Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Structured lexical concepts, property modifiers, and Transparent Intensional Logic

  • Published:
Philosophical Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In a 2010 paper Daley argues, contra Fodor, that several syntactically simple predicates express structured concepts. Daley develops his theory of structured concepts within Tichý’s Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL). I rectify various misconceptions of Daley’s concerning TIL. I then develop within TIL an improved theory of how structured concepts are structured and how syntactically simple predicates are related to structured concepts.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Three of the four TIL sources Daley quotes—Duží (2004), Materna (1998), Tichý (1988)—apply the ramified type hierarchy.

  2. Jespersen (2008, pp. 489–491) explains why.

  3. See Duží et al. (ibid., §1.2.2, §1.4.2.3).

  4. Already Kamp (1975, pp. 153–154) singles out ‘alleged’ as an adjective it appears impossible to pair off with a property. Instead, it seems, ‘alleged’ must be paired off with a modifier.

  5. In Daley’s defence, at the time of his (2010) no published material was available on how TIL handles modifiers. TIL has, however, since then acquired a full-fledged theory of modification. See Duží et al. (ibid., §4.4), Jespersen and Carrara (2013), Jespersen and Primiero (2012), Primiero and Jespersen (2010).

  6. Strictly speaking, Montague construes the meanings of adjectives as property-to-property mappings. His meaning postulates serve to differentiate between logically different sorts of adjectives. See Montague (1970), Partee (2001, 2007, ms.). For critical discussion, see Kamp (1975), Beesley (1982).

  7. See Duží et al. (ibid., §2.2).

  8. Cf. Soames (2010, p. 114).

  9. Triple (Quadruple,…) Execution is a theoretical possibility, though one we have so far never had any use for. Rather than one instance of Triple Execution we would deploy one instance of Double and one instance of Single Execution.

  10. See Jespersen (2008) for further details on extensionalization as Composition and a comparison with Bealer’s extensionalization operator.

  11. Tichý (1971) sums up first-generation TIL, which only had the simple type theory and lacked type τ. Tichý (1980a) marks the inception of temporalized TIL.

  12. I rehearse this example in my (2010). Nolan (2013, §3) objects that my hyperintensional distinction between a half-full and a half-empty glass should not be restricted to the conceptual sphere (‘of representations’), but ought to be extended to the empirical sphere (‘the world’). Maybe so; but TIL is not the right theory for pursuing worldly hyperintensionality, or worldly structure, for that matter.

  13. Cf. Carnap’s intensional isomorphism and Church’s synonymous isomorphism.

  14. See Duží et al. (2010, Def. 1.3, p. 46; Def. 1.4, p. 47).

  15. See Duží and Jespersen (ms.).

  16. See Duží et al. (2010, Def. 1.5, p. 48).

  17. The definition of simple concept found in Duží et al. (ibid., Def. 2.4, p. 155) has a second clause stating that [λx x] is a simple concept of the identity function of type (αα). However, this second clause involves a Closure, which is a composite construction, and as such ill-fitting as a simple concept. (The original motivation for including [λx x] was that no proper subconstruction within it is a concept.) Furthermore, Def. 7 differs from the previous definition of simple concept in that the definition extends now to constructions as well: also simple concepts of constructions are now an option.

  18. Cf. Fodor’s misgivings (ibid., pp. 123ff) about doorknob being a non-composite concept.

  19. The particular choice of language, name and notation is without semantic and conceptual significance: and 0Cтáлин are one and the same Trivialization, one and the same simple concept, of one and the same individual. Similarly for 0 Venus and 0 Venere.

  20. See also Duží et al. (ibid., §3.3.1).

  21. My (2004) translates the comprehension schema into TIL, stressing the procedural dimension of obtaining one set from another.

  22. In standard notation: {x | (Proud Father) x} ⊆ {x | Father x}, where Father is a set.

  23. Jespersen and Primiero (2012, §2.3) has the details, and also rectifies a claim made in Duží et al. (ibid., p. 506).

  24. Jespersen and Carrara (2013, §2.5), Jespersen et al. (ms.) point out that whether a given modifier is subsective, etc., is a function of its argument property (or argument modifier, for higher-degree modifiers). It is not fixed for a given modifier that it is subsective, etc. In this paper I am suppressing this relativization of a modifier’s status to its argument property (argument modifier).

  25. Jespersen et al. (ms.) explains why the rule of privation replaces M p by Non (property negation) rather than ¬ (boolean negation).

  26. Jespersen and Primiero (2012, §2) justifies this analysis.

  27. Daley’s type assignments, like (οι)(οι)ω or (οι)ω, leave it unclear how a proposition, minimally of type (οω), is to be obtained as functional value. I have not come across a type like ((οω)ι) in Daley, which would seem the most obvious type to assign to his propositional functions.

  28. See Duží et al. (ibid., §§3.4ff), Duží and Jespersen (2013, §3).

  29. I much prefer having ‘tall’ denote a modifier, which in “He is tall” modifies a value of the free variable f ranging over properties. The correct open Closure becomes λwλt [[0 Tall f] wt x]. “He is tall” is elliptic for “He is a (tall f)”. When an utterance of “He is tall” is felicitous, the audience knows who is denoted by ‘he’ and what property is the implicit modifie of Tall.

