I aim to establish in this article why Aribiah Attoe, like other determinists before him, got it wrong in arguing for the possibility of predeterminism in a materially evolving universe. I will do this by proving two things: I will first establish the inconsistency of the idea of predeterminism in an evolving universe. Then, I argue that the adirectionality presupposed by an evolutionary universe gives room for free will and negates the argument for a predeterministic universe. I aim to achieve (...) the above by exposing why the view which upholds the universe and all existents within it as lacking free will – or the possibility of adirectionality – stems from a category error on the part of the determinists. Lastly, I defend the position that for predeterminism to stand a chance against the free will of animate things-in-the-world, it must deny the possibility of an evolving/expanding universe that is adirectional and suggestive of boundlessness, and the possibility that some events are not fundamentally necessary reactions to previous states of affairs. (shrink)

In Category Mistakes, Magidor proposes that sortal restrictions should be viewed as pragmatic presuppositions. This contrasts with recent linguistic theories of successfully resolved category mistakes, e.g. coercions or copredication. It has been argued that for the proper treatment of such examples, sortal restrictions should be expressed by semantic presuppositions since they need to interact with compositional semantics. I explore possible ways in which Magidor’s theory could be extended to explain examples of coercion and copredication. The outcome of the discussion is (...) that incorporation of these facts into Magidor’s pragmatic system might be possible, but ecessitates choices that are far from trivial. (shrink)

This is my entry on natural language ontology in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Wittgenstein Tractatus'ta anlamlı bir tümcenin işlevinin bir şey durumunu öne sürmek olduğunu belirtir ve böyle yapmayan bütün tümceleri anlam alanının dışına bırakır. Buna karşılık anlam alanının dışında kalan tümceler işlevsiz değildirler; onlar bir şeyleri gösterebilirler. Bu söylemek/göstermek ayrımı Tractatus için temel önemde olsa da ayrımın göstermek ile ilgili kısmını Wittgenstein yeterince açıklamaz. Bu yazıda bu kavramın özellikle de etik ve estetik söz konusu olduğunda bir bakış açısını göstermek olarak anlaşılabileceğini öne süreceğim. Algı çalışmalarında yaygın bir kavram olan bakış açısı, dilbilim (...) alanına özellikle metafor konusundaki çalışmalarla taşınmıştır. Bir metaforun belirli bir bakış açısı etkisi yaptığı sıklıkla söylenir. Wittgenstein'ın "göstermek" derken anlatmak istediği bir bakış açısı kazandırmak olarak yorumlanabilir. -/- In Tractatus, Wittgenstein states that the function of a meaningful sentence is to assert a state of affairs and excludes all sentences that do not do so from the realm of meaning. Sentences outside the realm of meaning, however, are not useless; they can show something. Although this saying/showing distinction is of fundamental importance for Tractatus, Wittgenstein does not clearly explain the part of the distinction related to showing. In this paper I will argue that this notion can be understood, especially in the case of ethics and aesthetics, as showing an aspect. Aspect, which is a widely used notion in perception studies, has been carried to the field of linguistics, especially with studies on metaphor. It is often said that a metaphor makes an aspectual effect. What Wittgenstein meant by "showing" can be interpreted as making someone recognise an aspect. (shrink)

Many philosophers argue that the error theory should be rejected because it is incompatible with standard deontic logic and semantics. We argue that such formal objections to the theory fail. Our discussion has two upshots. First, it increases the dialectical weight that must be borne by objections to the error theory that target its content rather than its form. Second, it shows that standard deontic logic and semantics should be revised.

In Category Mistakes, Ofra Magidor provides two arguments against the view that category mistakes express propositions that are not truth-evaluable at some world. I argue that her first, Williamsonian argument against this view begs the question, and that her second argument rests on a misleading conception of how semantic defect results in infelicity judgments. I conclude by conceding that she is still correct to stress that the view she opposes face noteworthy foundational and empirical challenges.

Do we think in a language-like format? Taking the marker of language-like formats to be the property of unconstrained systematicity, this paper considers the following master argument for the claim that we do: language is unconstrainedly systematic, if language is unconstrainedly systematic then so is thought, so thought is unconstrainedly systematic. It is easy to feel that there is something right about this argument, that there will be some way of filling in its details that will vindicate the idea that (...) our thought must be unconstrainedly systematic given that the language in which we express it is. Clearly, however, the second premise needs support—we need a principled reason for moving from the unconstrained systematicity of language to the unconstrained systematicity of thought. This paper gives three passes at formulating such a principle. This turns out to be much harder than it might seem. We should, I conclude, resist falling too easily for the lure of this master argument for the language-like format of thought. (shrink)

I examine three ‘anti-object’ metaphysical views: nihilism, generalism, and anti-quantificationalism. After setting aside nihilism, I argue that generalists should be anti-quantificationalists. Along the way, I attempt to articulate what a ‘metaphysically perspicuous’ language might even be.

Frege’s rejection of singular reference to concepts is centrally implicated in his notorious paradox of the concept horse. I distinguish a number of claims in which that rejection might consist and detail the dialectical difficulties confronting the defense of several such claims. Arguably the least problematic such claim—that it is simply nonsense to say that a concept can be referred to with a singular term—has recently received a novel defense due to Robert Trueman. I set out Trueman’s argument for this (...) claim, identifying and remedying some omissions and errors of formulation therein. I then develop a response to the argument by showing, pace Trueman, that it is possible—and how it is possible—to express identities between objects and concepts. (shrink)

Many philosophers suppose that sometimes we think we are saying or thinking something meaningful when in fact we’re not saying or thinking anything at all: we are producing nonsense. But what is nonsense? An account of nonsense must, I argue, meet two constraints. The first constraint requires that nonsense can be rationally engaged with, not just mentioned. In particular, we can reason with nonsense and use it within that-clauses. An account which fails to meet this constraint cannot explain why nonsense (...) appears meaningful. The second constraint requires that nonsense does not express thoughts. An account which fails to meet this constraint undercuts the critical force of the concept of nonsense. I offer an account which meets both constraints. The central idea is that to be under the illusion that some nonsense makes sense is to enter a pretence that the nonsense is meaningful. (shrink)

The concept of group moral responsibility is apparently problematic, in that it is unobvious in what sense a group, which is evidently not a conscious rational subject like an individual person, can be held morally accountable. It is unclear how a group can be said to have the ability to form beliefs and intentions needed for genuine group actions of moral assessment. Broadly speaking, there are two separate platforms from which one can investigate this problem: individualism and collectivism. Subscribing to (...) the doctrinal position of methodological individualism, individualists suggest that individual members are the only capable entities, who can meaningfully bear the burden of moral responsibility, either individually or in a shared way. Collectivists, on the other hand look for an alternative position wherein they advocate the genuine possibility of attributing moral responsibility to groups qua groups. The collectivist approach has received substantial philosophical attention in recent years. However, most supporters of collectivism search for such possibility without strongly invoking the idea of group moral agency. In this article, I argue for an irreducible moral agential status of groups in terms of the intentional actions of their constituent individual members and their special conglomeration. I suggest that certain collective or group entities are capable of being identified as proper agents of moral assessment analogous to that of individual agents of similar assessment. (shrink)

In my book Category Mistakes, I discuss a range of potential accounts of category mistakes and defend a pragmatic, presuppositional account of the phenomenon. Three commentators discuss the book: Márta Abrusán focuses on a comparison between my book and Asher’s Lexical Meaning in Context, suggesting that Asher’s theory has the advantage of accounting not only for category mistakes, but also for additional phenomena such as so-called ‘coertion’ and ‘co-predication’. I argue that Asher’s account of all three phenomena is deficient, and, (...) moreover, that it is far from clear that the latter two phenomena are related to that of category mistakes. James Shaw challenges two of my arguments against the MBT view. I respond to these challenges. Paul Elbourne provides a novel argument in support of my account of category mistakes, involving multi-sentence discourses and ERP experiments. I show that it is not entirely straightforward for my account to explain this data, but that his argument does ul... (shrink)

Category mistakes are sentences such as ‘Colourless green ideas sleep furiously’ or ‘The theory of relativity is eating breakfast’. Such sentences are highly anomalous, and this has led a large number of linguists and philosophers to conclude that they are meaningless (call this ‘the meaninglessness view’). In this paper I argue that the meaninglessness view is incorrect and category mistakes are meaningful. I provide four arguments against the meaninglessness view: in Sect. 2, an argument concerning compositionality with respect to category (...) mistakes; in Sect. 3 an argument concerning synonymy facts of category mistakes; in Sect. 4 concerning embeddings of category mistakes in propositional attitude ascriptions; and in Sect. 5 concerning the uses of category mistakes in metaphors. Having presented these arguments, in Sect. 6 I briefly discuss some of the positive motivations for accepting the meaninglessness view and argue that they are unconvincing. I conclude that the meaninglessness view ought to be rejected. (shrink)

