This paper presents a semantic and pragmatic theory of complex demonstratives. According to this theory, the semantic content of a complex demonstrative, in a context, is simply an object, and the semantic content of a sentence that contains a complex demonstrative, in a context, is a singular proposition. This theory is defended from various objections to direct reference theories of complex demonstratives, including King's objection from quantification into complex demonstratives.

My aim is to defend a peculiar epistemic version of the particularity thesis, which results from a sui generis combination of what I call the ‘singular relational view’ and what I call the ‘relativistic content view.’ Particulars are not represented as part of putative singular content. Instead, we are perceptually acquainted with them in the relevant sense that experience puts us in direct perceptual contact with them. And the content of experience is best modeled as (...) a propositional function, that is, the content of a complex predicate that is true or false only relative to some circumstances of evaluation. (shrink)

This paper is a new non-descriptivist defense of nonconceptualism based on a new interpretation of Kant’s metaphysics of concepts. We advance the following claim: What distinguishes non-conceptual from conceptual singular representations is the way partial representations of the object’s features are integrated into the whole representation of the object, while at the non-conceptual level, this integration takes the form of images of the object’s features that are stored and projected, at the conceptual level this integration takes the form of (...) the recognition that those features are properties of a same object, what Kant calls “synthetic unity of Aperception”. (shrink)

This paper is a new non-descriptivist defense of non- conceptualism, based on a new interpretation of Kant’s metaphysics of concepts. We advance the following claim: What distinguishes non-conceptual from conceptual singular representations is the way partial representations of the object’s features are integrated into the whole representation of the object: while at the non-conceptual level this integration takes the form of images of the object’s features that are stored and projected, at the conceptual level this integration takes the form (...) of the recognition that those features are properties of a same object, what Kant calls “synthetic unity of Aperception”. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences seem to in some sense have singular contents. For example, a perceptual experience of a dog as fluffy seems to represent some particular dog as being fluffy. There are important phenomenological, intuitive, and semantic considerations for thinking that perceptual experiences represent singular contents, but there are also important phenomenological, epistemic, and metaphysical considerations for thinking that they do not. This paper proposes a two-tier picture of the content of singular perceptual experiences that is based (...) on phenomenal intentionality theories of intentionality combined with self-ascriptivism about derived representation, a combination of views that allows mental states to have two types of contents: phenomenal contents and derived contents. On the proposed picture, singular perceptual experiences represent singular phenomenal contents, which do not involve worldly objects, as well as singular derived contents, which do involve worldly objects. This picture accommodates and reconciles the considerations for and against thinking that perceptual experiences have singular contents. (shrink)

De re or singular thoughts are, intuitively, those essentially or constitutively about a particular object or objects; any thought about different objects would be a different thought. How should a philosophical articulation or thematization of their nature look like? In spite of extended discussion of the issue since it was brought to the attention of the philosophical community in the late fifties by Quine (1956), we are far from having a plausible response. Discussing the matter in connection with the (...) status of the Kripkean category of the contingent a priori, Donnellan (1979) argued that what can be properly classified as knowable a priori about utterances like those involving ‘one meter’ or ‘Neptune’ famously proposed by Kripke (1980) cannot be the very same singular content that is contingent he distinguished to that end between knowing a true proposition expressed by an utterance, and knowing that an utterance expresses a true proposition. Evans (1979) replied that, for a very specific sort of cases involving “descriptive names”, a related proto-two-dimensionalist account should be preferred, on which it is not the singular contingent content, but rather a general descriptive one which is knowable a priori. In a series of papers, Robin Jeshion (2000, 2001) has recently attacked Donnellan's proposal, arguing in favour of the most straightforward interpretation of Kripke's claim: in the relevant cases, the very same singular content can be both contingent and knowable a priori. This paper appeals to a generalized version of two-dimensional semantics to advance an account of the Kripkean cases along the lines of Evans's, and argues that Jeshion's compelling arguments against Donnellan's view do not apply to this version. (shrink)

On the traditional relationalist conception of singular thought, a thought has singular content when it is based on an ‘information relation’ to its object. Recent work rejects relationalism and suggests singular thoughts are distinguished from descriptive thoughts by their inferential role: only thoughts with singular content can be employed in ‘direct’ inferences, or inferences that ‘trade on identity’. Firstly this view is insufficiently clear, because it conflates two distinct ideas—one about a kind of inference, (...) the other a kind of process that grounds inferences—under the title, ‘trading on identity’. Secondly, this leaves us without a notion that can be used as an alternative to relationalism about singular thought. The first notion is no more applicable to singular than to descriptive thought. The second may help us better understand singular thought, but does so, not by replacing the view that singular thoughts are information-based, but by helping us understand the nature of information-based thought. (shrink)

A singular thought about an object o is one that is directly about o in a characteristic way—grasp of that thought requires having some special epistemic relation to the object o, and the thought is ontologically dependent on o. One account of the nature of singular thought exploits a Russellian Structured Account of Propositions, according to which contents are represented by means of structured n-tuples of objects, properties, and functions. A proposition is singular, according to this framework, (...) if and only if it contains an object as a constituent. One advantage of the framework of Russellian Structured propositions is that it promises to provide a metaphysical basis for the notion of a singular thought about an object, grounding it in terms of constituency. In this paper, we argue that the attempt to ground the peculiar features of singular thoughts in terms of metaphysical constituency fails, and draw some consequences of our discussion for other debates. (shrink)

