This essay explores the speech act of dogwhistling (sometimes referred to as ‘using coded language’). Dogwhistles may be overt or covert, and within each of these categories may be intentional or unintentional. Dogwhistles are a powerful form of political speech, allowing people to be manipulated in ways they would resist if the manipulation was carried outmore openly—often drawing on racist attitudes that are consciously rejected. If philosophers focus only on content expressed or otherwise consciously conveyed they may miss what is (...) most powerful and pernicious in the speech of political culture. This essay is a call to start paying attention to these more covert speech acts, and a first attempt at beginning to theorize them. It argues that dogwhistles present a complex and interesting case for the philosopher of language, and explores their implications for democratic politics. (shrink)

Conscious mental states are states we are in some way aware of. I compare higher-order theories of consciousness, which explain consciousness by appeal to such higher-order awareness (HOA), and first-order theories, which do not, and I argue that higher-order theories have substantial explanatory advantages. The higher-order nature of our awareness of our conscious states suggests an analogy with the metacognition that figures in the regulation of psychological processes and behaviour. I argue that, although both consciousness and metacognition involve higher-order psychological (...) states, they have little more in common. One thing they do share is the possibility of misrepresentation; just as metacognitive processing can misrepresent one’s cognitive states and abilities, so the HOA in virtue of which one’s mental states are conscious can, and sometimes does, misdescribe those states. A striking difference between the two, however, has to do with utility for psychological processing. Metacognition has considerable benefit for psychological processing; in contrast, it is unlikely that there is much, if any, utility to mental states’ being conscious over and above the utility those states have when they are not conscious. (shrink)

The notion of social progress is not much in favour in these sophisticated times of scepticism, cynicism, relativism and political correctness; at least in the West. Most people might admit that some indubitable advances have occurred, primarily in terms of this or that useful technological innovation. But any wider claim about ‘social progress’ is often met by overwhelming doubt and suspicion, if not outright derision. I provide a short argument for belief in progress.

There is a particular ressonance between the thinking of Walter Benjamin and that of the German jurist Carl Schmitt, including the fact that both analyse the 16th and 17th centuries in order to understand the 20th. Regarding this fact, the article attempts to clarify some themes that lead Schmitt’s work, i.e that of State of Exception, that of theologization of politics, the critique of parliamentarism as support of the Modern State, the tension between democracy and dictatorship, to explain how the (...) dialog between the two thinkers occurs, seeking thus for a better understanding of key works of Benjamin, specially The Origin of German Tragic Drama. (shrink)

Birch et. al. see their model as incompatible with higher-order-thought (HOT) theories of consciousness, on which a state is conscious if one is in some suitable way aware of that state. They see higher-order (HO) awareness as an “extra ingredient”. But since Birch et al go on to say that “[t]his is not the place for a detailed discussion of HOT theories,” they don’t address why they take HO awareness to be an extra ingredient or why HOT theorists are convinced (...) that it’s needed. In this commentary we argue that higher-order theories are a crucial for understanding consciousness. (shrink)

Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are notoriously uninterested in truthtelling. They also often appear uninterested even in constructing plausible falsehoods. What stands out above all is the brazenness and frequency with which they repeat known falsehoods. In spite of this, they are not always greeted with incredulity. Indeed, Republicans continue to express trust in Donald Trump in remarkable numbers. The only way to properly make sense of what Trump and Johnson are doing, we argue, is to give a greater role (...) to audience relativity - and in some cases, audience participation - in notions like bullshitting and bald-faced lying. In this paper, we develop a new understanding of bullshitting, one that includes bald-faced lying, and recognizes that different communicative acts may be directed at different audiences with a single utterance. In addition, we argue for recognition of the category of bald-faced bullshitting, a particular speciality of both Trump and Johnson, and one especially useful to authoritarian leaders. (shrink)

