Explicatures are not cancellable. Theoretical considerations.

I demonstrate that a "speech act" theory of meaning for imperatives is—contra a dominant position in philosophy and linguistics—theoretically desirable. A speech act-theoretic account of the meaning of an imperative !φ is characterized, broadly, by the following claims. -/- LINGUISTIC MEANING AS USE !φ’s meaning is a matter of the speech act an utterance of it conventionally functions to express—what a speaker conventionally uses it to do (its conventional discourse function, CDF). -/- IMPERATIVE USE AS PRACTICAL !φ's CDF is to (...) express a practical (non-representational) state of mind—one concerning an agent's preferences and plans, rather than her beliefs. -/- Opposed to speech act accounts is a preponderance of views which deny that a sentence's linguistic meaning is a matter of what speech act it is used to perform, or its CDF. On such accounts, meaning is, instead, a matter of "static" properties of the sentence—e.g., how it depicts the world as being (or, more neutrally, the properties of a model-theoretic object with which the semantic value of the sentence co-varies). On one version of a static account, an imperative 'shut the window!' might, for instance, depict the world as being such that the window must be shut. -/- Static accounts are traditionally motivated against speech act-theoretic accounts by appeal to supposedly irremediable explanatory deficiencies in the latter. Whatever a static account loses in saying (prima facie counterintuitively) that an imperative conventionally represents, or expresses a picture of the world, is said to be offset by its ability to explain a variety of phenomena for which speech act-theoretic accounts are said to lack good explanations (even, in many cases, the bare ability to offer something that might meet basic criteria on what a good explanation should be like). -/- I aim to turn the tables on static accounts. I do this by showing that speech act accounts are capable of giving explanations of phenomena which fans of static accounts have alleged them unable to give. Indeed, for a variety of absolutely fundamental phenomena having to do with the conventional meaning of imperatives (and other types of practical language), speech act accounts provide natural and theoretically satisfying explanations, where a representational account provides none. (shrink)

The skeptic says that “knowledge” is an absolute term, whereas the contextualist says that ‘knowledge” is a relationally absolute term. Which is the better hypothesis about “knowledge”? And what implications do these hypotheses about “knowledge” have for knowledge? I argue that the skeptic has the better hypothesis about “knowledge”, but that both hypotheses about “knowledge” have deeply anti‐skeptical implications for knowledge, since both presuppose our capacity for epistemically salient discrimination.

So-called "thick" moral concepts are distinctive in that they somehow "hold together" evaluation and description. But how? This paper argues against the standard view that the evaluations which thick concepts may be used to convey belong to sense or semantic content. That view cannot explain linguistic data concerning how thick concepts behave in a distinctive type of disagreements and denials which arise when one speaker regards another's thick concept as "objectionable" in a certain sense. The paper also briefly considers contextualist, (...) presuppositional, and implicature accounts of the evaluative contents of thick concepts, but finds none clearly superior to the others. (shrink)

This paper is a companion piece to my earlier paper “Fallibilism and Concessive Knowledge Attributions”. There are two intuitive charges against fallibilism. One is that it countenances the truth (and presumably acceptability) of utterances of sentences such as “I know that Bush is a Republican, though it might be that he is not a Republican”. The second is that it countenances the truth (and presumably acceptability) of utterances of sentences such as “I know that Bush is a Republican, even though (...) I’m not certain that he is”, or “I know that Bush it a Republican, even though it isn’t certain that he is.” In “Fallibilism and Concessive Knowledge Attributions”, I argue that fallibilism in epistemology does not countenance the truth of utterances of sentences such as “I know that Bush is a Republican, though it might be that he is not a Republican”. In this paper, I argue that there are independent reasons for thinking that utterances of sentences such as “I know that Bush is a Republican, though I’m not certain that he is” and “I know that Bush is a Republican, though it’s not certain that he is” are unassertible. More specifically, I argue that these are simply instances of Moore’s Paradox, such as “Dogs bark, but I don’t know that they do.” The right account of Moore’s Paradox does not involve the falsehood of the semantic content of the relevant utterances, but rather their pragmatic unacceptability. So the anti-fallibilist intuitions turn out to have pragmatic, rather than semantic import, and therefore do not tell against the truth of fallibilism. Fallibilism in epistemology is often thought to be theoretically desirable, but intuitively problematic. My purpose with these two papers is to show that fallibilism is not intuitively problematic. (shrink)

