This paper proposes a framework for formalising intuitions about the behaviour of imperative commands. It seeks to capture notions of satisfaction and coherence. Rules are proposed to express key aspects of the general logical behaviour of imperative constructions. A key objective is for the framework to allow patterns of behaviour to be described while avoiding making any commitments about how commands, and their satisfaction criteria, are to be interpreted. We consider the status of some conundrums of imperative logic in the (...) context of this proposal. (shrink)

This paper is based on tutorials on 'Logic and Games' at the 7th Asian Logic Conference in Hsi-Tou, Taiwan, 1999, and until 2002 in Siena, Stuttgart, Trento, Udine, and Utrecht. We present logic games as a topic per se, giving models for dynamic interaction between agents. First, we survey some basic logic games. Then we show how their common properties raise general issues of game structure and 'game logics'. Next, we review logic games in the light of general game logic. (...) Finally, we discuss more 'realistic' influences from game theory into logic games, including players' preferences, and imperfect information. (shrink)

I argue for an account of vagueness according to which the root of vagueness lies not in the type of semantic-value that is best associated with an expression, but in the type of linguistic practice that renders the expression meaningful. I suggest, in particular, that conventions about how to use sentences involving attributions of vague predicates to borderline cases prevail to a lesser degree than conventions about how to use sentences involving attributions of vague predicates to clear cases.

Geach’s rich paper ‘A Program for Syntax’ introduced many ideas into the arena of categorial grammar, not all of which have been given the attention they warrant in the thirty years since its first publication. Rather surprisingly, one of our findings (Section 3 below) is that the paper not only does not contain a statement of what has widely come to be known as “Geach’s Rule”, but in fact presents considerations which are inimical to the adoption of the rule in (...) question. With regard to at least some amongst the numerous other points extracted here from Geach’s discussion, we shall not be able to reach so definitive a conclusion, and content ourselves with giving the issues an airing. (shrink)

In this paper I have tried to give the SAS some descriptive content with respect to English. I have suggested that correlations of form, function and fit play a central role in accounting for understanding literal and direct communication, and I have tried to take some initial steps towards constructing a plausible theory of such communication incorporating these notions.As with any developing theory, the SAS has a long way to grow. Among the problem areas that need further work are the (...) following: (1) The nature of the semantic representation in line L2; (2) An account of the notion ‘knowledge of language’ appealed to in line L1(a); (3) Psychological evidence for the various levels of processing and mediating procedures; (4) An account of the nature of pragmatic rules and their relationsip to grammars. Fortunately, these are matters for other times and other places. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I investigate a conception of thoughts figuring in ordinary discourse, and argue that this conception is an improvement over a certain standard conception employed in current philosophical and linguistic endeavors. ;In Chapter 2, I discuss the leading principles of the standard conception, a conception according to which thoughts in general are to be identified with propositions. I also briefly preview some of the main features that distinguish the conception developed in the course of this study from the (...) standard conception. ;Chapter 4 is the heart of the thesis. I isolate a reading of the verb 'think' that I contend is both familiar from and central to our ordinary discourse about thoughts and thinking--the "generic reading", I call it. An investigation of the relation expressed by the verb, 'think', on this generic reading, and of the correlative conception of thoughts, occupies the remainder of the study. ;If this ordinary conception of thoughts is to serve the principal functions to which thoughts have standardly been assigned, in philosophical and linguistic endeavors, then there should be a discernible sense in which it is correct to say that thoughts, so conceived, are things that sentences express. In Chapter 5, I discuss the relevant notion of sentential expression. Accounts of this notion have commonly faced a stumbling block in the case of non-declarative sentences. What sort of thoughts, for example, can imperatives or interrogatives be said to express? In Chapter 6, I explain how, on the present conception, there is a clear sense in which sentences of a variety of grammatical moods--imperatives and interrogatives as well as declaratives--may be said, with equal propriety, to express thoughts. ;In Chapter 7, I discuss a fundamental thesis of the standard conception, and argue, in Chapter 8, that any account of the nature of thoughts accommodating this thesis is incompatible with the conception of thoughts arrived at in Chapter 4. Then, in order to retain this familiar conception and its benefits, a new account of the nature of thoughts must be provided. Such an account is described in Chapter 9. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of some of the most important philosophical papers by Peter Gärdenfors. Spanning a period of more than 20 years of his research, they cover a wide ground of topics, from early works on decision theory, belief revision and nonmonotonic logic to more recent work on conceptual spaces, inductive reasoning, semantics and the evolutions of thinking. Many of the papers have only been published in places that are difficult to access. The common theme of all the (...) papers is the dynamics of thought. Several of the papers have become minor classics and the volume bears witness of the wide scope of Gärdenfors’ research and of his crisp and often witty style of writing. The volume will be of interest to researchers in philosophy and other cognitive sciences. (shrink)