A singular thought can be characterized as a thought which is directed at just one object. The term ‘thought’ can apply to episodes of thinking, or to the content of the episode (what is thought). This paper argues that episodes of thinking can be just as singular, in the above sense, when they are directed at things that do not exist as when they are directed at things that do exist. In this sense, then, singular thoughts (...) are not object-dependent. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to survey a number of features which are constitutive of the Millian account of attitude-ascription and which I take to be irremediably defective. The features in question, some of which have not been fully appreciated, relate mainly to the failure of that account to accommodate certain fundamental aspects of our ordinary practise of attitude attribution. I take it that one’s definitive method of assessment of a given semantical theory consists in checking out whether or (...) not the theory is able to accommodate our pre-theoretical linguistic intuitions; to use Keith Donnellan’s phrase, such intuitions are the bottom line in philosophical argumentation about language. And I argue that the Millian appeal to modes of presentation taken both as semantically irrelevant and external to the singular contents believed, known, etc., as well as the associated pragmatic strategy employed to discard our ground-floor judgements, are insufficient to palliate the manifest implausibility of a number of Millian descriptions of our attitudes, especially descriptions of our second-order attitudes. (shrink)

This essay argues for a model of pictorial representation which aims to explain the relationship between pictorial content and pictorial accuracy. Focusing on cases where pictures are intended to convey accurate information, the model distinguishes between two fundamental representational relations: on one hand, a picture expresses a content; on the other, it aims at a target scene. Such a picture is accurate when the content it expresses fits the target scene it aims at. In addition, the model (...) follows the traditional division of content into two aspects: singular content specifies the particular individuals which a picture is of, and attributive content specifies the properties and relations which the picture ascribes to those individuals. For a picture to be accurate, both aspects must be matched in the target. I call this the Three-Part Model because it distinguishes between the triad of factors, singular content, attributive content, and target, which together determine pictorial accuracy. Though previous work on depiction has not recognized the distinctive role played by target, I will argue that it is essential in order to make sense of accuracy judgements across a range of central cases. (shrink)

De re or singular thoughts are, intuitively, those essentially or constitutively about a particular object or objects; any thought about different objects would be a different thought. How should a philosophical articulation or thematization of their nature look like? In spite of extended discussion of the issue since it was brought to the attention of the philosophical community in the late fifties by Quine (1956), we are far from having a plausible response. This is glaringly revealed by the contrasting (...) recent takes on the issue by writers such as Soames (2005) – who adopts the view by Donnellan (1979) to be outlined presently – and Jeshion (2001), otherwise sharing a similar direct-reference approach to the prototypical expression of those contents. Discussing the matter in connection with the status of the Kripkean category of the contingent a priori in the just mentioned article, Donnellan (1979) argued that what can be properly classified as knowable a priori about utterances like those involving ‘one meter’ or ‘Neptune’ famously proposed by Kripke (1980) cannot be the very same singular content that is contingent; he distinguished to that end between knowing a true proposition expressed by an utterance, and knowing that an utterance expresses a true proposition. (Thus, for instance, if, while listening to an utterance in a language that I do not know, I am told by a reliable person who knows the language and whom I trust that the utterance is true, I come thereby to know that the sentence expresses a truth, without knowing the truth that it expresses.) Evans (1979) replied that, for a very specific sort of cases involving “descriptive names”, a related proto-two-dimensionalist account should be preferred, on which it is not the singular contingent content, but rather a general descriptive one which is knowable a priori. In a series of papers, Robin Jeshion (2000, 2001) has recently attacked Donnellan's proposal, arguing in favour of the most straightforward interpretation of Kripke's claim: in the relevant cases, the very same singular content can be both contingent and knowable a priori. In this paper, I will appeal to a generalized version of two-dimensional semantics to advance an account of the Kripkean cases along the lines of Evans's, and I will argue that Jeshion's compelling arguments against Donnellan's view do not apply to this version. (shrink)

In order to avoid the reduction of desire to demand and to produce a theory in keeping with the insights of psychoanalysis, Lacan had to move beyond Hegel’s theorization based on recognition. To do so, Lacan had to come up with a new form of object, an object irreducible to the signifier but with the power to arouse the desire of the subject. The theorization of the objet a enables Lacan to make an important advance on Hegel’s theory of desire, (...) an advance that effectively reverses the priority that Hegel establishes between the object and the Other. Despite the widespread association of Lacan with the signifier and its laws, his one great theoretical breakthrough concerns what remains absolutely irreducible to signification. My central contention in this essay is that Lacan’s theory of desire allows us to understand how singularity appears in the cinema, despite the medium’s inherent resistance to it. I examine this appearance of singularity through two filmic occasions—Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and Michael Mann’s Heat. It is a medium in which recognition predominates, and yet the singularity of the objet a nonetheless emerges and animates the desire of the spectator. (shrink)

In this introduction, I consider different problems posed by the use of singular terms in fiction (section 1), paying especial attention to proper names and, in particular, to names of real people, places, etc. As we will see (section 2), descriptivist and Millian theories of reference face different kinds of problems in explaining the use of fictional names in fiction-related contexts. Moreover, the task of advancing a uniform account of names in these contexts—an account which deals not only with (...) fictional names but also with “real” names—will prove to be very hard no matter whether we favour realist or antirealist intuitions about fictional discourse (section 3). Section 4 offers an overview of the content of this volume, with emphasis on the discussion between Manuel García-Carpintero and Stacie Friend about the meaning of “real” names in fiction-related contexts, the main topic of the Third Blasco Disputatio. (shrink)

Philosophers of physics should be more attentive to the role energy conditions play in General Relativity. I review the changing status of energy conditions for quantum fields-presently there are no singularity theorems for semiclassical General Relativity. So we must reevaluate how we understand the relationship between General Relativity, Quantum Field Theory, and singularities. Moreover, on our present understanding of what it is to be a physically reasonable field, the standard energy conditions are violated classically. Thus the singularity theorems are unavailable (...) for classical General Relativity. Our understanding of singularities in General Relativity turns on delicate issues of what it is to be a matter field-issues distinct from the content of the theory. (shrink)

[Abstract] Suppose that the Big Bang was the first singularity in the history of the cosmos. Then it would be plausible to presume that the availability of the strong general intelligence should mark the second singularity for the natural human race. The human race needs to be prepared to make it sure that if a singularity robot becomes a person, the robotic person should be a blessing for the humankind rather than a curse. Toward this direction I would scrutinize the (...) implication of the hypothesis that the singularity robot is a member of the human society. I will ask how the robot is equipped to satisfy the ontological criteria such as accountability, consciousness, identity, by demonstrating a possibility that it has the epistemological capacities like conceptual role semantic understanding and non-monotonous inference, and by probing whether it can behave in the way human moral visions expect it to. -/- [Table of contents] 1. Opening: Singularity robots are coming 1) Singularity robots of strong general intelligence 2) A singularity robot is a member of the human community 2. Ontological interpretation of singularity robot 1) Responsibility: thinking, understanding, belief 2) Consciousness: three characteristics – zombie, enjoyment, sympathy 3) Identity: I, body, autonomy, unity 3. Epistmological prospects of singularity robot 1) Semantics of general intelligence: conceptual role semantics 2) Logic for general intelligence: non-monotonous logic 4. Moral horizon of singularity robot 1) When a singularity robot becomes a robot person 2) Humanity independence: singularity robot is a user of human languages 5. Concluding: preemptive humanities. (shrink)

This essay defends three interlocking claims about singular beliefs and their ascriptions. The first is a claim about the nature of such beliefs; the second is a claim about the semantic contents of ascriptions of such beliefs; the third is a claim about the pragmatic significance of such ascriptions. With respect to the nature of singular belief, I claim that the contents of our singular beliefs are a joint product of mind and world, with neither mind nor (...) world enjoying any peculiar priority over the other in the constitution of content. This view amounts to a rejection of the priority of so-called narrow or notional content over wide or referential content for singular beliefs. About the semantics of ascriptions of singular belief, I claim that such ascriptions ascribe what I call predicative doxastic commitments and nothing more. In particular, I will argue that to ascribe a predicative commitment is merely to say what property is being predicated by she who undertakes the relevant commitment to what object. My view has the consequence that ascriptions of singular beliefs typically do not either semantically specify or pragmatically implicate the modes of presentations, notions, or conceptions via which the ascribee cognizes the objects and properties relative to which she undertakes predicative commitments. To be sure, many maintain that at least one class of belief ascriptions -- so called de dicto ascriptions. (shrink)

Propositional attitudes, like believing and asserting, are relations between agents and propositions. Agents are individuals who do the believing and asserting; propositions are things that are believed and asserted. Propositional attitude ascriptions are sentences that ascribe propositional attitudes to agents. For example, a propositional attitude ascription α believes, or asserts, that S is true iff the referent of a bears the relation of believing, or asserting, to the proposition expressed by s. The questions I will address have to do with (...) the precise nature of propositions, and the attitudes, like belief, that we bear to them.I will assume both that propositions are the semantic contents of sentences, and that the proposition expressed by a sentence is a structured complex made up of the semantic contents of the parts of the sentences that express it. (shrink)

(1) Content properties are nonrelational, that is, having a content property does not entail the existence of any contingent object not identical with the thinker or a part of the thinker.2 (2) We have noninferential knowledge of our conscious thoughts, that is, for any of our..

