Donald Davidson contributed to the discussion of logical form in two ways. On the one hand, he made several influential suggestions on how to give the logical forms of certain constructions of natural language. His account of adverbial modification and so called action-sentences is nowadays, in some form or other, widely employed in linguistics (Harman (forthcoming) calls it "the standard view"). Davidson's approaches to indirect discourse and quotation, while not as influential, also still attract attention today. On the other hand, (...) Davidson provided a general account of what logical form is. This paper is concerned with this general account. Its foremost aim is to give a faithful and detailed picture of what, according to Davidson, it means to give the logical form of a sentence. The structure of the paper is as follows. (1) I will first informally introduce a notion of logical form as the form that matters in certain kinds of entailments, and indicate why philosophers have taken an interest in such a notion. (2) The second section develops constraints that we should arguably abide by in giving an account of logical form. (3) I then turn to Davidson’s view of what is involved in giving such an account. To this end, I will try to reconstruct Davidson’s view of the connection between an assignment of logical forms, a truth theory and a meaning theory. (4) Finally, I will briefly discuss possible problems of Davidson’s account as developed in this paper. (shrink)

Lying and fiction both involve the deliberate production of statements that fail to obey Grice’s first Maxim of Quality (“do not say what you believe to be false”). The question thus arises if we can provide a uniform analysis for fiction and lies. In this chapter I discuss the similarities, but also some fundamental differences between lying and fiction. I argue that there’s little hope for a satisfying account within a traditional truth conditional semantic framework. Rather than immediately moving to (...) a fully pragmatic analysis involving distinct speech acts of fiction-making and lying, I will first explore how far we get with the assumption that both are simply assertions, analyzed in a Stalnakerian framework, i.e. as proposals to update the common ground. (shrink)

Conceptualism is the thesis that, for any perceptual experience E, (i) E has a Fregean proposition as its content and (ii) a subject of E must possess a concept for each item represented by E. We advance a framework within which conceptualism may be defended against its most serious objections (e.g., Richard Heck's argument from nonveridical experience). The framework is of independent interest for the philosophy of mind and epistemology given its implications for debates regarding transparency, relationalism and representationalism, demonstrative (...) thought, phenomenal character, and the speckled hen objection to modest foundationalism. (shrink)

We argue that the most ambitious version of the mental files theory of singular thought, according to which mental files are a wide-ranging psychological natural kind underlying all and only singular thinking, is unsupported by the available psychological data. Nevertheless, critical examination of the theory from a psychological perspective opens up promising avenues for research, especially concerning the relationship between our perceptual capacity to individuate and track basic individuals, and our higher level capacities for singular thought.

This is a slightly opinionated review of three main factions in metaontology: Quineans, Carnapians, and Meinongians. Emphasis is given to the last camp, as the metaontological aspect of Meinongianism has been underappreciated. The final section then offers some general remarks about the legitimacy of ontology, touching on ideas I have developed in other publications.

Although philosophers of art and aesthetics regularly appeal to a notion of ‘pictorial content’, there is little agreement over its nature. The present paper argues that pictures have propositional contents. This conclusion is reached by considering a style of argument having to do with the phenomenon of negation intended to show that pictures must have some kind of non-propositional content. I first offer reasons for thinking that arguments of that type fail. Second, I show that when properly understood, such arguments (...) can in fact be turned on their heads and shown to support the propositionalist position. (shrink)

Tim Crane's The Objects of Thought is, I think, a much needed corrective to standard ways that analytic philosophers think about nonexistence. It starts from our common sense thought and talk, and tries to carve out a position that can defend this starting point in the face of criticism. It is well-written, a pleasure to read, and largely clear. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the problems of nonexistence. In §1 I sketch Crane's central ideas about the nonexistent, (...) before turning to themes that I would like to have heard more about. In §2, I distinguish two problems of nonexistence, showing that whilst Crane solves one, he does not address the other. Although Crane did not seek to address both problems, I think we should recognize that there is this residual problem of nonexistence remaining. Next (§3), I argue that whilst Crane is correct to think that a negative free logic has to be rejected if we construe it as making a claim about grammatical subject-predicate sentences, we might be able to salvage it if we recognise a class of logical predicates. But whether this is possible or not, depends on the solution to the unaddressed problem of nonexistence. In the final two sections I briefly raise a concern about Crane's view of quantification, before making a suggestion about his view might be employed in addressing Geach's problem of intentional identity. (shrink)

