It is our contention that an ontological commitment to propositions faces a number of problems; so many, in fact, that an attitude of realism towards propositions—understood the usual “platonistic” way, as a kind of mind- and language-independent abstract entity—is ultimately untenable. The particular worries about propositions that marshal parallel problems that Paul Benacerraf has raised for mathematical platonists. At the same time, the utility of “proposition-talk”—indeed, the apparent linguistic commitment evident in our use of 'that'-clauses (in offering explanations and making (...) predictions)—is also in need of explanation. We account for this with a fictionalist analysis of our use of 'that'-clauses. Our account avoids certain problems that arise for the usual error-theoretic versions of fictionalism because we apply the notion of semantic pretense to develop an alternative, pretense-involving, non-error-theoretic, fictionalist account of proposition-talk. (shrink)

In his famous 1979 article 'A Puzzle About Belief' Saul Kripke presents two puzzles regarding belief attribution, and he uses them to cast doubt on classical substitution arguments against the Millian view that a proper name has a 'denotation' (or reference) but no 'connotation' (or sense). In this article, I present Kripke's puzzles in what I take to be their most revealing form, discuss their relevance to the abovementioned arguments, briefly survey the ways in which philosophers have responded to these (...) puzzles, and call attention to some issues related to the puzzles that have yet to receive the consideration they deserve. (shrink)

In this review essay, I examine the central tenets of sociologist Dave Elder-Vass’s recent contribution to social ontology, as put forth in his book The Causal Power of Social Structures: Emergence, Structure and Agency. Elder-Vass takes issue with ontological individualists and maintains that social structures exist and have causal powers in their own right. I argue that he fails to establish his main theses: he shows neither that social structures have causal powers “in their own right” (in any sense of (...) this expression) nor that they exist. (shrink)

Are colors relational or non-relational properties of their bearers? Is red a property that is instantiated by all and only the objects with a certain intrinsic (/non-relational) nature? Or does an object with a particular intrinsic (/non-relational) nature count as red only in virtue of standing in certain relations - for example, only when it looks a certain way to a certain perceiver, or only in certain circumstances of observation? In this paper I shall argue for the view that color (...) properties are relational (henceforth, relationalism), and against the view that colors are not relational (henceforth, anti- or non-relationalism). (shrink)

Contemporary privacy theories and European discussions about data protection employ the notion of ‘personal information’ to designate their areas of concern. The notion of personal information is demarcated from non-personal information—or just information—indicating that we are dealing with a specific kind of information. However, within privacy scholarship the notion of personal information appears undertheorized, rendering the concept somewhat unclear. We argue that in an age of datafication, protection of personal information and privacy is crucial, making the understanding of what is (...) meant by ‘personal information’ more important than ever. To contribute to this aim, we analyse the conception of personal information and its nature, including the distinction between personal and non-personal information from a philosophy of language perspective. Through analyses of aboutness and relative aboutness we point to challenges related to the demarcation between personal and non-personal information, which may in practice lead to all information being personal. (shrink)

The article uses a producer-consumer theory from philosophy of mind and language to analyse the meaning of basic health concepts like disease, illness and sickness. The core idea of the producer-consumer perspective is that a person who has an incomplete understanding of a term can associate it with the same concept as a linguistic expert, if both of them are willing to defer to the same contextual or general norms of meaning. Using “disease” as an example, the article argues that (...) the producer-consumer theory implies that if patients were normally willing to defer to a standard expert concept of disease, it would be reasonable to assume that the concept of disease is this concept. However, it is empirically well documented that many patients are not willing to defer to health workers’ understanding of lay health concepts like “disease”. This means that the overall conceptual analysis of disease and other lay health concepts should be pluralistic—the concepts belong within what Wittgenstein calls different language-games. This conceptual pluralism is inconsistent with assumptions many theorists have made when attempting to develop general definitions of basic concepts of ill health. Furthermore, the pluralistic analysis has striking implications for how conceptions of meaning should be accepted as sound; participants in health discourses are entitled to use basic health terms like “health” and “illness” in accordance with their own language-games, and health workers should therefore acknowledge a diversity of meaning in patient communication. Nevertheless, health professionals can often secure a communicative platform of shared concepts by understanding patients’ language games, and by achieving contextual aims of agreement about meaning. (shrink)

