In this paper, I try to show that Kripke’s proposed solution to the problem of negative existentials fails. I try to show that Kripke’s proposal fails because it entails that anybody who has good reasons to believe that there are no propositions has also good reasons to believe that he or she does not exist. However, there were philosophers who had good reasons to believe that there are no propositions even though they didn’t have good reasons to believe that they (...) do not exist. I conclude that Kripke’s proposed solution to the problem of negative existentials fails. (shrink)

Amodal completion is the representation of occluded parts of perceived objects. We argue for the following three claims: First, at least some amodal completion-involved experiences can ground knowledge about the occluded portions of perceived objects. Second, at least some instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge are not sensitive, that is, it is not the case that in the nearest worlds in which the relevant claim is false, that claim is not believed true. Third, at least some instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge (...) are not safe, that is, it is not the case that in all or nearly all near worlds where the relevant claim is believed true, that claim is in fact true. Thus, certain instances of amodal completion-grounded knowledge refute both the view that knowledge is necessarily sensitive and the view that knowledge is necessarily safe. (shrink)

In this paper I show that we have strong empirical and theoretical reasons to treat the verbs we use in our semantic theorizing—particularly ‘refers to ’, ‘applies to ’, and ‘is true of ’—as intensional transitive verbs. Stating our semantic theories with intensional vocabulary allows us to partially reconcile two competing approaches to the nature and subject-matter of semantics: the Chomskian approach, on which semantics is non-relational, internalistic, and concerns the psychology of language users, and the Lewisian approach, on which (...) semantics is fully relational, specifies truth-conditions, and has metaphysical implications. ITVs have two readings: an intensional, de dicto reading, and a relational, de re reading. A semantic theory stated with the de dicto readings of our semantic verbs captures the core insights of the Chomskian approach to semantics, in part because it allows us to assign extremely fine-grained semantic values to expressions, even when those expressions are empty. On the other hand, the de re reading yields a theory that is fully relational, and issues in truth-conditions. The resulting theories are related—and compatible—in that they are expressed by two different readings of the very same semantic vocabulary, and plausibly, the distinction between these two readings is one of scope. (shrink)

According to possibilism, or non-actualism, fictional characters are possible individuals. Possibilist accounts of fiction do not only assign the intuitively correct truth-conditions to sentences in a fiction, but has the potential to provide powerful explanatory models for a wide range of phenomena associated with fiction (though these two aspects of possibilism are, I argue, crucially distinct). Apart from the classic defense by David Lewis the idea of modeling fiction in terms of possible worlds have been widely criticized. In this article, (...) I provide a defense of a possibilist account against some lines of criticism. To do so, I assume that names for fictional characters are directly referential and a possible-worlds model that accommodates transworld identity. On this background, I argue, it is possible to construct an elegant model of fictional discourse using familiar models of information exchange in ordinary discourse, and I sketch how this model can be used to i) make a natural distinction between fictional and counterfactual discourse, ii) account for creativity, and iii) sustain a natural definition of truth-in-fiction that avoids certain familiar objections to possibilism. Though I set aside questions about the metaphysical commitments of a possible-world interpretation here, there is accordingly reason to think that the battle over possibilist treatments of fiction will have to be fought over metaphysical foundations rather than technical shortcomings. (shrink)

I will argue that the scientific investigation of philosophical intuition ('experimental philosophy') is of philosophical interest. I will defend the significance of experimental philosophy against two important types of objection. I will term the first objection 'eliminativism' about intuitions: roughly, it is the claim that philosophical methodology does not in fact rely on intuition, and thus experimental philosophy's investigation is ill-conceived—in the words of one such opponent, 'a big mistake.' I will then consider a second objection, the 'expertise' defence. The (...) expertise defence argues that the expert intuitions of professional philosophers are distinct, and to be preferred to those of the 'folk.' Against the eliminativists, I will argue that an ineliminable mental component remains that can be subject of fruitful empirical investigation. Against the expertise defence I will argue that, at least in the context of philosophy of language, expertise is itself a potential source of bias. Since expertise is domain-specific, however, a general rebuttal will not be given. I will conclude that experimental philosophy has much to contribute. (shrink)

Lying and fiction both involve the deliberate production of statements that fail to obey Grice’s first Maxim of Quality (“do not say what you believe to be false”). The question thus arises if we can provide a uniform analysis for fiction and lies. In this chapter I discuss the similarities, but also some fundamental differences between lying and fiction. I argue that there’s little hope for a satisfying account within a traditional truth conditional semantic framework. Rather than immediately moving to (...) a fully pragmatic analysis involving distinct speech acts of fiction-making and lying, I will first explore how far we get with the assumption that both are simply assertions, analyzed in a Stalnakerian framework, i.e. as proposals to update the common ground. (shrink)

