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In this paper, I briefly outline the notion of a truth-conditional meaning-theory and introduce two prominent problems it faces. The“extensionality problem” arises because not all correct specifications of truth-conditions are meaning-giving. The “explanatory problem”concerns the extent to which truth-conditional meaning-theories can contribute to the task of clarifying the nature of linguistic meaning.The “principle of humanity” is supposed to resolve both issues simultaneously. I argue that it fails to do so. |
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Abstract: According to deflationism, grasp of the concept of truth consists in nothing more than a disposition to accept a priori (non-paradoxical) instances of the schema:(DS) It is true that p if and only if p.According to contextualism, the same expression with the same meaning might, on different occasions of use, express different propositions bearing different truth-conditions (where this does not result from indexicality and the like). On this view, what is expressed in an utterance depends in a non-negligible way (...) |
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It is easy to think of Frege as having offered two unintentionally discordant criteria for the identity of senses—one tied to the truth conditions of sentences, and one meant to capture relations of cognitive discriminability. This reading, however, is doubly mistaken; the discord between these two ways of thinking of senses has a Fregean resolution, but neither the resolution nor either of the original two pictures affords a genuine criterion for the identity of senses. |
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In a recent article, Hofweber presents a new, and surprising, argument for idealism. His argument is surprising because it starts with an apparently innocent premiss from the philosophy of language: that ‘that’-clauses do not refer. I do not think that Hofweber's argument works, and my first aim in this paper is to explain why. However, I agree with Hofweber that what we say about ‘that’-clauses has important metaphysical consequences. My second aim is to argue that, far from leading us into (...) |
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Neo-Fregeans take their argument for arithmetical realism to depend on the availability of certain, so-called broadly syntactic tests for whether a given expression functions as a singular term. The broadly syntactic tests proposed in the neo-Fregean tradition are the so-called inferential test and the Aristotelian test. If these tests are to subserve the neo-Fregean argument, they must be at least adequate, in the sense of correctly classifying paradigm cases of singular terms and non-singular terms. In this paper, I pursue two (...) |
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I distinguish between being cognisant and being able to perform intelligent operations. The former, but not the latter, minimally involves the capacity to make adequate judgements about one's relation to objects in the environment. The referential nature of cognisance entails that the mental states of cognisant systems must be inter-related holistically, such that an individual thought becomes possible because of its relation to a system of potential thoughts. I use Gareth Evans' 'Generality Constraint' as a means of describing how the (...) |
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Should we explicate truth in terms of meaning, or meaning in terms of truth? Ramsey, Prior and Strawson all favoured the former approach: a statement is true if and only if things are as the speaker, in making the statement, states them to be; similarly, a belief is true if and only if things are as a thinker with that belief thereby believes them to be. I defend this explication of truth against a range of objections.Ramsey formalized this account of (...) |
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I argue that maps do not feature predication, as analyzed by Frege and Tarski. I take as my foil (Casati and Varzi, Parts and places, 1999), which attributes predication to maps. I argue that the details of Casati and Varzi’s own semantics militate against this attribution. Casati and Varzi emphasize what I call the Absence Intuition: if a marker representing some property (such as mountainous terrain) appears on a map, then absence of that marker from a map coordinate signifies absence (...) |
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In this paper I provide a theory of the speech act of assertion according to which assertion is a species of joint action. In doing so I rely on a theory of joint action developed in more detail elsewhere. Here we need to distinguish between the genus, joint action, and an important species of joint action, namely, what I call joint epistemic action. In the case of the latter, but not necessarily the former, participating agents have epistemic goals, e.g., the (...) |
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Lawlor-Krista_Files-indexicals-and-descriptivism. |
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RésuméLe sens intentionnel ?une énonciation comprend selon Grice un acte illocutoire principal et des actes illocutoires secondaires, qui peuvent être soit des implicatures conventionnelles soit des implkatures non‐conventionnelles. Je montre que cette analyse, sous ľnterprétation visée par Grice, est défectueuse en ceci que i) elle exclut que ľacte illocutoire principal puisse être non littéral, ii) elle ne rend pas compte de ce que les implicatures conventionnelles sont annulables et iii) elle confond sous ľappellation ?implicature non conventionnelle deux types de phénomènes (...) |
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In the first part ("Determination"), I consider different notions of determination, contrast and compare modal with non-modal accounts and then defend two a-modality theses concerning essence and supervenience. I argue, first, that essence is a a-modal notion, i.e. not usefully analysed in terms of metaphysical modality, and then, contra Kit Fine, that essential properties can be exemplified contingently. I argue, second, that supervenience is also an a-modal notion, and that it should be analysed in terms of constitution relations between properties. (...) |
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Stephen Yablo has argued for metaontological antirealism: he believes that the sentences claiming or denying the existence of numbers (or other abstract entities or mereological sums) are inapt for truth valuation, because the reference failure of a numerical singular term (or a singular term for an abstract entity or a mereological sum) would not produce a truth value gap in any sentence containing that term. At the same time, Yablo believes that nothing similar applies to singular terms that aim to (...) |
