This volume explores the rich history of philosophy of language in the Western tradition, from Plato and Aristotle to the twentieth century. A team of leading experts focus in particular on key metaphysical debates about linguistic content, including questions of ontological status and metaphysical grounding.

Employing a constructionist framework of emotion, this study examines whether parental language during emotion belief discussions predicts parents’ self-reported beliefs about emotion and child emotion regulation (ER). 102 parents of children ages 8 through 12 participated in focus groups about emotion beliefs, and nine months later, completed questionnaires on their emotion beliefs and child ER. Focus group content was analyzed for positive and negative emotion talk, cognitive process talk, and an established linguistic marker of psychological distancing. Parents’ positive (...) emotion talk and parental linguistic distancing when discussing their child’s (but not their own) emotion experiences positively predicted beliefs about children’s emotional capabilities. Finally, negative emotion talk negatively predicted parental beliefs about children’s capacity to control their own emotions and the value of anger expression as well as child ER. Current findings contribute to our understanding of how parental communication patterns about emotions may influence emotion beliefs and child emotion development. (shrink)

This essay lays out a view of linguistic content in which discourse context plays an essential role. It provides a role for sentential content by using underspecification but argues that discourse level phenomena are essential not only to determining content but even grammaticality judgments in certain cases. It is thus argued that the traditional view which separates very strictly the areas of semantics — a context insensitive notion of meaning — and pragmatics — a non (...) class='Hi'>linguistic notion of speaker meaning — is inaccurate. In this line of thought, the paper pays a particular attention to hidden indexicals, anaphora and tense. The necessity of taking into account discursive parameters in order to solve semantic indeterminacy in such cases is argued for. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an account of linguistic content based on the active inference framework. While ecological and enactive theorists have rightly rejected the notion of content as a basis for cognitive processes, they must recognize the important role that it plays in the social regulation of linguistic interaction. According to an influential theory in philosophy of language, normative inferentialism, an utterance has the content that it has in virtue of its normative status, that (...) is, in virtue of the set of commitments and entitlements that the speaker undertakes by producing this utterance. This normative status is determined by the normative attitudes shared by members of the utterer’s linguistic community. I propose here an account of such normative attitudes based on the ecological interpretation of the active inference framework. I explain how social normativity can be understood in that framework as the way in which members of a group shape their social niche to make it more predictable. Finally, I apply this account of social normativity to basic communicative practices, thereby explaining how social normative expectations can emerge to regulate these communicative practices, eventually leading to the institution of the sort of normative statuses constitutive of linguistic content. (shrink)

This essay lays out a view of linguistic content in which discourse context plays an essential role. It provides a role for sentential content by using underspecification but argues that discourse level phenomena are essential not only to determining content but even grammaticality judgments in certain cases. It is thus argued that the traditional view which separates very strictly the areas of semantics — a context insensitive notion of meaning — and pragmatics — a non (...) class='Hi'>linguistic notion of speaker meaning — is inaccurate. In this line of thought, the paper pays a particular attention to hidden indexicals, anaphora and tense. The necessity of taking into account discursive parameters in order to solve semantic indeterminacy in such cases is argued for. (shrink)

This thesis presents an account of the nature of structured propositions and addresses a series of questions that arise from that proposal. Chapter 1 presents the account and explains how it meets standard objections to such views. Chapter 2 responds to the objection that this version of propositionalism is really a form of sententialism by arguing for the distinct advantages of the propositionalist view. Chapter 3 argues against a closely related view of propositions by way of general principles about how (...) to construct such theories. Chapter 4 illustrates how a theory of propositions of the sort proposed can be defended against a recent argument that propositions need not play a central role in linguistic theory. (shrink)

This book presents a new approach to semantics based on Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s Directival Theory of Meaning, which in effect reduces semantics of the analysed language to the combination of its syntax and pragmatics. The author argues that the DTM was forgotten because for many years philosophers didn’t have conceptual tools to appreciate its innovative nature, and that the theory was far ahead of its time. The book shows how a redesigned and modernised version of the DTM can deliver a new (...) solution to the problem of defining linguistic meaning and that the theory can be understood as a new type of functional role semantics. The defining feature of the DTM is that it presents meaning as a product of constraints on the usage of words. According to the DTM meaning is not use, but the avoidance of misuse. Readers will see how the DTM was shelved for reasons that we don’t find so dramatic anymore, and how it contains enough original ideas and solutions to warrant developing it into a full-blown contemporary account. It is shown how many of the underlying ideas of the theory have been embraced later by philosophers and treated simply as brute facts about natural languages or even as new philosophical discoveries. Philosophers of language and researchers with an interest in how languages and the mind work will find this book a fascinating read. (shrink)