What are the prospects for a linguistic approach to ontology? Given that it seems that there are true subject-predicate sentences containing empty names, traditional linguistic approaches to ontology appear to be flawed. I argue that in order to determine what there is, we need to determine which sentences ascribe properties (and relations) to objects, and that there does not appear to be any formal criterion for this. This view is then committed to giving an account of what predicates do in (...) sentences when they do not ascribe properties. I sketch an approach to the varieties of predication. (shrink)

Disjunctivists (Hinton 1973, Snowdon 1990, Martin 2002, 2006) often motivate their approach to perceptual experience by appealing in part to the claim that in cases of veridical perception, the subject is directly in contact with the perceived object. When I perceive a table, for example, there is no table-like sense-impression that stands as an intermediary between the table and me. Nor am I related to the table as I am to a deer when I see its footprint in the snow. (...) I do not experience the table by experiencing some- thing else over and above the table and its facing surface. I see the facing surface of the table directly. (shrink)

Empty proper names give rise to intriguing questions. Frege, Moore and Russell stand at the beginning of analytic philosophy's engagement with these questions. In this paper I will therefore introduce and assess their views on the topic of empty names and draw connections to recent work.

According to Frege, neither demonstratives nor indexicals are singular terms; only a demonstrative together with ‘circumstances accompanying its utterance’ has sense and singular reference. While this view seems defensible for demonstratives, where demonstrations serve as non-verbal signs, indexicals, especially pure indexicals like ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’, seem not to be in need of completion by circumstances of utterance. In this paper I argue on the basis of independent reasons that indexicals are in fact in need of completion; I identify the (...) completers as uses of circumstances of utterance by the speaker; and I show how these uses together with the utterance of indexical sentences express thoughts. The starting point of the paper is a criticism of Kripke’s and Künne’s alternative treatment of indexicals in Frege’s framework. (shrink)

This paper defends a version of the realist view that fictional characters exist. It argues for an instance of abstract realist views, according to which fictional characters are roles, constituted by sets of properties. It is argued that fictional names denote individual concepts, functions from worlds to individuals. It is shown that a dynamic framework for understanding the evolution of discourse information can be used to understand how roles are created and develop along with story content. Taking fictional names to (...) denote individual concepts provides accounts of a number of uses of fictional names. These include non-fictional uses, fictional uses, metafictional uses, interfictional uses, counterfictional uses, and negative existentials. It is argued that this account is not open to objections that have been raised in the literature. (shrink)

This paper provides an account of co-identification with fictional names, the way in which a fictional name can be used to talk about the same fictional character on disparate occasions. I develop a version of the view that fictional characters are roles constituted by sets of properties that is couched within a dynamic understanding of fictional discourse. I argue that this view captures what is right about both so-called name-centric and information-centric approaches to co-identification with fictional names. I show how (...) the dynamic view in addition accounts for a number of uses of fictional names, including fictional uses, assertoric uses, metafictional uses. (shrink)

Adherents of Ockham’s fundamental razor contend that considerations of ontological parsimony pertain primarily to fundamental objects. Derivative objects, on the other hand, are thought to be quite unobjectionable. One way to understand the fundamental vs. derivative distinction is in terms of the Aristotelian distinction between ontologically independent and dependent objects. In this paper I will defend the thesis that every natural number greater than 0 is an ontologically dependent object thereby exempting the natural numbers from Ockham’s fundamental razor.

In a series of recent articles, Robin Jeshion has developed a theory of singular thought which she calls ‘cognitivism’. According to Jeshion, cognitivism offers a middle path between acquaintance theories—which she takes to impose too strong a requirement on singular thought, and semantic instrumentalism—which she takes to impose too weak a requirement. In this article, I raise a series of concerns about Jeshion's theory, and suggest that the relevant data can be accommodated by a version of acquaintance theory that distinguishes (...) unsuccessful thoughts of singular form from successful singular thoughts, and in addition allows for ‘trace-based’ acquaintance. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore the possibility that, at least, some metaphysical debates are ‘metalinguistic negotiations’. I will take the dispute between the dominant approaches of realism and the anti-realism ones about the ontological status of scientific models as a case-study. I will argue that such a debate may be better understood as a disagreement, at bottom normatively, motivated, insofar as a normative and non-factual question may be involved in it: how the relevant piece of language ought (...) to be used. Even though I will generally assess the prospects for a broadly deflationist approach, I shall outline a sense in which the dispute can be recast as ‘minimally substantive’. (shrink)

