The aim of this paper is to reinterpret success semantics, a theory of mental content, according to which the content of a belief is fixed by the success conditions of some actions based on this belief. After arguing that in its present form, success semantics is vulnerable to decisive objections, I examine the possibilities of salvaging the core of this proposal. More specifically, I propose that the content of some very simple, but very important, mental (...) states, the immediate mental antecedents of action, can be explained in this manner. (shrink)

Success semantics holds, roughly, that what it is for a state of an agent to be a belief that P is for it to be disposed to combine with her desires to cause behaviour that would fulfill those desires if P. J. T. Whyte supplements this with an account of the contents of an agent's “basic desires” to provide an attractive naturalistic theory of mental content. We argue that Whyte's strategy can avoid the objections raised against it by (...) restricting “basic desires” to sensory inclinations that cause us to do things independently of our beliefs about their contents. -/- La sémantique du succès soutient, en gros, que ce qu'il faut pour qu'un état d'un agent soit une croyance en P, c'est que cet état soit disposé à se combiner avec ses désirs pour provoquer un comportement qui répondrait à ces désirs si P. J. T. Whyte complète cela par un compte-rendu du contenu des « désirs de base » d'un agent pour fournir une théorie naturaliste attrayante du contenu mental. Nous soutenons que la stratégie de Whyte peut éviter les objections qui lui sont faites en restreignant les « désirs de base » aux inclinations sensorielles qui nous font agir indépendamment de nos croyances sur leur contenu. (shrink)

According to success semantics, a belief’s content is that which guarantees the success of the actions that the belief, in combination with the relevant desires, would cause. One worry with the view is that it seems to apply only to full beliefs and fares poorly in dealing with partial beliefs. For example, if Ida’s partial belief that p is of strength 0.5, she may act in a way that would fulfill her desires if p were in fact (...) false—assuming that she desires money, she may well accept a bet that pays her $500 if not-p and costs her nothing otherwise. In response to the worry, defenders of success semantics hold that the content of a partial belief is simply that which guarantees the success of the actions it would cause were it a full belief. But, as I’ll argue in this paper, such a response is unsatisfactory. (shrink)

Success semantics is a theory of content that characterizes the truth-conditions of mental representations in terms of the success-conditions of the actions derived from them. Nanay : 151-165, 2013) and Dokic and Engel have revised this theory in order to defend it from the objections that assailed its previous incarnations. I argue that both proposals have seemingly decisive flaws. More specifically, these revised versions of the theory fail to deal adequately with the open-ended possibility of unforeseen obstacles (...) for the success of our actions. I suggest that the problem of ignored obstacles undermines success semantics quite generally, including alternative formulations such as Blackburn’s. (shrink)

Psychology’s emphasis on empirical investigation has long benefited from conceptual developments taking place in its intellectual community, but also from cognate areas in Philosophy. This paper explores the implications for empirical psychology of a recent conceptual proposal advanced within the philosophy of perception by Bence Nanay. In particular, Nanay proposes that “pragmatic representations”, i.e., perceptual representations of the properties of objects necessary for the successful completion of actions, are the rightful target for a success semantics. A success (...) semantics is, roughly speaking, a theory of contents according to which the truth conditions of representations are to be identified with the success conditions of actions guided by the representations. The problem arises for Nanay’s proposal in that the empirical scrutiny of the contents of a pragmatic representation requires that one first ascertains their content, but it is not at all clear whether this could possibly be done given the non-linguistic character of pragmatic representations on the one hand, and the linguistic character of third-personal verbal data acquired through an heterophenomenological methodology on the other. This and other concerns raise worries about the empirical scrutability of Nanay’s proposal. (shrink)

Success semantics is a theory of content that characterizes the truth-conditions of mental representations in terms of the success-conditions of the actions derived from them. Nanay : 151-165, 2013) and Dokic and Engel have revised this theory in order to defend it from the objections that assailed its previous incarnations. I argue that both proposals have seemingly decisive flaws. More specifically, these revised versions of the theory fail to deal adequately with the open-ended possibility of unforeseen obstacles (...) for the success of our actions. I suggest that the problem of ignored obstacles undermines success semantics quite generally, including alternative formulations such as Blackburn’s. (shrink)