This paper enters the continuing fray over the semantic significance of Donnellan’s referential/attributive distinction. Some holdthat the distinction is at bottom a pragmatic one: i.e., that the difference between the referential use and the attributive use arises at the level of speaker’s meaning rather the level of sentence-or utterance-meaning. This view has recently been challenged byMarga Reimer andMichael Devitt, both of whom argue that the fact that descriptions are regularly, that is standardly, usedto refer defeats the pragmatic approach. The present (...) paper examines a variety of issues bearing on the regularity in question: whether the regularity would arise in a Russellian language, whether the regularity is similar to the standard use ofcomplex demonstratives, and whether the pragmatic approach founders on the problem of dead metaphors. I argue that the pragmatic approach can readily explain all of these facets ofthe referential use of descriptions. (shrink)

Cancellability is an essential feature of implicatures. However, its reliability has been challenged by several cases and examples in which conversational implicatures seem to be hard or even impossible to cancel. Should it then be concluded that not all implicatures are cancellable, and therefore Grice's cancellability test should be weakened or abandoned? The present paper addresses this problem by drawing a distinction between theoretical and practical cancellability, where the latter concept captures the (un)reasonableness of explicit or contextual cancellation. By analyzing (...) three legal cases of misleading advertising, I show how the indefensibility of an interpretation can account for the practical uncancellability of an implicature. To explain and account for the reasonableness of an interpretation, the presumptive inferences involved must be reconstructed and evaluated considering different dimensions, such as the conversational context and the associated presumptions. (shrink)

Polysemy, understood as instances of a single linguistic expression having multiple related senses, is not a homogenous phenomenon. There are regular (apparently, rule‐based) cases and irregular (resemblance‐based) cases, which have different processing profiles. Although a primary source of polysemy is pragmatic inference, at least some cases become conventionalised and linguistically encoded. Three main issues are discussed: (a) the key differences between regular and irregular cases and the role, if any, of a “core meaning”; (b) the distinction between pragmatic polysemy and (...) semantic polysemy; and (c) the role of syntactic meaning in both generating and constraining polysemy. (shrink)

The following argument is widely assumed to be invalid: there is a pain in my finger; my finger is in my mouth; therefore, there is a pain in my mouth. The apparent invalidity of this argument has recently been used to motivate the conclusion that pains are not spatial entities. We argue that this is a mistake. We do so by drawing attention to the metaphysics of pains and holes and provide a framework for their location which both vindicates the (...) argument's validity and explains why it appears invalid. To this end, we show that previously proposed explanations for the apparent invalidity of the argument fail. Moreover, we show that our account accommodates and explains seemingly opposing linguistic data. We conclude that the ‘pain-in-mouth argument’ does not undermine the view that pains are spatial entities. (shrink)

Moderate Pragmatic Invariantism (MPI) has been criticized in the literature for postulating implicatures that are not straightforwardly cancellable. Defenders of MPI have responded that the data are not as clear-cut as one might wish. This paper grants the defenders of MPI, for the sake of argument, that the implicatures in question are cancellable and then turns this admission against them. In particular, the paper offers Bank Case variants in which the conversational implicatures postulated by MPI are contextually suspended – and (...) thus cancelled. Since our intuitions do not vary between the original Bank Case and these novel types of cases, the explanation offered by MPI must be mistaken. Our varying truth-value intuitions in the Bank Cases cannot be accounted for by means of conversational implicatures. (shrink)

I argue that there are slurs that are distinctly derogatory insofar as they only derogate their target’s epistemic faculties or capacities qua group member. I call these slurs epistemic slurs. Given that slur theories should explain the derogatory nature of all slurs, any comprehensive slur theory should be able to explain the derogatory nature of the epistemic slurs. I argue, however, that two particular expressivist theories of slurs cannot explain their distinctive derogatory nature. The epistemic slurs thus constitute a novel (...) explanatory problem for these expressivist slur theories. Yet I argue that a semantic theory of slurs, combinatorial externalism, can explain the distinctive derogatory nature of the epistemic slurs in which case these slurs constitute a novel explanatory advantage for combinatorial externalism. Whether the epistemic slurs constitute a novel explanatory problem or advantage for any other slur theories remains to be seen. (shrink)

