Two fundamental rules of reasoning are Universal Generalisation and Existential Instantiation. Applications of these rules involve stipulations (even if only implicitly) such as ‘Let n be an arbitrary number’ or ‘Let John be an arbitrary Frenchman’. Yet the semantics underlying such stipulations are far from clear. What, for example, does ‘n’ refer to following the stipulation that n be an arbitrary number? In this paper, we argue that ‘n’ refers to a number—an ordinary, particular number such as 58 or 2,345,043. (...) Which one? We do not and cannot know, because the reference of ‘n’ is fixed arbitrarily. Underlying this proposal is a more general thesis: Arbitrary Reference (AR): It is possible to fix the reference of an expression arbitrarily. When we do so, the expression receives its ordinary kind of semantic-value, though we do not and cannot know which value in particular it receives. Our aim in this paper is defend AR. In particular, we argue that AR can be used to provide an account of instantial reasoning (one that is better than the prominent alternatives), and we suggest that AR can also figure in offering new solutions to a range of difficult philosophical puzzles. (shrink)

This short piece discusses the sense-reference, intension-extension, and, from AI (artificial intelligence), the declarative knowledge-procedural knowledge dichotomies with an eye towards clarifying the difficult question of authorship in the case of computer-generated works.

By what types of properties do we specify twinges, toothaches, and other kinds of mental states? Wittgenstein considers two methods. Procedure one, direct, private acquaintance: A person connects a word to the sensation it specifies through noticing what that sensation is like in his own experience. Procedure two, outward signs: A person pins his use of a word to outward, pre-verbal signs of the sensation. I identify and explain a third procedure and show we in fact specify many kinds of (...) mental states in this way. (shrink)

That every sensation type be marked by a distinctive outward sign is not a prerequisite for having names for different kinds of sensations.

In mathematical languages and in predicate logic coreferential terms can be interchanged in any sentence without altering the truth value of that sentence. Replacing 3 + 5 by 12 − 4 in any formula of arithmetic will never lead from truth to falsity or from falsity to truth. But natural languages are different in this respect. While in some contexts it is always allowed to interchange coreferential terms, other contexts do not admit this. An example of the first sort of (...) context is likes bananas: for any two coreferential noun phrases A and B the sentence A likes bananas is true if and only if B likes bananas is. A context that does not allow intersubstitution of coreferents is The Ancients knew that appears at dawn. If we fill the hole with the noun phrase the Morning Star we get the true (1a), while if we plug in the Evening Star we get the false (1b). Yet the Morning Star and the Evening Star both refer to the planet Venus and are thus coreferential. (shrink)

Sometimes two expressions in a discourse can be about the same thing in a way that makes that very fact evident to the participants. Consider, for example, ‘he’ and ‘John’ in ‘John went to the store and he bought some milk’. Let us call this ‘de jure’ coreference. Other times, coreference is ‘de facto’ as with ‘Mark Twain’ and ‘Samuel Clemens’ in a sincere use of ‘Mark Twain is not Samuel Clemens’. Here, agents can understand the speech without knowing that (...) the names refer to the same person. After surveying many available linguistic and pragmatic tools (intentions to corefer, presuppositions, meanings, indexing, discourse referents, binding etc.) I conclude that we must posit a new semantic primitive to account for de jure coreference. (shrink)

This comment on Steven Boer's “Object-Dependent Thoughts” develops two examples: (1) a counterexample to the "axiom of the seamlessness of truth," namely, that there are no propositions, one true and one false, such that knowing the true one requires believing the false one; (2) a story about the first sighting of Neptune, by John Galle on September 23, 1846, that illustrates how one can understand Galle's remark "That is the planet whose position Leverrier calculated" without believing that there is something (...) to which Galle refers. (shrink)

In this fascinating work, Scott Soames offers a new conception of the relationship between linguistic meaning and assertions made by utterances. He gives meanings of proper names and natural kind predicates and explains their use in attitude ascriptions. He also demonstrates the irrelevance of rigid designation in understanding why theoretical identities containing such predicates are necessary, if true.

Nelson Goodman and, following him, Catherine Z. Elgin and Keith Lehrer have claimed that sometimes a sample is a symbol that stands for the property it is a sample of. The relation between the sample and the property it stands for is called 'exemplification' (Goodman, Elgin) or 'exemplarisation' (Lehrer). Goodman and Lehrer argue that the notion of exemplification sheds light on central problems in aesthetics and the philosophy of mind. However, while there seems to be a phenomenon to be captured, (...) Goodman's account of exemplification has several flaws. In this paper I will offer an alternative account of exemplification that is inspired by Grice's idea that one can communicate something by providing one's audience with intention-independent evidence and letting them draw the obvious conclusion for themselves. This explication of exemplification will solve the problems that arose for Goodman's theory in the spirit of his approach.1. (shrink)