What are the pillars on which the success of modern science rest? Although philosophers have much discussed what is behind science’s success, this paper argues that much of the discussion is misdirected. The extant literature rightly regards the semantic and inferential tools of formal logic and probability theory as pillars of scientific rationality, in the sense that they reveal the justificatory structure of important aspects of scientific practice. As key elements of our rational reconstruction toolbox, they make a (...) fundamental contribution to our understanding of the success of science.At the same time, any science, however exact, is dominated by approximation, error, and uncertainty, a fact that makes one wonder how science can be so successful. This paper articulates and illustrates general themes—e.g., that truth-preserving arguments often fail to preserve approximate truth—that highlight the need for additional semantic resources. Thus, our proposal is that persistent failures to unravel the reasons behind the success of science in the face of pervasive error and uncertainty should be attributed to an insufficiently rich way of rationally reconstructing scientific and mathematical knowledge. What is missing? This paper claims that there is a third formal method of reasoning that constitutes a distinct pillar on which rests the success of science, namely, perturbation theory. The paper outlines how the representational and inferential tools of perturbation theory differ from those of logic and probability theory, and how they enable us to understand the apparently elusive aspects of the success of science.However, compared to its peers, perturbative reasoning has not received the attention it deserves. As the paper explains, this partly results from the circumstances in which perturbation theory is taught, and partly from the fact that perturbation theory first appears to be a vaguely related collection of methods offering no systematic semantic insight. In an attempt to show that this first impression is wrong, this paper presents its contribution to the semantic dimension of scientific representation and inference in terms of what I call “semantic layering.”. (shrink)

The primary units of meaning in the use and comprehension of language are speech acts of the type called illocutionary acts. In Foundations of Illocutionary Logic John Searle and Daniel Vanderveken presented the first formalized logic of a general theory of speech acts. In Meaning and Speech Acts Daniel Vanderveken further develops the logic of speech acts and the logic of propositions to construct a general semantic theory of natural languages. Volume I, Principles of Language Use, explains the general principles (...) that connect meaning, reason, thought and speech acts in the semantic structure of language. It presupposes no detailed knowledge of logical formalism, and will be accessible to a large readership of students and scholars from philosophy, lingustics, cognitive psychology and computer science. Volume II, Formal Semantics of Success and Satisfaction uses the resources of philosophical and mathematical logics to develop a formalization of the laws of the semantic theory advanced in Volume I. It will be of interest to theoretical linguists and those involved in mathematical logic and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Minimal Semantics asks what a theory of literal linguistic meaning is for - if you were to be given a working theory of meaning for a language right now, what would you be able to do with it? Emma Borg sets out to defend a formal approach to semantic theorising from a relatively new type of opponent - advocates of what she call 'dual pragmatics'. According to dual pragmatists, rich pragmatic processes play two distinct roles in linguistic comprehension: as (...) well as operating in a post-semantic capacity to determine the implicatures of an utterance, they also operate prior to the determination of truth-conditional content for a sentence. That is to say, they have an integral role to play within what is usually thought of as the semantic realm. Borg believes dual pragmatic accounts constitute the strongest contemporary challenge to standard formal approaches to semantics since they challenge the formal theorist to show not merely that there is some role for formal processes on route to determination of semantic content, but that such processes are sufficient for determining content. Minimal Semantics provides a detailed examination of this school of thought, introducing readers who are unfamiliar with the topic to key ideas like relevance theory and contextualism, and looking in detail at where these accounts diverge from the formal approach. Borg's defence of formal semantics has two main parts: first, she argues that the formal approach is most naturally compatible with an important and well-grounded psychological theory, namely the Fodorian modular picture of the mind. Then she argues that the main arguments adduced by dual pragmatists against formal semantics - concerning apparent contextual intrusions into semantic content - can in fact be countered by a formal theory. The defence holds, however, only if we are sensitive to the proper conditions of success for a semantic theory. Specifically, we should reject a range of onerous constraints on semantic theorizing (e.g., that it answer epistemic or metaphysical questions, or that it explain our communicative skills) and instead adopt a quite minimal picture of semantics. (shrink)

Metasemantics is the metaphysics of semantic endowment: it asks how expressions become endowed with their semantic significance. Assuming that semantics is of the usual truth-conditional sort, metasemantics asks after the determinants of expressions’ distinctive contributions to truth-conditions. There are two widely divergent general approaches to the metasemantic project. Some theories – “productivist” ones such as causal theories or intention-based theories – emphasize conditions of production or employment of the items semantically endowed. Other metasemantic theories – “interpretationist” ones – emphasize (...) conditions of interpretive consumption or reception of such items. The book aims to articulate a set of considerations that favour metasemantic productivism over metasemantic interpretationism, to reconcile a general productivist metasemantic approach with contemporary truth-conditional semantics, and to apply the approach to more specialized case studies in the philosophy of language broadly construed. Finally, a major concern in contemporary philosophy of language after Quine is semantic indeterminacy, the worry that there is no fact of the matter as to the semantic significance of our words. The book articulates a distinctly metasemantic strategy to counter the worry. It is shown how the present approach delivers a more successful response to semantic indeterminacy than extant alternatives, a response that emphasizes the priority of reference over truth, which is both intuitively compelling and theoretically motivated. (shrink)

'Ontological Semantics' introduces a comprehensive approach to the treatment of text meaning by computer, arguing that being able to use meaning is crucial to the success of natural language processing applications.

