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27339.112628
How do we use language to refer to whatever we have in mind? The question is deceptively simple. The complications are right there, however, for everyone to see. The question invokes language language use reference, and human minds and we should not pretend to know the whole truth about any of these things. In Talking About, however, I try to answer the question by integrating a great deal of both classic and current work—in philosophy, cognitive science, and elsewhere— and by making some very specific assumptions about the four troublemakers, again; language use reference minds The central notion is pragmatic competence. This is the capacity to perform speech acts with a suite of specific audience-directed intentions. The capacity is grounded and explained by the normal operation of some biological, cognitive mechanism in humans. Aliens and AIs might certainly have something similar or functionally equivalent but still, the target is to understand the human capacity. The capacity to perform speech acts in which one refers to a single object is a very sophisticated aspect of pragmatic competence. I argue that such acts of reference have a proper function, namely, that they provide evidence of a referential intention. I think referential intentions are real phenomena in human brains, basically, they are sometimes part of the initial planning stages of utterance production. Moreover, I argue that such intentions can, in certain very specific circumstances, be irredeemably confused. Strictly speaking, on my view, those who are confused in this way will fail to refer to anything by the relevant utterances, because the intentions fail to determine any single object as the referent.
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36463.112802
A large majority of American college students — almost three-quarters — go to public schools. For four-year colleges, it’s about two-thirds. Yet strangely, these “public” schools aren’t equally open to the entire public. …
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72551.112812
In Who’s afraid of A. C. Bradley?comes out in favor of “talk[ing] about Shakespeare’s characters as if they were people.” If “character criticism” is abandoned, you’ll miss most of what is good and important in the plays. …
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205205.112819
Philosophers often defend their views by pointing to the unacceptability of what they take to be the only alternative. So, for example, materialists sometimes defend their view of the mind by contrasting it with the inadequacy of dualist views which treat the mind as an immaterial substance. The idea of immaterial substance is scientifically challenging, obscure, mysterious or even incoherent. This can be part of what moves them to accept a materialist view of the mind. Another case is the subject of this paper: the problem of non-existence. Many analytic philosophers construct their position in opposition to the view that we should explain thought and talk about the non-existent by appealing to a category of non-existent beings or entities. Here is an example of the kind of view they reject, which they usually attribute to Alexius Meinong (1853-1920): thoughts and sentences about the mythological winged horse Pegasus are explained in terms of reference to the non-existent entity, Pegasus. Pegasus does not exist, to be sure, but it must be an entity of some kind if we are to talk about it. However, the idea that there are entities which do not exist but have some kind of being is deeply peculiar. Don’t all these ideas — object, entity, existence, being, reality — come as a package? How can we really pull them apart?
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378656.112825
Linguistic data are commonly considered a defeasible source of evidence from which it is legitimate to draw philosophical hypotheses and conclusions. Linguistic methods popular amongst philosophers include linguistic tests, standard and comparative semantic analysis, testing language usage and use frequency with the help of language corpora, and the study of syntactical structures and etymologies. Epistemologists have applied linguistic methods to a wide range of philosophical issues, including epistemic contextualism, epistemic norms of assertion and practical reasoning, the nature of know-how, whether beliefs are states or performances, whether belief is a weak or a strong attitude, and what kind of gradability is instantiated by theoretical rationality and epistemic justification. Traditionally epistemologists have relied almost exclusively on linguistic data from western languages, with a primary focus on contemporary English. However, in the last two decades there has been an increasing interest in cross-linguistic studies in epistemology.
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416859.112832
Analytic debates about truth are wide-ranging, but certain key themes tend to crop up time and again. The three themes that we will examine in this paper are (i) the nature and behaviour of the ordinary concept of truth, (ii) the meaning of discourse about truth, and (iii) the nature of the property truth. We will start by offering a brief overview of the debates centring on these themes. We will then argue that cross-linguistic experimental philosophy has an indispensable yet underappreciated role to play in all of these debates. Recognising the indispensability of cross-linguistic experimental philosophy should compel philosophers to significantly revise the ways in which they inquire about truth. It should also prompt analytic philosophers more generally to consider whether similar revisions might be necessary elsewhere in the field.
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431373.112838
A correct observation to the effect that a does not exist, where the ‘a’ is a singular term, could be true on any of a variety of grounds. Typically, a true, singular negative existential is true on the unproblematic ground that the subject term ‘a’ designates something that does not presently exist. More interesting philosophically is a singular, negative existential statement in which the subject term ‘a’ designates nothing at all. Both of these contrast sharply with a singular, negative existential in which the subject term is a name from fiction. I argue that such singular, negative existential statements are false. My account of fictional characters differs significantly from Kripke’s. It is shown that an objection to my account rests on a crucial misunderstanding. Finally, a crucial aspect of the account is emphasized.
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489146.112846
This paper will be centered on Carnap’s views on rationality. More specifically, much of the focus will be on a puzzle regarding Carnap’s view on rationality that Florian Steinberger (2016) has recently discussed. Not only is Steinberger’s discussion of significant intrinsic interest: his discussion also raises general questions about Carnap interpretation. As I have discussed in earlier work, there are two very different ways of interpreting Carnap’s talk of “frameworks” – and, relatedly, different ways of interpreting Carnap’s principle of tolerance. Carnap can be interpreted as either a relativist or as what I call a language pluralist. Steinberger’s puzzle arises given the relativist interpretation; I believe the language pluralist interpretation is correct. Most of the discussion will concern the correct interpretation of Carnap, and what this means for Steinberger’s puzzle. While I will not here mount a full defense of the language pluralist interpretation, I will pause to discuss Vera Flocke’s recent criticism of it. Towards the end, I will describe a puzzle regarding rationality different from Steinberger’s. The puzzle that I describe does arise already for the language pluralist.
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489170.112853
In this paper, I will focus on AI systems (“AIs”) as very different, or at least potentially very different, kinds of language users from what humans are. Much theorizing about language is, for natural and understandable reasons, focused on human language, primarily the natural languages we use. But when asking philosophical questions about language, we often want to consider what languages in general are, and not only consider human languages. There is some reason to think that AIs are different from us in relevant respects, so asking questions about languages used by AIs may be useful for these general questions about language.
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497009.112858
I propose a revision of Cantor’s account of set size that understands comparisons of set size fundamentally in terms of surjections rather than injections. This revised account is equivalent to Cantor’s account if the Axiom of Choice is true, but its consequences differ from those of Cantor’s if the Axiom of Choice is false. I argue that the revised account is an intuitive generalization of Cantor’s account, blocks paradoxes—most notably, that a set can be partitioned into a set that is bigger than it—that can arise from Cantor’s account if the Axiom of Choice is false, illuminates the debate over whether the Axiom of Choice is true, is a mathematically fruitful alternative to Cantor’s account, and sheds philosophical light on one of the oldest unsolved problems in set theory.
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546917.112865
Longstanding philosophical debate over the semantics of proper names has yet to examine the distinctive behavior of deadnames, names that have been rejected by their former bearers. The use of these names to deadname individuals is derogatory, but deadnaming derogates differently than other kinds of derogatory speech. This paper examines different accounts of this behavior, illustrates what going views of names will have to say to account for it, and articulates a novel version of predicativism that can give a semantic explanation for this derogation.
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656194.112873
David Kaplan famously argued that mainstream semantics for modal logic, which identifies propositions with sets of possible worlds, is affected by a cardinality paradox. Takashi Yagisawa showed that a variant of the same paradox arises when standard possible worlds semantics is extended with impossible worlds to deliver a hyperintensional account of propositions. After introducing the problem, we discuss two general approaches to a possible solution: giving up on sets and giving up on worlds, either in the background semantic framework or in the corresponding conception of propositions. As a result, we conclude that abandoning worlds by embracing a truthmaker-based approach offers a promising way to account for hyperintensional propositions without facing the paradoxical outcome.
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1233635.112879
Shared intention normally leads to joint action. It does this, it is commonly said, only because it is a characteristically stable phenomenon, a phenomenon that tends to persist from the time it is formed until the time it is fulfilled. However, the issue of what the stability of shared intention comes down to remains largely undertheorized. My aim in this paper is to remedy this shortcoming. I argue that shared intention is a source of moral and epistemic reasons, that responsiveness to such reasons on the part of each individual reinforces her own relevant attitudes, and that this enhances the stability of the shared intention as a whole.
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1360246.112885
“Poetic expression,” says the sugar-coated-pill theory, “is the honey that makes palatable the medicine of content, be it philosophical, moral, or scientific.” It’s an old theory, evident even in Greek and Roman theory and practice. …
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1406808.112891
Bilateral proof systems, which provide rules for both affirming and denying sentences, have been prominent in the development of proof-theoretic semantics for classical logic in recent years. However, such systems provide a substantial amount of freedom in the formulation of the rules, and, as a result, a number of different sets of rules have been put forward as definitive of the meanings of the classical connectives. In this paper, I argue that a single general schema for bilateral proof rules has a reasonable claim to inferentially articulating the core meaning of all of the classical connectives. I propose this schema in the context of a bilateral sequent calculus in which each connective is given exactly two rules: a rule for affirmation and a rule for denial. Positive and negative rules for all of the classical connectives are given by a single rule schema, harmony between these positive and negative rules is established at the schematic level by a pair of elimination theorems, and the truth-conditions for all of the classical connectives are read off at once from the schema itself.
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1565395.112897
In this paper, I look at Susan Stebbing’s articles and reviews that critically engage logical positivism. These appeared before the publication of A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic and helped shape the early British reception of logical positivism. I highlight Stebbing’s adoption of G. E. Moore’s tripartite distinction between knowing a proposition, understanding it, and giving an analysis of it and, in light of this distinction, her focus on whether the principle of verifiability can ground a plausible account of communication. Stebbing thinks not, and I reconstruct her reasons, as well as her own account of communication. In doing this, I relate her criticisms to her rejection of methodological solipsism and her dissatisfaction with the logical positivist treatment of statements about other minds and the past. I also argue that Stebbing’s work provides a bridge to later criticisms of logical positivism by ordinary language philosophers. Foregrounding Stebbing’s engagement with logical positivism, especially her focus on communication, paints a fuller picture of how the logical positivists came to be part of analytic philosophy despite having different concerns than many of the British philosophers engaging their work.
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1638024.112904
A hyperintensional epistemic logic would take the contents which can be known or believed as more fine-grained than sets of possible worlds. I consider one objection to the idea: Williamson’s Objection from Overfitting. I propose a hyperintensional account of propositions as sets of worlds enriched with topics: what those propositions, and so the attitudes having them as contents, are about. I show that the account captures the conditions under which sentences express the same content; that it can be pervasively applied in formal and mainstream epistemology; and that it is left unscathed by the objection.
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1638070.112913
What is the connection between valid inference and true conditionals? Many conditional logics require that when A is a logical consequence of B, "if A then B" is true. Taking counterlogical conditionals seriously leads to systems that permit counterexamples to that general rule. However, this leaves those of us who endorse non-trivial accounts of counterpossible conditionals to explain what the connection between conditionals and consequence is. The explanation of the connection also answers a common line of objection to non-trivial counterpossibles, which is based on a transition from valid arguments to the corresponding conditionals. It also contributes to the wider project of illuminating the connections between contexts of utterance, on the one hand, and the truth-conditions of conditionals uttered in those contexts, on the other.
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1738852.112918
Slurs have been standardly assumed to bear a very direct, very distinctive semantic relationship to what philosophers have called “neutral counterpart” terms. I argue that this is mistaken: the general relationship between paradigmatic slurs and their “neutral counterparts” should be assumed to be the same one that obtains between ‘chick flick’ and ‘romantic comedy’, as well a huge number of other more prosaic pairs of derogatory and “less derogatory” expressions. The most plausible general relationship between these latter expressions — and thus, I argue, between paradigmatic slurs and “neutral counterpart” terms — is one of overlap in presumed extension, grounded in overlap in associated stereotypes. The resulting framework has the advantages of being simple, unified, and, unlike its orthodox rivals, neatly accommodating of a much wider range of data than has previously been considered. More importantly, it positions us to better understand, identify, and confront the insidious mechanisms of ordinary bigotry.
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1747853.112925
Jessica Keiser’s Non-Ideal Foundations of Language is a serious, sustained attempt to engage in systematic philosophy of language while leaving aside some of the persistent, and arguably pernicious, idealizations that the field has long taken for granted. In short, it’s rad. Of course, I have my reservations about certain aspects of the project – on which more below. But, to be clear: for anyone who had a niggling sense that, for all their talk of being interested in understanding real-world communication and hip to developments over in linguistics, philosophers of language have been missing something important about language use, this is the book for you. And if the reader hasn’t had that sense, this book should serve as a helpful corrective.
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1747877.11294
When thinking about online speech, it’s tempting to start with questions like: What’s new here? Do online speech environments enable new types of speech acts, new semantic phenomena, new expressive effects? In other words: how has the shift to online speech fundamentally changed how we use language to communicate, coordinate, obfuscate, rouse, empower, disempower, insult, etc.? What hidden truths might online speech reveal about the nature of meaning and communication more broadly?
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1747901.11295
During the town hall, the President . . . tried to separate himself from his recent retweet of a conspiracy theory from an account linked to QAnon, which baselessly claimed that former Vice President Joe Biden orchestrated to have Seal Team Six killed to cover up the fake death of al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. . . .
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1747923.112959
According to Jakobson (1960, pp. 353-57), there are six functions of language: the referential, poetic, emotive, conative, phatic, and metalingual functions. To expand on just two of these, the emotive function involves using language to express emotions or feelings rather than information. It is exemplified by pure exclamatives like ‘Wow!’ The phatic function, in contrast, involves the use of language to open, close, or maintain a channel of communication. Exemplars include utterances of ‘Hello’, ‘Um’, or ‘Bye’. Analytic philosophers tend not to pay Jakobson much heed these days. And perhaps that is justified; his categories are vague at best, introduced more via ostention than by definition. Still, the general approach to understanding language is one worth taking seriously: a picture of language as serving a multitude of functions. What is the function of language? There isn’t just one on this picture. Rather, language is a tool that we can, without in any way sullying it, put to a variety of uses in different circumstances.
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2261817.112968
In this paper, we discuss J. Michael Dunn’s foundational work on the semantics for First Degree Entailment logic (FDE), also known as Belnap–Dunn logic (or Sanjaya–Belnap–Smiley–Dunn Four-valued Logic, as suggested by Dunn himself). More specifically, by building on the framework due to Dunn, we sketch a broad picture towards a systematic understanding of contra-classicality. Our focus will be on a simple propositional language with negation, conjunction, and disjunction, and we will systematically explore variants of FDE, K3, and LP by tweaking the falsity condition for negation.
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2261841.112977
In this paper, we apply a Herzberger-style semantics to deal with the question: is the de Finetti conditional a conditional? The question is pressing, in view of the inferential behavior of the de Finetti conditional: it allows for inferences that seem quite unexpected for a conditional. The semantics we advance here for the de Finetti conditional is simply the classical semantics for material conditional, with a further dimension whose understanding depends on the kind of application one has in mind. We discuss such possible applications and how they cover ground already advanced in the literature.
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2261886.112985
In his “The simple argument for subclassical logic,” Jc Beall advances an argument that led him to take FDE as the one true logic (the latter point is explicitly made clear in his “FDE as the One True Logic”). The aim of this article is to point out that if we follow Beall’s line of reasoning for endorsing FDE, there are at least two additional reasons to consider that FDE is too strong for Beall’s purposes. In fact, we claim that Beall should consider another weaker subclassical logic as the logic adequate for his project. To this end, we first briefly present Beall’s argument for FDE. Then, we discuss two specific topics that seem to motivate us to weaken FDE. We then introduce a subsystem that will enjoy all the benefits of Beall’s suggestion.
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2261916.112991
A BSTRACT. S ören Halld´en’s logic of nonsense is one of the most well-known many-valued logics available in the literature. In this paper, we discuss Peter Woodruff’s as yet rather unexplored attempt to advance a version of such a logic built on the top of a constructive logical basis. We start by recalling the basics of Woodruff’s system and by bringing to light some of its notable features. We then go on to elaborate on some of the difficulties attached to it; on our way to offer a possible solution to such difficulties, we discuss the relation between Woodruff’s system and two-dimensional semantics for many-valued logics, as developed by Hans Herzberger. Keywords: Peter Woodruff, logic of nonsense, constructive logic, Hans Herzberger, two-dimensional semantics.
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2276420.113
This paper explores how, given a proof, we can systematically transform it into a proof that contains no irrelevancies and which is as strong as possible. I define a weaker and stronger notion of what counts as a proof with no irrelevancies, calling them perfect proofs and gaunt proofs, respectively. Using classical core logic to study classical validities and core logic to study intuitionistic validities, I show that every core proof or classical core proof can be transformed into a perfect proof. In a sequel paper, I show how proofs in core logic can also be transformed into gaunt proofs and I observe that this property fails for classical core logic.
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2276545.113008
This paper is the second part of a series exploring how, given a proof, we can inductively transform it into a proof that contains no irrelevancies and is as strong as possible. In the prequel paper, I defined a weaker and a stronger notion of what counts as a proof with no irrelevancies, calling them perfect proofs and gaunt proofs, respectively. There, I showed how proofs in core logic and classical core logic can be transformed into perfect proofs. In this paper I study gaunt proofs. I show how proofs in core logic can be inductively transformed into gaunt core proofs, but that this property fails for the natural deduction system of classical core logic.
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2276593.113017
Being relevant to some topic can be informally understood as making a difference or having something to contribute. Given a sequent ∆ ⇒ Γ, we can say, somewhat schematically, that a component of the sequent is relevant to the sequent when it contributes to the validity of the sequent. Different ways of making precise the idea of contributing to the validity and different understandings of the components of a sequent lead to a hierarchy of explications of relevance. I identify four key explications, called gaunt validity, perfect validity, relevant validity, and perfectibility. Each is shown to enjoy an interesting variable sharing property. Furthermore, if we begin with a standard sequent calculus for classical logic and introduce some simple constraints on the rules, the result is a fragment of classical logic that proves exactly the gauntly valid sequents.