Evidence is presented to show that the role of a generative grammar of a natural language is not merely to generate the grammatical sentences of that language, but also to relate them to their logical forms. The notion of logical form is to be made sense of in terms a natural logic, a logical for natural language, whose goals are to express all concepts capable of being expressed in natural language, to characterize all the valid inferences that can be made (...) in natural language, and to mesh with adequate linguistic descriptions of all natural languages. The latter requirement imposes empirical linguistic constraints on natural logic. A number of examples are discussed. (shrink)

Un problème est dit ici «mouvoir» la recherche, quand c'est sur lui que se concentre l'énergie du chercheur et que c'est son traitement qui fait «avancer» la recherche.Une entreprise de recherche, une « e-r »,commej'écrirai souvent, est considérée ici comme une unité individuée et je postule qu'il y a toujours au moins un « niveau » où l'on peut se placer pour qu'il soit légitime de considérer une e-r comme une unité individuée.

In bilateral logic formulas are signed by + and –, indicating the speech acts assertion and denial. I argue that making an assumption is also speech act. Speech acts cannot be embedded within other speech acts. Hence we cannot make sense of the notion of making an assumption in bilateral logic. Attempts to solve this problem are considered and rejected.

I discuss three observations about backtracking counterfactuals not predicted by existing theories, and then motivate a theory of counterfactuals that does predict them. On my theory, counterfactuals quantify over a suitably restricted set of historical possibilities from some contextually relevant past time. I motivate each feature of the theory relevant to predicting our three observations about backtracking counterfactuals. The paper concludes with replies to three potential objections.

Here, we defend the thesis whereby the event plays a main role of sense in the meaning of certain sentences. This thesis is based on the one hand on recent work in the metaphysics of so-called “happening” entities, which has led to a distinction between concrete physical processes and abstract events, the latter being conceived as psychological constructs accounting for stabilities or changes in the world. Furthermore, we look back at the work on intentionality carried out in the Brentanian school (...) at the turn of the 20th century and we relate abstract events to the mental states of affairs studied by Twardowski but which were then neglected by contemporary philosophers of language. Abstract events, thus characterized, have the contingent property of occurring, when facts obtain and realize them. We suggest that the facts in question correspond to Wittgensteinian states of affairs. (shrink)

This essay contains material which will hopefully be of interest not only to philosophers, but also to those social scientists whose research concerns the analysis of communication, verbal or non-verbal. Although most of the topics taken up here are central to issues in the philosophy of language, they are, in my opinion, indistinguishable from topics in descriptive social psychology. The essay aims to provide a conceptual framework within which various key aspects of communication can be described, and it presents a (...) formal language, using techniques from modern modal logic, in which such descriptions can themselves be formulated. It is my hope that this framework, or parts of it, might also turn out to be of value in future empirical work. There are, therefore, essentially two sides to this essay: the development of a framework of concepts, and the construction of a formal language rich enough to express the elements of which that framework is composed. The first of these two takes its point of departure in the statement quoted from Lewis (1972) on the page preceding this introduction. The distinction drawn there by Lewis is accepted as a working hypothesis, and in one sense this essay may be seen as an attempt to explore some of the consequences of that hypothesis. (shrink)

: Consider mental states of the type that relate a subject to a content expressed by a sentence. I propose that some of these states necessarily include as constituents of their contents the states themselves. These reflexive states arise when one locates a content as belonging, for example, to one's own present or past. That content is then a tense% thought, ordering one's present state with respect to the content. Anaphoric cross‐reference between an event or state and a constituent of (...) its own content is responsible, I argue, for the phenomenon of sequence of tense in English. Conversely, the fact that some states are necessarily reflexive supports the view that the elaborations of logical form that account for sequence of tense are no mere artefact of semantics, but even intrinsic to some of our utterances and thoughts. (shrink)