Almost every case of visual experience is as of a unified state of affairs and as of one or more specific particulars. I argue that a view on which the content of visual experience is a singular proposition does a better job at explaining these two features of visual experience than three popular theories: the Complex Property Theory, Generalism, and Fregean Particularism. The defended view, however, entails that there are no visual hallucinations traditionally understood. I make the case (...) for the plausibility of this consequence. (shrink)

Most direct reference theorists about indexicals and proper names have adopted the thesis that singular propositions about physical objects are composed of physical objects and properties.1 There have been a number of recent proponents of such a view, including Scott Soames, Nathan Salmon, John Perry, Howard Wettstein, and David Kaplan.2 Since Kaplan is the individual who is best known for holding such a view, let's call a proposition that is composed of objects and properties a K-proposition. In this paper, (...) I will attempt to show that a direct reference view about the content of proper names and indexicals leads very naturally to the position that all singular propositions about physical objects are K-propositions.3 Then, I will attempt to show that this view of propositions is false. I will spend the bulk of the paper on this latter task. My goal in the paper, then, is to show that adopting the direct reference thesis comes at a cost problems the view has with problems such as opacity and the significance of some identity statements; it comes at even more of a cost). (shrink)

Almost any mainstream reading about the nature of Kant's 'content of cognition' in both non-conceptualist and conceptualist camps agree that 'singular representations' (sensible intuitions) are, at least in some weak sense, objectdependent because they supervene on a manifold of sensations that are given through the disposition of our sensibility and parallel thus the real and physical components of the world (cf. McDowell 1996, Allison 1983, Ginsborg 2008, Allais 2009). The relevant class of sensible intuitions should refer, as they (...) argue, only to empirical and not to pure ones. Kant's transcendental argument creates, however, no implications as to the metaphysics of properties. Neither does he consider the world to be consisted of sensory content simpliciter nor do sensations refer to objects per se. Instead, he provides an all-encompassing pattern for sensible intuitions of any kind through the representation of space as a cognitive map in that an object can be represented if spatial properties are attributed to it. Sensible intuitions of any kind could be referring, that is to say, and can be conceptualized if they are spatial. Consequently and unlike the contemporary philosophy of perception, Kant contrasts sensible intuitions and pure concepts of understanding 'altogether' against one single experience, from which the justification of objects should proceed. In other words, what stands at the core of exposing the content of cognition concerns not the phenomenological status and actuality of sensible intuitions in the sense of 'bits of experiential intake', but the logical structure of possibility of sensible intuitions of any (external or internal) causal background. The aim of this discussion is to clarify that Kant's transcendental idealism mutatis mutandis reviews multiple and diverse kinds of 'data of mind' and cognition in the background, without reducing the content of cognition to metaphysically determined referents as 'matters of fact' and to pure concepts of understanding. Sensible intuitions in the sense of content of cognition vary, most importantly, from unstructured and unjustifiable data of mind including (physical) contents of perception and stuff of mind and also from reflective and intellectual intuitions that are the cognates of the structured complex singular representations. Put it in simple terms, Kant advocates the thesis that 'facts' are objects for concepts if they are already well-founded trough the cognitive map of the representation of space. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I argue that propositionalism is what generates a tension between referentialism and harmony. Harmony can be preserved if we replace propositionalism by centred referentialism, according to which referential thoughts and utterances about an object have descriptive contents that must be evaluated relative to a world centred on that object at the relevant time. By disentangling truth-conditions and contents, this move allows us to dissolve the tension between referentialism and descriptivism. The view that emerges has three main components: (...) the truth-conditions of a referential utterance or thought involves its referent ; its reference is determined by causal relations of acquaintance in the context of use ; and its cognitive value is fully explained by associated descriptions or truth-conditional contents. (shrink)

Holism about thought content – especially coupled with a measure of semantic externalism – can provide us with an attractive account of how thinking relates to the world. It can help us to tell a neat story that starts out with the inseparable entanglement of truth and intelligibility: in order to understand thought, to confront it to the world and to give verdicts about that confrontation, we need to grasp a considerable amount of truths. A variety of positions that (...) emerge under the influence of Davidson’s arguments (see, for instance, his 1974) deny the possibility of severing the connection between thought and facts of the world. However, this holisticunderstanding of thought seems less attractive when it is forced to account for our capacities to engage with singularities. A (roughly) Davidsonian conception of thought faces serious problems when it tries to answer questions regarding singular thoughts, de re attitudes and beliefs, and the nature of items of the world that cannot be described or referred to without the aid of demonstratives. This tension between thought and singularity is a well-known one and shows up in different traditions of philosophy. We aim at easing the tension without giving up the intuitions behind holism. (shrink)

How do we acquire thoughts and beliefs about particulars by looking at pictures? One kind of reply essentially compares depiction to perception, holding that picture-perception is a form of remote object-perception. Lopes’s theory that pictures refer by demonstrative identification, and Walton’s transparency theory for photographs, constitute such remote acquaintance theories of depiction. The main purpose of this paper is to defend an alternative conception of pictures, on which they are not suitable for acquainting us with particulars but for acquainting us (...) with certain kinds of properties. This conception is outlined in §4, where it is argued that pictures are useful devices for what Heal has called indexical predication. In §2 and §3, I explain why I believe that remote acquaintance theories are false, and why picture-perception cannot function as a form of extended or remote object-perception. The main reason is that the contents of picture-perceptions do not themselves provide the kind of numerical and contextual information required for singular thought. Picture-reference is instead secured by independent beliefs or linguistic communication about the causal history of pictures as objects. In other words, it is beliefs about the numerical identity of pictures as objects that anchors the reference of the representational contents of pictures. (shrink)

My purpose is to take a close look at the nature of visual content. I discuss the view that visual experiences have only existential contents, the view that visual experiences have either singular or gappy contents, and the view that visual experiences have multiple contents. I also consider a proposal about visual content inspired by Kaplan's well known theory of indexicals. I draw out some consequences of my discussion for the thesis of intentionalism with respect to the (...) phenomenal character of visual experience. (shrink)