It is fundamental assumption in nursing theory that it is important for nurses to understand how patients experience states of ill health. This assumption is often related to aims of empathic understanding, but normative principles of social interpretation can have an important action‐guiding role whenever nurses seek to understand patients’ subjective horizons on the basis of active or passive expressions of meaning. The aim of this article is to present a philosophical theory of concept possession and to argue that it (...) can shed light on how nurses should seek to understand patients’ subjective perspectives on the meaning of illness. The two basic ideas in the theory are that patients’ beliefs and thoughts about their experiences involve concepts and that concepts can be communicated on the basis of shared implicit conceptions of what they mean. These conditions of understanding have a striking application: nurse‐patient communication is limited by many contextual factors, but it is often possible for nurses to detect shared implicit conceptions of the meaning of concepts of disease and illness. Furthermore, by acting as sympathetic linguistic experts and creating an atmosphere for dialogue, nurses can make patients feel comfortable about deferring to medical explanations of meaning that can constitute a communicative platform. The last part of the article uses a number of cases studies to show how these implications can be implemented as conceptual tools for securing meaningful communication about illness experiences in patient dialogue. (shrink)

A fundamental aim in caring practice is to understand patients' experiences of ill‐health. These experiences have a qualitative content and cannot, unlike thoughts and beliefs with conceptual content, directly be expressed in words. Nurses therefore face a variety of interpretive challenges when they aim to understand patients' subjective perspectives on disease and illness. The article argues that theories on social simulation can shed light on how nurses manage to meet these challenges. The core assumption of social simulationism is that we (...) do not understand other people by forming mental representations of how they think, but by putting ourselves in their situation in a more imaginative way. According to simulationism, any attempt to understand a patient's behavior is made on the basis of simulating what it is like to be that patient in the given context. The article argues that this approach to social interpretation can clarify how nurses manage to achieve aims of patient understanding, even when they have limited time to communicate and incomplete knowledge of patients' perspectives. Furthermore, simulation theory provides a normative framework for interpretation, in the sense that its theoretical assumptions constitute ideals for how nurses should seek to understand patients' experiences of illness. (shrink)

Davidson argues that metaphorical sentences express no propositional contents other than the explicit literal contents they express. He offers a causal account, on the one hand, as an explanation of the supposed additional content of a metaphor in terms of the effects metaphors have on hearers, and on the other hand, as a reason for the non-propositional nature of the “something more” that a metaphor is alleged to mean. Davidson’s account is meant to restrict the semantic notions of meaning, content, (...) and truth, to literal sentences. I argue that the Davidsonian causal account does not satisfactorily account for metaphor’s figurativeness, speakers’ assertion and hearers’ uptake of metaphor, and our discursive practices of using metaphors in disagreements and argumentation. I offer a non-compositional analysis of a semantic account of metaphor within which one can make sense of the applicability of the notions of meaning and content to metaphor. This analysis shows that metaphorical sentences have meanings other than, and in addition to, their literal meanings and what speakers can use them to mean. (shrink)

In order to understand a sentence, one must know the relevant semantic rules. Those rules are not learned in a vacuum; they are given to one through one's senses. As a result, knowledge of semantic rules sometimes comes bundled with semantically irrelevant, but cognitively non-innocuous, knowledge of the circumstances in which those rules were learned. Thus, one must work through non-semantic information in order to know what is literally meant by a given sentence-token. A consequence is that one's knowledge of (...) what is literally meant by a given sentence-token is sometimes embedded in non-semantic knowledge, resulting in a cleavage between what that sentence-token literally means and what the auditor in question takes it to mean. Such deviations obviously have nothing to do with the principles put forth by Grice, since those principles only concern sentence-tokens that have already been understood---since, to put it another way, those principles only concern post-semantic implicature. The just-described deviations are appropriately described as being due to "pre-semantic implicature." Given the phenomenon of pre-semantic implicature, it is easily shown that Russell's Theory of Descriptions, if taken as a theory of literal meaning, is false. In the present volume, these rather elementary principles are entirely ignored, and all of the articles in it are sterile repetitions of the points made by Russell and Strawson. The blinkered approach to language embodied in this volume must be reconsidered in light of psychological principles relating to language-acquisition and language-use. Unfortunately, analytic philosophers shy away from such topics, as is made clear by the papers in this grim volume. (shrink)