Although adverbialism is not given much attention in current discussions of phenomenal states, it remains of interest to philosophers who reject the representationalist view of such states, in suggesting an alternative to a problematic ‘act-property’ conception. We discuss adverbialism and the formalization Tye once offered for it, and criticize the semantics he proposed for this formalization. Our central claim is that Tye’s ontological purposes could have been met by a more minimal view, which we dub “attributeism”. We then show that (...) there is no incompatibility between the ontology of attributeism and the postulation of pictorial representations in the brain. (shrink)

Scientists often use aesthetic values in the evaluation and choice of theories. Aesthetic values are not only regarded as leading to practically more useful theories but are often taken to stand in a special epistemic relation to the truth of a theory such that the aesthetic merit of a theory is evidence of its truth. This paper explores what aesthetic considerations influence scientists' reasoning, how such aesthetic values relate to the utility of a scientific theory, and how one can justify (...) the epistemic role for such values. The paper examines ways in which the link between beauty and truth can be defended, the challenges facing such accounts, and explores alternative epistemic roles for aesthetic values in scientific practice. (shrink)

For most of the major philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, human cognition was understood as involving the mind’s reflexive grasp of its own contents. But other important figures have described the very idea of a reflexive thought as incoherent. Ryle notably likened the idea of a reflexive thought to an arm that grasps itself. Recent work in philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences has greatly clarified the special epistemic and semantic properties of reflexive thought. This article is an (...) attempt to give an explicit characterization of the structure of reflexive thoughts that explains those properties and avoids the complaints of its critics. (shrink)

Fleeing from the Nazi regime, along with many German refugees, Hans Reichenbach came to teach at Istanbul University in 1933, accepting the invitation of the Turkish government and stayed in Istanbul until 1938. While much is known about his work and life in Istanbul, the existing literature relies mostly on his letters and works. In this article I try to shed more light on Reichenbach's scholarly activities and personal life by also taking into account the Turkish sources and the academic (...) context in which Reichenbach taught and worked. (shrink)

Specificity has been defined in the linguistic literature according to two different criteria: one corresponding to Quine's opaque and transparent contexts, and the other to criteria closely related to Donellan's referential/attributive distinction. The paper argues that only the former definition is a semantic one since it alone manifests linguistic correlates. The meaning changes involving referential/attributive factors are pragmatic in nature. In the concluding section is is argued that the semantics of specificity is completely independent of the relative scope interpretation of (...) an indefinite noun phrase in relation to other quantified nouns in the sentence. This is demonstrated using sentences which contain an indefinite interacting with both an opaque operator and a second quantifier. It is shown that such sentences can be four ways ambiguous. (shrink)

This paper should be read against the backdrop of three lines of linguistic investigation: the investigation of the Perfect construction, which has received considerable attention, going back to Reichenbach ; the working hypothesis that certain verbal constructions can be described in terms of the semantics of determiners on nominal expressions, with which we are more familiar; the common observation that we talk about time the way we talk about space. The focus of the paper is a particular construction in Greek. (...) As always, however, the search for the solution of a particular question reveals many other questions in the process and this paper should be seen as being also about a number of related puzzles in English and other languages. (shrink)

An exclusive disjunction is true when exactly one of the disjuncts is true. In the case of the familiar binary exclusive disjunction, we have a formula occurring as the first disjunct and a formula occurring as the second disjunct, so, if what we have is two formula-tokens of the same formula-type—one formula occurring twice over, that is—the question arises as to whether, when that formula is true, to count the case as one in which exactly one of the disjuncts is (...) true, counting by type, or as a case in which two disjuncts are true, counting by token. The latter is the standard answer: counting by tokens. James McCawley once suggested that, when the exclusively disjunctive construction in natural language is at issue, the construction should be treated as involving a multigrade connective whose semantic treatment is sensitive to the set of disjuncts rather than the corresponding multiset. Without any commitment as to whether there actually is such a construction, and conceding that for obvious pragmatic reasons such ‘repeated disjunct’ cases would be at best highly marginal, we note that for the binary case, this requires a nonstandard answer—count by type rather than by token—to the earlier question, and thus, an idempotent exclusive disjunction connective. Section 2 explores that idea and Section 3, a further idempotent variant for which it is the propositions expressed by the disjuncts, rather than the disjuncts themselves, that get counted once only in the case of repetitions. Sections 1 and 4 respectively set the stage for these investigations and conclude the discussion. More detailed considerations of points arising from the discussion but otherwise in danger of interrupting the flow are deferred to a ‘Longer Notes’ appendix at the end. (shrink)