The article summarizes the content of Andreas Reckwitz’s book The Society of Singularities in 10 theses and briefly links it to the author’s overall work. The Society of Singularities applies a practice theory approach in order to outline a theory of Western (late-)modernity which recognizes in it a basic rivalry between two logics of social evaluation: a social logic of the general and a social logic of the particular/ singular. The question arises which historical causes for the surge (...) of the social logic of uniqueness since the 1980s can be discerned, which structural features this type of society unfolds and which social and political consequences it has. (shrink)

Basic to Robert Brandom’s project in Making It Explicit is the demarcation of singular terms according to the structure of their inferential roles---rather than, as is usual, according to the kinds of things they purport to denote. But the demarcational effort founders on the need to distinguish extensional and nonextensional occurrences of expressions in terms of inferential roles; the closest that an inferentialist can come to drawing that distinction is to discern degrees of extensionality, and that is not close (...) enough. The general moral applies as well to “two factor” theories of content: the notion of inferential role lacks the independence from the notion of denotation that many proponents of such theories have attributed to it. (shrink)

In his recent book, Causation: A Realistic Approach , Michael Tooley discusses the following thesis, which he calls the ‘thesis of the Humean Supervenience of Causal Relations’: The truth values of all singular causal statements are logically determined by the truth values of statements of causal laws, together with the truth values of non-causal statements about particulars . represents one version of the ‘Humean’ idea that there is no more factual content to the claim that two particular events (...) are causally connected than that they occur, instantiate some law or regularity, and perhaps bear some appropriate non-causal to each other. This is an idea that is tacitly or explicitly assumed in most familiar accounts of singular causal statements. For example is assumed by many probabilistic theories of singular causal statements, by theories which attempt to analyse singular causal statements in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, and, as I shall argue below, by David Lewis' counterfactual theory. (shrink)

Suppose that Paul, while looking at a tree, sees that that thing over there is a red bird. Paul is having what we may call a ‘singular’ perceptual experience. How should we characterise the representational content of his perceptual experience? I will sketch an original answer to this question, building on the internalist accounts propounded by Searle (1983. Intentionality. Cambridge University Press. Ch. 2) and Recanati (2007. Perspectival Thought. Oxford University Press. Ch. 17). Pace Searle, the content (...) of Paul's experience is not a (general) proposition. Pace Recanati, whose account draws on Lewis’s (1979. “Attitudes De Dicto and De Se.” Philosophical Review 88 (4): 513–543) internalist view of de se attitudes, it is not a property of the perceiving subject. Instead, I submit, it is a property of the perceived object. The content is the property of being a red bird, which determines a set of centred worlds whose centre (an object taken at a time) is a red bird; the object (here, the bird) is part of the relevant situation of evaluation for the experience; and the experience is veridical only if the actual world centred on the object belongs to the set of centred worlds determined by that property. I will argue that this view retains the benefits of Searle's and Recanati's accounts while improving on them. (shrink)

Many of our thoughts are about particular individuals (persons, things, places, etc.). For example, one can spot a certain Ferrari and think that it is red. What enables this thought to latch onto that particular object? It cannot be how the Ferrari looks, for this could not distinguish one Ferrari from another just like it. In general, how a thought represents something cannot determine which thing it represents. What a singular thought latches onto seems to depend also on features (...) of the context in which the thought occurs. This suggests that its content is essentially indexical, contextually variable much as the content of an utterance like 'I am hungry' depends on who utters it and when (see DEMONSTRATIVES AND INDEXICALS). The indexical model of singular thought is not limited to thoughts about individuals one perceives, like the Ferrari driving by, but applies also to thoughts about individuals one remembers or has been informed of, like an old bicycle or Christopher Columbus. In each case, a certain contextual relation, based on perception, memory, or communication, connects thought to object. (shrink)