According to semantic minimalism, context-invariant minimal semantic propositions play an essential role in linguistic communication. This claim is key to minimalists’ argument against semantic contextualism: if there were no such minimal semantic propositions, and semantic content varied widely with shifts in context, then it would be “miraculous” if communication were ever to occur. This paper offers a critical examination of the minimalist account of communication, focusing on a series of examples where communication occurs without a minimal semantic proposition shared between (...) speaker and hearer. The only way for minimalists to respond to these examples is by restricting the scope of their account to intra-lingual communication. It can then be shown that the minimalist’s notion of a language shrinks to a point, such that practically no instances of communication will fall under that account, and that the retreat to intra-lingual communication is in any case self-defeating, since the only way for minimalists to account for the individuation of languages is by resort to precisely the kinds of contextual considerations they abjured in the first place. In short, if, as minimalists allege, contextualism founders because it renders communication contingent on speaker and hearer sharing a context, it can now be seen that minimalism faces a parallel problem because it renders communication contingent on speaker and hearer sharing a language. I end by arguing that the possibility of communication cannot, as minimalists assume, be grounded in shared semantic conventions; rather, successful communication must precede the establishment of any particular set of semantic conventions. (shrink)

This paper is about the principle that success entails ability, which I call Success. I argue the status of Success is highly puzzling: when we focus on past instances of actually successful action, Success is very compelling; but it is in tension with the idea that true ability claims require an action be in the agent's control. I make the above tension precise by considering the logic of ability. I argue Success is appealing because it (...) is classically equivalent to two genuinely valid inferences, which I call Past Success and Can't-Entails-Won't; but also that Success itself has counterexamples. I show how to invalidate Success while validating Past Success and Can't-Entails-Won't by connecting the meaning of ‘can’ to facts about what is settled or open. I define an operator W with features attributed to ‘will’ in the literature on future contingents. I then give a conditional analysis of ability ascriptions stated with W-conditionals, where "S can A" says, roughly, there’s some action available to S such that if S does it, then W(S A). I show this semantics invalidates Success while still explaining its appeal. (shrink)

This article begins by distinguishing force and mood. Then it lays out desiderata on a successful account. It sketches as background the program of truth-theoretic semantics. Next, it surveys assimilation approaches and argues that they are inadequate. Then it shows how the fulfillment-conditional approach can be applied to imperatives, interrogatives, molecular sentences containing them, and quantification into mood markers. Next, it considers briefly the recent set of propositions approach to the semantics of interrogatives and exclamatives. Finally, it shows (...) how to integrate exclamatives and optatives into a framework similar to the fulfillment approach. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold: (i) to introduce the framework of update semantics and to explain what kind of semantic phenomena may successfully be analysed in it: (ii) to give a detailed analysis of one such phenomenon: default reasoning.

In this paper, I characterize visual epistemic representations as concrete two- or three-dimensional tools for conveying information about aspects of their target systems or phenomena of interest. I outline two features of successful visual epistemic representation: that the vehicle of representation contain sufficiently accurate information about the phenomenon of interest for the user’s purpose, and that it convey this information to the user in a manner that makes it readily available to her. I argue that actual epistemic representation may involve (...) tradeoffs between these and is successful to the extent that they are present. (shrink)

Fodor's and Pylyshyn's stand on systematicity in thought and language has been debated and criticized. Van Gelder and Niklasson, among others, have argued that Fodor and Pylyshyn offer no precise definition of systematicity. However, our concern here is with a learning based formulation of that concept. In particular, Hadley has proposed that a network exhibits strong semantic systematicity when, as a result of training, it can assign appropriate meaning representations to novel sentences (both simple and embedded) which contain words in (...) syntactic positions they did not occupy during training. The experience of researchers indicates that strong systematicity in any form is difficult to achieve in connectionist systems.Herein we describe a network which displays strong semantic systematicity in response to Hebbian, connectionist training. During training, two-thirds of all nouns are presented only in a single syntactic position (either as grammatical subject or object). Yet, during testing, the network correctly interprets thousands of sentences containing those nouns in novel positions. In addition, the network generalizes to novel levels of embedding. Successful training requires a, corpus of about 1000 sentences, and network training is quite rapid. The architecture and learning algorithms are purely connectionist, but classical insights are discernible in one respect, viz, that complex semantic representations spatially contain their semantic constituents. However, in other important respects, the architecture is distinctly non-classical. (shrink)

The articles in this volume are the outcome of the successful BRIDGE Workshop held in Düsseldorf in 2014. The workshop gathered a number of distinguished researchers from formal semantics and conceptual semantics and aimed to initiate a deeper conversation and collaboration instead of separating the two sides as competing views. The workshop provided a platform to further discuss parallelisms on specific semantic issues on the one hand and on the other hand to confront opposed claims from the two (...) different perspectives. This volume represents a selected number of high-quality papers presented at the workshop featuring various approaches to meaning from linguistics, logic and philosophy of language.0This series explores issues of mental representation, linguistic structure and representation, and their interplay. The research presented in this series is grounded in the idea explored in the Collaborative Research Center?The structure of representations in language, cognition and science? (SFB 991) that there is a universal format for the representation of linguistic and cognitive concepts. (shrink)

Paraphrase is ubiquitous in philosophy, especially in discussions about ontological commitment. But should it be? Paraphrases are seldom accompanied by evidence that would convince, say, a linguist that the paraphrase and the paraphrased sentence have the same meaning. Indeed, from the perspective of linguistics, many paraphrases would seem to be nothing but bad jokes. For this reason, many philosophers have become deeply suspicious about paraphrase. I ague in this paper that this worry is misguided--that successful paraphrases do not need to (...) preserve semantic content, and that the way that paraphrase has been used in Quinean meta-ontology, and philosophical inquiry more generally, corresponds, at least roughly, to the way it should be used. (shrink)

Any semantic theory is bound to presume some structure in the messages it analyses, and the success of the theory depends on getting this structure right. But discovering this structure is the business of grammar. Therefore grammar is a necessary preliminary to semantics. Semantic theories of conditionals vividly illustrate this. All presume a provably untenable ternary structure: antecedent, operator, consequent. And all can be shown committed as a result to a thoroughly unbelievable set of connections between sentences and (...) their informational burdens. Actually, a conditional has five immediate factors, none of them an antecedent or a consequent. (shrink)

One of the great successes of the application of generalized quantifiers to natural language has been the ability to formulate robust semantic universals. When such a universal is attested, the question arises as to the source of the universal. In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that many semantic universals arise because expressions satisfying the universal are easier to learn than those that do not. While the idea that learnability explains universals is not new, explicit accounts of learning that can (...) make good on this hypothesis are few and far between. We propose a model of learning — back-propagation through a recurrent neural network — which can make good on this promise. In particular, we discuss the universals of monotonicity, quantity, and conservativity and perform computational experiments of training such a network to learn to verify quantifiers. Our results are able to explain monotonicity and quantity quite well. We suggest that conservativity may have a different source than the other universals. (shrink)

Computers today are not only the calculation tools - they are directly (inter)acting in the physical world which itself may be conceived of as the universal computer (Zuse, Fredkin, Wolfram, Chaitin, Lloyd). In expanding its domains from abstract logical symbol manipulation to physical embedded and networked devices, computing goes beyond Church-Turing limit (Copeland, Siegelman, Burgin, Schachter). Computational processes are distributed, reactive, interactive, agent-based and concurrent. The main criterion of success of computation is not its termination, but the adequacy of (...) its response, its speed, generality and flexibility; adaptability, and tolerance to noise, error,faults, and damage. Interactive computing is a generalization of Turing computing, and it calls for new conceptualizations (Goldin, Wegner). In the info-computationalist framework, with computation seen as information processing, natural computation appears as the most suitable paradigm of computation and information semantics requires logical pluralism. (shrink)

The sociolinguistic turn of the 1960's has been remarkably successful: variability of language is no longer an issue open to debate. But studies of variation have by and large been restricted to the level of expression. This volume makes a contribution to a neglected area in sociolinguistics, namely variation at the level of meaning, i.e., semantic variation. The chapters in this volume discuss the results of an empirical research strongly supporting the view that systematic variation in the choice of semantic (...) elements occurs across different social strata: mothers and their young children less than four years old showed a highly consistent, statistically significant, orientation to distinct styles of meaning, which correlated with their social positioning. The comparison of kindergarten teachers' ways of meaning with those of mothers', not surprisingly, reveal that teacher talk is an exaggerated version of middle class mothers' talk. Findings of this research are relevant to any serious discourse about equitable education. (shrink)

Both the phenomenon of presupposition and that of vagueness have motivated the use of one form or another of trivalent logic, in which a declarative sentence can not only receive the standard values true and false , but also a third, non-standard truth-value which is usually understood as ‘undefined’ . The goal of this paper is to propose a multivalent framework which can deal simultaneously with presupposition and vagueness, and, more specifically, capture their projection properties as well as their different (...) roles in language. Now, there is a prima facie simple way of doing this, which simply consists in assimilating the two phenomena, and using an appropriate type of trivalent logic. On this view, we just need a compositional system that deals with the ‘undefined’ truth-value, and does not care about whether the source of undefinedness is ‘presuppositional’ or related to vagueness. I will argue that such a simple solution cannot succeed, and point out a number of desiderata that any successful approach must meet. I will then present and discuss two seven-valued semantics, inspired, respectively, by the Strong Kleene semantics and by supervaluationism, which meet these desiderata. (shrink)

We prove that the general scheme for physical theories that we have called semantic realism(SR) in some previous papers copes successfully with a number of EPR-like paradoxes when applied to quantum physics (QP). In particular, we consider the old arguments by Furry and Bohm- Aharonov and show that they are not valid within a SR framework. Moreover, we consider the Bell-Kochen-Specker und the Bell theorems that should prove that QP is inherently contextual and nonlocal, respectively, and show that they can (...) be invalidated in the SR approach. This removes the seeming contradiction between the basic assumptions of SR and QP, and proves that some problematic features that are usually attributed to QP, us contextuality and nonlocality, occur because of the adoption of a verificationist position, from one side, and from an insufficient adherence to the operational principles that have inspired QP itself, from the other side. (shrink)

One of the most basic themes in the philosophy of language is referential uptake, viz., the question of what counts as properly `understanding' a referring act in communication. In this inquiry, the particular line pursued goes back to Strawson's work on re-identification, but the immediate influence is that of Gareth Evans. It is argued that traditional and recent proposals fail to account for success in referential communication. A novel account is developed, resembling Evans' account in combining an external (...) class='Hi'>success condition with a Fregean one. But, in contrast to Evans, greater emphasis is placed on the action-enabling side of communication. Further topics discussed include the role of mental states in accounting for communication, the impact of re-identification on the understanding of referring acts, and Donnellan's referential/attributive distinction. Readership: Philosophers, cognitive scientists and semanticists. (shrink)

Semantics and metaphysics are different. However, many philosophers maintain that the two are very closely related. Semantics is usually considered as a linguistic subject that deals with the meanings of linguistic expressions. Metaphysics, on the other hand, is a philosophical enterprise that purports to explore the nature of the world and to describe the structures and constituents of it. It is not difficult to see why the two distinct areas can merge so intimately together. After all, we all (...) agree that human languages and the world we know are closely connected. Because of this, some philosophers approach the topics of linguistic issues from the metaphysical perspectives and construct their theses of philosophical semantics based on their metaphysical standpoints. It naturally results invarious confusions of the semantic debates and projects with the metaphysical ones. This paper aims to explore the confusions which lie between semantics and metaphysics and to suggest that we can execute the semantic project successfully without taking up any metaphysical dispute. (shrink)

This work has four aims: (i) to provide an overview of the current debate about the semantics of knowledge attributions, i.e. sentences of the form ⌜S knows that Φ⌝; (ii) to ground the debate in a single semantic-pragmatic framework; (iii) to identify a methodology for describing the semantics of knowledge attributions; (iv) to go some way towards describing the semantics of knowledge attributions in light of this methodology, and in particular to defend moderate invariantist semantics against (...) its main current rivals. Aims (i) and (ii) are largely clarificatory; in §1 I set out a single semantic-pragmatic framework and over the course of this work show that it can be modified to explain and distinguish the various theories of the semantics of knowledge attributions currently on offer. Aim (iii) is also met in §1. I argue that a theory of the semantics of knowledge attributions T must be able to account for at least some ordinary speakers’ intuitions about the felicity or infelicity of utterances of the sentence ⌜S knows that Φ⌝ (felicity intuitions) purely in terms of its semantics. I also identify a number of theoretical considerations about knowledge and argue that if T conflicts with any one of these considerations, we should presume that T is false. Aim (iv) is met over the course of this work. According to moderate invariantism ⌜S knows that Φ⌝ is true if and only if S confidently believes the proposition expressed by Φ, this proposition is true and S’s epistemic position with respect to this proposition meets a moderately high epistemic standard. In §§2 – 5 I argue that the main current rivals to moderate invariantism – attributor contextualism, contrastivism, subject-sensitive invariantism and assessor relativism – conflict with at least one of the theoretical considerations identified in §1. In §6 I argue that moderate invariantism accounts for some ordinary speakers’ felicity intuitions purely in terms of the semantics of ⌜S knows that Φ⌝; I also argue that it is consistent with all of the theoretical considerations identified in §1. Moreover, in §§2 – 6 I argue that no theory is capable of accounting for all felicity intuitions purely in terms of the semantics of ⌜S knows that Φ⌝, and that only moderate invariantism can successfully explain why speakers have all of these intuitions. In §7 I conclude that moderate invariantism correctly describes of the semantics of knowledge attributions, or at least does so better than its main current rivals. (shrink)

Fodor's and Pylyshyn's stand on systematicity in thought and language has been debated and criticized. Van Gelder and Niklasson, among others, have argued that Fodor and Pylyshyn offer no precise definition of systematicity. However, our concern here is with a learning based formulation of that concept. In particular, Hadley has proposed that a network exhibits strong semantic systematicity when, as a result of training, it can assign appropriate meaning representations to novel sentences (both simple and embedded) which contain words in (...) syntactic positions they did not occupy during training. The experience of researchers indicates that strong systematicity in any form is difficult to achieve in connectionist systems.Herein we describe a network which displays strong semantic systematicity in response to Hebbian, connectionist training. During training, two-thirds of all nouns are presented only in a single syntactic position (either as grammatical subject or object). Yet, during testing, the network correctly interprets thousands of sentences containing those nouns in novel positions. In addition, the network generalizes to novel levels of embedding. Successful training requires a, corpus of about 1000 sentences, and network training is quite rapid. The architecture and learning algorithms are purely connectionist, but ‘classical’ insights are discernible in one respect, viz, that complex semantic representations spatially contain their semantic constituents. However, in other important respects, the architecture is distinctly non-classical. (shrink)

This volume is a tribute to Roger Schwarzschild's immense contributions in the formal semantics of nouns, focus, degrees and space, and tense and aspect. Collectively, the papers in the volume reveal parallels across ontological domains, in particular in the context of elements with internal structure, like plural sets, alternative sets, degree intervals, temporal intervals, and vectors. This research suggests that the structure of an entity could inform the semantic behavior of that entity just as much than its semantic type (...) or lexical category. And because these structures dictate the formation of semantic alternatives, it can help inform focus semantics and scalar implicature as well. Old questions on plurals, focus and degree expressions get new answers in this collection of papers in honor of Roger Schwarzchild. Roger Schwarzschild is one of the leading scholars in semantics, and the editors have been highly successful in requesting contributions by his teachers, peers and former students. Some papers have circulated in draft form for many years, and find their final home in this edited volume, which well reflects the state of the art in the field. Prof. dr. Henriëtte de Swart, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. (shrink)

The property common to three kinds of paradoxes (logical, semantic, and cultural) is the underlying presence of an exclusive disjunction: even when it is put to a check by the paradox, it is still invoked at the level of implicit discourse. Hence the argumentative strength of paradoxical propositions is derived. Logical paradoxes (insolubilia) always involve two contradictory, mutually exclusive, truths. One truth is always perceived to the detriment of the other, in accordance with a succession which is endlessly repetitive. A (...) check is put on the principle of the excluded middle by the logical paradoxes, because self-reference leads to an endlessly repeating circle, out of which no resolution is conceivable. Logical paradoxes are to be compared with the `objective ambiguity' prevalent in oracles (Gallet, 1990). Semantic paradoxes are contextually-determined occurrences, whose resolution at the metalinguistic level is made possible by the discovery of a middle term. They express a wilful ambiguity, in which the interlocutor is invited to take an active part in the construction of sense, since what must be found is the unexpected sense thanks to which A and not-A can be asserted simultaneously. Cultural paradoxes play about doxa (`common sense') and openly challenge common opinion because of their character as inopinata (`unexpected'). My aim is to show that even cultural paradoxes hide sometimes a flaw of argumentation similar to logical or semantic paradox; they too imply an exclusive disjunction leading to the disappearance of the middle terms. Finally, basing myself on the theory of topoi (Anscombre and Ducrot, 1983), a tentative resolution of the cultural paradoxes will be suggested. (shrink)

Semantic systems are sytems with an inherent semantics. An example would be systems showing intrinsic intentionality: if a system is genuinely intentional, it must be able to define its own meanings. Searle was a forerunner of the modern idea of semantic systems in his oft-cited “Chinese Room” paper in 1980. The current author has approached the problem from a different angle 30 years ago in his book Self-Modifying Systems, claiming that minds can define their own meanings by virtue of (...) being “material”, in the sense of freely generating new properties on the fly, as do material objects. In the course of the process, meaning should arise because syntax does not fully describe the rich functioning of such systems, so goes the argument. While still attractive, the author has in the meantime abandoned the idea, for at least two reasons. One, fundamentals-seeking has itself been largely abandoned, because the study of questions like “is the mind computational”? has turned out to be non-productive. Two, brute force approaches such as ANN-based deep learning have been “unreasonably” successful, and this fact puts aside arguments about the limits of computational systems. The paper provides an overview of these developments. (shrink)

Many ameliorative projects aim at moral goods such as social equality. For example, the amelioration of the concept MARRIAGE forms part of efforts to achieve equal rights for the LGBT+ community. What does implementation of such an ameliorated concept consist in? In this paper, I argue that, for some ameliorated concepts, successful implementation requires that individuals eschew semantic deference, at least with respect to relevant dimensions of the concept. My argument appeals to consideration of the aims of conceptual engineers engaged (...) in this type of ameliorative project: they seek conceptual change in order to contribute to the dismantling of oppressive social structures, institutions, and systems of belief. I argue that, for such aims to be achieved, it must be the case that individuals who come to endorse the concept do so for the right reasons---because they have gained an understanding of why the ameliorated concept is morally preferable to its ancestor. Once they have acquired such reasons, however, they are no longer correctly described as semantically deferential; they will treat moral reasons to employ the concept as overriding of semantic considerations. (shrink)

Montague (1970) interprets a small fragment of English through the use of two basic types of objects: individuals and propositions. My dissertation develops an alternative semantics that only uses one basic type (hence, *single-type semantics*). Such a semantics has been conjectured by Partee (2006) as a ‘minimality test’ for the Montagovian type system, which captures the lowest ontological requirements on any successful semantics for Montague’s fragment. The development of this semantics answers a number of important (...) open questions about the salience of the Montagovian type system, the robustness of semantic theories w.r.t. their basic-type choice, and the classification of these theories according to their objects’ informational strength. (shrink)

Kripke’s Wittgenstein is standardly understood as a non-factualist about meaning ascription. Non-factualism about meaning ascription is the idea that sentences like “Joe means addition by ‘plus’” are not used to state facts about the world. Byrne and Kusch have argued that Kripke’s Wittgenstein is not a non-factualist about meaning ascription. They are aware that their interpretation is non-standard, but cite arguments from Boghossian and Wright to support their view. Boghossian argues that non-factualism about meaning ascription is incompatible with a deflationary (...) theory of truth. Wright argues that non-factualism about meaning ascription is incoherent. To support the standard interpretation, I’ll respond to each argument in turn. To the degree that my responses are successful, Byrne and Kusch have an unmotivated interpretation of Kripke’s Wittgenstein. Wilson provides a factualist interpretation that is not based on Boghossian and Wright’s arguments. Miller argues for a non-factualist interpretation against Wilson, but I’ll show that Miller’s interpretation faces a dilemma. Miller’s argument cannot be maintained if a coherent interpretation of the skeptical solution is to be provided. I’ll show how this dilemma can be avoided and provide an independent argument against Wilson so that a non-factualist interpretation of the skeptical solution can be maintained. (shrink)

Situation semantics was developed as an alternative to possible worlds semantics. In situation semantics, linguistic expressions are evaluated with respect to partial, rather than complete, worlds. There is no consensus about what situations are, just as there is no consensus about what possible worlds or events are. According to some, situations are structured entities consisting of relations and individuals standing in those relations. According to others, situations are particulars. In spite of unresolved foundational issues, the partiality provided (...) by situation semantics has led to some genuinely new approaches to a variety of phenomena in natural language semantics. In the way of illustration, this article includes relatively detailed overviews of a few selected areas where situation semantics has been successful: implicit quantifier domain restrictions, donkey pronouns, and exhaustive interpretations. It moreover addresses the question of how Davidsonian event semantics can be embedded in a semantics based on situations. Other areas where a situation semantics perspective has led to progress include attitude ascriptions, questions, tense, aspect, nominalizations, implicit arguments, point of view, counterfactual conditionals, and discourse relations. (shrink)

Pragmatism in semantics is hampered by its proponents' tendency to tie understanding too closely to our mastery of epistemic practice. Both Brandom's inferentialist semantics and the anti-realist semantics championed by Dummett and Tennant amply illustrate this tendency. As a consequence, neither theory can successfully handle cases of the innocuously unknowable in which two sentences, though mutually consistent, nonetheless cannot be known to be true together. On Brandom's account, such sentences are treated as being mutually inconsistent after all. (...) According to both Dummett's and Tennant's version of anti-realist semantics, we cannot know that there are any true sentences of this kind. Neither result is the least acceptable, whence either theory fails. The lesson to be learnt from this failure is that understanding should not be identified with the ability to reach warranted verdicts, but with the ability to think, where thinking is constitutively involved in, but nonetheless distinct from judging. (shrink)

When communicating, people adapt their linguistic representations to those of their interlocutors. Previous studies have shown that this also occurs at the semantic level for vague and context-dependent terms such as quantifiers and uncertainty expressions. However, work to date has mostly focused on passive exposure to a given speaker's interpretation, without considering the possible role of active linguistic interaction. In this study, we focus on gradable adjectives big and small and develop a novel experimental paradigm that allows participants to ask (...) clarification questions to figure out their interlocutor's interpretation. We find that, when in doubt, speakers do resort to this strategy, despite its inherent cognitive cost, and that doing so results in higher semantic alignment measured in terms of communicative success. While not all question–answer pairs are equally informative, we show that speakers become better questioners as the interaction progresses. Yet, the higher semantic alignment observed when speakers are able to ask questions does not increase over time. This suggests that conversational interaction's key advantage may be to boost coordination without committing to long-term semantic updates. Our findings shed new light on the mechanisms used by speakers to achieve semantic alignment and on how language is shaped by communication. (shrink)

Philosophical analysis of ecological theories has lagged behind the study of evolutionary theory. The semantic conception of scientific theories, which has been employed successfully in the analysis of evolutionary theory, is adopted here to analyse ecological theory. Two general problems in ecology are discussed. One arises from the continued use of covering law models in ecology, and the other concerns the applicability of ecological theory in conservation biology. The semantic conception of ecological theories is used to resolve these problems.

Philosophical analysis of ecological theories has lagged behind the study of evolutionary theory. The semantic conception of scientific theories, which has been employed successfully in the analysis of evolutionary theory, is adopted here to analyse ecological theory. Two general problems in ecology are discussed. One arises from the continued use of covering law models in ecology, and the other concerns the applicability of ecological theory in conservation biology. The semantic conception of ecological theories is used to resolve these problems.

According to Herman Cappelen’s Austerity Framework, conceptual engineering doesn’t involve concepts, and barely involves engineering. I begin by raising two objections to the Austerity Framework as it stands: the framework cannot account for important normative aspects of conceptual engineering; and it doesn’t give us an adequate response to Strawson-style objections that conceptual engineering serves only to change the subject. I then supplement the Austerity Framework with an account of semantic normativity, which builds on the speaker/semantic meaning distinction, and show that (...) so-supplemented the Austerity Framework successfully overcomes the two objections. I tentatively conclude that semantic normativity should play a key role in how we understand conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Logical omniscience states that the knowledge set of ordinary rational agents is closed for its logical consequences. Although epistemic logicians in general judge this principle unrealistic, there is no consensus on how it should be restrained. The challenge is conceptual: we must find adequate criteria for separating obvious logical consequences from non-obvious ones. Non-classical game-theoretic semantics has been employed in this discussion with relative success. On the one hand, with urn semantics [15], an expressive fragment of classical (...) game semantics that weakens the dependence relations between quantifiers occurring in a formula, we can formalize, for a broad array of examples, epistemic scenarios in which an individual ignores the validity of some first-order sentence. On the other hand, urn semantics offers a disproportionate restriction of logical omniscience. Therefore, an improvement of this system is needed to obtain a better solution of the problem. In this paper, I argue that our linguistic competence in using quantifiers requires a sort of basic hypothetical logical knowledge that can be formulated as follows: when inquiring after the truth-value of ∀xφ, an individual might be unaware of all substitutional instances this sentence accepts, but at least she must know that, if an element a is given, then ∀xφ holds only if φ is true. This thesis accepts game-theoretic formalization in terms of a refinement of urn semantics. I maintain that the system so obtained affords an improved solution of the logical omniscience problem. To do this, I characterize first-order theoremhood in US+. As a consequence of this result, we will see that the ideal reasoner depicted by US+ only knows the validity of first-order formulas whose Herbrand witnesses can be trivially found, a fact that provides strong evidence that our refinement of urn semantics captures a relevant sense of logical obviousness. (shrink)

The book, which stepwise develops successively more powerful logical and grammatical systems, covers an unusually broad range of material.