow us to define necessity and logical truth, but analyticity is considerably more difficult to account for. The source of this difficulty lies in the received model-theoretical conception of a language interpretation. In intuitive terms, analyticity amounts to truth in virtue of meaning alone, i.e. solely in virtue of the interpretation of linguistic expressions. In other words, an analytic sentence should remain true under all variations of ‘extralinguistic reality’ as long as the interpretation is kept (...) constant. However, the received conception of an interpretation as a mapping from language to a model frame hinders keeping the interpretation constant while varying other components of the model. To make room for analyticity, the concept of an interpretation should therefore be revised. The latter should be made richer in content than it has usually been assumed. As a by-product, this revision also gives us a one-dimensional analogue of the influential two-dimensional account of a priori. We are thus able to map out the network of formal connections between the notions of analyticity, apriority, logical truth and necessity. (shrink)

Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation has puzzled the philosophical community for several decades. It is unquestionably among the best known and most disputed theses in contemporary philosophy. Quine’s classical argument for the indeterminacy thesis, in his seminal work Word and Object, has even been described by Putnam as “what may well be the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the Categories” (Putnam, 1975a: p. 159).

I have recently argued that origin essentialism regarding individual organisms entails that natural selection does not explain why individual organisms have the traits that they do. This paper defends this and related theses against Mohan Matthen's recent objections.

In his (1978) and parts of (1993), Philip Kitcher advances a new context-sensitive theory of reference which he applies to abandoned theoretical expression-types, such as Joseph Priestley’s ‘dephlogisticated air’, in order to show that, although qua types they fail to refer uniformly, they nonetheless have referential tokens. This piece offers a critical examination of Kitcher’s theory. After a general investigation into the overall adequacy of Kitcher’s theory as a general account of reference, I focus on the case of abandoned theoretical (...) terms. Kitcher’s theory is meant to be able to evaluate and solve disputes about referential continuity and progress in scientific theorychange. To this end, Kitcher employs the principle of humanity and a notion of the “correct historical explanation” of the production of each expression-token. I argue that the application of the principle of humanity does not offer a principled way to show that the historical actors were involved in different modes of reference when they produced different tokens of an expressiontype. I also suggest that the principle of humanity, coupled with Kitcher’s view that tokens of expression-types may systematically refer to different things, makes conceptual progress too easy and thus uninteresting. (shrink)

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.

The canonical version of possible worlds semantics for story prefixes is due to David Lewis. This paper reassesses Lewis's theory and draws attention to some novel problems for his account.

This essay is devoted to an analysis of the semantic significance of a fashionable view of proper names, the Predicate Theory of names, typically developed in the direction of the Metalinguistic Theory of names. According to MT, ‘syntactic evidence supports the conclusion that a name such as ‘Kennedy’ is analyzable in terms of the predicate ‘individual named ‘Kennedy’’. This analysis is in turn alleged to support a descriptivist treatment of proper names in designative position, presumably in contrast with theories of (...) names as ‘directly referring rigid designators’. The main aim of this essay is that of questioning the significance of PT and MT as theories of designation: even granting for the argument’s sake that names are analyzable as predicates, their designative occurrences may be interpreted in consonance with the dictates of Direct Reference—indeed, in consonance with the radically anti-descriptivist version of Direct Reference I call Millianism. (shrink)

Hume argued that inductive inferences do not have rational justification. My aim is to reject Hume's argument. The discussion is partly motivated by an analogy with Carroll's Paradox, which concerns deductive inferences. A first radically externalist reply to Hume is that justified inductive inferences do not require the subject to know that nature is uniform, though the uniformity of nature is necessary condition for having the justification. But then the subject does not have reasons for believing what she believes. I (...) defend a moderate externalist account that seeks to partly accommodate that objection to the radical externalist proposal. It is based on an extension of Peacocke's theory of concepts: possession conditions for predicative concepts standing for natural properties include dispositions to project them to new cases in accordance with inductive inferential patterns. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a view of names from fiction compatible with the Millian theory of proper names. Unlike other attempts at providing a Millian analysis of names from fiction, my approach gives semantic recognition to our pre‐theoretic intuitions without postulating metaphysically dubious entities. The intuitively correct treatment of typical examples, including true negative existential statements, is obtained by appealing only to independently motivated results in the semantics for natural languages.

