The ambition of the paper is to provide a solution to the problem posed by Von Wright (1999): how is it possible that the two actions, one of producing P and the other of preventing P can have different deontic status, the former being obligatory and the latter being forbidden. The solution for the problem is sought for by an investigation into connections between imperative and deontic logic. First, it is asked whether a solution could be found in Lemmon's (1965) (...) system of "change logic", using his idea on connection between logic of orders being in force and deontic logic. The answer is the negative one. Next, the connection between Lemmon's imperative logic and deontic logic given in Aqvist's paper - "Next" and "Ought" (1965) - is analyzed. Than, the Lemmon's treatment of imperatives is restricted to the natural language imperatives and Aqvist's way of connecting imperative and deontic logic is modified accordingly. Some principles for the natural language imperatives are established (the negation rule ; the law of contraposition for imperative conditionals) and a simple "global" semantics is developed. The notion of "opposite action" is introduced and it is given an important role in semantics. Finally, a solution for von Wright's problem is given. In the closing sections some further topics for investigation are hinted: one of them being the connection between Aqvist's epistemic- imperative conception of interrogatives and "epistemic obligations", the other being formalization of the idea that imperatives create and re-create obligation patterns that can be described in deontic terms. (shrink)

Ever since the publication of Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, there’s been a raging debate in philosophy of language over whether meaning and thought are, in some sense, normative. Most participants in the normativity wars seem to agree that some uses of meaningful expressions are semantically correct while disagreeing over whether this entails anything normative. But what is it to say that a use of an expression is semantically correct? On the so-called orthodox construal, it is to say (...) that it doesn’t result in a factual mistake, that is, in saying or thinking something false. On an alternative construal it is instead to say that it doesn’t result in a distinctively linguistic mistake, that is, in misusing the expression. It is natural to think that these two construals of semantic correctness are simply about different things and not in competition with each other. However, this is not the common view. Instead, several philosophers who subscribe to the orthodox construal have argued that the alternative construal of correctness as use in accordance with meaning doesn’t make any sense, partly because there are no clear cases of linguistic mistakes (Whiting 2016, Wikforss 2001). In this paper I develop and defend the idea that there’s a distinctively linguistic notion of correctness as use in accordance with meaning and argue that there are clear cases of linguistic mistakes. (shrink)

Imperatives cannot be true or false, so they are shunned by logicians. And yet imperatives can be combined by logical connectives: "kiss me and hug me" is the conjunction of "kiss me" with "hug me". This example may suggest that declarative and imperative logic are isomorphic: just as the conjunction of two declaratives is true exactly if both conjuncts are true, the conjunction of two imperatives is satisfied exactly if both conjuncts are satisfied—what more is there to say? Much more, (...) I argue. "If you love me, kiss me", a conditional imperative, mixes a declarative antecedent ("you love me") with an imperative consequent ("kiss me"); it is satisfied if you love and kiss me, violated if you love but don't kiss me, and avoided if you don't love me. So we need a logic of three -valued imperatives which mixes declaratives with imperatives. I develop such a logic. (shrink)

The meaning of a declarative sentence and that of an interrogative sentence differ in their aspect of mood. A semantics of mood has to account for the differences in meaning between these sentences, and it also has to explain that sentences in different moods may have a common core. The meaning of the declarative mood is to be explained not in terms of actual force (contra Dummett), but in terms of potential force. The meaning of the declarative sentence (including its (...) mood) is called the assertion-candidate, which is explained by what one must know in order to be entitled to utter the declarative with assertive force. Both a cognitive notion (knowledge) and a pragmatic notion (assertive force) are thus part of the explanation of the assertion-candidate. Davidson’s criticism that such a theory is in need of an account of the distinction between standard and non-standard uses of the declarative is answered: without counter-indications an utterance of a declarative sentence is understood as having assertive force. The meaning of an interrogative sentence, the question-candidate, and that of the other sentence types can ultimately be explained in terms of their specific relations to the assertion-candidate. Martin-Löf’s constructive type theory is used to show the philosophical relevance of a semantics of mood. The constructivist notion of proposition needs to be embedded in a theory of the assertion-candidate, which fulfils the offices of being the meaning of the declarative sentence, the content of judgement and assertion and the bearer of epistemic truth. (shrink)