According to the widely endorsed Knowledge Account of Assertion, the epistemic requirements on assertion are captured by the Knowledge Norm of Assertion, which requires speakers only to assert what they know. This paper proposes that in addition to the Knowledge Norm there is also an Epistemic Propositional Certainty Norm of Assertion, which enjoins speakers only to assert p if they believe that p on the basis of evidence which makes p an epistemic propositional certainty. The paper explains how this propositional (...) certainty norm accounts for a range of data related to the practice of assertion and defends the norm against general objections to certainty norms of assertion put forward by Duncan Pritchard, John Turri, and Timothy Williamson, by drawing on linguistic theories about epistemic modals and gradable predicate semantics. Together these considerations show that the prospects of a certainty account of assertion are much more promising than is usually assumed. (shrink)

A central point of contention in the ongoing debate between Humean and anti-Humean accounts of moral motivation concerns the theoretical credentials of the idea of mental states that are cognitive and motivational at the same time. Humeans claim that this idea is incoherent and thereby unintelligible (M. Smith, The Moral Problem, Blackwell 1994). I start by developing a linguistic argument against this claim. The semantics of certain ‘learning to’ and ‘knowing to’ ascriptions points to a dispositional state that has both (...) motivational and cognitive properties: habitual knowledge, as we may call it. But there is nothing unintelligible or incoherent about such ascriptions as they figure in the explanation and assessment of action. This suggests that the idea of a state that has both cognitive and motivational properties is not an artefact of philosophical speculation. Moreover, I suggest that action explanations that appeal to habitual knowledge, which are a variety of habit explanation, present distinctive problems for Humean accounts. The discussion bears on the relationship between habitual knowledge and knowing-how, and its possible significance for anti-Humean accounts of moral motivation. (shrink)

Some legal philosophers regard the use of deontic language to describe the law as philosophically significant. Joseph Raz argues that it gives rise to ‘the problem of normativity of law’. He develops an account of what he calls ‘detached’ legal statements to resolve the problem. Unfortunately, Raz’s account is difficult to reconcile with the orthodox semantics of deontic language. The article offers a revised account of the distinction between committed and detached legal statements. It argues that deontic statements carry a (...) Gricean generalized conversational implicature to the effect that the rules in question reflect the speaker’s own commitments. Detached legal statements are made when this implicature is either explicitly cancelled or when the conversational context is sufficient to defeat the implicature. I conclude by offering some tentative reflections on the theoretical significance of deontic language in the law. (shrink)

This article provides a speech act analysis of ‘crime-enacting’ provisions in criminal statutes, focusing on the illocutionary force of these provisions. These provisions commonly set out not only particular crimes and their characteristics but also their associated penalties. Enactment of a statute brings into force new social facts, typically norms, through the official utterance of linguistic material. These norms are supposed to guide behaviour: they tell us what we must, may, or must not do. Our main claim is that the (...) illocutionary force of such provisions is primarily ‘world-creating’, i.e. effective, or declarational, rather than directive. We assume that directive illocutionary force is either direct or indirect, showing that provisions need not contain the linguistic items that make for direct directives and that according to standard tests no indirect directive is present. A potential counter-argument is that any utterance serving to direct behaviour is necessarily a directive. We show that this behaviour-directing property is shared by some clear non-directives. (shrink)

I argue that knowledge is a particular kind of concept known as a thick concept. Examples of thick concepts include courage, generosity, loyalty, brutality, and so forth. These concepts are commonly said to combine both evaluation and description, and one of the main goals of this dissertation is to provide a new account of how a thick concept combines these elements. It is argued that thick concepts are semantically evaluative, and that they combine evaluation and description in a way similar (...) to that of concepts like good qua dancer and bad qua violinist. In the final chapter, this basic idea is applied to the concept of knowledge. There, the concept of knowledge is analyzed in terms of good qua belief. The upshot is that two central epistemological problems—the Gettier Problem and the Value Problem—can be resolved. (shrink)