This "text" discusses how capitalism, colonialism, and trauma are linked to various present-day crises, including issues related to civic engagement, environmental collapse, addiction, and collective trauma. The work argues for the inevitability of universalism by going through a history of how neoliberalism colonized the world and our minds. After surveying these various crossroads of contemporary precariousness, the crises of strategic intimacies, and the paralysis of endless reductionist calculi, in this work we will come to acknowledge how between the nightmares of (...) history and a technologically overdetermined and ecologically devastated future, an examination of civic life must start from within the throngs of devotees so mesmerized by the circulations of global finance. Out of a mélange of conflicting paradigms, I look to two prevailing belief systems that underpin the most populous language-cultures of the internet; which both locate each other from the utmost periphery of one another; both have underlying religious ideologies that may aid in the acculturation of inclusive institutions which work to affirm differences among their respective congregations. Encountering a convergence from the utmost periphery from the other, gives each perspective the potential to see how they are in a “constitutive relationship with (their) own outside,” to question their own universality, as well as realizing the inadequacies that come from within" (Balibar, 36). After analyzing the political implications of the philosophies of Hegel and Spinoza, in relation to Christian and Confucian theologies, I end by admonishing "us" to take responsibility as inscribers of ritual to heal ghosts of collective trauma. (shrink)

A recent fMRI study by Webb et al. (Cortical networks involved in visual awareness independent of visual attention, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2016;113:13923–28) proposes a new method for finding the neural correlates of awareness by matching atten- tion across awareness conditions. The experimental design, however, seems at odds with known features of attention. We highlight logical and methodological points that are critical when trying to disentangle attention and awareness.

David Rosenthal explains conscious mentality in terms of two independent, though complementary, theories—the higher-order thought (“HOT”) theory of consciousness and quality-space theory (“QST”) about mental qualities. It is natural to understand this combination of views as constituting a kind of representationalism about experience—that is, a version of the view that an experience’s conscious character is identical with certain of its representational properties. At times, however, Rosenthal seems to resist this characterization of his view. We explore here whether and (...) to what extent it makes sense to construe Rosenthal’s views as representationalist. Our goal is not merely terminological—discerning how best to use the expression ‘representationalism’. Rather, we argue that understanding Rosenthal’s account as a kind of representationalism permits us not only to make sense of broader debates within the philosophy of mind, but also to extend and clarify aspects of the view itself. (shrink)

David Rosenthal couples his higher-order thought theory of consciousness with a theory of “mental qualities”, properties of mental states. The first thesis of this paper is that there are no mental qualities as Rosenthal conceives of them. The second thesis is that Rosenthal’s residual insights are significant. They naturally lead to a simple first-order theory of consciousness.

Saul Goodman, Slipping Jimmy, Charlie Hustle, Gene Takavic, Viktor Saint Claire, and many others — all seem to be aliases of one James McGill. The characterization question, from the point of view of the metaphysics of identity, is trying to answer what determines personal identity. The notion of persistence describes necessary and sufficient conditions for a person to continue or cease to exist as a person. The practical importance of persistence includes both responsibility for a person's actions and the (...) fact that identity matters practically because of a person's selfish care about his or her own future. From a Better Call Saul perspective, we are combining metaphysical issues of identity — that pinpoint what it takes for someone to remain the same person — with the pendulum of various James McGill personae. -/- James McGill does seem to have both biological and psychological continuity while shifting from one character to another, but we will argue that psychological continuity is only relevant at the lowest level and that the narrativist account seems to better explain different Jimmy personae. Narrativism answers the persistence question by stating that we are persisting as the same person because of the stories we tell about ourselves, which influence our lives and our decisions. Identity is being constituted at a narrative level, that is — Jimmy is his (current) story, determining when he begins and ends. In this paper, by analyzing character development throughout the series, we are trying to show that James McGill may not always be equated with his aliases because of different spatial and temporal narratives, which also could open various ethical implications of responsibility for past actions. (shrink)

