I outline a discourse-based account of presuppositions that relies on insights from the writings of Peter Strawson, as well as on insights from more recent work by Robert Stalnaker and Barbara Abbott. One of the key elements of my account is the idea that presuppositions are “assertorically inert”, in the sense that they are background propositions, rather than being part of the “at issue” or asserted content. Strawson is often assumed to have defended the view that the (...) falsity of a presupposition leads to catastrophe, in the sense that a false presupposition “wrecks the assertive enterprise”. I argue that the discourse-based account in terms of assertoric inertia can explain how cases of presupposition failure can sometimes be non-catastrophic; there are cases in which the assertive enterprise operates smoothly, despite presupposition failure. The chief problem facing this line of argument is to account for cases in which presupposition failure is catastrophic. If presuppositions are assertorically inert, then how can their falsity ever wreck the assertive enterprise? I offer a principled account that delineates the circumstances in which false presuppositions are, and those in which they are not, catastrophic. (shrink)

Since linguists began extensive work on presupposition in the 1970's, a long and heterogeneous list has been compiled of expressions, expression types and constructions that give rise to presuppositions. In the current literature, the principal (but by no means sole) diagnostic for presupposition typically appealed to is the tendency of the particular element of meaning to project, i.e. to escape the scope of operators such as negation, the question operator, or modals. An important intuition also routinely appealed to is (...) that the element of meaning is in some sense backgrounded, or treated by the speaker as taken for granted. There seems little doubt that there are interesting and theoretically relevant distinctions to be made between different types of presuppositions within this heterogeneous set. But the study of these distinctions is of interest primarily in light of the intuition that the members of this set share some common feature: that there is some singular phenomenon of presupposition to be described and explained. This paper is concerned with what presuppositions have in common, and offers an alternative to the current standard view. On the view currently prevalent in the linguistic literature, presuppositions constitute constraints on the common ground, or on an interlocutor’s “take” on the common ground, at the point at which 1 the presupposing utterance is interpreted. I do not intend to offer here a detailed critique of this standard theory, but perhaps a few words of justification are in order. The motivation for seeking a new account comes in part from the same considerations cited by Abbott 2000, in her critique of the standard view. Abbott’s central point is that the driving idea behind the common ground view is that presuppositions are identified with “old” information, or information that the speaker is treating as “old.” This idea, while perhaps helpful as an initial approximation, rapidly runs up against the observation that it is normal and commonplace for.... (shrink)

Positivists identify science and certainty and in the name of the utter rationality of science deny that it rests on speculative presuppositions. The Logical Positivists took a step further and tried to show such presuppositions really no presuppositions at all but rather poorly worded sentences. Rules of sentence formation, however, rest on the presuppositions about the nature of language. This makes us unable to determine the status of mathematics, which is these days particularly irksome since this (...) question is now-since Abraham Robinson-one that mathematicians cannot ignore. Since mathematics is the paradigm of a logical discourse, logic must offer a system adequate enough to serve mathematics. This fact makes it difficult to avoid making question-begging moves in both mathematics and logic. We must therefore view the rationality of logic as partial and hope it is stepwise improvable. The theory of rationality thus turns to be the major presupposition of logic, and one which has ample metaphysical background to it. The very supposition, basic to all logic, that language is divisible into form andcontent is under suspicion-mathematics perhaps belongs to neither. (shrink)

Recall Grice’s well-worn example from Logic and Conversation about Smith, his girlfriend, and his trips to New York: (1) A: Smith doesn’t seem to have a girlfriend these days. B: He has been paying a lot of visits to NY recently. Grice says that in this dialogue, B implicates that Smith has, or may have, a girlfriend in New York. But in saying this, Grice under-describes his own example. For this proposition alone does not suffice to satisfy the requirements of (...) Relation, the maxim presumed to be operative in this case. Grice says that “[B] implicates that which he must be assumed to believe in order to preserve the assumption that he is observing the maxim of Relation.” But the assumption that B thinks that Smith might have a girlfriend in NY is not in itself sufficient to render B’s utterance relevant. An additional assumption is required, one which explicitly links the issue of having girlfriends to the issue of travel to NY: perhaps, the proposition that a person who has a girlfriend somewhere travels there frequently; or that many people have long-distance relationships, and these involve frequent trips to the same place. If A can work out that B is making this supposition, then she can immediately see the relevance of B’s response to her remark. Without it, relevance cannot be established. So this general background assumption must be implicated by the utterance.1 Now, this background assumption is not enough by itself to guarantee relevance. Suppose that B believes the background assumption, but does not believe that Smith might be traveling to NY to visit a girlfriend. Then his utterance is still in violation of Relation. B should invoke the background assumption only if it is relevant itself. (shrink)

There is a crisis in philosophical rationality today—in which modern logicisimplicated—thatcanbetracedtotheabandonmentofacommonbackground of principles. The situation has no parallel within the pre-modern tradition, which not only admits of such principles, but also refers them back to a set of assumptions grounded in a clearly religious frame of mind. Modern conceptions of rationality claim complete independence from religious sources, as from tradition more generally, and typically end up disposing of first principles altogether. The result is a fragmentation of reason, which can be (...) seen to be dramatically exemplified in the realm of modern logic, populated by countless different systems and incompatible conceptions of what it is to be a logic. Many of the conceptual choices that became implicit in the philosophical discussions eventually leading to the rejection of the religious picture, and ultimately to the aforementioned crisis, were themselves originally linked to religious premises, so that all along, a kind of religious subconscious has subsisted throughout those disputations; however, the lack of any proper recognition of this background obstructs the possibility of making a reasonable assessment of the nature and causes of the crisis. Alasdair MacIntyre, whose thought inspires the argument developed here, reached similar conclusions regarding practical rationality and the effects of abandoning the teleological framework of Aristotelian philosophy. MacIntyre’s arguments can be adapted, as he suggests, to deal with reason more generally, and his insistence upon the tradition-laden character of rational enquiry can help point toward the grounding of human reason in religion. (shrink)