Despite its enormous popularity, Russell’s theory of definite descriptions has received various criticisms. Two of the most important objections against this theory are those arising from the Argument from Incompleteness and the Argument from Donnellan’s Distinction. According to the former although a speaker may say something true by assertively uttering a sentence containing an incomplete description , on the Russellian analysis such a sentence expresses a false proposition; so, Russell’s theory cannot adequately deal with such sentences. According to the latter (...) objection a descriptive sentence is actually ambiguous—it expresses a general proposition when the description contained in it is used attributively, and a singular proposition when the description in question is used referentially; Russell’s theory is inadequate as it fails to capture this ambiguity and offers an analysis according to which a descriptive sentence expresses only a general proposition. These objections are examined in the present dissertation. It is shown here that these objections arise from: (i) ignoring the distinction between the meaning of a sentence and the assertions made by using it, (ii) the failure to distinguish between the semantic meaning of a sentence and the pragmatic meaning with which it is used on a particular occasion. To make the distinction mentioned in (i), a significant part of Scott Soames’ theory concerning meaning and assertions has been adopted in this dissertation; and, to make the distinction mentioned in (ii), a test, namely the cancellability test, and two Distinguishing Criteria, namely DC-1 and DC-2, have been developed here. It has been argued here that if we properly make the relevant distinctions, then we will find that: (a) the phenomenon cited by the Argument from Incompleteness can be well explained keeping the Russellian analysis of descriptive sentences intact, (b) the phenomenon arising from the Argument from Donnellan’s Distinction raises an issue of pragmatics and is irrelevant to Russell’s semantic analysis of descriptive sentences. So, none of the above criticisms poses a genuine threat to Russell’s theory of definite descriptions; his theory actually provides, to a large extent, a correct semantic analysis of descriptive sentences. (shrink)

According to deontological approaches to justification, we can analyze justification in deontic terms. In this paper, I try to advance the discussion of deontological approaches by applying recent insights in the semantics of deontic modals. Specifically, I use the distinction between weak necessity modals and strong necessity modals to make progress on a question that has received surprisingly little discussion in the literature, namely: ‘What’s the best version of a deontological approach?’ The two most obvious hypotheses are the Permissive View, (...) according to which justified expresses permission, and the Obligatory View, according to which justified expresses some species of obligation. I raise difficulties for both of these hypotheses. In light of these difficulties, I propose a new position, according to which justified expresses a property I call faultlessness, defined as the dual of weak necessity modals. According to this view, an agent is justified in phi-ing iff it’s not the case that she should [/ought] not phi. I argue that this ‘Faultlessness View’ gives us precisely what’s needed to avoid the problems facing the Permissive and Obligatory Views. (shrink)

Could a Nazi soldier or terrorist be courageous? The Courage Problem asks us to answer this sort of question, and then to explain why people are reluctant to give this answer. The present paper sheds new light on the Courage Problem by examining a controversy sparked by Bill Maher, who claimed that the 9/11 terrorists’ acts were ‘not cowardly.’ It is shown that Maher's controversy is fundamentally related to the Courage Problem. Then, a unified solution to both problems is provided. (...) This solution entails that gutsy people who lack good ends are not courageous. (shrink)

As an empirical inquiry into the nature of meaning, semantics must rely on data. Unfortunately, the primary data to which philosophers and linguists have traditionally appealed—judgments on the truth and falsity of sentences—have long been known to vary widely between competent speakers in a number of interesting cases. The present article constitutes an experiment in how to obtain some more consistent data for the enterprise of semantics. Specifically, it argues from some widely accepted Gricean premises to the conclusion that judgments (...) on lying are semantically relevant. It then endeavors to show how, assuming the relevance of such judgments, we can use them to generate a useful, widely acceptable test for semantic content. (shrink)