The problem of intersubjective identification arises from the difficulties of explaining how our thoughts and discourse about fictional characters can be directed towards the same (or different) characters given the assumption that there are no fictional entities. In this paper I aim to offer a solution in terms of participation in a practice of thinking and talking about the same thing, which is inspired by Sainsbury's name-using practices. I will critically discuss a similar idea that was put forward by Friend (...) in terms of participation in what Perry calls a notion-network. I will then argue in favor of Sainsbury's baptism-based approach against Perry's information-based approach and I will answer some recent objections that Friend put forward against the former. (shrink)

Against standard descriptivist and referentialist semantics for fictional reports, I will defend a view according to which fictional names do not refer yet they can be distinguished from one another in virtue of their different name-using practices. The logical structures of sentences containing fictional names inherit these distinctions. Different interpretations follow.

When are two tokens of a name tokens of the same name? According to this paper, the answer is a matter of the historical connections between the tokens. For each name, there is a unique originating event, and subsequent tokens are tokens of that name only if they derive in an appropriate way from that originating event. The conditions for a token being a token of a given name are distinct from the conditions for preservation of the reference of a (...) name. Hence a name may change its reference. Defending the theory requires considerations about the identity of acts, and about empty names and disagreement. The upshot is a causal theory of the identity of names, but not what would normally be counted as a causal theory of the reference of names. Although reference is often transmitted causally, what determines semantic reference is conventionalized speaker-reference. (shrink)

I argue that there is no straightforward inference from there being fictional characters to any interesting form of realism. One reason is that “fictional” may be an intensional operator with wide scope, depriving the quantifier of its usual force. Another is that not all uses of “there are” are ontologically committing. A realist needs to show that neither of these phenomena are present in “There are fictional characters”. Other roads to realism run into difficulties when negotiating the role that presupposition (...) plays when we make intuitive evaluations of the truth or falsehood of sentences involving fiction, for we may presuppose things we do not believe. This means that a judgment of truth, implicitly relative to a presupposition we do not believe, can be sincerely made by someone who, from a more austere perspective, would regard the judgment as false. (shrink)

The most common form of direct realism is Phenomenological Direct Realism. PDR is the theory that direct realism consists in unmediated awareness of the external object in the form of unmediated awareness of its relevant properties. I contrast this with Semantic Direct Realism, the theory that perceptual experience puts you in direct cognitive contact with external objects but does so without the unmediated awareness of the objects’ intrinsic properties invoked by PDR. PDR is what most understand by direct realism. My (...) argument is that, under pressure from the arguments from illusion and hallucination, defenders of intentionalist theories, and even of relational theories, in fact retreat to SDR. I also argue briefly that the sense-datum theory is compatible with SDR and so nothing is gained by adopting either of the more fashionable theories. (shrink)

My responses to seven critical reviews of my book *Mental Files* published in a special issue of the journal Disputatio, edited by F. Salis. The reviewers are: Keith Hall, David Papineau, Annalisa Coliva and Delia Belleri, Peter Pagin, Thea Goodsell, Krista Lawlor and Manuel Garcia-Carpintero.

In this essay I will defend a novel version of the indexical view on proper names. According to this version, proper names have a relatively sparse truth-conditional meaning that is represented by their rigid content and indexical character, but a relatively rich use-conditional meaning, which I call the (contextual) constraint of a proper name. Firstly, I will provide a brief outline of my favoured indexical view on names in contrast to other indexical views proposed in the relevant literature. Secondly, two (...) general motivations for an indexical view on names will be introduced and defended. Thirdly, I will criticize the two most popular versions of the indexical view on names: formal variable accounts and salience-based formal constant accounts. In the fourth and final section, I will develop my own use-conditional indexical view on names in three different steps by confronting an initial version of this view with three different challenges. (shrink)

