Switch to: Citations

Add references

You must login to add references.
  1. Literal Meaning.François Récanati - 2002 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    According to the dominant position among philosophers of language today, we can legitimately ascribe determinate contents to natural language sentences, independently of what the speaker actually means. This view contrasts with that held by ordinary language philosophers fifty years ago: according to them, speech acts, not sentences, are the primary bearers of content. François Recanati argues for the relevance of this controversy to the current debate about semantics and pragmatics. Is 'what is said' determined by linguistic conventions, or is it (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   514 citations  
  • Mental Files.François Récanati - 2012 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Over the past fifty years the philosophy of language and mind has been dominated by a nondescriptivist approach to content and reference. This book attempts to recast and systematize that approach by offering an indexical model in terms of mental files. According to Recanati, we refer through mental files, the function of which is to store information derived through certain types of contextual relation the subject bears to objects in his or her environment. The reference of a file is determined (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   262 citations  
  • (4 other versions)The Logic of Scientific Discovery.Karl Popper - 1959 - Studia Logica 9:262-265.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1564 citations  
  • The Foundations of Two-Dimensional Semantics.David J. Chalmers - 2006 - In Manuel Garcia-Carpintero & Josep Macià (eds.), Two-Dimensional Semantics. New York: Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 55-140.
    Why is two-dimensional semantics important? One can think of it as the most recent act in a drama involving three of the central concepts of philosophy: meaning, reason, and modality. First, Kant linked reason and modality, by suggesting that what is necessary is knowable a priori, and vice versa. Second, Frege linked reason and meaning, by proposing an aspect of meaning (sense) that is constitutively tied to cognitive signi?cance. Third, Carnap linked meaning and modality, by proposing an aspect of meaning (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   226 citations  
  • The problem of the essential indexical.John Perry - 1979 - Noûs 13 (1):3-21.
    Perry argues that certain sorts of indexicals are 'essential', in the sense that they cannot be eliminated in favor of descriptions. This paper also introduces the influential idea that certain sorts of indexicals play a special role in thought, and have a special connection to action.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   883 citations  
  • (4 other versions)The Logic of Scientific Discovery.K. Popper - 1959 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 10 (37):55-57.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1326 citations  
  • Insensitive Semantics: A Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism.Herman Cappelen & Ernest Lepore - 2005 - Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Edited by Ernest LePore.
    _Insensitive Semantics_ is an overview of and contribution to the debates about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one. Provides detailed and wide-ranging overviews of the central positions and arguments surrounding contextualism Addresses broad and varied aspects of the distinction between the semantic and non-semantic content of language Defends a distinctive (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   248 citations  
  • (1 other version)Truth in fiction.David K. Lewis - 1978 - American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1):37–46.
    It is advisable to treat some sorts of discourse about fiction with the aid of an intensional operator "in such-And-Such fiction...." the operator may appear either explicitly or tacitly. It may be analyzed in terms of similarity of worlds, As follows: "in the fiction f, A" means that a is true in those of the worlds where f is told as known fact rather than fiction that differ least from our world, Or from the belief worlds of the community in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   431 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Speaker’s Reference and Semantic Reference.Saul A. Kripke - 1977 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 2 (1):255-276.
    am going to discuss some issues inspired by a well-known paper ofKeith Donnellan, "Reference and Definite Descriptions,”2 but the interest—to me—of the contrast mentioned in my title goes beyond Donnellan's paper: I think it is of considerable constructive as well as critical importance to the philosophy oflanguage. These applications, however, and even everything I might want to say relative to Donnellan’s paper, cannot be discussed in full here because of problems of length. Moreover, although I have a considerable interest in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   412 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Speaker's reference and semantic reference.Saul A. Kripke - 1977 - In Peter A. French, Theodore Edward Uehling & Howard K. Wettstein (eds.), Studies in the philosophy of language. Morris: University of Minnesota, Morris. pp. 255-296.