Basic to Robert Brandom’s project in Making It Explicit is the demarcation of singular terms according to the structure of their inferential roles—rather than, as is usual, according to the kinds of things they purport to denote. But the demarcational effort founders on the need to distinguish extensional and nonextensional occurrences of expressions in terms of inferential roles; the closest that an inferentialist can come to drawing that distinction is to discern degrees of extensionality, and that is not close (...) enough. The general moral applies as well to “two factor” theories of content: the notion of inferential role lacks the independence from the notion of denotation that many proponents of such theories have attributed to it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: The Singular Voice of Being: John Duns Scotus and Ultimate Difference by Andrew Lazella Christopher Cullen S.J. Andrew Lazella, The Singular Voice of Being: John Duns Scotus and Ultimate Difference. Medieval Philosophy: Texts and Studies. New York: Fordham University Press, 2019. Pp. x + 260. $72.00. ISBN: 9780823284573. John Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308) is aptly called the Subtle Doctor. His thought is filled (...) with subtleties and distinctions that embody medieval Scholasticism's attempt to master the science of metaphysics, especially as it had been recast by the rediscovery of Aristotle's Metaphysics—a text that Scotus wrote about at length. Andrew Lazella's book, The Singular Voice of Being: John Duns Scotus and Ultimate Difference aims precisely at presenting the subtleties of Scotus' answer to Parmenides with the Eleatic's denial of the reality of the multiplicity of beings and of change. Lazella first illumines in detail Scotus's central metaphysical doctrine, namely, that the mind attains a univocal concept of being. But the problem then becomes, as Lazella rightly perceives, that this "univocity of being" might seem to be in danger of collapsing being into a Parmenidean monism. Hence, the urgency for Scotus "to divide being at its joints" (as Lazella refers to the task; 2). Scotus has to find the ultimate differences that demarcate the multiplicity and divisions of being, if his univocity of being is not to collapse being into a false unity. Lazella shows how Scotus attempts to escape the monism of Parmenides while also avoiding a Heraclitean flux and multitude that destroys the possibility of knowledge and science. For Scotus, only the univocal concept of being is adequate to this task. An analogy of being is inadequate, primarily because it is on the side of equivocation. The univocal concept is "the singular voice of being" that illumines the unity of the finite world, with its vast multitude of things, and that also grounds the concepts of a natural theology of the infinite God. Lazella insightfully begins the book by presenting Scotus's work as an answer to Parmenides and thus to the most basic of all metaphysical questions, as discussed above. Part 1 of the book includes three chapters: the first two discuss in detail the univocal concept that unites beings, and [End Page 237] chapter 3 outlines the concept of the ultimate difference that divides being. Lazella highlights a threefold taxonomy of ultimate differences that are found in the modes, species, and individuals of being. Part 2 of the book includes three chapters, one on each of the "regions" of ultimate difference: chapter 4 treats the intrinsic modes of being; chapter 5 the ultimate specific differences that account for the diversity of species; and chapter 6 presents the ultimate individual difference, i.e., "thisness" or haeceitas, which accounts for the reality of the individual substances. A helpful conclusion summarizes the argument of the book as a whole."In his early Quaestiones super Praedicamenta Aristotelis, Scotus says that things are univocally named when they share not only the same term (vox) or name (nomen) but also the same account (ratio)" (17). The opposite extreme from univocty is equivocity. Equivocity obtains when things only share a name but have different accounts. In between these two extremes is analogy: "Analogical names require that the name signify multiple rationes, which are unified according to some order or relation" (17). This account of these three terms is uncontroversial. Lazella thinks that Scotus's turn to univocity, as the ground of metaphysics, is driven largely by his epistemology. For Scotus, "cognition is rooted in sensible accidents and is unable to gain access to the real essences of substances themselves" (6). Hence the isomorphism between mind and reality cannot be secured without a univocal concept of being, contra the views of the majority of his fellow thirteenth-century Scholastics, such as Bonaventure and Aquinas. A key point is that, for Scotus, the intelligible species, or likeness, abstracted from the phantasm by the agent intellect, is not understood as a mirror that re-presents the form found in the concrete substances of the world. For Scotus, the intelligible species is no longer understood as a formal sign that... (shrink)

One of the most pressing questions concerning singular demonstrative mental contents is what makes their content singular: that is to say, what makes it the case that individual objects are the representata of these mental states. Many philosophers have required sophisticated intellectual capacities for singular content to be possible, such as the possession of an elaborate scheme of space and time. A more recent reaction to this strategy proposes to account for singular content (...) solely on the basis of empirical models of visual processing. We believe both sides make good points, and offer an intermediate way of looking into singular content. Our suggestion is that singular content may be traced to psychological capacities to form flexible, abstract representations in the prefrontal cortex. This allows them to be sustained for increasingly longer periods of time and extrapolated beyond the context of perception, thus going beyond lowlevel sensory representations while also falling short of more sophisticated intellectual abilities. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam (1981) proposed an interesting and much discussed attempt to refute a skeptical argument that is based on one form of the brain-in-a-vat scenario. In turn, Putnam’s attempted refutation is based on content externalism (also known as semantic externalism). On this view, the referents and meanings of various types of singular and general terms, as well as the propositions expressed by sentences containing such terms, are determined by aspects of the speaker’s external environment. In this entry, we (...) will consider the basic features of and problems with Putnam’s original argument, and we will also present and discuss several of the most important attempts to reconstruct or improve upon that argument. (shrink)

:I present arguments in favour of the view that the propositions expressed by utterances containing singularly referring terms have modes of presentation of the objects referred to by those terms as constituents. I rely on recent work by Sperber and Wilson, Recanati and other pragmatists, and claim that a Fregean account of singular reference is supported by this work. This is in opposition to Recanati himself, who in his book Direct Reference has argued for a view which is closer (...) to that of some neo‐Russellians. In particular, I argue contra Recanati for the truth‐conditional relevance of the modes of presentation associated with demonstratives and other referential terms. That is, 1 argue that these modes of presentation must be seen as part of the truth‐conditional content of utterance‐tokens containing such terms. (shrink)