Hobbs (2010) introduced ‘clause-internal coherence’ (CIC) to describe inferences in, e.g., ‘A jogger was hit by a car,’ where the jogging is understood to have led to the car-hitting. Cohen & Kehler (2021) argue that well-known pragmatic tools cannot account for CIC, motivating an enrichment account familiar from discourse coherence research. An outstanding question is how to compositionally derive CIC from coherence relations. This paper takes strides in answering this question. It first provides experimental support for the existence of CIC (...) via offline evidence that attributive (non-)deverbal adjectives can trigger the same causal inferences within clauses that their predicative counterparts can trigger across clauses, albeit more weakly. To explain the experimental results, we use tools in Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT), which allows us to show that causal inferences can be derived in various ways, depending on whether deverbal adjectives are used attributively or predicatively. If the former, they are presupposition triggers and the coherence relations Elaboration/Continuation compete with Background; if the latter, Explanation/Result compete with Background. These different competitions -- cashed out in terms of interaction between default axioms -- correlate with the difference in the relative salience of the causal inferences. (shrink)

There is a crisis in philosophical rationality today—in which modern logic is implicated—that can be traced to the abandonment of a common background of principles. The situation has no parallel within the pre-modern tradition, which not only admits of such principles, but also refers them back to a set of assumptions grounded in a clearly religious frame of mind. Modern conceptions of rationality claim complete independence from religious sources, as from tradition more generally, and typically end up disposing of (...) first principles altogether. The result is a fragmentation of reason, which can be seen to be dramatically exemplified in the realm of modern logic, populated by countless different systems and incompatible conceptions of what it is to be a logic. Many of the conceptual choices that became implicit in the philosophical discussions eventually leading to the rejection of the religious picture, and ultimately to the aforementioned crisis, were themselves originally linked to religious premises, so that all along, a kind of religious subconscious has subsisted throughout those disputations; however, the lack of any proper recognition of this background obstructs the possibility of making a reasonable assessment of the nature and causes of the crisis. Alasdair MacIntyre, whose thought inspires the argument developed here, reached similar conclusions regarding practical rationality and the effects of abandoning the teleological framework of Aristotelian philosophy. MacIntyre’s arguments can be adapted, as he suggests, to deal with reason more generally, and his insistence upon the tradition-laden character of rational enquiry can help point toward the grounding of human reason in religion. (shrink)

The paper examines the nature of the social fact in social knowledge on the background of the differences between sciences and social sciences. The approach applied is historical , as well as one based on differentiating between Humean conception of fact and the conceptions, in which facts are seen as determining the truth values of our propositions. Underlined are the intentionality and structure of social facts in terms of Searle’s construction of the social as well as the weakness of (...) his conception. In conclusion it is asserted that the construction of facts in social sciences is impossible without psychological vocabulary and concepts, whose contents are conceived – contrary to Searle’s internalism – in terms of externalism. (shrink)

There are many kinds of negation and denial. Perhaps the most common is the Boolean negation not that applies to propositions-in-extension, i.e. truth-values. The others are, inter alia, the property of propositions of not being true which applies to propositions; the complement function which applies to sets; privation which applies to properties; negation as failure applied in logic programming; negation as argumentation ad absurdum, and many others. The goal of this paper is neither to provide a complete list, nor to (...) analyse all of them. Rather, I am going to deal with negation of propositions that come attached with a presupposition that is entailed by the positive as well as negated form of a given proposition. However, there are two kinds of negation, namely internal and external negation. I am going to prove that while the former is presupposition-preserving, the latter is presupposition-denying. This issue has much in common with the difference between topic and focus articulation within a sentence. Whereas articulating the topic of a sentence activates a presupposition, articulating the focus frequently yields merely an entailment. The main contribution of this paper is the proof that the two kinds of negation are not equivalent. While the Russellian wide-scope (external) negation gets the truthconditions of a sentence right for a subject occurring as a focus, Strawsonian narrow-scope (internal) negation is validly applicable for a subject occurring as the topic. I also deal with other kinds of presupposition triggers, in particular factive attitudes and prerequisites of a given property. My background theory is Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL). TIL is an expressive logic apt for the analysis of sentences with presuppositions, because in TIL we work with partial functions, in particular with propositions with truth-value gaps. Moreover, the procedural semantics of TIL make it possible to uncover the hidden semantic features of sentences, make them explicit and logically tractable. (shrink)

The functions of advertisement always give rise to the fact that trust and co-operation between the interlocutors are limited or lacking. Presupposition is frequently employed in order to enhance function of advertising language implicitly because of its own special properties and characteristics. This article refers to the historical and theoretical background of the study of presupposition and indicates pragmatic functions of presupposition in advertising English.

