Contrary to how it may seem when we observe its output, an [LLM] is a system for haphazardly stitching together sequences of linguistic forms it has observed in its vast training data, according to...

A common objection to Russell's theory of descriptions concerns incomplete definite descriptions: uses of (for example) ‘the book is overdue’ in contexts where there is clearly more than one book. Many contemporary Russellians hold that such utterances will invariably convey a contextually determined complete proposition, for example, that the book in your briefcase is overdue. But according to the objection this gets things wrong: typically, when a speaker utters such a sentence, no facts about the context or the speaker's communicative (...) intentions single out a particular description-theoretic proposition as the proposition expressed. However, this is an objection only if it is assumed that successful linguistic communication requires the hearer to identify a proposition uniquely intended by the speaker. We argue that this assumption is mistaken. On our view, no proposition, descriptive or referential, is uniquely intended in such a context; thus, no proposition can nor need be identified as the proposition expressed. One significant upshot is that, once the aforementioned assumption is rejected, incompleteness no longer poses a threat to Russell's theory of descriptions. (shrink)

(2013). Two aspects of propositional unity. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 43, Essays on the Nature of Propositions, pp. 518-533.

Jeffrey King, Scott Soames, and others have recently challenged the familiar identification of a Russellian proposition, such as the proposition that Brutus stabbed Caesar, with an ordered sequence constructed out of objects, properties, and relations. There is, as they point out, a surplus of candidate sequences available that are each equally serviceable. If so, any choice among these candidates will be arbitrary. In this paper, I show that, unless a controversial assumption is made regarding the nature of nonsymmetrical relations, none (...) of the proffered candidate sequences are in fact adequate to the play the role. Moreover, as I argue, the most promising alternative theory of relations—one that avoids the problematic assumption and, in addition, fits most naturally into the sequentialist’s framework—fails to meet a basic requirement: it cannot distinguish between the proposition that Brutus stabbed Caesar and the proposition that Caesar stabbed Brutus. The upshot is that the conspicuously structured entities that are widely assumed to be up to the task of “playing the proposition role” shed no light on the very structure they are invoked to represent. (shrink)

Volume 97, Issue 3, September 2019, Page 628-631.

E. E. Constance Jones, a regular contributor to Mind and the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, and the author of several textbooks and a monograph, worked in both philosophical l...

Bertrand Russell's theory of definite descriptions sparked an ongoing debate concerning the proper logical and linguistic analysis of definite descriptions. While it is now widely acknowledged that, like the indexical expressions 'I', 'here', and 'now', definite descriptions in natural language are context-sensitive, there is significant disagreement as to the ultimate challenge this context-sensitivity poses to Russell's theory.This reader is intended both to introduce students to the philosophy of language via the theory of descriptions, and to provide scholars in analytic philosophy (...) with ready access to some of the central contributions in this area. It includes classic works by Russell, Carnap, Strawson, Lambert, Donnellan, Grice, Peacocke, Kripke, Wettstein, Soames, Neale, and Schiffer. (shrink)

In Meanings and Other Things fourteen leading philosophers explore central themes in the writings of Stephen Schiffer, a leading figure in philosophy since the 1970s. Topics range from theories of meaning to moral cognitivism, the nature of paradox, and the problem of vagueness. Schiffer's responses set out his current thinking.

In their target article, Blumenthal-Barby et al. (2022) address the view that bioethics as a philosophical discipline is obsolete. Indeed, their discussion was prompted by a recent bioethics confer...

In their widely discussed paper, “Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style”, Machery et al. argue that Kripke’s Gödel–Schmidt case, generally thought to undermine the description theory of names, rests on culturally variable intuitions: while Western subjects’ intuitions conflict with the description theory of names, those of East Asian subjects do not. Machery et al. attempt to explain this discrepancy by appealing to differences between Western and East Asian modes of categorization, as identified in an influential study by Nisbett et al. I claim that (...) these differences fail to explain the conflicting intuitions. Moreover, Machery et al.’s initial conjecture—that the relevant cultural differences would manifest themselves in differing semantic intuitions—is legitimate only if we assume that the Gödel–Schmidt case is used both to undermine descriptivism and establish the causal theory. But, as I argue, this is not Kripke’s intention. This misunderstanding persists in the recent clarification of their views in “If Folk Intuitions Vary, Then What?” (Machery et al., Philos Phenomenol Res, 2012). (shrink)

According to the naive theory of belief reports, our intuition that “Lois believes that Kent flies” is false results from our mistakenly identifying what this sentence implicates, which is false, with what it says, which is true. Whatever the merits of this proposal, it is here argued that the naive theory’s analysis of negative belief reports—sentences such as “Lois doesn't believe that Kent flies”—gives rise to equally problematic clashes with intuition, but that in this case no “pragmatic” explanation is available. (...) In particular, it is argued that there are situations at which, although “Lois believes that Superman flies” and “Lois doesn't believe that Kent flies” appear consistent, a speaker must contradict himself when he utters both. It is also argued that the hidden-indexical theory of belief reports—which otherwise respects our ordinary intuitions regarding belief reports—similarly fails to explain this intuition. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Preliminaries Descriptions and Quantification Descriptions and Predication Conclusion.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:66 Discussion REJOINDER TO DEJNOZKA'S REPLY GARY OSTERTAG Philosophy/ New YorkU. New York,NY 10003, USA [email protected] It is common knowledge that Russell does not explicitly endorse modal logic in any of his major logical writings. Nor does my review of BertrandRusseli onModalityand LogicalRelevance' suggest that Jan Dejnozka denies or is somehow unaware of this. On the contrary, I assume it to be obvious that any commitment Russell (...) may have had to modal logic must be implicitin his writings, nor explicit. The real issue is whether there is evidence of any such commitment. I will state, briefly,why I remain sceptical. First, Dejnozka's book lacks any interpretive methodology. When the question arises, In whichcontextsis itpermissibleto translateRusseli's language(formal orinformal)intoa modalsystem?, we get the following: amibute a modal logic to Russell if "it is more reasonable than not to paraphrase Russell's thinking into the modal logic." This condition, we are told, "is met to the extent that acertain modal logic is logicallyimplicit in Russell's thinking." All of which goes without saying, but it simply delays the inevitable question: when is a modal logic logicallyimplicit in a text? Dejnozka's current answer: a modal logic is logically implicit in a text when the text logically implies the paraphrase.2 But the final suggestion is incoherent, since we cannot tell what a text logical1y implies until we have discerned its logicalform-i.e. until we havealready paraphrased it into some formal idiom or other. A related problem is that Dejnozka consistently failsto distinguish two sorts of claims: • Certain passagesin Russell lend themselves to a modal interpretationthey can be captured in a given system of modal logic, e.g. S13. • Such an interpretation reflects Russell'sintentions. That a modal system captures one or another of Russell's accounts of logical truth in itself entails nothing regarding Russell'sintentions. The modal system G described by George Boolos in a munber of publications provides an alterna- ' "Russell's Modal Logic?", Russelin.s. 20 (2000): 165-72. 2 "Reply to Ostertag", Russell, n.s. 21 (2001): 63-5 (at 65). Discussion 67 rive formalization of Peano Arithmetic, enabling the derivation of Godel's incompleteness theorems. Yet the fact that this is possible does not in any way suggest that Godel himself was implicitly committed to G. Unfortunately, Dejnozka often writes as if the mere possibility of a modal interpretation is genuinely revealing as to Russell's intemions. Bm it is just as implausible to maintain this as it is to claim that it was Gi:idel'sintention to present Boolos's G.3 Second, as I maintain in my review, Dejnozka fails to take seriously the many comexts in which Russell is explicitly critical of modality. Dejnozka responds that he has quoted these very passagesand that he "embraces them as half-but only half-of [his] basic message" ("Reply", p. 64). But citing contexts in which Russell appears to find modality congenial does nothing to mitigate the force of the contexts in which Russell explicitly repudiates modality. It is Dejnozka's responsibility to explain how the latter are to cohere with his interpretation. To avoid this issue is to skirt the real philosophical and interpretive challenge that the project entails. Finally, we come to Dejnozka's confusions surrounding MDL-the triad of equivalences that underwrite the interpretation of Principiaas a modal logic. In light of Dejnozka's steadfast refusal to formalize the various modal systems he amibmes to Russell, it hardly makes a differencewhether MDLis a modal logic or merely, to use his terminology, a "modal theory" (assuming that the latter ultimately amounts to something other than a modal logic).4What is importam is whether MDLis trivial. If it is, then it is quite beside the point to pursue the various extensions of MDL.Since I maimain that Russell is not commined, implicitly or otherwise, to a substantive reading of MDL-one in which the modal operators have their conventional meanings-then he is not committed to these extensions, so there is no need for detailed discussion. What remains central is my argtunent for the claim that MDL is trivial. Bm this argmnent (unacknowledged by Dejnozka) is there for... (shrink)

Russellianism is characterized as the view that ‘that’-clauses refer to Russellian propositions, familiar set-theoretic pairings of objects and properties. Two belief-reporting sentences, S and S*, possessing the same Russellian content, but differing in their intuitive truthvalue, are provided. It is argued that no Russellian explanation of the difference in apparent truthvalue is available, with the upshot that the Russellian fails to explain how a speaker who asserts S but rejects S* can be innocent of inconsistency, either in what she says (...) or, at least, in what she implicates. Yet, while there is no semantic or pragmatic explanation of the substitution failure consistent with Russellianism, there remains the possibility of a purely psychological explanation that is, nonetheless, Russellian. This is an attractive option. It comes at a cost, however, since, in abandoning the project of providing a semantic or pragmatic explanation of anti-substitutivity intuitions, the Russellian is no longer in the business of explaining how a rational, well-informed speaker, with no incentive to mislead, can avoid inconsistency in reporting the facts as they appear. (shrink)

I here revisit a debate between Antonin Scalia and Ronald Dworkin concerning the constitutionality of capital punishment. As is well known, Scalia maintained that the consistency of capital punishment with the Eighth Amendment can be established on purely textualist principles; Dworkin denied this. There are, Dworkin maintained, two readings of the Eighth Amendment available to the textualist. But only on one of these readings is the constitutionality of capital punishment secured; on the other, ‘principled’, reading it is not. Moreover, breaking (...) the stalemate in favour of the former reading cannot be decided on textualist principles alone. To resolve the issue, Scalia is forced to appeal to interpretive principles he has explicitly disavowed – principles that permit us to go beyond the text and invoke the framers’ intentions. In this paper, I argue that Dworkin has misdescribed the situation: there is in fact a plausible textualist argument that favours Scalia’s reading – one that, as per its textualist credentials, makes no reference to the framers’ intentions or expectations. (shrink)

In The Things We Mean, Stephen Schiffer defends a novel account of the entities to which belief reports relate us and to which their that-clauses refer. For Schiffer, the referred-to entities—propositions—exist in virtue of contingencies of our linguistic practices, deriving from “pleonastic restatements” of ontologically neutral discourse. Schiffer’s account of the individuation of propositions derives from his treatment of that -clause reference. While that -clauses are referential singular terms, their reference is not determined by the speaker’s referential intentions. Rather, their (...) reference is determined in a top-down manner—in Schiffer’s words, “by what the speaker and audience mutually take to be essential to the truth-value of the belief report.” While this accounts for a deep disanalogy between belief reports and other relational propositions—a disanalogy emphasized by Schiffer—I argue that the proposal runs into trouble when we consider the case of de re belief. I close by showing how a modification of Schiffer’s approach—one differing in essential ways from the theory developed in Things—is capable of handling these difficulties. (shrink)

Peter Pagin: Indeterminacy of Translation: We discuss the content of the indeterminacy thesis, Quine's arguments for it and his associated behaviorism, consequences of the thesis, and some objections against it.

Conley et al. (2023) analyze the attempts at public engagement (PE) by five governance groups. These projects were conducted by organizations that endorse both the goals and values of PE. The autho...

Gary Ostertag has presented a new puzzle for Russellianism about belief reports. He argues that Russellians do not have the resources to solve this puzzle in terms of pragmatic phenomena. I argue to the contrary that the puzzle can be solved according to Nathan Salmon’s pragmatic account of belief reports, provided that the account is properly understood. Specifically, the puzzle can be solved so long as Salmon’s guises are not identified with sentences.

Since the 1970s Gary Watson has published a series of brilliant and highly influential essays on human action, examining such questions as: in what ways are we free and not free, rational and irrational, responsible or not for what we do? Moral philosophers and philosophers of action will welcome this collection, representing one of the most important bodies of work in the field.

Debate over whether health care institutions or individual providers should have a legally protected right to conscientiously refuse to offer legal services to patients who request them has grown exponentially due to the increasing legalization of morally contested services. This debate is particularly acute for Catholic health care providers. We elucidate Catholic teaching regarding the nature of conscience and the intrinsic value of being free to act in accord with one’s conscience. We then outline the primary positions defended in this (...) debate and respond to critics of Catholic teaching. In so doing, we show how Catholic health care providers’ claims to conscientiously refuse to offer specific health care services are not essentially faith-based, but are founded upon publicly defensible reasons. We also address the question of whether conscientiously refusing health care providers may become complicit in moral wrongdoing or potentially cause scandal by means of disclosure or referral to another provider. (shrink)

In a recent issue of the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, several scholars wrote on the topic of ethics expertise in clinical ethics consultation. The articles in this issue exemplified what we consider to be two troubling trends in the quest to articulate a unique expertise for clinical ethicists. The first trend, exemplified in the work of Lisa Rasmussen, is an attempt to define a role for clinical ethicists that denies they have ethics expertise. Rasmussen cites the dependence of ethical (...) expertise on irresolvable meta-ethical debates as the reason for this move. We argue against this deflationary strategy because it ends up smuggling in meta-ethical assumptions it claims to avoid. Specifically, we critique Rasmussen’s distinction between the ethical and normative features of clinical ethics cases. The second trend, exemplified in the work of Dien Ho, also attempts to avoid meta-ethics. However, unlike Rasmussen, Ho tries to articulate a notion of ethics expertise that does not rely upon meta-ethics. Specifically, we critique Ho’s attempts to explain how clinical ethicists can resolve moral disputes using what he calls the “Default Principle” and “arguments by parity.” We show that these strategies do not work unless those with the moral disagreement already share certain meta-ethical assumptions. Ultimately, we argue that the two trends of attempting to avoid meta-ethics by denying that clinical ethicists have ethics expertise, and attempting to articulate how ethics expertise can be used to resolve disputes without meta-ethics both fail because they do not, in fact, avoid doing meta-ethics. We conclude that these trends detract from what clinical ethics consultation was founded to do and ought to still be doing—provide moral guidance, which requires ethics expertise, and engagement with meta-ethics. To speak of ethicists without ethics expertise leaves their role in the clinic dangerously unclear and unjustified. (shrink)

The first part of the essay explores the relations between the will and practical reason or judgement. The second part takes up decision in the realm of belief, i.e. deciding that such and such is so. This phenomenon raises two questions. Since we decide that as well as to, should we speak of a doxastic will? Secondly, should we regard ourselves as active in the formation of our judgements as in the formation of our intentions? The author's answer to these (...) two further questions is ‘no’ and ‘yes’, respectively: the boundaries between the active and the passive are not marked by the will. (shrink)

This book offers a detailed look at Guattari's working methods in transdisciplinary experimentation from the time of his youth to his final years.His youthful adventures in the post-war Youth Hostels movement, decisive contact with institutional pedgagogy and the mentor figures of Fernand Oury and his brother Jean, give rise to an extraordinary penchant for organizational innovation in his life at Clinique de La Borde in Cour-Cheverny, France, and collective forms of expression manifested in publishing ventures and diverse collaborative research formations.Guattari's (...) highly original and hitherto neglected theories of a-signifyng semiotics and minor cinema are explored in depth with reference to the political goals of the critique of infoculture and the molecular revolutionary tendencies that are released in the search for a people to come.Guttari's engagement with eco-politics and art practices displays his originality as a political thinker and is firmly grounded on his exporation of how subjectivity is produced inlate capitalism.Guattari's ground-breaking conception of transversal politics is fully explored in relation to Michel Foucault's sense of the concept and its role in global political theory. (shrink)

With its unique combination of depth, clarity, and humor that has enchanted millions, this beloved classic by bestselling author Gary Zukav opens the fascinating world of quantum physics to readers with no mathematical or technical background. "Wu Li" is the Chinese phrase for physics. It means "patterns of organic energy," but it also means "nonsense," "my way," "I clutch my ideas," and "enlightenment." These captivating ideas frame Zukav's evocative exploration of quantum mechanics and relativity theory. Delightfully easy to read, (...) The Dancing Wu Li Masters illuminates the compelling powers at the core of all we know. (shrink)