We revisit a debate initiated some 15 years ago by Ray Elugardo and Robert Stainton about the domain of arguments. Our main result is that arguments are not exclusively sets of linguistic expressions. Instead, as we put it, some non-linguistic items have ‘logical form’. The crucial examples are arguments, both deductive and inductive, made with unembedded words and phrases. … subsentential expressions such as singular terms and predicates… cannot serve as premises or conclusions in inferences.

In this paper I challenge the common wisdom (see Dummett and Davidson) that sentences are the minimal units with which one can perform a speech act or make a move in the language game. I thus sit with Perry and Stainton in arguing that subsentences can be used to perform full-fledged speech acts. In my discussion I assume the traditional framework which distinguishes between the proposition expressed and the thought or mental state (possibly a sentence in Mentalese) one comes to (...) grasp when using/understanding an utterance (or sentence-in-a-context) expressing a proposition. Unlike Stainton, I will argue that the proposition expressed by a subsentential assertion and its corresponding thought are not the end product of a pragmatic process of free enrichment. I shall defend the view that a thought may concern something without the thinker having to represent that very thing. This should help us to resist the view that with the utterance of a subsentence enrichment is mandatory. I will further argue that subsentences and their corresponding thoughts are situated. Because of that we can successfully interact and engage in joint ventures using subsentences and be guided by thoughts without having to enrich them. The fact that the actors’ unenriched thoughts are co-situated may suffice to explain the positive outcome of their joint project. Last but not least, I will also show how the picture I propose gains further support by taking on board Perry’s distinction between reflexive truth conditions and incremental truth conditions (or official content). Since competent speakers can grasp an utterance’s reflexive truth conditions without having to grasp its official content (roughly, the proposition expressed) they can successfully interact without their thoughts having to undergo a process of free enrichment. Moreover, if I’m right in arguing that an utterance’s reflexive truth conditions are the best tool to classify the semantic features of one’s mental state (or sentence in Mentalese), we can further explain mental causation and linguistic communication without appealing to free enrichment. (shrink)

Logic played an important role in Wittgenstein’s work over the entire period of his philosophizing, from both the point of view of the philosopher of logic and that of the logician. Besides logical analysis, there is another kind of logical activity that characterizes Wittgenstein’s philosophical work after a certain point during his experience as a soldier and, later, as an officer in the First World War – if not earlier. This other kind of logical activity has to do with what (...) appears to be the literary form of Wittgenstein’s philosophical prose, and it is likely to be seen as the most modernist feature of his preoccupation with logic. (shrink)

