This paper defends the use-based metasemantic project against the problem of meaning without use, which allegedly shows the predictions of use-based metasemantic accounts to be indeterminate with respect to unusably long or complex expressions. This criticism is commonly taken to be decisive, prompting various retreats and contributing to the project’s eventual decline. Using metasemantic conventionalism as a case study, I argue the following: either such expressions do not belong to used languages or their meanings are uniquely determined by (...) use. Thus, the alleged problem of meaning without use offers no challenge to the use-based metasemantic project generally, nor to conventionalism in particular. (shrink)

What, exactly, is the difference between words such as ‘dead’ and ‘deceased’? In this paper, I argue that such differences in register, or style, ought to be construed as genuine differences in non-truth-conditional meaning. I also show that register cannot plausibly accounted for in terms of either presupposition or conventional implicature. Register is, rather, an instance of what I call pure use-conditional meaning. In the case of register, a difference in meaning does not correspond to a difference (...) in the contents speakers intend to convey. (shrink)

Much contemporary thinking about language is animated by the idea that the core function of language is to represent how the world is and that therefore the notion of representation should play a fundamental explanatory role in any explanation of language and language use. Leading thinkers in the field explore various ways this idea may be challenged as well as obstacles to developing various forms of anti-representationalism. Particular attention is given to deflationary accounts of truth, the role of language in (...) expressing mental states, and the normative and the natural as they relate to issues of representation. The chapters further various fundamental debates in metaphysics--for example, concerning the question of finding a place for moral properties in a naturalistic world-view--and illuminate the relation of the recent neo-pragmatist revival to the expressivist stream in analytic philosophy of language. (shrink)

Although Hume has no developed semantic theory, in the heyday of analytic philosophy he was criticized for his “meaning empiricism,” which supposedly committed him to a private world of ideas, led him to champion a genetic account of meaning instead of an analytic one, and confused “impressions” with “perceptions of an objective realm.” But another look at Hume’s “meaning empiricism” reveals that his criterion for cognitive content, the cornerstone both of his resolutely anti-metaphysical stance and his naturalistic (...) “science of human nature,” provides the basis for a successful response to his critics. Central to his program for reforming philosophy, Hume’s use of the criterion has two distinct aspects: a critical or negative aspect, which assesses the content of the central notions of metaphysical theories to demonstrate their unintelligibility; and a constructive or positive aspect, which accurately determines the cognitive content of terms and ideas. (shrink)

Much contemporary thinking about language is animated by the idea that the core function of language is to represent how the world is and that therefore the notion of representation should play a fundamental explanatory role in any explanation of language and language use. The chapters in this volume explore various ways this idea may be challenged as well as obstacles to developing various forms of anti- representationalism. Particular attention is given to deflationary accounts of truth, the role of language (...) in expressing mental states, and the normative and the natural as they relate to issues of representation. The chapters further various fundamental debates in metaphysics—for example, concerning the question of finding a place for moral properties in a naturalistic world view—and illuminate the relation of the recent neo- pragmatist revival to the expressivist stream in analytic philosophy of language. (shrink)

Frege ridiculed the formalist conception of mathematics by saying that the formalists confused the unimportant thing, the sign, with the important, the meaning. Surely, one wishes to say, mathematics does not treat of dashes on a bit of paper. Frege’s idea could be expressed thus: the propositions of mathematics, if they were just complexes of dashes, would be dead and utterly uninteresting, whereas they obviously have a kind of life. And the same, of course, could be said of any (...) proposition: Without a sense, or without the thought, a proposition would be an utterly dead and trivial thing. And further it seems clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And the conclusion which one draws from this is that what must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposition is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs. But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say that it was its use. (Blue Book, p. (shrink)

What is the relation between meaning and use? This chapter first defends a non-reductionist understanding of Wittgenstein’s suggestion that ‘the meaning of a word is its use in the language’; facts about meaning cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, facts about use, characterized non-semantically. Nonetheless, it is contended, facts about meaning do supervene on non-semantic facts about use. That supervenience thesis is suggested by comments of Wittgenstein’s and is consistent with his view of (...) meaning and rule-following. Semantic supervenience is then defended against two criticisms: first, John McDowell’s suggestion that the supervenience thesis falsifies the epistemology of meaning and fails to accommodate common-sense truths about meaning; second, a series of counter-examples proposed by Stephen Kearns and Ofra Magidor, who argue that worlds may differ semantically without differing non-semantically. It is argued that neither criticism is convincing: we should accept the thesis that semantic facts supervene on non-semantic facts. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 9, September 2020, Page 62-65.