Várias tentativas foram feitas pelos teóricos da referência direta para acomodar o dado intuitivo da opacidade referencial— a não ocorrência de substituição mútua salva veritate de nomes próprios co-referenciais nas orações subordinadas, precedidas por ‘que’, nas orações em que se atribuem atitudes proposicionais. A teoria defendida por Nathan Salmon, em seu livro de 1986 Frege’s Puzzle , é provavelmente a versão mais bem elaborada daquilo a que adiante nos referimos como ‘a Teoria Implicativa’. Salmon sustenta que a opacidade referencial é (...) uma ilusão decorrente de nossa incapacidade de distinguir o conteúdo semântico de atribuições de crenças das suas ‘partilhas pragmáticas’, como Salmon as chama. Lamentavelmente, seu trabalho deixa de todo misterioso o mecanismo rotineiro de produção de tais partilhas pragmáticas. Salmon limita-se a sugerir vagamente que estão envolvidas implicaturas conversacionais griceanas. Minha tese central neste artigo é a de que Salmon está equivocado, visto que as partilhas pragmáticas necessárias à sua teoria não satisfazem o critério de cancelabilidade , o que deveria ocorrer sempre que estamos às voltas com uma genuína implicatura conversacional. O argumento apresentado, até onde o saibamos, é inteiramente original. DOI:10.5007/1808-1711.2010v14n3p405. (shrink)

Russell is often accused of having a naive ‘Fido’–Fido theory of meaning of the sort Wittgenstein attacked at the beginning of the Philosophical Investigations. In this paper I argue that he never held such a theory though I concede that, prior to 1918, he said various things that might lead a very careless reader to suppose that he had. However, in The Analysis of Mind, a book which we know Wittgenstein studied closely, Russell put forward an account of understanding an (...) utterance which clearly anticipates the use theory of meaning usually attributed to Wittgenstein. The paper concludes with some problems for understanding the use theory of meaning as presented by both Russell and, derivatively, Wittgenstein. (shrink)

The word ‘God’ is typically thought to be a proper name, a name of a defined entity. From another position it appears to be a description that is fundamentally synonymous to ‘the first of all causes’, or ‘the font et origo of the structure of possibilities’, or ‘the provenience of being’, or ‘the generator of existence’. This lends credence to the view that ‘God’ is a truncated definite description. However, this article proposes that ‘God’ is a name given to whatever (...) is that which is the first of all causes, the font et origo of the structure of possibilities, the provenience of being, the generator of existence. If so, then it is a descriptive name. Yet even among descriptive names ‘God’ is unique, for it is neither convertible to a proper name, nor to a definite description. ‘God’ is an inveterate descriptive name. (shrink)

The pluralist sheds the more traditional ideas of truth and ontology. This is dangerous, because it threatens instability of the theory. To lend stability to his philosophy, the pluralist trades truth and ontology for rigour and other ‘fixtures’. Fixtures are the steady goal posts. They are the parts of a theory that stay fixed across a pair of theories, and allow us to make translations and comparisons. They can ultimately be moved, but we tend to keep them fixed temporarily. Apart (...) from considering rigour of proof as a fixture, I discuss fixed models, invariant notions and fixed information about objects across theories. There are other fixtures, but it is enough to start with these. (shrink)

In the multi-agent setting, it is relevant to model group dynamics of agents, and logic has proved a good tool to do so. We propose an epistemic logic, L-DINF-E, that allows one to formalize what are the beliefs formed by a group of agents, where several groups exist and agents can pass from a group to another one. We introduce a new modality which allows an agent to reason about the beliefs of other agents. This allows us to model aspects (...) of the “Theory of Mind”, understood as the set of social-cognitive skills involving the ability to attribute and reason about mental states, desires, beliefs, and knowledge of agents. In this paper, we present the logic L-DINF-E and illustrate how it can be used to solve “false-belief tasks”, i.e., tests in which an agent should understand that some other agent may develop, under some circumstances, false beliefs. (shrink)

You may speak of a chain, or if you please, a net. An analogy is of little aid. Each cause brings about future events. Without each the future would not be the same. Each is proximate in the sense it is essential. But that is not what we mean by the word. Nor on the other hand do we mean sole cause. There is no such thing.

