In a recent paper (Linguistics and Philosophy 23, 4, June 2000), Jason Stanley argues that there are no `unarticulated constituents', contrary to what advocates of Truth-conditional pragmatics (TCP) have claimed. All truth-conditional effects of context can be traced to logical form, he says. In this paper I maintain that there are unarticulated constituents, and I defend TCP. Stanley's argument exploits the fact that the alleged unarticulated constituents can be `bound', that is, they can be made to vary with the values (...) introduced by operators in the sentence. I show that Stanley's argument rests on a fallacy, and I provide alternative analyses of the data. (shrink)

The issues addressed in philosophical papers on quotation generally concern only a particular type of quotation, which I call ‘closed quotation’. The other main type, ‘open quotation’, is ignored, and this neglect leads to bad theorizing. Not only is a general theory of quotation out of reach: the specific phenomenon of closed quotation itself cannot be properly understood if it is not appropriately situated within the kind to which it belongs. Once the distinction between open and closed quotation has been (...) drawn and properly appreciated, it is tempting to consider that only closed quotation is relevant to semantics. Open quotation is more a matter of pragmatics: it is a matter of what people do with words, rather than a matter of content and truth-conditions. In this way one can provide the beginning of a justification for the neglect of open quotation in current semantic theorizing. There is some truth in this view, yet the phenomenon of ‘mixed quotation’, investigated at length in this paper, is interesting precisely because it shows that things are not so simple. Important issues concerning the interface between semantics and pragmatics will thus be raised. (shrink)

The received view about meteorological predicates like ‘rain’ is that they carry an argument slot for a location which can be filled explicitly or implicitly. The view assumes that ‘rain’, in the absence of an explicit location, demands that the context provide a specific location. In an earlier article in this journal, I provided a counter-example, viz. a context in which ‘it is raining’ receives a location-indefinite interpretation. On the basis of that example, I argued that when there is tacit (...) references to a location, it takes place for pragmatic reasons and casts no light on the semantics of meteorological predicates. Since then, several authors have reanalysed the counter-example, so as to make it compatible with the standard view. I discuss those attempts and argue that my account is superior. (shrink)

In a series of papers, Sperber provides the following analysis of the phenomenon of ill-understood belief (or 'quasi-belief', as I call it): (i) the quasi-believer has a validating meta-belief, to the effect that a certain representation is true; yet (ii) that representation does not give rise to a plain belief, because it is 'semi-propositional'. In this paper I discuss several aspects of this treatment. In particular, I deny that the representation accepted by the quasi-believer is semantically indeterminate, and I reject (...) Sperber's claim that quasi-belief is a credal attitude distinct from plain belief. (shrink)

Unlike traditional sentimentalists, sophisticated sentimentalists don’t think that the main linguistic function of evaluative terms is simply to express emotional responses. Instead, they contend that to predicate an evaluative term to an object is to judge that a particular emotion is justified toward that object. I will raise a fundamental difficulty for the sophisticated sentimentalists’ attempt to provide a credible account of the meaning of our most important evaluative terms. A more careful examination of the relations between the affective and (...) the reflective elements characteristic of our evaluative thinking will suggest that the emotions play a less central role in an account of the meaning of evaluative terms than sentimentalists have assumed. (shrink)

The paper clarifies what is at stake in the theory/antitheory debate in ethics and articulates the distinctive core of the method of reflective equilibrium which distinguishes it from a generic coherence constraint. I call this distinctive core 'maieutic reflection'. The paper then argues that if she accepts constructivist views in metaethics, a proponent of the method of reflective equilibrium will be committed to the existence of a moral theory.

To deal with memory-based modes of presentation I propose a couple of revisions to the standard criterion of difference for modes of presentation attributed to Frege. First, we need to broaden the scope of the criterion so that not merely the thoughts of a given subject at a given time may or may not involve the same way of thinking of some object, but also the thoughts of a subject at different times. Second, we need to ‘relativize’ the criterion of (...) difference to particular subjects in particular situations. Thanks to these revisions, we can make sense of Evans’ notion of a dynamic mode of presentation that persists through time despite lower-level changes. A dynamic mode of presentation is a complex mode of presentation involving several epistemically rewarding relations to the reference successively (in contrast to composite modes of presentation, which involve several epistemically rewarding relations simultaneously). I show how this idea can be cashed out in the mental file framework, and how, in that framework, we can provide a straightforward answer to the question: when is a mode of presentation based on a memory M the same as the mode of presentation based on the perception P from which the memory derives? The answer appeals to the distinction between anchored and unanchored memories. (shrink)

In recent years Fodor has repeatedly argued that nothing epistemic can be essential to, or constitutive of, any concept. This holds in virtue of a constraint which Fodor dubs the Compositionality Constraint. I show that Fodor's argument is fallacious because it rests on an ambiguity.

La 4e de couverture indique : "La science du droit n'a pas, jusqu'ici, participé à l'engouement qui s'est porté sur les autres sciences humaines. Voilà pourquoi l'auteur de ce livre s'est efforcé de parler à un public plus étendu que les spécialistes auxquels sont destinés le plupart des introduction au droit. Le livre s'adresse aussi aux praticiens familiarisés avec des techniques juridiques particulières mais ont perdu toute vision d'ensemble, proprement scientifique, de l'art qu'ils exercent. Enfin, à ceux qui étudient le (...) droit, il offre l'occasion de compléter une formation trop exclusivement axée sur l'exercice des professions juridiques. Le principal thème développé par le livre est le suivant : les droits des pays d'Europe occidentale et le droit international classique qui en est issu sont le langage d'un pouvoir qui perpétue un accès inégal à la propriété des biens et à la culture. Cette fonction idéologique et politique du droit positif ne se dégage pas seulement du contenu de ses règles mais aussi des techniques qu'il met en oeuvre : le formalisme et le rationalisme du droit moderne obéissent aux lois d'une rationalité économique. Les exemples et les références de l'édition française ont été empruntés au droit français.". (shrink)

In the paper author discusses ideas of L. Wittgenstein who renounced formalism which was characteristic of the "Tractatus" epoch. The change is connected with the adoption of a different conception of language which refers, among other, problems to the new approach to "generality" (e.g. to generalized sentences). Wittgenstein rejected the proposition of analytical reductionism which is a conviction that it is possible to reduce and analyse "generality". He changed his opinion connected with the theory of meaning. The problems discussed above, (...) dealt with by earlier conceptions of Frege and Russell belong to important problems of the philosophy of logic and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes Dworkin’s view that there can be morally unsettling individual responsibility gaps in cases of collectively generated bad outcomes. I focus on two of the more provocative aspects of Dworkin’s discussion. First, I challenge Dworkin’s view that group responsibility is indispensable for comprehensive moral evaluations. Second, I assess the related contention that those confronting IRGs can realize significant expressive value by conceiving of some group as a responsible entity that can be blamed for the relevant bad outcome. In (...) sum, I argue that there are weighty reasons why moral theorists should take care not to point too quickly to group responsibility and blame as the best and most discerning ways of demystifying IRGs. (shrink)

In this paper I compare my account of IEM to another one, the Simple View, according to which a judgment is IEM just in case its grounds do not include an identity. The Simple View does not say why no identity assumption is needed to ground the singular judgment in the IEM cases; my account is meant to complement it by providing an answer to that question. According to my account, the judgments that are IEM are based on a certain (...) experience, and what they are about is pre-determined by the mode of that experience, by the type of experience it is, in a way that leaves no room for an alternative. (shrink)

In this paper, we redefine the target of evolutionary explanations by proposing the “evosystem” as an alternative to populations, lineages and species. Evosystems account for changes in the distribution of heritable variation within individual Darwinian populations (evolution by natural selection, drift, or constructive neutral evolution), but also for changes in the networks of interactions within or between Darwinian populations and changes in the abiotic environment (whether these changes are caused by the organic entities or not). The evosystem can thereby become (...) a centerpiece for a redefined evolutionary science, that is, evolutionary studies, that apprehends through a single framework the variety of evolutionary processes that lie at various scales. To illustrate the importance of this broadened perspective on evolution, we use a case of antimicrobial resistance evolution: the spread of the blaNDM gene family and the related resistance to carbapenem antibiotics observed globally, and show how evolutionary studies can contribute to answering contemporary socially relevant challenges. (shrink)

Diversity of evidence is widely claimed to be crucial for evidence amalgamation to have distinctive epistemic merits. Bayesian epistemologists capture this idea in the variety-of-evidence thesis: ceteris paribus, the strength of confirmation of a hypothesis by an evidential set increases with the diversity of the evidential elements in that set. Yet, formal exploration of this thesis has shown that it fails to be generally true. This article demonstrates that the thesis fails in even more circumstances than recent results would lead (...) us to expect. Most importantly, it can fail whatever the chance that the evidential sources are unreliable. Our results hold for two types of degrees of variety: reliability independence and testable aspect independence. We conclude that the variety-of-evidence thesis can, at best, be interpreted as an exception-prone rule of thumb. (shrink)

This research paper proceeds in three parts. After a brief presentation of Bernard Palissy, the first part examines his panpsychic ideas, the second part his ideas on art, which I connect in the third part to some of his remaining works and projects.

Diversity of evidence is widely claimed to be crucial for evidence amalgamation to have distinctive epistemic merits. Bayesian epistemologists capture this idea in the variety-of-evidence thesis: ceteris paribus, the strength of confirmation of a hypothesis by an evidential set increases with the diversity of the evidential elements in that set. Yet, formal exploration of this thesis has shown that it fails to be generally true. This article demonstrates that the thesis fails in even more circumstances than recent results would lead (...) us to expect. Most importantly, it can fail whatever the chance that the evidential sources are unreliable. Our results hold for two types of degrees of variety: reliability independence and testable aspect independence. We conclude that the variety-of-evidence thesis can, at best, be interpreted as an exception-prone rule of thumb. (shrink)

I propose in this paper to explore Heidegger's thought of selfhood in Contributions to Philosophy through a close reading of key paragraphs. It is often assumed that after the "turning" in his thinking, when Heidegger engages in a thought of Ereignis no longer centered on human Dasein as the locus of the meaning of being, the reference to selfhood would fade away. However, a close reading of the Contributions reveals that a renewed thinking of selfhood, of what Heidegger calls "self-being" (...) , is enacted precisely at the same time that the subjectivistic understanding of the self is more radically abandoned. I attempt to delineate how Heidegger undertakes to rethink selfhood no longer from the paradigm of the ego, but from the event of Ereignis , or enowning. (shrink)

Cher*** Me revoici après neuvaine. Et aujourd'hui, mon regard porte au large. Et la mer apportera à chaque homme des raisons d'espérer, comme le sommeil la cohorte des rêves. C'est le point où la résidence numérique sur « Rhuthmos », en vient à s'enlacer avec l'exposition que je prépare à la « Galerie des Paysages » durant le festival d'Avignon. Le thème aura trait à une poétique intime — tu fais bien de me rappeler, cher ami, mon abus de langage (...) : je prends cette - Résidence numérique — François Villais. (shrink)

D'Avignon, en cette nuit du 7 mars Cher **** De nouvelles rêveries m'ont porté vers le cœur de mes structures Lorsqu'on s'y projette, on s'y trouve enveloppé du textile qui abrite mais n'enferme Ni toiles, ni filets, ce sont des jerseys lâches, des tulles diaphanes Des interfaces sensibles, qui au vent s'emplissent et se plissent, et qui bruissent aux flux, et qui vibrent à la terre Des mailles qui distillent les rosées, percolent des alcools, infusent la nuit, pénètrent le jour (...) Et qui pourtant, - Résidence numérique — François Villais. (shrink)

Cher ***, En ce temps de festival, j'ai le plaisir de te présenter l'exposition que je donne actuellement à la galerie d'Avignon. Le titre en est « Les bateaux ivres de la liberté ». Sache que je dispose de quelques bannettes pour des festivaliers en déshérence dans la ville surpeuplée. Graphisme : FW En ce ci bel été, très cher. Fr - Résidence numérique — François Villais.

Cher*** Je rentre à l'instant des « Iles d'Auvergne », d'où mon silence de ces dernières semaines. La traversée, avec « Gevaudan Airline », ne s'est pas faite sans péripéties. Je m'étendrai, sous peu, sur l'installation pilote « dénouée, déliée, déroulée, dressée » que j'ai pu élever là-bas, et dont je te donne un aperçu ci-dessous. Mais tu voudras bien, avant cela me suivre brièvement dans les étranges fantasmagories qui hantent mon avance vers l'été. « Les chiens de fer » (...) A l'approche d'Avignon, autour de - Résidence numérique — François Villais. (shrink)

Le posé-sol, Dans mes installations, touche à l'origine du mouvement qui me porte. Si je puis rêver un détail achevé, c'est bien celui de ce délicat contact. Mâture : le touché Elle pèse et appuie, mais sans bruire Un touché sans blesser Un posé, mais léger De bambous, infondés Non encastrés, enfoncés, enterrés La surface n'est ni creusée, ni troublée Le mat est creux Sa trace est — moins qu'un disque — un anneau A sa disparition, sur le gazon, ce (...) seul signe Griffe d'un visiteur fugace - Résidence numérique — François Villais. (shrink)

Cher***, Il est temps de te rapporter le « filage », cette gestuelle que j'ai donnée durant mon séjour aux « îles d'Auvergne », en cette vitalité printanière de fin de mai. Le résultat final, en frange d'univers, est autonome, inattendu, énigmatique et incongru. La structure, arrivée ce matin, repartira sous peu. Anecdote improbable dans le paysage, l'on marche à lui, en cette montagne, et je te donne ci-dessous la scène finale, en son décor naturel : A l'entrée, l'invite : (...) L'appel s'étend loin sur la - Résidence numérique — François Villais. (shrink)

Cher*** Je m'en viens te soumettre un projet d'exposition à la Galerie des Paysages, à Avignon, durant le festival de théâtre, en juillet prochain. « New York à vif » Une approche de la matière de la ville de New York, au delà du minéral, comme d'un « corps urbain », incarné, quasi charnel. Ce thème s'inscrit dans la continuité de mes travaux et installations de land-art, et de mes expositions, qui prolongent depuis 2002 ma carrière d'architecte, commencée en 1987. (...) Ces recherches sont centrées sur - Résidence numérique — François Villais. (shrink)

Cher ****, Il émane de ma Rêverie d'aujourd'hui un désir de projet de volumes dans le paysage mieux assis et assumé. Détachement progressif des modes d'insertion confortables — qui ont été néanmoins de bons leviers : M'appuyant sur le « land-art », mobiliser le génie du paysage comme plateforme pour des expressions plastiques de grande échelle afin d'en faire émerger du sens. Utiliser le paysage comme environnement harmonique à un statuaire monumental - Résidence numérique — François Villais.

This article maintains that an important class of scientific generalizations should be reinterpreted: they have typically been understood as ceteris paribus laws, but are, in fact, generics. Four arguments are presented to support this thesis. One argument is that the interpretation in terms of ceteris paribus laws is a historical accident. The other three arguments draw on similarities between these generalizations and archetypal generics: they come with similar inferential commitments, they share a syntactic form, and the existing theories to make (...) sense of them are alike. Once these generalizations are properly understood as generics, the recent cognitive approach to generics can be extended to the study of the relevant sciences. The last section indicates ways in which this extension is fruitful for the two strands of research that we combine: the philosophy of science literature on generalizations and the semantics literature on generics. (shrink)

SummaryIn this paper I discuss two influential views in the philosophy of mind: the two‐component picture draws a distinction between ‘narrow content’ and ‘broad content’, while radical externalism denies that there is such a thing as narrow content. I argue that ‘narrow content’ is ambiguous, and that the two views can be reconciled. Instead of considering that there is only one question and three possible answers corresponding to Cartesian internalism, the two‐component picture, and radical externalism respectively, I show that there (...) are two distinct questions: ‘Are mental contents internal to the individual?’ and, ‘Are mental contents analysable in two‐components?’ Both questions can be given a positive or a negative answer, in such a way that there are four, rather than three, possible views to be distinguished. The extra view whose possibility emerges in this framework is that which mixes radical externalism with the two‐component picture. It agrees with radical externalism that there cannot be ‘solipsistic’ contents: content is not an intrinsic property of the states of an individual organism, but a relational property. It also agrees with the two‐component picture, on a certain interpretation: the broad content of a psychological state depends upon what actually causes that state, but the narrow content depends only on what normally causes this type of state to occur. In the last section of the paper, I deal with internal representation which seem to be independent even of the normal environment. I show that such contents are themselves independent of the normal environment only in a relative sense: they are locally independent of the normal environment, yet still depend on it via the concepts to which they are connected in the concept system. (shrink)

François Recanati; IV*—Contextual Dependence and Definite Descriptions, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 87, Issue 1, 1 June 1987, Pages 57–74, h.

The classic essay on the "karesansui" garden by French art historian Berthier has now been translated by Graham Parkes, giving English-speaking readers a concise, thorough, and beautifully illustrated history of Zen rock gardens. 37 ...

La démarche de la Sylva Sylvarum semble s’écarter de la voie inductive proposée par le Novum Organum. Pourtant, l’exemple de la fabrication de l’or indique que les deux textes n’offrent pas forcément des perspectives si différentes. Cette œuvre est davantage détaillée dans la Sylva, avec un accent pratique plus prononcé. Mais, comme dans le Novum Organum, la dimension opérationnelle y est articulée à la recherche des causes générales du processus et, si la « forme » n’est pas présente comme terme, (...) l’idée apparaît bien en arrière-fond. Cet article propose ainsi, sur la base de cet exemple, de nuancer la divergence entre l’ experientia literata des histoires naturelles et l’induction vraie du Novum Organum. (shrink)