I propose a new theory of semantic presupposition, which I call dissatisfaction theory. I first briefly review a cluster of problems − known collectively as the proviso problem − for most extant theories of presupposition, arguing that the main pragmatic response to them faces a serious challenge. I avoid these problems by adopting two changes in perspective on presupposition. First, I propose a theory of projection according to which presuppositions project unless they are locally entailed. Second, I reject the standard (...) assumption that presuppositions are contents which must be entailed by the input context; instead, I propose that presuppositions are contents which are marked as backgrounded. I show that, together, these commitments allow us to avoid the proviso problem altogether, and generally make plausible predictions about presupposition projection out of connectives and attitude predicates. I close by sketching a two-dimensional implementation of my theory which allows us to make further welcome predictions about attitude predicates and quantifiers. (shrink)

Lewis 1973 observed that his logic for counterfactuals could be applied to definite descriptions. His generalization was that the latter display the same non-monotonic patterns as the former, contrary to what Russellian or Strawsonian accounts would predict. We take Lewis's suggestion literally and suggest that ‘if' should be analyzed as the word ‘the' applied to a description of possible worlds. We do not follow Lewis's own implementation, however, for it entails that definite descriptions do not refer. Rather, we use von (...) Heusinger's Choice Function theory of definiteness to analyze both ‘if p' and ‘the P' as referential terms: ‘if p' denotes the closest p-world, while ‘the P' denotes the most salient P-individual. (shrink)

This essay criticizes some strategies of Hegel scholarship, especially the non-metaphysical school and its recent metaphysical successor. My main claim is that these approaches are rhetorically opaque, and thus vulnerable to a certain anticolonial argument. In place of these strategies, I recommend and illustrate a more historically perspicuous approach that is sensitive to concerns about the role of European philosophy in the Americas.

A historical overview, with an attempt to rebut Grice's argument against Contextualism.

This paper develops an idea of saving ordinary uses of vague predicates from the Sorites by means of domain restriction. A tolerance level for a predicate, along a dimension, is a difference with respect to which the predicate is semantically insensitive. A central gap for the predicate+dimension in a domain is a segment of an associated scale, larger than this difference, where no object in the domain has a measure, and such that the extension of the predicate has measures on (...) one side of the gap and the anti-extension on the other. The domain restriction imposes a central gap. (shrink)

Process reliabilism says that a belief is justified iff the belief-forming process that produced it is sufficiently reliable. But any token belief-forming process is an instance of a number of different belief-forming process types. The problem of specifying the relevant type is known as the ‘generality problem’ for process reliabilism. This paper proposes a broadly relativist solution to the generality problem. The thought is that the relevant belief-forming process type is relative to the context. While the basic idea behind the (...) solution is from Mark Heller (1995), the solution defended here departs from Heller on a crucial point. Because of this departure, my solution avoids a serious problem with Heller’s solution. (shrink)

It is argued there is nothing special or deviant about the use of 'now' to refer to a time in the past (or about the use of 'here' to refer to a distant place) — no need to appeal to pragmatic mechanisms such as context-shifting to account for such uses. Such uses are puzzling only if one (mistakenly) maintains that 'here' and 'now' are pure indexicals. In the paper it is claimed that they are more similar to demonstratives than to (...) pure indexicals. Updated material on this can be found in *Truth-Conditional Pragmatics*, Chapter 6, 2010. (shrink)

El principio de racionalidad, o de economía, puede expresarse como la hipótesis de que los sujetos tienden a llevar a cabo aquellas acciones que maximizan la diferencia entre beneficios y costes. Este principio es ampliamente aplicado en las ciencias sociales, sobre todo, obviamente, en la teoría económica, si bien en el último medio siglo ha sido aplicado también de manera creciente a otras ramas de dichas disciplinas (sociología, ciencia política, antropología, historia, etc.). En este artículo se discute la posibilidad de (...) aplicarlo a la lingüística y la pragmática, comentando varios de los trabajos realizados desde ese punto de vista, e ilustrándolos con su aplicación al caso del uso de expresiones vagas. (shrink)

of (from Philosophy Dissertations Online).