Semantic externalism is the view that meaning is at least partly determined by reference. This suggests that the classic philosophical distinction between truth in virtue of meaning alone and truth in virtue of the world may need reconsideration. If all sentences are true in virtue of reference it is difficult to see how we can distinguish some sentences from others as true in virtue of the world-independent, purely semantic entities that their truth-conditions involve. I argue, to the contrary, that semantic (...) externalism instead exposes significant problems with the orthodox view about meaning that underlies the orthodox view about analytic truth, and I offer an account of analyticity from the perspective of semantic externalism. On this view, the truth-value of analytic sentences will not be distinguished from those of synthetic sentences. The truth-conditions of an analytic sentence are, however, to be distinguished from what makes it "analytic". This account is one that revokes the customary world-independence of analytic sentences, but does not sacrifice their unique modal and epistemic features. (shrink)

Direct reference theorists tell us that proper names have no semantic value other than their bearers, and that the connection between name and bearer is unmediated by descriptions or descriptive information. And yet, these theorists also acknowledge that we produce our name-containing utterances with descriptions on our minds. After arguing that direct reference proponents have failed to give descriptions their due, I show that appeal to speaker-associated descriptions is required if the direct reference portrayal of speakers wielding and referring with (...) public names is to succeed. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the prospects for using the distinction between rejection and denial to resolve Saul Kripke’s puzzle about belief. One puzzle Kripke presents in A Puzzle About Belief poses what would have seemed a fairly straightforward question about the beliefs of the bilingual Pierre, who is disposed to sincerely and reflectively assent to the French sentence Londres est jolie, but not to the English sentence London is pretty, both of which he understands perfectly well. The question to (...) be answered is whether Pierre believes that London is pretty, and Kripke argues, of each answer, that it is unacceptable. On my proposal, either answer to the question is to be rejected, but neither answer is to be denied, using the resource of partially-defined predicates. After demonstrating how this serves as a solution to the puzzle, I illustrate some philosophical motivations—independent of Kripke’s puzzle —for adopting a view on which belief is a partially defined predicate. I conclude that there are decent prospects for the proposed response to Kripke’s puzzle. (shrink)

Physicist Max Tegmark argues that if there are infinite universes or sub-universes, we will encounter our exact duplicates infinite times, the nearest within 10^10^115 m. Tegmark assumes Humean supervenience and a finite number of possible combinations of elementary quantum states. This paper argues on the contrary that Tegmark’s argument fails to hold if possible thoughts, persons, and life histories are all infinite in number. Are there infinite thoughts we could possibly think? This paper will show that there are. If so, (...) then it is not only Tegmark’s specific claim about our duplication that is called into question. We additionally acquire another strong argument against Humean supervenience. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Wittgenstein is correct when he says of the Standard Metre stick that we can neither say that it is or is not a metre in length – despite what our intuitions may tell us to the contrary. Specifically, the paper deals with Kripke's criticism of Wittgenstein's claim in Naming And Necessity and with Salmon's attempt to arbitrate between the two views. I conclude that, not only is Wittgenstein correct, but that both Kripke and Salmon (...) (and possibly the majority of philosophers) simply do not understand the concept of measurement. (shrink)

Incommensurability may be regarded as driving specialisation, on the one hand, and as posing some problems to interdisciplinarity, on the other hand. It may be argued, however, that incommensurability plays no role in either specialisation or interdisciplinarity. Scientific specialties could be defined as simply 'different' (that is, about different things), rather than 'incommensurable' (that is, competing for the explanation of the same phenomena). Interdisciplinarity could be viewed as the co- ordinated effort of scientists possessing complemetary and interlocking skills, and not (...) as the overcoming of some sort of incommensurable divide. This article provides a comprehensive evaluative examination of the relations between specialisation, interdisciplinarity, and incommensurability. Its aim is to defend the relevance of incommensurability to both specialisation and interdisciplinarity. At the same time, it aims at correcting the tendency, common among many philosophers, to regard incommensurability in a restrictive manner - such as, for example, as an almost purely semantic issue. (shrink)

Identity theories are those that hold that 'sensations are brain processes'. In particular, they hold that mental/psychological state kinds are identical to brain/neuroscientific state kinds. In this paper, I isolate and explain some of the key features of contemporary identity theories. They are then contrasted with the main live alternatives by means of considering the two most important lines of objection to identity theories.