It was an empirical discovery that Phosphorus is Hesperus. According to Kripke, this was also the discovery of a necessary fact. Now, given Kripke’s theory of direct reference one could wonder what kind of discovery this is. For we already knew Phosphorus/Hesperus, and we also knew that any entity is, necessarily, identical to itself. So what is it that was discovered? I want to show that there is more to this widely known case than what usual readings, and critics, reveal; (...) and I want to show this under the Kripkean pattern that what was discovered is the plain fact of identity that Phosphorus is, and necessarily is, Hesperus. Moreover, I will show how both Kripkean theses, the necessity of identity and the direct theory of reference, should not be kept apart to understand the kind of discovery this is. In particular, understanding the kind of discovery we made will help us see how intuition is displayed in metaphysics, and how metaphysical impossibilities, and metaphysical modality in general, can be discerned by reason and separated from other modalities. The study of this discovery will help us see, in a line, how identity belongs to the inner and most profound structure of reality and to the most profound structure of cognition and language. (shrink)

‘Ahab is a whaler’ and ‘Holmes is a whaler’ express different propositions, even though neither ‘Ahab’ nor ‘Holmes’ has a referent. This seems to constitute a theoretical puzzle for the Russellian view of propositions. In this paper, I develop a variant of the Russellian view, Plenitudinous Russellianism. I claim that ‘Ahab is a whaler’ and ‘Holmes is a whaler’ express distinct gappy propositions. I discuss key metaphysical and semantic differences between Plenitudinous Russellianism and Traditional Russellianism and respond to objections that (...) stem from those differences. (shrink)

In an addendum to Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke argues against his earlier view that Sherlock Holmes is a possible person. In this paper, I suggest a nonstandard interpretation of the addendum. A key feature of this non-standard interpretation is that it attempts to make sense of why Kripke would be rejecting the view that Sherlock Holmes is a possible person without asserting that it is not the case that Sherlock Holmes is a possible person.

Artifactualism about fictional characters, positing Harry Potter as an abstract artifact created by J. K. Rowling, has been criticized on the grounds that the idea of creating such objects is mysterious and problematic. In the light of such qualms, it is worth homing in on an argument in favor of artifactualism, showing that it is the best way to include the likes of Harry Potter in our ontology precisely because it incorporates authorial creation. To that end, I will be exploring (...) Kripke’s fleeting remarks in the Addenda to his “Naming and Necessity” lectures about expressions like ‘unicorn’ and ‘Harry Potter’. Elsewhere, Kripke motivates artifactualism by suggesting that incorporating authorial creation (as artifactualism does) is a move that is intuitive and natural; but beyond this, he doesn’t provide any arguments in favor of such a move. My purpose in this paper is to construct such an argument based on considerations about Kripke’s general view about proper names, in particular, his seminal causal-historical chain account of reference determination, and its consequences for fictional names as well as nonfictional names without bearers such as ‘Vulcan’. (shrink)

My goal is to reflect on the phenomenon of inadvertent creation and argue that—various objections to the contrary—it doesn’t undermine the view that fictional characters are abstract artifacts. My starting point is a recent challenge by Jeffrey Goodman that is originally posed for those who hold that fictional characters and mythical objects alike are abstract artifacts. The challenge: if we think that astronomers like Le Verrier, in mistakenly hypothesizing the planet Vulcan, inadvertently created an abstract artifact, then the “inadvertent creation” (...) element turns out to be inescapable yet theoretically unattractive. Based on considerations about actually existing concrete objects featured in fictional works (as Napoleon is in Tolstoy’s War and Peace), I argue that independently of one’s stand on mythical objects, admitting fictional characters as abstract artifacts is enough to give rise to the challenge at hand; yet this very point serves to undermine the challenge, indicating that inadvertent creation is not nearly as worrisome as Goodman suggests. Indeed, the inadvertent creation phenomenon’s generality extends far beyond objects of fiction and myth, and I will use this observation to counter a further objection. Taking fictional characters (and mythical objects) to be abstract artifacts therefore remains a viable option. (shrink)

In several papers, Petr Koťátko defends an “ontologically modest account of fictional characters”. Consider a position (which I have been defending) that is anything but ontologically restrained: positing fictional characters like Andrei Bolkonsky in War and Peace as abstract artifacts. I will argue, first, that such a position turns out to offer a nice fit with Petr Koťátko’s proposal about narrative fiction, one that fares better than an alternative pretense-based theory that doesn’t posit Bolkonsky as existing in any sense. Second, (...) I will explore a recent challenge by Jeffrey Goodman—which I will call the inadvertent creation challenge—that is originally posed for those who hold that fictional characters and mythical objects alike are abstract artifacts. The crux of the challenge is this: if we think that astronomers like Le Verrier, in mistakenly hypothesizing the planet Vulcan, inadvertently create an abstract artifact, then the inadvertent creation” element turns out to be inescapable yet theoretically unattractive. Third, based on considerations about actually existing concrete objects being featured in fictional works (as Napoleon is in War and Peace), I argue that regardless of where one stands on mythical objects, admitting fictional characters as abstract artifacts is enough to give rise to the inadvertent creation challenge; yet this very set of considerations serves to undermine the challenge, indicating that inadvertent creation is not nearly as worrisome after all as Goodman is suggesting. Taking fictional characters (and mythical objects) to be abstract artifacts therefore remains a viable option. -/- . (shrink)

There is a list of desiderata that any good metaphysics of fictional entities should be able to fulfill. These desiderata are: 1) the nonexistence of fictional entities; 2) the causal inefficacy of suchentities;3)the incompleteness of such entities;4)the created character of such entities; 5) the actual possession by ficta of the narrated properties; 6) the unrevisable ascription to ficta of such properties; and 7) the necessary possession by ficta of such properties. (Im)possibilist metaphysics uncontroversially satisfy 1) and 2); Neo-Meinongian metaphysics satisfy (...) 1), 2), 3), 5), 6), and 7); artefactualist or creationist metaphysics uncontroversially satisfy 1), 2), 3), and 4). Another metaphysics is needed in order to satisfy all such desiderata. In this chapter Idevelop such a metaphysics, claiming that a Syncretistic metaphysics that combines Neo-Meinongianism with Artefactualism achieves this purpose. According to Syncretism, ficta are hybrid entities individuated in terms of both a certain makebelieve narrative process and the set of properties that one such narration mobilizes. Toward the end of the chapter I consider some possible criticisms to this approach: its non-intuitiveness; ficta’s unnecessary proliferation; and troubles with creationism of any sort. (shrink)

In (1959), Carnap famously attacked Heidegger for having constructed an insane metaphysics based on a misconception of both the logical form and the semantics of ordinary language. In what follows, it will be argued that, once one appropriately (i.e., in a Russellian fashion) reads Heidegger’s famous sentence that should paradigmatically exemplify such a misconception, i.e., “the nothing nothings”, there is nothing either logically or semantically wrong with it. The real controversy as to how that sentence has to be evaluated—not as (...) to its meaning but as to its truth—lies at the metaphysico- ontological level. For in order for the sentence to be true one has to endorse an ontology of impossibilia and Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles. (shrink)

Since Kaplan : 81–98, 1979) first provided a logic for context-sensitive expressions, it has been thought that the only way to construct a logic for indexicals is to restrict it to arguments which take place in a single context— that is, instantaneous arguments, uttered by a single speaker, in a single place, etc. In this paper, I propose a logic which does away with these restrictions, and thus places arguments where they belong, in real world conversations. The central innovation is (...) that validity depends not just on the sentences in the argument, but also on certain abstract relations between contexts. This enrichment of the notion of logical form leads to some seemingly counter-intuitive results: a sequence of sentences may make up a valid argument in one sequence of contexts, and an invalid one in another such sequence. I argue that this is an unavoidable result of context sensitivity in general, and of the nature of indexicals in particular, and that reflection on such examples will lead us to a better understanding of the idea of applying logic to context sensitive expressions, and thus to natural language in general. (shrink)

