Results for 'descriptivism and nondescriptivism'

950 found
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  1. The conversational practicality of value judgement.Stephen Finlay - 2004 - The Journal of Ethics 8 (3):205-223.
    Analyses of moral value judgements must meet a practicality requirement: moral speech acts characteristically express pro- or con-attitudes, indicate that speakers are motivated in certain ways, and exert influence on others' motivations. Nondescriptivists including Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard claim that no descriptivist analysis can satisfy this requirement. I argue first that while the practicality requirement is defeasible, it indeed demands a connection between value judgement and motivation that resembles a semantic or conceptual rather than merely contingent psychological link. I (...)
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  2. What are the debates on same-sex marriage and on the recognition of transwomen as women about? On anti-descriptivism and revisionary analysis.Brice Bantegnie - 2020 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63 (9-10):974-1000.
    ABSTRACT In recent years, debates on same-sex marriage and the recognition of transwomen as women have been raging. These debates often seem to revolve around the meaning of, respectively, the word ‘marriage’ and ‘woman’. That such debates should take place might be puzzling. It seems that if debates on gay and transgender rights revolve around the meaning of these words, then those in favor of same-sex marriage and of the recognition of transwomen as women have no room left to maneuver. (...)
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  3. Two nondescriptivist views of normative and evaluative statements.Matthew Chrisman - 2018 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (3-4):405-424.
    The dominant route to nondescriptivist views of normative and evaluative language is through the expressivist idea that normative terms have distinctive expressive roles in conveying our attitudes. This paper explores an alternative route based on two ideas. First, a core normative term ‘ought’ is a modal operator; and second, modal operators play a distinctive nonrepresentational role in generating meanings for the statements in which they figure. I argue that this provides for an attractive alternative to expressivist forms of nondescriptivism (...)
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  4. A reductionist reading of Husserl’s phenomenology by Mach’s descriptivism and phenomenalism.Vasil Penchev - 2020 - Continental Philosophy eJournal 13 (9):1-4.
    Husserl’s phenomenology is what is used, and then the conception of “bracketing reality” is modelled to generalize Peano arithmetic in its relation to set theory in the foundation of mathematics. The obtained model is equivalent to the generalization of Peano arithmetic by means of replacing the axiom of induction with that of transfinite induction. A comparison to Mach’s doctrine is used to be revealed the fundamental and philosophical reductionism of Husserl’s phenomenology leading to a kind of Pythagoreanism in the final (...)
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    Rigid Designators and Descriptivism.Yu Zhang - 2023 - Open Journal of Social Sciences 11:345-354.
    Kripke distinguishes necessity and priority as two different categories: priority is a notion of epistemology, while necessity is a notion of metaphysics. Based on this fundamental argument, Kripke objects to Descriptivism, which takes certain properties as the criteria of identity across all possible worlds, and he argues for the legitimacy of a posteriori necessary truths. Kripke also criticizes Russell’s methods for dealing with empty descriptions, and he puts forward a modal world to explain the rigidity of proper names. However, (...)
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  6. Actualized and protected descriptivism: an answer to Celia Teixeira / Descritivismo atualizado e protegido: uma resposta à Célia Teixeira.Rodrigo Cid - 2010 - Revista Aproximação 2:9-ss.
    It was argued by Célia Teixeira (2003) that the actualized descriptivist theory of names have the problem of generating undesired epistemic necessities. In this paper I want to argue for a descriptivis theory that does not suffer from such problem. For this I will explain Teixeira's objections and later present my own conception of an actualized descriptivist theory of names; it is, protected against the problem of undesired necessities.
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  7. The descriptivist theory of names and the problem of paradoxical reputations.Terence Rajivan Edward - manuscript
    This paper presents an objection to the theory of names according to which what a name refers to is determined by a description that the speaker or writer associates with that name. Some names are associated with paradoxical descriptions. I use the reputations of Henry Sidgwick and J.M.E. McTaggart to illustrate this problem.
