The metaphysics of words

Philosophical Studies 81 (2-3):193 - 214 (1996)
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Abstract

Semantic indeterminacy is the ether of philosophy of language. It fills the interstices of our intentions and pervades accounts of presupposition, tense, fiction, translation, and especially, vagueness. Yet semantic indeterminacy is as impossible as ectoplasm. Indeed, more so! The demonstration need only borrow a few assumptions used elsewhere in widely accepted impossibility results. Since an impossibility is never a necessary condition for anything actual, semantic indeterminacy must be superfluous. Language is no more explained by semantic indeterminacy than calculus is explained by (pre-Robinsonian) infinitesimals.

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Roy Sorensen
University of Texas at Austin

Citations of this work

Inexpressible properties and Grelling’s antinomy.Benjamin Schnieder - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 148 (3):369 - 385.
The tao of metaphysics.Philipp Keller & Elena Cassetta - 2008 - Swiss Philosophical Preprints.

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References found in this work

Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics.Peter Strawson - 1959 - London, England: Routledge. Edited by Wenfang Wang.
Vagueness.Timothy Williamson - 1994 - New York: Routledge.
Philosophy of logic.Willard Van Orman Quine - 1970 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Edited by Simon Blackburn & Keith Simmons.
The Principles of Mathematics.Bertrand Russell - 1903 - Cambridge, England: Allen & Unwin.

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