Philosophy of Language, Miscellaneous

In this paper, I critically assess Mark Richard’s interesting and important development of the claim that linguistic meanings can be fruitfully analogized with biological species. I argue that linguistic meanings qua cluster of interpretative presuppositions need not and often do not display the population-level independence and reproductive isolation that is characteristic of the biological species concept. After developing these problems in some detail, I close with a discussion of their implications for the picture that Richard paints concerning the dangers of (...) conceptual engineering and the prospects for dynamic notions of semantic stability. (shrink)

This paper shows that Wittgenstein's later explorations of the meaning of expressive moral judgements reach far deeper than has so far been noticed. It is argued that an adequate description of the meaning of expressive moral judgements requires engaging in a grammatical investigation that focuses on three interwoven components within specific language-games. First, the ethical reactions expressed by moral words and the additional purpose they may fulfil. Second, the features of the actions which are bound up with moral words and (...) are constitutive of our moral evaluations. And, finally, the forms of life in which expressive moral judgements and moral language-games are embedded. (shrink)

This piece was written as my Presidential Address at the Annual Conference of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, held at Melbourne University in July 1999. I discuss the view ‘that we can’t describe or theorise about the world from outside language.’ I call this idea ‘linguistic imprisonment’, and take it to be a platitude, although one that is interpreted very differently by different philosophers. In so far as language does depend on contingencies of our own ‘location’, how should we theorise (...) about such matters? I distinguish two approaches, called ‘backgrounding’ and ‘foregrounding’. Roughly, the latter seeks to incorporate the contingencies into the content of claims that depend on them, whereas the former treats them as use conditions. I argue that linguistic imprisonment implies that not everything can be foregrounded, and apply the framework to a then-recent objection to expressivism by Jackson and Pettit. (shrink)

RésuméJe soutiendrai que la façon dont Davidson rend compte de l'intention pure peut être comprise comme une analyse de l'intention comme étant relative à un jugement dans une perspective en première personne. Selon Davidson, avoir la pure intention de faire A, c'est formuler un jugement tout bien considéré qu'il est désirable de faire A. Dans cette analyse anti-réductionniste, l'intention est traitée comme un état irréductible du sujet. J’établirai une comparaison entre cette analyse et celle de Wright et je montrerai comment (...) la position de Davidson peut être considérée comme une analyse non-réductionniste rapportant l'intention au jugement, selon les directions suggérées par Wright. J'expliquerai ensuite comment cette analyse peut aider à éclaircir diverses difficultés qui se présentent dans la conception que Davidson se fait ultérieurement de la signification et du contenu mental. (shrink)

Does utterance understanding require reliable (i.e. non-lucky) recovery of the speaker’s intended proposition? There are good reasons to answer in the affirmative: the role of understanding in supporting testimonial knowledge seemingly requires such reliability. Moreover, there seem to be communicative analogues of Gettier cases in which luck precludes the audience’s understanding an utterance despite recovering the intended proposition. Yet, there are some major problems with the view that understanding requires such reliability. Firstly, there are a number of cases in which (...) understanding seems to occur in a lucky way. In light of these cases I argue that we need to narrow down the precise sense in which understanding precludes luck – the anti-luck condition attached to linguistic understanding is importantly different to anti-luck conditions typically applied to knowledge. Secondly, Megan Hyska has recently argued that, assuming understanding precludes luck, we get a communicative analogue of the value problem for knowledge. i.e. why is it better to meet the other conditions for understanding in a reliable way than in a lucky way? It is natural to assume that we can simply port over our favoured responses to the epistemic value problem in response to Hyska’s challenge. I argue that, due to the difference between epistemic and communicative luck (discussed in response to the first problem), this cannot be done. The epistemic and communicative value problems will require different solutions. I close by sketching the beginnings of an alternative answer to the value problem for communication. (shrink)