A hyperintensional semantics for natural language is proposed which is agnostic about the question of whether propositions are sets of worlds or worlds are sets of propositions. Montague’s theory of intensional senses is replaced by a weaker theory, written in standard classical higher-order logic, of fine-grained senses which are in a many-to-one correspondence with intensions; Montague’s theory can then be recovered from the proposed theory by identifying the type of propositions with the type of sets of worlds and adding an (...) axiom to the effect that each world is the set of propositions which are true there. Senses are compositionally assigned to linguistic expressions by a categorial grammar with only two rule schemas, based on the implicative fragment of intuitionistic linear propositional logic, and a fully explicit grammar fragment is provided that illustrates the compositional assignment of sense to a variety of constructions, including dummy-subject constructions, infinitive complements, predicative adjectives and nominals, raising to subject, ‘tough-movement’, and quantifier scope ambiguities. Notably, the grammar and the derivations that it licenses never make reference to either worlds or to the extensions of senses. (shrink)

Recently, Lisa Feldman Barrett and colleagues have introduced the Theory of Constructed Emotions (TCE), in which emotions are constituted by a process of categorizing the self as being in an emotional state. The view, however, has several counterintuitive implications: for instance, a person can have multiple distinct emotions at once. Further, the TCE concludes that emotions are constitutively social phenomena. In this article, I explicate the TCE*, which, while substantially similar to the TCE, makes several distinct claims aimed at avoiding (...) the counterintuitive implications plaguing the TCE. Further, because of the changes that comprise the TCE*, emotions are not constitutively social phenomena. (shrink)

Some hold that proper names and indexicals are “Kaplan rigid”: they designate their designata even in worlds where the designata don’t exist. An argument they give for this is based on the analogy between time and modality. It is shown how this argument gains forcefulness at the expense of carefulness. Then the argument is criticized as forming a part of an inconsistent philosophical framework, the one with which David Kaplan and others operate. An alternative account of a certain class of (...) negative existentials is developed, one which eliminates both the inconsistency and the need for Kaplan rigidity. After all, mustn’t whatever is referred to exist? (shrink)

I will show how a metaphysical problem of Arthur Prior’s can be solved by a logical tool he developed himself, but did not put to any foundational use: metric logic. The broader context is given by the key question about the metaphysics of time: Is time tenseless, i.e., is time just a structure of instants; or is time tensed, because some facts are irreducibly tensed? I take sides with Prior and the tensed theory. Like him, I therefore I have to (...) deal with a more specific metaphysical question: How can the instants of tenseless time be reduced to tensed facts? This is the point where, on the technical level, hybrid logic and metric logic come in. For present purposes, both can be seen as species of tense logic; and both are creations of Prior. In his argument for the tensed theory of time, Prior used hybrid tense logic to reduce instants. But, as he himself pointed out, this reduction runs into deep problems, because it immediately generalizes to other categories, for example and most importantly to persons. My main aim is to show that metric logic does not run into similar difficulties: It will help the tensed theory reduce instants, but it leaves persons untouched. I will also give reasons for preferring a metric to a hybrid logic of time that are independent of the metaphysical issue of reduction, but concern temporal reasoning, natural language semantics, and the epistemic side of time-keeping. (shrink)

Against the background of the theory of branching space-times (BST), the paper sketches a concept of individuals. It discusses Kripkean modal intuitions concerning individuation, and, finally it addresses Lewis’s objections to branching individuals.

A number of philosophers endorse, without argument, the view that there’s something it’s like consciously to think that p, which is distinct from what it’s like consciously to think that q. This thesis, if true, would have important consequences for philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In this paper I offer an argument for it, and attempt to induce examples of it in the reader. The argument claims it would be impossible introspectively to distinguish conscious thoughts with respect to their (...) content if there weren’t something it’s like to think them. This argument is defended against several objections. Then I use what I call “minimal pair” experiences—sentences read without and with understanding—to induce in the reader an experience of the kind I claim exists. Further objections are considered and rebutted. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss, on behalf of the materialist, a consideration against the modal or conceivability argument against materialism which was first voiced in the third lecture of Naming and Necessity. This consideration is based on intertheoretic identities, statements in which both terms flanking the identity sign are theoretical. I argue that the defender of the conceivability argument has trouble to account for the appearance of contingency in those types of necessary identities. In fact, intertheoretic identities pose a formidable (...) dilemma for the defender of the modal argument and actually force the antimaterialist to say more about the semantics of theoretical terms than is implicit in standard discussions of the argument. I myself consider several options in this regard, the upshot being, however, that none of the alternative semantics for theoretical terms available to the antimaterialist is good enough to achieve the twofold aim which her modal argument requires, namely, to account for the a posteriori necessity of identities of this sort and, at the same time, to preserve her antimaterialist argument. Finally, in the last part of the paper, I argue that my defense of materialism can withstand some worries coming from David Chalmers’ recent views on a priori scrutability. (shrink)

I argue that truth is relative (in the sense recently defended by some prominent analytical philosophers) by focusing on some semantic issues raised by Einstein's theory of relativity together with our ordinary attributions of truth.