The words we call slurs are just plain vanilla descriptions like ‘cowboy’ and ‘coat hanger’. They don't semantically convey any disparagement of their referents, whether as content, conventional implicature, presupposition, “coloring” or mode of presentation. What distinguishes 'kraut' and 'German' is metadata rather than meaning: the former is the conventional description for Germans among Germanophobes when they are speaking in that capacity, in the same way 'mad' is the conventional expression that some teenagers use as an intensifier when they’re emphasizing (...) that social identity. That is, racists don’t use slurs because they’re derogatory; slurs are derogatory because they’re the words that racists use. To use a slur is to exploit the Maxim of Manner (or Levinson’s M-Principle) to signal one’s affiliation with a group that has a disparaging attitude towards the slur’s referent. This account is sufficient to explain all the familiar properties of slurs, such as their speaker orientation and “nondetachability,” with no need of additional linguistic mechanisms. It also explains some features of slurs that are rarely if ever explored; for example the variation in tone and strength among the different slurs for a particular group, the existence of words we count as slurs, such as 'redskin', which almost all of their users consider to be respectful, and the curious absence in Standard English of any commonly used slurs—by which I mean words used to express a negative attitude toward an entire group—for Muslims and women. (shrink)

Focusing on cases which involve binding into epistemic modals with definite descriptions and quantifiers, I raise some new problems for standard approaches to all of these expressions. The difficulties are resolved in a semantic framework that is dynamic in character. I close with a new class of problems about de re readings within the scope of modals.

I propose a pragmatic approach to the kind of reference-shifting occurring in indexicals as used in e.g. written notes and answering machine messages. I proceed in two steps. First, I prepare the ground by showing that the arguments against such a pragmatic approach raised in the recent literature fail. Second, I take a first few steps towards implementing this approach, by sketching a pragmatic theory of reference-shifting, and showing how it can handle cases of the relevant kind. While the immediate (...) scope of the paper is restricted to indexicals and reference-shifting, and the discussion is confined to a specific range of theories and cases, the approach proposed is compatible with a fairly broad range of more or less semantically conservative theories, and many of the conclusions drawn are significant for the evaluation of pragmatic explanations in philosophy more generally. The overall goal is to offer a new perspective on the issues under discussion, and to prompt philosophers to reconsider some of the established methods by which pragmatic explanations are evaluated. (shrink)

A semantic theory aims to make predictions that are accurate and comprehensive. Sometimes, though, a semantic theory falls short of this aim, and there is a mismatch between prediction and data. In such cases, defenders of the semantic theory often attempt to rescue it by appealing to Gricean pragmatics. The hope is that we can rescue the theory as long as we can use pragmatics to explain away its predictive failures. This pragmatic rescue strategy is one of the most popular (...) moves in philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and formal semantics. In this paper I argue that this strategy fails whenever the predictive failures at issue can be recast in epistemological or metaphysical terms. This general “reformulation argument” undermines a wide variety of pragmatic rescue attempts. (shrink)

According to Grice's “Modified Occam's Razor”, in case of uncertainty between the implicature account and the polysemy account of word uses it is parsimonious to opt for the former. However, it is widely agreed that uses can be partially conventionalised by repetition. This fact, I argue, raises a serious problem for MOR as a methodological principle, but also for the substantial notion of implicature in lexical pragmatics. In order to overcome these problems, I propose to reinterpret implicatures in terms of (...) implicature-like effects delivered by non-inferential processes. (shrink)

Some contemporary semantic views defend an asymmetry thesis concerning defi-nite descriptions and indexicals. Semantically, indexicals are devices of singular refer-ence; they contribute objects to the contents of the speech acts made with utterances including them. Definite descriptions, on the other hand, are generalized quantifiers, behaving roughly the way Russell envisaged in “On Denoting”. The asymmetry thesis depends on the existence of a sufficiently clear-cut distinction between semantics and pragmatics, because indexicals and descriptions are often used in ways that apparently contradict (...) the asymmetry thesis; the semantics/pragmatics distinction is invoked to see behind the appearances. The paper critically examines arguments by Schiffer against the asymmetry thesis, based on referential uses of incomplete descriptions. (shrink)

