This book explores linguistic and philosophical issues presented by sentences expressing personal taste, such as Roller coasters are fun, or Licorice is tasty. Standard semantic theories explain the meanings of sentences by specifying the conditions under which they are true; here, Peter Lasersohn asks how we can account for sentences that are concerned with matters of opinion rather than matters of fact. He argues that a truth-theoretic semantic theory is appropriate even for sentences like these, but that for such (...) sentences, truth and falsity must be assigned relative to perspectives, rather than absolutely. The book provides a detailed and explicit formal grammar, working out the implications of this conception of truth both for simple sentences and for reports of mental attitude. The semantic analysis is paired with a pragmatic theory explaining what it means to assert a sentence which is true or false only relativistically, and with a speculative account of the functional motivation for a relativized notion of truth. (shrink)

This paper argues that truth values of sentences containing predicates of “personal taste” such as fun or tasty must be relativized to individuals. This relativization is of truth value only, and does not involve a relativization of semantic content: If you say roller coasters are fun, and I say they are not, I am negating the same content which you assert, and directly contradicting you. Nonetheless, both our utterances can be true (relative to their separate contexts). A formal semantic theory (...) is presented which gives this result by introducing an individual index, analogous to the world and time indices commonly used, and by treating the pragmatic context as supplying a particular value for this index. The context supplies this value in the derivation of truth values from content, not in the derivation of content from character. Predicates of personal taste therefore display a kind of contextual variation in interpretation which is unlike the familiar variation exhibited by pronouns and other indexicals. (shrink)

Plurality, Conjunction and Events presents a novel theory of plural and conjoined phrases, in an event-based semantic framework. It begins by reviewing options for treating the alternation between `collective' and `distributive' readings of sentences containing plural or conjoined noun phrases, including analyses from both the modern and the premodern literature. It is argued that plural and conjoined noun phrases are unambiguously group-denoting, and that the collective/distributive distinction therefore must be located in the predicates with which these noun phrases combine. More (...) specifically, predicates must have a hidden argument place for events; the collective/distributive distinction may then be represented in the part/whole structure of these events. This allows a natural treatment of `collectivizing' adverbial expressions, and of `pluractional' affixes; it also allows a unified semantics for conjunction, in which conjoined sentences and predicates denote groups of events, much like conjoined noun phrases denote groups of individuals. (shrink)

Recent arguments for relativist semantic theories have centered on the phenomenon of “faultless disagreement.” This paper offers independent motivation for such theories, based on the interpretation of predicates of personal taste in certain attitude contexts and presuppositional constructions. It is argued that the correct interpretation falls out naturally from a relativist theory, but requires special stipulation in a theory which appeals instead to the use of hidden indexicals; and that a hidden indexical analysis presents problems for contemporary syntactic theory.

This dissertation provides a model-theoretic semantics for English sentences atttributing a property or action to a group of objects, either collectively or distributively. It is shown that certain adverbial expressions select for collective predicates; therefore collective and distibutive predicates must be distinguishable. This finding is problematic for recent accounts of distributive predicates which analyze such predicates as taking group-level arguments, and hence as not distinguishable from collective predicates. ;A group-level treatment of distributives is possible, however, if predicate denotations are relativized (...) to a set of events for which a part/whole relation is defined. An event in which a group performs an action distributively will have subevents in which each of the group's members perform the same action; an event in which the group performs the action collectively will not. ;This analysis also makes possible an account of the fact that adverbials expressing collective action commonly have an additional use expressing spatial proximity, both in English and cross-linguistically. . A spatial "trace" function on the set of events allows formal definitions for the spatial uses of such adverbials to exactly parallel the definitions for the collectivizing uses. ;The dissertation also provides arguments for a set-theoretic model for plurality, in which the group membership relation is distinct from the subgroup relation. ;Certain quantifiers are shown sensitive to distinction between different sorts of group-level event. To accommodate this fact, it is suggested that verbal denotations provide, for each event, both an "inclusion set" and an "exclusion set"--corresponding roughly to positive and negative denotations. If the inclusion and exclusion sets are allowed under certain circumstances not to complement each other, correct results obtain. ;The splitting of verbal denotations into inclusion and exclusion sets also allows the solution of certain problems in previous accounts of the semantics of subject-verb agreement for number. The dissertation closes with a defense of the hypothesis that agreement is conditioned primarily by the semantics. (shrink)

It is a truism that people speak ‘loosely’——that is, that they often say things that we can recognize not to be true, but which come close enough to the truth for practical purposes. Certain expressions. such as those including ‘exactly’, ‘all’ and ‘perfectly’, appear to serve as signals of the intended degree of approximation to the truth. This article presents a novel formalism for representing the notion of approximation to the truth, and analyzes the meanings of these expressions in terms (...) of this formalism. Pragmatic loosencss of this kind should be distinguished from authentic truth-conditional vagueness. (shrink)

Presents a unified semantics for various readings of 'together', using event mereology.

I argue that compositionality (in the sense of homomorphic interpretation) is compatible with radical and pervasive contextual effects on interpretation. Apparent problems with this claim lose their force if we are careful in distinguishing the question of how a grammar assigns interpretations from the question of how people figure out which interpretations the grammar assigns. I demonstrate, using a simple example, that this latter task must sometimes be done not by computing a derivation defined directly by the grammar, but through (...) the use of pragmatic background knowledge and extragrammatical reasoning, even when the grammar is designed to be fully compositional. The fact that people must sometimes use global pragmatic mechanisms to identify truth conditions therefore tells us nothing about whether the grammar assigns truth conditions compositionally. Compositional interpretation (or the lack thereof) is identifiable not by the mechanisms necessary to calculating truth conditions, but by the structural relation between the interpretation of a phrase in context and the interpretations of its parts in that same context. Even if this relation varies by context, an invariant grammar is possible if grammars can “invoke” pragmatic concepts; but this does not imply that grammatical theory must explain these concepts or incorporate a theory of pragmatics. (shrink)

Presents a series of generalizations of distributivity operators across a type hierarchy, in order to account for collective-distributive ambiguities for non-subject arguments.

Argues against a Gillon-style covers-based analysis of plural noun phrases.

I argue that sentence contents should be assigned truth-values relative to parameters other than a possible world only if those parameters are fixed by the context of assessment rather than the context of use. Standard counterexamples, including tense, de se attitudes, and knowledge ascriptions, all admit of alternative analyses which do not make use of such parameters. Moreover, allowing such indices greatly complicates the task of defining disagreement, and forces an odd separation between what is true, and what someone has (...) truthfully said. If non-world indices are always fixed by the context of assessment, a characterization of semantic theories as ?relativist? in terms of assessment-sensitivity converges with a characterization in terms of sensitivity to non-world indices. More tentatively, I suggest that even a possible world index, when used in the assignment of truth-values to sentence contents, should be fixed by the context of assessment, not the context of use. This eliminates MacFarlane's category of ?non-indexical contextualism?, and results in a system in which parameters fixed by the context of use are used only in the assignment of contents to linguistic expressions, and parameters used in the assignment of truth-values to contents are uniformly fixed by the context of assessment. (shrink)

I argue that common nouns should be analyzed as variables, rather than as predicates which take variables as arguments. This necessitates several unusual features to the analysis, such as allowing variables to be modally non-rigid, and assigning their values compositionally. However, treating common nouns as variables offers a variety of theoretical and empirical advantages over a more traditional analysis: It predicts the conservativity of nominal quantification, simplifies the analysis of articleless languages, derives the weak reading of sentences with donkey anaphora, (...) solves the proportion problem presented by quantifiers like ‘most’, improves the analysis of the temperature paradox, allows a more unified analysis of bare plurals, and regularizes the correspondence between syntactic categories and semantic types. (shrink)

Attempts to clarify some issues about the use of hidden arguments to predicates of personal taste, and motivate an analysis which does not make use of such arguments.