This paper discusses a set of observations, many of which are novel, concerning differences between the adjectival modals _certain_ and _possible_ and their adverbial counterparts _certainly_ and _possibly_. It argues that the observations can be derived from a standard interpretation of _certain_/_certainly_ as universal and _possible_/_possibly_ as existential quantifiers over possible worlds, in conjunction with the hypothesis that the adjectives quantify over knowledge and the adverbs quantify over belief. The claims on which the argument relies include the following: (i) knowledge (...) implies belief, (ii) agents have epistemic access to their belief, (iii) relevance is closed under speakers’ belief, and (iv) commitment is pragmatically inconsistent with explicit denial of belief. (shrink)

Pragmatists have argued that doxastic or epistemic norms do not apply to beliefs, but to changes of beliefs; thus not to the holding or not-holding, but to the acquisition or removal of beliefs. Doxastic voluntarism generally claims that humans acquire beliefs in a deliberate and controlled way. This paper introduces Negative Doxastic Voluntarism according to which there is a fundamental asymmetry in belief change: humans tend to acquire beliefs more or less automatically and unreflectively, but they tend to withdraw beliefs (...) in a controlled and deliberate way. I first present a variety of philosophical, empirical and logical arguments for Negative Doxastic Voluntarism. Then I raise two objections against it. First, the apparent asymmetry may result from a confusion of belief with other doxastic attitudes like assumption, supposition, hypothesis or opinion. Second, the apparent asymmetry seems to vanish if we focus on doxastic states rather than just beliefs. Some rejoinders and their consequences for the vague concept of belief are sketched. (shrink)

In the middle of the 20th century, it was a common Wittgenstein-inspired idea in philosophy that for a linguistic expression to have a meaning is for it to be governed by a rule of use. In other words, it was widely believed that meanings are to be identified with use-conditions. However, as things stand, this idea is widely taken to be vague and mysterious, inconsistent with “truth-conditional semantics”, and subject to the Frege-Geach problem. In this paper I reinvigorate the ideas (...) that meaningfulness is a matter of being governed by rules of use and that meanings are best thought of in terms of use-conditions. I will do this by sketching the Rule-Governance view of the nature of linguistic meaningfulness, showing that the view isn’t by itself subject to the two problems, and explain why the idea has had a lasting appeal to philosophers from Strawson to Kaplan and why we should find it continually attractive. (shrink)

In this survey paper, I start from two classical theses of speech act theory: that speech act content is uniformly propositional and that sentence mood encodes illocutionary force. These theses have been questioned in recent work, both in philosophy and linguistics. The force/content distinction itself – a cornerstone of 20‐century philosophy of language – has come to be rejected by some theorists, unmoved by the famous ‘Frege–Geach’ argument. The paper reviews some of these debates.

Without violating the spirit of Game-Theoretical semantics, its results can be re-worked in Martin-Löf''s Constructive Type Theory by interpreting games as types of Myself''s winning strategies. The philosophical ideas behind Game-Theoretical Semantics in fact highly recommend restricting strategies to effective ones, which is the only controversial step in our interpretation. What is gained, then, is a direct connection between linguistic semantics and computer programming.

This paper presents a novel proof-theoretic account of dialogue coherence. It focuses on an abstract class of cooperative information-oriented dialogues and describes how their structure can be accounted for in terms of a multi-agent hybrid inference system that combines natural deduction with information transfer and observation. We show how certain dialogue structures arise out of the interplay between the inferential roles of logical connectives (i.e., sentence semantics), a rule for transferring information between agents, and a rule for information flow between (...) agents and their environment. The order of explanation is opposite in direction to that adopted in game-theoretic semantics, where sentence semantics (or a notion of valid inference) is derived from winning dialogue strategies. That approach and the current one may, however, be reconcilable, since we focus on cooperative dialogue, whereas the game-theoretic tradition concentrates on adversarial dialogue. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel proof-theoretic account of dialogue coherence. It focuses on an abstract class of cooperative information-oriented dialogues and describes how their structure can be accounted for in terms of a multi-agent hybrid inference system that combines natural deduction with information transfer and observation. We show how certain dialogue structures arise out of the interplay between the inferential roles of logical connectives (i.e., sentence semantics), a rule for transferring information between agents, and a rule for information flow between (...) agents and their environment. The order of explanation is opposite in direction to that adopted in game-theoretic semantics, where sentence semantics (or a notion of valid inference) is derived from winning dialogue strategies. That approach and the current one may, however, be reconcilable, since we focus on cooperative dialogue, whereas the game-theoretic tradition concentrates on adversarial dialogue. (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)