Bare plurals (dogs) behave in ways that quantified plurals (some dogs) do not. For instance, while the sentence John owns dogs implies that John owns more than one dog, its negation John does not own dogs does not mean “John does not own more than one dog”, but rather “John does not own a dog”. A second puzzling behavior is known as the dependent plural reading; when in the scope of another plural, the ‘more than one’ meaning of the plural (...) is not distributed over, but the existential force of the plural is. For example, My friends attend good schools requires that each of my friends attend one good school, not more, while at the same time being inappropriate if all my friends attend the same school. This paper shows that both these phenomena, and others, arise from the same cause. Namely, the plural noun itself does not assert ‘more than one’, but rather the plural denotes a predicate that is number neutral (unspecified for cardinality). The ‘more than one’ meaning arises as an scalar implicature, relying on the scalar relationship between the bare plural and its singular alternative, and calculated in a sub-sentential domain; namely, before existential closure of the event variable. Finally, implications of this analysis will be discussed for the analysis of the quantified noun phrases that interact with bare plurals, such as indefinite numeral DPs (three boys), and singular universals (every boy). (shrink)

The work of the late Paul Grice (1913–1988) exerts a powerful influence on the way philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists think about meaning and communication. With respect to a particular sentence φ and an “utterer” U, Grice stressed the philosophical importance of separating (i) what φ means, (ii) what U said on a given occasion by uttering φ, and (iii) what U meant by uttering φ on that occasion. Second, he provided systematic attempts to say precisely what meaning is by (...) providing a series of more refined analyses of utterer’s meaning, sentence meaning, and what is said. Third, Grice produced an account of how it is possible for what U says and what U means to diverge. Fourth, by characterizing a philosophically important distinction between the “genuinely semantic” and “merely pragmatic” implications of a statement, Grice clarified the relationship between classical logic and the semantics of natural language. Fifth, he provided some much needed philosophical ventilation by deploying his notion of “implicature” to devastating effect against certain overzealous strains of “Ordinary Language Philosophy,” without himself abandoning the view that philosophy must pay attention to the nuances of ordinary talk. Sixth, Grice undercut some of the most influential arguments for a philosophically significant notion of “presupposition.” Today, Grice’s work lies at the center of research on the semantics-pragmatics distinction and shapes much discussion of the relationship between language and mind. In a nutshell, Grice has forced philosophers and linguists to think very carefully about the sorts of facts a semantic theory is supposed to account for and to reflect upon the most central theoretical notions, notions that otherwise might be taken for granted or employed without due care and attention. To be sure, Grice’s own positive proposals have their weaknesses; but in the light of his work any theory of meaning that is to be taken at all seriously must now draw a sharp line between genuinely semantic facts and facts pertaining to the nature of human interaction.. (shrink)

Grice's Quantity maxims have been widely misinterpreted as enjoining a speaker to make the strongest claim that she can, while respecting the other conversational maxims. Although many writers on the topic of conversational implicature interpret the Quantity maxims as enjoining such volubility, so construed the Quantity maxims are unreasonable norms for conversation. Appreciating this calls for attending more closely to the notion of what a conversation requires. When we do so, we see that eschewing an injunction to maximal informativeness need (...) not deprive us of any ability to predict or explain genuine cases of implicature. Crucial to this explanation is an appreciation of how what a conversation, or a given stage of a conversation, requires, depends upon what kind of conversation is taking place. I close with an outline of this dependence relation that distinguishes among three importantly distinct types of conversation. (shrink)

Based on the new experimental evidence, we argue that a link between a conditional antecedent and the consequent is semantically expressed rather than pragmatically conveyed. In our paper, we focus on particular kinds of links which conditionals may convey in a context. For instance, a conditional ‘If p, q’ may convey a thought equivalent to ‘p will cause q’, ‘p is the best explanation for q’, ‘q follows from p’, etcetera. The traditional theoretical literature on conditionals seems to imply that (...) these specific links are generated pragmatically and are akin to conversational implicatures. In order to test this hypothesis, we used a well-recognized linguistic test from ‘reinforceability’, which serves to distinguish between a semantic and pragmatic level of meaning, and we designed an experimental study based on that test. The outcome of our study is that specific links conveyed by conditionals exhibit features of semantic entailments rather than conversational implicatures. This result accords with some of the recent findings in empirical investigations on conditionals. In the final part of our paper, we discuss various accounts of conditionals which can accommodate the results of our study. (shrink)