Experimental philosophers have gathered impressive evidence for the surprising conclusion that philosophers' intuitions are out of step with those of the folk. As a result, many argue that philosophers' intuitions are unreliable. Focusing on the Knobe Effect, a leading finding of experimental philosophy, we defend traditional philosophy against this conclusion. Our key premise relies on experiments we conducted which indicate that judgments of the folk elicited under higher quality cognitive or epistemic conditions are more likely to resemble those of the (...) philosopher. We end by showing how our experimental findings can help us better understand the Knobe Effect. (shrink)

The paper reconstructs Moore's Open Question Argument (OQA) and discusses its rise and fall. There are three basic objections to the OQA: Geach's point, that Moore presupposes that ?good? is a predicative adjective (whereas it is in fact attributive); Lewy's point, that it leads straight to the Paradox of Analysis; and Durrant's point that even if 'good' is not synonymous with any naturalistic predicate, goodness might be synthetically identical with a naturalistic property. As against Geach, I argue that 'good' has (...) both predicative and attributive uses and that in moral contexts it is difficult to give a naturalistic account of the attributive 'good'. To deal with Lewy, I reformulate the OQA. But the bulk of the paper is devoted to Durrant's objection. I argue that the post-Moorean programme of looking for synthetic identities between moral and naturalistic properties is either redundant or impossible. For it can be carried through only if 'good' expresses an empirical concept, in which case it is redundant since naturalism is true. But 'good' does not express an empirical concept (a point proved by the reformulated OQA). Hence synthetic naturalism is impossible. I discuss direct reference as a possible way out for the synthetic naturalist and conclude that it will not work. The OQA may be a bit battered but it works after a fashion. (shrink)

Scott Soames has argued that Rigidified Descriptivism wrongly predicts that one cannot believe, say, that Joe Strummer was born in 1952 without having a belief about the actual world. Soames suggests that agents in other possible worlds may have this belief, but may lack any beliefs about the actual world, a world that they do not occupy and have no contact with. I respond that this argument extends to other popular actuality-involving analyses. In order for Soames to hold on to (...) his argument against Rigidified Descriptivism, he must provide alternatives to these analyses. I argue that there is reason to think that these alternatives are not forthcoming, so Soames should surrender his argument against Rigidified Descriptivism. (shrink)

According to the zombie conceivability argument, phenomenal zombies are conceivable, and hence possible, and hence physicalism is false. Critics of the conceivability argument have responded by denying either that zombies are conceivable or that they are possible. Much of the controversy hinges on how to establish and understand what is conceivable, what is possible, and the link between the two—matters that are at least as obscure and controversial as whether consciousness is physical. Because of this, the debate over physicalism is (...) unlikely to be resolved by thinking about zombies—or at least, zombies as discussed by philosophers to date.



In this paper, I explore an alternative strategy against the zombie conceivability argument. I accept the possibility of zombies and ask whether that possibility is accessible (in the sense of ‘accessible’ used in possible world semantics) to our world. It turns out that the question of whether zombie worlds are accessible to our world is equivalent to the question of whether physicalism is true. By assuming that zombie worlds are accessible to our world, supporters of the zombie conceivability argument beg the question against physicalists. I will then consider what happens if a supporter of the zombie conceivability argument should insist that zombie worlds are accessible to our world. I will argue that the same ingredients used in the zombie conceivability argument—whatever they might be—can be used to construct an argument to the opposite conclusion. If that is correct, we reach a stalemate between physicalism and property dualism: while the possibility of some zombies entails property dualism, the possibility of other creatures entails physicalism. Since these two possibilities are inconsistent, one of them is not genuine. To resolve this stalemate, we need more than thought experiments. (shrink)