Self-Knowledge and Self-Reference is a defense and reconciliation of the two apparently conflicting theses that the self is peculiarly elusive and that our basic, cogito-judgments are certain. On the one hand, Descartes seems to be correct that nothing is more certain than basic statements of self-knowledge, such as "I am thinking." On the other hand, there is the compelling Humean observation that when we introspect, nothing is found except for various "impressions." The problem, then, is that the Humean and Cartesian (...) insights are both initially appealing, yet they appear to be in tension with one another. In this paper I attempt to satisfy both intuitions by developing a roughly descriptivist account of self-reference according to which our certainty in basic beliefs stems precisely from our needing to know so little in order to have them. (shrink)

At the centre of Arthur Prior’s ‘Thank goodness’ argument for the A-theory of time is a particular form of relief. Time must objectively pass, Prior argues, or else the relief felt when a painful experience has ended is not intelligible. In this paper, I offer a detailed analysis of the type of relief at issue in this argument, which I call temporal relief, and distinguish it from another form of relief, which I refer to as counterfactual relief. I also argue (...) that existing discussions of the ‘Thank goodness’ argument—including Prior’s own—fail to give a satisfactory account of temporal relief, and that it needs to be seen as an emotion linked to the ability to engage in fairly sophisticated forms of planning. I also suggest that this has an impact on Prior’s claim that the idea of points in time plays no fundamental role in the semantic analysis of tenses. (shrink)

To explain the phenomena in the world of our experience, to answer the question “why?” rather than only the question “what?”, is one of the foremost objectives of all rational inquiry; and especially, scientific research in its various branches strives to go beyond a mere description of its subject matter by providing an explanation of the phenomena it investigates. While there is rather general agreement about this chief objective of science, there exists considerable difference of opinion as to the function (...) and the essential characteristics of scientific explanation. In the present essay, an attempt will be made to shed some light on these issues by means of an elementary survey of the basic pattern of scientific explanation and a subsequent more rigorous analysis of the concept of law and of the logical structure of explanatory arguments. (shrink)

‘Fred must open the door’ concerns Fred’s obligations. This obligative meaning is turned off by adding aspect: ‘Fred must have opened/be opening/have been opening the door’ are one and all epistemic. Why? In a nutshell: obligative ’must’ operates on procedural contents of imperative sentences, epistemic ‘must’ on propositional contents of declarative sentences; and adding aspect converts procedural into propositional content.

Alice has insomnia. She has trouble falling asleep and part of the problem is that she worries about it and realizes that her worrying about it tends to keep from falling asleep. It occurs to her that thinking that she will not be able to fall asleep may be a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps she even has a thought that might be expressed like this: I am not going to fall asleep because of my having this very thought. This (...) thought attributes to itself the property of keeping her awake. (shrink)

Abstract Theories in physics require reference to manifolds of locations and events. Abstract versions of these manifolds, ?space?, ?time? and ?space?time? are frequently used as reference systems. Should they be included in the ontology of physics as well as the material manifolds from which they are abstracted? This problem can be approached through a study of the identity conditions of events. The argument is offered that neither an abstract ?time? of moments is viable, nor is the assumption that events are (...) individuated by their locations necessary. Taken together these conclusions would require reinterpretation of relativity as a grammar of histories and of the Einstein?Podolski?Rosen experiment as displaying the possibility of spatially distributed events. (shrink)