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  8. DESCRIPTIVIST THEORIES OF CONCEPTS AND THE IGNORANCE ARGUMENT: AN ANALYSIS FROM SEMANTIC DEMENTIA.Erika Torres - 2022 - Límite | Revista Interdisciplinaria de Filosofía y Psicología 17 (11):1-13.
    In this paper, I argue that descriptive information associated with concepts plays a relevant role in the performance of different cognitive tasks, as suggested by Descriptivist Theories of Concepts (DTC). However, I argue that it does not follow that such information determines the extension of concepts, as also suggested by DTC. In support of these claims, I present an analysis of empirical evidence offered by cases of semantic dementia. According to this interpretation of such evidence, the information associated with concepts (...)
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  9. Against causal descriptivism.Panu Raatikainen - 2006 - Mind and Society 5 (1):78-84.
    Causal descriptivism and its relative nominal descriptivism are critically examined. It is argued that they do not manage to undermine the principal conclusions of the new theory of reference.
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  10. Factualism and Anti-descriptivism: a challenge to the materialist criterion of fundamentality.Víctor Fernandez Castro - 2022 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 29 (1):109-127.
    Inspired by the work of Sellars, Cumpa (2014, 2018) and Buonomo (2021) have argued that we can evaluate our metaphysical proposals on fundamental categories in terms of their capacity for reconciling the scientific and the manifest image of the world. This criterion of fundamentality would allow us to settle the question of which categories among those proposed in the debate—e.g., substance, structure or facts—have a better explanatory value. The aim of this essay is to argue against a central assumption of (...)
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  11. Chrisman, Matthew. The Meaning of ‘Ought’: Beyond Descriptivism and Expressivism in Metaethics.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 280. $65.00. [REVIEW]Jack Woods - 2016 - Ethics 127 (1):272-277.
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  12. Analytical descriptivism revisited.Anthony Hatzimoysis - 2002 - Ratio 15 (1):10–22.
    Analytical descriptivism purports to identify the meaning of ethical sentences with that of the descriptive sentences that capture the clauses of mature folk morality. The paper questions the plausibility of analytical descriptivism by examining its implications for the semantics, epistemology and metaphysics of morals. The discussion identifies some of the reasons why the analytical descriptivist fails to deliver a reductionist account of normativity.
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  13. A Kripkean argument for descriptivism.Jens Kipper & Zeynep Soysal - 2021 - Noûs 56 (3):654-669.
    In this paper, we offer a novel defense of descriptivism about reference. Our argument is based on principles about the relevance of speaker intentions to reference that are shared by many opponents of descriptivism, including Saul Kripke. We first show that two such principles that are plausibly endorsed by Kripke and other prominent externalists in fact entail descriptivism. The first principle states that when certain kinds of speaker intentions are present, they suffice to determine and explain reference. (...)
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  14. Singularism vs. Descriptivism?Rachel Goodman - 2023 - In Ernest Lepore & David Sosa (eds.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Language, 3. Oxford University Press. pp. 33-66.
    This paper’s most general aim is to illuminate the disagreement between singularists about thought (who claim there are non-descriptive thoughts about ordinary external objects), and descriptivists about thought (who claim all thought about ordinary external objects is descriptive). It does this by clarifying the common claim that singular thoughts have an anchoring role with respect to thought in general and by making two further claims: 1) some of the putative disagreements between singularists and descriptivists are illusory once properly understood, and (...)
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  15. Psychiatric Euthanasia and the Ontology of Mental Disorder.Hane Htut Maung - 2020 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 38 (1):136-154.
    In the Netherlands and Belgium, it is lawful for voluntary euthanasia to be offered on the grounds of psychiatric suffering. A recent case that has sparked much debate is that of Aurelia Brouwers, who was helped to die in the Netherlands on account of her suffering from borderline personality disorder. It is sometimes claimed that whether or not a mentally ill person’s wish to die is valid hinges on whether or not that wish is a symptom of the person’s mental (...)