This paper concerns the formal semantic analysis of imperative sentences. It is argued that such an analysis cannot be deferred to the semantics of propositions, under any of the three commonly adopted strategies: the performative analysis, the sentence radical approach to propositions, and the (nondeclarative) mood-as-operator approach. Whereas the first two are conceptually problematic, the third faces empirical problems: various complex imperatives should be analysed in terms of semantic operators over simple imperatives. One particularly striking case is the Dutch pluperfect (...) imperative. It is argued that this construction should be analysed as a genuine counterfactual imperative. On the constructive side, in the last part of the paper a formal semantic analysis of imperatives is presented, in the framework of Update Semantics. On this analysis, imperatives are sui generis semantic entities, on a par with propositions. The analysis also includes an account of the counterfactual imperatives. (shrink)

This article begins by distinguishing force and mood. Then it lays out desiderata on a successful account. It sketches as background the program of truth-theoretic semantics. Next, it surveys assimilation approaches and argues that they are inadequate. Then it shows how the fulfillment-conditional approach can be applied to imperatives, interrogatives, molecular sentences containing them, and quantification into mood markers. Next, it considers briefly the recent set of propositions approach to the semantics of interrogatives and exclamatives. Finally, it shows how to (...) integrate exclamatives and optatives into a framework similar to the fulfillment approach. (shrink)

What knowledge would suffice to yield an interpretation of an arbitrary utterance of a language when such knowledge is based on evidence plausibly available to a nonspeaker of that language? it is argued that it is enough to know a theory of truth for the language and that the theory satisfies tarski's 'convention t' and that it gives an optimal fit to data about sentences held true, Under specified conditions, By native speakers.

Quantified NPs in questions may lead to an interpretation in which the NP quantifies into the question. Which dish did every guest bring? can be understood as: 'For every guest x: which dish did x bring?'. After a review of previous approaches that tried to capture this quantification formally or to explain it away, it is argued that such readings involve quantification into speech acts. As the algebra of speech acts is more limited than a Boolean algebra – it only (...) contains conjunction, not disjunction or negation – it is predicted that only universal quantifiers can scope out of questions or other speech acts. The approach is extended to indirect questions, which either are embedded speech acts or coerced to denote the true answers, depending on the embedding verb; in the latter case a Boolean structure results, and we find wide-scope readings of non-universal quantifiers. (shrink)

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.

David Lewis has tried to explain what it is for a possible language to be the actual language of a population in terms of his game-theoretical notion of a convention. This explanation of the actual language relation is re-evaluated in the light of some typical episodes of linguistic communication, and it is argued that speakers of a language do not generally stand in the actual language relation to that language if the actual language relation is explicated in Lewis's way. In (...) order to avoid these counterexamples, an alternative account of the actual language relation is proposed which makes use of Lewis's notion of convention in a different way. (shrink)

Sentences with slifting parentheticals The formal analysis of natural language, Mouton, The Hague, 1973) grammaticalize an intriguing interaction between truth-conditional meaning and speech act function. In such sentences, the assertion strength of the slifted clause is modulated by the parenthetical, which provides evidential support :480–496, 1952; Asher in J Semant 17:31–50, 2000; Rooryck in Glot Int 5:125–133, 2001; Jayez and Rossari in: Corblin, de Swart Handbook of French semantics, CSLI, Stanford, 2004; Davis et al. in Proc Semant Linguist Theory 17:71–88, (...) 2007; Simons in Lingua 117:1034–1056, 2007; Murray in Semant Pragmat 7:1–53, 2014; Maier and Bary in: Brochhagen et al. Proceedings of the 20th Amsterdam colloquium, 2015; AnderBois in Semant Pragmat 9:1–55, 2016; Hunter in Dialogue Discourse 7:1–35, 2016). Starting with the idea that assertability comes in degrees, this paper develops a probabilistic updatemodel that captures the role of parentheticality as a language tool for qualifying commitments. A crucial role here is played by the rule of Jeffrey conditionalization, which factors in the uncertainty of the parenthetical information itself. The model also derives certain effects of parenthetical modification not found in regular embedding constructions, including the fact that slifting parentheticals are limited to creating upward-entailing environments. (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.