This book argues that the major traditions in the philosophy of language have mistakenly focused on highly idealized linguistic contexts. Instead, it presents a non-ideal foundational theory of language that contends that the essential function of language is to direct attention for the purpose of achieving diverse social and political goals. Philosophers of language have focused primarily on highly idealized linguistic contexts in which cooperative agents are working toward the shared goal of gaining information about the world. This approach abstracts (...) away from important issues like power, ideology, social position, and diversity of goals which are crucial to explaining linguistic phenomena both at the semantic and pragmatic levels. This book begins by examining the work of some of the pioneers of this tradition--primarily David Lewis, Paul Grice, and Robert Stalnaker. The author shows that various problems have their source in idealizations made at the foundational level of linguistic theory and proposes to rebuild from the ground-up. She presents a non-ideal foundational theory of language which retains the major insights of traditional frameworks while rejecting the social idealizations that guide them. Then, she explores the social and political applications of her account to issues such as dog whistling, propaganda, slurs and racist speech, silencing, and manipulation. Non-Ideal Foundations of Language will appeal to researchers and advanced students in philosophy of language who are interested in the social and political applications of language, as well as traditional metasemantic theory. (shrink)

Philosophical disagreements about whether there is a distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge is typically conflated with a disagreement about the possibility of a priori knowledge itself. This is because very few people doubt the existence of a posteriori knowledge or what it is, so the survival of the distinction inevitably is dependent on the survival and/or the characterisation of the a priori. But whether knowing anything a priori is actually possible has still not found philosophical resolution. Naturalism, (...) for instance, has provided a steady offensive against the possibility of a priori knowledge. And, inevitably, most often the rebuttals have come from within the rationalist camp. But, it is argued here, a defence of the a priori which does not use the most robust analysis of the concept is bound to fail at the outset. Such a robust account does necessarily come from the rationalist camp. This paper aims to correct one such defence of the a priori and therefore of the distinction: Casullo’s ‘Four challenges to the a priori-a posteriori distinction’ – which is in fact four challenges to the a priori. It further aims to suggest a more robust construal of a priori, by suggesting an anti-realist analysis of ‘a priori knowledge’. (shrink)

Smells are often said to be ineffable, and linguistic research shows that languages like English lack a dedicated olfactory lexicon. Starting from this evidence, I propose an account of how we talk about smells in English. Our reports about the way things smell are comparative: When we say that something smells burnt or like roses, we characterise the thing's smell by noting its similarity to the characteristic smells of certain odorous things (burnt things, roses). The account explains both the strengths (...) and limitations of our smell discourse, and has implications for philosophical discussions of the relation between language and appearances. (shrink)

Populism has become a buzzword within the political arena of the twenty-first century. It is near omnipresent in our discourse, most of the time without being tied to any particularly defined conceptualization. This proliferation of populist and meta-populist discourse results in the meaning of the term populism becoming taken for granted without ever resulting in its user’s need to feel it necessary to expand on its actual meaning. The aim of this paper is to try to shed some light on (...) the definition of the word populism and its usage. I adopt and apply some tools proposed by Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, namely his idea of family resemblance and meaning as use. Firstly, I will consider populism as a family resemblance term. Instead of trying to entangled populism within a framework of fixed and essential features, populism should be seen as contingent and contextual intertwining of different characteristics which make us immediately recognize a phenomenon as populism. Secondly, I will propose three different uses of populism within academic literature – populism as a classifier, as an admonition and as a descriptor - in order to show how the meaning that we attributed to the term might change according to the usage we make of it. Consequently, each theory of populism advanced should be conceived in light of the scope of the analysis and the specific use we make of the word within political debate. This approach would allow us to maintain the word populism in spite of its lack of a central definition, while allowing a plurality of overlapping and conflictual meanings. (shrink)

Gadamer's Truth and Method: A Polyphonic Commentary offers a fresh look at Gadamer's magnum opus, Truth and Method, which was first published in German in 1960, translated into English in 1975, and is widely recognized as a ground-breaking text of philosophical hermeneutics. The volume features essays from fourteen scholars--both established and rising stars--each of which cover a portion of Truth and Method following the order of the text itself. The result is a robust, historically and thematically rich polyphonic reading of (...) the text as a whole, valuable both for scholarship and teaching. (shrink)

