Currently developing my work at languageandphilosophy.blogetary.com Comparing the work of Wittgenstein and St Augustine on language one is aware of 

a startling dichotomy, are these two theses mutually exclusive? On the one hand we have the Augustinian theory, put simply, that language enables 

the individual to articulate ever deeper layers of his soul. On the other hand we have Wittgenstein, put simply again, language and its continued 

development IS the soul. Language gives the child (and the adult for that matter) the power to articulate, and through articulation to control, his 

feelings and by extension his environment. He can distance himself from his self, gain perspectives which are truly awesome in their power. 
Clearly such differing theses have profound consequences in many areas of study, not least that of religion.

I am a graduate student at the University of Ghana, West Africa. I am currently undertaking a study on Causative constructions in Ewe, a Kwa language from the Niger-Congo family and using Cognitive Linguistics as a theoretical framework. I find it very difficult to establish a link between the theory and the work. Can I have advice how I can use the theory to analyze causative constructions in the language and achieve my research objectives?

I wonder if anyone knows of useful recent discussions of Tyler Burge on Frege's hierarchy of senses (in 'Frege and the Hierarchy')? And I would be interested in anyone's comments on the extended Postscript to the reprint of the paper in Burge's 'Truth, Structure, and Method', or especially interested in hearing of anyone's thoughts on the section in the Postscript that discusses his 'Principle for Canonical Names of Senses'. Does anyone think the discussion demode?

Redundancy theory of truth has been regarded one (may the most) powerful objection to Realism, new truth theorist, articulating rather different notion of truth claim that the semantic thesis of Realism must be rejected - and hence the whole project of realism - i think there is something wrong with - for example - Gary Kemps article and reasoning for redundancy theory of truth.
there could two problems be differed
1) the redundancy argument for redundancy of SEMANTIC content of truth;
2) the redundancy argument for redundancy of ASSERTION that notion;
arguments - as far as i have seen - are related to the second but not the first ( see for example Ramsey truism and Strawson's "Truth" and Gary Kemp's article "Meaning and truth conditions").
 that seems to be about the redundancy argument for ASSERTION of truth predicate, but the reasoning does not entail that "truth" does not have any genuine semantic content. i think the very problem could be found in Tarski's "Sem ... (read more)

Hi all, 
In the PI Wittgenstein remarks that "The common behaviour of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language". My question is, what exactly does W. means by 'the common behaviour of mankind'? I guess it has to do with the human "form of life", but again, if so, what does W. mean by this? 

Cheers, 
Alfredo.     

I couldn't find Tim's email so am instead posting here a link to my critical discussion of his paper (which may also be of interest to other readers):
Moral Judgments, 2Dism, and Attitudinal Commitments.


Cheers,
Richard

This is awesome. Tractatus power!

I fairly recently read a paper, which I now can't find, which complained that much of the discussion relating to content, given in that-clauses, missed the point that these were clauses (perhaps essentially incomplete). I think I recall Stephen Schiffer on something like that, but I'm not sure. Does anyone know this, or some connected relevant handling of clauses?

Where should one begin if one is looking to start reading their work?

In "On Denoting" (1905), Russell presents a theory of denotation which relies on the notion of a variable.  Russell says very little about variables in this paper.  He says only that they are "fundamental," and that they are "essentially and wholly undetermined" constituents of propositional functions.  I think I understand the role of this notion in Russell's theory, and why Russell says what he does about it,  He appeals to non-denoting elements in propositions in order to avoid having to interpret "a=b" as "a=a."  By using variables, he can claim that no elements in a propositional function serve the role of the denoting phrase.  For example, in the fully explicit presentation of "Scott is the author of Waverley," we do not find anything for which we could substitute the phrase "the author of Waverley."  The meaning of the denoting phrase is only found when we interpret the proposition as a whole, and cannot be found in any of its parts. 

My problem is, I don't know what it means to say ... (read more)

In 1976 Fitch proposed a tight argument against Kripkean a posteriori necessary truths. He argued that if 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus' are rigid designators with no descriptive content, then 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' and 'Phosphorus is Phosphorus' express the same proposition, one we can know a priori.

In this 2004 paper he tries to rescue Kripke's position by adding a new kind of entities in addition to sentences and propositions, namely, statements. He writes on p. 302:

"A statement is an interpreted sentence (type). The difference, for example, between the sentence “You are a philosopher” and the statement that you are a philosopher is that the former is uninterpreted and could mean (in some language) any number of things. The statement expressed by our use of the sentence given our interpretation according to the rules of our language is something like the indicated person has the property of being a philosopher. The proposition asserted by the utterance of the sentence in a given cont ... (read more)

Hi, I'm writing an essay on whether George Bealer gives a good deductive argument for the existence of universals in this paper. I was wondering if any one has any thoughts on this?
Thanks

This is by a wide margin my most-downloaded paper on PhilPapers. Why is this? I don't think it's my /best/ paper -- 'Multidisjunctive' and 'Externalist's guide' are more interesting, in my view; and 'Noise' is (IMHO!) the final word on its subject-matter (if sort of hard to read).
Theories:

1. High-profile forum? (But 'Noise', in /Mind/, has way fewer downloads)
2. Critical? (But this paper has more than twice as many downloads as the paper it criticizes)
3. On the rarely discussed topic of the language of experience reports? (But see the previous)
4. Feet in several categories? 

Somewhat inclined to think it's all of these working together: it's the most-downloaded paper in Pronouns and Anaphora, and the fourth most-downloaded paper in What is it Like?; also there's stuff in there for the active HOT community; and there's the imprimatur of /Phil Review/; and it opens a can of, ah, criticism of Lormand's weird view, for fun.

When we say that "P" is possible iff there is a possible world where "P" is true, we can continue and say that there is a possible world where "P" is true iff "A" is true, and "A" is not something about a non-actual possible world. Such an approach would allow us to use the vocabulary of possible worlds, while sustaining an agnostic or an anti-realist position about the the existence of non-actual possible worlds. Can such a reductive approach to possible worlds solve the problem of ontological commitmentt to the existence of non-actual possible worlds? And what do you think that "A" must be as non-actual possible worlds dont get implicated?

I published in 1994 a paper alleging to state what all and only games have in common in virtue of which they are games
( "Games and Family Resemblances," Philosophical Investigations, Volume 17, No. 2, April 1994, 435-443). 
There have been no responses. It seems to me what I wrote is worth refuting, anyhow,
and thinking about games is fun, so I wonder if you’all will tell me what you think. I quote below (and paraphrase) the central part of my paper.

‘A promising place to seek the essence of games is within the class of rule-defined activities, that is, activities it would be impossible to perform without following rules. So, for example, we could eat, run, and fight without following rules, but we couldn't play chess, bridge, or basketball. Not all rule-defined activities are games, however (e.g. pace Wittgenstein, speaking a language).

What makes a rule-defined activity a game? I propose the following theory: A game is a rule-defined activity involving a state which counts as performing ... (read more)

Can anyone point me towards criticisms of this paper?

I understand it was very well-received.  Is there a general consensus that knowledge-how is a variety of knowledge-that?

I tend to think of knowledge-that as a variety of knowledge-how.  I think that was Ryle's outlook, as per chapter 2 of The Concept of Mind, where he seems to regard knowledge-that as a particular set of abilities to do with language.  I thus wonder if Stanley and Williamson might have misrepresented Ryle's distinction.  Admittedly, this is just a first-blush response.  I have not yet analyzed their critique of Ryle's argument against the "intellectualist legend."

Any pointers here would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Jason

In this paper I described three fundamentally different kinds of classes; but the idea of ‘natural kinds’ never crossed my mind.  (That shows how long ago it was.)
I guess I now should say something like, “The extension of a ‘natural kind’ K is governed by the (usually hidden) features that are responsible for such and such observable distinguishing features in these (pointing) paradigmatic Ks.”

That would give us an important, and interesting fourth kind of class. Right?

Cross-posted from http://mleseminar.wordpress.com/

...

This week we discussed some unpublished material by Antony on ‘might’ counterfactuals. The handout is here, and the paper is here.

We thought a bit about cases in which ‘could’ and ‘might’ come apart. In the paper, Antony discussed sentences like

33b)  If we’d left the gate open, the dog could have got out; yet if we’d left the gate open, it isn’t the case that the dog might have got out.

The felicity of such sentences seems to show that at least some ‘might’ counterfactuals shouldn’t be analysed in terms of ‘could’, but instead should be given an epistemic reading. Antony isn’t averse to this idea – in fact, his final view is that ‘might’ is ambiguous in counterfactual contexts between the epistemic reading and the ability reading. However, this does invite the further question of what determines the appropriate reading for some given ‘might’ counterfactual.

Fron 33b we naturally conclude though the dog has the ability to get out, it is ... (read more)

Cross-posted from http://mleseminar.wordpress.com/
...

My handout for the seminar yesterday is here – the paper we were discussing is here (subscription required). We were glad to have Cian Dorr drop in for the discussion – he really livened up what might have turned into an hour and a half of Gonzalo teaching everybody about how truthmakers work!

My take on the contribution which Gonzalo’s paper makes to the big-picture debate over truthmakers is as follows. Conceptions of truthmaking which appeal only to entailment, or to necessitation, get things importantly wrong. The way to fix up the account of truthmaking is to appeal to a metaphysical ‘in virtue of’ relation. Truthmaking is not mere sufficiency for the truth of a proposition. However, this undermines much of the appeal that truthmaker theory had for some of its original proponents – it does not, after all, allow us to avoid primitive metaphysical ‘grounding’ or ‘dependence’ relations. Still, it does not make truthmaker theory alto ... (read more)

Cross-posted from http://mleseminar.wordpress.com/
...

The presentation is here. Some thoughts which came out of the discussion:

- If Stanley’s argument in section 3 that gradability doesn’t imply context-sensitivity is sound, then it renders section 2 rather superfluous, as that is devoted to arguing that ‘knows’ is not gradable.

- But even if Stanley’s argument in section 3 is sound, his argument against contextualism still looks pretty weak. At most he’s shown that ‘knows’ isn’t contextual in virtue of  ‘justified’ being gradable. But it’s a perfectly consistent position to say that the context-sensitivity of knowledge is of a distinctive kind, different from the context-sensitivity of gradable adjectives. Plausibly, Lewisian contextualism is of this sort.

- Stanley’s argument in section 3 doesn’t look sound to me. It rests strongly on the supposed counterexample of a gradable and non-context sensitive predicate ‘ taller than six feet’. This is meant to be gradable because you can be slig ... (read more)