Contemporary international migration is directly related to the construction of the nation-state. The variations in this migration are multiple, depending on the type of mobility, the territories and the characteristics of the people who practice it. One kind of migration that has been particularly important at the end of the twentieth century and so far in the twenty-first century is that of minors who migrate without being accompanied by their parents. The legal definitions, bureaucratic practices and rights of these (...) minors-turned-migrants vary across European states and in the international literature. This paper aims to analyse the terminology used colloquially in the media and academically to refer to this group of people. In the early days of the phenomenon, the acronym MENA (unaccompanied migrant minors) has been the most common in Spain. It was intended to be a “neutral” term used in the legal sphere and migration studies. Still, in recent times, MENA has become more than a descriptive category. It has become a way of criminalising a group of young people who are in national territory and come from another country (usually an African country and, especially, a Maghreb country). However, not everything is determined by the circumstances surrounding us or our lives as social beings. Social pressure, with its narrative, cannot mean leaving aside history, legal culture, and learning. We need a new language to talk about this group of people. Currently, the negative connotation hides the most human aspect of this condition; the term “MENA” is a banner to mystify a fundamental fact: we are talking about children and adolescents who, not being able to count on the protection of an adult or family member, are condemned to social exclusion. This article approaches the migrant child as a critical figure who embodies the paradox of humanitarian reasoning, which is also a legal and political paradox, encapsulating the tension between structural rejection and the individual capacity of the human subject. By focusing on the theoretically productive role of minors without parental guardianship as subjects of ethnographic examination, this paper aims to understand better how current anthropological knowledge redefines the concepts of childhood, adulthood, and migration. The first part of this paper focuses on examining the terminologies used at the European and international levels, with their respective social implications. The second part focuses on the Spanish case, with the different impacts the term produces at the local level. The third and final part focuses on the terminology of refugee children and opens the discussion on scapegoating in Spain. (shrink)

The study reported in this paper focused on nursing students' learning and, in particular, their integration of caring science in theory and practice. An educational model incorporating educational drama was developed for implementation in three different teaching contexts within the nursing and midwifery study programmes at a Swedish college. A central aim was to understand the dynamics of educational drama in the healthcare context and its impact on learning and teaching. Using a phenomenological approach, seventeen students and six teachers were (...) interviewed and their experience of drama as an educational method explored.The research findings illustrate the meaning of learning and teaching that is sensitive to students' lifeworld experiences. In order to be a successful method for closing the gap between caring science theory and practice, not only the educational drama, but teaching in general, must be anchored in the lived world of the students - that is, their experiences of health and care. While embodied reflection, as a key factor in integrating theory and practice, was shown to be well supported by educational drama, it was also found that "the method" tends too readily to take over and govern teaching and learning. The findings of this study further indicate how learning in practice and embodied reflection can be supported by the inclusion of well-chosen caring science theory to cast light on caring practice dilemmas. (shrink)

Use theories of meaning (UTMs) seem ill-equipped to accommodate the intuition that ignorant but deferential speakers use natural kind terms (e.g. 'zinc') and technical expression (e.g. 'credit default swap') with the same meanings as the experts do. After all, their use deviates from the experts', and if use determines meaning, a deviant use ordinarily would determine a deviant meaning. Yet the intuition is plausible and advocates of UTMs believe it can be accommodated. I examine Gilbert Harman's and (...) Paul Horwich's views, and argue that they do not offer a satisfactory reconciliation of the intuition with the theory. I propose an accommodation based on a novel account of semantic deference, and show that it is consistent with UTMs that a speaker may use a word with a certain meaning without fully or adequately knowing it. (shrink)

The study reported in this paper focused on nursing students’ learning and, in particular, their integration of caring science in theory and practice. An educational model incorporating educational drama was developed for implementation in three different teaching contexts within the nursing and midwifery study programmes at a Swedish college. A central aim was to understand the dynamics of educational drama in the healthcare context and its impact on learning and teaching. Using a phenomenological approach, seventeen students and six teachers were (...) interviewed and their experience of drama as an educational method explored.The research findings illustrate the meaning of learning and teaching that is sensitive to students’ lifeworld experiences. In order to be a successful method for closing the gap between caring science theory and practice, not only the educational drama, but teaching in general, must be anchored in the lived world of the students – that is, their experiences of health and care. While embodied reflection, as a key factor in integrating theory and practice, was shown to be well supported by educational drama, it was also found that “the method” tends too readily to take over and govern teaching and learning. The findings of this study further indicate how learning in practice and embodied reflection can be supported by the inclusion of well-chosen caring science theory to cast light on caring practice dilemmas. (shrink)

This piece was written circa 1982–83, drawing in part on material from my PhD thesis (The Problem of the Single Case, Cambridge, 1981). In the thesis I proposed what would now be called an expressivist account of judgements of the form ‘It is probable that p’. One chapter, on which this paper builds, tried to defend the view against the Frege-Geach argument. This piece earned a revise and resubmit from Philosophical Review, but was never resubmitted. Parts of it made their (...) way into my ‘Semantic Minimalism and the Frege Point’, in Tsohatzidis, S.L.(ed.), Foundations of Speech Act Theory: Philosophical and Linguistic Perspectives, Routledge, 1994, pp. 132–55 (reprinted in Naturalism without Mirrors, Oxford, 2011, ch. 3) – though that paper favours a different approach to the Frege-Geach argument, leaning more heavily on semantic minimalism. I’m putting this piece online to facilitate self-citation. (shrink)

In 1870, Hermann von Helmholtz criticized the Kantian conception of geometrical axioms as a priori synthetic judgments grounded in spatial intuition. However, during his dispute with Albrecht Krause (Kant und Helmholtz über den Ursprung und die Bedeutung der Raumanschauung und der geometrischen Axiome. Lahr, Schauenburg, 1878), Helmholtz maintained that space can be transcendental without the axioms being so. In this paper, I will analyze Helmholtz’s claim in connection with his theory of measurement. Helmholtz uses a Kantian argument that can (...) be summarized as follows: mathematical structures that can be defined independently of the objects we experience are necessary for judgments about magnitudes to be generally valid. I suggest that space is conceived by Helmholtz as one such structure. I will analyze his argument in its most detailed version, which is found in Helmholtz (Zählen und Messen, erkenntnistheoretisch betrachtet 1887. In: Schriften zur Erkenntnistheorie. Springer, Berlin, 1921, 70–97). In support of my view, I will consider alternative formulations of the same argument by Ernst Cassirer and Otto Hölder. (shrink)