-/- Hate speech is a concept that many people find intuitively easy to grasp, while at the same time many others deny it is even a coherent concept. A majority of developed, democratic nations have enacted hate speech legislation—with the contemporary United States being a notable outlier—and so implicitly maintain that it is coherent, and that its conceptual lines can be drawn distinctly enough. Nonetheless, the concept of hate speech does indeed raise many difficult questions: What does the ‘hate’ in (...) hate speech refer to? Can hate speech be directed at dominant groups, or is it by definition targeted at oppressed or marginalized communities? Is hate speech always ‘speech’? What is the harm or harms of hate speech? And, perhaps most challenging of all, what can or should be done to counteract hate speech? -/- In part because of these complexities, hate speech has spawned a vast and interdisciplinary literature. Legal scholars, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, political theorists, historians, and other academics have each approached the topic with exceeding interest. In this current article, however, we cannot hope to cover how these many disciplines have engaged with the concept of hate speech. Here, we will focus most explicitly on how hate speech has been taken up within philosophy, with particular emphasis on issues such as: how to define hate speech; what are the plausible harms of hate speech; how an account of hate speech might include both overt expressions of hate (e.g., the vitriolic use of slurs) as well as more covert, implicit utterances (e.g., dogwhistles); the relationship between hate speech and silencing; and what might we do to counteract hate speech. (shrink)

Hilary Whitehall Putnam was one of the leading philosophers of the second half of the 20th century. As student of Rudolph Carnap's and Hans Reichenbach's, he went on to become not only a major figure in North American analytic philosophy, who made significant contributions to the philosphy of mind, language, mathematics, and physics but also to the disciplines of logic, number theory, and computer science. He passed away on March 13, 2016. The present volume is a memorial to his extraordinary (...) intellectual contributions, honoring his contributions as a philosopher, a thinker, and a public intellectual. It features essays by an international team of leading philosophers, covering all aspects of Hilary Putnam's philosophy from his work in ethics and the history of philosophy to his contributions to the philosophy of science, logic, and mathematics. Each essay is an original contribution. -/- Author information James Conant, Univ. of Chicago/Univ. of Leipzig, USA/Germany; Sanjit Chakraborty, IISER Kolkata, India. (shrink)

the two-and-a-half years that Dewey lived in Japan and China offered him an East-West comparative standpoint to examine Euro-American presuppositions. In subsequent work, he took steps in the direction of a global philosophical outlook by promoting a fusion of aesthetic refinements with democratic experimentalism. The year 2021 marks the centennial of Dewey’s return to the United States, yet philosophers in this country have only begun to take in an emerging global philosophical scene that includes unfamiliar questions, angles, idioms, and emphases. (...) This includes American pragmatists. In a sense, as Gregory Pappas has observed in the context of Latin American philosophies, pragmatism did not “grow up” in the United... (shrink)

The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique case study for understanding conceptual and linguistic propagation. In early 2020, scientists, politicians, journalists, and other public figures had to, with great urgency, propagate several public health-related concepts and terms to every person they could. This paper examines the propagation of coronavirus and social distancing and develops a framework for understanding how the language used to express a notion can help or hinder propagation. I argue that anyone designing a representational device (...) for propagation needs to appreciate the three-way causal relationship between language, people’s mental representations, and the extramental world. Using this framework, I explore what makes “social distancing” a bad name for social distancing and why it is unproblematic that “coronavirus” is a scientifically loose way of speaking about the virus. Through this and further study of the many historical examples of linguistic and conceptual propagation, conceptual engineers can better understand the complex challenges facing people who want to propagate representational devices. (shrink)

Together with the volume “Inquiries in philosophical pragmatics: Linguistic and theoretical issues,” this book collects selected contributions to the conference Pragmasophia II held in Lisbon in 2018. This first volume intends to contribute to the dialogue between philosophers and linguists, trying to broaden the boundaries of this discipline defined by the crucial notions of context and verbal action. To this purpose, the contributions are collected in an order that reflects the core and the frontiers of pragmatics, the former constituted by (...) the classical and more philosophical topics as quantifiers, semantic intentions and semantics, and common knowledge, and the latter exploring areas such as the relationship between pragmatics and other fields, such as argumentation and discourse analysis. Between these two poles of theoretical developments, we can find new theoretical challenges to some basic pragmatic problems, such as pure indexicals, deferred reference, polysemy, explicatures and indirect reports. (shrink)

It has been suggested that intuitions supporting the nonvacuity of counterpossibles can be explained by distinguishing an epistemic and a metaphysical reading of counterfactuals. Such an explanation must answer why we tend to neglect the distinction of the two readings. By way of an answer, I offer a generalized pattern for explaining nonvacuity intuitions by a stand-and-fall relationship to certain indicative conditionals. Then, I present reasons for doubting the proposal: nonvacuists can use the epistemic reading to turn the table against (...) vacuists, telling apart significant from spurious intuitions. Moreover, our intuitions tend to survive even if we clear-headedly intend a metaphysical reading. -/- . (shrink)