I argue that metaphysicians of mind have not done justice to the notion of accessibility between possible worlds. Once accessibility is given its due, physicalism must be reformulated and conceivability arguments must be reevaluated. To reach these conclusions, I explore a novel way of assessing the zombie conceivability argument. I accept that zombies are possible and ask whether that possibility is accessible from our world in the sense of ‘accessible’ used in possible world semantics. It turns out that the question (...) whether zombie worlds are accessible from our world is equivalent to the question whether physicalism is true at our world. By assuming that zombie worlds are accessible from our world, proponents of the zombie conceivability argument beg the question against physicalism. In other words, it is a mistake to assume that the metaphysical possibility of zombies entails that physicalism is false at our world. I will then consider what happens if a proponent of the zombie conceivability argument should insist that zombie worlds are accessible from our world. I will argue that the same ingredients used in the zombie conceivability argument—whatever exactly they might be—can be used to construct an argument to the opposite conclusion. At that point, we reach a stalemate between physicalism and property dualism: while the possibility of zombies entails property dualism, the possibility of other creatures entails physicalism. Since these two possibilities are mutually inconsistent, either one of them is not genuine or one of them is inaccessible from the actual world. To resolve this stalemate, we need more than traditional conceivability arguments. (shrink)

When is seeing part of an object enough to qualify as seeing the object itself? For instance, is seeing a cat’s tail enough to qualify as seeing the cat itself? I argue that whether a subject qualifies as seeing a given object varies with the context of the ascriber. Having made an initial case for the context-sensitivity of object-seeing, I then address the contention that it is merely a feature of the ordinary notion. I argue that the notions of object-seeing (...) that earn their explanatory keep in both vision science and the philosophy of perception are context-sensitive as well. (shrink)

Dualists say plausible things about our mental concepts: there is a way of thinking of pain, in terms of how it feels, which is independent of causal role. Physicalists make attractive ontological claims: the world is wholly physical. The attraction of a posteriori physicalism is that it has seemed to do both: to agree with the dualist about our mental concepts, whilst retaining a physicalist ontology. In this paper I argue that, in fact, a posteriori physicalism departs from the dualist's (...) intuitive picture of our phenomenal concepts in just as radical a manner as more traditional forms of physicalism. Whereas the physicalism of David Lewis and David Armstrong is counterintuitive in holding that our only way of thinking about pain is in terms of its causal role, the physicalism of David Papineau and Brian Loar departs from common sense in holding that our phenomenal concept of pain is opaque: thinking of pain in terms of how it feels reveals nothing of what it is for something to feel pain. The arguments of David Chalmers and Frank Jackson against a posteriori physicalism involve general claims about all concepts. In contrast, my argument makes a claim only about phenomenal concepts: phenomenal concepts are not opaque. (shrink)

This article explores the limits of social constructionism and criticizes the `demiurgic conception of society' associated with it. It contemplates the possibility of sociological realism by investigating the intrinsic and objective properties of action, cognition and morality. The incorporation of intrinsic meanings and intentions in social actions, the objective information supporting cognitive processes and human sensitivity to pleasure and pain as well as the normative rejection of undue suffering, delineate the objective core of social facts, which can be interpreted or (...) influenced, but not arbitrarily or capriciously constructed or manipulated. This general argument is supported by various illustrations drawn from the semantics of social actions and classical puzzles of interpretative sociology such as the meaning of suicide or the morality of social sanctions. (shrink)

Selective scientific realists disagree on which theoretical posits should be regarded as essential to the empirical success of a scientific theory. A satisfactory account of essentialness will show that the (approximate) truth of the selected posits adequately explains the success of the theory. Therefore, (a) the essential elements must be discernible prospectively; (b) there cannot be a priori criteria regarding which type of posit is essential; and (c) the overall success of a theory, or ‘cluster’ of propositions, not only individual (...) derivations, should be explicable. Given these desiderata, I propose a “unification criterion” for identifying essential elements. (shrink)

'God needs no instruments to act', Malebranche writes in Search 6.2.3; 'it suffices that He wills in order that a thing be, because it is a contradiction that He should will and that what He wills should not happen. Therefore, His power is His will' (450). After nearly identical language in Treatise 1.12, Malebranche writes that '[God's] wills are necessarily efficacious ... [H]is power differs not at all from [H]is will' (116). God's causal power, here, clearly traces only to His (...) volitions - not merely to the fact that He wills, but specifically to the content of His volitions ('"what" He wills'). Yet despite the obviously key role the ordinary notion of volitional content plays for Malebranche, recent writers have paid surprisingly little attention either to it or its exegetical implications. I hope to rectify this situation here. The plan of this paper is this: first, to borrow current work in the philosophy of mind to sketch the notion of an incomplete volition, i.e. one whose content is 'incomplete' in a sense to be explained; second, to show that Malebranche clearly allows and uses something like this notion; third, to apply the notion to Malebranche's doctrine of human freedom. In so doing, I believe, we can understand this doctrine in a new way, and one which: (i) is clearly consistent with his texts, and (ii) unlike other interpretations makes coherent sense out of the conflicting streams in his heroic attempt to reconcile his occasionalism - the doctrine that no finite substances have genuine causal powers - with our freedom; fourth, Contrast my interpretation with those of two recent writers: Sleigh et al. (1998) and Schmaltz (1996); and Fifth, Summarize the major results. (shrink)