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  16. The Quasi-Verbal Dispute Between Kripke and 'Frege-Russell'.J. P. Smit - manuscript
    Traditional descriptivism and Kripkean causalism are standardly interpreted as rival theories on a single topic. I argue that there is no such shared topic, i.e. that there is no question that they can be interpreted as giving rival answers to. The only way to make sense of the commitment to epistemic transparency that characterizes traditional descriptivism is to interpret Russell and Frege as proposing rival accounts of how to characterize a subject’s beliefs about what names refer to. My (...)
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  17. Sen and prejudice: a defence of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis?Terence Rajivan Edward - manuscript
    The 2004-5 essay competition set by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis asks, “Why are some countries rich and some countries poor?” It has information which strangely does not feature the name Amartya Sen. But I have conceived of a defence against the charge that this is bad practice, which resembles appealing to the descriptivist theory of names.
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  18. Truth and objectivity in conceptual engineering.Sarah Sawyer - 2020 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63 (9):1001-1022.
    Conceptual engineering is to be explained by appeal to the externalist distinction between concepts and conceptions. If concepts are determined by non-conceptual relations to objective properties rather than by associated conceptions (whether individual or communal), then topic preservation through semantic change will be possible. The requisite level of objectivity is guaranteed by the possibility of collective error and does not depend on a stronger level of objectivity, such as mind-independence or independence from linguistic or social practice more generally. This means (...)
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  19. Metaethics, teleosemantics and the function of moral judgements.Neil Sinclair - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (5):639-662.
    This paper applies the theory of teleosemantics to the issue of moral content. Two versions of teleosemantics are distinguished: input-based and output-based. It is argued that applying either to the case of moral judgements generates the conclusion that such judgements have both descriptive (belief-like) and directive (desire-like) content, intimately entwined. This conclusion directly validates neither descriptivism nor expressivism, but the application of teleosemantics to moral content does leave the descriptivist with explanatory challenges which the expressivist does not face. Since (...)
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  20. Object Files, Properties, and Perceptual Content.Santiago Echeverri - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (2):283-307.
    Object files are mental representations that enable perceptual systems to keep track of objects as numerically the same. How is their reference fixed? A prominent approach, championed by Zenon Pylyshyn and John Campbell, makes room for a non-satisfactional use of properties to fix reference. This maneuver has enabled them to reconcile a singularist view of reference with the intuition that properties must play a role in reference fixing. This paper examines Campbell’s influential defense of this strategy. After criticizing it, a (...)
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  21. Enactivism, action and normativity: a Wittgensteinian analysis.Manuel Heras-Escribano, Jason Noble & Manuel De Pinedo García - 2015 - Adaptive Behavior 23 (1):20-33.
    In this paper, we offer a criticism, inspired by Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations, of the enactivist account of perception and action. We start by setting up a non-descriptivist naturalism regarding the mind and continue by defining enactivism and exploring its more attractive theoretical features. We then proceed to analyse its proposal to understand normativity non-socially. We argue that such a thesis is ultimately committed to the problematic idea that normative practices can be understood as private and factual. Finally, we offer a (...)
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  22. Bohr’s Relational Holism and the classical-quantum Interaction.Mauro Dorato - 2016
    In this paper I present and critically discuss the main strategies that Bohr used and could have used to fend off the charge that his interpretation does not provide a clear-cut distinction between the classical and the quantum domain. In particular, in the first part of the paper I reassess the main arguments used by Bohr to advocate the indispensability of a classical framework to refer to quantum phenomena. In this respect, by using a distinction coming from an apparently unrelated (...)
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  23. Reference and Response.Louis deRosset - 2011 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (1):19-36.
    A standard view of reference holds that a speaker's use of a name refers to a certain thing in virtue of the speaker's associating a condition with that use that singles the referent out. This view has been criticized by Saul Kripke as empirically inadequate. Recently, however, it has been argued that a version of the standard view, a /response-based theory of reference/, survives the charge of empirical inadequacy by allowing that associated conditions may be largely or even entirely implicit. (...)