Esta entrevista realizada al primer vicepresidente de la Academia Nacional de Letras de Uruguay, Gerardo Caetano, tiene como propósito debatir sobre la situación política que atraviesa Latinoamérica, a partir de los cuestionamientos que se han hecho acerca de algunos conceptos fundamentales, como el que se entiende por democracia. Las respuestas que brinda el doctor son esenciales, puesto que efectúa un recuento de la historia de los dos últimos siglos para confrontar el panorama que se aprecia en las coyunturas nacionales actuales (...) y el rol que ejercen otras instituciones u organismos, como la prensa. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show how micro-argumentation mechanisms of presumptive reasoning and reasoning from best explanation can be used for explaining some cases of presupposition cancellation. It will be shown how the relationship between presupposition triggers and pragmatic presuppositions can be analyzed in terms of presumptive and non-presumptive polyphonic articulation of an utterance, resulting in different types of commitments for the interlocutors. This approach is grounded on the two interconnected notions of presumptions and commitments. In some complex (...) cases of presupposition “suspension,” the speaker presumes the hearer’s acceptance of and commitment to propositions that cannot be presumed as such, namely that do not belong to the common ground, or that have been explicitly rejected as being commonly shared. This phenomenon triggers a complex type of reasoning that can be represented as an abductive pattern, grounded on hierarchies of presumptions and aimed at providing an interpretation that solves this conflict of presumptions. Several cases of suspension of presupposition will be investigated as resulting from non-presumptive polyphonic articulations, in which different voices responsible for distinct commitments are distinguished. By indirectly reporting an element of discourse, the speaker can refuse to take responsibility for the presupposed proposition, and correct the commitments that may result for him. This polyphonic treatment of utterances shows how and why a presupposition is suspended, and identifies the conflicting presumptions that can be further solved through reasoning from best explanation. This reasoning can result in a different reconstruction of the developed logical form of utterance or of its illocutionary force. (shrink)

I offer an interpretation of Carnap and Quine’s views on cognitive significance and insignificance. The basic idea behind their views is as follows: to judge an expression is insignificant is to recommend it not be used in or explicated into languages used to express truth-valued judgments in inquiry; to judge an expression is significant is to recommend it be used in or explicated into such languages. These judgments are pragmatic judgments, made in light of purposes for language use in inquiry. (...) For Carnap at least, these pragmatic judgments are non-cognitive. This basic idea is only a roughly correct statement of their views. This is because the details of the scientific languages they recommend for inquiry are necessary to understand their views and the way they understand their own views. Even so, I offer two reasons to suggest that this basic idea is worthy of our consideration today. First, it provides a conception of significance that captures the natural thought that epistemological concerns can lead us to consider expressions to be insignificant without requiring an objectionable form of verificationism. Second, if we appeal also to Carnap and Quine’s pluralistic attitude toward explication, we can make a pragmatic judgment that an expression is insignificant while judging it to be significant on a distinct explication of significance fit for describing and explaining natural language. (shrink)

Detendo-se na questão do simbólico, que, precedendo e excedendo a razão, se impõe como fundamento da condição de uma existência que não tende a dialogar senão com a possibilidade, o artigo em questão investiga a sua emergência através das formas que se inter-relacionam na constitutividade da realidade (a saber, a linguagem, o mito, a religião), recorrendo à noção do sistema proposto pela leitura de Ernst Cassirer, que instaura um processo que do pertencimento à espécie animal à fala, do mythos ao (...) lógos, acena com a experiência da autoconstrução humana, convergindo para possibilitar, em suma, antes do que o conhecimento do Ser, a sua criação. (shrink)