The publication of Kripke (2009), originally delivered as a lecture at Princeton University in 1990, was long in coming. Widely circulated since then, some aspects of the original manuscript are now well known by many working on presupposition. The published paper differs from the manuscript in clarifying certain points, tying up loose ends, answering some previously open questions, and incorporating a modest revision or two. That would be reason enough to review it here. More important is an assessment of what (...) is truly groundbreaking in the discussion, and what is not. It is not, I will argue, Kripke’s attempted demonstrations that propositions previously said to be presupposed by various utterance types really aren’t presupposed, though there is something correct about those critical remarks. Nor is it his identification of new propositions presupposed by the utterances in question. Although there are new presuppositions, in certain cases his characterization of them requires revision or supplementation. However, these are not the most important aspects of his paper. Rather, I will argue, his most significant insights concern the mechanisms that give rise to presuppositions, which involve the formulation of presuppositional requirements of a kind different from those of the theories on which he comments. These in turn have far-reaching consequences for the notion of conversational contexts incorporating shared background information that utterances are used to update, and against which they are evaluated. Ironically, it is these, most important, aspects of Kripke’s view that (to my knowledge) have been least understood, and most incompletely assimilated into ongoing work. For this reason, I will concentrate on them. (shrink)

The behaviour of presupposition triggers in human language has been extensively studied and given rise to many distinct theoretical proposals. One intuitively appealing way of characterising presupposition is to argue that it constitutes backgrounded meaning, which does not contribute to updating the conversational record, and consequently may not be challenged or refuted by discourse participants. However, there are a wide range of presupposition triggers, some of which can systematically be used to introduce new information. Is there, then, a clear psychological (...) distinction between presupposition and assertion? Do certain expressions vacillate between presupposing and asserting information? And is information backgrounding a categorical or a gradient phenomenon? In this paper we argue for the value of experimental methods in addressing these questions, and present a pilot study demonstrating backgrounding effects of presupposition triggers, and suggesting their gradience in nature. We discuss the implications of these findings for theoretical categorisations of presupposition triggers. (shrink)

Scientific discourse leaves implicit a vast amount of knowledge, assumes that this background knowledge is taken into account – even taken for granted – and treated as undisputed. In particular, the terminology in the empirical sciences is treated as antecedently understood. The background knowledge surrounding a theory is usually assumed to be true or approximately true. This is in sharp contrast with logic, which explicitly ignores underlying presuppositions and assumes uninterpreted languages. We discuss the problems that (...) class='Hi'>background knowledge may cause for the formalization of scientific theories. In particular, we will show how some of these problems can be addressed in the context of the computational representation of scientific theories. (shrink)

In this paper we analyze the Strawson's notion of presupposition proposed in his book Introduction to Logical Theory. Strawsonian notion of presupposition is dependent on the notion of logical entailment. We make use of the theory of logical consequence operation as a general framework to show that it is impossible to find a logical consequence operation which mirrors the philosophical intuitions of the Strawson's notions of presupposition. The aim of this paper is to present in details the philosophical backgrounds of (...) the formal analysis presented in the author's paper "Strawsonian presuppositions and logical entailment". (shrink)

ABSTRACT The paper undertakes a critical analysis of the so-called Presupposition of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, which prescribes the benevolent interpretation of the other’s words. We aim to identify the anthropological and epistemological background of the pedagogical guidelines contained therein and to explicate the intellectual and moral virtues needed to put them into practice. We argue that practising the Presupposition is both virtuous and mutually beneficial in pedagogical practice.

“When a speaker says something of the form A and B, he may take it for granted that A (or at least that his audience recognizes that he accepts that A) after he has said it. The proposition that A will be added to the background of common assumptions before the speaker asserts that B. Now suppose that B expresses a proposition that would, for some reason, be inappropriate to assert except in a context where A, or something entailed (...) by A, is presupposed. Even if A is not presupposed initially, one may still assert A and B since by the time one gets to saying that B, the context has shifted, and it is by then presupposed that A” (Stalnaker 1974). (shrink)

This article seeks to recover a neglected chapter in the historical and theoretical background of social theory in general and critical theory in particular with a view to refining the understanding of the presuppositions of a cognitively enhanced critical social science appropriate to our troubled times. For this purpose, it offers a brief reconstruction of the mathematical-philosophical tradition from ancient to modern times by extrapolating that part of it that is marked by the ideas of infinity, infinite processes (...) and limit concepts. It gives suggestive indications not only of how these ideas relate to extant social-theoretical thought, but especially also of the two related cognitive directions – the weak-naturalistic and the socio-cultural – in which such thought is currently challenged to go. (shrink)

This article notes differences in legislation in Germany and Great Britain regarding human embryo research and looks for an explanation in their divergent intellectual traditions. Whereas the German Stem Cell Act invokes an anthropological concept of human dignity to ground its ban on using embryos for research, there is no definition of what it means to be human in either the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act or in the advisory Warnock-Report. After studying the differences and providing some philosophical (...) class='Hi'>background, the essay distinguishes two notions that are significant for understanding human dignity. It then proposes from a theological point of view a basic understanding within a relational anthropology, and comes to the conclusion that because of continuity in development and their relational constitution, humans embryos should be accepted as human from the moment of conception. (shrink)

Leonard Nelson is known primarily as a critic of epistemology in the Neo-Kantian meaning of the term. The aim of this paper is to investigate the presuppositions and consequences of his critique. I claim that what has rarely been discussed in this context is the problem of the possibility of metaphysics. By the impossibility of epistemology Nelson means the possibility of metaphysical knowledge. I intend to devote this paper to the analysis of this problem in relation to the Neo-Kantian (...) background. (shrink)

Science is always presupposing some basic concepts that are held to be useful. These absolute presuppositions (Collingwood) are rarely debated and form the framework for what has been termed paradigm by Kuhn. Our currently accepted scientific model is predicated on a set of presuppositions that have difficulty accommodating holistic structures and relationships and are not geared towards incorporating non-local correlations. Since the theoretical models we hold also determine what we perceive and take as scientifically viable, it is important (...) to look for an alternative model that can deal with holistic relationships. One approach is to generalise algebraic quantum theory, which is an inherently holistic framework, into a generic model. Relaxing some restrictions and definitions from quantum theory proper yields an axiomatic framework that can be applied to any type of system. Most importantly, it keeps the core of the quantum theoretical formalism. It is capable of handling complementary observables, i.e. descriptors which are non-commuting, incompatible and yet collectively required to fully describe certain situations. It also predicts a generalised form of non-local correlations that in quantum theory are known as entanglement. This generalised version is not quantum entanglement but an analogue form of holistic, non-local connectedness of elements within systems, predicted to occur whenever elements within systems are described by observables which are complementary to the description of the whole system. While a considerable body of circumstantial evidence supports the plausibility of the model, we are not yet in a position to use it for clear cut predictions that could be experimentally falsified. The series of papers offered in this special issue are the beginning of what we hope will become a rich scientific debate. (shrink)

‘Egalitarian' views of consciousness treat my stream of consciousness and yours as on a par ontologically. A range of worries about Chalmers's philosophical system are traced to a background presupposition of egalitarianism: Chalmers is apparently committed to ‘soul pellets'; the ‘phenomenal properties' at the core of the system are obscure; a ‘vertiginous question' about my identity is raised but not adequately answered; the theory of phenomenal concepts conflicts with the ‘transparency of experience'; the epistemology of other minds verges very (...) close to a priori physicalism; the system predicts that dualism is alluring, when it is not. (shrink)

This paper argues that epistemic contextualism misrepresents ordinary epistemic practices and fails to adequately respond to skepticism. It offers an alternative account of contextual variation in epistemic practices on which epistemic standards are stable, but met differently in different contexts. Contexts are determined by background presuppositions, which vary with types of inquiry. The presuppositions behind some inquiries imply that some standards of knowledge have 'already' been met. This view does not solve the skeptical problem, but aims to (...) elucidate ordinary epistemic attitudes, and to clarify what a response to skepticism must accomplish. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 7, Issue 4, pp 235 - 245 The discussion highlights the need to distinguish between perceptions and the experiences implicated by perceptions, noting that Coliva’s framework makes perception irrelevant to justified belief, except for being the contingent means by which we are furnished with experiences that are the real source of justified belief. It then addresses two issues concerning the problem of cognitive locality. The problem concerns what enables us rationally to suppose that our perceptual experiences mostly (...) put us in touch with reality. The issues addressed are: whether, assuming that there is a problem of cognitive locality, Coliva’s Moderate position adequately addresses it; and whether Coliva gives us enough to make sense of the claim, central to the Moderate position, that certain background presuppositions are constitutive of empirical rationality. (shrink)

This paper concerns content externalism and privileged access. I argue that externally-individuated concepts are not just subject to a causal constraint, but are also subject t an epistemic constraint. Their possession requires not merely that certain background presuppositions be true but, further, that the subject be in possession of true justified beliefs concerning their referents.

: Current philosophical and scientific approaches to consciousness are very often characterised by a strong background presupposition: whatever the precise details of a theory of consciousness may be, a physicalist – or materialist – view of consciousness itself must be correct. I believe, however, that this conviction, pervasive though it may be, is not really justified. In particular, I think that the arguments offered in favour of the materialist presupposition are weak and unconvincing, and that there is a very (...) strong prima facie case for rejecting physicalism regarding phenomenal consciousness. In a previous article of mine I have already discussed the first point; the present paper is devoted to elaborating the second, presenting a common-sense-based argument against physicalism. Keywords: Consciousness; Physicalism; Knowledge; Nature/Essence; Common Sense Conoscere per Esperienza. O del perché il fisicalismo non dovrebbe essere la nostra posizione di default nello studio della coscienza Riassunto: Gli attuali approcci filosofici e scientifici alla coscienza sono molto spesso caratterizzati da una forte presupposizione di sfondo: qualunque siano i dettagli precisi di una teoria della coscienza, una visione fisicalista – o materialista – della coscienza stessa deve essere corretta. Credo tuttavia che questa convinzione, per quanto pervasiva, non sia davvero giustificata. In particolare penso che gli argomenti offerti a favore della presupposizione materialista siano deboli e non convincenti e che ci sia un argomento prima facie molto forte per respingere il fisicalismo circa la coscienza fenomenica. Ho già discusso il primo punto in un articolo precedente; il presente articolo è dedicato a sviluppare il secondo punto, presentando un argomento contro il fisicalismo basato sul senso comune. Parole chiave: Coscienza; Fisicalismo; Conoscenza; Natura/Essenza; Senso comune. (shrink)

It has been observed that, unlike other kinds of singular judgments, mental self-ascriptions are immune to error through misidentification: they may go wrong, but not as a result of mistaking someone else’s mental states for one’s own. Although recent years have witnessed increasing interest in this phenomenon, three basic questions about it remain without a satisfactory answer: what is exactly an error through misidentification? What does immunity to such errors consist in? And what does it take to explain the fact (...) that mental self-ascriptions exhibit this sort of immunity? The aim of this paper is to bring these questions into focus, propose some tentative answers and use them to show that one prominent attempt to explain the immunity to error through misidentification of mental self-ascriptions is unsuccessful. (shrink)

I propose a new theory of semantic presupposition, which I call dissatisfaction theory. I first briefly review a cluster of problems − known collectively as the proviso problem − for most extant theories of presupposition, arguing that the main pragmatic response to them faces a serious challenge. I avoid these problems by adopting two changes in perspective on presupposition. First, I propose a theory of projection according to which presuppositions project unless they are locally entailed. Second, I reject the (...) standard assumption that presuppositions are contents which must be entailed by the input context; instead, I propose that presuppositions are contents which are marked as backgrounded. I show that, together, these commitments allow us to avoid the proviso problem altogether, and generally make plausible predictions about presupposition projection out of connectives and attitude predicates. I close by sketching a two-dimensional implementation of my theory which allows us to make further welcome predictions about attitude predicates and quantifiers. (shrink)

The subject takes part in and constructs what it perceives, shifting, thus, the presuppositions, that is, the ‚pre-formats‘ of this construction into the background, out of reach of that which is manifesting itself. In fact, within the framework of its own construction, the subject does not dispose of any possibilities of transferring other heterogeneous settings into a unique target format upon which the world of objects is constructed. In order to achieve this the subject needs a determinate interactive (...) interface, i. e., mediation. Access to mediation, that is, to the interfaces combining the different settings, to complexity and to the real, helps us to understand the differences that become accessible to us. Furthermore, access helps us to reach an adequate understanding of the role of the subject in the world, a world in which the subject is not only mechanically constructed but, above all, mediated accordingly. (shrink)

Dewey’s social ontology could be characterized as a habit ontology, an ontology of habit qua second nature that offers us an account of intentionality, social statuses, institutions, and norms in terms of habituations. Such an account offers us a promising alternative to contemporary intentionalist and deontic approaches to social ontology such as Searle’s. Furthermore, it could be the basis of a social ontology better suited to explain both the maintenance and the transformation of social reality. In the first part I (...) will characterize Dewey’s model as a social ontology based on the notion of habit, and present it as an alternative to intentionalist approaches to social reality. In the second part I will argue that habit ontology offers us an account of social norms that is based on a peculiar understanding of the notion of ‘status’, and represents an alternative to deontic accounts. In the third part I will claim that Dewey’s notion of “public” offers us a dynamic understanding of social institutions and a ‘reactive’ notion of collective intentionality as an achievement rather than as a presupposition of social practices. In the final section I will summarize some advantages of the Deweyan over the Searlean social ontology concerning our understanding of acceptance, maintenance and transformation of statuses, and of the role played by the ‘background’. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Background: Schopenhauer's Methodological Presuppositions Empirical Consciousness Aesthetic Consciousness Moral Consciousness and the Path to Salvation Concluding Remarks Notes References Further Reading.

Background and objectives: Physicians are exposed to matters of existential character at work, but little is known about the personal impact of such issues. Methods: To explore how physicians experience and cope with existential aspects of their clinical work and how such experiences affect their professional identities, a qualitative study using individual semistructured interviews has analysed accounts of their experiences related to coping with such challenges. Analysis was by systematic text condensation. The purposeful sample comprised 10 physicians (including three (...) women), aged 33–66 years, residents or specialists in cardiology or cardiothoracic surgery, working in a university hospital with 24-hour emergency service and one general practitioner. Results: Participants described a process by which they were able to develop a capacity for coping with the existential challenges at work. After episodes perceived as shocking or horrible earlier in their career, they at present said that they could deal with death and mostly keep it at a distance. Vulnerability was closely linked to professional responsibility and identity, perceived as a burden to be handled. These demands were balanced by an experience of meaning related to their job, connected to making a difference in their patients’ lives. Belonging to a community of their fellows was a presupposition for coping with the loneliness and powerlessness related to their vulnerable professional position. Conclusions: Physicians’ vulnerability facing life and death has been underestimated. Belonging to caring communities may assist growth and coping on exposure to existential aspects of clinical work and developing a professional identity. (shrink)

Background and objectives: Physicians are exposed to matters of existential character at work, but little is known about the personal impact of such issues.Methods: To explore how physicians experience and cope with existential aspects of their clinical work and how such experiences affect their professional identities, a qualitative study using individual semistructured interviews has analysed accounts of their experiences related to coping with such challenges. Analysis was by systematic text condensation. The purposeful sample comprised 10 physicians , aged 33–66 (...) years, residents or specialists in cardiology or cardiothoracic surgery, working in a university hospital with 24-hour emergency service and one general practitioner.Results: Participants described a process by which they were able to develop a capacity for coping with the existential challenges at work. After episodes perceived as shocking or horrible earlier in their career, they at present said that they could deal with death and mostly keep it at a distance. Vulnerability was closely linked to professional responsibility and identity, perceived as a burden to be handled. These demands were balanced by an experience of meaning related to their job, connected to making a difference in their patients’ lives. Belonging to a community of their fellows was a presupposition for coping with the loneliness and powerlessness related to their vulnerable professional position.Conclusions: Physicians’ vulnerability facing life and death has been underestimated. Belonging to caring communities may assist growth and coping on exposure to existential aspects of clinical work and developing a professional identity. (shrink)

This paper examines a number of proverbs in English and Persian to shed light on certain pragmatic issues involved in translation. By analyzing three sets of data within the pragmatic framework, we found that the translatability of proverbs should be characterized as a continuum, rather a clear-cut dichotomy. Depending on the universality or culture-specificity of background cultural information associated with proverbs, three main categories, namely translatables, semi-translatables, and untranslatables are proposed. These categories fall along different points on a postulated (...) continuum of translatability. Our study also shows that implicatures and presuppositions, when applicable to translatability, influence it in an incontrovertible manner. On top of this, the indubitable role of metaphor in the conceptualization of proverbs, and as a result, on the translatability of them is acknowledged. (shrink)

Nelson Goodman's acceptance and critique of certain methods and tenets of positivism, his defence of nominalism and phenomenalism, his formulation of a new riddle of induction, his work on notational systems, and his analysis of the arts place him at the forefront of the history and development of American philosophy in the twentieth-century. However, outside of America, Goodman has been a rather neglected figure. In this first book-length introduction to his work Cohnitz and Rossberg assess Goodman's lasting contribution to philosophy (...) and show that although some of his views may be now considered unfashionable or unorthodox, there is much in Goodman's work that is of significance today. The book begins with the "grue"-paradox, which exemplifies Goodman's way of dealing with philosophical problems. After this, the unifying features of Goodman's philosophy are presented - his constructivism, conventionalism and relativism - followed by an discussion of his central work, The Structure of Appearance and its significance in the analytic tradition. The following chapters present the technical apparatus that underlies his philosophy, his mereology and semiotics, which provides the background for discussion of Goodman's aesthetics. The final chapter examines in greater depth the presuppositions underlying his philosophy. (shrink)

Background The justification for Nazi programs involving involuntary euthanasia, forced sterilisation, eugenics and human experimentation were strongly influenced by views about human dignity. The historical development of these views should be examined today because discussions of human worth and value are integral to medical ethics and bioethics. We should learn lessons from how human dignity came to be so distorted to avoid repetition of similar distortions. Discussion Social Darwinism was foremost amongst the philosophies impacting views of human dignity in (...) the decades leading up to Nazi power in Germany. Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory was quickly applied to human beings and social structure. The term 'survival of the fittest' was coined and seen to be applicable to humans. Belief in the inherent dignity of all humans was rejected by social Darwinists. Influential authors of the day proclaimed that an individual's worth and value were to be determined functionally and materialistically. The popularity of such views ideologically prepared German doctors and nurses to accept Nazi social policies promoting survival of only the fittest humans. A historical survey reveals five general presuppositions that strongly impacted medical ethics in the Nazi era. These same five beliefs are being promoted in different ways in contemporary bioethical discourse. Ethical controversies surrounding human embryos revolve around determinations of their moral status. Economic pressures force individuals and societies to examine whether some people's lives are no longer worth living. Human dignity is again being seen as a relative trait found in certain humans, not something inherent. These views strongly impact what is taken to be acceptable within medical ethics. Summary Five beliefs central to social Darwinism will be examined in light of their influence on current discussions in medical ethics and bioethics. Acceptance of these during the Nazi era proved destructive to many humans. Their widespread acceptance today would similarly lead to much human death and suffering. A different ethic in needed which views human dignity as inherent to all human individuals. (shrink)

This book brings together phenomenological studies of the experience of forgiveness. The contributors, from psychological, philosophical, and theological backgrounds, set aside theoretical presuppositions, approach this topic with fresh eyes, and address problematic aspects of the existing literature.

Feminist epistemology is both a paradox and a necessity. Epistemology is a highly general inquiry – into the meaning of knowledge claims and attributions, into conditions for the possibility of knowledge, into the nature of truth and justification, and so on. Feminism is a family of positions and inquiries characterized by some common sociopolitical interests centering on the abolition of sexual and gender inequality. What possible relation could there be between these two sets of activity? Furthermore, feminist inquiry results in (...) substantive claims and analyses of whose adequacy and correctness feminists hope to persuade nonfeminists as well as other feminists. How could such persuasion occur without some highly general and shared conceptions of knowledge and rationality to set the ground rules within which this persuasion will occur? How could this be anything but a general and uniformly applicable epistemology? A feminist epistemology is oxymoronic. On the other hand, feminist scholars have demonstrated the gender bias infusing most other academic disciplines – a gender bias that is expressed in particular claims and facilitated by disciplinary first principles. Women's experience is made invisible or distorted, as are gender relations. What reason have we for thinking philosophy and its subdisciplines might be immune? And how can feminists pursue philosophical inquiry without subjecting our own discipline and subdisciplines to the same kind of searching scrutiny to which other feminist scholars have subjected their disciplines? Indeed, since the traditional academic disciplines have rested on philosophical presuppositions that may be implicated in sexist or androcentric outcomes, it is imperative that we do so. Feminist epistemology is a necessity. (shrink)

Against the background of the current discussion about self-organization theories and complexity theories and their application within biology and ecology, the question of teleology gains a new significance. Some scholars insist on the total elimination of any reference to teleology from the realm of the natural sciences. However, it seems especially hard to eradicate teleological expressions from scientific language when the issue of understanding living beings is at stake. For this reason, other scholars opt for a middle path that (...) allows for some teleological language. Yet, it is an open question whether teleological expressions are to be considered as playing a merely metaphorical or a necessary heuristic role in the sciences. Moreover, the ontological presuppositions, which underpin different positions in the debate, need to be depicted and analyzed. This paper aims at addressing the question of teleology within the life sciences by taking into account both Kant’s critical philosophy and Whitehead’s ontology. My analysis starts with Georg Toepfer’s distinction among different concepts of teleology and then focuses on the role of “internal purposiveness” (innere Zweckmäßigkeit) for biology today. I show how purposiveness (Zweckmäßigkeit; hereafter: ZM) corresponds to a very complex form of reciprocal causation (Wechselwirkung) rather than to any model of final causation. Drawing on Kant’s analysis of “natural purposes” in the Critique of Judgment as well as selforganization theory, I claim that reciprocal causation – however complex it might well be – is not sufficient to describe living beings adequately. However, since the natural sciences are still caught up in the presuppositions of modern scientistic and materialistic ontology, a step beyond mere efficient causation seems to be impossible within their methodological framework. And yet, as I will show, a genuine teleology of nature implies the idea of anticipation of totality. This kind of teleological consideration is presented at first in its role as a regulative concept in Kantian terms. Finally, I follow the path of Whitehead’s ‘philosophy of organism’ and claim for natural teleology the state of a necessary ontological presupposition. Whitehead’s ontology offers an ontological underpinning for teleological issues that, by avoiding any recourse to supernatural forces, invites life and natural sciences to a fruitful dialogue at the limit of their methodological boundaries, pressing them beyond their unreflected presuppositions. (shrink)

This dissertation investigates the ways in which natural language restricts the domains of quantifiers. Adverbs of quantification are analyzed as quantifying over situations. The domain of quantifiers is pragmatically constrained: apparent processes of "semantic partition" are treated as pragmatic epiphenomena. The introductory Chapter 1 sketches some of the background of work on natural language quantification and begins the analysis of adverbial quantification over situations. Chapter 2 develops the central picture of "semantic partition" as a side-effect of pragmatic processes of (...) anaphora resolution. I argue that the apparent effects of topic/focus articulation and presuppositional information on the interpretation of quantifiers are not the result of a direct and local mechanism of sentence grammar. Instead, I develop an analysis where the link is established via the anaphoric dependence of quantifier domains on the discourse context. Chapter 3 discusses the analysis of conditional clauses as quantifier restrictors, concentrating on the question whether conditional clauses restrict quantifiers directly or indirectly. A treatment is explored which has if-clauses constrain the value of the hidden domain variable of the restricted quantifier. Chapter 4, on unless-clauses, and Chapter 5, on only if- and even if-clauses, present some issues in the compositional analysis of complex conditional clauses. These chapters significantly expand the data coverage of the theory of A-quantification. Building on previous work of mine on exceptives, I analyze unless-clauses as exceptive operators on A-quantifiers. The analysis of only if-clauses, treated as conditional clauses that combine if with the focus adverb only, unearthes some interesting new properties. Chapter 6, finally, examines the phenomenon of donkey-anaphora in the light of the results of the previous chapters. I show that a solution to the proportion problem may become possible once we combine the situation-semantic approach to adverbial quantification with the pragmatic theory developed in Chapter 2 and further elaborated in the analysis of donkey anaphora in complex conditionals. (shrink)

Are sagging pants cool? Are cows food? Are women more submissive than men? Are blacks more criminal than whites? Taking the social world at face value, many people would be tempted to answer these questions in the affirmative. And if challenged, they can point to facts that support their answers. But there is something wrong about the affirmative answers. In this chapter, I draw on recent ideas in the philosophy of language and metaphysics to show how the assertion of a (...) generic claim of the sort in question ordinarily permits one to infer that the fact in question obtains by virtue of something specifically about the subject so described, i.e., about women, or blacks, or sagging pants. In the examples I’ve offered, however, this implication inference is unwarranted. The facts in question obtain by virtue of broad system of social relations within which the subjects are situated, and are not grounded in intrinsic or dispositional features of the subjects themselves. The background relations are obscured, however, and as a result, the assertion is at least systematically misleading; a denial functions to block the problematic implication. Revealing such implications or presuppositions and blocking them is a crucial part of ideology critique. (shrink)

The deaths of those on whom our practical identities rely generate a sense of disorientation or alienation from the world seemingly at odds with life being meaningful. In the terms put forth in Cheshire Calhoun’s recent account of meaningfulness in life, because their existence serves as a metaphysical presupposition of our practical identities, their deaths threaten to upend a background frame of agency against which much of our choice and deliberation takes place. Here I argue for a dual role (...) for grief in addressing this threat to life’s meaningfulness. Inasmuch as grief’s object is the loss of our relationship with the deceased as it was prior to their death, grief serves to alert us to the threat to our practical identities that their deaths pose to us and motivates us to defuse this threat by revising our practical identities to reflect the modification in our relationship necessitated by their deaths. Simultaneously, the emotional complexity and richness of grief episodes provides an abundance of normative evidence regarding our relationship with the deceased and our practical identities, evidence that can enable us to re-establish our practical identities and thereby recover a sense of our lives as meaningful. (shrink)

The format of this book is unusual, especially for a book about linguistics. The book is meant primarily as a research monograph aimed at linguists who have some background in formal semantics, e. g. Montague Grammar. However, I have two other audiences in mind. Linguists who have little or no experience of formal semantics, but who have worked through a basic mathematics for linguists course (e. g. using Wall, 1972, or Partee, 1978), should, perhaps with the help of a (...) sympathetic Montague gramma rian, be able to discover enough of how I have adapted some of the basic ideas in formal semantics to make the developments that I undertake in the rest of the book accessible. Logicians and computer scientists who know about model theoretic semantics and formal systems should be able to glean enough from Chapters I and II about linguistic concerns and techniques to be able to read the remainder of the book, again possibly with the help of a sympathetic Montague grammarian. However, readers should beware. Chapter II is not meant as a general introduction either to formal semantics or to linguistics and while much of the presentation there is going over ground that is already well covered in the literature, the particular formulation and the emphases are very much oriented to the developments to be undertaken later in the book. (shrink)

Ira Brevis furor, said the Latins: anger is a brief bout of madness. There is a long tradition that views all emotions as threats to rationality. The crime passionnel belongs to that tradition: in law it is a kind of “brief-insanity defence.” We still say that “passion blinds us;” and in common parlance to be philosophical about life's trials is to be decently unemotional about them. Indeed many philosophers have espoused this view, demanding that Reason conquer Passion. Others — from (...) Hume to the Emotivists — have appeared to reverse this hierarchy.” But those philosophers who refuse to join in the general denigration of emotion as irrational usually share the presupposition that the role of rationality is limited to the calculation of means. In so far as emotions are concerned with the determination of ends, they remain, on this view, beyond the pale of rationality. Modern decision theorists have worked out schemes to assess the rationality of desires, as well as actions, against the background of beliefs and other desires.1 But these schemes leave no room at all for emotions, except, by implication, as disrupters of the rational process. (shrink)

Many experiential properties are naturally understood as dispositions such that e.g. a cake tastes good to you iff you are disposed to get gustatory pleasure when you eat it. Such dispositional analyses, however, face a challenge. It has been widely observed that one cannot properly assert “The cake tastes good to me” unless one has tried it. This acquaintance requirement is puzzling on the dispositional account because it should be possible to be disposed to like the cake even if this (...) disposition has never been manifested. We argue that familiar response strategies on behalf of the dispositionalist fail. These include appeals to conversational implicatures, expressivism, semantic presuppositions and norms of assertion. Against this background, we propose a new analysis in terms of what we call tendencies, where a tendency is a disposition that has been manifested. The acquaintance requirement comes out as an entailment. We point out a hitherto unnoticed parallel to sentences ascribing character traits such as “Hannah is brave,” and extend our tendency-based analysis to this domain. (shrink)

As a graduate student in Linguistics at UMass/Amherst in the 1980s, I was fortunate to be exposed to a number of new developments bearing on the relationship between formal semantics and pragmatics. In the 1970s under the influence of Cresswell, Lewis, Montague, and Partee, enormous progress in semantics was made possible by narrowing the focus of the field mainly to the consideration of the conventional, truth conditional content of an indicative utterance, calculated compositionally as a function of the semantic contributions (...) of its parts and its syntactic structure. Context was typically relegated to the background, in the form of indices of evaluation, though occasionally popping out for more serious consideration, as in the work of Kaplan, Karttunen, and Stalnaker. But eventually the nature of the rigorous formal enterprise itself, confronted with phenomena like Geach’s donkey sentences, presupposition projection, and the context-dependence of tense and aspect, forced the field into a more careful, thorough reconsideration of the relationship between context and content. Hence were born the dynamic theories of interpretation, beginning with Hans Kamp (1981) and Irene Heim (1982), who were both at UMass during my stay there, Heim completing her dissertation and Kamp on the faculty in Philosophy. Such frameworks posit a dynamic interchange between content and context, each dependent on the other, even in the course of interpreting a single utterance. Mats Rooth was also a graduate student at UMass at that time, and wrote his influential dissertation (1985) proposing an alternative semantics for the interpretation of prosodic focus, inter alia shedding light on how focus contributes to the contextual domain restriction of various operators. (shrink)

Against the background of some positions taken up in a recent document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the article studies Raymond Brown’s attempt to combine mainstream historical‐critical exegesis of the Bible with a Roman Catholic theological pre‐understanding. Particular reference is made to his handling of issues connected with the virginal conception of Jesus. Some of his religious presuppositions such as those concerning the relation between faith and reason, and the development of doctrine, are presented. Biblical criticism in Brown’s (...) understanding is an essentially historical discipline which has as its principal object the literal sense of the text, that is, what the text meant when it was written. His religious presuppositions make the practice of the discipline ineliminable in an integral hermeneutic. From an analysis of his treatment of the virginal conception, it is argued that Catholic pre‐understanding and historical criticism, when combined, inevitably result in a two‐stage hermeneutic. In a first stage appeal is made to presuppostions common to all practitioners of historical criticism. In a second stage religious presuppostions come into play. The distinction between these two stages is seen as more fundamental than Brown’s better known distinction between the literal and more‐than‐literal senses of the text. It is argued that the relation between the two stages is to be understood in chalcedonian terms as exemplifying the dialectic of faith and reason: they must be distinguished, but cannot be separated. Brown’s grasp of an incarnational economy of salvation is presented in terms of David H. Kelsy’s concept of a discrimen, and emerges as fundamental for an ecclesial hermeneutic of the Bible. Questions about the place of the historical‐critical method, the promise of alternative approaches and the role of hermeneutical theory can only be adequately addressed in terms of it. (shrink)

Semantic relativism maintains that the truth-value of some propositions is sensitive to a judge parameter, facilitating cases whereby a proposition can be true relative to one judge, but false relative to another. Most prominently, semantic relativism has been applied to predicates of personal tastes (PPTs). Recently, Lasersohn [2007. “Expressives, Perspective and Presupposition.” Theoretical Linguistics 33 (2): 223–230; 2017. Subjectivity and Perspective in Truth-Theoretic Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press] has urged an extension of semantic relativism to terms traditionally construed as expressives (...) including derogatory epithets (e.g. ‘asshole’) and, more tentatively, expressions like ‘damn’. In this paper, we challenge Lasersohn’s extension of relativism. Section 1 gives a background on semantic theories for expressives and on semantic relativism. In Section 2, we focus on Lasersohn’s [2007. “Expressives, Perspective and Presupposition.” Theoretical Linguistics 33 (2): 223–230] account where he attempts to apply relativism to a wider range of expressives. We argue that because PPTs and expressives have fundamentally different semantic functions, the prospects for a relativistic account are slim. Several problems are presented. Our focus is on the perspective sensitivity of expressive content and the phenomenon of projection failure, as both reveal a fundamental disparity between expressives and PPTs. (shrink)