We argue that Recanati burdens his otherwise salutary “Mental File” account of singular thought with an “Actualist” assumption that he has inherited from the discussion of singular thought since at least Evans, according to which singular thoughts can only be about actual objects: apparent singular thoughts involving “empty” terms lack truth-valuable content. This assumption flies in the face of manifestly singular thoughts involving not only fictional and mistakenly postulated entities, such as Zeus and the (...) planet Vulcan, but also “perceptual inexistents,” e.g., Kanizsa figures, rainbows, words and phonemes, as well as hosts of at best metaphysically problematic “objects,” such as properties, numbers, ceremonies, contracts, symphonies, “the sky,” “the rain.” Indeed, reflection on what seems to be the boundless diversity of “things” about which we seem to be able to have singular thoughts strongly suggests that there may be no general metaphysics of objects, much less “acquaintance” and “epistemically rewarding” relations that would distinguish singular from non-singular thought. We recommend that Recanati and other mental file theorists confine the theory to a metaphysically neutral account of singular thought as specific kind of internally “focused” computational state, and not seek any general account of the relation of thought to reality. (shrink)

In response to the concern that criteriological psychiatric diagnosis, based on the DSM and ICD classifications, pigeon-holes patients, there have been calls for it to be augmented by an idiographic formulation [IDGA Workgroup, WPA 2003]. I have argued elsewhere that this is a mistake [Thornton 2008a, 2008b, 2010]. Looking back to its original proponent Wilhelm Windelband yields no clear account of the contrast between idiographic and nomothetic judgement. Abstracting from Jaspers’ account of understanding an idea of idiographic judgement based on (...) the contrast between singular and general causal relations also fails. I argue, however, that Windelband does provide a helpful clue in his remark that ‘every interest and judgement, every ascription of human value is based upon the singular and the unique... Our sense of values and all of our axiological sentiments are grounded in the uniqueness and incomparability of their object’ [Windelband 1980: 182]. This suggests a role for the idiographic not as the content of a particular kind of judgement but rather as characterising its aim. I argue that this connects to the issue of the generalisability of small scale qualitative social science research and to the critique of ‘looking away’ in moral philosophy. (shrink)

Representationalist theories of experience face the problem that two sets of compelling intuitions seem to support the contrary conclusions that we should ascribe, respectively, singular contents and general contents to experience. Susanna Schellenberg has, in a series of articles, argued that we can conserve both sets of intuitions if we award a central explanatory role to the notions of gappy-contents and content-schemas in our theory of experience. I argue that there is difficulty in seeing how gappy-contents and (...) class='Hi'>content-schemas can fulfil the explanatory role envisioned for them by Schellenberg. The central problem is that both gappy-contents and contentschemas lack truth-conditions. Schellenberg attempts to support her view by suggesting an analogy between the role of content-schemas in our account of experience and the role of Kaplan’s notion of character in our account of demonstrative statements. However, I show that this analogy breaks down at crucial places when it is explored in detail. Hence, gappy-contents and content-schemas cannot fill the explanatory roles that the representationalist awards to fully truth-evaluable contents. Therefore, Schellenberg’s theory provides no way for the representationalist to conserve both sets of competing intuitions. (shrink)

In this paper,[1] I shall address the much-discussed issue of how definite descriptions should be analysed: whether they should be given a quantificational analysis in the style of Russell’s theory of descriptions,[2] or whether they should be seen instead, at least in some cases, as “genuine singular terms” or “genuine referring expressions”, whose function is to pick out a particular object in order to say something about that very object.

Existentialist accounts maintain that visual phenomenal content takes the logical form of an existentially quantified sentence. These accounts do not make phenomenal content specific enough. Singularist accounts posit a singular content in which the seen object is a constituent. These accounts make phenomenal content too specific. My account gets the specificity of visual phenomenal content just right. My account begins with John Searle's suggestion that visual experience represents an object as seen, moves this relation (...) outside the scope of the existential quantifier and then replaces it with the relation of objects being ‘present as accessible’, as described by Alva Noë. (shrink)

In uttering negative existential sentences, we do not mention but use an empty singular term. A pretense account explains the use in terms of pretense. I argue that our understanding of negative existential statements can be successfully explained by Crimmins’ theory of shallow pretense if it is supplemented and reconstructed properly. First, I explain the notion of shallow pretense and supplement Crimmin’s theory with an Evansian account that we immediately grasp the phenomenology of what is pretended without a conscious (...) effort to imagine the condition under which what is pretended can be true. Thus, shallow pretense does not consist in the counterintuitive meta-representation of the fact of pretense. Second, against the objection to Crimmins’ distinction between utterance truth-condition and modal content that it is ad hoc, I argue that there is good reason to hold the distinction for the semantics of belief reports. Finally, I argue that the distinction has a merit of explaining our intuition about the epistemic possibility associated with our use of an empty singular term. (shrink)

This paper aims to offer a new metaphysical view of both the representational content and the phenomenal or conscious character of visual experience inspired by Kaplan’s semantics of demonstratives. In Kaplan’s famous account, the character or meaning of a demonstrative type is understood as the function of a particular token of that type (vehicle of content) in the context of the demonstration of the singular content in the context in question. By way of analogy, I want (...) to suggest that the phenomenal character of experience can be best modeled as a function from tokens of experience in the context of experiential contact to their singular contents: that is, the instantiation of properties with which the subject is in experiential contact in those contexts. Since the meaning of demonstratives can also be described by its token-reflexive rule (the object demonstrated by this token demonstrative in this context of demonstration), we can also think of the phenomenal character as a token-reflexive property of representing whatever is normally causally responsible for this token experience in the context of experiential contact. This is what I call Reflexionism, inspired by Tye’s Kaplanianism (Tye 2009, 113-4, 2014). For example, phenomenal yellowness is the token-reflexive property of representing whatever is causally responsible for the relevant brain pattern in the context of experiential contact under normal conditions. (shrink)

