The purpose of this paper is to define the sentence-tokened—a product of utterance distinct from the act of utterance—and highlight the role that it can play in communication. In particular, the author will suggest that this entity is plausibly at the root of John MacFarlane’s motivating intuitions for the view that truth is assessment-sensitive. Here the author argues that the truth-value intuitions that MacFarlane uses to motivate his view can be accommodated within the Kaplanian semantic framework, once we (...) acknowledge the sentence-tokened and the role it can play. (shrink)

The classical rule of Repetition says that if you take any sentence as a premise, and repeat it as a conclusion, you have a valid argument. It's a very basic rule of logic, and many other rules depend on the guarantee that repeating a sentence, or really, any expression, guarantees sameness of referent, or semantic value. However, Repetition fails for token-reflexive expressions. In this paper, I offer three ways that one might replace Repetition, and still keep an interesting (...) notion of validity. Each is a fine way to go for certain purposes, but I argue that one in particular is to be preferred by the semanticist who thinks that there are token-reflexive expressions in natural languages. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that the type/token theorist concerning musical works cannot come up with an adequate semantic theory of those sentences in which we purport to talk about such works. Specifically, it has been claimed that, since types are abstract entities, a type/token theorist can only account for the truth of sentences such as “The 1812 Overture is very loud” and “Bach's Two Part Invention in C has an F-sharp in its fourth measure” by adopting an untenable semantic (...) claim: namely, that the predicates in such sentences, once applied to musical works, undergo a systematic shift in their meanings. This article is a sustained explanation of why our talk about musical works in fact provides no problem for the type/token theorist. First, we demonstrate that the aforementioned “meaning shift” approach to the sentences’ predicates is well motivated and very credible. Second, we explain how the type/token theorist can adopt the best available version of an alternative, generic quantificational approach to such sentences. Third, we establish that other semantic theories, presented as undermining the type/token theory by giving us a reason for adopting eliminativism about types, are much less theoretically virtuous than the two theories that a type/token theorist can freely adopt. (shrink)

In this essay I respond to Quentin Smith's chargethat `the date-analysis version ofthe tenseless theory of time cannot give adequateaccounts of the truth conditions ofthe statements made by tensed sentence-tokens'(Smith 1999, 236). His argument isbased on an analysis of certain counterfactualsituations that is at odds with thedate-analysis account of language and hence succeedsonly in begging the questionagainst that theory. To anticipate: his argumentfails if one allows that temporalindexicals such as `now' rigidly designate theirtime of utterance, something thedate-analyst can happily (...) admit whether she adheresto an absolute or relationalmetaphysics of time. (shrink)

Serious actualists take it that all properties are existence entailing. I present a simple puzzle about sentence tokens which seems to show that serious actualism is false. I then consider the most promising response to the puzzle. This is the idea that the serious actualist should take ordinary property-talk to contain an implicit existential presupposition. I argue that this approach does not work: it fails to generalise appropriately to all sentence types and tokens. In particular, it fails to (...) capture the right distinctions we ought to make between what I call _typographical sentence types_—an interesting and previously undiscussed class of fine-grained sentence types which are partially individuated by their typography, or how they look when written out. (shrink)

The popular interpretation of token‐reflexivism states that at the level of logical form, indexicals and demonstratives are disguised descriptions that employ complex demonstratives or special quotation‐mark names involving particular tokens of the appropriate expression‐types. In this article I first demonstrate that this interpretation of token‐reflexivism is only one of many, and that it is better to think of token‐reflexivism as denoting a family of distinct theoretical frameworks. Second, I contrast two interpretations of the idea of the token‐reflexive paraphrase of an (...) indexical sentence. The utterance approach claims that token‐reflexive paraphrases involve tokens of entire utterances. The sub‐utterance approach maintains that token‐reflexive paraphrases involve tokens of the particular indexical words used in the utterance. Next, I pose a problem that shows that neither of the two approaches is correct. The problem shows that the only viable version of the token‐reflexive proposition must somehow take into account the referential intentions of the speaker of the context. Therefore I conclude the article by sketching the framework of restricted intentional token‐reflexivism. I argue that it is an attractive semantic theory of distributed utterances that, among other things, enables automatic and intentional indexicals to be distinguished. (shrink)