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  24. Normativity in Language and Law.Alex Silk - 2019 - In Toh Kevin, Plunkett David & Shapiro Scott (eds.), Dimensions of Normativity: New Essays on Metaethics and Jurisprudence. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 287-313.
    This chapter develops an account of the meaning and use of various types of legal claims, and uses this account to inform debates about the nature and normativity of law. The account draws on a general framework for implementing a contextualist theory, called 'Discourse Contextualism' (Silk 2016). The aim of Discourse Contextualism is to derive the apparent normativity of claims of law from a particular contextualist interpretation of a standard semantics for modals, along with general principles of interpretation and conversation. (...)
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  25. Sense and Linguistic Meaning: A solution to the Burge-Kripke Conflict.Carlo Penco - 2013 - Paradigmi 3:75-89.
    When “Sinning Against Frege” was published in 1979 I thought it should have given a real turn in the discussion on Frege’s ideas. Actually the impact was less then I imagined, and the problem was that – at the end of the story – Tyler Burge’s interpretation should have posed a shadow on the direct reference theories and the Millean criticism of descriptivist theories of proper names, based on the criticism of the identification of Frege’s notion of sense with linguistic (...)
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  26. Attitudes Towards Reference and Replaceability.Christopher Grau & Cynthia L. S. Pury - 2014 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 5 (2):155-168.
    Robert Kraut has proposed an analogy between valuing a loved one as irreplaceable and the sort of “rigid” attachment that (according to Saul Kripke’s account) occurs with the reference of proper names. We wanted to see if individuals with Kripkean intuitions were indeed more likely to value loved ones (and other persons and things) as irreplaceable. In this empirical study, 162 participants completed an online questionnaire asking them to consider how appropriate it would be to feel the same way about (...)
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  27. Geach and Ascriptivism: Beside the Point.Luís Duarte D'Almeida - 2016 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 4 (6).
    This paper discusses the first incarnation of what came to be known as the “Frege-Geach” point. The point was made by Peter Geach in his 1960 essay “Ascriptivism”, and developed in “Assertion”, a 1965 piece. Geach’s articles launch a wholesale attack on theories of non-descriptive performances advanced by “some Oxford philosophers” whom he accuses of ignoring “the distinction between calling a thing ‘P’ and predicating ‘P’ of a thing”. One view that Geach specifically targets is H. L. A. Hart’s claim (...)
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  28. Norm Conflicts and Conditionals.Niels Skovgaard-Olsen, David Kellen, Ulrike Hahn & Karl Christoph Klauer - 2019 - Psychological Review 126 (5):611-633.
    Suppose that two competing norms, N1 and N2, can be identified such that a given person’s response can be interpreted as correct according to N1 but incorrect according to N2. Which of these two norms, if any, should one use to interpret such a response? In this paper we seek to address this fundamental problem by studying individual variation in the interpretation of conditionals by establishing individual profiles of the participants based on their case judgments and reflective attitudes. To investigate (...)
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  29. Self‐Location and Other‐Location.Dilip Ninan - 2013 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (1):301-331.
    According to one tradition in the philosophy of language and mind, the content of a psychological attitude can be characterized by a set of possibilities. On the classic version of this account, advocated by Hintikka (1962) and Stalnaker (1984) among others, the possibilities in question are possible worlds, ways the universe might be. Lewis (1979, 1983a) proposed an alternative to this account, according to which the possibilities in question are possible individuals or centered worlds, ways an individual might be. The (...)
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  30. Naturalism, non-factualism, and normative situated behaviour.Manuel Heras-Escribano & Manuel de Pinedo-García - 2018 - South African Journal of Philosophy 37 (1):80-98.
    This paper argues that the normative character of our unreflective situated behaviour is not factual. We highlight a problematic assumption shared by the two most influential trends in contemporary philosophy of cognitive science, reductionism and enactivism. Our intentional, normative explanations are referential, descriptive or factual. Underneath this assumption lies the idea that only facts can make true or false our attributions of cognitive, mental and agential abilities. We will argue against this view by describing the main features and problems of (...)
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  31. Theories of Reference: What Was the Question?Panu Raatikainen - 2020 - In Andrea Bianchi (ed.), Language and reality from a naturalistic perspective: Themes from Michael Devitt. Cham: Springer. pp. 69–103.
    The new theory of reference has won popularity. However, a number of noted philosophers have also attempted to reply to the critical arguments of Kripke and others, and aimed to vindicate the description theory of reference. Such responses are often based on ingenious novel kinds of descriptions, such as rigidified descriptions, causal descriptions, and metalinguistic descriptions. This prolonged debate raises the doubt whether different parties really have any shared understanding of what the central question of the philosophical theory of reference (...)
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  32. Patterns, Noise, and Beliefs.Lajos Ludovic Brons - 2019 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 23 (1):19-51.
    In “Real Patterns” Daniel Dennett developed an argument about the reality of beliefs on the basis of an analogy with patterns and noise. Here I develop Dennett’s analogy into an argument for descriptivism, the view that belief reports do no specify belief contents but merely describe what someone believes, and show that this view is also supported by empirical evidence. No description can do justice to the richness and specificity or “noisiness” of what someone believes, and the same belief (...)
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  33. Donnellan's Misdescriptions and Loose Talk.Carlo Penco - 2017 - In Maria De Ponte Kepa Korta (ed.), Reference and Representation in Language and Thought. Oxford University Press. pp. 104-125.
    Keith Donnellan wrote his paper on definite descriptions in 1966 at Cornell University, an environment where nearly everybody was discussing Wittgenstein’s ideas of meaning as use. However, his idea of different uses of definite descriptions became one of the fundamental tenets against descriptivism, which was considered one of the main legacies of the Frege–Russell– Wittgenstein view; and I wonder whether a more Wittgensteinian interpretation of Donnellan’s work is possible.
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  34. G. E. Moore and the greifswald objectivists on the given and the beginning of analytic philosophy.Nikolay Milkov - 2004 - Axiomathes 14 (4):361-379.
    Shortly before G. E. Moore wrote down the formative for the early analytic philosophy lectures on Some Main Problems of Philosophy (1910–1911), he had become acquainted with two books which influenced his thought: (1) a book by Husserl's pupil August Messer and (2) a book by the Greifswald objectivist Dimitri Michaltschew. Central to Michaltschew's book was the concept of the given. In Part I, I argue that Moore elaborated his concept of sense-data in the wake of the Greifswald concept. Carnap (...)
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  35. Indeterminacy and reference: comments on Roads to Reference. [REVIEW]Panu Raatikainen - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (3):987-994.
    Roads to Reference: An Essay on Reference Fixing in Natural Language by Mario Gómez-Torrente provides an ample attack against certain more recent variants of descriptivism in the theory of reference. The book discusses a wide variety of expressions, but the focus of this short note is on proper names and natural kind terms. In the case of proper names, indeterminacy plays an important role in Gómez-Torrente’s critical argument. Some questions related to it are raised. As to natural kind terms, (...)
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  36. Methodological realism and modal resourcefulness: out of the web and into the mine.Lydia Patton - 2015 - Synthese 192 (11):3443-3462.
    Psillos, Kitcher, and Leplin have defended convergent scientific realism against the pessimistic meta-induction by arguing for the divide et impera strategy. I argue that DEI faces a problem more serious than the pessimistic meta-induction: the problem of accretion. When empirically successful theories and principles are combined, they may no longer make successful predictions or allow for accurate calculations, or the combination otherwise may be an empirical failure. The shift from classical mechanics to the new quantum theory does not reflect the (...)
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  37. An Unjustly Neglected Theory of Semantic Reference.J. P. Smit - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (5):1297-1316.
    There is a simple, intuitive theory of the semantic reference of proper names that has been unjustly neglected. This is the view that semantic reference is conventionalized speakers reference, i.e. the view that a name semantically refers to an object if, and only if, there exists a convention to use the name to speaker-refer to that object. The theory can be found in works dealing primarily with other issues (e.g. Stine in Philos Stud 33:319–337, 1977; Schiffer in Erkenntnis 13:171–206, 1978; (...)
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  38. Ethics, Fitting Attitudes, and Practical Reason: A Theory of Normative Facts.Howard Nye - 2009 - Dissertation, University of Michigan
    I present and defend (1) an account of ethical judgments as judgments about our reasons to feel specific motivationally laden attitudes, (2) an account of what an agent should do in terms of what would achieve ends that she has reason to be motivated to pursue, and (3) an account of an agent’s reasons for motivation (and thus action) in terms of the prescriptions of the most fundamental principles that guide her deliberations. Using these accounts, I explain the connection between (...)
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  39. Yoruba Proverbs, Names and Consciousness.Fasiku Gbenga - 2006 - Journal of Pan African Studies 1 (4):60-63.
    This paper is an attempt to situate Yorùbá proverbs, names, role-expectations, aspirations and consciousness towards building and contributing to the development of a national consciousness. The paper proceeds with a critical exposition of the general nature of Yorùbá proverbs, an exploration of the dialectical relationship between Yorùbá proverbs and names, and argues that this relationship instantiates a descriptivist theory of reference of names in the philosophy of language, with concluding particulars that critically espouses the values and virtues embedded in selected (...)
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  40. A New Imagery Debate: Enactive and Sensorimotor Accounts.Lucia Foglia & J. Kevin O’Regan - 2016 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 7 (1):181-196.
    Traditionally, the “Imagery Debate” has opposed two main camps: depictivism and descriptivism. This debate has essentially focused on the nature of the internal representations thought to be involved in imagery, without addressing at all the question of action. More recently, a third, “embodied” view is moving the debate into a new phase. The embodied approach focuses on the interdependence of perception, cognition and action, and in its more radical line this approach promotes the idea that perception is not a (...)
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  41. Saving the DSM-5? Descriptive conceptions and theoretical concepts of mental disorders.Elisabetta Lalumera - 2016 - Medicina E Storia 9.
    At present, psychiatric disorders are characterized descriptively, as the standard within the scientific community for communication and, to a certain extent, for diagnosis, is the DSM, now at its fifth edition. The main reasons for descriptivism are the aim of achieving reliability of diagnosis and improving communication in a situation of theoretical disagreement, and the Ignorance argument, which starts with acknowledgment of the relative failure of the project of finding biomarkers for most mental disorders. Descriptivism has also the (...)
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  42. Saving the DSM-5? Descriptive conceptions and theoretical concepts of mental disorders. MEDICINA & STORIA, 109-128.Elisabetta Lalumera - 2016 - Medicina E Storia 2 (9-10):109-129.
    Abstract: At present, psychiatric disorders are characterized descriptively, as the standard within the scientific community for communication and, to a cer- tain extent, for diagnosis, is the DSM, now at its fifth edition. The main rea- sons for descriptivism are the aim of achieving reliability of diagnosis and improving communication in a situation of theoretical disagreement, and the Ignorance argument, which starts with acknowledgment of the relative fail- ure of the project of finding biomarkers for most mental disorders. Descrip- (...)
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  43. In Defense of a Kripkean Dogma.Jonathan Ichikawa, Ishani Maitra & Brian Weatherson - 2011 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (1):56-68.
    In “Against Arguments from Reference” (Mallon et al., 2009), Ron Mallon, Edouard Machery, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich (hereafter, MMNS) argue that recent experiments concerning reference undermine various philosophical arguments that presuppose the correctness of the causal-historical theory of reference. We will argue three things in reply. First, the experiments in question—concerning Kripke’s Gödel/Schmidt example—don’t really speak to the dispute between descriptivism and the causal-historical theory; though the two theories are empirically testable, we need to look at quite different (...)
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  44. Mechanizmy predykcyjne i ich normatywność [Predictive mechanisms and their normativity].Michał Piekarski - 2020 - Warszawa, Polska: Liberi Libri.