Say a reason to ø is legal just in case at least a part of the reason is the fact that ø-ing is legally required. This paper is about the widely accepted claim that legal reasons have a certain distinctive formal property—content-independence. I argue that, on two important interpretations, this claim is false. It is false either because legal reasons contingently lack the relevant property or because no reason lacks it. I also argue that, given these two interpretations, (...) class='Hi'>content-independence could not be a property of singular legal reasons. (shrink)

The idea that what we perceive are tropes (abstract particulars) is anything but new. In fact, it was one of the reasons why the ontology of tropes was postulated in the first place. Still, the claim that we perceive tropes is invariably and purely based on pre-philosophical intuitions or, indirectly, as a supporting argument for the advantages of the content view when compared to the relational view of experience. In this paper, I take the content view for granted (...) and argue in favor of what is herein referred to as the trope-content view of experience. My defense is a case of inference to the best explanation. The trope-content view can meet all reasonable desiderata on the experience and its content without assuming gaps or making the ad hoc assumption that there are different layers of content, or so shall I argue. (shrink)

This paper investigates the question of how to correctly capture the scope of singular thinking. The first part of the paper identifies a scope problem for the dominant view of singular thought maintaining that, in order for a thinker to have a singular thought about an object o, the thinker has to bear a special epistemic relation to o. The scope problem has it is that this view cannot make sense of the singularity of our thoughts about (...) objects to which we do not or cannot bear any special epistemic relation. The paper focuses on a specific instance of the scope problem by addressing the case of thoughts about the natural numbers. Various possible solutions to the scope problem within the dominant framework are assessed and rejected. The second part of the paper develops a new theory of singular thought which hinges on the contention that the constraints that need to be met in order to think singularly vary depending on the kind of object we are thinking about. This idea is developed in detail by discussing the difference between the somewhat standard case of thoughts about spatio-temporal medium-sized inanimate objects and the case of thoughts about the natural numbers. It is contended that this new Pluralist theory of singular thought can successfully solve the scope problem. (shrink)

The intentionalist about consciousness holds that the qualitative character of experience, “what it’s like,” is determined by the contents of a select group of special intentional states of the subject. Fred Dretske (1995), Mike Thau (2002), Michael Tye (1995) and many others have embraced intentionalism, but these philosophers have not generally appreciated that, since we are intimately familiar with the qualitative character of experience, we thereby have special access to the nature of these contents. In this paper, we take advantage (...) of this fact to show that intentionalism is incompatible with the idea that these contents are singular or general propositions, and thus that intentionalism is incompatible with one dominant trend in thinking about contents in general. In particular, there appear to be insoluble difficulties in explaining how the phenomenology of place and time can be explained by any intentionalist theory appealing to singular or general propositions. (shrink)

My purpose is to take a close look at the nature of visual content. I discuss the view that visual experiences have only existential contents, the view that visual experiences have either singular or gappy contents, and the view that visual experiences have multiple contents. I also consider a proposal about visual content inspired by Kaplan's well known theory of indexicals. I draw out some consequences of my discussion for the thesis of intentionalism with respect to the (...) phenomenal character of visual experience. (shrink)

In this paper I will discuss the intentionalist view of perception, and present some arguments to support the view that, contrary to Michael Martin’s criticism, intentionalists do not need to conceive the content of perception as either singular or general, because this is not the way that it should be thought. The right way to conceive the representational content of perception is by considering it as informational and functional.

Naïve Realists hold that perceptual experience is a conscious relation to an object and its property-instances. In contrast, Representationalists hold that it is a conscious representational state with content, something which is accurate or inaccurate in certain conditions. The most common versions of Representationalism take perceptual content to be either general (Generalism) or singular in the object-place and otherwise consisting of attribution of properties (Singularism/Attributionism). Susanna Schellenberg has recently developed a version on which perceptual content is (...) singular even in the property-place in containing a de re mode of presentation of a property-instance (Particularism) (Schellenberg 2018). Particularism is explicitly motivated by its ability to capture certain Naïve Realist insights and it would be genuine progress if it were the best version of Representationalism. Then the debate between Naïve Realism and Representationalism would reduce to the debate over Disjunctivism. In this paper I show that Particularism faces a version of the problem of the Unity of Perceptual Content. Namely, its supporters haven’t told us how objects can be bound together with property-instances into a content such that it represents them and has accuracy-conditions. Furthermore, I argue that Particularists face an in-principle obstacle in solving it. In contrast, Attributionists can say that objects are bound together with properties into a content because the latter are attributed to the former. This establishes Attributionism as the only Representationalist game in town. But Attributionism can’t capture all Naïve Realist insights that the Particularists are after. Thus, the debate between Naïve Realism and Representationalism doesn’t reduce to the debate over Disjunctivism. (shrink)