Sainsbury 2005 and 2009 offers a theory of empty names that purports to account for the content and truth-value of all utterances involving them. The goal is to do this while offering a homogenous semantic treatment: both empty and nonempty names make the same kind of contribution to truth-values. The account is based on a new theory of reference that purports to be an alternative among nondescriptivist accounts. According to the new theory, there is reference even without referents. In this (...) paper I argue that the theory does not offer a homogeneous semantics for names and that, thus, it fails to offer a more satisfactory alternative to the theories already available. I conclude by briefly describing a way in which a theory could in fact offer such homogeneous semantics for names via a cognitive theory of empty names. (shrink)

As our data will show, negative existential sentences containing socalled empty names evoke the same strong semantic intuitions in ordinary speakers and philosophers alike.Santa Claus does not exist.Superman does not exist.Clark Kent does not exist.Uttering the sentences in (1) seems to say something truth-evaluable, to say something true, and to say something different for each sentence. A semantic theory ought to explain these semantic intuitions.The intuitions elicited by (1) are in apparent conflict with the Millian view of proper names. According (...) to Millianism, the meaning (or 'semantic value') of a proper name is just its referent. But empty names, such as 'Santa Claus' and 'Superman', appear to lack a .. (shrink)

Muchos filósofos piensan que los contenidos perceptuales son siempre generales y que no deben especificarse utilizando términos singulares. Ellos creen que los objetos /propiedades distales no constituyen esencialmente los contenidos perceptuales. Argumentaré que esta estrategia es insatisfactoria al especificar contenidos e incapaz de dar cuenta de una intuición común, según la cual la veracidad de nuestras experiencias perceptuales no es algo evaluable con independencia de si percibimos o no. Finalmente, sugeriré una alternativa "singularista" en la que los objetos distales sí (...) entran en los contenidos, haciendo de las percepciones y las alucinaciones dos tipos de experiencia fundamentalmente diferentes. Many philosophers think that perceptual contents are always general and shouldn´t be specified using singular terms. They believe that distal objects and properties don't essentially constitute perceptual contents. I will argue that this strategy doesn't provide a satisfactory account of content specification and fails to make sense of the common-sense intuition that the veridicality of our perceptual experiences isn't something fully independent of whether we perceive or not. Finally, I will suggest an alternative "singularist" standpoint in which distal objects do enter into visual contents, making perceptions and hallucinations fundamentally different types of experiences. (shrink)

H. H. Price (1932) held that experience is essentially presentational. According to Price, when one has an experience of a tomato, nothing can be more certain than that there is something of which one is aware. Price claimed that the same applies to hallucination. In general, whenever one has a visual experience, there is something of which one is aware, according to Price. Call this thesis Item-Awareness.

Putting individual constants and quantifiers into the same syntactic category within first-order language promises to have far-reaching consequences: a syntax of this kind can reveal the potential of any such language, allowing us to realize that a vast class of noun phrases, including non-denoting terms, can be accommodated in the new syntax as expressions suited to being subjects of sentences. In the light of this, a formal system that is an extension of classical first-order logic is developed here, and is (...) equipped with an appropriate semantics. An ontological interpretation of the new logic is then also provided, with several categories of object and notions of existence being distinguished. Last but not least, a modal version of the logic, with some interesting formal features, is proposed. (shrink)

Frege's puzzle about identity sentences has long challenged many philosophers to find a solution to it but also led other philosophers to object that the evidential datum it is grounded on is false. The present work is an elaboration of this second kind of reaction: it explains why Frege's puzzle seems to resist the traditional objection, giving voice to different and more elaborated presentations of the evidential datum, faithful to the spirit but not to the letter of Frege's puzzle. The (...) final outcome is negative, no satisfactory formulation of the evidential datum is found and Frege's puzzle is challenged until a better formulation of it is found. (shrink)

There are many data suggesting that we should acknowledge fictional entities in our ontological inventory, in spite of the paraphrasing strategies that Russell’s theory of descriptions can offer. Thus the realist attitude toward fictional entities of Meinongian and artifactualist accounts may seem well-motivated. Yet, these approaches infringe the Russellian “robust sense of reality.” A different realist account is proposed here, one that is compatible with the Russellian “robust sense of reality” in that it identifies fictional entities with denoting concepts, understood (...) as properties of properties. (shrink)

Many philosophers have suggested that metaethical scepticism is an inherently unstable position. Recently, Dworkin has offered an argument to this effect, claiming that (a) metaethical scepticism entails a set of first-order moral claims, and (b) this set of claims is internally inconsistent. The present essay shows why this argument fails. Along the way, it situates a plausible anti-realist semantics within the range of options for dealing with uncontroversially non-referring terms, like ‘unicorns’.

‘Quantified pure existentials’ are sentences (e.g., ‘Some things do not exist’) which meet these conditions: (i) the verb EXIST is contained in, and is, apart from quantificational BE, the only full (as against auxiliary) verb in the sentence; (ii) no (other) logical predicate features in the sentence; (iii) no name or other sub-sentential referring expression features in the sentence; (iv) the sentence contains a quantifier that is not an occurrence of EXIST. Colin McGinn and Rod Girle have alleged that standard (...) first-order logic cannot adequately deal with some such existentials. The article defends the view that it can. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson has proposed that we should give a ‘knowledge first’ twist to David Lewis’s account of content, maintaining that for P to be the content of one’s belief is for P to be the content that would be attributed by an idealized interpreter working under certain constraints, and that the fundamental constraint on interpretation is a principle of knowledge maximization. According to this principle, an interpretation is correct to the extent that it maximizes the number of knowledgeable judgments the (...) subject comes out as making. Here I will argue against knowledge maximization and two fallback positions suggested by Williamson’s discussion. Williamson intends the principle of knowledge maximization to form the basis of an argument against a certain sort of skepticism about judgment. In the final section I argue that the kind of general response to judgment skepticism envisaged by Williamson is neither desirable nor necessary. (shrink)

This paper discusses and criticizes Segal’s 1989 argument against singular object-dependent thoughts. His argument aims at showing that object-dependent thoughts are explanatorily redundant. My criticism of Segal’s argument has two parts. First, I appeal to common anti-individualist arguments to the effect that Segal’s type of argument only succeeds in establishing that object-dependent thoughts are explanatorily redundant for those aspects of subjects’ behaviour that do not require reference to external objects. Secondly, Segal’s view on singular thoughts is at odds with his (...) view on the semantics of proper names, which favours the singularity and object-dependency of the truth-conditions of sentences in which they occur. In particular, his views are at odds with a position he holds, that truth-conditional semantics can adequately account for all aspects of speakers’ linguistic competence in the use of proper names. (shrink)

The Millian semantic view of names relies on a metaphysical view of names—often given the label ‘common currency conception’ —on which the names of distinct individuals count as distinct names. While even defenders of the Millian view admit that the CCC ‘does not agree with the most common usage’, I will argue further that the CCC makes names exceptional amongst the class of linguistic expressions: if the CCC is correct, then names must have a sui-generis metaphysical nature, distinct from the (...) metaphysics of every other kind of linguistic expression. Such metaphysical exceptionalism would be justified if the Millian view had a clear, uncontested theoretical advantage over its rivals. However, in the context of a semantic debate about names in which the closest competitors of the Millian view—the Predicate view and Indexicalism—do not result in such exceptionalism, it counts as a strike against the Millian view. (shrink)

In uttering negative existential sentences, we do not mention but use an empty singular term. A pretense account explains the use in terms of pretense. I argue that our understanding of negative existential statements can be successfully explained by Crimmins’ theory of shallow pretense if it is supplemented and reconstructed properly. First, I explain the notion of shallow pretense and supplement Crimmin’s theory with an Evansian account that we immediately grasp the phenomenology of what is pretended without a conscious effort (...) to imagine the condition under which what is pretended can be true. Thus, shallow pretense does not consist in the counterintuitive meta-representation of the fact of pretense. Second, against the objection to Crimmins’ distinction between utterance truth-condition and modal content that it is ad hoc, I argue that there is good reason to hold the distinction for the semantics of belief reports. Finally, I argue that the distinction has a merit of explaining our intuition about the epistemic possibility associated with our use of an empty singular term. (shrink)