Does truth attach to sentences, or to what sentences express? If to sentences, then certainly not to type sentences, such as ‘I am going to London tomorrow’, but only to token sentences, that is, sentences considered as uttered by a particular speaker at a particular time. It would, however, be inconvenient to restrict truth to utterances that are actually made; we may therefore adopt the device and terminology of Davidson, and speak of a ‘statement’ constituted by a triple [s, i, (...) t] of a type sentence s, an individual i and a time t, the existence of which does not depend on whether i in fact uttered s at t. I shall presume that the identification of a type sentence depends on identifying the language to which it belongs. A familiar, irritating obstacle prevents our explaining that, when i did not utter s at t, the ‘statement’ is to be said to be true just in case he would have said something true if he had done so; the obstacle consists in sentences like, ‘I am not now speaking.’ The difficulty is not serious. What more is needed in order to obtain, from a type sentence s, something apt to be characterised as true or false is an assignment of references to indexical and demonstrative expressions occurring in s; we may say that s ‘comes out’ true or false under such an assignment. We may therefore take a ‘statement’ [s, i, t] to be true or false according as s comes out true or false under the assignment of t to the word ‘now’, i to the words ‘I’, and ‘me’, the place where i is at t to the word ‘here’, and so on. There is no reason to be disconcerted by the fact that this will yield as true a ‘statement’ involving the sentence, ‘I have been dead for a hundred years.’ Demonstrative expressions like ‘that house’, ‘this country’, etc., are less easily dealt with. Many should be regarded as devoid of reference unless, at t, i actually makes a pointing gesture or the equivalent; but the question need not be pursued here. For convenience, however, we may continue to speak of the ascription of truth to sentences, as long as we bear in mind that it is to ‘statements’, in our special sense, to which it is really to be ascribed. (shrink)

do not really ascribe A-properties. Tensed sentences or their tokens, it is argued, are logically equivalent to, or have the same meaning as, tenseless sentences about events, and thus possess the same reference as the tenseless sentences, viz., to events with B-relations. It would follow that time has only one aspect, the B-aspect. You can search..

Against criticism from Georges Rey I defend both my earlier account of sentence realization and my objection to his own ‘folie-a-deux’ account. The latter has two components, one sceptical (sentences and other standard linguistic entities are rarely if ever realized [‘produced’, ‘tokened’, ‘uttered’]) and the other optimistic (this is a benign outcome since communication is unaffected by our being mistaken in assuming that they are realized). Both components are flawed, notwithstanding Rey’s defence. My non-sceptical account of sentence (...) realization avoids the difficulties his faces, as well as those he raises for it. (shrink)

Pulvermüller advocates an experimental design in which well-matched tokens from various word categories are presented in list form to subjects making rapid lexical decisions about these stimuli. Implicit in this paradigm are several problematic assumptions. We conclude that such experiments are not likely to tell us much about the biological bases of human language.

Quentin Smith has argued that the new tenseless theory of time is faced with insurmountable problems and should be abandoned in favour of the tensed theory of time. Smith;s main argument attacks the fundamental premise of the tenseless theory: that tenseless truth conditions for tokens of tensed sentences adequately capture the meaning of tensed sentences. His position is that tenseless truth conditions cannot explain the logical relations between tensed sentences, thus the tensed theory must be accepted. Against Smith, this paper (...) adopts an alternative approach to the explanation of the entailment relations between sentences which contain indexicals. The approach drops the reliance upon tokens and instead relies on the evaluation of sentence types with respect to a context rather than upon actual or possible utterances of tokens of the types. This (new) version of the tenseless theory of time can adequately explain the relevant entailment relations between tensed sentences. (shrink)

Corcoran, John. 2005. Meanings of word: type-occurrence-token. Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 11(2005) 117. -/- Once we are aware of the various senses of ‘word’, we realize that self-referential statements use ambiguous sentences. If a statement is made using the sentence ‘this is a pronoun’, is the speaker referring to an interpreted string, a string-type, a string-occurrence, a string-token, or what? The listeners can wonder “this what?”. -/- John Corcoran, Meanings of word: type-occurrence-token Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-4150 (...) E-mail: [email protected] The four-letter written-English expression ‘word’, which plays important roles in applications and expositions of logic and philosophy of logic, is ambiguous (multisense, or polysemic) in that it has multiple normal meanings (senses, or definitions). Several of its meanings are vague (imprecise, or indefinite) in that they admit of borderline (marginal, or fringe) cases. This paper juxtaposes, distinguishes, and analyses several senses of ‘word’ focusing on a constellation of senses analogous to constellations of senses of other expression words such as ‘expression’, ‘symbol’, ‘character’, ‘letter’, ‘term’, ‘phrase’, ‘formula’, ‘sentence’, ‘derivation’, ‘paragraph’, and ‘discourse’. Consider, e.g., the word ‘letter’. In one sense there are exactly twenty-six letters (letter-types or ideal letters) in the English alphabet and there are exactly four letters in the word ‘letter’. In another sense, there are exactly six letters (letter-repetitions or letter-occurrences) in the word-type ‘letter’. In yet another sense, every new inscription (act of writing or printing) of ‘letter’ brings into existence six new letters (letter-tokens or ink-letters) and one new word that had not previously existed. The number of letter-occurrences (occurrences of a letter-type) in a given word-type is the same as the number of letter-tokens (tokens of a letter-type) in a single token of the given word. Many logicians fail to distinguish “token” from “occurrence” and a few actually confuse the two concepts. Epistemological and ontological problems concerning word-types, word-occurrences, and word-tokens are described in philosophically neutral terms. This paper presents a theoretical framework of concepts and principles concerning logicography, including use of English in logic. The framework is applied to analytical exposition and critical evaluation of classic passages in the works of philosophers and logicians including Boole, Peirce, Frege, Russell, Tarski, Church and Quine. This paper is intended as a philosophical sequel to Corcoran et al. “String Theory”, Journal of Symbolic Logic 39(1974) 625-637. https://www.academia.edu/s/cdfa6c854e?source=link -/- . (shrink)