Illocutionary force and semantic content are widely held to occupy utterly different categories in at least two ways: Any expression serving as an indicator of illocutionary force must be without semantic content, and no such expression can embed. A refined account of the force/content distinction is offered here that does the explanatory work that the standard distinction does, while, in accounting for the behavior of a range of parenthetical expressions, shows neither nor to be compulsory. The refined account also motivates (...) a development of the "scorekeeping model" of conversation, helps to isolate a distinction between illocutionary force and illocutionary commitment, and reveals one precise respect in which meaning is only explicable in terms of use. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss Künne’s Modest Theory of truth, and develop a variation on a worry that Field expresses with respect to Horwich’s related view. The worry is not that deflationary accounts are false, but rather that, because they take propositions as truth-bearers, they are not philosophically interesting. Compatibly with the intuitions of ordinary speakers, we can understand proposition so that the proposals do account for a property that such truth-bearers have. Nevertheless, we saliently apply the truth-concept also to (...) entities such as utterances or assertions , and the de flationary accounts do not provide a similarly deflationary account for those applications. In fact, there are good reasons to suspect that no such account would be forthcoming; we need something more substantive or in flationary there. (shrink)

This paper proposes a framework for formalising intuitions about the behaviour of imperative commands. It seeks to capture notions of satisfaction and coherence. Rules are proposed to express key aspects of the general logical behaviour of imperative constructions. A key objective is for the framework to allow patterns of behaviour to be described while avoiding making any commitments about how commands, and their satisfaction criteria, are to be interpreted. We consider the status of some conundrums of imperative logic in the (...) context of this proposal. (shrink)

Utterances of natural language sentences can be used to communicate not just contents, but also forces. This paper examines this topic from a cross-linguistic perspective on sentential mood. Recent work in this area focuses on conversational dynamics: the three sentence types can be associated with distinctive kinds of conversational effects called sentential forces, modeled as three kinds of updates to the discourse context. This paper has two main goals. First, it provides two arguments, on empirical and methodological grounds, for treating (...) sentential force as part of a compositional dynamic semantics, rather than a dynamic pragmatics. Second, it formulates a minimal dynamic semantic analysis that covers the data at the heart of these arguments, incorporating existing analyses of the three major moods, evidentials and conjunction. A further aim of the paper is to sharpen the distinction between sentential force and utterance force, and discuss its implications. (shrink)

An argument is developed at some length to show that any semantical theory which treats superficially nonperformative sentences as being governed by performative prefaces at some level of underlying structure must either leave those sentences semantically uninterpreted or assign them the wrong truth-conditions. Several possible escapes from this dilemma are examined; it is tentatively concluded that such hypotheses as the Ross-Lakoff-Sadock “Performative Analysis” should be rejected despite their attractions.

ABSTRACT It has become standard to conceive of metalinguistic disagreement as motivated by a form of negotiation, aimed at reaching consensus because of the practical consequences of using a word with one content rather than another. This paper presents an alternative motive for expressing and pursuing metalinguistic disagreement. In using words with given criteria, we betray our location amongst social categories or groups. Because of this, metalinguistic disagreement can be used as a stage upon which to perform a social identity. (...) The ways in which metalinguistic disagreements motivated in this way diverge in character from metalinguistic negotiations are described, as are several consequences of the existence of metalinguistic disagreements motivated in this way. (shrink)

We construct an extension P of the standard language of classical propositional logic by adjoining to the alphabet of a new category of logical-pragmatic signs. The well formed formulas of are calledradical formulas (rfs) of P;rfs preceded by theassertion sign constituteelementary assertive formulas of P, which can be connected together by means of thepragmatic connectives N, K, A, C, E, so as to obtain the set of all theassertive formulas (afs). Everyrf of P is endowed with atruth value defined classically, (...) and everyaf is endowed with ajustification value, defined in terms of the intuitive notion of proof and depending on the truth values of its radical subformulas. In this framework, we define the notion ofpragmatic validity in P and yield a list of criteria of pragmatic validity which hold under the assumption that only classical metalinguistic procedures of proof be accepted. We translate the classical propositional calculus (CPC) and the intuitionistic propositional calculus (IPC) into the assertive part of P and show that this translation allows us to interpret Intuitionistic Logic as an axiomatic theory of the constructive proof concept rather than an alternative to Classical Logic. Finally, we show that our framework provides a suitable background for discussing classical problems in the philosophy of logic. (shrink)