    The aim of this study is to justify the belief that there are biological normative mechanisms that fulfill non-trivial causal roles in the explanations (as formulated by researchers) of actions and behaviors present in specific systems. One example of such mechanisms is the predictive mechanisms described and explained by predictive processing (hereinafter PP), which (1) guide actions and (2) shape causal transitions between states that have specific content and fulfillment conditions (e.g. mental states). Therefore, I am guided by a specific (...)
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  45. Names Are Variables.Anders J. Schoubye - 2020 - Philosophical Review 129 (1):53-94.
    MILLIANISM and DESCRIPTIVISM are without question the two most prominent views with respect to the semantics of proper names. However, debates between MILLIANS and DESCRIPTIVISTS have tended to focus on a fairly narrow set of linguistic data and an equally narrow set of problems, mainly how to solve with Frege's puzzle and how to guarantee rigidity. In this article, the author focuses on a set of data that has been given less attention in these debates—namely, so-called predicative uses, bound (...)
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  46. A philosopher’s guide to discounting.Kian Mintz-Woo - 2021 - In Budolfson Mark, McPherson Tristram & Plunkett David (eds.), Philosophy and Climate Change. Oxford University Press. pp. 90-110.
    This chapter introduces several distinctions relevant to what is called the “discounting problem”, since the issue is how (future) costs and benefits are discounted to make them comparable in present terms. The author defends the claim that there are good reasons to adopt Ramsey-style discounting in the context of climate change: the Ramsey rule is robust, flexible, and well-understood. An important distinction involved in discounting—“descriptivism” and “prescriptivism”—is discussed. It is argued that, even if we adopt prescriptivism, and accept that (...)
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  47. Ultra-liberal attitude reports.Kyle Blumberg & Ben Holguín - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (8):2043-2062.
    Although much has been written about the truth-conditions of de re attitude reports, little attention has been paid to certain ‘ultra-liberal’ uses of those reports. We believe that if these uses are legitimate, then a number of interesting consequences for various theses in philosophical semantics follow. The majority of the paper involves describing these consequences. In short, we argue that, if true, ultra-liberal reports: bring counterexamples to a popular approach to de re attitude ascriptions, which we will call ‘descriptivism’; (...)
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  48. Descriptive versus Prescriptive Discounting in Climate Change Policy Analysis.Kelleher J. Paul - 2017 - Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy 15:957-977.
    This paper distinguishes between five different approaches to social discount rates in climate change economics, criticizes two of these, and explains how the other three are to some degree mutually compatible. It aims to shed some new light on a longstanding debate in climate change economics between so-called “descriptivists” and “prescriptivists” about social discounting. The ultimate goal is to offer a sketch of the conceptual landscape that makes visible some important facets of the debate that very often go unacknowledged.
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  49. Two Roles for Propositions: Cause for Divorce?Mark Schroeder - 2011 - Noûs 47 (3):409-430.
    Nondescriptivist views in many areas of philosophy have long been associated with the commitment that in contrast to other domains of discourse, there are no propositions in their particular domain. For example, the ‘no truth conditions’ theory of conditionals1 is understood as the view that conditionals don’t express propositions, noncognitivist expressivism in metaethics is understood as advocating the view that there are not really moral propositions,2 and expressivism about epistemic modals is thought of as the view that there is no (...)
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  50. Can There Be a Davidsonian Theory of Empty Names?Siu-Fan Lee - 2016 - In Piotr Stalmaszczyk & Luis Fernandez Moreno (eds.), Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations into Proper Names. Peter Lang. pp. 203-226.
    This paper examines to what extent Davidsonian truth-theoretic semantics can give an adequate account for empty names in natural languages. It argues that the prospect is dim because of a tension between metaphysical austerity, non-vacuousness of theorems and empirical adequacy. Sainsbury (2005) proposed a Davidsonian account of empty names called ‘Reference Without Referents’ (RWR), which explicates reference in terms of reference-condition rather than referent, thus avoiding the issue of existence. This is an inspiring account. However, it meets several difficulties. First, (...)
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