Timothy Williamson has argued that, unless the speech act of assertion were supposed to be governed by his so-called Knowledge Rule, one could not explain why sentences of the form "A and I do not know that A" are unassertable. This paper advances three objections against that argument, of which the first two aim to show that, even assuming that Williamson's explanandum has been properly circumscribed, his explanation would not be correct, and the third aims to show that his explanandum (...) has not been properly circumscribed. (shrink)

This paper argues that a certain type of self-referential sentence falsifies the widespread assumption that a declarative sentence's meaning is identical to its truth condition. It then argues that this problem cannot be assimilated to certain other problems that the assumption in question is independently known to face.

Foundations of Speech Act Theoryoffers a timely, thorough and, above all, compelling examination of the complexities of illocutionary acts, performatives, and their phenomenological basis. Savas Tsohatzidis has collected an impressive range of international scholars on the subject. Clearly demonstrating the relevance of speech act theory to semantic theory, the collection further interrogates the inability of pragmatic theories of illocution to properly locate such speech acts within the logic of phenomenology and intersubjectivity.

This paper examines, and rejects, a recent argument to the effect that knowledge is not truth-entailing, i.e. that “know” is not factive.

A problem is raised for the introduction rules proposed in Benjamin Schnieder’s ‘A logic for “because”’, arising in connection with (a) inferences that the rules should not, but do, validate and (b) inferences that the rules should, but do not, validate.

The analysis of mixed quotation proposed in Cappelen & Lepore (1997), purportedly as a development of Davidson's accounts of direct and of indirect quotation, is critically examined. It is argued that the analysis fails to specify either necessary or sufficient conditions on mixed quotation, and that the way it has been defended by its proponents makes its alleged Davidsonian parentage questionable.

In this volume, Savas L. Tsohatzidis brings together a team of leading experts to provide up-to-date perspectives on the work of J. L. Austin, a major figure in twentieth-century philosophy and an important contributor to theories of language, truth, perception, and knowledge. Focusing on aspects of Austin's writings in these four areas, the volume's ten original essays critically examine central elements of his philosophy, exploring their interrelationships, their historical context, their reception, and their implications for key issues of (...) contemporary philosophical research. The volume deepens our understanding of Austin's philosophy while illustrating its continuing significance, and will appeal to students and scholars of modern philosophy, particularly to those interested in the philosophy of language and epistemology. (shrink)

This paper argues that Michael Dummett's proposed distinction between a declarative sentence's "assertoric content" and "ingredient sense" is not in fact supported by what Dummett presents as paradigmatic evidence in its support.

This paper argues that the obvious validity of certain inferences involving indirect speech reports as premises and truth or falsity ascriptions as conclusions is incompatible with Davidson's so-called "paratactic" analysis of the logical form of indirect discourse. Besides disqualifying that analysis, this problem is also claimed to indicate that the analysis is doubly in tension with Davidson's metasemantic views. Specifically, it can be reconciled neither with one of Davidson's key assumptions regarding the adequacy of the kind of semantic theory he (...) recommends nor with one of his key assumptions regarding the inadequacy of a kind of semantic theory he rejects. (shrink)

This is a volume of original essays on key aspects of John Searle's philosophy of language. It examines Searle's work in relation to current issues of central significance, including internalism versus externalism about mental and linguistic content, truth-conditional versus non-truth-conditional conceptions of content, the relative priorities of thought and language in the explanation of intentionality, the status of the distinction between force and sense in the theory of meaning, the issue of meaning scepticism in relation to rule-following, and the proper (...) characterization of ‘what is said’ in relation to the semantics/pragmatics distinction. Written by a distinguished team of contemporary philosophers, and prefaced by an illuminating essay by Searle, the volume aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of Searle's work in philosophy of language, and to suggest innovative approaches to fundamental questions in that area. (shrink)

This paper is an addendum to [Tsohatzidis, 2013].