Research spanning linguistics, psychology, and philosophy suggests that speakers and hearers are finely attuned to perspectives and viewpoints that are not their own, even though perspectival information is not encoded directly in the morphosyntax of languages like English. While some terms seem to require a perspective or a judge for interpretation (e.g., epithets, evaluative adjectives, locational PPs, etc.), perspective may also be determined on the basis of subtle information spanning multiple sentences, especially in vivid styles of narrative reporting. In this (...) paper, I develop an account of the cues that are involved in evaluating and maintaining non-speaker perspectives, and present an economy-based discourse processing model of perspective that embodies two core principles. First, perspectives are subject to a “speaker-default,” but may shift to a non-speaker perspective if sufficient contextual cues are provided. Second, the processor follows the path of least resistance to maintaining perspective, opting to maintain the current perspective across sentences as long as the shifted perspective continues to be coherent. The predictions of the model are tested in a series of offline and online studies, manipulating the form of an attitude report and the tense of the sentence that follows. Implications for processing perspective and viewpoint in speech and narrative forms are explored. (shrink)

The indexical word “I” has traditionally been assumed to be an overt analogue to the concept of self, and the best model for understanding it. This approach, I argue, overlooks the essential role of cognitive phenomenology in the mastery of the concept of self. I suggest that a better model is to be found in a different kind of representation: phenomenal concepts or more generally phenomenally grounded concepts. I start with what I take to be the defining feature of the (...) concept of self, namely its “super-reflexivity”: to use this concept is not just to think of oneself, but to think of oneself as the thinker of the present thought. I call this familiar observation the “Thinker Intuition”. I review some shortcomings of the indexical model of the concept of self, which is the classical account of the Thinker Intuition. I go on to propose a different account, the “phenomenal model”, according to which the concept of self is a phenomenally grounded concept, anchored in a generic kind of cognitive phenomenolog... (shrink)

We seek means of distinguishing logical knowledge from other kinds of knowledge, especially mathematics. The attempt is restricted to classical two-valued logic and assumes that the basic notion in logic is the proposition. First, we explain the distinction between the parts and the moments of a whole, and theories of ?sortal terms?, two theories that will feature prominently. Second, we propose that logic comprises four ?momental sectors?: the propositional and the functional calculi, the calculus of asserted propositions, and rules for (...) (in)valid deduction, inference or substitution. Third, we elaborate on two neglected features of logic: the various modes of negating some part(s) of a proposition R, not only its ?external? negation not-R; and the assertion of R in the pair of propositions ?it is (un)true that R? belonging to the neglected logic of asserted propositions, which is usually left unstated. We also address the overlooked task of testing the asserted truth-value of R. Fourth, we locate logic among other foundational studies: set theory and other theories of collections, metamathematics, axiomatisation, definitions, model theory, and abstract and operator algebras. Fifth, we test this characterisation in two important contexts: the formulation of some logical paradoxes, especially the propositional ones; and indirect proof-methods, especially that by contradiction. The outcomes differ for asserted propositions from those for unasserted ones. Finally, we reflect upon self-referring self-reference, and on the relationships between logical and mathematical knowledge. A subject index is appended. (shrink)

We survey main developments, results, and open problems on interval temporal logics and duration calculi. We present various formal systems studied in the literature and discuss their distinctive features, emphasizing on expressiveness, axiomatic systems, and (un)decidability results.

Semanticists often restrict their theories by imposing constraints on the parameters that can be employed for interpreting the expressions of a language. Such constraints are based on non-logical features of actual contexts of utterance, but they often have important effects on issues that do pertain to logic, like analyticity or entailment. For example, Kaplan’s restriction to so-called “proper contexts” was required in order to count “I am here now” as valid. In this paper I argue that constraints of this kind (...) are often posited in an arbitrary and non-consistent way, and that they yield the intended results only at the price of imposing ad hoc principles whose justification could in turn justify further, often undesirable restrictions into the theory. I also introduce a criterion for telling whether such constraints are imposed in a legitimate manner. (shrink)

This paper addresses two questions: what is the distinction between semantics and pragmatics? And why is this distinction important? These questions are discussed in light of the central explanatory goal of linguistics and in relation to the phenomenon of context sensitivity, as illustrated by relational words with implicit arguments and by so-called quantifier domain restriction. It is concluded that context sensitivity is, in the former case, grammatical or lexical and, in the latter case, neither.