Generically interpreted bare plural noun phrases license donkey anaphora. This fact has unexpected consequences both for the analysis of generics and for the analysis of donkey anaphors. Specifically, if we assume a kindsbased analysis of bare plurals as in Carlson (1980), we will be forced to give up the idea that donkey anaphors are variables – presumably in favor of an E-type analysis. Conversely, if we assume that donkey anaphors are variables, we will be forced to give up Carlson’s treatment (...) of generically interpreted bare plurals as denoting kinds – presumably in favor of an analysis employing a generic operator like that of Wilkinson (1991), which quantifies over objects directly, without the mediation of kinds. The two issues are thus dependent on one another, and cannot be decided independently. This paper will not attempt to choose between an E-type and a variable-based analysis of donkey anaphors, or between a kinds-based and a kinds-free analysis of generic bare plurals, but only to point out that the choice one makes with regard to either one of these issues appears to force a particular choice with respect to the other issue. (shrink)

I compare Potts’ use of a ‘‘judge’’ parameter in semantic interpretation with the use of a similar parameter in Lasersohn (2005). The latter technique portrays the content of expressives as constant across speakers, while Pott’s technique does not. The idea that the content of expressives is a kind of presupposition is also briefly defended, and a technical problem in the ‘‘dynamics’’ of Pott’s formalism is pointed out.

Argues for an assimilation of sentential and predicate conjunction to collective conjunction, based on modification of predicates by adverbs such as 'alternately'.

Survey of issues pertaining to the semantics of mass and plural nouns.

Common nouns and noun phrases have usually been analyzed semantically as predicates. In quantified sentences, these predicates take variables as arguments. This paper develops and defends an analysis in which common nouns and noun phrases themselves are treated as variables, rather than as predicates taking variables as arguments. Several apparent challenges for this view will be addressed, including the modal non-rigidity of common nouns. Two major advantages to treating common nouns as variables will be presented: Such an analysis predicts that (...) all nominal quantification is conservative, rather than requiring conservativity to be stipulated as a constraint on determiner denotations; and it makes possible some improvements to the analysis of the temperature paradox, allowing for quantificational examples without adding a spurious layer of modal variability. (shrink)

Argues that certain conditional clauses are irreducibly adnominal, so that 'if' cannot be treated purely as a sentential connective. A unified analysis of adnominal if-clauses and ordinary if-clauses is possible, however, if we assume a semantic theory in which sentences denote sets of events rather than truth values.

What is the relation between models, as used in model-theoretic semantics, and the “world” which models represent? More specifically, let us consider the question of whether a single individual, event, time or other element in a model might be used to represent more than one individual, event, time or other object in the real world.

Responds to an argument against relativist semantics advanced in Cappelen and Hawthorne’s Relativism and Monadic Truth.

Margaret Macdonald was at the institutional heart of analytic philosophy in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. Yet, her views on the nature of philosophical theories diverge quite considerably from those of many of her contemporaries. In this paper, I focus on her 1953 article ‘Linguistic Philosophy and Perception’, a provocative paper in which Macdonald argues that the value of philosophical theories is more akin to that of poetry or art than science or mathematics. I do so for two reasons. First, (...) because it reveals just how far Macdonald’s meta- philosophical views diverged from those of many of her contemporaries. Second, because the discussion in LPP pre-empts recent literature on the nature of philosophical inquiry and the efficacy of philosophical arguments. Indeed, Macdonald’s paper is just as likely to provoke discussion today as it was in the 1950s. (shrink)

In September 2008, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) scientists successfully switched on the historic biggest physics device, the Large ...

When do two sentences say the same thing, that is, express the same content? We defend two-component (2C) semantics: the view that propositional contents comprise (at least) two irreducibly distinct constituents, (1) truth-conditions, and (2) subject-matter. We contrast 2C with one-component (1C) semantics, focusing on the view that subject-matter is reducible to truth- conditions. We identify exponents of this view and argue in favor of 2C. An appendix proposes a general formal template for propositional 2C semantics.

This paper provides a philosophical evaluation of the concept of handedness prevalent but largely unspoken in the scientific literature. This literature defines handedness as the preference or ability to use one hand rather than the other across a range of common activities. Using the philosophical discipline of phenomenology, I articulate and critique this conceptualization of handedness. Phenomenology shows defining a concept of handedness by focusing on hand use leads to a right hand biased concept. I argue further that a phenomenological (...) model based in spatial orientation rather than hand use provides a more inclusive concept of handedness. (shrink)

Debates about the semantics and pragmatics of predicates of personal taste have largely centered on contextualist and relativist proposals. In this paper, I argue in favor of an alternative, absolutist analysis of PPT. Theorists such as Max Kölbel and Peter Lasersohn have argued that we should dismiss absolutism due to its inability to accommodate the possibility of faultless disagreement involving PPT. My aim in the paper is to show how the absolutist can in fact accommodate this possibility by drawing (...) on an account of faultless disagreement that improves upon a recent proposal due to Karl Schafer. In amending Schafer’s proposal, I put forward an empirically informed view of our beliefs regarding matters of personal taste, as well as an account of our assertions concerning such matters. I also argue that absolutists should take disagreement about these matters to be conative, rather than doxastic, in nature. The anticipated result is an independently compelling account of faultless disagreement about matters of personal taste that fits naturally with absolutism. (shrink)

"This book is an augmented and updated translation by the author of Theorie des Subjekts: Subjectiviteat und Identiteat zwischen Moderne und Postmoderne, Teubingen, Francke-UTB, 2010 (3rd ed.)"--Title page verso.

P.F. Strawson's essay traces some formal characteristics of logic and grammar to their roots in general features of thought and experience.

The lecture that we have heard consists of excerpts from Professor Stanley’s forthcoming book Knowledge and Interest, and it consists of two parts, a messy part and a clean part; the messy part is from the book’s introduction, which describes the “central data that is at issue in this debate,” and the clean part is from Chapter 7, which presents an interesting criticism of a semantical theory of knowledge-attribution sentences that makes their truth-conditions relative to non-time-world circumstances of evaluation, e.g. (...) to a judgment-maker at a time. There is a nice discussion of Peter Lasersohn’s semantical views, with kudos, bricks, and bats to Mark Richard, Jeff King, Gareth Evans, John Hawthorne, David Kaplan, and David Lewis. Though I found this discussion of great interest and would have welcomed more discussion of an earlier view of Jason Stanley’s in which “what is said” and “what is believed” can be used to refer to entities that are not propositional, e.g. semantic values that are neutral with respect to time and place, a view of Stanley’s of which I am a fan, I was more provoked by the messy part: the appeal to intuitive linguistic data employed by supporters of epistemological contextualism, e.g. Stewart Cohen, Keith De Rose, a time-slice of David Lewis, among others. I will focus on what Professor Stanley says about the data in his paper and not worry the scholarly question about their relation to other views. (shrink)

Truth-relativism is the claim that the truth of statements is dependent on the context in which they are made. In this article, truth-relativism is considered as a way to explain disagreements. Viewpoint relativism, a recent version of truth-relativism, is introduced as a useful framework to analyse how truth-relativism approaches disagreements. Viewpoint relativism is based on contextual semantics and the logic of viewpoint, which is a two-dimensional modal logic. In viewpoint relativism, the central concept is a point of view in relation (...) to which truth claims are evaluated. Viewpoint relativism is compared to the truth-relativism of Peter Lasersohn and John MacFarlane. Finally, truth-relativism is defended against the critique of Paul Boghossian that it represents untenable ‘replacement relativism’. (shrink)

In this article I intend to justify six theses: (1) Temporal becoming is founded in an intuition-form of self-intuition, whereas physical space-time is independent of any form of intuition; (2) communicable thoughts are, as Kant says, products of self-consciousness; (3) both roots of idealism are connected by the tensed form of predication; (4) the thinking subject is, as Kant says, an appearance for itself; (5) the subject has, in virtue of this nature, the capacity of mental causality; and (6) mental (...) causality is a sufficient basis for a Kantian “causality from freedom”. (shrink)

In this book we present a collection of papers on the topic of applying paraconsistent logic to solve inconsistency related problems in science, mathematics and computer science. The goal is to develop, compare, and evaluate different ways of applying paraconsistent logic. After more than 60 years of mainly theoretical developments in many independent systems of paraconsistent logic, we believe the time has come to compare and apply the developed systems in order to increase our philosophical understanding of reasoning when faced (...) with inconsistencies. This book wants to be a first step toward an application based, constructive debate to tackle the question which systems are best applied for which kind of problems and which philosophical conclusions can be drawn from such applications. (shrink)

What is the relation between monetary policy and inequalities in income and wealth? This question has received insufficient attention, especially in light of the unconventional policies introduced since the 2008 financial crisis. The article analyzes three ways in which the concern central banks show for inequalities in their official statements remains incomplete and underdeveloped. First, central banks tend to care about inequality for instrumental reasons only. When they do assign intrinsic value to containing inequalities, they shy away from trade-offs with (...) the standard objectives of monetary policy that such a position entails. Second, central banks play down the causal impact monetary policy has on inequalities. When they do acknowledge it, they defend their actions by claiming that it is an unintended side effect, that it is temporary, and/or that any alternative policy would fare even worse. The article appeals to the doctrine of double effect to criticize these arguments. Third, even if one accepts that inequalities should be contained and that today’s monetary policies exacerbate them, is it both desirable and feasible to make containing inequalities part of the mandate of central banks? The article analyzes and rejects three attempts on the part of central banks to answer this question negatively. (shrink)

This white paper outlines the plans of the History Philosophy Culture Working Group of the Next Generation Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration.

Carroll shaped the corporate social responsibility discourse into a four-dimensional pyramid framework, which was later adapted to corporate citizenship and sustainability approaches. The four layers of the pyramid—structured from foundation to apex as economic, legal, ethical, and philanthropic responsibilities—drew considerable managerial attention. An important criticism of the economic foundation of the Carroll pyramid concerns the identification and ordering of the four dimensions, which are inadequately justified theoretically. The authors of this article propose an alternative approach that builds on the public (...) value concept, which integrates a microfoundation of psychological research into basic human needs. Drawing on their Swiss Dialogue process, the authors argue that a four-dimensional pyramid does have heuristic value for managers. The advantage of this alternative pyramid logic is that it may be contingently adapted to different cultural contexts, because it allows adaptive internal reordering. (shrink)

Factorial surveys integrate elements of survey research and classical experiments. Using a large number of respondents in a controlled setting, FSs approximate complex and realistic judgment situations through so-called vignettes—that is, carefully designed descriptions of hypothetical people, social situations, or scenarios. Despite being rooted, and predominantly applied, in sociology, FSs are particularly promising for business and society scholars. Given the multiplicity, inherent complexity, and sometimes fuzziness of B&S research objects, conventional research methods inevitably reach their limits. This article, therefore, systematically (...) presents methodological and thematic opportunities for FS studies in B&S research. It is argued that FSs are well suited to dealing with the complex interplay of societal-, organizational-, and individual-level factors in B&S research and to studying the principles underlying human perceptions, attitudes, values, social norms, and behavior. The application of the FS method is illustrated based on a showcase example in the realm of socially responsible investments. As the literature on the conceptualization of FSs is limited, methodological challenges are addressed to guide B&S researchers past the common methodological pitfalls. (shrink)

As much as Zimbabwe is considered one of the highly literate countries in the Global South, with well documented succession and inheritance laws, womenfolk continue to be stripped of their assets after the death of their husbands. This trend became even worse during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic when movement was restricted, making it difficult to access the courts of law. Using a mixed methodological approach of a desk research and qualitative interviews conducted in the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe, (...) Zororo Comfort circuit in Harare, it has been noted that women and girls face numerous horrific experiences, pushing them to wallow in the margins of society. This study therefore calls for the church to address the vulnerability of women and girls using a deviant theory. To date, there are increasing figures of domestic violence, sexual assault, and child marriages. Financial and communal disturbances corresponding through continuous pandemic challenges for women are aggravated, and those who survive find it challenging to hunt for fairness because of stockpiled court issues and freedom for the perpetrators. The fact that women are dispossessed of their belongings because of the cultural status of being a woman calls for a cultural cue. Using a deviant theory in the narrative of a tenacious widow in the gospel of Luke 18:1–8 from a sociological dimension, this study provides a critical edge into interpreting the action of this widow who deviated from expected societal customs. The study concludes by calling faith communities to re-read the widow’s story through deviant theory spectacles to raise questions on how this widow courageously represented herself from societal margin to undermine the centre (patriarchal standards) and to utilise the text as a resource for addressing the plight of women to be repositioned and be empowered in Zimbabwe.Contribution: This study contributes to the ongoing academic studies on women, pandemics, religion and gender, using the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe, Zororo Comfort circuit as a case study. It concludes by an invitation to faith communities to re-read the widow’s story using a deviant theory in order to use the text as a resource to alleviate the plight of women and empower them to the position of equilibrium with men. (shrink)

This work describes the concept of bond order. It shows that covalent bond energy is correlated to bond order. Simple expressions which included bond order are introduced to calculate bond energies of homo-nuclear and hetero-nuclear bonds. Calculated values of bond energies are compared with literature values and show there is very good agreement between and calculated and experimental values in the vast majority of cases. Bond order reveals the strength of a bond and shows the number of bonds in both (...) homo-nuclear and hetero-nuclear covalent bonds. (shrink)

‘British Empiricism’ is a name traditionally used to pick out a group of eighteenth-century thinkers who prioritised knowledge via the senses over reason or the intellect and who denied the existence of innate ideas. The name includes most notably John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. The counterpart to British Empiricism is traditionally considered to be Continental Rationalism that was advocated by Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, all of whom lived in Continental Europe beyond the British Isles and all embraced innate (...) ideas. This article characterizes empiricists more broadly as those thinkers who accept Locke’s Axiom that there is no idea in the mind that cannot be traced back to some particular experience. It includes British-Irish Philosophy from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century. As well as exploring the traditional connections among empiricism and metaphysics and epistemology, it examines how British empiricists dealt with issues in moral philosophy and the existence and nature of God. The article identifies some challenges to the standard understanding of British Empiricism by including early modern thinkers from typically marginalised groups, especially women. Finally, in showing that there is nothing uniquely British about being an empiricist, it examines a particular case study of the eighteenth-century philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo, the first African to receive a doctorate in Europe. (shrink)

Die Methode der Dialektik im modernen Sinne stammt von Hegel. Woher aber hat er diese Methode bezogen? Die nachfolgende Theorie heisst: Hegel logisiert das trinitarische Geheimnis Gottes (Mythos) und stilisiert dieses zur Weltformel, die fur Marx bis Marcuse und Sartre gleichermassen verbindlich ist.".

Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Exponents of an ‘explanatory gap’ between physical, functional and intentional facts, on the one hand, and the facts of phenomenal consciousness, on the other, argue that there are reasons of principle why phenomenal consciousness cannot be reductively explained: Jackson (1982), (1986); Levine (1983), (1993), (2001); McGinn (1991); Sturgeon (1994), (2000); Chalmers (1996), (1999). Some of these writers claim that the existence of such a gap would warrant a belief in some form (...) of ontological dualism (Jackson, 1982; Chalmers, 1996), whereas others argue that no such entailment holds (Levine, 1983; McGinn, 1991; Sturgeon, 1994). In the other main camp, there are people who argue that a reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness is possible in principle (Block and Stalnaker, 1999), and yet others who claim, moreover, to have provided such an explanation in practice (Dennett, 1991; Dretske, 1995; Tye, 1995,2000; Lycan, 1996; Carruthers, 2000). (shrink)