    am going to discuss some issues inspired by a well-known paper ofKeith Donnellan, "Reference and Definite Descriptions,”2 but the interest—to me—of the contrast mentioned in my title goes beyond Donnellan's paper: I think it is of considerable constructive as well as critical importance to the philosophy oflanguage. These applications, however, and even everything I might want to say relative to Donnellan’s paper, cannot be discussed in full here because of problems of length. Moreover, although I have a considerable interest in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   354 citations  
  • Pragmatic Presuppositions.Robert Stalnaker - 1999 - In Context and Content: Essays on Intentionality in Speech and Thought. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 47--62.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   314 citations  
  • Afterthoughts.David Kaplan - 1989 - In Joseph Almog, John Perry & Howard Wettstein (eds.), Themes From Kaplan. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 565-614.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   471 citations  
  • Mental files.François Recanati - 2021 - In Piotr Stalmaszczyk (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of the Philosophy of Language. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   59 citations  
  • Insensitive Semantics. A Defence of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism.Herman Cappelen & Ernest Lepore - 2008 - Critica 40 (120):148-152.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   181 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Speaker’s reference and semantic reference.Saul Kripke - 2013 - In Maite Ezcurdia & Robert J. Stainton (eds.), The Semantics-Pragmatics Boundary in Philosophy. Peterborough, CA: Broadview Press. pp. 60.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   123 citations  
  • (1 other version)Insensitive Semantics: A Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism.Herman Cappelen & Ernie Lepore - 2006 - Linguistics and Philosophy 29 (1):1-26.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   168 citations  
  • (1 other version)Semantics.John Lyons - 1979 - Linguistics and Philosophy 3 (2):289-295.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   157 citations  
  • Speaker Intentions in Context.Jeffrey C. King - 2012 - Noûs 48 (2):219-237.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   84 citations  
  • Truth-conditional pragmatics.Francois Recanati - 1998 - In Asa Kâšer (ed.), Pragmatics: Critical Concepts. Dawn and delineation. Vol. 1. Routledge. pp. 509-511.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   144 citations  
  • I am not here now.Stefano Predelli - 1998 - Analysis 58 (2):107-115.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   97 citations  
  • (1 other version)Semantics.John Lyons - 1978 - Philosophy 53 (205):421-423.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   128 citations  
  • Putting humpty dumpty together again.Keith S. Donnellan - 1968 - Philosophical Review 77 (2):203-215.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   111 citations  
  • Who Is I?Eros Corazza, William Fish & Jonathan Gorvett - 2002 - Philosophical Studies 107 (1):1-21.
    Whilst it may seem strange to ask to whom “I” refers, we show that there are occasionswhen it is not always obvious. In demonstratingthis we challenge Kaplan's assumptionthat the utterer, agent and referent of “I” arealways the same person.We begin by presenting what weregard to be the received view about indexicalreference popularized by David Kaplan in hisinfluential 1972 “Demonstratives” before goingon, in section 2, to discuss Sidelle'sanswering machine paradox which may be thoughtto threaten this view, and his deferredutterance method of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   76 citations  
  • (1 other version)Truth in fiction.David K. Lewis - 2010 - In Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel (eds.), Arguing about language. New York: Routledge.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   65 citations  
  • The Answering Machine Paradox.Alan Sidelle - 1991 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (4):525--539.
    According to an intuitive semantics for 'I,' 'here' and 'now,' 'I am not here now' should always be false when uttered. But occurrences of 'I am not here now' on an answering machine seem to be true (when the speaker is not home). A number of possible solutions are considered and rejected, and a novel solution offered introducing the notion of a 'deferred utterance,' which allows for non-mysterious sort of action at a distance.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   71 citations  
  • Zero tolerance for pragmatics.Christopher Gauker - 2008 - Synthese 165 (3):359–371.
    The proposition expressed by a sentence is relative to a context. But what determines the content of the context? Many theorists would include among these determinants aspects of the speaker’s intention in speaking. My thesis is that, on the contrary, the determinants of the context never include the speaker’s intention. My argument for this thesis turns on a consideration of the role that the concept of proposition expressed in context is supposed to play in a theory of linguistic communication. To (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   58 citations  
  • The semantics and pragmatics of complex demonstratives.Ernest Lepore & Kirk Ludwig - 2000 - Mind 109 (434):199-240.
    Complex demonstratives, expressions of the form 'That F', 'These Fs', etc., have traditionally been taken to be referring terms. Yet they exhibit many of the features of quantified noun phrases. This has led some philosophers to suggest that demonstrative determiners are a special kind of quantifier, which can be paraphrased using a context sensitive definite description. Both these views contain elements of the truth, though each is mistaken. We advance a novel account of the semantic form of complex demonstratives that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   48 citations  
  • Supplementives, the coordination account, and conflicting intentions.Jeffrey C. King - 2013 - Philosophical Perspectives 27 (1):288-311.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   46 citations  
  • Demonstratives, demonstrations, and demonstrata.Marga Reimer - 1991 - Philosophical Studies 63 (2):187--202.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   73 citations  
  • Billboards, bombs and shotgun weddings.Andy Egan - 2009 - Synthese 166 (2):251-279.
    It's a presupposition of a very common way of thinking about contextsensitivity in language that the semantic contribution made by a bit of context-sensitive vocabulary is sensitive only to features of the speaker's situation at the time of utterance. I argue that this is false, and that we need a theory of context-dependence that allows for content to depend not just on the features of the utterance's origin, but also on features of its destination. There are cases in which a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   41 citations  
  • Intentions and Demonstrations.Kent Bach - 1992 - Analysis 52 (3):140--146.
    MARGA REIMER has forcefully challenged David Kaplan's recent claim ([3], pp. 582-4) that demonstrative gestures, in connnection with uses of demonstrative expressions, are without semantic significance and function merely as 'aids to communication', and that speaker intentions are what determine the demonstratum. Against this Reimer argues that demonstrations can and do play an essential semantic role and that the role of intentions is marginal at best. That is, together with the linguistic meaning of the demonstrative phrase being used, an act (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   60 citations  
  • How to bridge the gap between meaning and reference.Howard K. Wettstein - 1984 - Synthese 58 (1):63 - 84.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   66 citations  
  • Demonstratives and their linguistic meanings.David Braun - 1996 - Noûs 30 (2):145-173.
    In this paper, I present a new semantics for demonstratives. Now some may think that David Kaplan (1989a,b) has already given a more than satisfactory semantics for demonstratives, and that there is no need for a new one. But I argue below that Kaplan's theory fails to describe the linguistic meanings of 'that' and other true demonstratives. My argument for this conclusion has nothing to do with cognitive value, belief sentences, or other such contentious matters in semantics and the philosophy (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   59 citations  
  • Shifty characters.Eliot Michaelson - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 167 (3):519-540.
    In “Demonstratives”, David Kaplan introduced a simple and remarkably robust semantics for indexicals. Unfortunately, Kaplan’s semantics is open to a number of apparent counterexamples, many of which involve recording devices. The classic case is the sentence “I am not here now” as recorded and played back on an answering machine. In this essay, I argue that the best way to accommodate these data is to conceive of recording technologies as introducing special, non-basic sorts of contexts, accompanied by non-basic conventions governing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   21 citations  
  • Pragmatics.S. C. Levinson - 1983 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 49 (3):531-532.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   534 citations  
  • The multiple uses of indexicals.Quentin Smith - 1989 - Synthese 78 (2):167--191.
    you use it. These two assumptions, which I believe to be false, are based on a more fundamental assumption, that the rule governing the reference of an indexical remains constant from use to use. Contemporary theories hold that the reference of an indexical varies from use to (relevantly different) use, but that the reference-fixing rule of use is You can search..
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   56 citations  
  • Now the French are invading England!K. Romdenh-Romluc - 2002 - Analysis 62 (1):34-41.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  • Structured characters and complex demonstratives.David Braun - 1994 - Philosophical Studies 74 (2):193--219.
    A structured character is a semantic value of a certain sort. Like the more familiar Kaplanian characters, structured characters determine the contents of expressions in contexts. But unlike Kaplanian characters, structured characters also have constituent structures. The semantic theories with which most of us are acquainted do not mention structured characters. But I argue in this paper that these familiar semantic theories fail to make obvious distinctions in meaning---distinctions that can be made by a theory that uses structured characters. Thus (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   45 citations  
  • Intentions, indexicals and communication.Stefano Predelli - 2002 - Analysis 62 (4):310-316.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   34 citations  
  • A plea for pragmatics.Jonas Åkerman - 2009 - Synthese 170 (1):155 - 167.
    Let intentionalism be the view that what proposition is expressed in context by a sentence containing indexicals depends on the speaker’s intentions. It has recently been argued that intentionalism makes communicative success mysterious and that there are counterexamples to the intentionalist view in the form of cases of mismatch between the intended interpretation and the intuitively correct interpretation. In this paper, I argue that these objections can be met, once we acknowledge that we may distinguish what determines the correct interpretation (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Indexicality and the Puzzle of the Answering Machine.Jonathan Cohen - 2013 - Journal of Philosophy 110 (1):5-32.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Indexicals and Reference‐Shifting: Towards a Pragmatic Approach.Jonas Åkerman - 2017 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95 (1):117-152.
