By creating certain marks on paper, or by making certain sounds-breathing past a moving tongue-or by articulation of hands and bodies, language users can give expression to their mental lives. With language we command, assert, query, emote, insult, and inspire. Language has meaning. This fact can be quite mystifying, yet a science of linguistic meaning-semantics-has emerged at the intersection of a variety of disciplines: philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and psychology. Semantics is the study of meaning. But what exactly is "meaning"? (...) What is the exact target of semantic theory? Much of the early work in natural language semantics was accompanied by extensive reflection on the aims of semantic theory, and the form a theory must take to meet those aims. But this meta-theoretical reflection has not kept pace with recent theoretical innovations. This volume re-addresses these questions concerning the foundations of natural language semantics in light of the current state-of-the-art in semantic theorising. (shrink)

This chapter defends a view of semantics on which developing a semantic theory closely resembles developing a scale of measurement. The view helps explain how semantics has made so much progress despite deep disagreements about the target of semantic theorizing (e.g., between those who maintain that semantics is characterizing something psychological, and those who maintain that it is characterizing something social), how appeals to set-theoretic abstracta make sense despite Benacerraf-style worries and despite the fact that set-theoretic entities fit badly with (...) standard (e.g., causal) metasemantic views, and why the threat of radical context sensitivity does not undermine the semantic project. (shrink)

It has long been widely agreed that some concepts can be possessed only by those who have undergone a certain type of phenomenal experience. Orthodoxy among contemporary philosophers of mind has it that these phenomenal concepts provide the key to understanding many disputes between physicalists and their opponents, and in particular offer an explanation of Mary’s predicament in the situation exploited by Frank Jackson's knowledge argument. I reject the orthodox view; I deny that there are phenomenal concepts. My arguments exploit (...) the sort of considerations that are typically used to motivate externalism about mental content. Although physicalists often appeal to phenomenal concepts to defend their view against the knowledge argument, I argue that this is a mistake. The knowledge argument depends on phenomenal concepts; if there are no phenomenal concepts, then the knowledge argument fails. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Contemporary relativists often see their view as contributing to a semantic/post-semantic account of linguistic data about disagreement and retraction. I offer an independently motivated metasemantic account of the same data, that also handles a number of cases and empirical results that are problematic for the relativist. The key idea is that the content of assertions and beliefs is determined in part by facts about other times, including times after the assertion is made or the belief is formed. On this (...) temporal externalist view, speaker behaviours such as retraction of previous assertions play a role in making it the case that a past utterance has a given meaning. (shrink)

Physicalists about the mind are committed to claims about property identities. Following Kripke's well-known discussion, modal arguments have emerged as major threats to such claims. This paper argues that modal arguments can be resisted by adopting a counterpart theoretic account of modal claims, and in particular modal claims involving properties. Thus physicalists have a powerful motive to adopt non-Kripkean accounts of the metaphysics of modality and the semantics of modal expressions.

The idea that experts (especially scientific experts) play a privileged role in determining the meanings of our words and the contents of our concepts has become commonplace since the work of Hilary Putnam, Tyler Burge, and others in the 1970s. But if experts have the power to determine what our words mean, they can do so responsibly or irresponsibly, from good motivations or bad, justly or unjustly, with good or bad effects. This paper distinguishes three families of metasemantic views based (...) on their attitudes towards bad behaviour by meaning-fixing experts, and draws a series of distinctions relevant for the normative evaluation of meaning-determining actions. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to draw out a little noticed, but correct and important, consequence of David Lewis’s theory of how the values of contextual parameters are determined. According to Lewis, these values are often determined at least in part by accommodation; to a first approximation, the idea is that contextual parameters tend to take on the values they need to have in order for our utterances to be true. The little-noticed consequence of Lewis’s way of developing these (...) ideas is that what we say is determined in part by the way the conversation unfolds after our utterance. That is, Lewisian accommodation entails a non-standard form of externalism, according to which what we say is determined not only by factors internal to us at the time of our utterance, nor even by truths about our physical or social environment at the time of utterance or by our history, but also by truths about our future—truths about times after the time of our utterance. Seeing this consequence clearly lets us refine and improve upon Lewis’s account of when accommodation can occur. (shrink)

Torin Alter (2013) attempts to rescue phenomenal concepts and the knowledge argument from the critique of Ball 2009 by appealing to conceptual mastery. I show that Alter’s appeal fails, and describe general features of conceptual mastery that suggest that no such appeal could succeed.

Kaplan (1989) famously claimed that monsters--operators that shift the context--do not exist in English and "could not be added to it". Several recent theorists have pointed out a range of data that seem to refute Kaplan's claim, but others (most explicitly Stalnaker 2014) have offered a principled argument that monsters are impossible. This paper interprets and resolves the dispute. Contra appearances, this is no dry, technical matter: it cuts to the heart of a deep disagreement about the fundamental structure of (...) a semantic theory. We argue that: (i) the interesting notion of a monster is not an operator that shifts some formal parameter, but rather an operator that shifts parameters that play a certain theoretical role; (ii) one cannot determine whether a given semantic theory allows monsters simply by looking at the formal semantics; (iii) theories which forbid shifting the formal "context" parameter are perfectly compatible with the existence of monsters (in the interesting sense). We explain and defend these claims by contrasting two kinds of semantic theory--Kaplan's (1989) and Lewis's (1980). (shrink)

Francois Recanati’s Mental Files presents a picture of the mind on which mental representations are indexical and transparent. I dispute this picture: there is no clear case for regarding mental representations as indexical, and there are counterexamples to transparency.

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss a puzzle involving accommodation. The puzzle is based on three assumptions. The first assumption is that accommodation takes place after an utterance. The second assumption is that accommodation can make a difference to the truth-value of an utterance even if the utterance is not about the future. The third assumption is that something that takes place after an utterance cannot make a difference to the truth-value of the utterance unless the (...) utterance is about the future. Since these assumptions are jointly inconsistent, one of them must be false. The question is which one we ought to reject. The majority of the discussion is devoted to discussing each of the options, and the tentative conclusion is that the most plausible strategy is to reject the third thesis. That amounts to saying that something that takes place after an utterance can make a difference to the truth-value of the utterance even if the utterance is not about the future. (shrink)

Millians about proper names typically claim that it is knowable apriori that Hesperus is Phosphorus. We argue that they should claim instead that it is knowable only aposteriori that Hesperus is Hesperus, since the Kripke-Putnam epistemic arguments against descriptivism are special cases of Quinean arguments that nothing is knowable apriori, and Millians have no resources to resist the more general Quinean arguments.

The hard problem of consciousness is to explain why certain physical states are conscious: why do they feel the way they do, rather than some other way or no way at all? Arthur Reber claims to solve the hard problem. But he does not: even if we grant that amoebae are conscious, we can ask why such organisms feel the way they do, and Reber’s theory provides no answer. Still, Reber’s theory may be methodologically useful: we do not yet have (...) a satisfactory theory of consciousness, but perhaps the study of simple minds is a way to go about finding one. (shrink)

Many of our deepest disagreements turn on matters of definition. Philosophers discuss the definitions of knowledge, art, truth, and freedom, and social and political questions about personhood, health and disease, marriage and gender are also commonly thought of as turning in part on definitions. This book contributes to our understanding of how we engage with questions and disagreements of this kind. It argues that disputes about matters of definition are not just about the meanings of words or our concepts, and (...) they do not typically involve change of meaning. Instead, it develops a conception of definition on which engaging in an investigation or a discussion helps determine the meanings of our words without changing them; what is determined is the meaning our words had all along. This temporal externalist view—that what happens at the end of our investigation or discussion can play a role in determining what we meant and thought throughout—puts us in a position to see why typical ways we engage with questions of definition make sense, and are not confused or in need of revision. The book develops this style of view in unprecedented detail and shows how it helps make sense not only of definitional disputes, but also of disagreements about matters of taste (such as discussions of whether a particular food is delicious, or a certain film is funny.) Its defencse of temporal externalism includes powerful new criticisms of competing philosophical views about verbal dispute, metalinguistic negotiation, inconsistent concepts, conceptual engineering, and relativism. (shrink)

It is widely believed that Twin-Earth-style thought experiments show that the contents of a person's thoughts fail to supervene on her intrinsic properties. Several recent philosophers have made the further claim that Twin-Earth-style thought experiments produce metaphysically necessary conditions for the possession of certain concepts. I argue that the latter view is false, and produce counterexamples to several proposed conditions. My thesis is of particular interest because it undermines some attempts to show that externalism is incompatible with privileged access.

This paper develops and critiques the two-dimensionalist account of mental content developed by David Chalmers. I first explain Chalmers's account and show that it resists some popular criticisms. I then argue that the main interest of two-dimensionalism lies in its accounts of cognitive significance and of the connection between conceivability and possibility. These accounts hinge on the claim that some thoughts have a primary intension that is necessarily true. In this respect, they are Carnapian, and subject to broadly Quinean attack. (...) The remainder of the paper advances such an attack. I argue that there are possible thinkers who are willing to revise their beliefs in response to expert testimony, and that such thinkers will have no thoughts with necessary primary intensions. I even suggest that many actual humans may well be such thinkers. I go on to argue that these possible thinkers show that the two-dimensionalist accounts fail. (shrink)

Critical notice of Derk Pereboom's "Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism". Discusses Pereboom's idea that conscious states might be misrepresented in introspection, and his idea that instantiations of mental properties are composed of instantiations of physical properties.

Fixing Language: An Essay on Conceptual Engineering, by CappelenHerman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. x + 212.

Volume 97, Issue 4, December 2019, Page 846-847.

The main aim of this paper is to highlight the need to address the conceptual problem of “implicit knowledge” or “implicit cognition” —a notion especially important in the study of the nonverbal minds of animals and infants. We review some uses of the term ‘implicit’ in psychology and allied disciplines,and conclude that conceptual clarification of this notion is not only lacking, but largely avoided and reduced to a methodological problem. We propose that this elusive notion is central in the study (...) not only of animal and infant minds, but also the human adult mind. Some promising approaches in developmental and evolutionary psychology towards innovative conceptualisation of implicit knowledge remain conceptually underdeveloped and in need of reconsideration and re-elaboration. We conclude by suggesting that the challenge of implicit cognition and nonverbal minds will only be solved through a concerted interdisciplinary approach between psychology and other disciplines. (shrink)

This review article is stimulated by the publication by Polity Press in 2008 of a translation of Bourdieu’s Le Bal des célibataires, which had been published by Editions du Seuil in the year of his death — 2002. Le Bal des célibataires assembled three articles about his native Béarn which Bourdieu had written at roughly ten-year intervals, starting in 1962. Given that Le Bal des célibataires formally constitutes a new publication in that it juxtaposes the three earlier articles, adds a (...) short introduction and republishes, as an appendix, a methodological article first published in the 1970s, the 2002 text provides access to four stages in the development of Bourdieu’s reflexive analysis of traditional society. The article draws attention to some of the objective socio-economic changes in Béarn society in the second half of the 20th century and asks whether the autonomous logic of Bourdieu’s conceptual development in this period was the product of his partisan participation in an originally traditional situation and whether his maintenance of this logic over time was a device to give scientific legitimation to that situation. Consideration of these microcosmic analyses of the Béarn raises questions relevant to international socio-economic development in general, about whether sociology is equipped to offer a scientific explanation of economic and technological changes in society or whether, by definition, it is categorally committed to a conservative value-orientation which criticizes ‘post-human’ postmodernity. (shrink)

This book introduces and applies Foucault's most important concepts and procedures, and does so specifically for a psychology readership. Drawing on the recently published Collège de France lectures Abnormal (2003) and Psychiatric Power (2006), Foucauldian Analytics and Psychology is as useful to those concerned with Foucault's engagement with the "psy-disciplines" as it is to those interested in the practical application of Foucault's critical research methods.