Several influential philosophical accounts of assertion have recently been claimed by Peter Pagin to commit a fundamental mistake. The present paper argues that Pagin's defence of that claim is flawed: The criterion he proposes for evaluating theories of assertion is unreliable; and even if it were supposed to be in itself reliable, it could not be used, in the way he proposes, either against the kinds of theories he intends to undermine or in favour of the kind of theory he (...) intends to support. (shrink)

The most distinctive, and probably the most striking, assumption of Donald Davidson's well known ‘paratactic’ analysis of the logical form of saying ascriptions is that the “that”-clause that, in such an ascription, specifies the content of the ascribed act of saying, is neither syntactically nor semantically part of the sentence effecting the ascription. The present paper identifies a neglected problem that this assumption engenders for the Davidsonian analysis. The problem arises in connection with instances of saying ascriptions that are both (...) self-verifying and self-referential, and consists in the fact that, given the Davidsonian assumption, these ascriptions must be assigned logical forms that misrepresent their logically relevant properties. (shrink)

This paper intends to contribute to the evaluation of the project of analyzing speech act concepts in terms of mental state concepts, by examining Searle's and Vanderveken's proposed analyses of certain types of illocutionary acts as expressions of corresponding types of emotional states. It is argued that the proposed analyses are all defective, that the assumptions about underlying speech act/mental state parallelisms from which their initial plausibility might be taken to derive are themselves mistaken, and that the fact that they (...) have been proposed at all betrays insufficient attention to the distinction between semanti-cally and pragmatically determined aspects of utterance interpretation. It is concluded that these results disturb both the overall structure of Searle's and Vanderveken's theory of speech acts, and the logic of several other similarly reductionist claims in the philosophy of language. (shrink)

An anti-dispositionalist interpretation of grammatical knowledge would maintain that such knowledge exists whether or not it can be behaviourally manifested; a dispositionalist interpretation, on the other hand, would identify that knowledge with the in principle possibility of certain behavioural manifestations. The purpose of this paper is to present a preliminary case for the dispositionalist interpretation by accomplishing two complementary tasks: first, rejecting a prominent argument against the dispositionalist interpretation; second, advancing an original argument against the anti-dispositionalist interpretation. Both tasks involve (...) rebuttals of certain key theses associated with Chomskyan grammatical metatheory, and therefore, provide new opportunities for assessing its viability. -/- . (shrink)

This book includes ten original essays that critically examine central themes of John Searle’s ontology of society, as well as a new essay by Searle that summarizes and further develops his work in that area. The critical essays are grouped into three parts. Part I (Aspects of Collective Intentionality) examines the account of collective intention and action underlying Searle’s analysis of social and institutional facts, with special emphasis on how that account relates to the dispute between individualism and anti-individualism in (...) the analysis of social behaviour, and to the opposition between internalism and externalism in the analysis of intentionality. Part II (From Intentions to Institutions: Development and Evolution) scrutinizes the ontogenetic and phylogenetic credentials of Searle’s view that, unlike other kinds of social facts, institutional facts are uniquely human, and develops original suggestions concerning their place in human evolution and development. Part III (Aspects of Institutional Reality) focuses on Searle’s claim that institutional facts owe their existence to the collective acceptance of constitutive rules whose effect is the creation of deontic powers, and examines central issues relevant to its assessment (among others, the status of the distinction between regulative and constitutive rules, the significance of the distinction between brute and deontic powers, the issue of the logical derivability of normative from descriptive propositions, and the import of the difference between moral and non-moral normative principles). Written by an international team of philosophers and social scientists, the essays aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of Searle’s work on the ontology of society, and to suggest new approaches to fundamental questions in that research area. (shrink)

This book collects twenty-five of the author's essays, each of which addresses a descriptive or a foundational issue that arises at the interface between linguistic semantics and pragmatics, on the one hand, and the philosophy of language, on the other. Arranged into three interconnected parts (I. Matters of Meaning and Truth; II. Matters of Meaning and Force; III. Knowledge Matters), the essays suggest that some key topics in the above-mentioned fields have often been approached in ways that considerably underestimate their (...) empirical or conceptual complexity, and attempt to delineate perspectives from which, and conditions under which, an improved understanding of those topics could be sought. (shrink)

This paper examines a recent attempt to provide a negative answer to the question of the existence of illocutionary negations. It argues that the attempt is unsuccessful both because it presupposes a misinterpretation of the question's theoretical import and because, even granting that misinterpretation, it bases its proposed answer on certain assumptions that can independently be shown to be untenable.

This collection should be welcomed by anyone working on the subtle interplay between theories of perception, internalism and externalism about mental and linguistic content, and the linguistic expression of mental states. Many of these connections have been put into focus by John Searle, and his views are here subjected to careful scrutiny from a variety of directions. The contributions do not sum to a general discussion of Searle's contributions to the philosophy of mind and language. There is little or nothing (...) here on, for example, the Chinese rooms and Strong AI, or on his more recent work on social construction and rationality. Such absences are an inevitable consequence of the sheer number of influential theses Searle has advanced over the decades. Instead, the locus of discussion is the systematic perspective most clearly set out in his work, a fact that lends integrity to the volume.The book is divided into two main parts, with inevitable links across the divide. The first is concerned with the intentionality of mental states, and the second with the intentionality of linguistic acts. The first kind of intentionality is, according to Searle, intrinsic, while the second is inherited from the first, with linguistic conventions affording the derivation. The two kinds of intentionality parallel one another …. (shrink)

This collection should be welcomed by anyone working on the subtle interplay between theories of perception, internalism and externalism about mental and linguistic content, and the linguistic expression of mental states. Many of these connections have been put into focus by John Searle, and his views are here subjected to careful scrutiny from a variety of directions. The contributions do not sum to a general discussion of Searle's contributions to the philosophy of mind and language. There is little or nothing (...) here on, for example, the Chinese rooms and Strong AI, or on his more recent work on social construction and rationality. Such absences are an inevitable consequence of the sheer number of influential theses Searle has advanced over the decades. Instead, the locus of discussion is the systematic perspective most clearly set out in his work , a fact that lends integrity to the volume.The book is divided into two main parts, with inevitable links across the divide. The first is concerned with the intentionality of mental states, and the second with the intentionality of linguistic acts. The first kind of intentionality is, according to Searle, intrinsic, while the second is inherited from the first, with linguistic conventions affording the derivation. The two kinds of intentionality parallel one another …. (shrink)

Interpreting J.L. Austin: Critical Essays Edited by TsohatzidisSavas L.Oxford University Press, 2018. xii + 238 pp.

Alain Badiou, magnumopus’u sayılan BeingandEvent adlı eserinde, Varlık ve Olay diye ayırdığı iki düzey arasında kapanmayan gediği anlatır. Varlık alanında bir kopuşu açığa çıkaran olay kavramına geçmeden önce varlığa dair son derece ayrıntılı ve karmaşık bir analiz sunar. Bu analizin temeli “matematiğin ontoloji” olduğu savına dayanır. Bu Matematiksel ontolojinin temel iki savı, “Birin varolmadığı” ve varlığın “boşluk” olarak adlandırabileceğimiz “tutarsız çokluk” olduğudur. “Biz de bu yazıda, Türkiye’de daha ziyade olay ve siyaset görüşleri bakımından rağbet edilen Badiou’nun kışkırtıcı ontoloji kuramını ele (...) alacağız. İlkin “matematiğin ontoloji” olduğu, “Birin varolmadığı ve varlığın boşluk/tutarsız çokluk olduğu” savlarının, hangi kavram ve araçlardan hareketle geliştirildiğini; ikinci olarak da, ontolojik bir durumun ötesine geçmemizi sağlayan “olay” kavramı için önemli olan ontolojik çıkmazların ve çatlakların nasıl ortaya çıktığını göstermeye çalışacağız. (shrink)

Geleneksel bir bakış açısıyla İsrailoğullarının Tevrat’taki ilk kadın peygamberi olan Miryam, Harun ve Musa’nın kız kardeşi olup Mısır’dan çıkışın önemli figürlerinden biridir. Ancak eleştirel ve farklı bakış açısından Miryam ile ilgili kutsal kitap ve midraşlardaki anlatılara bakıldığında onun üç farklı portreye sahip olduğu görülmektedir. İlk portre, sepet içinde suya bırakılan Musa’yı uzaktan seyreden ve ismi belirtilmeyen abladır. İkinci tasvirde o, Mısır’dan çıkış esnasında Harun’un kız kardeşi peygamber Miryam olarak betimlenmektedir. Bu tasvir daha yakından incelendiğinde Mısır’dan çıkışta dilinde ezgisi, elinde tefi (...) ile dans ederek İsrailoğullarına liderlik eden Miryam’ın, peygamber olmaktan ziyade Mısır’dan izler taşıyan rahibe olmaya daha yakın durduğu görülmektedir. Nitekim Miryam’ı bir rahibe olarak görmek Cüzzamlı Miryam kıssasını daha anlaşılır kıldığı gibi onun fiziki kusurla cezalandırılması Mısır’daki bir rahibenin görevden uzaklaştırılmasıyla uyumluluk arz etmektedir. Rabbani literatür başta olmak üzere Yahudi geleneğinin Miryam algısı ise ona üçüncü bir portre kazandırmaktadır. Midraş literatürün Miryam portresi, ölümünden hemen önce Tevrat’ın ondan aldığı saygınlığı iade çerçevesinde olup, onu diğer önemli anneler arasında görmek üzerine kuruludur. (shrink)

The problems like what kind of rights people have over what, and when and how these rights can be defined as natural rights and should be protected have always been a discussion topic in the history of philosophy, and they are likely to remain so in the future. This paper presents the views of two philosophers who are seeking answers to these questions. According to Hobbes people have natural rights, but because they are not secured, there is always a state (...) of war. In order to protect the rights and achieve sustainability of life, people need to abandon the state of nature and agree on a social contract. One of the other important philosopher is Locke who believes that people certainly have natural rights. However, according to him, the state of nature does not necessarily mean a state of war. The state of war refers a situation before the social contract. After the contract is agreed to, natural rights are ensured to a certain extent. In the view of both philosophers, natural rights are guaranteed through reason.İnsanların neler üzerinde ne tür hakları olduğu, bu hakların nasıl ve ne zaman doğal hak olarak nitelenebileceği, nasıl ve neden korunmaları gerektiği konuları felsefe tarihinin tartışılagelmiş, öyle görünüyor ki, tartışılmaya devam edilecek konularındandır. Bu çalışmada bu sorulara yanıt önerisinde bulunan iki filozofun görüşlerine yer verilmiştir. Hobbes’a göre insanların doğal hakları vardır, ancak bunlar güvence altında olmadıklarından, her zaman bir savaş durumu vardır. Hakların korunması ve yaşamın devamlılığı için doğa durumundan çıkıp insanların birbirleriyle toplum sözleşmesi yapması gerekir. Locke’a göre de insanların doğal hakları vardır. Ancak doğa durumu her zaman bir savaş durumuna karşılık gelmez. Savaş durumu, toplum sözleşmesi yapılmadan önceki durumu imler. Sözleşme yapıldıktan sonra, doğal haklar bir ölçüye kadar güvence altına alınmış olur. Her iki filozof için de doğal haklara sahip olmanın teminatı akıldır. (shrink)

Yazar, gazeteci, milletvekili ve Batıcılık fikrinin savunucusu Kılıçzâde Hakkı (öl. 1960), Türk düşünce tarihinde önemli bir yere sahiptir. Kılıçzâde, yazılarında devletin ilerlemesi için yapılması gerekenleri ismiyle müsemma şekilde savaşırcasına anlatır. Yazar hakkındaki çalışmaların ekserisi kitapları ve makaleleri hakkındadır. Oysa Kılıçzâde Hakkı, gerilemenin en büyük sebebi olarak gördüğü batıl inançlarla savaşını, kurgusal zemine taşıyarak hikâyeleştirmiştir. Kılıçzâde hakkındaki çalışmalarda söz konusu hikâyelere değinilmekle birlikte ayrıntılı bir değerlendirme yapılmamıştır. Bu makalede Kılıçzâde Hakkı’nın İçtihad ve Hürriyet-i Fikriyye dergilerinde yayımlanan sekiz hikâyesi incelenmiştir. Yazarın hikâyelerinde (...) batıl gördüğü, dinî ve toplumsal inanışlarla olan mücadelesi dikkat çekmektedir. Çalışmanın amacı makalelerinde de benzer konuları işleyen Kılıçzâde’nin fikrî eserlerinde başlattığı mücadelesini fiktif yapıya taşıdığını göstermek, yazarın düşüncelerini açıklamada kurguyu kullanılışını örneklendirmektir. Çalışmanın yöntemi şu aşamalarda ilerlemiştir: yazarın hikâyeleri tespit edilmiş, Latin alfabesine aktarılmış, makaleleriyle hikâyeleri arasındaki benzer noktalar bulunmuştur. Bu dikkatle çalışma üç başlık altında ele alınmıştır. Söz konusu sekiz hikâyeden evlilik hakkındakiler “Dest-i İzdivaca Talip miyiz?”, toplumdaki dindarlık ve dinsizlik algısının eleştirildiği hikâyeler “Dinsizlik Alametleri”, Yunus Hoca hakkındaki hikâyeler ise “Sahte Softalığın Simgesi: Yunus Hoca” başlıkları altında değerlendirilmiştir. Kılıçzâde Hakkı’nın aile mefhumuna büyük kıymet verdiğini yazılarından takip etmek mümkündür. “Dest-i İzdivaca Talip miyiz?” başlığı altında işlenen hikâyelerde düğün eğlenceleri, eşlerin birbirini tanıyarak evlenmelerinin önemi, evlenme ve boşanma işlemlerinin nasıl olması gerektiği, örnek aile temsili ele alınır. “Dinsizlik Alametleri” başlığında incelenen hikâyelerde ise toplum tarafından dinsizlik yaftasına maruz kalan ailelerin dine dair tutumu işlenmiştir. Sahte softalarla pek çok cephede savaşmayı kendine görev edinen Kılıçzâde Hakkı, bu savaşını kurguya taşımıştır. Makalenin üçüncü kısmı “Sahte Softalığın Simgesi: Yunus Hoca”nın maceralarının anlatıldığı üç hikâyeden müteşekkildir.Yunus Hoca üzerinden din adamı vasfına talip ve sahip kişilerde bulunmaması gereken özelliklerin anlatıldığı hikâyelerin ilkinde Yunus Hoca’nın ataları; ikincisinde medrese talebeliği, üçüncüsünde bir kadınla giriştiği münakaşa tahkiye edilir. Bu değerlendirmeler ışığında Kılıçzâde Hakkı’nın hikâyelerinin aile ve din mefhumları üzerinde yoğunlaştığı görülmüştür. Bununla birlikte Kılıçzâde’nin fikrî eserlerindeki meseleleri, fiktif yapıda da işlediği ve Batıl itikatlarla bir de edebiyat cephesinde savaştığı anlaşılmıştır. (shrink)

In a recent paper Savas Tsohatzidis has provided a number of putative counterexamples to the well-attested Kartunnen-Vendler (K-V) thesis that the use of 'tell' with a wh-complement requires that the speaker spoke truthfully. His counterexamples are sentences like: (1) Old John told us who he saw in the fog, but it turned out that he was mistaken. I argue that such examples do not serve to refute the K-V thesis. Rather, they are examples of a more general phenomenon (...) that I label participant projection, which is manifested in sentences like: (2) He gave her a ring studded with diamonds, but they turned out to be glass. Just as the acceptability of (2) does not show that some diamonds are glass, so the acceptability of (1) does not disprove the K-V thesis. (shrink)