"E como suportaria eu ser homem se o homem não fosse também poeta e decifrador de enigmas e redentor do acaso?" (Friedrich Nietzsche). Destituída de pretérito enquanto dimensão em cujas fronteiras supostamente guarda raízes, emergindo então como tal, a imagem poética, segundo Gaston Bachelard, consiste em uma súbita erupção do psiquismo em um movimento que se sobrepõe à noção de princípio e à relação de causalidade que caracterizam a reflexão filosófica e o pensamento científico no processo de construção lógico-racional, na (...) medida em que escapa ao caráter de um impulso propriamente dito e à condição de eco de um passado, a despeito de sua correspondência com um arquétipo, tendo em vista que, como êxtase, por intermédio da explosão do seu conteúdo imagístico, da sua irrupção, alcança os recônditos do outrora e, dessa forma, desnuda os códigos ético-lógicos e histórico-culturais que interagem no devir da memória e na constituição do seu arcabouço identitário na experiência existencial de transformação de si que repercute sem cessar no instante poético. Carregando uma sonoridade do ser, a imagem que germina do exercício poético e da experiência existencial que a encerra como relação do ente humano enquanto existente singular com o próprio Ser converge para uma fala que envolve o âmago mesmo do ser em uma construção que pressupõe a dialética entre forma e matéria na dimensão da imaginação, na medida em que o verbo que corporifica a criação poética na linguagem guarda correspondência com uma causa formal em um movimento que traz como princípio uma causa sentimental neste esforço cuja instauração conjuga forças imaginantes que, em suma, tendem, ou a se deter nas fronteiras do acontecimento inesperado, ou a se deter nas fronteiras do ser em uma aspiração irreprimível de encontrar em suas profundezas o primitivo e o eterno. Princípio de excitação imediata do devir psíquico, a imaginação institui a ruptura diante do estável que caracteriza o existente singular na ocupação consigo próprio em relação ao processo de produção dos meios de sua existência tanto quanto, dessa forma, de si mesmo, na medida em que converge para as fronteiras que encerram hipóteses de vida através de um movimento que implica a formação de um mundo que, guardando raízes na dimensão onírica, envolve infinitas possibilidades de superação de si em uma construção poética que emerge no ímpeto de devir humano e se torna o ápice de uma inspiração que expõe a palavra em sua condição originária, a saber, nova. Se a imaginação carrega a capacidade de produzir o que se impõe à visão, tornando o homem em sua individualidade concreta criador, na medida em que possibilita trazer à luz o que está para além da apreensão lógico-racional das fronteiras da dimensão do ver em um exercício que se sobrepõe ao modo do ser em sua disposição fática na imanência por intermédio de um processo de derivação que encerra um mundus contra mundum (contra-mundo) e consiste em um movimento que guarda correspondência com o mistério original e originário da formação da forma, diante do qual o criador humano se opõe em virtude do conhecimento da sua condição de “secundaridade” que converge para uma relação que implica a apropriação de um conteúdo através de um horizonte de Revelação e Verdade que tende a torná-lo próprio em uma construção que mantém raízes na translatio ou transposição de uma inexplicabilidade sistemática (verdade) na fusão ou interação do religioso e do mítico que eleva ao topos (ou ou-topos) o poeta na eclosão dialética do pré-texto de transcendência. (shrink)

There is a profound, but frequently ignored relationship between the classical notion of logical consequence (formal implication) and material implication. The first repeats the patterns of the latter, but with a wider modal reach. It is argued that this kinship between formal and material implication simply means that they express the same variety of implication, but differ in scope. Formal implication is unrestricted material implication. This apparently innocuous observation has some significant corollaries: (1) conditionals are not connectives, but arguments; (2) (...) the traditional examples of valid argumentative forms are metalogical principles that express the properties of logical consequence; (3) formal logic is not a useful guide to detect valid arguments in the real world; (4) it is incoherent to propose alternatives to the material implication while accepting the classical properties of formal implication; (5) the counter-examples to classical argumentative forms and conditional puzzles are unsound. (shrink)

Are religious beliefs psychologically different from matter-of-fact beliefs? Many scholars say no: that religious people, in a matter-of-fact way, simply think their deities exist. Others say yes: that religious beliefs are more compartmentalized, less certain, and less responsive to evidence. Little research to date has explored whether lay people themselves recognize such a difference. We addressed this question in a series of sentence completion tasks, conducted in five settings that differed both in religious traditions and in language: the US, Ghana, (...) Thailand, China, and Vanuatu. Participants everywhere routinely used different verbs to describe religious versus matter-of-fact beliefs, and they did so even when the ascribed belief contents were held constant and only the surrounding context varied. These findings support the view that people from diverse cultures and language communities recognize a difference in attitude type between religious belief and everyday matter-of-fact belief. (shrink)