This paper has a negative and a positive claim. The negative claim is that the Frege-Russell account of existence as a higher-order predicate is mistaken and should be abandoned, even with respect to general statements of existence such as “Flying mammals exist” (where statements of this sort are supposed to be best accommodated by the account). The Frege-Russell view seems to be supported by two ideas. First, the idea that existence is entirely expressed by the existential quantifier of standard predicate (...) logic. Second, the idea that the existential quantifier is a higher-order predicate, a predicate of predicates, not of individuals. I think that both ideas are wrong but will focus on the latter. By construing prima facie first-order statements such as “Flying Mammals exist” as higher-order predications such as “The Fregean Concept Flying Mammal maps at least one individual onto the True”, the Frege-Russell view commits one - merely on the basis of the meaning it assigns to the existence predicate – to abstract objects such as concepts (Gottlob Frege), or propositional functions (Bertrand Russell), or classes (Rudolf Carnap), or properties, kinds, and so on. This cannot be right, I think. The positive claim of the present paper is that, at least in the context of first-order discourse, the existence predicate is just what it seems to be: a bona fide first-order predicate (pace Kant, Hume, Frege, Russell and others). Three important ideas about existence are shared with the Frege-Russell conception of existence, though. (1) Being and existence are one and the same thing: there is no difference between “Unicorns are not”, or “There are no unicorns”, and “Unicorns do not exist”, or “There exist no unicorns”. (2) To be is to be the value of a bound variable, to belong to a domain of quantification (Willard Quine). (3) Anti-Meinongianism, the idea that there are no non-existent objects (Russell). However, we diverge from the Frege-Russell tradition with respect to the following claim. (4) The best concept of existence, in the sense of the one that is best understood and best enables us to formulate ontological disputes, is a purely logical first-level concept defined in terms of existential quantification and identity. First-order statements of existence and non-existence like “Flying Mammals exist” and “Unicorns do not exist” are accordingly taken at face value and analyzed in terms of a logical first-order predicate of existence, the predicate “is (identical to) something”. Reasons are given to prefer this notion of existence to other first-order non-logical notions that have been proposed in the literature, notions characterized in terms of predicates such as “is in space-time”, “is concrete”, “is causally efficacious”, “is actual”, “is real”, etc. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I defend the view that natural languages are concrete biopsychological phenomena to be studied empirically. In Section One, I begin with an historical explanation. Some analytic philosophers, I argue, misapply formal logic as an analysis of natural language, when it was in fact originally developed as an alternative to natural language, employed for scientific purposes., quasi-mathematical philosophies of language, I argue, are partially a result of this misunderstanding. I respond to Jerrold Katz’ argument that a proper understanding (...) of analytic truth requires this quasi-mathematical philosophy of language through a model-theoretical analysis of analytic truth in modal and intuitionist logics. In Section Two, I offer a positive argument for a biopsychological philosophy of language. While Chomsky and others have emphasized the metaphysical basis of natural languages in psychological representations, I further contribute to understanding by emphasizing the basis of natural language in psychological representations of relevant properties of a specifically constrained biological implementation base. I defend this ontological perspective through a thorough engagement with the subfield of linguistic phonology and its important relations to physiological articulation and perception, along with an analysis of crucial interface relations among phonology, morphology and syntax. In the final section, I engage with the objections to this biopsychological philosophy of language stemming from concerns related to linguistic normativity and communication. If natural language is based metaphysically in the biopsychological representations of individuals, there are apparent paradoxes in the notion of public rules for language use, and in the notion of shared content for the purpose of communication. Drawing on David Forrest Wallace’s pragmatic conception of linguistic prescription, together with analogies from anti-realist metaethical systems, I defend the intelligibility of public linguistics norms without the need for abstract ontological commitment. Drawing on Ray Jackendoff’s internalist semantic and metasemantic analysese, together with Burtrand Russell’s analogy argument on other minds, I also defend intelligibility of linguistic communication equally without need for abstract ontological commitment. (shrink)

I set out four general facts about things that we can refer to and talk about, whether they exist or not. Then, I set out an argument for the existence of God. Myargument, like Anselm’s original argument, is a reductio ad absurdum: It shows that the assumption that God does not exist leads to a contradiction. Theargument is short and in ordinary language. Each line of the argument, other than the reductio premise, is justified by one of the general facts. (...) Finally, I consider some traditional objections to Anselm’s argument, and show how my updated version avoids them. (shrink)

I am hugely grateful for these provocative and illuminating comments. My thanks to all N commentators (N ≈ 13). I will have something to say about each contribution, but the overall organization wi...

The paper presents a new theory of perceptual demonstrative thought, the property-dependent theory. It argues that the theory is superior to both the object-dependent theory (Evans, McDowell) and the object-independent theory (Burge).

In Naming and Necessity Kripke argues 'intuitively' that names are rigid. Unlike Kripke, Ben-Yami first introduces and justifies the Principle of the Independence of Reference (PIR), according to which the reference of a name is independent of what is said in the rest of the sentence containing it. Ben-Yami then derives rigidity, or something close to it, from the PIR. Additional aspects of the use of names and other expressions in modal contexts, explained by the PIR but not by the (...) rigidity claim, are then discussed. Ben-Yami next examines a difficulty in accepted definitions of rigidity, stemming from the fact that the same name can be used to name different particulars. This difficulty might force us to adopt a revised form of the rigidity claim. (shrink)

En este trabajo me ocupo de la semántica de los términos de ficción, en el marco de una posición de tipo abstractista (Kripke 2011 y 2013, van Inwagen 1977, Salmon 1998 y 2002, Thomasson 1999, Predelli 1997, 2002 y 2005 y Voltolini 2011). En particular, me concentro en dos problemas que afectan a este tipo de posiciones: el primero de ellos es dar cuenta de la verdad intuitiva de enunciados como “Ulises duerme en la playa de Ithaca”; el segundo es (...) explicar la aceptación, también intuitiva, de que “Ulises no existe” es un enunciado verdadero. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is to present and analyze some versions of make-believe theories for singular negative existentials. I will quickly present Evans’ perspective and, in greater detail, the perspectives of Kroon and Walton. I will claim that neither Evans nor Walton provide the right account of the phenomenon of singular negative existentials, and that Kroon’s perspective is better than both. However, I will argue that the three theories have the same problem, which I call the problem of semantic (...) motivation. (shrink)