In psycholinguistics, concepts are considered abstract if they do not apply to physical objects that we can touch, see, feel, hear, smell or taste. Psychologists usually distinguish concrete from abstract concepts by means of so-called _concreteness ratings_. In concreteness rating studies, laypeople are asked to rate the concreteness of words based on the above criterion. The wide use of concreteness ratings motivates an assessment of them. I point out two problems: First, most current concreteness ratings test the intuited concreteness of (...) word forms as opposed to concepts. This ignores the ubiquitous phenomenon of lexical ambiguity. Second, the criterion of abstract concepts that the instruction texts of rating studies rely on does not capture the notion that psychologists working on abstract concepts are normally interested in, i.e., concepts that could reasonably be sensorimotor representations. For many concepts that pick out physical objects, this is not reasonable. In this paper, I propose a characterization of concrete and abstract concepts that avoids these two problems and that may be useful for future studies in psychology. (shrink)

Russellians can have a no proposition view of empty names. I will defend this theory against the problem of meaningfulness, and show that the theory is in general well motivated. My solution to the problem of meaningfulness is that speakers’ judgements about meaningfulness are tracking grammaticality, and not propositional content.

Establishing Dispositionalism as a viable theory of modality requires the successful fulfilment of two tasks: showing that all modal truths can be derived from truths about actual powers, and offering a suitable metaphysics of powers. These two tasks are intertwined: difficulties in one can affect the chances of success in the other. In this paper, I generalise an objection to Dispositionalism by Jessica Leech and argue that the theory in its present form is ill-suited to account for de re truths (...) about merely possible entities. I argue that such difficulty is rooted in a problem in the metaphysics of powers. In particular, I contend that the well-known tension between two key principle of powers ontology, namely Directedness and Independence has received an unsatisfactory solution so far, and that it is this unsatisfactory solution concerning the status of “unmanifested manifestations” that makes it hard for Dispositionalism to account for mere possibilia. I develop a novel account of the status of unmanifested manifestations and an overall metaphysics of powers which allows to better respond to Leech's objection and handle mere possibilia. The central idea of the proposal is that unmanifested manifestations are akin to mere logical existents, and are best characterised as non-essentially non-located entities. (shrink)

Ordinary disposition ascriptions appear to form a semantically heterogeneous class of clauses some of which can be straightforwardly analyzed as possibility claims, and some of which resist a simple quantificational treatment. For example, while “The block is breakable” is true if the block breaks at a relevant possible world, for “The block is fragile” to be true it doesn’t suffice that the block breaks at one of the worlds that matter to the evaluation of the ascription, since the block could (...) break accidentally and yet be sturdy. The contrast has been taken to indicate that sentences like “The block is fragile” don’t introduce mere existential quantification over sets of worlds, and should be represented as claims about sufficient ratios or proportions of worlds. However, recent work has suggested that by pairing the recalcitrant DAs with modified manifestation phrases, we can generalize the standard analysis of existential DAs to the problematic examples, and state a uniform characterization of DAs as claims of possibility. The paper discusses some counterexamples to the view that allegedly non-existential DAs are covert claims of fine-grained possibility, and sketches a hybrid account combining proportional quantification with fine-grained manifestations. (shrink)

Magidor argued that category mistakes are infelicitous due to presupposition failure. The case for this position is strengthened by the consideration of a previously unnoted category of data, namely multi-sentence discourses in which category mistake phenomenology arises at the end of the last sentence, but arguably due to content contained in a previous sentence. This phenomenon is analysed in terms of the previous sentence giving rise to a presupposition that is shown to be false only in the last sentence.

We argue that all comparative expressions in natural language obey a principle that we call Comparability: if x and y are at least as F as themselves, then either x is at least as F as y or y is at least as F as x. This principle has been widely rejected among philosophers, especially by ethicists, and its falsity has been claimed to have important normative implications. We argue that Comparability is needed to explain the goodness of several patterns (...) of inference that seem manifestly valid, that the purported failures of Comparability would have absurd consequences, and that the influential arguments against Comparability are less compelling than they may have initially seemed. (shrink)

A system of categories is a complete list of highest kinds or genera. Traditionally, following Aristotle, these have been thought of as highest genera of entities (in the widest sense of the term), so that a system of categories undertaken in this realist spirit would ideally provide an inventory of everything there is, thus answering the most basic of metaphysical questions: “What is there?”. Skepticism about the possibilities for discerning the different categories of ‘reality itself’ has led others to approach (...) category systems not with the aim of cataloging the highest kinds in the world itself, but rather with the aim of elucidating the categories of our conceptual system. Thus Kant makes the shift to a conceptualist approach by drawing out the categories that are.. (shrink)