The author contends that the Objectivist epistemology has lacked a viable model of propositional knowledge for nearly fifty years, due to neglect of Rand's unit-perspective view of concepts. This pioneering insight, he says, not only is an essential building block of her concept theory, but also welds together the three levels of logical theory and provides the clearest X-ray picture of our multilayered conceptual knowledge. Using the unit-perspective to expand Rand's theory of concepts, the author then devises a theory of (...) the proposition, giving considerable attention to axioms and statements about nonexistent subjects. (shrink)

No último quartel do Séc. XX, instalou-se na Filosofia da Linguagem um vivo debate entre duas teorias acerca da referência, a teoria descritivista, formulada por Bertrand Russell e com raízes na filosofia de Frege, e, a desafiar esta, a teoria causal da referência, sob o impulso de Putnam e de Kripke. Há, por outro lado, importantes estudos do pensamento de Husserl, centrados sobretudo em Ideias I, que dão conta da possibilidade de uma sua leitura fregeana. O intuito desta comunicação reside, (...) primeiramente, em mostrar que, não obstante essas leituras, os aspectos semânticos mais originais na fenomenologia de Husserl e, além disso, também mais interessantes para o debate sobre o problema da referência, se encontram logo na Primeira das Investigações Lógicas. Com efeito, nesse texto, cremos ser possível mostrar que a teoria da expressão de Husserl não se ajusta nem à teoria descritivista nem à teoria causal da referência. As razões do desajustamento, segundo tese que propomos, prendem-se com o facto de ambas as teorias da referência, descritivista e causal, disputarem entre si o problema da frxação da referência das expressões como se esse fosse o problema de saber o que faz com que as expressões refiram. Mostrar que não é assim com Husserl, conduz-nos a um terceiro problema, na obra póstuma Experiência e Juízo, sobre a constituição dos referentes, enquanto objectos de uma relação directa ao individual, ou seja, enquanto objectos de experiência. Quererá isto dizer, concluindo, que o problema da referência, antes de respeitar às expressões referenciais, respeita à própria experiência e que tal problema deverá, por isso, resolver-se na constituição passiva e ante-predicativa da experiência. (shrink)

§0. Alonzo Church's contributions to philosophy and to that most philosophical part of logic, intensional logic, are impressive indeed. He wrote relatively few papers actually devoted to specifically philosophical issues, as distinguished from related technical work in logic. Many of his contributions appear in reviews for The Journal of Symbolic Logic, and it can hardly be maintained that one finds there a “philosophical system”. But there occur a clearly articulated and powerful methodology, terse arguments, often of “crushing cogency”, and philosophical (...) observations of the first importance.Many of the less formal philosophical contributions center around questions concerning meaning, but there are important clarifications and insights into matters of the epistemology and ontology of the sciences, especially the formal sciences.1.1. The logistic method. Church's writings on philosophical matters exhibit an unwavering commitment to what he called the “logistic method”. The term did not catch on and now one would just speak of “formalization”. The use of these ideas is now so common and familiar among logicians and logically-oriented philosophers that they are simply taken for granted. But they deserve to be celebrated and re-emphasized, for there are philosophers who seriously underestimate and even consciously reject these techniques. (shrink)

The metaphysics of representation poses questions such as: in virtue of what does a sentence, picture, or mental state represent that the world is a certain way? In the first instance, I have focused on the semantic properties of language: for example, what is it for a name such as ‘London’ to refer to something? Interpretationism concerning what it is for linguistic expressions to have meaning, says that constitutively, semantic facts are fixed by best semantic theory. As here developed, it (...) promises to give a reductive, universal and non-revisionary account of the nature of linguistic representation. -/- Interpretationism in general, however, is threatened by severe internal tension, due to arguments for radical inscrutability. These contend that, given the interpretationist setting, there can be no fact of the matter what object an individual word refers to: for example, that there is no fact of the matter as to whether “London” refers to London or to Sydney. -/- A series of challenges emerge, forming the basis for this thesis. 1. What sort of properties is the interpretationist trying to reduce, and what kind of reductive story is she offering? 2. How are inscrutability theses best formulated? Are arguments for inscrutability effective in their own terms? What kinds of inscrutability arise? 3. Is endorsing radical inscrutability a stable position? 4. Are there theoretical virtues—such as simplicity—that can be appealed to in discrediting the rival (empirically equivalent) theories that underpin inscrutability arguments? -/- In addressing these questions, I concentrate on diagnosing the source of inscrutability, mapping the space of ways of resisting the arguments for radical inscrutability, and examining the challenges faced in developing a principled account of linguistic content that avoids radical inscrutability. -/- The effect is not to close down the original puzzles, but rather to sharpen them into a set of new and deeper challenges. (shrink)