The “dynamic turn” in semantic theory of natural language, which has been taking place roughly during the last decade, has resulted into seeing the meaning of a sentence as a “context-change-potential”, as a function which maps the set of possible contexts on itself. The development of theories of this kind has been stimulated especially by the effort to semantically cope with the anaphoric items of natural language . The most significant species of dynamic semantic theories are represented by Kamp´s “discourse (...) representations theory” and Groenendijk and Stokhof´s “dynamic logic”. The former sees sentences as means of building and rebuilding “discourse representations structures”; the latter, which tries to be an expressly logical objects to “discourse markers” into the same set. The paper presents basic principles of theories of both of these kinds and indicates how they can help us analyse natural language locutions involving anaphora. (shrink)

A verb is transitive iff it usually occurs with a direct object, and in such occurrences it is said to occur transitively . Thus ‘ate’ occurs transitively in ‘I ate the meat and left the vegetables’, but not in ‘I ate then left’ (perhaps it is not the same verb ‘left’ in these two examples, but it seems to be the same ‘ate’). A verb is intensional if the verb phrase (VP) it forms with its complement is anomalous in at (...) least one of three ways: (i) interchanging expressions in the complement referring to the same entity can change the truth-value of the sentence embedding the VP; (ii) the VP admits of a special “unspecific” reading if it contains a quantifier, or a certain type of quantifier; and (iii) the normal existential commitments of names and existential quantifiers in the complement are suspended even when the embedding sentence is negation-free. (shrink)

Approximately thirty years ago, Barbara H. Partee tried to think of counterexamples to David Lewis’s observation that no intransitive verbs appeared to have intensional subject positions. She came up with such verbs as ‘rise,’ ‘change,’ and ‘increase.’ Lewis agreed that they were indeed counterexamples to his observation. He mentioned it to Richard Montague, who incorporated these verbs into his now famous grammatical theory for English.

Semantic composition in language must be closely related to semantic composition in thought. But the way the two processes are explained differs considerably. Focusing primarily on propositional content, language theorists generally take semantic composition to be a truth‐conditional process. Focusing more on extensional content, cognitive theorists take it to be a form of concept combination. But though deep, this disconnect is not irreconcilable. Both areas of theory assume that extensional (i.e., denotational) meanings must play a role. As this article demonstrates, (...) they also have the potential to fulfill a mediative function. What is shown is that extensional meanings are themselves inherently compositional. On this basis, it becomes possible to model semantic composition without assuming the existence of any specifically linguistic/conceptual apparatus. Examples are presented to demonstrate this direct style of modeling. Abstract connections between composition in thought and language can then be made, raising the prospect of a more unified, theoretical account of semantic composition. (shrink)

I develop a device for simulating quantification over merely possible objects from the perspective of a modal actualist ---someone who thinks that everything that exists actually exists.

In this essay, I propose an analysis of Quine’s example ’Giorgione was so-called because of his size’, grounded on the idea of an obstinate demonstrative. In the first sections, I discuss the advantages and drawbacks of the demonstrative and logophoric treatments of ‘so called’, I highlight certain parallelisms with Davidson’s paratactic view of quotation, and I introduce independent considerations in favor of the idea of an obstinate demonstrative. In the second half of my essay, I apply this notion to Quine’s (...) example, and I discuss its consequences with respect to the principle of substitutivity of coreferential singular terms. (shrink)

John Hawthorne in a recent paper takes issue with Lewisian accounts of counterfactuals, when relevant laws of nature are chancy. I respond to his arguments on behalf of the Lewisian, and conclude that while some can be rebutted, the case against the original Lewisian account is strong. I develop a neo-Lewisian account of what makes for closeness of worlds. I argue that my revised version avoids Hawthorne's challenges. I argue that this is closer to the spirit of Lewis's first (non-chancy) (...) proposal than is Lewis's own suggested modification. (shrink)

Psychology has benefited from an enormous wealth of knowledge about processes of cognition in relation to how the brain organizes information. Within the categorization literature, this behavior is often explained through theories of memory construction called exemplar theory and prototype theory which are typically based on similarity or rule functions as explanations of how categories emerge. Although these theories work well at modeling highly controlled stimuli in laboratory settings, they often perform less well outside of these settings, such as explaining (...) the emergence of background knowledge processes. In order to explain background knowledge, we present a non-similarity-based post-Skinnerian theory of human language called Relational Frame Theory which is rooted in a philosophical world view called functional contextualism. This theory offers a very different interpretation of how categories emerge through the functions of behavior and through contextual cues, which may be of some benefit to existing categorization theories. Specifically, RFT may be able to offer a novel explanation of how background knowledge arises, and we provide some mathematical considerations in order to identify a formal model. Finally, we discuss much of this work within the broader context of general semantic knowledge and artificial intelligence research. (shrink)