Pragmatics, Micropragmatics, Macropragmatics The paper addresses the distinction between micropragmatics and macropragmatics. It is postulated that this differentiation, a consequence of a number of controversies surrounding the core field of pragmatics, does manifest a number of conceptual merits and methodological feasibility. The article also aims to elaborate on the four concepts central to the methodology of pragmatics, i.e. deixis, presupposition, implicature and speech acts, from an essentially ‘micropragmatic’ perspective, describing their contribution to the proposition of an utterance, its illocutionary force, (...) and a wide range of effects the utterance may produce. At the same time, however, three relativities-regularities are indicated and presented as prompts for an integrated study of intentionality at the macro level of discourse/text. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss some of the criteria that are widely used in the linguistic and philosophical literature to classify an aspect of meaning as either semantic or pragmatic. With regards to the case of scalar implicature (e.g. some Fs are G implying that not all Fs are G), these criteria are not ultimately conclusive, either in the results of their application, or in the interpretation of the results with regards to the semantics/pragmatics distinction (or in both). I propose (...) a psychologically relevant criterion, that of the primary or secondary role of context. This criterion applies to sub-personal processes that derive the interpretation of a scalar term rather than to the eventual interpretation of the term, and there exist well-established experimental paradigms that can generate quantitative data. I present recent studies on scalar implicature which employ such off-line and real-time paradigms, aiming to demonstrate how research on the semantics/pragmatics distinction can benefit from experimental investigation. (shrink)

This paper develops an analysis of a scalar implicature that is induced by the use of reportative evidentials such as the Cuzco Quechua enclitic = si and the German modal sollen. Reportatives, in addition to specifying the speaker’s source of information for a statement as a report by someone else, also usually convey that the speaker does not have direct evidence for the proposition expressed. While this type of implicature can be calculated using the same kind of Gricean reasoning that (...) underlies other scalar implicatures, it requires two departures from standard assumptions. First, evidential scalar implicatures differ from the more familiar scalar implicatures in that they do not turn on the notion of informativeness but on the notion of evidential strength. Second, the implicature arises on the illocutionary level of meaning. It is argued that a version of Grice’s maxim of quantity in terms of illocutionary strength can account for this evidential scalar implicature as well as for the more typical scalar implicatures. The account developed also proposes some revisions to the taxonomy of speech acts and suggests that the sincerity conditions of assertive speech acts contain an evidential sincerity condition in addition to the belief condition standardly assumed. (shrink)

Recently, an orthodox Russellian tenet has come under fire from within. In particular, some Russellians now argue that definite descriptions don’t semantically encode uniqueness. Instead, Reformed Russellians, as I call them, hold that definite descriptions are truth-theoretically identical to indefinite ones. On this approach, a definite description’s uniqueness reading becomes a matter of pragmatics, not semantics. These reforms, we’re told, provide both empirical and methodological benefits over and above the prevailing orthodoxy. As I argue, however, the Russellian Reformation contains serious (...) flaws. Indeed, it is Orthodox Russellianism that remains a superior choice, both empirically and conceptually. (shrink)

While writing this thesis, there were many things I wanted to get right. I wanted to get the data right. I wanted to get my analysis of the data right. I certainly wanted to get all my citations right, which can get pretty tricky when one is trying to finish a chapter at 2am. But if an error did creep in somewhere in the body of the thesis, that is not a disaster. Sooner or later, I will get a chance (...) to correct it in a future publication. However, this part of the thesis, which sits right at the beginning but was among the last to be written, is different. I only have one opportunity to express, in print, how thankful I am to the people whose assistance was so important to me over the past years. Which is unfortunate, since if I were to truly elaborate all I am thankful for, these acknowledgements would be the lengthiest chapter of the thesis. But I hope this brief version will suffice in its stead. (shrink)