We develop and defend a new approach to counterlogicals. Non-vacuous counterlogicals, we argue, fall within a broader class of counterfactuals known as counterconventionals. Existing semantics for counterconventionals, 459–482 ) and, 1–27 ) allow counterfactuals to shift the interpretation of predicates and relations. We extend these theories to counterlogicals by allowing counterfactuals to shift the interpretation of logical vocabulary. This yields an elegant semantics for counterlogicals that avoids problems with the usual impossible worlds semantics. We conclude by showing how this approach (...) can be extended to counterpossibles more generally. (shrink)

Social structure of our society decides the actions that are allowed by any individual human being. All the actions of an individual are characterized into voluntary or involuntary actions, which decides the behaviour of society towards that individual for that action. In this paper it has been shown that the characterization of action into these two categories is fundamentally flawed.

In this cumulative phd thesis, I provide an account of conceptual engineering and defend it against various challenges. The thesis contains five chapters (plus an introduction and a conclusion): 1. Engineering what? On concepts in conceptual engineering (Synthese, 2020); 2. The externalist challenge to conceptual engineering (Synthese, 2021); 3. There is no dilemma for conceptual engineering. Reply to Max Deutsch (Philosophical Studies, 2020); 4. Why conceptual engineers should not worry about topics (Erkenntnis, forthcoming); 5. Carnapian explication, experimental philosophy, and fruitful (...) concepts (Inquiry, 2019). (shrink)

L’Exercitium academicum circa praescientiam daemonum (1666), pubblicato nella riformata Jena, tematizza una questione dibattuta nella Scolastica fra XIII e XIV secolo ma le cui radici risalgono ad Agostino d'Ippona, cui si deve il primo testo sull'argomento: la prescienza dei demoni. L'analisi segue la traccia del De divinatione daemonum agostiniano, mentre appare critica nei confronti delle posizioni di Tommaso d'Aquino e dei tomisti. Ad esse, in particolare riguardo alla natura delle facoltà intellettive demoniche, egli contrappone Giovanni Duns Scoto, Durando di san (...) Porziano e non meglio specificati nominales, accomunati in un indistinto riferimento alla teoria delle species. Ciò non toglie che il testo segua poi Tommaso nell'articolazione delle forme di prescienza dei demoni e nella definizione di questa come conoscenza congetturale. Scopo del nostro intervento sarà infatti mostrare, attraverso l'analisi che per la prima volta sarà condotta sul testo, lo spaccato di una comunità conversazionale nella quale le linee di forza e le distinzioni che animano il dibattito si mostrano autonome rispetto alle posizioni storiche di cattolici e riformati. Nell’Exercitium, Duns Scoto è contrapposto ai tomisti e, con Agostino e Durando di san Porziano – che costituisce una fonte comune del dibattito secentesco insieme a Bonaventura, Aureolo, Suarez, Vazquez, Gregorio di Valencia, e in tale veste sarà ripreso di lì a poco da Leibniz -, è cooptato tra gli autori a sostegno della sua tesi. Lungi dall'essere un esercizio di eclettismo o la stanca ripetizione di formule scolastiche, lo scritto getta luce su un dibattito universitario nel quale le fonti sono usate non come auctoritates ma quale repertorio di teorie da smontare e rimontare; ad esse l’Exercitium attinge per soluzioni che si definiscono in relazione a finalità filosofiche o dottrinali, ma non politiche né confessionali. (shrink)

A well-known theory about under which circumstances a statement is true in a fiction is The Reality Principle, which originate in the work of David Lewis: (RP) Where p1... pn are the primary fictional truths of a fiction F , it is true in F that q iff the following holds: were p1 ... pn the case, q would have been the case (Walton 1990: 44). RP has been subjected to a number of counterexamples, up to a point where, in (...) the words of Stacie Friend “it is widely recognized that the Reality Principle […] cannot be a universal inference rule for implied story-truths” (Friend 2017: 33). This chapter argues that the strength of these counterexamples is widely overestimated, and that they do not, on closer scrutiny, constitute reasons for rejecting RP. (shrink)

This paper has two interconnected goals -- one defensive and fairly conservative, the other more novel and enterprising. The first goal is to defend a broadly Gricean approach to verbal irony from the post-Gricean criticisms which have emerged in the intervening literature --i.e., all things considered, verbal irony is best viewed as one among many species of particularized conversational implicature. The subsequent goal is to work toward developing a significantly original theory of verbal irony, within this Gricean orientation, which aims (...) to take into account and rectify some omissions in and shortcomings of Grice’s very brief published remarks on the topic. (shrink)

We offer a novel account of metalinguistic comparatives, such as 'Al is more wise than clever'. On our view, metalinguistic comparatives express comparative commitments to conventions. Thus, 'Al is more wise than clever' expresses that the speaker has a stronger commitment to a convention on which Al is wise than to a convention on which she is clever. This view avoids problems facing previous approaches to metalinguistic comparatives. It also fits within a broader framework—independently motivated by metalinguistic negotiations and convention-shiftingexpressions— (...) that gives linguistic conventions a role in the semantics. (shrink)

بررسی استدلال و پاسخ شک‌گرایانة کریپکی و برخی از واکنش‌ها به آن .

The focus of this article is a question that has been neglected in debates about digitalization: Could machines replace human scientists? To provide an intelligible answer to it, we need to answer a further question: What is it that makes (or constitutes) a scientist? I offer an answer to this question by proposing a new demarcation criterion for science which I call “the discoverability criterion”. I proceed as follows: (1) I explain why the target question of this article is important, (...) and (2) show that it leads to a variant of the demarcation problem of science. (3) By arguing that it is probably an essential feature of science that we can make scientific discoveries, I suggest a novel way of dealing with this problem by proposing a new demarcation criterion. Before introducing it, (4) I analyze an exemplary case of a real scientific discovery, and (5) argue that scientific discovery processes have a general underlying structure. (6) I introduce my discoverability criterion for science and present my master argument that helps us understand which criteria have to be fulfilled in order to decide whether machines can replace human scientists or not. (7) I conclude by answering the article’s target question and bringing forward a take-home message. (shrink)

It is widely held that assertions are partially governed by an epistemic norm. But what is the epistemic condition set out in the norm? Is it knowledge, truth, belief, or something else? In this paper, I defend a view similar to that of Stanley (2008), according to which the relevant epistemic condition is epistemic certainty, where epistemic certainty (but not knowledge) is context-sensitive. I start by distinguishing epistemic certainty, subjective certainty, and knowledge. Then, I explain why it’s much more plausible (...) to think that ‘certain’, rather than ‘know’, is context-sensitive. After that, I respond to an important worry raised by Pritchard, according to which the proposed view is too strong to accommodate our current practice of assertion. I then show that the main linguistic and conversational data advanced in the recent literature in favour of the knowledge condition are best explained by the certainty view. Finally, I offer two principled considerations: the certainty view is the only one compatible with three independently plausible claims and it fits very well with the common thought that knowledge does not entail certainty. (shrink)

This paper develops a puzzle about non-merely-verbal disputes. At first sight, it would seem that a dispute over the truth of an utterance is not merely verbal only if there is a proposition that the parties to the dispute take the utterance under dispute to express, which one of the parties accepts and the other rejects. Yet, as I argue, it is extremely rare for ordinary disputes over an utterance’s truth to satisfy this condition, in which case non-merely verbal disputes (...) are extremely rare. After examining various responses to the puzzle, I outline a solution using the framework of truthmaker semantics. (shrink)

With reference to Polish logical-philosophical tradition two formal theories of language syntax have been sketched and then compared with each other. The first theory is based on the assumption that the basic linguistic stratum is constituted by object-tokens (concrete objects perceived through the senses) and that the types of such objects (ideal objects) are derivative constructs. The other is founded on an opposite philosophical orientation. The two theories are equivalent. The main conclusion is that in syntactic researches it is redundant (...) to postulate the existence of abstract linguistic entities. Earlier, in a slightly different form, the idea was presented in paper "Logiczne podstawy ontologii składni języka" (1988). (shrink)

To say that a philosophical dispute is ‘merely verbal’ seems to be an important diagnosis. If that diagnosis is correct for a particular dispute, then the right thing to do would be to declare that dispute to be over. The topic of what the disputing parties were fighting over was just a pseudo-problem (thus not really a problem), or at least – if there is a sense in which also merely verbal disputes indicate some problem, for example, insufficient clarity of (...) terminology – this problem is not substantial, or not as substantial as the disputing parties believed their problem initially to be. In this paper I will try to clarify what it means if we diagnose that two arguing parties are having a merely verbal dispute. (shrink)