In his recent John Locke Lectures – published as Between Saying and Doing – Brandom extends and refines his views on the nature of language and philosophy by developing a position that he calls Analytic Pragmatism. Although Brandom’s project bears on an extraordinarily rich array of different philosophical issues, we focus here on the contention that certain vocabularies have a privileged status within our linguistic practices, and that when adequately understood, the practices in which these vocabularies figure can help furnish (...) us with an account of semantic intentionality. Brandom’s claim is that such vocabularies are privileged because they are a species of what he calls universal LX vocabulary –roughly, vocabulary whose mastery is implicit in any linguistic practice whatsoever. We show that, contrary to Brandom’s claim, logical vocabulary per se fails to satisfy the conditions that must be met for something to count as universal LX vocabulary. Further, we show that exactly analogous considerations undermine his claim that modal vocabulary is universal LX. If our arguments are sound, then, contrary to what Brandom maintains, intentionality cannot be explicated as a “pragmatically mediated semantic phenomenon”, at any rate not of the sort that he proposes. (shrink)

This research looks into absurdity focusing on its etymology as well as its relationship with the concepts "sense" and "meaning", looks into the concepts of "context" and "decontextualization" so as to understand the nature of absurd decontextualization. Considering the different meanings of absurdity in literature, philosophy and humour, this research is also meant to provide a breakdown of the architecture of nonsense.

Should a theory of meaning state what sentences mean, and can a Davidsonian theory of meaning in particular do so? Max Kölbel answers both questions affirmatively. I argue, however, that the phenomena of non-homophony, non-truth-conditional aspects of meaning, semantic mood, and context-sensitivity provide prima facie obstacles for extending Davidsonian truth-theories to yield meaning-stating theorems. Assessing some natural moves in reply requires a more fully developed conception of the task of such theories than Kölbel provides. A more developed conception is also (...) required to defend his positive answer to the first question above. I argue that, however Kölbel might elaborate his position, it can’t be by embracing the sort of cognitivist account of Davidsonian semantics to which he sometimes alludes. (shrink)

In celebrating Arthur Prior we celebrate what he gave to the world. Much of this is measured by what others have made of his ideas after his death. The focus of this paper is a little different. It looks at what Prior himself thought he was accomplishing. In particular it considers Prior’s attitude to the semantic metatheory of the logics that he was interested in. The paper sets out some characteristics of the metalogical study of intensional languages in terms of (...) an indexical theory of truth conditions stated in the language of set theory. In examining Prior’s work using these characteristics, it emerges that Prior had serious reservations about this way of studying modal and tense logics. (shrink)

The semantic automata framework, developed originally in the 1980s, provides computational interpretations of generalized quantifiers. While recent experimental results have associated structural features of these automata with neuroanatomical demands in processing sentences with quantifiers, the theoretical framework has remained largely unexplored. In this paper, after presenting some classic results on semantic automata in a modern style, we present the first application of semantic automata to polyadic quantification, exhibiting automata for iterated quantifiers. We also discuss the role of semantic automata in (...) linguistic theory and offer new empirical predictions for sentence processing with embedded quantifiers. (shrink)

I defend the claim that it is possible for thoughts to be context-sensitive. Assuming that a thought is a sentence of Mentalese and content is a function from indices to truth-values, then a thought, T, is context-sensitive IFF at least one of the following three conditions are met: T exhibits character-underdeterminacy, where T is character underdetermined iff a component of T makes an explicit reference to the context to establish content. T exhibits type-underdeterminacy, where T is type underdetermined iff there (...) are tokens of T that have distinct truth-values. T is token-underdetermined, where T is token underdetermined iff for some possible states of affairs its truth-value is indeterminate. Additionally, there must be a mechanism by which the content of T can be determined by appeal to the context. Otherwise T is not sensitive to the context. The most significant objection to the possibility of context-sensitive thoughts comes from a regress argument. The concern is that any process of removing context-sensitivity from a thought will token an additional thought. If that further thought is context-sensitive, then another thought will have to be tokened. This process will only terminate when a non-context-sensitive thought is arrived at. Yet this seems to show that context-sensitivity in thought, if possible, can only be a contingent, detachable feature of thoughts. To counter this argument, I will present three versions of context-sensitive thought, mirroring each of -. These views make use of a range of relationships between thoughts and their contents or extensions that are affected by the context, but I will argue they do not require the generation of an additional thought. This provides a range of views on which thoughts can be treated as essentially context-sensitive. (shrink)