In the course of the discussion, Professor Quine pinpoints the difficulties involved in translation, brings to light the anomalies and conflicts implicit in our ...

The main thesis of this paper is that we sometimes are disposed to accept false and even jointly inconsistent claims by virtue of our semantic competence, and that this comes to light in the sorites and liar paradoxes. Among the subsidiary theses are that this is an important source of indeterminacy in truth conditions, that we must revise basic assumptions about semantic competence, and that classical logic and bivalence can be upheld in the face of the sorites paradox.

We give a precis of our book Insensitive Semantics.

Some philosophers plaintively wonder why there is something rather than nothing. Others refuse to wonder: Explaining has its field of application outside of which the activity makes no sense.

Some philosophers plaintively wonder why there is something rather than nothing. Others refuse to wonder: Explaining has its field of application outside of which the activity makes no sense.

Knowledge and Reference in Empirical Science is a fascinating study of the bounds between science and language: in what sense, and of what, does science provide knowledge? Is science an instrument only distantly related to what's real? Can the language of science be used to adequately describe the truth? In this book, Jody Azzouni investigates the technology of science - the actual forging and exploiting of causal links, between ourselves and what we endeavor to know and understand. Here can be (...) found one of the earliest severely careful analyses of Putnam's notorious permutation argument, as well as the responses to it by David Lewis and Michael Devitt, among others. The ways in which the references of noun phrases transcend our capacities to fix reference by human means (e.g. causation) are shown and the consequences of this are drawn clearly. (shrink)

_Knowledge and Reference in Empirical Science_ is a fascinating study of the bounds between science and language: in what sense, and of what, does science provide knowledge? Is science an instrument only distantly related to what's real? Can the language of science be used to adequately describe the truth? In this book, Jodi Azziouni investigates the technology of science - the actual forging and exploiting of causal links, between ourselves and what we endeavor to know and understand.

When ordinary people--mathematicians among them--take something to follow from something else, they are exposing the backbone of our self-ascribed ability to reason. Jody Azzouni investigates the connection between that ordinary notion of consequence and the formal analogues invented by logicians. One claim of the book is that, despite our apparent intuitive grasp of consequence, we do not introspect rules by which we reason, nor do we grasp the scope and range of the domain, as it were, of our reasoning. This (...) point is illustrated with a close analysis of a paradigmatic case of ordinary reasoning: mathematical proof. (shrink)

Knowledge and Reference in Empirical Science is a fascinating study of the bounds between science and language: In what sense does science provide knowledge? Is it to be taken literally? Is science an instrument only distantly related to what's real? Does the language of science adequately describe the truth? Jody Azzouni approaches these questions through an analysis of the "reference" of kind terms. He investigates the technology of science--the actual forging and exploiting of causal links--and shows how this technology allows (...) for knowledge-gathering, why scientific lore must be regarded as true, and in what ways our access to the universe is anchored in observation. The book then explores the language of science and shows how this flexible tool enables us to transform our fragmented investigations of the world into a unitary and seamless discourse. (shrink)

When ordinary people - mathematicians among them - take something to follow from something else, they are exposing the backbone of our self-ascribed ability to reason. Jody Azzouni investigates the connection between that ordinary notion of consequence and the formal analogues invented by logicians. One claim of the book is that, despite our apparent intuitive grasp of consequence, we do not introspect rules by which we reason, nor do we grasp the scope and range of the domain, as it were, (...) of our reasoning. This point is illustrated with a close analysis of a paradigmatic case of ordinary reasoning: mathematical proof. (shrink)

In these essays the minimalist approach to linguistic theory is formulated and progressively developed.

_Insensitive Semantics_ is an overview of and contribution to the debates about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one. Provides detailed and wide-ranging overviews of the central positions and arguments surrounding contextualism Addresses broad and varied aspects of the distinction between the semantic and non-semantic content of language Defends a distinctive (...) and explanatorily powerful combination of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism Confronts core problems which not only run to the heart of philosophy of language and linguistics, but which arise in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy as well. (shrink)

(Beall ed. The Revenge of the Liar, forthcoming from Oxford University Press) > The main presentation of my approach to the semantic paradoxes. I take them to show that understanding a natural language is sharing a cognitive relation to a logically false semantic theory with other speakers.