The Burge-Putnam thought experiments have generated the thesis that beliefs are not fixed by the constitution of the body. However, many philosophers have thought that if this is true then there must be another content-like property. Even if the contents of our attitudes such as the one in ‘believes that aluminum is a light metal’, do not supervene on our physical makeups, nevertheless people who are physical duplicates must be the same when it comes to evaluating their rationality and (...) explaining their actions. I argue that the considerations motivating this view are best handled with just the ordinary ‘that’-clause contents. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

A central finding in experimental research identified with Embodied Cognition (EC) is that understanding actions involves their embodied simulation, i.e. executing some processes involved in performing these actions. Extending these findings, I argue that reenactment – the overt embodied simulation of actions and practices, including especially communicative actions and practices, within utterances – makes it possible to forge an integrated EC-based account of linguistic meaning. In particular, I argue: (a) that remote entities can be referred to by reenacting actions (...) performed with them; (b) that the use of grammatical constructions can be conceived of as the reenactment of linguistic action routines; (c) that complex enunciational structures (reported speech, irony, etc.) involve a separate level of reenactment, on which characters are presented as interacting with one another within the utterance; (d) that the segmentation of long utterances into shorter units involves the reenactment of brief audience interventions between units; and (e) that the overall meaning of an utterance can be stated in reenactment terms. The notion of reenactment provides a conceptual framework for accounting for aspects of language that are usually thought to be outside the reach of EC in an EC framework, thus supporting a view of meaning and linguistic content as thoroughly grounded in action and interaction. (shrink)

In this paper we address the question of what determines the content of our conscious episodes of thinking, considering recent claims that phenomenal character individuates thought contents. We present one prominent way for defenders of phenomenal intentionality to develop that view and then examine ‘sensory inner speech views’, which provide an alternative way of accounting for thought-content determinacy. We argue that such views fare well with inner speech thinking but have problems accounting for unsymbolized thinking. Within this dialectic, (...) we present an account of the nature of unsymbolized thinking that accords with and can be seen as a continuation of the activity of inner speech, while offering a way of explaining thought-content determinacy in terms of linguistic structures and representations. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of speaker intentions in issues of reference determination for context-sensitive expressions, focusing on demonstratives. Intuitively, the referent of a token utterance of ‘that’ is fixed by the speaker’s intentions. However, if this is right it causes a potential problem for so-called formal theories of meaning. I begin by setting out the nature of this problem and proceed to explore three putative solutions. First, the assumption that speaker intentions fix reference in these cases may be rejected; (...) second, it may be held that current speaker intentions are relevant but that they can be accommodated within a formal semantic theory; third, reference determination and semantic content may be held strictly apart. I reject the first two of these moves, termed respectively ‘conventionalism’ and ‘non-inferentialism’, but argue that the third move provides an appealing way for the formal semanticist to accommodate the content of context-sensitive expressions.Este artigo examina o papel das intenções do falante no que diz respeito à determinação da referência para expressões, concentrando-se nos demonstrativos. Intuitivamente, o referente de um proferimento-token de ‘aquilo’ é fixado pelas intenções do falante. Se isto é correto, no entanto, temos um problema potencial para as chamadas teorias formais do significado. Eu começarei fixando a natureza deste problema e, em seguida, explorarei três supostas soluções. Primeiro, a assunção de que a intenção do falante fixa a referência nestes casos pode ser rejeitada; segundo, pode ser sustentada a tese de que as intenções correntes do falante são relevantes, mas podem ser acomodadas em uma teoria semântica formal; terceiro, a determinação da referência e o conteúdo semântico podem ser mantidos estritamente separados. Eu rejeito as duas primeiras possibilidades acima, chamadas respectivamente de ‘convencio-nalismo’ e ‘não-inferencialismo’, mas argumento que a terceira provê uma forma atraente para o semanticista formal de acomodar o conteúdo de expressões sensíveis ao contexto. (shrink)

Some argue that emotions represent so-called core relational themes. A core relational theme describes a relation between a particular event and an organism’s well-being. For instance, the core relational theme of anger is ‘a demeaning offense against me and mine’. I argue that a core relational theme is a summary or generalization of a more complex mental content. Defenders of the Simple Core Relational Theme View reject the idea that emotional content is complex. Instead, they argue that the (...) content of emotion simply consists of a core relational theme. I argue that this view commits the linguistic fallacy: it confuses a theory of emotion categorization with a theory of emotional content. (shrink)

Bystander information is information about others’ attitudes towards a text (i.e. about whether they agree or disagree with it). Social media platforms force bystander information upon us when we read posts thereon. What effect does this have on how we respond to what we read? The dominant view in the literature is that it changes our minds (the so-called “bandwagon effect”). Simplifying a little: if we see that most people agree (disagree) with what a post says, we are more likely (...) to agree (disagree) with what it says. This paper argues that we should take seriously a competitor view and care about the difference between it and the dominant view. The competitor view proposes that bystander information changes what a text seems to us to say: although bystander information may lead us to change what attitude we express toward a post, that’s not because we’ve changed our attitude toward any fixed content (i.e. fixed thing that the post says). This paper argues that, if this competitor view is correct, then social media is likely to be an especially hazardous place for the practice of sharing content. (shrink)

Since the 1960's, work in the analytic tradition on the nature of mental and linguistic content has converged on the views that social facts about public language meaning are derived from facts about the thoughts of individuals, and that these thoughts are constituted by properties of the internal states of agents. I give a two-part argument against this picture of intentionality: first, that if mental content is prior to public language meaning, then a view of mental (...) class='Hi'>content much like the causal-pragmatic theory presented by Robert Stalnaker in Inquiry must be correct; second, that the causal-pragmatic theory is false. I conclude with some positive suggestions regarding alternative solutions to the `problem of intentionality.'. (shrink)

People in a prevention focus tend to view their goals as duties and obligations, whereas people in a promotion focus tend to view their goals as hopes and aspirations. The current research suggests that people’s attention goes to somewhat different experiences when they describe their hopes versus duties. Two studies randomly assigned participants (N = 953) to describe a hope versus duty. Specifically, Study 1 asked participants to describe a personal experience of pursuing a hope versus duty, and Study 2 (...) asked participants to describe a current hope versus duty they had. I analyzed these descriptions with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2015. Consistent with earlier research on regulatory focus, participants wrote more about positive outcomes when describing hopes and social relationships when describing duties. The current research suggests that the effectiveness of common regulatory focus and regulatory fit manipulations could depend on participants’ freedom to choose the experiences they bring to mind when they describe their hopes and duties. (shrink)

According to contextualists, communication has to do with pragmatically adjusted content, not with conventional meaning. This pragmatic content is sometimes identified with speaker meaning or with the thought the speaker intends to express. I will argue that given the sociolinguistic role of utterance content—the fact it provides reasons for action, liabilities and entitlements—locutionary content should not be modelled as a variety of speaker meaning.

Huw Price proposes a strategy for dissolving ontological puzzles through a pragmatist account of our conceptual activity. Here I consider the proper place for conceptual content in Price’s pragmatism. Price himself rules out any explanatory role for content, just as he rules out any explanatory role for representational notions such as reference and truth. I argue that the cases are disanalogous and that he offers no good reasons for avoiding explanatory appeal to content. Furthermore, I argue that (...) doing so is incompatible with his pragmatist project. (shrink)

According to contextualists, communication has to do with pragmatically adjusted content, not with conventional meaning. This pragmatic content is sometimes identified with speaker meaning or with the thought the speaker intends to express. I will argue that given the sociolinguistic role of utterance content—the fact it provides reasons for action, liabilities and entitlements—locutionary content should not be modelled as a variety of speaker meaning.

Each of the three essays constituting the dissertation's body explores a theoretical approach to conceptual content, as well as to particular kinds of concepts. A concluding chapter defends a distinction between two varieties of intentionality. ;Chapter 1 identifies a distinctive model of intentionality in Locke's discussion of our "ideas of the sorts of substances." Properly understood, his doctrine of the "inadequacy" of substance-ideas reveals that the sort represented by such an idea isn't settled by the idea's descriptive content. (...) The key to his compromise between classificatory conventionalism and essentialism is an injunction to "rectify" each substance-idea, one that reflects a norm governing natural-historical inquiry. Interestingly, Locke regards the resulting picture of the natural kinds represented by substance-ideas as compatible with his descriptivist account of how the extensions of substance-names are fixed. ;Chapter 2 examines Gupta and Belnap's theory of "circular concepts," which likewise appeals to a semantic "revision rule." Besides promising to explain semantic paradox when applied to the concept of truth, their theory significantly liberalizes the framework of truth conditional semantics. I criticize the rationale behind that liberalization by investigating the significance attributed to the revision rule, and propose invoking pragmatic ideas to do justice to some of the theory's motivating intuitions. ;Chapter 3 first argues that Brandom's appeal to normatively characterized linguistic practice subserves two approaches to content: one expressivist and the other reductionist. The criterion of adequacy motivating his "inferentialist" reduction of contentfulness, I then argue, is one he should dismiss in view of his deflationism about truth. Moreover, Brandom fails to vindicate the priority of attributions of inferential norms over attributions of propositional content. This criticism doesn't affect the expressivist elucidation of intentional concepts resulting from Brandom's normative-pragmatic description of assertional practice. ;My conclusion draws on this elucidation to defend a distinction prefigured in my construal of Locke as divorcing the aboutness of substance-ideas from assessments of truth. I argue that we should distinguish between a "representational" kind of intentionality whose attribution subserves explanations of successful inductive and explanatory practices, and a "semantic" kind whose attribution makes explicit normative features of the essentially communicative practice of assertion. (shrink)

Textualist and originalist legal reasoning usually involves something like the following thesis, whether implicitly or explicitly: the legal content of a statute or constitutional clause is the linguistic content that a reasonable member of the relevant audience would, knowing the context and conversational background, associate with the enactment. In this paper, I elucidate some important aspects of this thesis, emphasizing the important role that contextual enrichment plays in textualist and originalist legal reasoning. The aim is to show (...) how the linguistic framework underlying sophisticated versions of new textualism and public-meaning originalism can help to shed important light on the plausibility of what John Perry calls conception textualism. Contra Perry, I do not think that conception textualism—arguably best classified as a version of expected-applications originalism—is “confused, implausible, and unworkable.” I also briefly compare my linguistic case for conception textualism with Justice Scalia's nonlinguistic argument for it, the main premise of which concerns the constitutive function of constitutions. (shrink)

Content-externalism is the view that a subject’s relations to a context can play a role in individuating the content of her mental states. According to social content-externalists, relations to a socio-linguistic context can play a fundamental individuating role. Åsa Wikforss has suggested that ‘social externalism depends on the assumption that individuals have an incomplete grasp of their own concepts’ (Wikforss 2004, p. 287). In this paper, I show that this isn’t so. I develop and defend an (...) argument for social content-externalism which does not depend on this assumption. The argument is animated by strands of thought in the later work of Wittgenstein. In addition to demonstrating that social externalists are not necessarily committed to thinking that a subject can have thoughts involving concepts which she incompletely understands, this argument is important insofar as it: (1) supports a form of content-externalism with extended scope; (2) avoids the controversy surrounding the claim that subjects can think with concepts which they incompletely understand; and (3) situates Wittgenstein’s later work with respect to contemporary debates about content-externalism. (shrink)

In Context and Content Robert Stalnaker develops a philosophical picture of the nature of speech and thought and the relations between them. Two themes in particular run through these collected essays: the role that the context in which speech takes place plays in accounting for the way language is used to express thought, and the role of the external environment in determining the contents of our thoughts. Stalnaker argues against the widespread assumption of the priority of linguistic over (...) mental representation, which he suggests has had a distorting influence on our understanding. The first part of the book develops a framework for representing contexts and the way they interact with the interpretation of what is said in them. This framework is used to help to explain a range of linguistic phenomena concerning presupposition and assertion, conditional statements, the attribution of beliefs, and the use of names, descriptions, and pronouns to refer. Stalnaker then draws out the conception of thought and its content that is implicit in this framework. He defends externalism about thought--the assumption that our thoughts have the contents they have in virtue of the way we are situated in the world--and explores the role of linguistic action and linguistic structure in determining the contents of our thoughts. Context and Content offers philosophers and cognitive scientists a summation of Stalnaker's important and influential work in this area. His new introduction to the volume gives an overview of this work and offers a convenient way in for those who are new to it. The Oxford Cognitive Science series is a new forum for the best contemporary work in this flourishing field, where various disciplines--cognitive psychology, philosophy, linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and computational theory--join forces in the investigation of thought, awareness, understanding, and associated workings of the mind. Each book constitutes an original contribution to its subject, but will be accessible beyond the ranks of specialists, so as to reach a broad interdisciplinary readership. The series will be carefully shaped and steered with the aim of representing the most important developments in the field and bringing together its constituent disciplines. (shrink)

_Abstract_: In this paper, I explain emerging mental content by focusing on the role of inner speech in reading acquisition. I offer a hybrid explanation that relates a Vygotskian conception of inner speech (constructivism) to dual-route psycholinguistic models of reading (cognitivism) and the notion of content-involving mental states based on socio-cultural practices (enactivism). I first clarify some of the presuppositions that allow for my proposed conception of proto-content. Second, I explore the relationship between inner speech and reading (...) acquisition. Lastly, I develop a notion of “proto-content” grounded in the idea of internal aboutness. _Keywords_: Mental Representations; Reading Acquisition; Linguistic Content; Constructivism; Enactivism; Cognitivism _Da qualche parte, là in mezzo: il discorso interiore e il contenuto proto-mentale_ _Riassunto_: In questo lavoro intendo illustrare l’emergere del contenuto mentale concetrandomi sul ruolo del discorso interiore nella acquisizione della capacità di lettura. Intendo offrire un modello ibrido di spiegazione che metta in relazione una concezione vygotskiana del discorso interiore (costruttivismo) e i modelli di lettura psicolinguistici a due vie (cognitivismo) con la nozione di stati mentali provvisti di contenuto. Chiarirò in primo luogo alcuni presupposti della mia concezione del proto-mentale. In secondo luogo esplorerò la relazione tra discorso interiore e acquisizione della capacità di lettura. In ultima istanza svilupperò una nozione di “proto-contenuto” fondata nell’idea della capacità interna di riferimento. _Parole chiave_: Rappresentazione mentale; Acquisizione della capacità di lettura; Contenuto linguistico; Costruttivismo; Enattivismo; Cognitivismo. (shrink)

The majority of our linguistic exchanges, such as everyday conversations, are divided into turns; one party usually talks at a time, with only relatively rare occurrences of brief overlaps in which there are two simultaneous speakers. Moreover, conversational turn-taking tends to be very fast. We typically start producing our responses before the previous turn has finished, i.e., before we are confronted with the full content of our interlocutor’s utterance. This raises interesting questions about the nature of linguistic (...) understanding. Philosophical theories typically focus on linguistic understanding characterized either as an ability to grasp the contents of utterances in a given language or as outputs of this ability—mental states of one type or another. In this paper, I supplement these theories by developing an account of the process of understanding. I argue that it enables us to capture the dynamic and temporal aspect of understanding and reconcile philosophical investigations with empirical research on language comprehension. (shrink)

There is a well-established social practice whereby we hold one another responsible for the things that we say. Speakers are held liable for the truth of the contents they express and they can be sanctioned and/or held to be unreliable or devious if it turns out what they say is false. In this paper chapter we argue that a better understanding of this fundamental socio-linguistic practice – of ascribing what we will term (following Borg (2019)) ‘linguistic liability’ – (...) helps to shed light on a core debate in semantics and pragmatics, concerning how and where to draw the line between different kinds of content. We suggest that attributions of linguistic liability form a heterogenous (rather than a homogenous) class and seek to show that different kinds of liability judgements are useful because they track divergent kinds of content – specifically the kinds that have come to prominence in recent theorising theorizing about the semantics/pragmatics divide. (shrink)

Propositions are traditionally regarded as performing vital roles in theories of natural language, logic, and cognition. This chapter offers an opinionated survey of recent literature to assess whether they are still needed to perform three linguistic roles: be the meaning of a declarative sentence in a context, be what is designated by certain linguistic expressions, and be the content of illocutionary acts. After considering many of the relevant choice-points, I suggest that there remains a linguistic basis (...) for propositions, but not for some of the traditional reasons. (shrink)

Most people working on linguistic meaning or communication assume that semantics and pragmatics are distinct domains, yet there is still little consensus on how the distinction is to be drawn. The position defended in this paper is that the semantics/pragmatics distinction holds between encoded linguistic meaning and speaker meaning. Two other ‘minimalist’ positions on semantics are explored and found wanting: Kent Bach’s view that there is a narrow semantic notion of context which is responsible for providing semantic values (...) for a small number of indexicals, and Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore’s view that semantics includes the provision of values for all indexicals, even though these depend on the speaker’s communicative intentions. Finally, some implications are considered for the favoured semantics/pragmatics distinction of the fact that there are linguistic elements which do not contribute to truth-conditional content but rather provide guidance on pragmatic inference. (shrink)

We explored whether children could apply linguistic strategies for lying, i.e., manipulating linguistic content of speech to mislead others. We announced a knowledge-test entailing prizes in the classrooms of a primary school and a middle school. Altogether 79 Chinese children (6-18 years) voluntarily participated in the test: listening to a series of animal sounds before guessing the names of the animals. Meanwhile, behind the participants, a video was playing images that ostensibly corresponded to the sounds being played. (...) In fact, this was not necessarily the case, i.e., some items cannot be solved because the sounds played are not from any animal but machine-synthesized. Participants were instructed not to look back at the video. However, 51 children peeked at the video for the unsolvable items, although the peeking behavior decreased with age. Moreover, when explaining how they correctly guessed the unsolvable items, children as young as six years old were able to apply a linguistic strategy (i.e., "capability attribution") for lying. Besides "capability attribution", Children also applied "fortune attribution" and "topic shift" for lying. Finally, "fortune attribution" and "topic shift" increased with age. Therefore, educators need to be aware that children are able to apply verbal strategies for lying that could involve truthful statements (i.e., "topic shift") or statements that are difficult to be proved as untruthful (i.e., "fortune attribution"). (shrink)

How much linguistic understanding is required for testimonial knowledge acquisition? One answer is that, so long as we grasp the content expressed by the speaker, it does not matter if our understanding of it is poor. Call this the ‘Liberal View’ of testimony. This approach looks especially promising when combined with the thesis that we share a public language that makes it easy to grasp the right content. In this paper, I argue that this picture is epistemically (...) problematic. Poor linguistic understanding undermines our ability to recognise evidence and counterevidence for the testimonial content. Because of this, in many cases in which a hearer’s understanding is poor, her resultant testimonial belief will lack sufficient warrant to qualify as knowledge. Given that we often do not possess a sufficiently good understanding of the testimony we consume, I argue that we acquire far less knowledge through testimony than the Liberal View suggests. (shrink)

This book steers a middle course between two opposing conceptions that currently dominate the field of semantics, the logical and cognitive approaches. Patrick Duffley brings to light the inadequacies of both of these frameworks, arguing that linguistic semantics must be based on the linguistic sign itself and on the meaning that it conveys across the full range of its uses. The book offers 12 case studies that demonstrate the explanatory power of a sign-based semantics, dealing with topics such (...) as complementation with aspectual and causative verbs, control and raising, wh- words, full-verb inversion, and existential-there constructions. It calls for a radical revision of the semantics/pragmatics interface, proposing that the dividing line be drawn between content that is linguistically encoded and content that is not encoded but still communicated. While traditional linguistic analysis often places meaning at the level of the sentence or construction, this volume argues that meaning belongs at the lower level of linguistic items, where the linguistic sign is stored in a stable, permanent, and direct relation with its meaning outside of any particular context. Building linguistic analysis from the ground up in this way provides it with a more0solid foundation and increases its explanatory power. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d. The article is devoted to the analysis of the key directions of the study of the possible influence of the specifics of Chinese language culture on the content and nature of intellectual discourse, which is recognized as philosophical. Logic and ontology are the key areas of analysis of the possible influence of linguistic determinants on the intellectual discourse of China. Three main topics that attract the attention of researchers (...) are the structure of judgment, the semantics of lexical units, and the specificity of the pragmatics of the Chinese language. M e t h o d s. The author applied general scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison and description of the works of researchers of Chinese philosophy, which justify and argue the fruitfulness of studying the peculiarities of Chinese language to explain the reasons of the fundamental difference between the problems actualized in the history of Chinese philosophy and those that formed the basis of the development of the history of philosophy in the Western world. R e s u l t s. It is generally accepted that for the worldview of representatives of Chinese culture, the world is a structural whole, consisting of elements that continuously interact in the dynamics of changes and transformations, we find a reflection of this feature in the semantics of the corresponding symbolic system. Polysemy in the Chinese language mostly reveals a complex and multi-layered "web" of associative and correlative connections between meanings, which in fact cannot be argued outside the context of the relevant cultural tradition indicating common features or similarities of the signified. The doubt about the typicality of understanding the denotations as fixed and atomized for the Chinese language culture is reasonable, even in those cases when it comes to the designation of empirically accessible objectivity. The main specific features of polysemy in the Chinese language are the complete heterogeneity of what is signified, and the lack of transparent grounds for identifying the genus-species subordination of the scope of general concepts. This can also serve as an explanation for the fact that we do not find a completely obvious and nondisputable analogue of the problem of universals of the Western model in the history of Chinese philosophy. C o n c l u s i o n s. Based on the peculiarities of the Chinese language culture, we can recognize as a reasonable a statement that the seemingly natural understanding of the essence – the subject, as something that remains the same (at least for a certain time), but it undergoes some changes through its manifestations – a predicate (properties and actions). It is not as necessary and axiomatic for Chinese thinkers as, for example, for ancient Greek philosophers. In addition, we can recognize the fact that the verb "to exist" does not fulfill the role of a necessary copula in judgments in the Chinese language, as a probable reason for the lack of fundamental problematization of the concept of "being" in the Chinese history of philosophy. In general, the context of the use of a certain word-sign in the Chinese language plays a determining role. The actualization of one or another meaning in an expression is formed not only by its integration into a certain text, but also by its purpose in accordance with the specific practice of application. Therefore, this can serve as an explanation for the absence of an original and axiomatic interpretation of truth as absolute, that is, unchanging and non-relative in the history of Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

According to Sparse views of perceptual content, the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is exhausted by the experiential presentation of ‘low-level’ properties such as (in the case of vision) shapes, colors, and textures Whereas, according to Rich views of perceptual content, the phenomenal character of perceptual experience can also sometimes involve experiencing ‘high-level’ properties such as natural kinds, artefactual kinds, causal relations, linguistic meanings, and moral properties. An important dialectical tool in the debate between Rich and Sparse (...) theorists is the so-called ‘method of phenomenal contrast’. I explore how this method of phenomenal contrast interacts with the sort of content-externalism made familiar by Putnam. I show that the possibility of Twin Earth style cases places important restrictions on the range of properties that the method of phenomenal contrast could plausibly apply to. Moreover, these restrictions would apply to some paradigmatically low-level properties as well as to some of the frequently advanced high-level properties. I also draw some general lessons about the different ways one might conceive of the relation between phenomenal character and representational content. (shrink)

This paper articulates an account of imperatives that sensibly supports the idea of a logic of imperative inferences. We rebuke common objections to the very possibility of such a logic, from a perspective based on recent linguistic work on the morphosyntax of imperatives. Specifically, we develop the notion that the content of an imperative sentence includes both a force operator alongside an imperational content to which the force applies. We further argue that this account of the (...) class='Hi'>content of imperatives constitutes a plausible and flexible framework to develop a logic of imperative by examining a number of reconstructions of this idea using semantical analogs of widespread modal semantics. After studying the performance of those approaches, we conclude that progress in imperative logic has been hindered by the failure to adopt conflict-tolerant and resource-sensitive semantics, but suggest that such considerations can be incorporated in this flexible framework. Finally, we also propose a simple account of the difference between operators applying to the content of imperatives and imperative operators, in a way that sheds light on some of the issues underlying the usual antinomies. (shrink)