The aim of natural language ontology is to uncover the ontological categories and structures that are implicit in the use of natural language, that is, that a speaker accepts when using a language. This article aims to clarify what exactly the subject matter of natural language ontology is, what sorts of linguistic data it should take into account, how natural language ontology relates to other branches of metaphysics, in what ways natural language ontology is important, and what may be distinctive (...) of the ontological categories and structures reflected in natural language. (shrink)

What is the relation of logic to thinking? My dissertation offers a new argument for the claim that logic is constitutive of thinking in the following sense: representational activity counts as thinking only if it manifests sensitivity to logical rules. In short, thinking has to be minimally logical. An account of thinking has to allow for our freedom to question or revise our commitments – even seemingly obvious conceptual connections – without loss of understanding. This freedom, I argue, requires that (...) thinkers have general abilities to respond to support and tension among their thoughts. And these abilities are constituted by following logical rules. So thinkers have to follow logical rules. But there isn’t just one correct logic for thinking. I show that my view is consistent with logical pluralism: there are a range of correct logics, any one of which a thinker might follow. A logic for thinking does, however, have to contain certain minimal principles: Modus Ponens and Non-Contradiction, and perhaps others. We follow logical rules by exercising logical capacities, which display a distinctive first-person/third-person asymmetry: a subject can find the instances of a rule compelling without seeing them as instances of a rule. As a result, there are two limits on illogical thinking. First, thinkers have to tend to find instances of logical rules compelling. Second, thinkers can’t think in obviously illogical ways. So thinking has to be logical – but not perfectly so. When we try to think, but fail, we produce nonsense. But our failures to think are often subjectively indistinguishable from thinking. To explain how this occurs, I offer an account of nonsense. To be under the illusion that some nonsense makes sense is to enter a pretence that the nonsense is meaningful. Our use of nonsense within the pretence relies on the role of logical form in understanding. Finally, while the normativity of logic doesn’t fall directly out of logical constitutivism, it’s possible to build an attractive account of logical normativity which has logical constitutivism as an integral part. I argue that thinking is necessary for human flourishing, and that this is the source of logical normativity. (shrink)

This dissertation is an investigation into the relation between mind and language from different perspectives, split up into three interrelated but still, for the most part, self-standing parts. Parts I and II are concerned with the question how thought is affected by language while Part III investigates the scope covered by mind and language respectively. Part I provides a reconstruction of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous Private Language Argument in order to apply the rationale behind this line of argument to the relation (...) between mind and language. This argumentative strategy yields the conclusion that reasoning – an important type of thought – is constitutively dependent on language possession and is therefore not available to non-linguistic creatures. This result is achieved by considering the preconditions for reasoning – given that it is a rule-governed activity – and eliminating competitors to language for providing reasoners with what it takes to reason. Part II provides a critical outlook on the wide and highly heterogeneous field of linguistic relativity theories. It is argued that no kind of linguistic relativity whatsoever follows from the conclusion of Part I – i.e., the claim that reasoning is constitutively dependent on having a language. While Part II does not provide a conclusive argument against the linguistic relativity hypothesis, it is argued that endorsement of linguistic relativity theories often rests on a mistaken assumption to the effect that language and culture are interwoven in a way which makes it impossible to separate culture and language, as well as their respective studies. This assumption is undermined by providing examples of languages which clearly predate their culture or do not even have a culture at all. So, the assumption that language and culture are inextricably intertwined is refuted by way of counterexample. Part III provides an in-depth examination of the Principle of Expressibility – prominently endorsed and formulated by John Searle – which claims that whatever can be thought can also be said. The domains of what can be thought and of what can be said are considered in set theoretic terms in order to determine whether one is contained in the other, so that everything we can think can also be adequately communicated. After thorough study of interpretative issues regarding the Principle of Expressibility and consideration of the most pressing potential counterexamples to the principle, we can conclude that we have good reason to believe in the truth of the Principle of Expressibility. In conclusion, the achieved results are related back to prominent positions in the discussion about thought and language which already make their appearance in the very beginning of this investigation. The final chapter of this dissertation reminds us that eminent figures in philosophy have often taken a wrongheaded perspective on the relation between language and thought, so that language has frequently appeared to be an impediment to thought. We can, however, confidently conclude that language, on the contrary, is by far our most apt means for thought and that reasoning would not even be possible without the resources language provides. (shrink)