I resolve the major challenge to an Expressivist theory of the meaning of normative discourse: the Frege–Geach Problem. Drawing on considerations from the semantics of directive language (e.g., imperatives), I argue that, although certain forms of Expressivism (like Gibbard’s) do run into at least one version of the Problem, it is reasonably clear that there is a version of Expressivism that does not.

In this paper I will develop a view about the semantics of imperatives, which I term Modal Noncognitivism, on which imperatives might be said to have truth conditions (dispositionally, anyway), but on which it does not make sense to see them as expressing propositions (hence does not make sense to ascribe to them truth or falsity). This view stands against “Cognitivist” accounts of the semantics of imperatives, on which imperatives are claimed to express propositions, which are then enlisted in explanations (...) of the relevant logico-semantic phenomena. It also stands against the major competitors to Cognitivist accounts—all of which are non-truth-conditional and, as a result, fail to provide satisfying explanations of the fundamental semantic characteristics of imperatives (or so I argue). The view of imperatives I defend here improves on various treatments of imperatives on the market in giving an empirically and theoretically adequate account of their semantics and logic. It yields explanations of a wide range of semantic and logical phenomena about imperatives—explanations that are, I argue, at least as satisfying as the sorts of explanations of semantic and logical phenomena familiar from truth-conditional semantics. But it accomplishes this while defending the notion—which is, I argue, substantially correct—that imperatives could not have propositions, or truth conditions, as their meanings. (shrink)

Some utterances of imperative clauses have directive force—they impose obligations. Others have permissive force—they extend permissions. The dominant view is that this difference in force is not accompanied by a difference in semantic content. Drawing on data involving free choice items in imperatives, I argue that the dominant view is incorrect.

An argument is developed at some length to show that any semantical theory which treats superficially nonperformative sentences as being governed by performative prefaces at some level of underlying structure must either leave those sentences semantically uninterpreted or assign them the wrong truth-conditions. Several possible escapes from this dilemma are examined; it is tentatively concluded that such hypotheses as the Ross-Lakoff-Sadock Performative Analysis should be rejected despite their attractions.

[ENG] The aim of this paper is to analyze the „possibility puzzle” presented by Shapiro (2011) in the context of the debate between conventionalism and non-conventionalism in speech act theory. Conventionalism claims that for every speech act there is a pattern (convention) which determines its illocutionary force. To perform a felicitous speech act is to fulfil necessary and sufficient conditions for this particular speech act. Non-conventionalism criticizes the view that for every speech act there is a conventional pattern and hidden (...) conditions, which are to be fulfilled. This view maintains the conventional thesis for the so-called strict conventional speech acts (e.g. performatives), but negates using universal quantifier for so-called communicative speech acts whose aim is, in short, to express an intention and force someone to act by virtue of this intention. As in (Shapiro 2011), Phil said: in order for someone to have the power to make, change and apply rules, there has to be a rule that empowers someone to do so. This objection concerned „The First Legis- lator” only from the conventional perspective on speech acts. If it can be maintained that The First Legislator’s speech acts may be non-conventional, then Phil’s argument misses the point. Finally, I will emphasize that only lawyers analyze „the very first speech acts” whereas for philosophers, the problem of e.g. „the very first question” is less absorbing. -/- [PL] Celem niniejszego artykułu jest przedstawienie tak zwanej Aporii Phila (possibility puz- zle) przedstawionej przez Shapiro (2011) w kontekście sporu konwencjonalizm–nonkon- wencjonalizm w teorii aktów mowy. Konwencjonalizm utrzymuje, że dla każdego aktu mowy istnieje konwencja, która determinuje moc illokucyjną aktu. Wykonać w pełni for- tunny akt mowy to spełnić wystarczające i konieczne warunki określone dla danego aktu mowy. Nonkonwencjonalizm krytykuje pogląd, że dla każdego aktu mowy istnieje okre- ślona konwencja oraz ukryte warunki, które należy spełnić. Ten pogląd utrzymuje kon- wencjonalną tezę dla tak zwanych stricte konwencjonalnych aktów mowy (na przykład performatywów), ale neguje użycie dużego kwantyfikatora dla tak zwanych komunika- cyjnych aktów mowy, których celem jest, w skrócie, wyrażenie pewnej intencji i zmusze- nie kogoś poprzez jej wyrażenie do określonego postępowania. Phil, bohater historii z książki Shapiro (2011), podkreślił, iż zawsze musi istnieć reguła upoważniająca do two- rzenia prawa. Ten zarzut dotyczący „Pierwszego Legislatora” jest zasadny tylko z per- spektywy konwencjonalizmu. Jeżeli można utrzymywać, że akt mowy Pierwszego Legislatora może być nonkonwencjonalny, wtedy argument Phila jest nietrafny. Na końcu scharakteryzowany jest następujący fenomen: tylko prawnicy analizują „pierwsze akty mowy”, natomiast dla filozofów problem „pierwszego pytania” nie jest tak absorbujący. (shrink)