Rosenthal descreve a consciência de criatura como o simples fato de uma criatura estar desperta e atenta aos estímulos externos da natureza. Estas criaturas conscientes possuem determinados estados mentais que representam os fenômenos da natureza, isto é, uma certa propriedade mental que estabelece uma relação entre o fenômeno da natureza, e aquilo que percebemos desse fenômeno. Estes estados mentais podem ou não estarem presentes na consciência de criatura. O que é responsável por tornar esses estados mentais conscientes? Para tentar (...) responder a essa pergunta, Rosenthal propõe uma teoria baseada em estados mentais de ordem superior. Estes estados mentais, não representam fenômenos externos, mas outros estados mentais,tornando estes últimos em estados mentais conscientes. Entretanto, Charles Siewert (1996) afirma que Rosenthal comete o mesmo erro de Brentano ao responder esse problema da consciência com o uso de estados mentais de ordem superior. Porém, não é verdade que Brentano se utiliza da ordem superior para elaborar sua teoria sobre a consciência, Brentano (1874) utiliza estados mentais internos que se autorrepresentam de determinada forma. Outros autores, como Dan Zahavi (2004), Rocco Gennaro (1996) entre outros, também estabelecem uma ligação entre Rosenthal e Brentano, alguns afirmando que suas teorias são equivalentes, outros negando. Devido a essa recorrente confusão, o objetivo do trabalho é não só uma análise das teorias dos dois autores, mas também uma comparação entre os fundamentos, as argumentações e as características de ambas as teorias. Dessa forma, pretendo ao final deste dissertação mostrar que as teorias da consciência de Rosenthal e de Brentano são profundamente diferentes. Além disso, pretendo mostrar com base tanto no funcionamento da teoria, quanto em estudos empíricos, a teoria de Rosenthal parece estar mais adequada para explicar o fenômeno da consciência. (shrink)

Everyone knows what David Lewis' possible worlds are, what role they play in his account of possibility and necessity, and Saul Kripke's criticisms. But what, instead, are Kripke's possible worlds, and what role do they play in his account of possibility and necessity? The answers are not so obvious. Recently, it has even been claimed that, contrary to what is standardly assumed, Kripke's approach to modality has not always been consistently metaphysical. In particular, an interpretation of the famous passage (...) in the preface to Naming and Necessity with Kripke's discussion of the dice example has been put forward, according to which he purports there to clarify the modal notions in terms of that of possible world, model-theoretically construed, in a way which is reminiscent of Carnap's. In this paper, I shall point out some internal difficulties of this interpretation, and offer a different one, according to which in the dice passage Kripke is trying, consistently with his metaphysical approach, to legitimize the technically useful notion of possible world starting from modal notions, to be accounted for in another way (arguably, in an essentialistic framework). My final goal, however, will be philosophical elucidation rather than mere exegesis. Indeed, I am interested in shedding some light on what possible worlds might possibly be, if something like Kripke's metaphysical approach is on the right track. (shrink)

Art often is the subject of philosophy; it is more rare that a work of art becomes philosophy, pursued by means other than language. In its cinematic way, Son of Saul, a Hungarian film by László Nemes about the Holocaust, engages with the same set of problems that the nineteenth century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote about.

[ES] Esta es una discusión de algunos temas vagamente conectados en los artículos de Saul Kripke «The first person» y «Frege’s theory of sense and reference». [EN] This is a discussion of some loosely connected issues in Saul Kripke’s articles «The first person» and «Frege’s theory of sense and reference».

Charles Carlini interviews Nathan Salmón about the philosophical work of his mentor and friend, the late Saul Kripke, one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th Century.

In Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Saul Kripke presents a controversial skeptical argument, which he attributes to Wittgenstein’s interlocutor in the Philosophical Investigations [PI]. The argument purports to show that there are no facts that correspond to what we mean by our words. Kripke maintains, moreover, that the conclusion of Wittgenstein’s so-called private language argument is a corollary of results Wittgenstein establishes in §§137-202 of PI concerning the topic of following-a-rule, and not the conclusion of an independently developed (...) argument in §§243ff of PI, as most commentators take it to be. In this work, I assess Kripke’s skeptical argument both in its own right, and as an interpretation of the rule-following sections of PI. In its own right, I try to show that it is critically flawed. However, as an interpretation of the rule-following sections of PI, I try to show that it is essentially correct. I do this by showing that Kripke’s interpretation squares with and supports the meta-philosophical framework developed by Wittgenstein in §§107-136 of PI, which immediately precedes his remarks on following-a-rule. (Oct 16, 2008. Committee: Paul Horwich, Galen Strawson, Stephen Neale, Michael Levin) -/- . (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the sophisticated views on free will and determinism of the nineteenth-century Hindu mystic Sri Ramakrishna and brings them into dialogue with the views of three western philosophers—namely, the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Lord Kames and the contemporary analytic philosophers Saul Smilansky and Derk Pereboom. Sri Ramakrishna affirms hard theological determinism, the incompatibilist view that God determines everything we do and think. At the same time, however, he claims that God, in His infinite wisdom, has endowed ordinary unenlightened (...) people with the illusion of free will for the sake of their moral and spiritual welfare. Kames, I suggest, defends a theological determinist position remarkably similar to Sri Ramakrishna’s. However, I argue that Sri Ramakrishna’s mystical orientation puts him in a better position than Kames to explain why a loving God would implant in us the illusion of free will in the first place. I then show how certain aspects of the views of Smilansky and Pereboom resonate with those of Sri Ramakrishna. (shrink)