The discrepancy between syntax and semantics is a painstaking issue that hinders a better comprehension of the underlying neuronal processes in the human brain. In order to tackle the issue, we at first describe a striking correlation between Wittgenstein's Tractatus, that assesses the syntactic relationships between language and world, and Perlovsky's joint language-cognitive computational model, that assesses the semantic relationships between emotions and “knowledge instinct”. Once established a correlation between a purely logical approach to the language and computable psychological activities, (...) we aim to find the neural correlates of syntax and semantics in the human brain. Starting from topological arguments, we suggest that the semantic properties of a proposition are processed in higher brain's functional dimensions than the syntactic ones. In a fully reversible process, the syntactic elements embedded in Broca's area project into multiple scattered semantic cortical zones. The presence of higher functional dimensions gives rise to the increase in informational content that takes place in semantic expressions. Therefore, diverse features of human language and cognitive world can be assessed in terms of both the logic armor described by the Tractatus, and the neurocomputational techniques at hand. One of our motivations is to build a neuro-computational framework able to provide a feasible explanation for brain's semantic processing, in preparation for novel computers with nodes built into higher dimensions. (shrink)

I happen to believe that though human experiences are to be characterized as pluralistic they are all rooted in the one reality. I would assume the thesis of pluralism but how could I maintain my belief in the realism? There are various discussions in favor of realism but they appear to stay within a particular paradigm so to be called “internal realism”. In this paper I would try to justify my belief in the reality by discussing a special use of (...) indexicals. I will argue for my indexical realism by advancing the thesis that indexicals can be used as an inter-agentic referential term. Three arguments for the thesis will be presented. The first argument derives from a revision of Kaplan-Kvart’s notion of exportation. Their notions of exportation of singular terms can be analyzed as intra-agentic exportation in the context of a single speaker and theirs may be revised so as to be an inter-agentic exportation in the context of two speakers who use the same indexicals. The second is an argument from the notion of causation which is specifically characterized in the context of inter-theoretic reference. I will argue that any two theories may each say “this” in order to refer what is beyond its own theory. Two theories address themselves to ‘this’ same thing though what ‘this’ represents in each theory turn out to be different objects all together. The third argument is an argument which is based on a possibility of natural reference. Reference is used to be taken mostly as a 3-place predicate: Abe refers an object oi with an expression ej. The traditional notion of reference is constructive and anthropocentric. But I would argue that natural reference is a reference that we humans come to recognize among denumerably many objects in natural states: at a moment mi in a natural state there is a referential relation among objects o1, o2, o3, . . , oj, o j+1, . . which interact to each other as agents of information processors. Natural reference is an original reference which is naturally given and to which humans are passive as we derivatively refer it by using ‘this’. (shrink)

This work explores the hypothesis that natural language is a tool for changing a language user's state of mind and, more specifically, the hypothesis that a sentence's meaning is constituted by its characteristic role in fulfilling this purpose. This view contrasts with the dominant approach to semantics due to Frege, Tarski and others' work on artificial languages: language is first and foremost a tool for representing the world. Adapted to natural language by Davidson, Lewis, Montague, et. al. this dominant approach (...) has crystalized as truth-conditional semantics: to know the meaning of a sentence is to know the conditions under which that sentence is true. Chapter 1 details the animating ideas of my alternative approach and shows that the representational function of language can be understood in terms of the more general function of changing representational mental states. Chapters 2-4 argue that the additional resources of this more general conception of meaning allow us to explain certain phenomena involving conditionals and grammatical mood that truth-conditional semantics does not. In the analysis of these specific phenomena and the articulation of the general approach on offer, it emerges that this approach combines insights and benefits from both use-theoretic and truth-theoretic work on meaning. (shrink)