Later Wittgenstein is famous for having related meaning and use. Nonetheless, thanks to Dummett and Kripke, and the debates they provoked, a conventional wisdom is nowadays available: Wittgenstein, so the story goes, adopted a theory of meaning in terms of assertability conditions. This paper claims that it is wrong to attribute such a theory to the Investigations. For such a thesis to go through, one of the following two scenarios should be confirmed. It should either be true that Wittgenstein reduces (...) all meaning-engendering uses and conditions of use to assertion and assertability conditions, or that he invokes assertability conditions to show that meaning is always use. But, I will be claiming, the first scenario is excluded by Wittgenstein’s thoughts about the role of assertion and his thoughts about the sense-force distinction, while the second scenario is excluded by Wittgenstein’s thoughts about truth. (shrink)

a comprehensive, somewhat Gricean theory of speech acts, including an account of communicative intentions and inferences, a taxonomy of speech acts, and coverage of many topics in pragmatics -/- .

I argue that the concept of direction of fit is best seen as picking out a certain inferential property of a psychological attitude. The property in question is one that believing shares with assuming and fantasizing and fails to share with desire. Unfortunately, the standard analysis of DOF obscures this fact because it conflates two very different properties of an attitude: that in virtue of which it displays a certain DOF, and that in virtue of which it displays certain revision (...) conditions. I claim that the latter corresponds with the aim of an attitude, not its DOF. In order to remedy this failure of the standard analysis, I offer an alternative account of DOF, which I refer to as the two-content analysis. (shrink)

John Cook Wilson (1849–1915) was Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College, Oxford and the founder of ‘Oxford Realism’, a philosophical movement that flourished at Oxford during the first decades of the 20th century. Although trained as a classicist and a mathematician, his most important contribution was to the theory of knowledge, where he argued that knowledge is factive and not definable in terms of belief, and he criticized ‘hybrid’ and ‘externalist’ accounts. He also argued for direct realism in perception, (...) criticizing both empiricism and idealism, and argued for a moderate nominalist view of universals as being in rebus and only ‘apprehended’ by their particulars. His influence helped swaying Oxford away from idealism and, through figures such as H. A. Prichard, Gilbert Ryle, or J. L. Austin, his ideas were also to some extent at the origin of ‘moral intuitionism’ and ‘ordinary language philosophy’ which defined much of Oxford philosophy until the second half of the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, his name and legacy were all but forgotten for generations after World War II. Still, his views on knowledge are with us today, being in part at work in the writings of philosophers as diverse as John McDowell, Charles Travis, and Timothy Williamson. (shrink)

An abridged and slightly updated version of "Pragmatics", in Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Routledge 620-633 (1998).

This dissertation is a contribution to the philosophy of language. Its central question is: In virtue of which facts do linguistic expressions mean what they do? E.g. why does “apple” mean apple in English? The question receives a systematic answer; in short: Linguistic expressions mean what they do because among their users, there are linguistic conventions and social norms to use and understand them in certain ways. The answer is clarified and defended as a central thesis. For in this form, (...) it is at best a slogan: What is meaning? What is it to use and understand expressions? What are conventions and social norms anyway? How does the use and understanding determine meaning? The goal of the dissertation consists in answering these questions. (shrink)