This paper attempts a solution to the classical problem of predication, "the unity of the sentence": how, instead of merely listing the several things they designate, the parts of the sentence combine to represent something as being the case. While this capacity of a sequence of terms to "say some single thing" is standardly attributed to the distinct function of `subject' and `predicate' terms, these functional differences need explaining. Here, they are traced to the distinctive, asymmetrical causal explanation (...) of the tokening of the expressions serving one role or another in the speech act: the unity of the sentence is explained by the interconnection and interdependence of the cause of the predicate on that of the subject. Thus the account adverts to the pragmatic character of the expressions rather than the ontology of what they denote. This causal context explains several central semantic features of predication. (shrink)

This paper attempts a solution to the classical problem of predication, “the unity of the sentence”: how, instead of merely listing the several things they designate, the parts of the sentence combine to represent something as being the case. While this capacity of a sequence of terms to “say some single thing” is standardly attributed to the distinct function of ‘subject’ and ‘predicate’ terms, these functional differences need explaining. Here, they are traced to the distinctive, asymmetrical causal explanation (...) of the tokening of the expressions serving one role or another in the speech act: the unity of the sentence is explained by the interconnection and interdependence of the cause of the predicate on that of the subject. Thus the account adverts to the pragmatic character of the expressions rather than the ontology of what they denote. This causal context explains several central semantic features of predication. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Copy of a Book Is Not a Token of a TypeDavid Socher (bio)Masons butter their bricks, gardeners deadhead their roses, and who am I to quibble over terms? However, philosophers routinely speak of tokens and types, as if, so it seems to me, they are bringing a greater measure of precision to the table. Here I shall quibble. I shall try to lead the reader to realize that (...) those philosophers are neither being especially precise nor are they following Charles S. Peirce; instead, they are merely lending a false air of scientific respectability to the matter at hand. (Although these are broad strokes and I here tip my hand to a larger purpose, in what remains I'll stick to my title proposition.)In hearing or seeing a word, we hear sound, or see ink or chalk (or perhaps a hand gesture.) The sound or ink is said to be a "word-token," and the word itself that the speaker or writer thereby used is called a "word-type." Word-types are the things comprising our vocabulary, and their tokens are physical events or objects. Such is the reigning conception of the ontology of words, in analytic Anglo-American philosophy, for a hundred years. However, if David Kaplan1 carries the day, the time has come for a title bout and a new champ. And if he succeeds, then what follows may become mostly of antiquarian interest, a side trip down memory lane. I don't here join battle for or against the traditional account. A second issue I decline to engage concerns a little-noticed baby step or side-shuffle: commonly logicians speak of "tokens" and "types" for any linguistic expression of any length, apparently unaware they are extending the scope of a pair of terms introduced to only apply to words. (On the face of it, a linguistic expression as such doesn't really have a use on par with the use of a word.) A third issue [End Page 23] I decline to discuss is the propriety of that dubious contemporary giant step where brain processes are said to come in tokens and types. Perhaps this is a mere barbarism.So what is my main issue? It is this: Given, pace Kaplan, that we accept the traditional conception that words come in token and type, we ought not casually say the same of books, as, for example, Hornsby does in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy: "Following Peirce it can be said, for example, that there are three tokens of the word 'the' (that type) in the previous sentence, and that the actual book you're now reading is a token of the type Oxford Companion to Philosophy."2I now present some facts of speech, writing, and publishing to help dissipate the temptation to speak of the copies of a publication as tokens of a type.The purpose of printPrint mimics speech and handwriting. One can only receive words through a physical medium.3 In listening to talk and in reading handwritten letters, one gets the speaker or writer's words through the physical medium he or she directly produced. Not so in reading print: there, the printed words stand in for the author's physical words, or for a narrator's or character's words; or they present words of an abstract thing such as an amendment, advertisement, or contract, or of a concrete thing like a street sign or loudspeaker. In any case, whether or not an item is published, it is within such an item that the words are used—that is, that the types are invoked.When I signal a waiter for the check I produce a token, when an infant uses his only word to call out "mama," he produces a token; when in his second inaugural Lincoln admonished the nation to pursue reconstruction, "with malice towards none, with charity to all," he produced eight word tokens to invoke seven word types, twice invoking the word type "with." These two ways of counting words apply equally to Lincoln's phrase, his pronouncement of it, any publication or duplication of it, as well as any particular copies of such... (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to discuss a metaphysical framework within which to understand “standard linguistic entities” (SLEs), such as words, sentences, phonemes, and other entities routinely employed in linguistic theory. In doing so, I aim to defuse certain kinds of skepticism, challenge convention-based accounts of SLEs, and present a series of distinctions for better understanding what the various accounts of SLEs do and do not accomplish.

In his Paradoxes (1995: Cambridge University Press: 149) Mark Sainsbury presents the following pair of sentences: Line 1: The sentence written on Line 1 is nonsense. Line 2: The sentence written on Line 1 is nonsense. Sainsbury (1995: 149, 154) here makes three assertions: (1) The sentence in Line 1 is so viciously self-referential that it falls into the truth-value gap. The sentence is really nonsense. (2) The sentence in Line 2 is by contrast true. (...) For it states precisely that the sentence in Line 1 is nonsense. (3) The two sentences in Lines 1 and 2 are an example of the principle that two sentence tokens of the same sentence-type can have different truth-values, although they have the same reference and state the same property of the object of reference. In this paper, I argue that Sainsbury’s assumptions are false in all three cases. (shrink)

Here the extension of a sentence token is a truth-value, the extension of a name is an individual, and so on. Scenarios are most often understood as centered possible worlds – i.e. ordered triples of worlds, individuals, and times - although they may also be understood in other ways.

If, as the new B-theory of time maintains, tensed sentences have tenseless truth conditions, it follows that it is possible for two sentence-tokens to have the sametruth conditions but different meanings. This conclusion forces a rethink of the traditional identification of truth conditions with meaning. There is an aspect of the meanings of tensed sentences that is not captured by their truth conditions, and that has so far eluded explanation. In this paper I intend to locate, examine, and explain (...) this feature of tensed meaning. (shrink)

If, as the new B-theory of time maintains, tensed sentences have tenseless truth conditions, it follows that it is possible for two sentence-tokens to have the sametruth conditions but different meanings. This conclusion forces a rethink of the traditional identification of truth conditions with meaning. There is an aspect of the meanings of tensed sentences that is not captured by their truth conditions, and that has so far eluded explanation. In this paper I intend to locate, examine, and explain (...) this feature of tensed meaning. (shrink)

This paper aims to establish three major theses: (1) Not only declarative sentences, but also interrogatives and imperatives, may be classified as true or as false. (2) Declarative, imperative, and interrogative utterances may also be classified as honest or as dishonest. (3) Whether an utterance is honest or dishonest is logically independent of whether it is true or is false. The establishment of the above theses follows upon the adoption of a principle for identifying what is meant by any (...) class='Hi'>sentence, declarative, interrogative, or imperative. The analysis aims to show that meaning is to be attributed to the uttered or written sentence-token, rather to the thereby exhibited sentence-type. Further, the meaning of the sentential token is to be identified with a purpose of the speaker, that the speaker would reveal to the addressee by uttering the sentence. The to be revealed purpose is analysed into two components: an ultimate concern (that the addressee stand in such and such a relation--e.g., of believing, or informing the speaker about, or making it true that) and an ultimate topic of concern (the state of affairs, i.e., proposition, relative to which the speaker would have the addressee stand in the specified relation). Sentential utterances "signify" different purposes by "expressing" different ultimate concerns and "indicating" different ultimate topics of concern. Variations in expressed concern are correlated with variations in sentential form, such as declarative, interrogative and imperative. Variations in indicated topic of concern are correlated with variations in the subject and predicate of the uttered sentence. Thus, for example, utterances of "Johnny will jump in the lake," "Will Johnny jump in the lake?" and "Johnny, go jump in the lake!" all indicate one and the same ultimate topic of concern but express different ultimate concerns with this topic. A sentential utterance is true or false according as its indicated topic of concern is true or false. Hence, declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives may all be classified as true or as false. But honesty or dishonesty is a function (explained in the paper) of the expressed concern, rather than of the topic of concern. Hence, although utterances of all sentential forms are honest or dishonest, their honesty or dishonesty is logically independent of their truth or falsity. (shrink)

Speakers often use ordinary words and phrases, unembedded in any sentence, to perform speech acts—or so it appears. In some cases appearances are deceptive: The seemingly lexical/phrasal utterance may really be an utterance of a syntactically eplliptical sentence. I argue however that, at least sometimes, plain old words and phrases are used on their own. The use of both words/phrases and elliptical sentences leads to two consequences: 1. Context must contribute more to utterance meaning than is often supposed. (...) Here's why: The semantic type of normal words and phrases is non-proppositional, even after the usual contextual features are added . Yet an utterance of a word/phrase can be fully propositional. 2. Often, a hearer does not need to know the exact identity of the expression uttered, to understand an utterance. The reason: Typically, words/phrases in context will sound the same, and mean the same, as some elliptical sentence token. (shrink)

I. Vague Properties and the Problem of Vagueness The philosophical problem of vagueness is to say what vagueness is in a way that helps to resolve the sorites paradox. Saying what vagueness is requires saying what kinds of things can be vague and in what the vagueness of each kind consists. Philosophers dispute whether things of this, that, or the other kind can be vague, but no one disputes that there are vague linguistic expressions. Among vague expressions, predicates hold a (...) special place in the problem of vagueness, for it’s their vagueness that is soritesgenerating. That puts the vagueness of predicates at the hub of the problem of vagueness, and there can be little doubt that we’ll be a short step from home if we can account for it. Any account of vagueness will of course require commitment to theses that are themselves foci of philosophical debate, but one can’t expect to get anywhere without taking on some as working hypotheses and then striving to say something that will be plausible if those hypotheses are plausible. One of the working hypotheses of this paper is that propositional attitudes and propositional speech acts are relations to propositions of some stripe or other, in the generic sense in which a proposition is an abstract, mind- and language-independent entity that has a truth condition, and has that truth condition both essentially and absolutely (i.e. without relativization to anything).1 The existence of propositions requires the existence of properties, in the generic sense in which a property is an abstract, mind- and language-independent entity that has an instantiation condition, and has that instantiation condition both essentially and absolutely. For present purposes it will be harmless to pretend that the propositions we believe and assert are Russellian propositions---structured entities whose basic constituents are the objects and properties our beliefs and speech acts are about. When a propositionalist speaks in loosey-goosey mode, she is apt to say that a sentence token is true just in case the proposition expressed in its utterance is true. (shrink)

A notion of truth as applicable to events of assertoric use ( utterances ) of a sentence token is arguably presupposed and required by our evaluative practices of the use of language. The truth of an utterance seems clearly to depend on what the utterance says . This fundamental dependence seems in turn to be captured by the schema that, if an utterance u says that P , then u is true iff P . Such a schema may thus (...) be thought to constitute a suitable basis for an adequate theory of utterance truth, so much so that it seems straightforwardly to avoid the problems arising from context dependence and the semantic paradoxes which notoriously beset theories of utterance truth based on a simple disquotational schema. The paper argues that appearances are deceptive in both cases. On the one hand, the schema cannot allow for plausible if not uncontroversial non-indexical forms of context dependence, arising from the possibility that what an utterance says can be the case or not relative to different situations and that the truth of an utterance u of a sentence φ arguably depends on the truth of φ at the situation "associated" with u . On the other hand, a quantified utterance-truth variation on the liar paradox shows that the schema entails some consequence φ and at the same time the untruth of any utterance of φ; moreover, a resilient quantified propositional variation on the contingent liar paradox is offered, which only relies on resources usually employed by theories of utterance truth based on the schema. (shrink)

According to some views, natural language suffers from underdeterminacy, but thought doesn’t. According to the underdeterminacy claim, sentence types underdetermine the truth-conditions of sentence tokens. In particular, the semantics of a predicate type seems to underdetermine the satisfaction conditions of its tokens. By contrast, mental representation-types are supposed to determine the truth-conditions of its tokens. In this paper I critically examine these mixed views. First, I argue that the arguments supporting the indispensability of including in one’s theory mental (...) representations that are free of the underdeterminacy exhibited by natural language are not sound. As a result, the possibility that mental representation-types are as underdetermined as natural language sentence-types has not been ruled out. Second, I argue that Carston’s ad hoc concept-types are as underdetermined as word-types. I finish by arguing that mental representations are also underdetermined in a second sense—mental representation-tokens only determine a partial function from possible worlds to truth-values. (shrink)

The B-theory of time holds that McTaggart’s A-series of past, present, and future is reducible to the B-series of events running from earlier to later. According to the date-theory—originally put forth by J.J.C. Smart and later endorsed by by D.H. Mellor—the truth conditions of tensed or Asentence-tokens can be given in terms of tenseless or B-sentences and, therefore, A-sentence-tokens do not ascribe any A-determinations of pastness, presentness, or futurity. However, as Nathan Oaklander has argued, the date-theory does not provide (...) an adequate analysis of the ontological truth conditions of irreducible A-propositions. I show that the co-reporting theory—which holds that for every A-sentence-token there is a B-sentence that differs in sense but reports the same event or state of affairs—escapes the objections Oaklander has addressed against the date-theory. (shrink)

Degree-sentences, i.e. sentences that seem to refer to things that allow of degrees, are widely used both inside and outside of philosophy, even though the metaphysics of degrees is much of an untrodden field. This paper aims to fill this lacuna by addressing the following four questions: [A] Is there some one thing, such that it is degree sensitive? [B] Are there things x, y, and z that stand in a certain relation to each other, viz. the relation that x (...) has more y than z? [C] In those cases in which degree sentences do not refer to phenomena that are degree sensitive, what is responsible for their prima facie seeming to do so? [D] If there are degree sensitive things, to which ontological categories do they belong? We answer each of these questions by arguing that there are, metaphysically speaking, different phenomena that degree sentences refer to: some refer to determinates that emanate from a certain determinable, others to tokens that are instantiations of a certain type, and yet others to what we call ‘complex, resultant properties that are constituted by stereotypical properties’. (shrink)

Stephen Schiffer has argued that natural languages do not have compositional semantics. But it has been widely held that compositional semantics is required in order to explain how it is possible that we have the linguistic capacities that we do. In particular, our use of natural languages is productive in the sense that there are indefinitely many sentences that we have never heard or considered before, but which we are nonetheless capable of understanding. How is this possible? Compositionality evidently supplies (...) a clear answer to that question, because it guarantees that there is some way of determining the meaning of each sentence of the language from a fixed and finite base of semantic value assignments. This poses a serious challenge to Schiffer's negative thesis. -/- Schiffer proposes to answer this challenge in a way that will also provide a solution to the language-relation problem. This is the problem of specifying what relation must obtain between a population P and a language L in order for L to be a language of P. Schiffer's strategy is to reduce the problem for public languages to that of specifying the language-relation for languages of thought-specifying what it is to think in a language. -/- I will show in a precise way that Schiffer has neither met the productivity challenge nor solved the language-relation problem. Using Schiffer's characterization of what it is to think in a language, I show that if an agent thinks in some language L, then there is an infinity of languages that the agent also thinks in with the very same sentence tokens, but with arbitrarily different meanings. Thus, Schiffer has clearly not given a sufficient condition for an agent to think in a language, and Schiffer cannot do with less than a sufficient condition. Moreover, I will argue that Schiffer cannot avail himself of various attempts in the literature to address similar problems. (shrink)

The thesis of Ineffability has it that no proposition can be fully expressed by a sentence, this meaning that no sentence-type, or even sentence-token whose indexicality and ambiguities have been resolved, can fully encode a proposition. The thesis of the propositionality of thoughts has it that thoughts are propositional. An implication of the joint endorsement of these two theses is that thoughts are ineffable. The aim of this paper is to argue that this is not the case: (...) there are effable thoughts, and we can even safely say that, generally, thoughts are effable. In order to defend this insight, I first counter the thesis of the propositionality of thought by bringing some counterexamples to it, which amount to cases of non-fully propositional thought. I then argue that, if thoughts can be and often are non-fully propositional, they can be expressed by sentences that fail to fully express a proposition. I also show that the propositional thoughts that we can entertain are after all effable (in a suitable, relevant sense) and resist some alleged examples of insurmountable ineffability. (shrink)

This essay argues that propositions are made true by facts. A proposition is the sense expressed by a statement (sentence token used to make a truth claim). Facts are positive or negative constitutive properties of the domain of discourse (usually the actual world). The presence of horses is a positive constitutive property of the world; the absence of unicorns is a negative one. This notion of constitutive properties accords well with the Hume-Kant claim that existence is not a property (...) of any individual said to exist. While Frege held existence to be a property of concepts and Russell held it to be a property of propositional functions, our view sees existence as a property of a domain of discourse. To say that Native Dancer exists is simply to say that the world is characterized by the presence of Native Dancer; to say that Pegasus does not exist is to say the world is characterized by the absence of Pegasus. Such properties of presence and absence are facts. Facts make true propositions true; nothing makes false propositions false (they simply fail to be made true). Facts are not items in the world; they are (constitutive) properties of the world. (shrink)

This dissertation defends the place of representation in music. Music’s status as a representational art has been hotly debated since the War of the Romantics, which pitted the Weimar progressives (Liszt, Wagner, &co.) against the Leipzig conservatives (the Schumanns, Brahms, &co.) in an intellectual struggle for what each side took to be the very future of music as an art. I side with the progressives, and argue that music can be and often is a representational medium. Correspondence (or resemblance) theories (...) of representation, such as the one I offer, have been much maligned in philosophy since the 1960s. Most theories assimilate representation under “meaning,” which has usually been thought to belong primarily to language. As a result, representational content has been taken to be purely conventional in the way that sentential meaning is. People want to know what music “means,” and these theories interpret this as “what does it refer to?” or “what propositions does it express?” I argue that propositional communication is only one (small) part of the issue. Once we overcome the bias of conceiving of musical works as essentially linguistic items, speech acts (performed) or sentence tokens (written), we can begin to take music on its own terms to discover how it represents—one way in which it “means.” The first step is to “naturalize” music’s representational content. Influenced by recent discussions in the philosophies of mind and science, I argue in Chapter 1 that composers represent extra-musical objects, events, and states of affairs through their works by exploiting antecedent relations (such as similarities in pitch, timbre, and structure) in order to secure reference to them. In Chapter 2, I survey and respond to the main challenges that those skeptical of music’s representational possibilities would raise against my theory of musical representation. In Chapter 3, I explore a number of ways through which music has been claimed to represent in order to show how my theory accounts for these diverse phenomena better than its conventionalist rivals, both in terms of the metaphysics and the epistemology. Chapter 4 extends this discussion by offering an account of how we perceive, understand, appreciate, and interpret sophisticated musical representations. I conclude by teasing out some of my theory’s implications and suggesting areas for further research. (shrink)

Chihara seeks to avoid commitment to mathematical objects by replacing traditional assertions of the existence of mathematical objects with assertions about possibilities of constructing certain open-sentence tokens. I argue that Chihara's project can be defended against several important objections, but that it is no less epistemologically problematic than its platonistic competitors.

The co-reporting theory holds that for every A-sentence-token there is a B-sentence that differs in sense but reports the same event orstate of affairs. Thus, if it is now t7, what is reported by now tokening “It is t7 now” is identical with what is reported by tokening “It is t7 at t7.” Quentin Smith has argued that the fact that the sentence-tokens differ in sense but are co-reporting is compatible with the A-theory supposition that their difference (...) in sense consists in the fact that the A-sentence-token alone conveys the information that t7 has an irreducible A-property of presentness. I counter argue that every time the indexical “now” is tokened it expresses, not an irreducible A-property, but a unique individual essence of a moment of time which can be apprehended only at that time. (shrink)

. According to John Buridan, the time for which a statement is true is underdetermined by the grammatical form of the sentence – the intention of the speaker is required. As a consequence, truth-bearers are not sentence types, nor sentence tokens plus facts of the context of utterance, but statements. Statements are also the bearers of logical relations, since the latter can only be established among entities having determined truth-conditions. This role of the intention of the speaker (...) in the determination of what is said by an utterance is not isolated in medieval semantics. (shrink)

Key words: liar paradoxes, propositions, definite descriptions A Liar would be a sentence or sentence-token that expresses a proposition that is both true and not true. A Liar Paradox is reasoning that would do the impossible and demonstrate the reality of a Liar. It is sufficient, fully to resolve a Liar Paradox, to turn its purported demonstration that some sentence or sentence-token expresses a proposition that is both true and not true into a reductio of the (...) existence of the proposition that would be expressed, while ‘explaining away’ the particular tricks and charm of the purported demonstration of paradox. The interest of these exercises lies in the seductiveness of the would be demonstration of a Liar Paradox, and in the depth and subtlety of logical/grammatical resources that can be tapped and fashioned to dispel it. The Liar taken on in this paper occasions especially seductive reasoning that exploits ‘scope-ambiguities’ of definite descriptions that, not incidentally, survive unscathed when its argument is symbolized in a Fregean description theory in which scopes of definite descriptions are not discriminated. Symbolizing this argument in a Russellian description theory in which scopes are discriminated makes unavoidable that its scope-ambiguities be settled one way or another, and reveals that however the scope ambiguity of a certain premise is settled the resultant unambiguous argument is unsound, either because it is invalid, though this premise comes out true, or because, though it is valid, this premise comes out not true. These results of Russellian analysis pave the way to a formal demonstration, from premises to which a monger of the paradox would be committed, that contrary to his case the Liar of this paper does not express a proposition. This conclusion is confirmed in the Appendix to this paper by a demonstration from a single empirical premise that no one can deny, in a Russellian calculus enhanced for truth of propositions expressed by tokens of sentences.. (shrink)

Propositions - truths and falsehoods - are "eternal" objects of possible ("de dicto") belief and disbelief, potential points of agreement and disagreement. Accordingly the criterion of two sentence-tokens "expressing tiie same proposition" will be tiie logical impossibility of beheving (disbelieving) what one expresses without believing (disbelieving) what the other expresses. This involves an ultra-thight synonymity relation ("semantic equivalence") and a sharing of denotations as between corresponding Unguistic expressions in each. Only locutions containing names, indexicals, etc. which commit speakers to (...) the same purported existents can "express the same proposition", but Stephen Schiffer is wrong to argue that saying one believes such a proposition necessarily imputes any metalinguistic conceptions to one. Propositions lack simplicity-or-complexity and hence structure (because sometimes a conjunction is one of its conjuncts). Each true (false) proposition has "its own" fact which it asserts (denies). (shrink)

Propositions - truths and falsehoods - are "eternal" objects of possible ("de dicto") belief and disbelief, potential points of agreement and disagreement. Accordingly the criterion of two sentence-tokens "expressing tiie same proposition" will be tiie logical impossibility of beheving (disbelieving) what one expresses without believing (disbelieving) what the other expresses. This involves an ultra-thight synonymity relation ("semantic equivalence") and a sharing of denotations as between corresponding Unguistic expressions in each. Only locutions containing names, indexicals, etc. which commit speakers to (...) the same purported existents can "express the same proposition", but Stephen Schiffer is wrong to argue that saying one believes such a proposition necessarily imputes any metalinguistic conceptions to one. Propositions lack simplicity-or-complexity and hence structure (because sometimes a conjunction is one of its conjuncts). Each true (false) proposition has "its own" fact which it asserts (denies). (shrink)

It is often said that an argument is valid if and only if it is impossible for its premises to be jointly true and its conclusion false. Usually there is little harm in saying this but it places the concept of truth at the very heart of logic and, given how complex and obscure that concept is, one might wonder if trouble arises from this.It does — in at least two contexts. One of these was explored in the first half (...) of the fourteenth century by Jean Buridan and by the mysterious figure known as the Pseudo-Scotus of the Questions on the Prior Analytics printed in the edition of Scotus's works edited by Luke Wadding. Buridan thought that the bearers of truth were particular sentence-tokens; he thought of truth as a .. (shrink)

The ancient puzzle of the Liar was shown by Tarski to be a genuine paradox or antinomy. I show, analogously, that certain puzzles of contemporary game theory are genuinely paradoxical, i.e., certain very plausible principles of rationality, which are in fact presupposed by game theorists, are inconsistent as naively formulated. ;I use Godel theory to construct three versions of this new paradox, in which the role of 'true' in the Liar paradox is played, respectively, by 'provable', 'self-evident', and 'justifiable'. I (...) also construct in modal operator logic a paradox involving reflexive empirical reasoning. Unlike the paradox of the Liar, the paradox of reflexive reasoning does not depend on self-reference. ;I consider various solutions to the Liar paradox and evaluate how well these solutions cope with the paradox of reflexive reasoning. I then formalize the solution to the paradoxes which I favor: the indexical-hierarchical approach, first sketched out by Charles Parsons and Tyler Burge. In this solution, occurrences of the predicate 'true' in sentence-tokens are contextually relativized to levels of a hierarchy. Drawing also on some brief remarks of Bertrand Russell and Charles Parsons, I develop an account of the kind of schematic generality needed for this theory to be statable. ;Finally, I demonstrate that the principles shown to be paradoxical are in fact presupposed by contemporary game theorists in their reliance on the notion of common knowledge or, more precisely, mutual belief. I create novel analyses of and corresponding solutions to several recalcitrant puzzles within game theory, including the "chain-store paradox". (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold. I criticize Michael Devitt's linguistic---as opposed to Chomsky's psychological---conception of linguistics on the one hand, and I modify his related view on linguistic intuitions on the other. I argue that Devitt's argument for the linguistic conception is in conflict with one of the main theses of that very conception, according to which linguistics should be about physical sentence tokens of a given language rather than about the psychologically real competence of native speakers. (...) The basis of this conflict is that Devitt's view on language, as I will show, inherits too much from the criticized Chomskian view. This is also the basis of Devitt's strange claim that it is the linguist, and not the ordinary speaker, whose linguistic intuition should have an evidential role in linguistics. I will argue for the opposite by sketching a view on language that is more appropriate to the linguistic conception. That is, in criticizing Devitt, I am not defending the Chomskian approach. My aim is to radicalize Devitt's claims. (shrink)

It is argued that the slingshot argument does not soundly challenge the truth-maker correspondence theory of truth, by which at least some distinct true propositions are expected to have distinct truth- makers. Objections are presented to possible exact interpretations of the essential slingshot assumption, in which no fully acceptable reconstruction is discovered. A streamlined version of the slingshot is evaluated, in which explicit contradiction results, on the assumption that identity and nonidentity contexts are purely extensional relations, effectively establishing the intensionality (...) of identity. (shrink)