Scientists often make surprising claims about things that no one can observe. In physics, chemistry, and molecular biology, scientists can at least experiment on those unobservable entities, but what about researchers in fields such as paleobiology and geology who study prehistory, where no such experimentation is possible? Do scientists discover facts about the distant past or do they, in some sense, make prehistory? In this book Derek Turner argues that this problem has surprising and important consequences for the scientific (...) realism debate. His discussion covers some of the main positions in philosophy of science - realism, social constructivism, empiricism, and the natural ontological attitude - and shows how they relate to issues in paleobiology and geology. His original and thought-provoking book will be of wide interest to philosophers and scientists alike. (shrink)

It’s intuitive to think that an intentional action requires that the agent knows that she’s doing so. In light of some apparent counterexamples, Setiya suggests that this intuitive insight is better captured in terms of credence: performing an intentional action requires the agent to have a higher credence that she’s doing so than she would have otherwise. I argue that there is no such thing as an agent’s credence for what she’s doing. After distinguishing this thesis from an idea some (...) defend under the slogan “deliberation crowds out prediction”, I explore the thesis’s broader epistemological implications for the belief-credence relation. (shrink)

Foucault, Power, and Education invites internationally renowned scholar Stephen J. Ball to reflect on the importance and influence of Foucault on his work in educational policy.

Is there one univocal or generic notion of ground? Monists answer yes, while pluralists answer no. Pluralists argue that monism cannot meet plausible constraints on an adequate theory of ground. My aim in this paper is to articulate a monist theory of ground that can satisfy the pluralist constraints in a way that leaves the pluralists with no reasons not to endorse the monist picture of ground. I do this by adopting a tripartite conception of ground and then showing that (...) it has the resources to vindicate monism while satisfying the pluralist constraints on a theory of ground. (shrink)

Mark Schroeder has argued that all reasonable forms of inconsistency of attitude consist of having the same attitude type towards a pair of inconsistent contents (A-type inconsistency). We suggest that he is mistaken in this, offering a number of intuitive examples of pairs of distinct attitudes types with consistent contents which are intuitively inconsistent (B-type inconsistency). We further argue that, despite the virtues of Schroeder's elegant A-type expressivist semantics, B-type inconsistency is in many ways the more natural choice in developing (...) an expressivist account of moral discourse. We close by showing how to adapt ordinary formality-based accounts of logicality to define a B-type account of logical inconsistency and distinguish it from both semantic and pragmatic inconsistency. In sum, we provide a roadmap of how to develop a successful B-type expressivism. (shrink)

This paper attempts to specify the conditions under which a psychological explanation can undermine or debunk a set of beliefs. The focus will be on moral and religious beliefs, where a growing debate has emerged about the epistemic implications of cognitive science. Recent proposals by Joshua Greene and Paul Bloom will be taken as paradigmatic attempts to undermine beliefs with psychology. I will argue that a belief p may be undermined whenever: (i) p is evidentially based on an intuition which (...) (ii) can be explained by a psychological mechanism that is (iii) unreliable for the task of believing p; and (iv) any other evidence for belief p is based on rationalization. I will also consider and defend two equally valid arguments for establishing unreliability: the redundancy argument and the argument from irrelevant factors. With this more specific understanding of debunking arguments, it is possible to develop new replies to some objections to psychological debunking arguments from both ethics and philosophy of religion. (shrink)

According to Bickerton, the behavioral sciences have failed to give an adequate account of human nature at least partly because of the conjunction and mutual reinforcement of two widespread beliefs: that language is simply a means of communication and that human intelligence is the result of the rapid growth and unusual size of human brains. Bickerton argues that each of the properties distinguishing human intelligence and consciousness from that of other animals can be shown to derive straightforwardly from properties of (...) language. In essence, language arose as a representational system, not a means of communication or a skill, and not a product of culture but an evolutionary adaptation. The author stresses the necessity of viewing intelligence in evolutionary terms, seeing it not as problem solving but as a way of maintaining homeostasis - the preservation of those conditions most favorable to an organism, the optimal achievable conditions for survival and well-being. The term protolanguage is used to describe the stringing together of symbols that prehuman hominids employed. "It did not allow them to turn today's imagination into tomorrow's fact. But it is just this power to transform imagination into fact that distinguishes human behavior from that of our ancestral species, and indeed from that of all other species. It is exactly what enables us to change our behavior, or invent vast ranges of new behavior, practically overnight, with no concomitant genetic changes." Language and Human Behavior should be of interest to anyone in the behavioral and evolutionary sciences and to all those concerned with the role of language in human behavior. (shrink)

There are many different oughts. There is a moral ought, a prudential ought, an epistemic ought, the legal ought, the ought of etiquette, and so on. These oughts can prescribe incompatible actions. What I morally ought to do may be different from what I self-interestedly ought to do. Philosophers have claimed that these conflicts are resolved by an authoritative ought, or by facts about what one ought to do simpliciter or all-things-considered. However, the only coherent notion of an ought simpliciter (...) has preposterous first-order normative commitments. It is more reasonable to reject the ought simpliciter in favor of the form of normative pluralism advocated in (Tiffany 2007). (shrink)

Introduction -- Creation and the other -- Originality and invention -- Inventive language and the literary event -- Singularity -- Reading and responding -- Performance -- Form, meaning, context -- Responsibility and ethics -- An everyday impossibility.

The Music Instinct Philip Ball provides the first comprehensive, accessible survey of what is known--and what is still unknown--about how music works its magic, and why, as much as eating and sleeping, it seems indispensable to humanity. --from publisher description.

Traversing the fields of pedagogy, philosophy, and political theory, this book develops a marxist theory of education that will be useful for academics and activists alike. The second edition includes two additional chapters as well as a new preface and revisions throughout.

Thomas Reid (1710–96) is increasingly being seen as a highly significant philosopher and a central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. This new edition of Reid's classic philosophical text in the philosophy of mind at long last gives scholars a complete, critically edited text of the Inquiry. The critical text is based on the fourth life-time edition (1785). A selection of related documents showing the development of Reid's thought, textual notes, bibliographical details of previous editions and a full introduction by the (...) editor makes this an important contribution to the study of this increasingly respected philosopher. -/- Key Features - Complete, critically edited text of the Inquiry accompanied by a judicious selection of manuscript evidence relating to its composition - Comprehensive Introduction providing an historical and philosophical account of the formation of the Inquiry - Detailed textual notes which include bibliographical details and allusions, translations, references to secondary literature and selected passages from Reid's manuscripts. (shrink)

This book presents an accessible and groundbreaking new look at the evolution of consciousness. It traces its origins back to early man's primordial emotions - those elicited from basic needs such as hunger and thirst.

For Malraux, modernity in art is not only about modern art; it is also about the birth of what he aptly terms “the first universal world of art.” This event was a consequence of the process of metamorphosis which is central to Malraux’s account of the relationship between art and time. The article explains this event, noting also that modern aesthetics has not provided an explanation.

This paper discusses varieties of normative phenomena, ranging from morality, to epistemic justification, to the rules of chess. It canvases a number of distinctions among these different normative phenomena. The most significant distinction is between formal and authoritative normativity. The prior is the normativity exhibited by any standard one can meet or fail to meet. The latter is the sort of normativity associated with phenomena like the "all-things-considered" ought. The paper ends with a brief discussion of reasons for skepticism about (...) authoritative normativity. (shrink)