  30. Tichý makes this point in various places, e.g. (1980b).

  31. See Duží et al. (ibid., p. 524, Def. 5.5).

  32. See Duží et al. (ibid., p. 105, Def. 1.10) and also (ibid., §2.1.3).

  33. As for the logic of the negation Un, see Jespersen et al. (ms.) for the logic of the second-degree modifier Non*.

  34. I interpret ‘an unmarried man’ as ‘some unmarried man’. It is controversial, to be sure, to interpret an indefinite description by way of an existential quantifier, but the interpretation does not affect the point I am making. The shortcut renders superfluous the introduction of the separate category of indefinite descriptions.

References

  • Beesley, K. R. (1982). Evaluative adjectives as one-place predicates in Montague Grammar. Journal of Semantics, 1, 195–249.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daley, K. (2010). The structure of lexical concepts. Philosophical Studies, 150, 349–372.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duží, M. (2004). Concepts, language, and ontologies (from the logical point of view). In Y. Kiyoki, H. Kangassalo, & E. Kawaguchi (Eds.), Information modelling and knowledge bases XV (pp. 193–209). Amsterdam: IOS Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duží, M., & Jespersen, B. (2013). Procedural isomorphism, analytic information and β-conversion by value. Logic Journal of the IGPL, 21, 291–308.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duží, M., & Jespersen, B. (ms.). Transparent quantification into hyperintensional objectual attitudes (in revision).

  • Duží, M., Jespersen, B., & Materna, P. (2010). Procedural semantics for hyperintensional logic, Vol. 17 of LEUS. Dordrecht: Springer.

  • Fodor, J. A. (1998). Concepts: Where cognitive science went wrong. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jespersen, B. (2004). Aussonderung as procedure. In L. Běhounek (Ed.), The logica yearbook 2003 (pp. 133–144). Prague: Filozofia.

  • Jespersen, B. (2008). Predication and extensionalization. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 37, 479–499.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jespersen, B. (2010). How hyper are hyperpropositions? Language and Linguistics Compass, 4, 96–106.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jespersen, B., & Carrara, M. (2013). A new logic of technical malfunction. Studia Logica, 101, 547–581.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jespersen, B., Carrara, M., & Duží, M. (ms.). Double privation and multiply modified artefact properties (in submission).

  • Jespersen, B., & Primiero, G. (2012). Alleged assassins: Realist and constructivist semantics for modal modifiers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7758, 94–114.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kamp, H. (1975). Two theories of adjectives. In E. Keenan (Ed.), Formal semantics of natural language (pp. 123–155). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Materna, P. (1998). Concepts and objects, Vol. 63 of Acta Philosophica Fennica. Helsinki: Philosophical Society of Finland.

  • Montague, R. (1970). English as a formal language. In B. Visentini, et al. (Eds.), Linguaggi nella societá e nella tecnica (pp. 189–224). Milan: Edizioni di Comunità.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nolan, D. (2013). Hyperintensional metaphysics. Philosophical Studies. doi:10.1007/s11098-013-0251-2.

    Google Scholar 

  • Partee, B. (2001). Privative adjectives: Subsective plus coercion. In R. Bäuerle, et al. (Eds.), Presuppositions and discourse. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

    Google Scholar 

  • Partee, B. (2007). Compositionality and coercion in semantics. In G. Bouma, et al. (Eds.), Cognitive foundations of interpretation (pp. 145–161). Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

    Google Scholar 

  • Partee, B. (ms.). Are there privative adjectives? Retrievable from http://people.umass.edu/partee/docs/ParteeInPressKampFest.pdf.

  • Primiero, G., & Jespersen, B. (2010). Two kinds of procedural semantics for privative modification. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, 6284, 252–271.

    Google Scholar 

  • Soames, S. (2010). What is meaning? Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tichý, P. (1971). An approach to intensional analysis. Nous, 5, 273–297. (Reprinted in V. Svoboda, B. Jespersen, & C. Cheyne (Eds.), Collected papers in logic and philosophy. Prague/Dunedin: Filosofia, Czech Academy of Sciences/University of Otago Press.)

  • Tichý, P. (1980a). The logic of temporal discourse. Linguistics and Philosophy, 3, 343–369. (Reprinted in V. Svoboda, B. Jespersen, & C. Cheyne (Eds.), Collected papers in logic and philosophy. Prague/Dunedin: Filosofia, Czech Academy of Sciences/University of Otago Press.)

  • Tichý, P. (1980b). Merrill on what a sentence says. Philosophical Studies, 37, 197–200. (Reprinted in V. Svoboda, B. Jespersen, & C. Cheyne (Eds.), Collected papers in logic and philosophy. Prague/Dunedin: Filosofia, Czech Academy of Sciences/University of Otago Press.)

  • Tichý, P. (1988). The foundations of Frege’s logic. Berlin: de Gruyter.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

A version of this paper was read as an invited tutorial at Department of Computer Science, TU Ostrava, as part of the TIL Summer School, 26–30 August 2013. The research reported herein forms part of the project Unity of Structured Hyperpropositions, Marie Curie Fellowship No. 628170, FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF. The research has also been supported by TU Ostrava Grant No. SP2014/157, Knowledge Modelling, Process Simulation and Design. I wish to thank Jakub Macek, Pavel Materna and, especially, Marie Duží for valuable comments.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. LOGOS Research Group in Logic, Language and Cognition, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Barcelona, 08001, Barcelona, Spain

    Bjørn Jespersen

  2. Department of Computer Science, VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, 708 33, Ostrava, Czech Republic

    Bjørn Jespersen

Authors
  1. Bjørn Jespersen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bjørn Jespersen.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Jespersen, B. Structured lexical concepts, property modifiers, and Transparent Intensional Logic. Philos Stud 172, 321–345 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0305-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0305-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation