A number of authors have argued that the fact that certain indexicals depend for their reference-determination on the speaker’s referential intentions demonstrates the inadequacy of associating such expressions with functions from contexts to referents (characters). By distinguishing between different uses to which the notion of context is put in these argument, I show that this line of argument fails. In the course of doing so, I develop a way of incorporating the role played by intentions into a character-based semantics for (...) indexicals and I argue that the framework I prefer is superior to an alternative which has been proposed by others. (shrink)

Todd (2016) proposes an analysis of future-directed sentences, in particular sentences of the form 'will(φ)', that is based on the classic Russellian analysis of definite descriptions. Todd's analysis is supposed to vindicate the claim that the future is metaphysically open while retaining a simple Ockhamist semantics of future contingents and the principles of classical logic, i.e. bivalence and the law of excluded middle. Consequently, an open futurist can straightforwardly retain classical logic without appeal to supervaluations, determinacy operators, or any further (...) controversial semantical or metaphysical complication. In this paper, we will show that this quasi-Russellian analysis of 'will' both lacks linguistic motivation and faces a variety of significant problems. In particular, we show that the standard arguments for Russell's treatment of definite descriptions fail to apply to statements of the form 'will(φ)'. (shrink)

This paper offers a unified, quantificational treatment of incomplete descriptions like ‘the table’. An incomplete quantified expression like ‘every bottle’ (as in “Every bottle is empty”) can feature in true utterances despite the fact that the world contains nonempty bottles. Positing a contextual restriction on the bottles being talked about is a straightforward solution. It is argued that the same strategy can be extended to incomplete definite descriptions across the board. ncorporating the contextual restrictions into semantics involves meeting a complex (...) array of desiderata, yet the apparently simpler pragmatic alternative faces severe problems and is therefore a nonstarter. (shrink)

I-theories of bare demonstratives take the semantic referent of a demonstrative to be determined by an inner state of the utterer. E-theories take the referent to be determined by factors external to the utterer. I argue that, on the Standard view of communication, neither of these theories can be right. Firstly, both are committed to the existence of conventions with superfluous content. Secondly, any claim to the effect that a speaker employs the conventions associated with these theories cannot have any (...) content, i.e. nothing can count as following these conventions. Bare demonstratives may well not be devices of semantic reference at all, i.e. may not actually contribute a referent to the proposition semantically expressed by an utterance. (shrink)

People often speak loosely, uttering sentences that are plainly false on their most strict interpretation. In understanding such speakers, we face a problem of underdetermination: there is often no unique interpretation that captures what they meant. Focusing on the case of incomplete definite descriptions, this paper suggests that speakers often mean bundles of propositions. When a speaker means a bundle, their audience can know what they mean by deriving any one of its members. Rather than posing a problem for the (...) interpretation of loose talk, the underdetermination of a uniquely correct interpretation allows for various ways in which the audience can grasp the speaker’s meaning. (shrink)

Conversational exculpature is a pragmatic process whereby information is subtracted from, rather than added to, what the speaker literally says. This pragmatic content subtraction explains why we can say “Rob is six feet tall” without implying that Rob is between 5'0.99" and 6'0.01" tall, and why we can say “Ellen has a hat like the one Sherlock Holmes always wears” without implying Holmes exists or has a hat. This article presents a simple formalism for understanding this pragmatic mechanism, specifying how, (...) in context, the result of such subtractions is determined. And it shows how the resulting theory of conversational exculpature accounts for a varied range of linguistic phenomena. A distinctive feature of the approach is the crucial role played by the question under discussion in determining the result of a given exculpature. (shrink)

Defenders of the Knowledge Argument contend that physicalism is false because knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient to know all the truths about the world. In particular, proponents of the Knowledge Argument claim that physicalism is false because the truths about the character of conscious experience are not knowable from the complete set of physical truths. This dissertation is a defense of the Knowledge Argument. Chapter one characterizes what physicalism is and provides support for the claim that if (...) knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient to know all the truths about the world, then physicalism is false. In chapter two, I defend the claim that knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient for knowing all the truths about the world. In addition to mounting a prima facie case for the knowledge intuition, I present and defend an epistemology grounded in direct acquaintance to provide a more substantive argument to accept it. Chapters three through five address the physicalist objections to the Knowledge Argument. The first set of objections advocates that knowing all the physical truths is, in fact, sufficient for knowing all the truths about the world. The next set of objections admits that there is some sense in which knowing all the physical truths is not sufficient for knowing all the truths about the world. However, these objections maintain that the kind of knowledge that is absent from the complete set of physical truths is know-how or knowledge by acquaintance, and not factual or propositional knowledge. The final set of objections maintain that the kind of propositional knowledge that is left out of the complete set of physical truths is compatible with physicalism. My response to these objections is part of advancing my prima facie case for the Knowledge Argument. The final chapter addresses a structural question that pertains to the Knowledge Argument. Some philosophers have maintained that the structure of the Knowledge Argument invites a kind of self-refutation of any systematic account of reality. The concern is that the Knowledge Argument proves too much, and that the dualist who uses the argument to refute physicalism risks the argument defeating his own position. I will argue that the Knowledge Argument does not refute dualism. (shrink)

Keith Donnellan’s distinction between the attributive and referential uses of definite descriptions has spurred debates regarding the truth conditions of the utterance “the F is G” with definite descriptions used referentially. In this article, I present a semantic account of referential descriptions, grounded in the contextual factors of the utterance, including the speaker’s intention and presupposition as well as the interlocutor’s recognition of them. This account is called the IPR-semantic account, according to which the speaker’s intention (I), presupposition (P), and (...) the interlocutor's recognition (R) jointly determine whether “the F” in an utterance “the F is G” is used referentially or attributively, and the meaning of “the F” is determined by whether it is used referentially or attributively. Moreover, I argue that the meaning of the referential description “the F” is the intended object e, embodied with a property H that has prompted the speaker to presuppose that e is F and to intend to use “the F” to refer to e, as well as the interlocutor to recognize the presupposition and intention. According to the IPR-semantic account, the utterance “the F is G” with “the F” used referentially expresses a singular proposition, namely, that e is G, and it is true if and only if the intended object e is G. Additionally, I argue that the IPR-semantic account not only surpasses some alternative semantic accounts but also outperforms Kripke’s pragmatic account. (shrink)

The book is about logical analysis of natural language. Since we humans communicate by means of natural language, we need a tool that helps us to understand in a precise manner how the logical and formal mechanisms of natural language work. Moreover, in the age of computers, we need to communicate both with and through computers as well. Transparent Intensional Logic is a tool that is helpful in making our communication and reasoning smooth and precise. It deals with all kinds (...) of linguistic context in a fully compositional and anti-contextual way. (shrink)

Context-sensitivity raises a metasemantic question: what determines the value of a context-sensitive expression in context? Taking gradable adjectives as a case study, this paper argues against various forms of intentionalist metasemantics, i.e. that speaker intentions determine values for context-sensitive expressions in context, including the coordination account recently defended by King :219–237, 2014a; in: Burgess, Sherman Metasemantics: New essays on the foundations of meaning, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 97–118, 2014b). The paper argues that all intentionalist accounts face the speaker authority (...) problem, that speaker intentions are just the wrong sorts of things to determine the standards for gradable adjectives in context. The problem comes to light when we look at cases in which speakers have idiosyncratic, false beliefs that cause their proper communicative intentions to come apart from the non-intentional features of context like the question under discussion, facts about the world, practical goals, and prior linguistic discourse. (shrink)

According to a view widely held by epistemic contextualists, the truth conditions of a knowledge claim depend on features of the context such as the presuppositions, interests and purposes of the conversational participants. Against this view, I defend an intentionalist account, according to which the truth conditions of a knowledge attribution are determined by the speaker’s intention. I show that an intentionalist version of contextualism has several advantages over its more widely accepted rival account.

A common objection to Russell's theory of descriptions concerns incomplete definite descriptions: uses of (for example) ‘the book is overdue’ in contexts where there is clearly more than one book. Many contemporary Russellians hold that such utterances will invariably convey a contextually determined complete proposition, for example, that the book in your briefcase is overdue. But according to the objection this gets things wrong: typically, when a speaker utters such a sentence, no facts about the context or the speaker's communicative (...) intentions single out a particular description-theoretic proposition as the proposition expressed. However, this is an objection only if it is assumed that successful linguistic communication requires the hearer to identify a proposition uniquely intended by the speaker. We argue that this assumption is mistaken. On our view, no proposition, descriptive or referential, is uniquely intended in such a context; thus, no proposition can nor need be identified as the proposition expressed. One significant upshot is that, once the aforementioned assumption is rejected, incompleteness no longer poses a threat to Russell's theory of descriptions. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I defend a Russellian form of descriptivism. The main supporting argument invokes a relation between meaning and thought. I argue that the meanings of sentences are the thoughts people use them to express. This is part of a Gricean outlook on meaning according to which psychological intentionality is prior to, and determinative of, linguistic intentionality. The right approach to thought, I argue in Chapter 1, is a type of functionalism on which thoughts have narrow contents. On this (...) view, the attitude ascriptions of a regimented psychology capture what people really believe and desire. These attitude ascriptions have content clauses that are what David Lewis calls ‘modified Ramsey sentences.’ I then conclude that, since the meanings of sentences are the narrow contents of the thoughts speakers use them to express, the meanings of sentences can also be represented with such descriptive sentences. I extend the view so that it applies to individual words. The resulting view is a form of descriptivism. Referring, I claim in Chapter 2, is the expression of a de re attitude. I argue that the non-psychological, de re individuation of thoughts captures only contingent features of these thoughts. Furthermore, whether a thought counts as de re depends on the attributor’s context. These two characteristics carry over to reference. The referential properties of speech acts and expressions are merely contingent features. Furthermore, whether a speech act or expression counts as referring depends upon the attributor’s context. In Chapter 3, I apply this version of descriptivism to indexicals, demonstratives and names. Indexicals turn out to have non-descriptive, context-insensitive, semantically determined meanings. Demonstratives have descriptive, context-sensitive, pragmatically determined meanings. Names, finally, have descriptive, context-insensitive, semantically determined meanings. In the final chapter, I address Putnam's model-theoretic argument, the most formidable obstacle to the form descriptivism outlined here. I criticize Lewis's ‘magnetist’ solution that invokes primitive naturalness because it is committed to the existence of incorrigible error about the external world. I suggest an empiricist approach on which psychological intentionality, and so ultimately linguistic intentionality as well, is anchored in experience. (shrink)

It is generally thought that definite determiners exclusively mark nouns as definite. In several languages, however, definite determiners may modify both nouns and verbs. As I will argue, the existence of these “multi‐functional” elements suggests that determiners are in fact phrases. This syntactic move has a philosophical payoff. Among other things, it allows us to cast Donnellan's distinction as an ordinary consequence of the context‐invariant compositional semantics of natural language, not as a matter of contextual manipulation or lexical ambiguity. Multi‐functional (...) determiners show us that Donnellan's distinction is,contraDonnellan, a matter of grammar. (shrink)

In “On Referring” Peter Strawson pointed out that incomplete descriptions pose a problem for Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions. Howard Wettstein and Michael Devitt appealed to incomplete descriptions to argue, first, that Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions fails, and second, that Donnellan’s referential/attributive distinction has semantic bite. Stephen Neale has defended Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions against Wettstein’s and Devitt’s objections. In this paper, my aim is twofold. First, I rebut Neale’s objections to Wettstein’s and Devitt’s argument and argue that (...) Neale’s attempt to provide an account of referential descriptions within a Russellian framework fails. Second, contra Devitt and Wettstein, I argue that the problem posed by incomplete descriptions shows that Donnellan was right in believing that referential descriptions refer even if the definite description fits nothing. (shrink)

Following Neale, I call the notion that there can be no such thing as a structured referring expression ‘structure skepticism’. The specific aim of this paper is to defuse some putative counterexamples to structure skepticism. The general aim is to bolster the case in favor of the thesis that lack of structure—in a sense to be made precise—is essential to reference.