Certain approaches to the meaning of utterances primarily characterize speakers' communicative intentions as the only source of meaning of a speaker's utterance. I show that a strict version of this position is difficult to maintain because the meaning of an utterance is partially due to the intentional attitudes of the audience to an utterance, including their reaction to the social identity of a speaker. This can result in a negotiation over meaning that can take place if the speaker and audience (...) do not agree on the significance of the utterance. The view is motivated if one takes an ameliorative approach to meaning which acknowledges that theories of meaning are constrained by normative concerns related to meaning and communication. (shrink)

This book collects twenty-five of the author's essays, each of which addresses a descriptive or a foundational issue that arises at the interface between linguistic semantics and pragmatics, on the one hand, and the philosophy of language, on the other. Arranged into three interconnected parts (I. Matters of Meaning and Truth; II. Matters of Meaning and Force; III. Knowledge Matters), the essays suggest that some key topics in the above-mentioned fields have often been approached in ways that considerably underestimate their (...) empirical or conceptual complexity, and attempt to delineate perspectives from which, and conditions under which, an improved understanding of those topics could be sought. (shrink)

Frege’s claim that sentences are names of truth-values, I argue, was drawn to fit the formal project, but it respects our pre-theoretical intuitions and does not undermine the sentence’s central semantic role. I do a minimal work both on the expression and on its referent, connecting the sentence and the definite description, suggesting an intuitive referent for a true sentence, suggesting a motive for Frege’s choice of the truth-values as referents, and finally suggesting an understanding of the False as a (...) referent. (shrink)

As a philosophical approach to public moral discourse in a religiously plural society, Jeffrey Stout’s “modest pragmatism” has received a mixed response from the opposite sides of the secularism debate. While many political theologians and communitarians claim that Stout concedes too much to the secularists, some secularists, on the other hand, find Stout’s inclusive approach towards religious reasonings in public discourse all too “theological.” This essay offers a re-examination and a further analysis of modest pragmatism in the light of recent (...) work in epistemology of democracy (especially Anderson’s interpretation of Dewey’s inclusive and experimental democracy), and discourse ethics based on Jose Medina’s theory of hermeneutical (in)justice. I argue that Stout’s normative vision of public moral discourse is persuasive only if certain principles which Stout either affirms or presupposes – a strong principle of religious freedom, a democratic principle of inclusion and a principle to settle disputes discursively and not violently – are placed in its center and developed further than they have been in Stout’s own work. This also means that I apply the previously-mentioned theory – Medina’s theory of hermeneutical (in)justice in particular – to the question which it does not address, namely: how can and should different religious languages be included in public moral deliberation? The result is a new and stronger variant of the modest pragmatist vision of public moral discourse, and a renewed argument for a qualified secularity of such discourse. (shrink)

L’objet théorique discours acquiert sa spécificité analytique dans la confrontation avec la matérialité du numérique dans ses propres conditions de production: cela ouvre à la recherche des formes textuelles des vlogs comme technologies de langage dans la composition de différentes matérialités signifiantes. Ce travail interroge le processus du mettre en circulation cette composition matériel du vlog, qui est investi du sens de la création et il est soutenu par le mode juridique d'administration, particulièrement par les droits d’auteur. Le procédé analytique (...) est fondé, à partir d’une position matérialiste dans l’Analyse de Discours, sur le recoupement de séquences discursives des traits socio-historiques décantés dans le langagier. Les gestes de description doivent, à cet effet, considérer le mode particulier d’inscription matérielle des vlogs dans le numérique pour montrer le travail entre la mémoire et l’actualisation. (shrink)

The conventional wisdom about conditionals claims that (1) conditionals that have non-assertive acts in their consequents, such as commands and promises, cannot be plausibly interpreted as assertions of material implication; (2) the most promising hypothesis about those sentences is conditional-assertion theory, which explains a conditional as a conditional speech act, i.e., a performance of a speech act given the assumption of the antecedent. This hypothesis has far-reaching and revisionist consequences, because conditional speech acts are not synonymous with a proposition with (...) truth conditions. This paper argues against this view in two steps. First, it presents a battery of objections against conditional-assertion theory. Second, it argues that those examples can be convincingly interpreted as assertions of material implication. (shrink)