The central claim of this thesis is that concepts, the components from which cognitively significant truth evaluable content (thought) is composed, are unstructured entities an account of whose individuation makes no essential reference to other concepts in the possession of the thinking subject or to any particular means by which the reference of the concept is identified by the thinking subject. This position is called Conceptual Atomism and contrasts with Inferential Role Semantics, according to which concepts are individuated by their (...) inferential roles or their conditions of warranted application. The structure of the argument is as follows. Firstly, a principle called the Transparency Principle is developed. This places constraints on the individuation of concepts across differing contexts. The Transparency Principle is then used to show that Inferential Role Semantics is false because it cannot provide a satisfactory account of cognitive dynamics; that is, of the conditions under which a concept is retained through changes in the epistemic state of the subject over a period of time. A version of Conceptual Atomism is then defended and it is shown that this theory yields the correct individuation of concepts. According to this theory the concepts of an individual subject are individuated in terms of referential episodes, episodes of ongoing reference to an object or property during which it is diachronically transparent to the subject that the same thing is being referred to. The more general notion of a referential practice is then used to account for the sharing of concepts by more than one person. Finally, a novel account of the thoughts expressed using indexical terms is defended in order to show that indexicals present no counterexample to Conceptual Atomism. This account of indexical thoughts is of some consequence in its own right. (shrink)

This paper challenges the first Gettier counterexample to the tripartite account of knowledge. Noting that 'the man who will get the job' is a description and invoking Donnellan's distinction between their 'referential' and 'attributive' uses, I argue that Smith does not actually believe that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith's ignorance about who will get the job shows that the belief cannot be understood referentially, his ignorance of the coins in his pocket (...) shows that it cannot be understood attributively. An explanation for why Smith appeared to have justified true belief is given by distinguishing between 'belief' and 'belief in truth'. Smith believes the sentence 'the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket' to be true (he mistakenly believes that Jones will get the job, of whom he knows that he has ten coins in his pocket) (hence his 'belief'), the sentence is true (hence 'truth'), and he has sufficient reason to assent to it (hence his 'justification'). But he does not believe the proposition expressed. Hence he does not know it either. (shrink)

The mind. Sanctum sanctorum of subjectivity. Soundstage of the mental. Consciousness' cockpit. Romping-grounds of the intentional. A great deal, it would seem, rides on the notion of mind. It's not just that naughty children never do, or that people when irritated often claim to have half-a-one. Though perhaps telling in other ways, it isn't so important that while we all think we lose ours from time to time, we rarely-if ever-doubt that we had one to begin with. Solipsists are perfectly (...) willing to doubt that anyone else actually possesses one, but no one suspects that everyone but herself has one. The reason seems clear and distinct as Cartesian water; it just makes sense, which is another thing that minds are rumored to be responsible for. One could go on and on-the idioms seem endless-but nevermind. (shrink)

A main issue in Swedish school debate is the question of how to teach the student a common value system based on democracy and western humanism. The debate is rather intense, to say the least. Not only is the premise that there exists one value system that we share a target for critique, but there is also the question of what value education is or could be. There is, as well, quite a body of research on children's moral development, where (...) many take as their departure the work of Kohlberg. However, there has been little or no attention on how the individual learner conceptualizes and makes meaning out of ethical issues. That is, descriptions of processes. In this paper we will present what we take to be urgent questions that need to be investigated against the background of prior research and practical work at Södra teatern in Stockholm, Sweden. For eight years in a row, Södra teatern has had as a main project to lead a practice on the subject of philosophy with children. Several groups of youths in the age of nine to eighteen have regularly met to discuss philosophical thoughts and problems, which in a democratic manner are settled for discussion by the participants. Today this philosophical practice has spread to the north of Sweden. In Backman's final exam within the teacher education she has explored the development of children's (7‐8 years old) ability to argue for different ethical positions, both verbally and in writing and painting. This practice has been inspired by the tradition at Södra teatern, but customized to fit a regular school class in Luleå, with very little experience of philosophical discussion. In the very short period of five weeks Backman has been able to see quite significant changes in the children's ability to argue for their ethical positions. The study was initiated by examining some argumentative abilities of the pupils, for instance the ability of expressing an argument for an ethical position in writing. In the final part of the study, the same ability was examined in very similar circumstances, and the augment of expressed arguments in writing was significant. Another consideration that was raised as a consequence of the study regards the pupil's conceptualizing of ethical issues. In some conversations about the notion of justice it became clear that children interpreted the term very differently. This is not very surprising but important to pay further attention to. As mentioned earlier, there has been very little attention on how individual children conceptualize ethical issues. In this paper we argue that more interest should be put on investigating these issues in more depth, and we will do this by an outlining of a research application. (shrink)

This paper provides a defense of the description theory of proper names by constructing a ‘two-component’ theory of names. Using Kripke’s puzzle about belief as the stepping stone, this paper first points out problems with Kripke’s direct reference theory of names. It then presents the two-component theory of names and defends it against Kripke’s general criticisms of the description theory. It also compares the two-component theory of names against other leading description theories and shows how the two-component theory provides a (...) better analysis of names. The paper offers a comprehensive summary of the debate between the description theory and the direct reference theory of names. At the end, it shows how the two-component theory of names can deal with Kripke’s puzzle and more. (shrink)

This paper shows that Russell’s theory of descriptions gives the wrong semantics for definite descriptions occurring in questions and imperatives. Depending on how that theory is applied, it either assigns nonsense to perfectly meaningful questions and assertions or it assigns meanings that diverge from the actual semantics of such sentences, even after all pragmatic and contextual variables are allowed for. Given that Russell’s theory is wrong for questions and assertions, it must be wrong for assertoric statements; for the semantics of (...) ‘the phi’ obviously doesn’t vary depending on whether it occurs in a question or an assertion or a command. (shrink)

The tradition of semantic externalism that follows Kripke and Putnam is built on the assumption that the folk have essentialist commitments about natural kinds. Externalists commonly take the body of empirical data concerning psychological essentialism as support for this claim. However, recent empirical findings call the psychological theory of essentialism into question. This thesis examines the relevance of these findings to both essentialism and semantic externalism. I argue that these findings suggest that these theories fail to reflect folk beliefs about (...) natural kinds and folk natural kind term usage. This leads me to propose an alternative thesis-- the Ambiguity Thesis-- that is better able to accommodate the existing body of empirical data. (shrink)

This study investigates the composer-performer relationship in terms of the site of responsibility for the aesthetic features of the musical performance. It considers the extent to which the performer's view of that relationship affects the performance itself. This is accomplished by examining four focal points: the composer-performer relationship; composers' intentions; Nelson Goodman's account of notation, expression and style; and the work--including the writings--of Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. ;The composer is seen by some as predominantly responsible for the performance, with the (...) performer's role as that of fulfilling the composer's intentions. A contrasting perspective, cognizant of the significance of interpretive decisions, situates the performer as co-creator. ;Pivotal in this debate are the discrepancies surrounding the role of composers' intentions. Critical discussion of the Early Music Movement, considered here as a paradigm of historical authenticity, distinguishes between its proponents, for whom composers' intentions are authoritative, and its opponents, who perceive that historical authenticity, even if attainable, would be insufficient to ensure a work's aesthetic merit. ;This divergence derives from the fact that the musical performance is underdetermined by Western musical notation. Nelson Goodman addresses this by assigning to the musical score the function of identification: Any performance which complies with the score constitutes an instance of the work. Moreover, Goodman's account of expression and style recognizes the score's non-notational elements as instrumental to the aesthetic qualities of the performance. ;Goodman's theoretical account is then applied to the work of Glenn Gould. First, Gould's consideration of the performer as co-creator is identified as instrumental in determining the aesthetic features of his performances. The interpretive autonomy afforded by his perspective, it is argued, led to the development of a performance and compositional style characterized by a predilection for a manifestly contrapuntal rather than hierarchical structure. Gould's performances and compositions are shown to express views of an ethical as well as aesthetic nature, contributing to what Goodman terms "worldmaking," affirming the symbolic function of music. ;In conclusion, the performer's view of the performer-composer relationship is fundamental and determinant in defining the aesthetic features of the musical performance. (shrink)