Change of logic is typically taken as requiring that the meanings of the connectives change too. As a result, it has been argued that legitimate rivalry between logics is under threat. This is, in a nutshell, the meaning‐variance argument, traditionally attributed to Quine. In this paper, we present a semantic framework that allows us to resist the meaning‐variance claim for an important class of systems: classical logic, the logic of paradox and strong Kleene logic. The major feature of (...) the semantics is that the connectives have the same meanings in these systems, so that the meaning‐variance argument is straightforwardly blocked. We discuss the effects of this semantics for two uses of the argument of meaning variance, and also consider its impact on related issues. (shrink)

As it emerged in the late twentieth century, Empire promised a new era of global cooperation and stability through a seamless integration of late capitalism and neoliberal technocracy. Premised as an end to history itself, all that was left to accomplish was to tinker at the margins, stimulate corporate enterprise, embrace financialization and technological innovation, and encourage liberal rights and inclusion. As we enter the third decade of the twenty-first century, the narrative fictions sustaining Empire have broadly collapsed at the (...) level of symbolic identification and belief. Empire has entered into a period of global emergency and mutation. Engaging with Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s work, this paper considers what might emerge when we read education into the circuitry of Empire’s decay. First, we locate Empire within foundational tensions in modernity, using Kantian philosophy and colonialism as examples, to foreground the idea of education as immanent to historical processes of creativity, resistance, and innovation. Second, we highlight dead-end responses, from space colonization to neo-fascism, as representations of how modes of education circulate to stabilize and contain Empire’s crises, specifically in relation to capitalism, nationalism, and identity. Lastly, the paper develops a political ontology of education after Empire. (shrink)

This study presents and develops in detail (a new version of) the argumental conception of meaning. The two basic principles of the argumental conception of meaning are: i) To know (implicitly) the sense of a word is to know (implicitly) all the argumentation rules concerning that word; ii) To know the sense of a sentence is to know the syntactic structure of that sentence and to know the senses of the words occurring in it. The sense of a (...) sentence is called immediate argumental role of that sentence. According to the argumental conception of meaning a theory of meaning for a particular language yields a systematic specification of the understanding of every sentence of the language which consists in a specification of the immediate argumental role of the sentence. The immediate argumental role is a particular aspect of the use of a sentence in arguments. But it is not the whole use in arguments, nor is the whole use in arguments reducible to the immediate argumental role. That is why, by accepting the argumental conception of meaning, we can have epistemological holism without linguistic holism. The argumental conception distinguishes between the understanding and the correctness of a language. Such a distinction makes it possible to account for our understanding of paradoxical languages. Redundancy theory of truth, realistic conceptions of truth or epistemic conceptions of truth are all compatible with an argumental conception of sense. But here it is argued that an epistemic conception of truth is preferrable. Acceptance of the argumental conception of meaning and of an epistemic conception of truth leads to a rejection of the idea of analytic truth. The argumental conception is pluralistic with respect to the understandability of different logics, and neutral with respect to their correctness. (shrink)

The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee is entrusted with assessing the ethics of proposed projects prior to approval of animal research. The role of the IACUC is detailed in legislation and binding rules, which are in turn inspired by the Three Rs: the principles of Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement. However, these principles are poorly defined. Although this provides the IACUC leeway in assessing a proposed project, it also affords little guidance. Our goal is to provide procedural and philosophical clarity (...) to the IACUC without mandating a particular outcome. To do this, we analyze the underlying logic of the Three Rs and conclude that the Three Rs accord animals moral standing, though not necessarily “rights” in the philosophical sense. We suggest that the Rs are hierarchical, such that Replacement, which can totally eliminate harm, should be considered prior to Reduction, which decreases the number of animals harmed, with Refinement being considered last. We also identify the need for a hitherto implicit fourth R: Reject, which allows the IACUC to refuse permission for a project which does not promise sufficient benefit to offset the pain and distress likely to be caused by the proposed research. (shrink)

This article surveys a range of current views on the semantics of imperatives, presenting them as more or less conservative with respect to the Truth-Conditional Paradigm in semantics. It describes and critiques views at either extreme of this spectrum: accounts on which the meaning of an imperative is a modal truth-condition, as well as various accounts that attempt to explain imperative meaning without making use of truth-conditions. It briefly describes and encourages further work on a family of (...) views lying somewhere in the middle. On such views, an imperative will semantically determine, without having as its meaning, a modal truth-condition, which figures centrally in accounting for various aspects of its meaning. (shrink)

In this article we study how members of an interdisciplinary research team use an online forum for communicating about their research project. We use the concepts of "community of practice" and "connectivity" to consider the online interaction within a wider question of how people from different academic traditions "do" interdisciplinarity. The online forum for this Grey and Pleasant Land project did not take off as hoped, even after a series of interventions and amendments, and we consider what the barriers were (...) and how they might be overcome. Barriers to involvement included participants' expectations of interaction and collaboration--expectation that real interaction happens elsewhere, tensions between academic discourse and forum talk norms, unfamiliarity with the technology, and different conceptions of appropriate academic discussion. We suggest that common academic practice does not prepare us well for creating interdisciplinary research communities through online collaboration tools, whereas such tools are our best bet currently for including geographically dispersed members in collaborative projects. Therefore, careful planning and competence building would be necessary if such tools are to be used in collaborative research. Suggested interventions, based on our experience, include providing a more focused forum, making technical support easily available, and setting up particular tasks or items to debate, within a preset, synchronous timeframe, focusing on issues relevant to the project at that time. (shrink)

Neil Tennant and Joseph Salerno have recently attempted to rigorously formalize Michael Dummett's argument for logical revision. Surprisingly, both conclude that Dummett commits elementary logical errors, and hence fails to offer an argument that is even prima facie valid. After explicating the arguments Salerno and Tennant attribute to Dummett, I show how broader attention to Dummett's writings on the theory of meaning allows one to discern, and formalize, a valid argument for logical revision. Then, after correctly providing a rigorous (...) statement of the argument, I am able to delineate four possible anti-Dummettian responses. Following recent work by Stewart Shapiro and Crispin Wright, I conclude that progress in the anti-realist's dialectic requires greater clarity about the key modal notions used in Dummett's proof. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel version of anti-platonism, called semantic fictionalism. The view is a response to the platonist argument that we need to countenance propositions to account for the truth of sentences containing `that'-clause singular terms, e.g., sentences of the form `x believes that p' and `σ means that p'. Briefly, the view is that (a) platonists are right that `that'-clauses purport to refer to propositions, but (b) there are no such things as propositions, and hence, (c) `that'-clause-containing sentences (...) of the above sort are not true-they are useful fictions. Semantic fictionalism is an extension of Hartry Field's mathematical fictionalism, but my defense of the view is not analogous to his. One of the many virtues of my defense is its generality: it explains how we can adopt a fictionalist stance towards all abstract singular terms, e.g., mathematical singular terms and `that'-clauses. (shrink)

Semiotic objections to commodification hold that buying and selling certain goods and services is wrong because of what market exchange communicates or because it violates the meaning of certain goods, services, and relationships. We argue that such objections fail. The meaning of markets and of money is a contingent, socially constructed fact. Cultures often impute meaning to markets in harmful, socially destructive, or costly ways. Rather than semiotic objections giving us reason to judge certain markets as immoral, (...) the usefulness of certain markets gives us reason to judge certain semiotic codes as immoral. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel version of anti-platonism, called semantic fictionalism. The view is a response to the platonist argument that we need to countenance propositions to account for the truth of sentences containing ‘that’-clause singular terms, e.g., sentences of the form ‘x believes that p’ and ‘σ means that p’. Briefly, the view is that (a) platonists are right that ‘that’-clauses purport to refer to propositions, but (b) there are no such things as propositions, and hence, (c) ‘that’-clause-containing sentences (...) of the above sort are not true---they are useful fictions. Semantic fictionalism is an extension of Hartry Field’s mathematical fictionalism, but my defense of the view is not analogous to his. One of the many virtues of my defense is its generality: it explains how we can adopt a fictionalist stance towards all abstract singular terms, e.g., mathematical singular terms and ‘that’-clauses. (shrink)

There are certain uses of and and or that cannot be explained by their normal meanings as truth-functional connectives, even with sophisticated pragmatic resources. These include examples such as The cops show up, and a fight will break out (‘If the cops show up, a fight will break out’), and I have no friends, or I would throw a party (‘I have no friends. If I did have friends, I would throw a party.’). We argue that these uses are indeed (...) distinct from the more ordinary uses of and and or, but that they are nonetheless related in a principled way. To explain them we give an analysis of what we call the dynamic effects of connectives, which arise in all their uses. The special uses at issue are then argued to be instances where the connectives exhibit their dynamic effects without their truth-conditional meaning. (shrink)

Rejecting the category of belief is one of the most striking and profound ideas to emerge from the ontological turn. This essay will argue that the rejection of belief is best understood as part of a broader rejection of representationalism. Representationalism regards thought, speech, and intentionality as depending primarily on the mind’s ability to manipulate beliefs, ideas, meanings, or similar contents. Some central strands of the ontological turn thus participate in the philosophical project of understanding human life without appeal (...) to such representational states. After showing how 20th century anthropology was implicated in the representationalist picture, this essay will critique some of the arguments against belief found among proponents of the ontological turn. It will then try to construct a more robust argument against the use of the category of belief in anthropology. It ends with some reflections on what it means to do anthropology without belief. (shrink)

In this paper I outline a role for mechanistic conceptions of organisms in ancient Greek natural philosophy, especially the study of organisms. By ‘mechanistic conceptions’ I mean the use of ideas and techniques drawn from the field of mechanics to investigate the natural world. ‘Mechanistic conceptions’ of organisms in ancient Greek philosophy, then, are those that draw on the ancient understanding of the field called ‘mechanics’ — hê mêchanikê technê—to investigate living things, rather than those bearing some perceived similarity to (...) modern notions of ‘the mechanical.’ I have argued elsewhere that evidence of mechanistic conceptions of the natural world can be found, not only among seventeenth and eighteenth century ‘mechanical philosophers,’ but also—albeit in vestigial form — in some ancient Greek texts. Unfortunately, these reports are slight, often by detractors of this approach, and offer only clues as to the motivational context for employing these mechanical conceptions. Here, my purpose is to suggest what role they might have played in the history of natural philosophy. (shrink)

Following Wallace’s suggestion, Darwin framed his theory using Spencer’s expression “survival of the fittest”. Since then, fitness occupies a significant place in the conventional understanding of Darwinism, even though the explicit meaning of the term ‘fitness’ is rarely stated. In this paper I examine some of the different roles that fitness has played in the development of the theory. Whereas the meaning of fitness was originally understood in ecological terms, it took a statistical turn in terms of reproductive (...) success throughout the 20th Century. This has lead to the ever-increasing importance of sexually reproducing organisms and the populations they compose in evolutionary explanations. I will argue that, moving forward, evolutionary theory should look back at its ecological roots in order to be more inclusive in the type of systems it examines. Many biological systems can only be satisfactorily accounted for by offering a non-reproductive account of fitness. This argument will be made by examining biological systems with very small or transient population structures. I argue this has significant consequences for how we define Darwinism, increasing the significance of survival over that of reproduction. (shrink)

Talk of gender identity is at the core of heated current philosophical and political debates. Yet, it is unclear what it means to have one. I examine several ways of understanding this concept in light of core aims of trans writers and activists. Most importantly, the concept should make good trans people’s understanding of their own gender identities and help understand why misgendering is a serious harm and why it is permissible to require information about people’s gender identities in public (...) life. I conclude that none of the available accounts meets these essential criteria, on the assumption that the gender norms of femininity and masculinity are unjustified. But we can, and should, pursue the feminist project without “gender identity”. Such feminism can include trans people because it is possible to account for the specific harm of misgendering without assuming a claim to the recognition of our gender identities. I conclude that we should eliminate the concept of “gender identity.” To understand the phenomena that are putatively captured by “gender identity,” we are better off employing other concepts, such as “sexual dysphoria,” (assigned or aspirational) “gender roles,” and (internalised or endorsed) “gender norms”. These concepts can usefully replace “gender identity” in an individual evaluation of each of the trans people’s claims to inclusion into particular spaces. (shrink)

There is a wide-spread belief amongst theorists of mind and language. This is that in order to understand the relation between language, thought, and reality we need a theory of meaning and content, that is, a normative, formal science of meaning, which is an extension and theoretical deepening of folk ideas about meaning. This book argues that this is false, offering an alternative idea: The form of a theory that illuminates the relation of language, thought, and reality (...) is a theory of language agency. In a nutshell, the theory of language agency is a theory of competence, without being a theory of understanding or grasping rules. It is a theory of cognitive structure and language production. This theory distils all there is to say about language, thought, and reality. It does not supplement a theory of truth-conditions or semantic norms. It is not the explanation of how a speaker, qua cognitive system causally embedded in a larger reality, is able to use a language with some pre-existing semantic characterization. There is no pre-existing semantic characterization. Nevertheless, there are facts of meaning, as good as any other facts. The dissolution of the theory of meaning is accompanied by another disappearance. That is the disappearance of metaphysical questions in a number of domains. Once we complete the theory of language agency, then just as theoretical questions about meaning disappear, certain theoretical questions about existence disappear. Having provided a theory of the language agency for talk of meaning, fact, property, relation, and proposition, there is no question left over about what meanings, facts, properties, relations, and propositions are. There is no theory to be given of their natures. This is not because they have primitive irreducible natures. Rather it is because, in a sense to be clarified in this work, they lack natures. I call this approach to language agency Global Expressivism. That is because it generalizes some of the insights brought to the study of value-language by expressivists. However, it removes these insights from the clouding affects of attempting to make expressivism a semantic theory. Expressivism about value fails as a semantic theory of value talk. However, global expressivism can succeed as a theory of all talk because it is not a semantic theory but a theory of language agency, wherein the theory of meaning is replaced by a theory of talk about meaning. (shrink)

When we see or hear a spontaneous emotional expression, we usually immediately, effortlessly, and often correctly interpret it to mean happiness, sadness, or some other emotion as well as what this emotion is about. How do we do that? In this article, I evaluate how useful the concepts of natural meaning and probabilistic meaning are when it comes to explaining how we and other animals interpret emotional signs displayed without communicative intentions. I argue that Grice’s notion of (...) natural meaning, because it is a factive relation, is too restrictive for this purpose. I then present the notion of probabilistic meaning. The latter seems adequate for analyzing our ability to interpret non-communicative emotional signs, but it faces several difficulties when it comes to analyzing how we and other animals interpret emotional _signals_, i.e. signs that have the function to communicate emotional information. I present three of these difficulties. En passant, I suggest that a teleosemantic notion may be better suited for these challenges. (shrink)

Secured to a table in my living room is an antique apple peeler—a cast iron 19th century mechanical contrivance that I gave my wife for her birthday some years ago. This thing is not art. At the very least, I do not believe it is art. Yet my wife and I do not use it as an apple peeler; we use it as art. Indeed, my living room is filled with things that we are using as art—some artifacts, some natural (...) objects—but my living room is not filled with art. This is not, I think, all that unusual a phenomenon. Indeed, I believe this is a widespread phenomenon occurring at the blurry line between art and non-art, especially in the home. However, exactly what it means to use a thing as art without thus believing it is art, and without it being art, is not a straightforward matter, especially given the many functions of art today, and their functional overlap with non-art. In this essay, I investigate the notion of using a thing—specifically a non-art thing, whether an artifact or otherwise—as art, and the importance of this notion both inside and outside of philosophy.. (shrink)

In the article “Nudging and Informed Consent”, Cohen argues that the use of “nudging” by physicians in the clinical encounter may be ethically warranted because it results in an informed consent where obligations for beneficence and respect for autonomy are both met. However, the author's overenthusiastic support for nudging and his quick dismissal of shared decision-making leads him to assume that “soft” manipulation is un-problematic and that “wisdom” on the side of medical professionals will suffice to guard against abuse. Opposing (...) this view, we propose that: 1) patient preferences and values should not be boiled down to rational or irrational decisions based on cognitive reasoning alone, 2) potential threats to the physician-patient must be mitigated and could be minimized by employing alternative strategies that acknowledge the impact of cognitive heuristics in shaping decision-making but maintain transparency and trust, and 3) patient preferences and values can be legitimately influenced only under specific circumstances. The latter include: (1) exhaustion of other means; (2) evidence that nudging is effective in a specific context; (3) evidence of clear and active public misinformation (e.g., industry promoting smoking); (4) explicit pubic dialogue between various stakeholders including medical professional societies about nudging; (5) upholding shared decision-making as a preferred approach; and (6) a rich understanding of clinical reality beyond the simple dichotomy of beneficence-autonomy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Information and the Veridicality Thesis Information as a Mongrel Concept Natural Information Without Truth Nonnatural Information: The Case for the Veridicality Thesis Nonnatural Information Without Truth An Objection Conclusion Acknowledgments References.

My colleague E. D. Hirsch has skillfully developed the consequences for literary interpretation of a “realistic” epistemological position which he formulates as follows: “If we could not distinguish a content of consciousness from its contexts, we could not know any object at all in the world.” Given that premise, it is easy for Hirsch to infer that “without the stable determinacy of meaning there can be no knowledge in interpretation.”1 A lot of people disagree with Hirsch on the (...) latter point, and they look to philosophy for replies to the premise from which it was inferred. But it is not clear where in philosophy they should look: To epistemology? Ethics?2 Philosophy of language? What Jacques Derrida calls “a new logic, … a graphematics of iterability”?3 Where do we find first principles from which to deduce an anti-Hirsch argument?I want to argue that there is no clear or straight answer to this question and that there need be none. I shall begin by criticizing the strategy used against Hirsch and others by my fellow pragmatists Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels. They think that one can start with philosophy of language and straighten things out by adopting a correct account of meaning. I share their desire to refute Hirsch, their admiration for Stanley Fish, and their view that “theory”—when defined as “an attempt to govern interpretations of particular texts by appealing to an account of interpretation in general”—has got to go . But they want to defend this position by exposing a mistake which they think common to all theory so defined: an error about the relation between meaning and intention. They assert that “what is intended and what is meant are identical” and that one will look for an “account of interpretation in general” only if one fails to recognize this identity . Such failure leads to an attempt to connect meaning and intention or to disconnect them . But such attempts must fail, for they presuppose a break “between language and speech acts” which does not exist . 1. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., The Aims of Interpretation , pp. 3, 1.2. See ibid., where Hirsch offers a “fundamental ethical maxim for interpretation” which, he says, “claims no privileged sanction from metaphysics or analysis” . Here and elsewhere Hirsch suggests that it may be ethics rather than epistemology which provides the principles that govern interpretation. There remain other passages, however, in which he retains the view, conspicuous in his earlier writings, that an analysis of the idea of knowledge is the ultimate justification for his approach.3. Jacques Derrida, “Limited Inc abc … , ” Glyph 2 : 219. Richard Rorty is Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Consequences of Pragmatism , among other works, and is currently writing a book on Martin Heidegger. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, “Deconstruction and Circumvention,” appeared in the September 1984 issue. (shrink)

Military metaphors are pervasive in biomedicine, including HIV research. Rooted in the mind set that regards pathogens as enemies to be defeated, terms such as “shock and kill” have become widely accepted idioms within HIV cure research. Such language and symbolism must be critically examined as they may be especially problematic when used to express scientific ideas within emerging health-related fields. In this article, philosophical analysis and an interdisciplinary literature review utilizing key texts from sociology, anthropology, history, and Chinese and (...) African studies were conducted to investigate the current proliferation of military metaphors. We found the use of these metaphors to be ironic, unfortunate, and unnecessary. To overcome military metaphors we propose to give them less aggressive meanings, and/or replace them with more peaceful metaphors. Building on previous authors' work, we argue for the increased use of “journey” metaphors as meaningful, cross-culturally app... (shrink)

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, high hopes were put on digital contact tracing, using mobile phone apps to record and immediately notify contacts when a user reports as infected. Such apps can now be downloaded in many countries, but as second waves of COVID-19 are raging, these apps are playing a less important role than anticipated. We argue that this is because most countries have opted for app configurations that cannot provide a means of rapidly informing users of (...) likely infections while avoiding too many false positive reports. Mathematical modelling suggests that differently configured apps have the potential to do this. These require, however, that some pseudonymised data be stored on a central server, which privacy advocates have cautioned against. We contend that their influential arguments are subject to two fallacies. First, they have tended to one-sidedly focus on the risks that centralised data storage entails for privacy, while paying insufficient attention to the fact that inefficient contact tracing involves ethical risks too. Second, while the envisioned system does entail risks of breaches, such risks are also present in decentralised systems, which have been falsely presented as ‘privacy preserving by design’. When these points are understood, it becomes clear that we must rethink our approach to digital contact tracing in our fight against COVID-19. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

This paper presents a new argument to defend the normativity of meaning, specifically the thesis that there are no meanings without norms. The argument starts from the observation inferentialists have emphasized that incompatibility relations between sentences are a necessary part of meaning as it is understood. We motivate this approach by showing that the standard normativist strategy in the literature, which is developed in terms of veridical reference that may swing free from the speaker’s understanding, violates the (...) ought-implies-can principle, but ours does not. In addition, our approach is superior because, unlike the representationalist approach, it can be extended from declarative sentences to non-representational uses of language. In this paper, however, we only formulate the argument for the base case that involves incompatibility relations between declarative sentences. The goal is not to derive norms from something that is not normative, but to explicate the distinctive type of normativity that is built into meaning as it is understood by language-users. The explication proceeds in two steps. (1) For any sentence s a speaker understands, there is an incompatible sentence s’ the speaker understands to be incompatible with s. (2) In virtue of understanding this incompatibility of meanings, she ought not to be committed to both s and s’. This prohibition is not derived from instrumental practical reason, nor is it based on representational correctness, but its source is the incompatibility of meanings. (shrink)

Search Without Idols is a study of human transcendence in the context of human striving, projecting, surpassing, overcoming. This power is central to man's search for wholeness. Such transcendence makes reality tolerable. It provides us with ~m impressive array of human responses which enable us to cope. But it also provides the excesses that go beyond human striving. Nothing seems to be off-limits to this ubiquitous power. Such a state of surpassing limits is what we find in the relation (...) between the human search for wholeness and the quest for external totalities which lies beyond the human context. Such soaring flights beyond the capacity of human striving are hard to control, impossible to show responsibility-for and beyond the reach of criteria. The reach exceeds both our grasp and our control. Transcendence, then, is a greatly used and much abuse~ human power. Its activities have never ceased to amaze me, its excesses have always troubled me even from the beginning of my studies. This book is not an exercise in self-clarification. I have some thoughts on the matter which I wish to share with the reader. Perhaps we can mutually appreciate the great gift without compromising our sanity. Part I will provide a new look at the meaning of transcendence. (shrink)

summaryThis paper discusses objections against the idea that the meaning of a word is its use. Sct. 1 accepts Rundle's point that ‘meaning’ and ‘use’ are used differently, but insists that this is compatible with holding that use determines meaning, an therefore holds the key to conceptual analysis. Scts. 2–4 rebut three lines of argument which claim that linguistic philosophy goes astray by reading into the meaning of words non‐semantic features of its use: Searle's general speech (...) act fallacy charge, Hacker's use of the Frege‐point against Wittgenstein's account of avowals, and Grice's attack on Wittgenstein's discussion of ‘trying’. Sct. 5 argues that Grice's doctrine of conversational implicature fails to show that the features he disregards are pragmatic rather than semantic. Sct. 6 ends with some suggestions about how use can be related to meaning without being abused. (shrink)

[Herbert F.] Tucker has shown us in a very practical way that the concept of meaning is the problem of problems, not only in hermeneutics but in literary theory and, indeed, literary study generally. It may well be that in literary study there can be no talk of meaning that is not ambiguous, that does not require us to speak in figures or by means of metaphorical improvisations. It would not necessarily follow that our talk of meaning (...) is merely provisional or without philosophical authority since we know now that considerable authority attaches to ordinary language, whence we obtain our use of the word "meaning" as well as the figurations that we use to talk our way around it. To be sure, the discipline of literary study is now rapidly filling with grave masters who take our figures to mean that meaning is literally unspeakable—only so many transferences and substitutions within a system of differences alarmingly vast . This is itself a terrific idea, or a terrific figure, although it is used mainly to expose the thoughtless way we talk about meaning as well as our offhand assumptions about the conditions that make understanding possible. Our problem in literary study is not that meaning is unspeakable—even if it were it would not be a problem—but that we rarely reflect on the subject of meaning in a disciplined way. In our time, meaning as a topic of study is the preserve of logicians. It is almost exclusively a theme of analytical philosophy, and even those not bound by this philosophy address themselves to the analytical tradition when they speak of meaning.1 It is time that we entered into this discourse on meaning; a paper as fine as Tucker's should serve as a summons.· 1. Among numerous cases, see John R. Searle, "Metaphor" and "Literal Meaning," Expression and Meaning , pp. 76-136, and "Intentionality and the Use of Language," in Meaning and Use, ed. Avishai Margalit , pp. 181-97.Gerald l. Bruns, professor of English at the University of Iowa, is the author of Modern Poetry and the Idea of Language and Inventions: Writing, Textuality, and Interpretation in Literary History. (shrink)

This study investigates Félix RavaissonRavaisson-Mollien, Félix’s ambiguous relation to F. W. J. Schelling by homing in on the specific relation that holds between habit as a means of demonstrating an underlying identity of mind and world in RavaissonRavaisson-Mollien, Félix’s De l’habitude and Schelling’s use of aesthetic intuitionIntuition as a philosophical method in his 1800 System of Transcendental IdealismIdealism (also German Idealism). I argue that what Schelling found in fine art—the work of genius—RavaissonRavaisson-Mollien, Félix finds in habit, and from this conclude (...) that RavaissonRavaisson-Mollien, Félix offers what we might describe as a romantic conception of habit that brings it into the domain of the pre-rational, pre-reflective spontaneity that Schelling describes in artistic production. (shrink)

A robust, if not absolute, prohibition on treating people merely as a means seems to sit at the core of common sense deontological morality. But the principle prohibiting such treatment, the ‘means principle’ (MP), has been notoriously hard to defend: both the subjective, intention-focused and the objective, causal-role-focused interpretations of what it means to use someone as a means face potent objections. In this paper, my goal is not to defend the MP, but to articulate and defend a new principle, (...) which I call the Restricting Claims Principle (RCP), that explains why a person’s causal role is morally significant. The RCP broadens the basic frame of relevant considerations from the MP’s concern with the dyadic relationship between agent and patient to a global balance of patient-claims on an agent. It distinguishes two kinds of patient-claims that weigh in that balance: restricting and non-restricting. In most cases, these can be distinguished as follows: Restricting claims, if respected as rights, would restrict an agent from doing what she could otherwise permissibly do if the claimant (or his property) were absent; non-restricting claims, if respected as rights, would not in that way restrict an agent. Only restricting claims press to make others worse off than if the claimant were absent. The RCP holds that restricting claims must therefore be substantially weaker than non-restricting ones. The claims of those who would be used as a means are non-restricting, while the claims of those who would be harmed as a side effect are restricting. Thus the RCP can account for the same cases (mostly) as the MP, without having to rely on the MP to do so. (shrink)

Could animals behave morally if they can’t mindread? Does morality require mindreading capacities? Moral psychologists believe mindreading is contingently involved in moral judgements. Moral philosophers argue that moral behaviour necessarily requires the possession of mindreading capacities. In this paper, I argue that, while the former may be right, the latter are mistaken. Using the example of empathy, I show that animals with no mindreading capacities could behave on the basis of emotions that possess an identifiable moral content. Therefore, at least (...) one type of moral motivation does not require mindreading. This means that, a priori, non-mindreading animals can be moral. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the Hole Argument can be formulated without using the notion of isomorphism, and for this reason it is not threatened by the criticism of Halvorson and Manchak (Br J Philos Sci, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1086/719193). Following Earman and Norton (Br J Philos Sci 38, pp. 515–525, 1987), I divide the Hole Argument into two steps: the proof of the Gauge Theorem and the transition from the Gauge Theorem to the conclusion of radical indeterminism. In the (...) analaysis of the first step, I argue that the Gauge Theorem does not rely on the notion of isomorphism but on the notion of the diffeomorphism-invariance of the equations of local spacetime theories; however, for this approach to work, the definition of local spacetime theories needs certain amendments with respect to Earman and Norton’s formulation. In the analysis of the second step, I postulate that we should use the notion of radical indeterminism instead of indeterminism simpliciter and that we should not decide in advance what kind of maps are to be used in comparing models. Instead, we can tentatively choose some kind of maps for this purpose and check whether a given choice leads to radical indeterminism involving empirically indistinguishable models. In this way, the use of the notion of isomorphism is also avoided in the second step of the Hole Argument. A general picture is that physical equivalence can be established by means of an iterative procedure in which we examine various candidate classes of maps, and, depending on the outcomes, we need to broaden or narrow these classes. The Hole Argument can be viewed as a particular instance of this procedure. (shrink)

Without taking a position on the overall justification of anti-doping regulations, I analyse the possible justification of Therapeutic Use Exemptions from such rules. TUEs are a creative way to prevent the unfair exclusion of athletes with a chronic condition, and they have the potential to be the least bad option. But they cannot be competitively neutral. Their justification must rest, instead, on the relevance of intentions to permissibility. I illustrate this by means of a set of thought experiments in (...) which only an athlete’s intentions vary. I argue that the Doctrine of Double Effect sheds some light on TUEs and illustrate this by applying different readings of the DDE to the thought experiment. This underpins a justification of anti-doping exemptions very different from the approach adopted by the World Anti-Doping Agency. I argue for three changes to bring TUEs in line with this understanding: rewriting of the regulations, transparency, and a greater role for athletes in determining what exemptions are allowed, and when. (shrink)

When generally applicable rules clash with one’s cultural, religious or moral commitments, should exemptions be granted? The debate on exemptions raises the question both of what it means to treat people equally and of what it means to protect diversity adequately. The objective of this paper is to defend the no-exemption argument and to make it a more attractive position for liberals. I first argue that exemptions violate the principle of equal treatment because they rely on distinctions that cannot be (...) neutrally justified. I then argue that diversity can be adequately accommodated if we use a more demanding interpretation of the justification of generally applicable rules. There should be no exemption to fully justified rules, but rules are only fully justified when the particular demands that they impose on individuals are justified, i.e. when they are either neutral or pass both a Necessity Test and a Sufficiency Test. When rules are not fully justified, they should be repealed or modified. Based on this focus on the demands of rules, equality can be reconciled with an adequate accommodation of diversity. (shrink)

What can transcendence mean for us? We live in a world in which there are many conceptions of transcendence. Some philosophers say that they all point, in their way, to a transcendent realm, without which death and life's sorrows have the last word, while their opponents argue that since this realm is an illusion, we must use our own resources to meet life's trials. Others argue that moral and religious concepts of transcendence are obscured by philosophical notions of transcendence, (...) and must be rescued from them. These conflicting views on a central issue in our culture are brought into sharp relief in the present collection. (shrink)