In the pair of articles of which this is the second, I present a set of problems and philosophical proposals that have in recent years been associated with the term “relativism”. These problems are related to the question of how we should represent thought and speech about certain topics. The main issue is whether we should model such mental states or linguistic acts as involving representational contents that are absolutely correct or incorrect, or whether, alternatively, their correctness should be thought (...) of as varying with some (more or less surprising) factor. In the first article, “Relativism 1: Representational Content”, I discussed the general issue of relativism about representational content. I argued for the conciliatory view that both relativist and absoutist conceptions of representational content can be legitimate. In the present continuation, I look in more detail at a special case of the general issue, namely the question of whether semantic contents, i.e. the contents assigned to linguistic utterances in the semantics of natural language, should be construed in an absolutist or in a relativist way. (shrink)

This article explores Gareth Evans’s idea that there are such things as descriptive names, i.e. referring expressions introduced by a definite description which have, unlike ordinary names, a descriptive content. Several ignored semantic and modal aspects of this idea are spelled out, including a hitherto little explored notion of rigidity, super-rigidity. The claim that descriptive names are (rigidified) descriptions, or abbreviations thereof, is rejected. It is then shown that Evans’s theory leads to certain puzzles concerning the referential status of descriptive (...) names and the evaluation of identity statements containing them. A tentative solution to these puzzles is suggested, which centres on the treatment of definite descriptions as referring expressions. (shrink)

This article reconsiders Kripke’s ( 1977 , in: French, Uehling & Wettstein (eds) Contemporary perspectives in the philosophy of language, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis) pragmatic, univocal account of the attributive-referential distinction in terms of a metalinguistic apparatus consisting of semantic reference and speaker reference. It is argued that Kripke’s strongest methodological argument supporting the pragmatic account, the parallel applicability of the apparatus to both names and definite descriptions, is successful only if descriptions are treated as designators in both attributive (...) and referential uses. It is not successful if descriptions are treated à la Russell, contrary to what is often assumed. Thus a third theoretical option for the semantic analysis of definite descriptions arises, neglected by both supporters and opponents of Russell: a univocal, referentialist analysis of descriptions in conjunction with a pragmatic account of the attributive-referential distinction. Contrary to Kripke, and to much of the literature, it is noted that not all so-called referential uses involve implicatures. In the course of the argument Kripke’s innovative apparatus is subjected to improvements and fine-tunings. Also, some general critical comments are made about analogical reasoning, on which Kripke’s argument is partly based. This leads to a clarification of the fundamental notion of speaker reference. The paper concludes with reflections on the challenge to and need of systematic empirical evidence in this field, a desideratum noted by Kripke and still not met. (shrink)

As a class of terms and mental representations, proper names and mental names possess an important function that outstrips their semantic and psycho-semantic functions as common, rigid devices of direct reference and singular mental representations of their referents, respectively. They also function as abstract linguistic markers that signal and underscore their referents' individuality. I promote this thesis to explain why we give proper names to certain particulars, but not others; to account for the transfer of singular thought via communication with (...) proper names; and, more generally, to support a cognitivist, not acquaintance or instrumentalist, theory of singular thought. (shrink)

No particular dagger was the object of Macbeth’s hallucination of a dagger. In contrast, when he hallucinated his former comrade Banquo, Banquo himself was the object of the hallucination. Although philosophers have had much to say about the nature and philosophical import of hallucinations (e.g. Macpherson and Platchias, Hallucination, 2013) and object-involving attitudes (e.g. Jeshion, New essays on singular thought, 2010), their intersection has largely been neglected. Yet, object-involving hallucinations raise interesting questions about memory, perception, and the ways in which (...) we have knowledge of the world around us. In this paper, I offer an account of object-involving hallucinations. Specifically, I argue that they are an unusual species of perceptual remembering. (shrink)

This paper defends the thesis that counterfactuals are strict conditionals. Its purpose is to show that there is a coherent view according to which counterfactuals are strict conditionals whose antecedent is stated elliptically. Section 1 introduces the view. Section 2 outlines a response to the main argument against the thesis that counterfactuals are strict conditionals. Section 3 compares the view with a proposal due to Aqvist, which may be regarded as its direct predecessor. Sections 4 and 5 explain how the (...) view di ers from the theories of counterfactuals advocated by Stalnaker and Lewis, and from some contextualist strict conditional accounts of counterfactuals that have emerged recently. Finally, section 6 addresses the thorny issue of disjunctive antecedents. (shrink)