It is generally assumed that if it is possible to believe that p without believing that q, then there is some difference between the object of the thought that p and the object of the thought that q. This assumption is challenged in the present paper, opening the way to an account of epistemic opacity that improves on existing accounts, not least because it casts doubt on various arguments that attempt to derive startling ontological conclusions from seemingly innocent epistemic premises.

Just as bodily actions are things you do with your body, mental actions are things you do with your mind. Both are different from things that merely happen to you. Where does the idea of mental action come from? What are mental actions? And why do they matter in philosophy? These are the three main questions answered in this paper. Section 1 introduces mental action through a brief history of the topic in philosophy. Section 2 explains what it is to (...) be a mental action in terms of intentional action. Section 3 argues that the fact that we can perform mental actions has some striking consequences concerning mental content. Section 4 shows how mental action helps to explain some important facts about self-knowledge and the normativity of thought. The conclusion mentions two further fruitful avenues for philosophical research on mental action. (shrink)

The paper looks at an impasse with respect to the role of rights as reasons for action which afflicts contemporary legal and political debates. Adopting a meta‐ethical approach, it moves on to argue that the impasse arises from a philosophical confusion surrounding the role of rights as normative reasons. In dispelling the confusion, an account of reasons is put forward that attempts to capture their normativity by relating them to a reflexive public practice. Two key outcomes are identified as a (...) result of this explication: first, that normative practices are instances of rule‐following; and second, that agents partaking of normative practices possess absolute value (i.e., acquire the status of persons). In light of this explication, rights acquire the status of the most general reasons that purport to guarantee the content of personhood by specifying and safeguarding conditions which enable agents to participate in public practices of universalisation. (shrink)

If an object has a property essentially, it has that property in every possible world according to which it exists.2 If an object has a property accidentally, it does not have that property in every possible world according to which it exists. Claims about an object’s essential or accidental properties are de re modal claims, and essential and accidental properties are de re modal properties. Take an object’s modal profile to specify its essential properties and the range of its accidental (...) properties. Note that “world” as I am using it is a term of art: a modal realist believes that there are many concrete worlds, while the actualist believes in only one concrete world, the actual world. The ersatzist is an actualist who takes nonactual possible worlds and their contents to be abstracta. Essentialism is the view that objects have properties essentially, but one should distinguish deep essentialism from shallow essentialism. Deep essentialists take the (nontrivial) essential properties of an object to determine its nature— such properties give sense to the idea that an object has a unique and distinctive character, and make it the case that an object has to be a certain way in order for it to be at all.3 As Stephen Yablo (1987, 297) describes it, the essence of a thing is “an assortment of properties in virtue of which it is the entity in question,” as well as “a measure of what is required for it to be that thing.” Intuitively, on the deep essentialist picture, an ordinary object has essential properties, and it must have its essential properties in order for it to exist. On this view, objects’ essential properties are absolute, i.e., are not determined by contexts of describing (or thinking, etc.) about the object, and truths about such properties are absolute truths.4 Shallow essentialists oppose deep essentialists: they reject the view that objects can be said to have essential properties independently of contexts of description or evaluation, and so substitute context-dependent truths for the deep essentialist’s context-independent ones.. (shrink)

There seems to be a perfectly ordinary sense in which different speakers can use an empty name to talk about the same thing. Call this fictional coreference. It is a constraint on an adequate theory of empty names that it provide a satisfactory account of fictional coreference. The main claim of this paper is that the pretense theory of empty names does not respect this constraint.

Physicalism about colour is the thesis that colours are identical with response-independent, physical properties of objects. I endorse the Argument from Structure against Physicalism about colour. The argument states that Physicalism cannot accommodate certain obvious facts about colour structure: for instance, that red is a unitary colour while purple is a binary colour, and that blue resembles purple more than green. I provide a detailed formulation of the argument. According to the most popular response to the argument, the Physicalist can (...) accommodate colour structure by explaining it in terms of colour experience. I argue that this response fails. Along the way, I examine other interesting issues in the philosophy of colour and colour perception, for instance the relational structure of colour experience and the description theory of how colour names refer. (shrink)