    I propose a pragmatic approach to the kind of reference-shifting occurring in indexicals as used in e.g. written notes and answering machine messages. I proceed in two steps. First, I prepare the ground by showing that the arguments against such a pragmatic approach raised in the recent literature fail. Second, I take a first few steps towards implementing this approach, by sketching a pragmatic theory of reference-shifting, and showing how it can handle cases of the relevant kind. While the immediate (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • When Shapes and Sounds become Words: Indexicals and the Metaphysics of Semantic Tokens.Cathal O'Madagain - 2021 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy.
    To avoid difficulties that arise when we appeal to speaker intentions or multiple rules to determine the meaning of indexicals, Cohen (2013) recently defends a conventionalist account of these terms that focuses on their context of tokening. Apart from some tricky cases already discussed in the literature, however, such an account faces a serious difficulty: in many speech acts, multiple apparent tokens are produced – for example when a speaker speaks on a telephone, and her utterance is heard both where (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • The impurity of “pure” indexicals.Allyson Mount - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 138 (2):193 - 209.
    Within the class of indexicals, a distinction is often made between “pure” or “automatic” indexicals on one hand, and demonstratives or “discretionary” indexicals on the other. The idea is supposed to be that certain indexicals refer automatically and invariably to a particular feature of the utterance context: ‘I’ refers to the speaker, ‘now’ to the time of utterance, ‘here’ to the place of utterance, etc. Against this view, I present cases where reference shifts from the speaker, time, or place of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Misleading indexicals.Brian Weatherson - 2002 - Analysis 62 (4):308–310.
    In “Now the French are invading England” (Analysis 62, 2002, pp. 34-41), Komarine Romdenh-Romluc offers a new theory of the relationship between recorded indexicals and their content. Romdenh-Romluc’s proposes that Kaplan’s basic idea, that reference is determined by applying a rule to a context, is correct, but we have to be careful about what the context is, since it is not always the context of utterance. A few well known examples illustrate this. The “here” and “now” in “I am not (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Presupposition and policing in complex demonstratives.Michael Glanzberg & Susanna Siegel - 2006 - Noûs 40 (1):1–42.
    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'.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Indexicals and the Metaphysics of Semantic Tokens: When Shapes and Sounds become Utterances.Cathal O’Madagain - 2014 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 3 (1):71-79.
    To avoid difficulties facing intention-based accounts of indexicals, Cohen () recently defends a conventionalist account that focuses on the context of tokening. On this view, a token of ‘here’ or ‘now’ refers to the place or time at which it tokens. However, although promising, such an account faces a serious problem: in many speech acts, multiple apparent tokens are produced. If I call Alaska from Paris and say ‘I'm here now’, an apparent token of my utterance will be produced in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • On the alleged ambiguity of 'now' and 'here'.Eros Corazza - 2004 - Synthese 138 (2):289 - 313.
    It is argued that, in order to account for examples where the indexicals `now' and `here' do not refer to the time and location of the utterance, we do not have to assume (pace Quentin Smith) that they have different characters (reference-fixing rules), governed by a single metarule or metacharacter. The traditional, the fixed character view is defended: `now' and `here' always refer to the time and location of the utterance. It is shown that when their referent does not correspond (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Assessment-contextual indexicals.Josh Parsons - 2011 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (1):1 - 17.
    In this paper, I consider whether tenses, temporal indexicals, and other indexicals are contextually dependent on the context of assessment (or a-contextual), rather than, as is usually thought, contextually dependent on the context of utterance (u-contextual). I begin by contrasting two possible linguistic norms, governing our use of context sensitive expressions, especially tenses and temporal indexicals (??2 and 3), and argue that one of these norms would make those expressions u-contextual, while the other would make them a-contextual (?4). I then (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • Back through the Looking Glass: On the Relationship between Intentions and Indexicals.Jonathan Gorvett - 2005 - Philosophical Studies 124 (3):295-312.
    Donnellan and Predelli have both responded to accusations that in virtue of involving intentions in their accounts of reference they are committed to ‘Humpty Dumpty’ theories of reference. I examine their responses and argue that they do not succeed in escaping this accusation. Corazza et al. (2002) propose an alternative to Predelli’s account involving linguistic conventions instead of intentions. I argue that Predelli’s responses to Corazza et al. are unsatisfactory and that the intentional theorist is obliged either to accept the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations