Thomas Hofweber's well-known ontological project crucially involves inferring negative existential statements from statements of non-reference, i.e. statements that say that some term or terms do not refer. Here, after explaining the context of this move, I aim to show that it is fallacious, and that this vitiates Hofweber's ontological project.

This paper challenges the negative attitudes towards labelled proof systems, usually referred to as semantic pollution, by arguing that such critiques overlook the full potential of labelled calculi. The overarching objective is to develop a practice-based philosophical analysis of labelled calculi to provide insightful considerations regarding their proof-theoretic and philosophical value. To achieve this, successful applications of labelled calculi and related results will be showcased, and comparisons with other relevant works will be discussed. The paper ends by advocating for (...) a more practice-based approach towards the philosophical understanding of proof systems and their role in structural proof theory. (shrink)

Once one accepts that certain things metaphysically depend upon, or are metaphysically explained by, other things, it is natural to begin to wonder whether these chains of dependence or explanation must come to an end. This essay surveys the work that has been done on this issue—the issue of grounding and infinite descent. I frame the discussion around two questions: (1) What is infinite descent of ground? and (2) Is infinite descent of ground possible? In addressing the (...) second question, I will consider a number of arguments that have been made for and against the possibility of infinite descent of ground. When relevant, I connect the discussion to two important views about the way reality can be structured by grounding: metaphysical foundationalism and metaphysical infinitism. (shrink)

[A slightly revised version of this paper has been accepted by the BJPS] More attention has been devoted to providing evolutionary scenarios accounting for the development of beliefs, or belief-like states, than for desires or preferences. Here I articulate and defend an evolutionary rationale for the development of psychologically real preference states. Preferences token or represent the expected values of discriminated states, available actions, or action-state pairings. The argument is an application the ‘environmental complexity thesis’ found in Godfrey-Smith and Sterelny, (...) although my conclusions differ from Sterelny’s. I argue that tokening expected utilities can, under specified general conditions, be a powerful design solution to the problem of allocating the capacities of an agent in an efficient way. Preferences are for efficient action selection, and are a ‘fuel for success’ in the sense urged by Godfrey-Smith for true beliefs. They will tend to be favoured by selection when environments are complex in ways that matter to an organism, and when organisms have rich behavioural repertoires with heterogenous returns and costs. The rationale suggested here is conditional, especially on contingencies in what design options are available to selection and on trade-offs associated with the costs of generating and processing representations of value. The unqualified efficiency rationale for preferences suggests that organisms should represent expected utilities in a comprehensive and consistent way, but none of them do. In the final stages of the paper I consider some of the ways in which design trade-offs compromise the implementation of preferences in organisms that have them. (shrink)

In formal ontology, infinite regresses are generally considered a bad sign. One debate where such regresses come into play is the debate about fundamentality. Arguments in favour of some type of fundamentalism are many, but they generally share the idea that infinite chains of ontological dependence must be ruled out. Some motivations for this view are assessed in this article, with the conclusion that such infinite chains may not always be vicious. Indeed, there may even be room for a type (...) of fundamentalism combined with infinite descent as long as this descent is “boring,” that is, the same structure repeats ad infinitum. A start is made in the article towards a systematic account of this type of infinite descent. The philosophical prospects and scientific tenability of the account are briefly evaluated using an example from physics. (shrink)

Abstract for Descent and Logic in Biosystematics: An Essay AUTHOR: THOMAS MCCABE PUBLISHER: PERSEVERANT PUBLISHING Descent and Logic in Biosystematics: An Essay is a short book about biological systematics and taxonomy. Some of the subjects con- sidered in it are philosophical: taxonomic theory, species concepts, speciation models, and evolutionary theories. Yet the book also covers matters not philosophical, such as taxonomic operations, experi- mental taxonomy, and a new suggested taxonomic method with worked examples. The author finds relationships among (...) these topics. The book is addressed to biosystematists, practicing biological tax- onomists, and philosophers of biology. It will also interest others who draw on biological taxonomy and biosystematics in their work. Descent and Logic in Biosystematics: An Essay goes into some old topics such as traditional biological identifying, classifying, and nomenclature; some recent, such as cladistic analysis, phylogenetics, and phylogenomics; and a few new, such as the logic of mutually exclusive taxon definitions, and techniques for using directly obser- ved reproductive events and pedigree analysis to untangle certain taxonomic dilemmas. There is a chapter about minimizing am- biguities when defining biological taxa, a chapter on the relevance of human biology to biosystematics, chapters addressing some biosys- tematic problems associated with the phenomenon of hybridization, a chapter on the relationship of biological taxonomy to conservation biology, and a chapter about the scientificity of evolutionary theories. Descent and Logic in Biosystematics: An Essay is published with a glossary, twelve black and white line figures, a dynamic table of contents, linked cross references, linked bibliographic citations, and a detailed index in the print and PDF versions. Descent and Logic in Biosystematics: An Essay, is available from the publisher in print and PDF formats, and from distributors and retailers as an ebook. It should be considered for academic libraries, research libraries, natural history museum libraries, the libraries of conservation organizations, and some private libraries. (shrink)

This paper establishes a sound and complete semantics for the impure logic of ground. Fine (Review of Symbolic Logic, 5(1), 1–25, 2012a) sets out a system for the pure logic of ground, one in which the formulas between which ground-theoretic claims hold have no internal logical complexity; and it provides a sound and complete semantics for the system. Fine (2012b) [§§6-8] sets out a system for an impure logic of ground, one that extends the rules of the original pure system (...) with rules for the truth-functional connectives, the first-order quantifiers, and λ-abstraction. However, no semantics has yet been provided for this system. The present paper partly fills this lacuna by providing a sound and complete semantics for a system GG containing the truth-functional operators that is closely related to the truth-functional part of the system of Fine (2012b). (shrink)

I argue that semantics is the study of the proprietary database of a centrally inaccessible and informationally encapsulated input–output system. This system’s role is to encode and decode partial and defeasible evidence of what speakers are saying. Since information about nonlinguistic context is therefore outside the purview of semantic processing, a sentence’s semantic value is not its content but a partial and defeasible constraint on what it can be used to say. I show how to translate this thesis (...) into a detailed compositional-semantic theory based on the influential framework of Heim and Kratzer. This approach situates semantics within an independently motivated account of human cognitive architecture and reveals the semantics–pragmatics interface to be grounded in the underlying interface between modular and central systems. (shrink)

The influence of surrealism and Philippe Soupault on William Carlos Williams' poetry.

In this paper I show that we have strong empirical and theoretical reasons to treat the verbs we use in our semantic theorizing—particularly ‘refers to ’, ‘applies to ’, and ‘is true of ’—as intensional transitive verbs. Stating our semantic theories with intensional vocabulary allows us to partially reconcile two competing approaches to the nature and subject-matter of semantics: the Chomskian approach, on which semantics is non-relational, internalistic, and concerns the psychology of language users, and the Lewisian approach, (...) on which semantics is fully relational, specifies truth-conditions, and has metaphysical implications. ITVs have two readings: an intensional, de dicto reading, and a relational, de re reading. A semantic theory stated with the de dicto readings of our semantic verbs captures the core insights of the Chomskian approach to semantics, in part because it allows us to assign extremely fine-grained semantic values to expressions, even when those expressions are empty. On the other hand, the de re reading yields a theory that is fully relational, and issues in truth-conditions. The resulting theories are related—and compatible—in that they are expressed by two different readings of the very same semantic vocabulary, and plausibly, the distinction between these two readings is one of scope. (shrink)

In “Is semantics possible?” Putnam connected two themes: the very possibility of semantics (as opposed to formal model theory) for natural languages and the proper semantic treatment of common nouns. Putnam observed that abstract semantic accounts are modeled on formal languages model theory: the substantial contribution is rules for logical connectives (given outside the models), whereas the lexicon (individual constants and predicates) is treated merely schematically by the models. This schematic treatment may be all that is needed for (...) an account of validity in a formal setting, but it does not help to understand how proper and common nouns function in reality (not in models). Putnam then initiated the empirical study of such nouns to indicate, (i), that the popular Frege-Carnap account of them as (“disguised” compound) predicates is empirically incorrect, and, (ii), that they offer a new paradigm for a naturalistic semantics of natural languages. We take Putnam’s program a couple of steps further. First, we investigate the semantics of common nouns and argue that they refer (to kinds), rather than apply by satisfaction/truth to a designation/denotation. Second, we point to general results about semantics as a theory whose fulcrum is the reference relation rather than satisfaction in models and validity across them. (shrink)

Relationship between default semantics and modularity of mind (in particular mind reading through the principle of Relevance).

This chapter defends a view of semantics on which developing a semantic theory closely resembles developing a scale of measurement. The view helps explain how semantics has made so much progress despite deep disagreements about the target of semantic theorizing (e.g., between those who maintain that semantics is characterizing something psychological, and those who maintain that it is characterizing something social), how appeals to set-theoretic abstracta make sense despite Benacerraf-style worries and despite the fact that set-theoretic entities fit (...) badly with standard (e.g., causal) metasemantic views, and why the threat of radical context sensitivity does not undermine the semantic project. (shrink)

At the heart of semantics in the 20th century is Frege’s distinction between sense and force. This is the idea that the content of a self-standing utterance of a sentence S can be divided into two components. One part, the sense, is the proposition that S’s linguistic meaning and context associates with it as its semantic interpretation. The second component is S’s illocutionary force. Illocutionary forces correspond to the three basic kinds of sentential speech acts: assertions, orders, and questions. (...) Forces are then kinds of acts in which propositions are deployed with certain purposes. I sketch a speech-act theoretic semantics in which that distinction does not hold. Instead of propositions and forces, the theory proposes proto-illocutionary acts and illocutionary acts. The orthodox notion of a proposition plays no role in the framework, which is a good thing, since that notion is deeply problematic. The framework also shows how expressionists, who embrace a sophisticated speech-act framework, face no Frege-Geach embedding problem, since the latter assumes the Sense/Force distinction. (shrink)

Intellectual humility is an interesting but underexplored disposition. The claim “I am (intellectually) humble” seems paradoxical in that someone who has the disposition in question would not typically volunteer it. There is an explanatory gap between the meaning of the sentence and the meaning the speaker expresses by uttering it. We therefore suggest analyzing intellectual humility semantically, using a psycholexical approach that focuses on both synonyms and antonyms of ‘intellectual humility’. We present a thesaurus-based method to map the semantic (...) space of intellectual humility as a heuristic to support philosophical and psychological analysis of this disposition. We find three semantic clusters that compose intellectual humility: the sensible self, the discreet self, and the inquisitive self; likewise, we find three clusters that compose its contraries: the overrated self, the underrated other, and the underrated self. (shrink)

I develop and defend a truthmaker semantics for the relevant logic R. The approach begins with a simple philosophical idea and develops it in various directions, so as to build a technically adequate relevant semantics. The central philosophical idea is that truths are true in virtue of specific states. Developing the idea formally results in a semantics on which truthmakers are relevant to what they make true. A very natural notion of conditionality is added, giving us relevant implication. I then (...) investigate ways to add conjunction, disjunction, and negation; and I discuss how to justify contraposition and excluded middle within a truthmaker semantics. (shrink)

Philosophers and cognitive scientists have worried that research on animal mind-reading faces a ‘logical problem’: the difficulty of experimentally determining whether animals represent mental states (e.g. seeing) or merely the observable evidence (e.g. line-of-gaze) for those mental states. The most impressive attempt to confront this problem has been mounted recently by Robert Lurz. However, Lurz' approach faces its own logical problem, revealing this challenge to be a special case of the more general problem of distal content. Moreover, participants in this (...) debate do not agree on criteria for representation. As such, future debate should either abandon the representational idiom or confront underlying semantic disagreements. (shrink)

Philosophers have spilled a lot of ink over the past few years exploring the nature and significance of grounding. Kit Fine has made several seminal contributions to this discussion, including an exact treatment of the formal features of grounding [Fine, 2012a]. He has specified a language in which grounding claims may be expressed, proposed a system of axioms which capture the relevant formal features, and offered a semantics which interprets the language. Unfortunately, the semantics Fine offers faces a number of (...) problems. In this paper, I review the problems and offer an alternative that avoids them. I offer a semantics for the pure logic of ground that is motivated by ideas already present in the grounding literature, and for which a natural axiomatization capturing central formal features of grounding is sound and complete. I also show how the semantics I offer avoids the problems faced by Fine’s semantics. (shrink)

In several recent contributions to the growing literature on slurs, Hedger draws upon Kaplan’s distinction between descriptive and expressive content to argue that slurs are expressions with purely expressive content. The distinction between descriptive and expressive content and the view that slurs are expressions with purely expressive content has been widely acknowledged in prior work, and Hedger aims to contribute to this tradition of scholarship by offering novel arguments in support of his ‘‘pure expressivist’’ account of slurs. But the account (...) that PE offers is explanatorily inadequate, resting on suspect a priori intuitions which also commit one to denying many basic facts about slurs, such as that slurs largely display systematic differential application and that slurs can be used non-offensively between in-group speakers. In this article I provide clear reasons for rejecting PE, arguing particularly against Hedger as one of PE’s most explicit and recent proponents. In showing that PE is inadequate in at least 11 ways, I argue in favor of a mixed or hybrid approach. (shrink)

Coreferentialism refers to the common assumption in the literature that slurs and descriptors are coreferential expressions with precisely the same extension. For instance, Vallee recently writes that “If S is an ethnic slur in language L, then there is a non-derogatory expression G in L such that G and S have the same extension”. The non-derogatory expression G is commonly considered the nonpejorative correlate of the slur expression S and it is widely thought that every S has a coreferring G (...) that possesses precisely the same extension. Yet here I argue against this widespread assumption by first briefly introducing what slurs are and then considering four sources of supporting evidence showing that slurs and descriptors are in fact not coreferential expressions with precisely the same extension. I argue that since slurs and descriptors differ in their extension they thereby differ in their meaning or content also. This article additionally introduces the notion of a conceptual anchor in order to adequately account for the relationship between slurs and descriptors actually evidenced in the empirical data, and further considers the inadequacy of common dictionary definitions of slurs. This article therefore contributes to the literature on slurs by demonstrating that previous accounts operating on the assumption that slurs and descriptors are coreferential expressions with the same extension, and that they thereby have the same meaning or content, are inconsistent with empirical data and that an alternative account in accord with Croom better fits the facts concerning their actual meaning and use. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a new semantic framework designed to capture a distinctly cognitive or epistemic notion of meaning akin to Fregean senses. Traditional Carnapian intensions are too coarse-grained for this purpose: they fail to draw semantic distinctions between sentences that, from a Fregean perspective, differ in meaning. This has led some philosophers to introduce more fine-grained hyperintensions that allow us to draw semantic distinctions among co-intensional sentences. But the hyperintensional strategy has a flip-side: it risks (...) drawing semantic distinctions between sentences that, from a Fregean perspective, do not differ in meaning. This is what we call the ‘new problem’ of hyperintensionality to distinguish it from the ‘old problem’ that faced the intensional theory. We show that our semantic framework offers a joint solution to both these problems by virtue of satisfying a version of Frege’s so-called ‘equipollence principle’ for sense individuation. Frege’s principle, we argue, not only captures the semantic intuitions that give rise to the old and the new problem of hyperintensionality, but also points the way to an independently motivated solution to both problems. (shrink)

Moeser suggested participants default to linear ordering elements but they can be primed to impose either linear or partial ordering. This study seems problematic insofar as ‘greater than’ might be understood to incline participants to favor linear orderings. Recent follow-up studies strongly suggest participants do not default to linear ordering. It seems plausible, moreover, that the observed priming effect is far more pervasive than Moeser countenanced. The present work explores the extent to which priming for linear or partial orders conflicts (...) with the construction of linear or partial ordering lists. Our two experiments suggest friction between priming and task, and also show once the priming tasks are cleared of potentially confounding semantic content, participants perform equally with respect to constructing linear or partial orders under similar priming conditions. (shrink)

Within contemporary philosophy of mind, it is taken for granted that externalist accounts of meaning and mental content are, in principle, orthogonal to the matter of whether cognition itself is bound within the biological brain or whether it can constitutively include parts of the world. Accordingly, Clark and Chalmers (1998) distinguish these varieties of externalism as ‘passive’ and ‘active’ respectively. The aim here is to suggest that we should resist the received way of thinking about these dividing lines. With reference (...) to Brandom’s (1994; 2000; 2008) broad semantic inferentialism, we show that a theory of meaning can be at the same time a variety of active externalism. While we grant that supporters of other varieties of content externalism (e.g., Putnam 1975 and Burge 1986) can deny active externalism, this is not an option for semantic inferentialists: On this latter view, the role of the environment (both in its social and natural form) is not ‘passive’ in the sense assumed by the alternative approaches to content externalism. (shrink)

The epistemic modal auxiliaries must and might are vehicles for expressing the force with which a proposition follows from some body of evidence or information. Standard approaches model these operators using quantificational modal logic, but probabilistic approaches are becoming increasingly influential. According to a traditional view, must is a maximally strong epistemic operator and might is a bare possibility one. A competing account—popular amongst proponents of a probabilisitic turn—says that, given a body of evidence, must \ entails that \\) is (...) high but non-maximal and might \ that \\) is significantly greater than 0. Drawing on several observations concerning the behavior of must, might and similar epistemic operators in evidential contexts, deductive inferences, downplaying and retractions scenarios, and expressions of epistemic tension, I argue that those two influential accounts have systematic descriptive shortcomings. To better make sense of their complex behavior, I propose instead a broadly Kratzerian account according to which must \ entails that \ = 1\) and might \ that \ > 0\), given a body of evidence and a set of normality assumptions about the world. From this perspective, must and might are vehicles for expressing a common mode of reasoning whereby we draw inferences from specific bits of evidence against a rich set of background assumptions—some of which we represent as defeasible—which capture our general expectations about the world. I will show that the predictions of this Kratzerian account can be substantially refined once it is combined with a specific yet independently motivated ‘grammatical’ approach to the computation of scalar implicatures. Finally, I discuss some implications of these results for more general discussions concerning the empirical and theoretical motivation to adopt a probabilisitic semantic framework. (shrink)

nated discussion of the semantics of such verbs. I will call this view.

There is something peculiar about aesthetic testimony. It seems more difficult to gain knowledge of aesthetic properties based solely upon testimony than it is in the case of other types of property. In this paper, I argue that we can provide an adequate explanation at the level of the semantics of aesthetic language, without defending any substantive thesis in epistemology or about aesthetic value/judgement. If aesthetic predicates are given a non-invariantist semantics, we can explain the supposed peculiar difficulty with aesthetic (...) testimony. (shrink)

In this paper, we do two things. First, we provide some support for adopting a version of the meaningless strategy with respect to the liar paradox, and, second, we extend that strategy, by providing, albeit tentatively, a solution to that paradox—one that is semantic, rather than logical.

I use the principle of truth-maker maximalism to provide a new solution to the semantic paradoxes. According to the solution, AUS, its undecidable whether paradoxical sentences are grounded or ungrounded. From this it follows that their alethic status is undecidable. We cannot assert, in principle, whether paradoxical sentences are true, false, either true or false, neither true nor false, both true and false, and so on. AUS involves no ad hoc modification of logic, denial of the T-schema's validity, or (...) obvious revenge. (shrink)

Virtual environments engage millions of people and billions of dollars each year. What is the ontological status of the virtual objects that populate those environments? An adequate answer to that question requires a developed semantics for virtual environments. The truth-conditions must be identified for “tree”-sentences when uttered by speakers immersed in a virtual environment (VE). It will be argued that statements about virtual objects have truth-conditions roughly comparable to the verificationist conditions popular amongst some contemporary antirealists. This does not mean (...) that the virtual objects lack ontological standing. There is an important sense in which virtual objects are no less real for being mind-dependent. (shrink)

Semantic information is usually supposed to satisfy the veridicality thesis: p qualifies as semantic information only if p is true. However, what it means for semantic information to be true is often left implicit, with correspondentist interpretations representing the most popular, default option. The article develops an alternative approach, namely a correctness theory of truth (CTT) for semantic information. This is meant as a contribution not only to the philosophy of information but also to the philosophical (...) debate on the nature of truth. After the introduction, in Sect. 2, semantic information is shown to be translatable into propositional semantic information (i). In Sect. 3, i is polarised into a query (Q) and a result (R), qualified by a specific context, a level of abstraction and a purpose. This polarization is normalised in Sect. 4, where [Q + R] is transformed into a Boolean question and its relative yes/no answer [Q + A]. This completes the reduction of the truth of i to the correctness of A. In Sects. 5 and 6, it is argued that (1) A is the correct answer to Q if and only if (2) A correctly saturates Q by verifying and validating it (in the computer science’s sense of “verification” and “validation”); that (2) is the case if and only if (3) [Q + A] generates an adequate model (m) of the relevant system (s) identified by Q; that (3) is the case if and only if (4) m is a proxy of s (in the computer science’s sense of “proxy”) and (5) proximal access to m commutes with the distal access to s (in the category theory’s sense of “commutation”); and that (5) is the case if and only if (6) reading/writing (accessing, in the computer science’s technical sense of the term) m enables one to read/write (access) s. Sect. 7 provides some further clarifications about CTT, in the light of semantic paradoxes. Section 8 draws a general conclusion about the nature of CTT as a theory for systems designers not just systems users. In the course of the article all technical expressions from computer science are explained. (shrink)