Niezdaniowe akty mowy to przynajmniej pozornie niezdaniowe wypowiedzi, za których pomocą mówiący dokonują pewnych aktów illokucyjnych: stwierdzają, pytają, proszą itp. Wśród teoretyków zajmujących się takimi wypowiedziami można wskazać zwolenników podejścia, które głosi, że większość takich wypowiedzi tojednak — wbrew pozorom — wypowiedzi zdaniowe (elipsy), oraz zwolenników stanowiska, zgodnie z którym treść takich wypowiedzi musi być bezpośrednio wzbogacona z kontekstu za pomocą procesów pragmatycznych niekontrolowanych semantycznie. W pierwszej części tej pracy przyglądam się bliżej stanowisku traktującemu wypowiedzi niezdaniowe jako elipsy i zastanowiam (...) się, czy można uznać, że kontekst pozajęzy- kowy może wyznaczać sposób uzupełnienia wyrażenia do pełnego zdania w taki sposób, że pierwotna wypowiedź niezdaniowa może być uznana za elipsę. Następnie przedstawiam stanowisko, zgodnie z którym wypowiedzi niezdaniowe to udane akty illokucyjne niewymagające wzbogacenia pragmatycznego. Argumentuję, że taki pogląd nie jest adekwatny, ponieważ na jego gruncie wypowiedzi niezdaniowych nie można uznać za pełnoprawne akty mowy. W dalszej części pracy proponuję wersję stanowiska pragmatycznego, opartą na relatywizmie umiarkowanym Franęois Recanatiego. Proponowana przeze mnie koncepcja pozwala uznać, że mimo iż wypowiedzi niezdaniowe semantycznie nie wyrażają sądów i nie mają wartości logicznej, to po odpowiednim wzbogaceniu z kontekstu pozajęzykowego mają na tyle określoną treść (i moc), że mogą być uznane za udane akty illokucyjne. Koncepcja ta pozwala również odpowiedzieć na zarzut ze zgodności gramatycznej, który jest jednym z najpoważniejszych zarzutów, z jakimi muszą się zmierzyć wszystkie koncepcje pragmatyczne. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper I present a view of linguistic meaning that I label 'Sentence Priority’: the position that semantically primitive language‐world contact is made at the level of complete sentences . Then, in the main part of the paper, I consider and reject an objection against Sentence Priority raised by John Perry, an objection that appeals to Wittgenstein's builders parable. Perry argues that the builder's utterances are utterances of self‐standing nouns, and that therefore they constitute a (...) counter‐example to SP. A sound assessment of Perry's argument, however, depends on a clear distinction between two cases: one in which the four expressions mentioned in Wittgenstein's example exhaust the builders’expressive powers, and one in which they do not. Once these cases are distinguished it can be seen that in neither does Perry's argument go through. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline and defend a novel approach to alethic pluralism, the thesis that truth has more than one metaphysical nature: where truth is, in part, explained by reference, it is relational in character and can be regarded as consisting in correspondence; but where instead truth does not depend upon reference it is not relational and involves only coherence. In the process, I articulate a clear sense in which truth may or may not depend upon reference: this involves (...) distinguishing semantic denotation from pragmatic speaker reference and claiming that there may or may not exist a metasemantic connection between these two notions. Finally, I argue that reference is not in general inscrutable—that this metasemantic connection does exist in the case of our ordinary discourse about present macroscopic concrete objects—but that it is in pure mathematics, where reference cannot be secured, and which therefore plays no role in accounting for truth. In this manner, alethic pluralism is upheld. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper I present the measurement-theoretic fallacy of 'over-assignment of structure': the unwarranted assumption that every numeric relation holding among two (or more) numbers represents some empirical, physical relation among the objects to which these numbers are assigned as measures (e.g., of temperature). In the second section I argue that a generalized form of this fallacy arises in various philosophical contexts, in the form of a misguided, over-extended application of one conceptual domain to another. Three (...) examples are given: (i) the reduction of arithmetic into set theory, (ii) the ascription of full-blown intentional states to (at least some) non-overtly intentional creatures, such as Wittgenstein's builders, and (iii) the analysis of some modal notions as involving quantification over possible worlds (or their substitutes). The discussion of the third example gives rise to a novel account of possible-worlds talk. (shrink)

The truth-conditions of many utterances have components that do not correspond to any uttered morpheme. This happens because linguistic acts are always a supplement to whatever else is available to agents engaged in a conversation. Unarticulated constituents result from the informational trade-off between what is available in the situation of utterance and what needs to be linguistically articulated. Unarticulated constituents are constituents of propositions, that is, of classifying tools that are neutral with respect to the way in which what is (...) given in a situation interacts with the words uttered. (shrink)

Examples of successful linguistic communication give rise to two important insights: (1) it should be understood most fundamentally in terms of the pragmatic success of each individual utterance, and (2) linguistic conventions need to be understood as on a par with the non-linguistic regularities that competent language users rely upon to refer. Syntax and semantics are part of what Barwise and Perry call the context of the utterance, contributing to the pragmatics of the utterance. This full and distributed multichannel context (...) determines meaning if anything does. On the standard account of context, context disambiguates the meaning of language, but it is at least as apt in many situations to say that language disambiguates context. In practice, the two work together, sometimes with more emphasis on one than the other. Reference should be understood in pragmatic terms (it is an act) and, since success is often achieved in non-standard, creative ways, any formalisation of pragmatics can only be partial. The need for such an inventive approach to referring traces back to the need for language to be highly efficient, with expressions underdetermining their interpretation. Next, the shared semantic and syntactic regularities, which might seem to be independent of the context of an utterance, should be understood as also being part of that context. Past usage underdetermines how terms can be used since it allows for multiple projections. Successful reference with novel uses that are disambiguated by context can become the ground for new conventions. (shrink)