In this paper, I discuss the distribution and interpretation of free choice items (FCIs) in Greek, a language exhibiting a lexical paradigm of such items distinct from that of negative polarity items. Greek differs in this respect from English, which uniformly employs any. FCIs are grammatical only in certain contexts that can be characterized as nonveridical (Giannakidou 1998, 1999), and although they yield universal-like interpretations in certain structures, they are not, I argue, universal quantifiers. Evidence will be provided that FCIsare (...) indefinites; the quasi-universal effect is shown to be the result of binding by an operator with universal force. Additionally, the limited distribution of FCIs in non veridical contexts can be accounted for by analyzing them as indefinites which must always be interpreted in an intensional type. The difference between ``regular'' indefinites and FCIs, therefore, is reduced to a type difference which captures the fact that only the latter exhibit limited distribution: because of their intensional type, FCIs will be grammatical only in contexts providing alternatives (worlds or situations), and nonveridical contexts do exactly this. By contrast, FCIs are excluded from veridical and episodic contexts because these provide no alternatives and hence do not satisfy the lexical semantic requirement ofFCIs. The proposed analysis is supported by data from other languages as well (Spanish, Catalan,French) and has important consequences regarding the analysis of English any. If FCIs are not universal quantifiers but indefinites, then the usual ambiguity thesis (free choice any being universal, negative polarity any an existential) can no longer be maintained, at least not as one in terms of quantificational force. (shrink)

Token-reflexive theories of indexicals – words like ‘I,’ ‘here,’ and ‘today’ – are widely thought to face a problem in account for intuitively valid arguments involving indexicals. Yet all discussions of the problem with which I am familiar focus on particular examples or on particular rules of inference. In this paper, I first state the problem in its full generality, and then argue that two recent attempts to reject the problem fail. Finally, I consider the proposal by García-Carpintero that demonstratives (...) – ‘this’ and ‘that’ – raise the same problem. I argue that while there are important similarities between the logic problem for token-reflexives and the role of demonstratives in logic, recent work on the logic of demonstratives can offer insights into logic that token-reflexive theories cannot. (shrink)

According to John McDowell, in its central uses, ‘I’ is immune to error through misidentification and thus to be accounted strongly identification‐free (I–II). Neither doctrine is obviously well founded (III); indeed, given that deixis is a proper part of ‘I’ (IV–VIII), it appears that uses of ‘I’ are identification‐dependent (IX–X).

Reichenbachian approaches to indexicality contend that indexicals are "token-reflexives": semantic rules associated with any given indexical-type determine the truth-conditional import of properly produced tokens of that type relative to certain relational properties of those tokens. Such a view may be understood as sharing the main tenets of Kaplan's well-known theory regarding content, or truth-conditions, but differs from it regarding the nature of the linguistic meaning of indexicals and also regarding the bearers of truth-conditional import and truth-conditions. Kaplan has criticized these (...) approaches on different counts, the most damaging of which is that they make impossible a "logic of demonstratives". The reason for this is that the token-reflexive approach entails that not two tokens of the same sentential type including indexicals are guaranteed to have the same truth-conditions. In this paper I rebut this and other criticisms of the Reichenbachian approach. Additionally, I point out that Kaplan's original theory of "true demonstratives" is empirically inadequate, and claim that any modification capable of accurately handling the linguistic data would have similar problems to those attributed to the Reichenbachian approach. This is intended to show that the difficulties, no matter how real, are not caused by idiosincracies of the "token-reflexive" view, but by deep facts about indexicality. (shrink)

In this paper I shall be concerned primarily with contingent subjunctive conditionals, not to analyze them, but to argue that those who attempt such an analysis employing the concept of law--an approach which I confess seems promising--are at best providing logically sufficient conditions for the truth of contingent subjunctive conditionals and are not providing a correct analysis. My argument will have two parts. I shall first argue that the more plausible attempts to analyze our concept of law without subjunctive conditionals (...) seem to fall prey to counter-examples. Secondly, I shall argue that even if we had an independent understanding of law, it is at least questionable that such an analysis could be employed in explicating conditions which are both logically necessary and sufficient for the truth of a subjunctive conditional. (shrink)