Expressivists about epistemic modals deny that ‘Jane might be late’ canonically serves to express the speaker’s acceptance of a certain propositional content. Instead, they hold that it expresses a lack of acceptance. Prominent expressivists embrace pragmatic expressivism: the doxastic property expressed by a declarative is not helpfully identified with that sentence’s compositional semantic value. Against this, we defend semantic expressivism about epistemic modals: the semantic value of a declarative from this domain is the property of doxastic attitudes (...) it canonically serves to express. In support, we synthesize data from the critical literature on expressivism—largely reflecting interactions between modals and disjunctions—and present a semantic expressivism that readily predicts the data. This contrasts with salient competitors, including: pragmatic expressivism based on domain semantics or dynamic semantics; semantic expressivism à la Moss [2015]; and the bounded relational semantics of Mandelkern [2019]. (shrink)

In The Philosophy of Information, Luciano Floridi presents a theory of “strongly semantic information”, based on the idea that “information encapsulates truth” (the so-called “veridicality thesis”). Starting with Popper, philosophers of science have developed different explications of the notion of verisimilitude or truthlikeness, construed as a combination of truth and information. Thus, the theory of strongly semantic information and the theory of verisimilitude are intimately tied. Yet, with few exceptions, this link has virtually pass unnoticed. In this paper, (...) we briefly survey both theories and offer a critical comparison of strongly semantic information and related notions, like truth, verisimilitude, and partial truth. (shrink)

This paper contributes to answering the question how physicalism can be defined for a world without fundamental physical phenomena. In a recent paper in this journal, Torin Alter, Sam Coleman, and Robert J. Howell propose a necessary condition on physicalism. They argue that physicalism is true only if there is no infinitely descending chain of mentally constituted phenomena. I argue that this alleged necessary condition faces counterexamples. An infinitely descending chain of mentally constituted phenomena is compatible with physicalism. Afterwards I (...) propose a simpler definition of physicalism that does not fall prey to my counterexample. (shrink)

My paper examines the popular idea, defended by Kripke, that meaning is an essentially normative notion. I consider four common versions of this idea and suggest that none of them can be supported, either because the alleged normativity has nothing to do with normativity or because it cannot plausibly be said that meaning is normative in the sense suggested. I argue that contrary to received opinion, we don’t need normativity to secure the possibility of meaning. I conclude by considering the (...) repercussions of rejecting semantic normativity on three central issues: justification, communication, and naturalism. (shrink)

There is a prevalent notion among cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind that computers are merely formal symbol manipulators, performing the actions they do solely on the basis of the syntactic properties of the symbols they manipulate. This view of computers has allowed some philosophers to divorce semantics from computational explanations. Semantic content, then, becomes something one adds to computational explanations to get psychological explanations. Other philosophers, such as Stephen Stich, have taken a stronger view, advocating doing away with (...) semantics entirely. This paper argues that a correct account of computation requires us to attribute content to computational processes in order to explain which functions are being computed. This entails that computational psychology must countenance mental representations. Since anti-semantic positions are incompatible with computational psychology thus construed, they ought to be rejected. Lastly, I argue that in an important sense, computers are not formal symbol manipulators. (shrink)

The article investigates the significance of the so-called phenomenon of apparent faultless disagreement for debates about the semantics of taste discourse. Two kinds of description of the phenomenon are proposed. The first ensures that faultless disagreement raises a distinctive philosophical challenge; yet, it is argued that Contextualist, Realist and Relativist semantic theories do not account for this description. The second, by contrast, makes the phenomenon irrelevant for the problem of what the right semantics of taste discourse should be. Lastly, (...) the following dilemma is assessed: either faultless disagreement provides strong evidence against semantic theories; or its significance should be considerably downplayed. (shrink)

I provide an analysis of sentences of the form ‘To be F is to be G’ in terms of exact truth-maker semantics—an approach that identifies the meanings of sentences with the states of the world directly responsible for their truth-values. Roughly, I argue that these sentences hold just in case that which makes something F is that which makes it G. This approach is hyperintensional, and possesses desirable logical and modal features. These sentences are reflexive, transitive and symmetric, and, if (...) they are true, then they are necessarily true, and it is necessary that all and only Fs are Gs. I close by defining an asymmetric and irreflexive notion of analysis in terms of the reflexive and symmetric one. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reinterpret success semantics, a theory of mental content, according to which the content of a belief is fixed by the success conditions of some actions based on this belief. After arguing that in its present form, success semantics is vulnerable to decisive objections, I examine the possibilities of salvaging the core of this proposal. More specifically, I propose that the content of some very simple, but very important, mental states, the immediate mental antecedents (...) of action, can be explained in this manner. (shrink)

SEMANTIC ARITHMETIC: A PREFACE John Corcoran Abstract Number theory, or pure arithmetic, concerns the natural numbers themselves, not the notation used, and in particular not the numerals. String theory, or pure syntax, concems the numerals as strings of «uninterpreted» characters without regard to the numbe~s they may be used to denote. Number theory is purely arithmetic; string theory is purely syntactical... in so far as the universe of discourse alone is considered. Semantic arithmetic is a broad subject which (...) begins when numerals are mentioned (not just used) and mentioned as names of numbers (not just as syntactic objects). Semantic arithmetic leads to many fascinating and surprising algorithms and decision procedures; it reveals in a vivid way the experiential import of mathematical propositions and the predictive power of mathematical knowledge; it provides an interesting perspective for philosophical, historical, and pedagogical studies of the growth of scientific knowledge and of the role metalinguistic discourse in scientific thought. (shrink)

This paper considers a now familiar argument that the ubiquity of context -dependence threatens the project of natural language semantics, at least as that project has usually been conceived: as concerning itself with `what is said' by an utterance of a given sentence. I argue in response that the `anti-semantic' argument equivocates at a crucial point and, therefore, that we need not choose between semantic minimalism, truth-conditional pragmatism, and the like. Rather, we must abandon the idea, familiar from (...) Kaplan and others, that utterances express propositions `relative to contexts' and replace it with the Strawonian idea that speakers express propositions by making utterances in contexts. The argument for this claim consists in a detailed investigation of the particular case of demonstratives, which I argue demand such a Strawsonian treatment. I then respond to several objections, the most important of which allege that the Strawsonian account somehow undermines the project of natural language semantics, or threatens the semantics -pragmatics distinction. Please note that the paper posted here is an extended version of what was published. (shrink)

Quine's views on semantic holism and observation statements appear to be incompatible. My paper is an attempt to alleviate this tension.

Boethius identifies God both with esse ipsum and esse suum. This paper explains Boethius's general semantic use of "esse" and the application of this use to God. It questions the helpfulness of attributing to Boethius "existence" words and argues for a more robust role in Boethius’s thought for Hilary of Poitiers’s and Augustine’s exegeses of Exodus 3:14-15 than has been acknowledged in recent scholarship.

This paper presents a semantical analysis of the Weak Kleene Logics Kw3 and PWK from the tradition of Bochvar and Halldén. These are three-valued logics in which a formula takes the third value if at least one of its components does. The paper establishes two main results: a characterisation result for the relation of logical con- sequence in PWK – that is, we individuate necessary and sufficient conditions for a set.