Saul Smilansky’s theory of free will and moral responsibility consists of two parts; dualism and illusionism. Dualism is the thesis that both compatibilism and hard determinism are partly true, and has puzzled many philosophers. I argue that Smilansky’s dualism can be given an unquestionably coherent and comprehensible interpretation if we reformulate it in terms of pro tanto reasons. Dualism so understood is the thesis that respect for persons gives us pro tanto reasons to blame wrongdoers, and also pro tanto (...) reasons not to blame them. These reasons must be we ighed against each other (and against relevant consequentialist reasons) in order to find out what we all things considered ought to do. (shrink)

In this commentary I criticize David Rosenthal’s higher order thought theory of consciousness . This is one of the best articulated philosophical accounts of consciousness available. The theory is, roughly, that a mental state is conscious in virtue of there being another mental state, namely, a thought to the effect that one is in the first state. I argue that this account is open to the objection that it makes “HOT-zombies” possible, i.e., creatures that token higher order mental states, (...) but not the states that the higher order states are about. I discuss why none of the ways to accommodate this problem within HOT leads to viable positions. (shrink)

Dans Naming and Necessity, Saul Kripke a proposé une théorie causale de la référence selon laquelle un nom se réfère à un objet en vertu d'une connexion causale avec l'objet, médiatisée par les communautés de locuteurs. Il déclare également que les noms propres, contrairement à la plupart des descriptions, sont des désignations rigides (le nom propre fait référence à l'objet nommé dans tout monde possible dans lequel l'objet existe)Les idées de Naming and Necessity ont évolué au fil du temps, (...) se développant sur la base de recherches formelles antérieures en théorie des modèles pour la logique modale, basées sur le principe leibnizien d'identité des indiscernables. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.23511.09122 . (shrink)

"Better Call Saul" is used to debunk 3 powerful myths about "Free Will" and "Determinism.".

David Rosenthal is a well-known defender of a particular kind of theory of consciousness known as the higher-order thought theory (HOTT). Higher-order theories are united by what Rosenthal calls the Transitivity Principle (TP), which states that a mental state is conscious iff one is conscious of oneself, in some suitable way, as being in that mental state. Since there are various ways to implement TP and HOTT commits one to the view that any mental state could occur unconsciously (...) it seems to predict that a mental state’s being conscious doesn’t have any significant function to perform. An unconscious mental state, according to the theory, has most of its causal connections already, as evidenced by priming studies, subliminal perception, and other empirical findings. Given this, one early objection to HOTT was to emphasize this consequence of the theory. Since consciousness does have a function any theory which predicts that it doesn’t must be suspect. Rosenthal’s primary goal in this paper is to defend HOTT against this objection. In fact he argues that if we could establish that consciousness has no function independently of HOTT we would then have an analogous argument for it: Since consciousness doesn’t have any significant function any theory which predicts that it doesn’t fares be. (shrink)

In this paper, I try to outline what I take to be Naming and Necessity’s fundamental legacy to my generation and those that follow, and the new perspectives it has opened up for twenty-first century philosophy. The discussion is subdivided into three sections, concerning respectively philosophy of language, metaphysics, and metaphilosophy. The general unifying theme is that Naming and Necessity is helping philosophy to recover a Golden Age, by freeing it from the strictures coming from the empiricist and Kantian traditions (...) and reconnecting it to the world and the objects that populate it. Because of this, in the concluding paragraph I tentatively suggest that Kripke’s philosophy may be seen as a sui generis form of naturalism. (shrink)

This paper considers the significance of the informal publication and circulation in the work of one of the most important analytic philosophers of the late 20th Century, Saul Kripke. I argue that everyday copying technologies such as tape recording and photocopying enabled academic philosophers in the 1970s and 1980s to create and reproduce living documents whose private preservation and circulation offered a way to make and maintain a community of interest, carve out a space for oral discourse and, most (...) significantly for histories of alternative print technologies, that these technologies and techniques of reproduction were essential to the composition of Kripke’s ground-breaking and revolutionary published work. The recording, transcripts and photocopies archived Kripke’s ideas and offered access to them outside of institutional publishing channels. Kripke lectured a great deal, usually without notes, and was known to be reluctant to commit his ideas to print; this ‘szamizdat’ (as he refers to it) also preserved a space for the oral as the preferred mode of communication for philosophical discourse, connecting the modern tradition with the ancients, an oral tradition held together with magnetic tape, typescript, photocopies, and digital text files. This archival study draws attention to the intermediality of Kripke's work through close examination of his acknowledgments, prefaces, and footnotes to work up a history of the everyday media inscriptions (the recordings, typescript transcriptions, photocopies etc.) and practices (the lectures, seminars, and international social networks of distribution) that underpin the production of both his published and unpublished work. This essay brings a media archaeological approach into contact with scholarship on the history of the book and intellectual history. It foregrounds the role of the oral and aural in the history of print and contributes to our understanding of circulation and reproduction as a cultural practices. (shrink)

Since the 1960s, Kripke has been a central figure in several fields related to mathematical logic, language philosophy, mathematical philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology and set theory. He had influential and original contributions to logic, especially modal logic, and analytical philosophy, with a semantics of modal logic involving possible worlds, now called Kripke semantics. In Naming and Necessity, Kripke proposed a causal theory of reference, according to which a name refers to an object by virtue of a causal connection with the object, (...) mediated by the communities of speakers. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.26557.20964. (shrink)

Our generation is turning to mentoring as an instrument of God to repair the ruin of our personal losses.

În Numire și necesitate Kripke a propus o teorie cauzală a referinței, conform căreia un nume se referă la un obiect prin virtutea unei conexiuni cauzale cu obiectul, mediată de comunitățile vorbitorilor. El afirmă, de asemenea, că numele proprii, spre deosebire de majoritatea descrierilor, sunt desemnări rigide (numele propriu se referă la obiectul numit în orice lume posibilă în care obiectul există). Ideile din Numire și necesitate au evoluat în timp, dezvoltându-se pe baza cercetărilor formale anterioare în teoria modelelor pentru (...) logica modală, pe baza principiului leibnizian al indiscernabilității identicilor. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.16140.56968. (shrink)

This thesis is a critical and comparative study of four commentators on the later Wittgenstein’s rule following considerations. As such its primary aim is exegetical, and ultimately the thesis seeks to arrive at an enriched understanding of Wittgenstein’s work through the distillation of the four commentators into what, it is hoped, can be said to approach a definitive interpretation, freed of their individual frailties. -/- The thesis commences by explicating the position of Kripke’s Wittgenstein. He draws our attention to the (...) ‘sceptical problem’ of how we are to resolve the apparently paradoxical situation that whilst we seem to use language meaningfully, there is no fact about us that constitutes our meaning one thing as opposed to something else, and consequently the possibility of our actually meaning anything seems to evaporate. Kripke interprets Wittgenstein as accepting the validity of the sceptical problem, but seeking to establish that the force of the problem is radically diminished because the justification which it has shown to be unobtainable is actually unnecessary for rule following to take place. -/- McDowell tries to show that Kripke is mistaken when he views Wittgenstein as endorsing scepticism in this way, because he sees Kripke as failing to appreciate a section of Philosophical Investigations which suggests that one ought to reject the sceptical paradox by correcting the misunderstanding which gives rise to it. McDowell reads Wittgenstein’s claim as being that we mistakenly think we are caught in a dilemma which requires us either to endorse the sceptical paradox or to subscribe to a mythological picture of rule following; whereas, so the thought goes, we must reject the entire dilemma. -/- Although McDowell’s criticism of Kripke is essentially correct, he is motivated to that criticism by an incorrect reading of Wittgenstein. Central to this misinterpretation is his failure to note Wittgenstein’s belief that universal scepticism is nonsensical. Winch does much to flesh out the nature of Wittgenstein’s claim here, although he makes the mistake of attributing to Kripke that position which the latter finds in Philosophical Investigations. Despite inheriting this error from Winch, Diamond nonetheless improves on his attempt to characterize the shortcomings of Kripke’s reading as an interpretation of Wittgenstein, enabling the thesis to reach a conclusion about Wittgenstein’s understanding of rule following. (shrink)

Saul Kripke argued that the requirement that knowledge eliminate all possibilities of error leads to dogmatism . According to this view, the dogmatism puzzle arises because of a requirement on knowledge that is too strong. The paper argues that dogmatism can be avoided even if we hold on to the strong requirement on knowledge. I show how the argument for dogmatism can be blocked and I argue that the only other approach to the puzzle in the literature is mistaken.

One of David Rosenthal’s many important contributions to the philosophy of mind was his clear and unshirking account of introspection. Here we argue that while there is a kind of introspection (we call it “reflective introspection”) that Rosenthal’s account may be structurally fit to accommodate, there is also a second kind (“primitive introspection”) that his account cannot recover. We introduce Rosenthal’s account of introspection in §1, present the case for the psychological reality of primitive introspection in §2, (...) and argue that Rosenthal’s account lacks the resources to accommodate it in §3. (shrink)

Jennifer Saul argues that the evidence from the literature on implicit biases entails a form of skepticism. In this paper, I argue that Saul faces a dilemma: her argument is either self-defeating, or it does not yield a skeptical conclusion. For Saul, both results are unacceptable; thus, her argument fails.

After briefly summarizing Rosenthal’s higher-order thought theory of consciousness, I consider difficulties that arise for his account from the possibility of an ‘empty HOT’, a HOT that occurs in the absence of the mental state that it purports to represent. I criticize Rosenthal’s responses to this objection, and conclude that the difficulties that derive from the possibility of such misrepresentation are fatal to his HOT-theory.

Recenzja: Saul Kripke, Kłopoty filozoficzne, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2023. Review of the Polish-language edition of Saul Kripke's Philosophical Troubles, vol. 1.

Saul Kripke (1972) argued for the existence of a priori propositions that are contingently true. Kripke uses the example of a case presented by Wittgenstein (1953) about the Standard Meter of Paris. The Standard Meter is an object to determine the standard lenght, in the measure system, of a one meter unit. Wittgenstein argued that we can’t affirm that the Standard Meter has one meter, since it is the standard for measure and works as a rule in the language. (...) Therefore, the phrase “the standard meter has one meter” doesn’t have a truth-value. On the other hand, Kripke argued that that phrase expresses a true proposition and can be known a priori by whom stipulated that this object will be the standard for measure. I will argue in favor a kripkean position, analyzing the dispute and thereafter answering possible objections from proponents of the wittgensteinian position. (shrink)

Saul Smilansky notes that, despite the famous role of paradoxes in philosophy, very few moral paradoxes have been developed and assessed. The present paper offers recipes for generating moral paradoxes as a tool to aid in filling this gap. The concluding section presents reflections on how to assess the depth of the paradoxes generated with these recipes. Special attention is paid to links between putative moral paradoxes and debate about ethical particularism and generalism.

A brief study of Saul Steinberg’s works on shadows and reflections, and of the seemingly paradoxical world that emerges from such works.

According to the sceptic Saul Kripke envisages in his celebrated book on Wittgenstein on rules and private language, there are no facts about an individual that determine what she means by any given expression. If there are no such facts, the question then is, what justifies the claim that she does use expressions meaningfully? Kripke’s answer, in a nutshell, is that she by and large uses her expressions in conformity with the linguistic standards of the community she belongs to. (...) While Kripke’s sceptical problem has gripped philosophers for over three decades, few, if any, have been satisfied by his proposed solution, and many have struggled to come up with one of their own. The purpose of this paper is to show that a more satisfactory answer to Kripke’s challenge can be developed on the basis of Donald Davidson’s writings on triangulation, the idea of two individuals interacting simultaneously with each other and the world they share. It follows from the triangulation argument that the facts that can be regarded as determining meaning are irreducible. Yet, contra Kripke, they are not mysterious, for the argument does spell out what is needed for an individual’s expressions to be meaningful. (shrink)

The paper discusses Saul Kripke's Normativity Argument against semantic dispositionalism: it criticizes the orthodox interpretation of the argument, defends an alternative reading and argues that, contrary to what Kripke himself seems to have been thinking, the real point of the Normativity Argument is not that meaning is normative. According to the orthodox interpretation, the argument can be summarized as follows: (1) it is constitutive of the concept of meaning that its instances imply an ought, but (2) it is not (...) constitutive of the concept of a disposition that dispositions imply an ought, hence (3) no dispositional analysis of meaning can work. According to my alternative reading, the point of the argument is another one, namely that while (1) dispositionalism is committed to the thesis that speakers have non-inferential knowledge of their unmanifested linguistic dispositions, (2) speakers, as a matter of fact, do not have such a knowledge. A point that is in principle independent from the issue of the normativity of meaning. (shrink)

The essay presents Saul Kripke's argument for mind/body-dualism and makes the suppositions explicit on which it rests. My claim, inspired by Richard Boyd, is that even if one of Kripke’s central suppositions - the principle of necessity of identities using rigid designators - is shared by the non-traditional identity theorist, it is still possible for her to rebut Kripke’s dualism.

This is the second in a two part series of articles that attempt to clarify the nature and enduring relevance of Kant's concept of a priori knowledge. (For Part I, see below.) In this article I focus mainly on Saul Kripke's critique of Kant, in Naming and Necessity. I argue that Kripke draws attention to a genuine defect in Kant's epistemological framework, but that he used definitions of certain key terms that were quite different from Kant's definitions. When Kripke's (...) definitions are replaced by Kant's definitions, Kripke's account of the status of naming turns out to be a defense of analytic aposteriority as a significant classification of knowledge that Kant neglected. I also introduce here a new way of understanding such epistemological labels, as defining the perspective adopted by the knowing subject in a given situation, rather than an objective characteristic of certain propositions as such. (shrink)

Since Saul Kripke’s influential work in the 1970s, the revisionary approach to semantic paradox—the idea that semantic paradoxes must be solved by weakening classical logic—has been increasingly popular. In this paper, we present a new revenge argument to the effect that the main revisionary approaches breed new paradoxes that they are unable to block.

In this paper we analyze and discuss Jennifer Saul’s account of the famous Gricean notions of ‘what is said’ and ‘what is implicated’ and the alleged conflict between them and the so- called Speaker- Meaning Exhaustiveness Thesis (SMET), which is standardly attributed to Grice in the literature. SMET declares that speaker- meaning divides exhaustively into what is said and what is (conventionally or nonconventionally) implicated by the speaker. After a detailed interpretation of Saul’s position, we argue that her (...) analysis partly misconstrues the relation between Grice’s theory of speaker- meaning and his normative account of conversational implicature. First of all, because SMET is not a genuine part of the Gricean theory of language and meaning – Grice was never committed to it. Secondly, Saul’s interpretation of the Gricean account of conversational implicature does not reflect accurately his original ideas. Although we agree with Saul that conversational implicature has an essential normative aspect, her account cannot capture well the real nature of this normativity, since it does not identify its source and does not delineate its scope. Finally, we present an alternative, speaker- oriented normative interpretation of Grice’s account of conversational implicatures, and argue that it fits better with the Gricean picture of communication and handles better the various problematic cases of conversational implicature than Saul’s mainly audience- oriented interpretation. (shrink)