Lewis thought concessive knowledge attributions (e.g., ‘I know that Harry is a zebra, but it might be that he’s just a cleverly disguised mule’) caused serious trouble for fallibilists. As he saw it, CKAs are overt statements of the fallibilist view and they are contradictory. Dougherty and Rysiew have argued that CKAs are pragmatically defective rather than semantically defective. Stanley thinks that their pragmatic response to Lewis fails, but the fallibilist cause is not lost because Lewis was wrong about the (...) commitments of fallibilism. There are problems with Dougherty and Rysiew’s response to Stanley and there are problems with Stanley’s response to Lewis. I’ll offer a defense of fallibilism of my own and show that fallibilists needn’t worry about CKAs. (shrink)

What I have attempted to show in the foregoing is that: (1) For any frequency adjective f, there is an element of meaning common to both the adverbial and the generic usage of f; this is a function f′ from propositions to truth-values such that f′(Φ)′ is true at an interval i iff Φ′ is true at subintervals of i distributed through i in a certain way. (2) In an adverbial use of f, f′ functions like the corresponding frequency adverb. (...) (3) In a generic use of f, f′ quantifies the times intervals which a specified object is realized by some stage. (4) In their adverbial usage, frequency adjectives are not regular attributive adjectives at the level at which interpretation takes place, but are perhaps determiners. And (5) in their generic usage, frequency adjectives are adjectives at the level at which interpretation takes place.More generally, I hope to have suggested something of the range of uses to which frequency is put in natural language. That we effortlessly grasp what is meants by Monday, the Columbus Dispatch, autumn, the Today Show, and so on, demonstrates our fluency in interpreting certain sequences of objects, events, or states of affairs as sequences of values of some function cycling on a time-axis. Much more must ultimately be told about the psychological and anthropological significance of frequency. (shrink)

Donnellan makes a convincing case for two distinct uses ofdefinite descriptions. But does the difference between the usesreflects an ambiguity in the semantics of descriptions? This paperapplies a linguistic test for ambiguity to argue that the differencebetween the uses is not semantically significant.

I argue that there are slurs that are distinctly derogatory insofar as they only derogate their target’s epistemic faculties or capacities qua group member. I call these slurs epistemic slurs. Given that slur theories should explain the derogatory nature of all slurs, any comprehensive slur theory should be able to explain the derogatory nature of the epistemic slurs. I argue, however, that two particular expressivist theories of slurs cannot explain their distinctive derogatory nature. The epistemic slurs thus constitute a novel (...) explanatory problem for these expressivist slur theories. Yet I argue that a semantic theory of slurs, combinatorial externalism, can explain the distinctive derogatory nature of the epistemic slurs in which case these slurs constitute a novel explanatory advantage for combinatorial externalism. Whether the epistemic slurs constitute a novel explanatory problem or advantage for any other slur theories remains to be seen. (shrink)

Explicatures are not cancellable. Theoretical considerations.

My dissertation asks how we affect conversational context and how it affects us when we participate in any conversation—including philosophical conversations. Chapter 1 argues that speakers make pragmatic presuppositions when they use proper names. I appeal to these presuppositions in giving a treatment of Frege’s puzzle that is consistent with the claim that coreferential proper names have the same semantic value. I outline an explanation of the way presupposition carrying expressions in general behave in belief ascriptions, and suggest that substitutivity (...) failure is a special case of this behavior. Chapter 2 develops a compositional probabilistic semantics for the language of subjective uncertainty, including epistemic adjectives scoped under quantifiers. I argue that we should distinguish sharply between the effects that epistemically hedged statements have on conversational context, and the effects that they have on belief states. I also suggest that epistemically hedged statements are a kind of doxastic advice, and explain how this hypothesis illuminates some otherwise puzzling phenomena. Chapter 3 argues that ordinary causal talk is deeply sensitive to conversational context. The principle that I formulate to characterize that context sensitivity explains at least some of the oddness of ‘systematic causal overdetermination,’ and explains why some putative overgenerated causes are never felicitously counted, in conversation, as causes. But the principle also makes metaphysical theorizing about causation rather indirectly constrained by ordinary language judgments. (shrink)