Semantic dispositionalism is roughly the view that meaning a certain thing by a word, or possessing a certain concept, consists in being disposed to do something, e.g., infer a certain way. Its main problem is that it seems to have so many and disparate exceptions. People can fail to infer as required due to lack of logical acumen, intoxication, confusion, deviant theories, neural malfunctioning, and so on. I present a theory stating possession conditions of concepts that are counterfactuals, rather (...) than disposition attributions, but which is otherwise similar to inferentialist versions of dispositionalism. I argue that it can handle all the exceptions discussed in the literature without recourse to ceteris paribus clauses. Psychological exceptions are handled by suitably undemanding requirements (unlike that of giving the sum of any two numbers) and by setting the following two preconditions upon someone’s making the inference: that she considers the inference and has no motivating reason against it. The non-psychological exceptions, i.e., cases of neural malfunctioning, are handled by requiring that the counterfactuals be true sufficiently often during the relevant interval. I argue that this accommodates some important intuitions about concept possession, in particular, the intuition that concept possession is vague along a certain dimension. (shrink)

Externalism is widely endorsed within contemporary philosophy of mind and language. Despite this, it is far from clear how the externalist thesis should be construed and, indeed, why we should accept it. In this entry I distinguish and examine three central types of externalism: what I call foundational externalism, externalist semantics, and psychological externalism. I suggest that the most plausible version of externalism is not in fact a very radical thesis and does not have any terribly interesting implications for philosophy (...) of mind, whereas the more radical and interesting versions of externalism are quite difficult to support. (shrink)

Abstract I argue that good and right are gradable adjectives as that is understood in the current linguistic theory of gradable adjectives. According that theory, gradable adjectives do not denote properties but contribute meaning in a different yet cognitive way; and if that applies to good and right, then those words contribute meaning and provide evaluativity and normativity by means other than denoting properties. If that is true, significant consequences follow for metaethics, both because of the lack of properties good (...) and right, and because of specific features of the gradable adjective semantics. I outline the theory of good and right as gradable adjectives and explore some of those consequences, attempting to give a sense of what changes we may expect in metaethics. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the idea that certain sentences suffer from what is generally called semantic unspecificity: their meaning is determinate, but their truth conditions are not. While there tends to be agreement on the idea that semantic unspecificity differs from phenomena such as ambiguity and vagueness, some theorists have defended an account which traces it to indexicality, broadly construed. Some authors have tried to vindicate the distinction between unspecificity and indexicality and, in this paper, I pursue (...) the same cause, but with a critical stance towards previously employed strategies. I urge that the central argument employed by Sainsbury to trace this difference fails suitably to set unspecificity apart from indexicality and I propose a new argument, which helps to trace this distinction more perspicuously. The argument is based on embeddings of indexical and unspecific expressions within modal operators and on the ways in which the truth conditions of utterances of the resulting, complex expressions are thereby affected. (shrink)

This thesis argues for two main points concerning the philosophy of natural language semantics. Firstly, that the objects of assertion are distinct from the entities appealed to in the compositional rules of natural language semantics. Secondly, natural languages contain context-shifting operators known as "monsters". In fact, it will be shown that these theses are simply two sides of the same coin.

According to Jago (2014a), logical omniscience is really part of a deeper paradox. Jago develops an epistemic logic with principles of indeterminate closure to solve this paradox, but his official semantics is difficult to navigate, it is motivated in part by substantive metaphysics, and the logic is not axiomatized. In this paper, I simplify this epistemic logic by adapting the hyperintensional semantic framework of Sedlár (2021). My first goal is metaphysical neutrality. The solution to the epistemic paradox should not (...) require appeal to a metaphysics of truth-makers, situations, or impossible worlds, by contrast with Jago’s official semantics. My second goal is to elaborate on the proof theory. I show how to axiomatize a family of logics with principles of indeterminate epistemic closure. (shrink)

Deflationism is the view that certain metaphysical debates are defective, leaving it open whether the defect is best explained in semantic, conceptual, or epistemic terms. Local semantic deflationism is the thesis that familiar metaphysical debates, which appear to be about the existence and identity of material objects, are merely verbal. It’s a form of local deflationism because it restricts itself to one particular area of metaphysics. It’s a form of semantic deflationism because the defect it purports to (...) identify in these debates is explained in terms of the broadly semantic notion of a merely verbal disputation. Three questions about this thesis are asked and answered here. Does a commitment to the principle of interpretive charity support it? No. Does it avoid the problems that plagued Carnap? No. Does it support a linguistic turn with respect to questions about the nature of material things? No. The central take-home message is that local semantic deflationism is unstable: advocates of the view must admit that debates about material coincidence and identity are substantive. (shrink)