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This paper examines popular‘conventionalist’explanations of why philosophers need not back up their claims about how‘we’use our words with empirical studies of actual usage. It argues that such explanations are incompatible with a number of currently popular and plausible assumptions about language's ‘social’character. Alternate explanations of the philosopher's purported entitlement to make a priori claims about‘our’usage are then suggested. While these alternate explanations would, unlike the conventionalist ones, be compatible with the more social picture of language, they are each shown to (...) |
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I shall be mainly concerned with the question ‘What is personal propositional knowledge?’. This question is obviously quite narrowly focused, in three respects. In the first place, there is impersonal as well as personal knowledge. Second, a distinction is often drawn between propositional knowledge and practical knowledge. And third, as well as asking what knowledge is, it is also possible to ask whether and how knowledge of various kinds can be acquired: causal knowledge, a priori knowledge, moral knowledge, and so (...) |
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A. P. A. Hutchinson. What's the Point of Elucidation? Metaphilosophy, 2007, vol. 38, no. 5, pages 691-713. Published by and copyright Wiley-Blackwell Publishing. The definitive version of this article is available from http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/. |
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Gordon Baker in his last decade published a series of papers (now collected in Baker 2004), which are revolutionary in their proposals for understanding of later Wittgenstein. Taking our lead from the first of those papers, on "perspicuous presentations," we offer new criticisms of 'elucidatory' readers of later Wittgenstein, such as Peter Hacker: we argue that their readings fail to connect with the radically therapeutic intent of the 'perspicuous presentation' concept, as an achievement-term, rather than a kind of 'objective' mapping (...) |
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Strawson contends that the proper subject matter of a theory of meaning includes what is meant on an occasion of utterance. If his contention is correct, it rules out a recent proposal that Davidsonian semantic theory should limit its scope so that it does not capture the extension of what is meant or what is said. In this paper, I reject Strawson's arguments for his contention. Despite the persuasive ring of his claim that the essential character of linguistic rules is (...) |
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This paper describes a model of legal reasoning and a logic for reasoning with rules, principles and goals that is especially suited to this model of legal reasoning. The paper consists of three parts. The first part describes a model of legal reasoning based on a two-layered view of the law. The first layer consists of principles and goals that express fundamental ideas of a legal system. The second layer contains legal rules which in a sense summarise the outcome of (...) |
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In this paper, we offer a theory of the role of the nominal in complex demonstrative expressions, such as 'this dog' or 'that glove with a hole in it'. |
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W. V. Quine thinks logical truth can be defined in purely extensional terms, as follows: a logical truth is a true sentence that exemplifies a logical form all of whose instances are true. P. F. Strawson objects that one cannot say what it is for a particular use of a sentence to exemplify a logical form without appealing to intensional notions, and hence that Quine's efforts to define logical truth in purely extensional terms cannot succeed. Quine's reply to this criticism (...) |
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It is often maintained that co-referential terms can be substituted for one another whilst preserving truth-value in extensional contexts, and preserving grammaticality in all contexts. Crispin Wright calls this claim ‘The Reference Principle’ . Since Wright defines extensional contexts as those in which truth-value is determined only by reference, it is the assertion about substitution salva congruitate that is significant. Wright argues that RP is the key to understanding how Frege came to hold, paradoxically, that the concept horse is not (...) |
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There is an incompatibility between the deflationist approach to truth, which makes truth transparent on the basis of an antecedent grasp of meaning, and the traditional endeavour, exemplified by Davidson, to explicate meaning through of truth. I suggest that both parties are in the explanatory red: deflationist lack a non-truth-involving theory of meaning and Davidsonians lack a non-deflationary account of truth. My focus is on the attempts of the latter party to resolve their problem. I look in detail at Davidson's (...) |
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This paper examines the view of ethical language that Wittgenstein took in later years. It argues that according to this view, ethics falls into place as a part of our natural history, while every sense of the mystical or supernatural that once surrounded it is irrevocably lost. Moreover, Wittgenstein argues that ethical language does not correspond to reality “in the way” in which a physical theory does. I propose an interpretation of this claim that shows how it sets his view (...) |
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Cet article propose un traitement de l'indexicalité mentale utilisant la notion de fichier. |
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Truth is one of the central subjects in philosophy. It is also one of the largest. Truth has been a topic of discussion in its own right for thousands of years. Moreover, a huge variety of issues in philosophy relate to truth, either by relying on theses about truth, or implying theses about truth. |
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La teleosemántica es una teoría teleológica de las representaciones mentales, propugnada por David Papineau, que tiene como propósito ofrecer una explicación naturalista y evolucionista de dichas representaciones, en particular de las creencias. Mi objetivo será analizar las creencias y su relación con la verdad en la obra de Papineau. Según Papineau, los contenidos y las representaciones mentales, específicamente las creencias, cumplen funciones derivadas de la evolución biológica de la especie, y correlativamente, la finalidad de las creencias y los contenidos proviene (...) |