In a well-functioning democracy, must citizens regard one another as political equals, despite ongoing disagreements about normatively significant questions of public policy. A conception of civility is needed to supply citizens with a common sense of the rules of political engagement. By adhering to the norms of civility, deeply divided citizens can still assure one another of their investment in democratic politics. Noting well-established difficulties with the very idea of civility, this essay raises a more fundamental problem. Any conception of (...) civility faces the problem of semantic descent, the phenomenon by which second-order norms devolve into tools for conducting first-order disputes. The problem of incivility in politics thus is not simply that of designing a suitably inclusive view of what civility demands. It might be that political civility can be cultivated only by way of interactions that are themselves not at all political. (shrink)

Does Frege have a metatheory for his logic? There is an obvious and uncontroversial sense in which he does. Frege introduces and discusses his new logic in natural language; he argues, in response to criticisms of Begriffsschrift, that his logic is superior to Boole's by discussing formal features of both systems. In so far as the enterprise of using natural language to introduce, discuss, and argue about features of a formal system is metatheoretic, there can be no doubt: Frege has (...) a metatheory. There is also an obvious and uncontroversial sense in which Frege does not have a metatheory for his logic. The model theoretic semantics with which we are familiar today are a post-Fregean development. The question I address in this paper is, does Frege have a metatheory in the following sense: do his justifications of his basic laws and rules of inference employ, or even require, ineliminable use of a truth predicate and metalinguistic variables? My answer is ‘no’ on both counts. I argue that Frege neither uses, nor has any need to use, a truth predicate or metalinguistic variables in his justifications of his basic laws and rules of inference. Quine's famous explanation of the need for semantic ascent simply does not apply to Frege's logic. The purpose of the discussions that are typically understood as constituting Frege's metatheory is, rather, elucidatory. And once we see what the aim of these particular elucidations is, we can explain Frege's otherwise puzzling eschewal of the truth predicate in his discussions of the justification of the laws and rules of inference. (shrink)

For most of the major philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, human cognition was understood as involving the mind’s reflexive grasp of its own contents. But other important figures have described the very idea of a reflexive thought as incoherent. Ryle notably likened the idea of a reflexive thought to an arm that grasps itself. Recent work in philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences has greatly clarified the special epistemic and semantic properties of reflexive thought. This article is (...) an attempt to give an explicit characterization of the structure of reflexive thoughts that explains those properties and avoids the complaints of its critics. (shrink)

Beginning with the challenging remark that "analytical philosophy deserves a better rationale than it has so far been given", this book proceeds to do just that. This is not to say, of course, that here we have a perfect rationale that could not in any way be questioned, but it is to say that we have a refreshing and closely-reasoned justification of analytical philosophy that will turn many of its previous criticisms into straw-man attacks, and force its critics to come (...) to terms with Cohen's account. Indeed, as one would expect from Cohen's previous work, he does "analysis" with intelligence, originality, rare ratiocinative energy and intensity, and considerable interdisciplinary relevance. By the latter I mean that the book is not merely a piece of metaphilosophy, but also a noteworthy contribution to the theory of reasoning, the theory of rationality, the philosophy of psychology, and the philosophy of computer science. Cohen makes a plea for what he calls a "semantic descent," in addition to semantic ascent à la Quine, a descent which makes it imperative to do more than just armchair metaphilosophizing and to get involved in substantive philosophical issues. (shrink)

Thomas Hofweber's well-known ontological project crucially involves inferring negative existential statements from statements of non-reference, i.e. statements that say that some term or terms do not refer. Here, after explaining the context of this move, I aim to show that it is fallacious, and that this vitiates Hofweber's ontological project.

This article seeks to correct some widespread misunderstandings of Derrida's thought, mostly amongst philosophers working in the mainstream analytic line of descent. I put the case – with reference to Of Grammatology along with other writings of his earlier period – that Derrida has made important contributions to philosophy of language and logic, especially with regard to issues of modality, tense, and the scope and limits of classical (bivalent) reasoning. Moreover I contend, again contra the received analytic view, that (...) his texts themselves bear witness to the highest standards of conceptual and logico-semantic precision. That there are now some signs – albeit hesitant and belated – of their coming to recognise these virtues of Derrida's work is welcome evidence that philosophers in that 'other', analytical tradition are beginning to move beyond the old outlook of mistrust or downright hostility toward their typecast 'continental' counterparts. (shrink)

Having seen the limitations of a reconstruction of Buridan’s semantics in terms of a modified quantification theory, this chapter begins engaging Buridan’s theory in its own terms, starting with a detailed discussion of the semantic properties of terms. The discussion moves from a brief discussion of Buridan’s distinction between immediate and ultimate signification, to Buridan’s theory of reference, namely, supposition, and oblique reference, namely, appellation. The chapter discusses suppositional descents as distinguishing quantifier-scopes, numerical quantification, and appellation in temporal and (...) modal contexts, as well as Buridan’s peculiar theory of appellatio rationis, the theory of oblique reference to concepts in intentional contexts. (shrink)

This paper is about paradigmatic slurs, i.e. expressions that are prima facie associated with the expression of a contemptuous attitude concerning a group of people identified in terms of its origin or descent, race, sexual orientation, ethnia or religion, gender, etc. Our purpose is twofold: explaining their expressive meaning dimension in terms of a version of stereotype semantics and analysing their original and most typical uses as insults, which will be called with a neologism ‘insultive’, in terms of a (...) speech act theory. (shrink)

The majority of the extant languages have one of three dominant basic word orders: SVO, SOV or VSO. Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain this word order bias, including the existence of a universal grammar, the learnability imposed by cognitive constraints, the descent of modern languages from an ancestral protolanguage, and the constraints from functional principles. We run simulations using a multi-agent computational model to study this bias. Following a local order approach, the model simulates individual language processing (...) mechanisms in production and comprehension. The simulation results demonstrate that the semantic structures that a language encodes can constrain the global syntax, and that local syntax can help trigger bias towards the global order SOV/SVO. (shrink)

When is conceptual change so significant that we should talk about a new theory, not a new version of the same theory? We address this problem here, starting from Gould’s discussion of the individuation of the Darwinian theory. He locates his position between two extremes: ‘minimalist’—a theory should be individuated merely by its insertion in a historical lineage—and ‘maximalist’—exhaustive lists of necessary and sufficient conditions are required for individuation. He imputes the minimalist position to Hull and attempts a reductio : (...) this position leads us to give the same ‘name’ to contradictory theories. Gould’s ‘structuralist’ position requires both ‘conceptual continuity’ and descent for individuation. Hull’s attempt to assimilate into his general selectionist framework Kuhn’s notion of ‘exemplar’ and the ‘semantic’ view of the structure of scientific theories can be used to counter Gould’s reductio , and also to integrate structuralist and population thinking about conceptual change. (shrink)

In the decades around 1800, genealogical imaginaries, or the social, political, economic and cultural meanings of descent and kinship, underwent far-reaching change. Hegel was deeply concerned with these transformations in various respects and in different parts of his philosophy. By engaging with the issues of kinship and family, with the disputes over racial diversity as well as with the scientific debates about life, reproduction and the meaning of sexual difference, Hegel contributed to a philosophical re-articulation of genealogical relations, or (...) to the shaping of a new vocabulary through which the political, social, cultural and epistemic transformations of the period were rendered intelligible in distinctive ways. Although Hegel did not draw explicit connections between his reflections on kinship, race and reproduction, my aim is to explore the semantic interrelations among his reflections on these issues. (shrink)

Preface Phillip R. Sloan, Gerald McKenny, Kathleen Eggleson pp. xiii-xviii In November of 2009, the University of Notre Dame hosted the conference “Darwin in the Twenty-First Century: Nature, Humanity, and God.‘ Sponsored primarily by the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values at Notre Dame, and the Science, Theology, and the Ontological Quest project within the Vatican Pontifical... 1. Introduction: Restructuring an Interdisciplinary Dialogue Phillip R. Sloan pp. 1-32 Almost exactly fifty years before the Notre Dame conference, the (...) world’s largest centenary commemoration of Darwin’s legacy was held at nearby University of Chicago. This event, organized by a committee spearheaded by University of Chicago anthropologist Sol Tax, drew nearly 2,500 registrants. In attendance were the primary leaders... Part 1. Nature 2. Evolution through Developmental Change: How Alterations in Development Cause Evolutionary Changes in Anatomy Scott F. Gilbert pp. 35-60 For the past half-century, the mechanisms of evolution have been explained by the fusion of genetics and evolutionary biology called “the Modern Synthesis.‘ The tenets of the Modern Synthesis have been generally formulated as such: 1. There is genetic variation within the population. 2. There is competition... 3. The Evolution of Evolutionary Mechanisms: A New Perspective Stuart A. Newman pp. 61-89 The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, based on Charles Darwin’s concept of natural selection in conjunction with a genetic theory of inheritance in a population-based framework, has been, for more than six decades, the dominant scientific perspective for explaining the diversity of living organisms. In recent years, however, with the growth... 4. The Evolvability of Organic Forms: Possible, Likely, and Unlikely Change from the Perspective of Evolutionary Developmental Biology Alessandro Minelli pp. 90-115 Confronted with the extraordinary diversity of animal form, we can ask questions about function and adaptation. How does this animal move? How does it feed? How does it defend itself from its enemies? But we can also ask questions about development, reproduction, and heredity. What mechanisms produce these forms? How are these... 5. Accident, Adaptation, and Teleology in Aristotle and Darwinism David J. Depew pp. 116-143 Charles Darwin framed the Origin of Species to meet criteria for inductive science set out by John Herschel in his Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. Accordingly, he was distraught when he learned that Herschel, to whom he had sent a copy of his newly published book, was not... 6. The Game of Life Implies Both Teleonomy and Teleology Gennaro Auletta, Ivan Colagè, Paolo D’Ambrosio pp. 144-164 The present contribution is mainly aimed at suggesting the importance of teleonomy and teleology as explanatory mechanisms in biology in the light of recent achievements in the field, and at showing that they play an actual and relevant role in the realm of life. The issue of finality in biology still provokes lively debates in the... Part 2. Humanity 7. Humanity’s Origins Bernard Wood pp. 167-181 One of Charles Darwin’s many achievements is that he began the process of converting the Tree of Life from a religious metaphor into a biological reality. All types of living organisms, be they animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, or viruses, are at the end of twigs that reach the surface of the Tree of Life, and all the types of organisms... 8. Darwin’s Evolutionary Ethics: The Empirical and Normative Justifications Robert J. Richards pp. 182-200 In the increasingly secular atmosphere of the nineteenth century, intellectuals grew wary of the idea that nature had any moral authority. In an earlier age, one might have looked upon the dispositions of nature as divinely sanctioned, and thus one could call upon natural law to ground moral judgment. Certain behaviors, for instance, might have... 9. Crossing the Milvian Bridge: When Do Evolutionary Explanations of Belief Debunk Belief? Paul E. Griffiths, John S. Wilkins pp. 201-231 Two traditional targets for evolutionary skepticism are religion and morality. Evolutionary skeptical arguments against religious belief are continuous with earlier genetic arguments against religion, such as that implicit in David Hume’s Natural History of Religion. Evolutionary arguments are also... 10. Questioning the Zoological Gaze: Darwinian Epistemology and Anthropology Phillip R. Sloan pp. 232-266 This quotation from Darwin’s Descent of Man illuminates an under-explored issue in Darwin’s work---not the issue of evolutionary ethics itself, but the epistemology of experience assumed in his work, and the consequences of his application of this “zoological gaze‘ to human beings. I will term this epistemological stance in this chapter “natural historical... Part 3. God 11. Evolution and Catholic Faith John O’Callaghan pp. 269-298 To begin to examine the relation of orthodox Catholic Christian faith to evolutionary theory and the question of human origins, consider words of the fourth pope, St. Clement: Let us fix our gaze on the Father and Creator of the whole world, and let us hold on to his peace and blessings, his splendid and surpassing... 12. After Darwin, Aquinas: A Universe Created and Evolving William E. Carroll pp. 299-337 At the 2000 Jubilee Session for scientists, held at the Vatican in May of that year, Archbishop Józef Życiński offered an eloquent assessment of contemporary discourse on the relationship between the natural sciences and theology. He ended his address with the comment that what is needed today is a new Thomas Aquinas. I remember... 13. Evolutionary Theism and the Emergent Universe Józef Życiński pp. 338-354 The 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species has been celebrated in the context of an animated debate concerning both scientific and philosophical issues implied by the theory of evolution.1 One finds a deep diversity of attitudes, both methodological and semantic, in the current debates on evolutionary... 14. Beyond Separation or Synthesis: Christ and Evolution as Theodrama Celia Deane-Drummond pp. 355-380 The fervor with which popular discourse on science and religion has continued to bubble up in the anniversary year celebrating Darwin’s achievements shows that the publically perceived conflict between science and religion will not go away. Academic discussion on such matters is therefore not just peripheral to cultural concerns but takes... Part 4. Past and Future Prospects 15. Imagining a World without Darwin Peter J. Bowler pp. 383-403 What would have happened if Charles Darwin had not lived to write On the Origin of Species? Perhaps his bad health caused the early death he feared, or maybe he fell overboard while on the voyage of the Beagle. Would the world have still experienced the Darwinian Revolution under another name, or would the history of science, and... 16. What Future for Darwinism? Jean Gayon pp. 404-423 What future for Darwinism? I will propose some criteria for exploring this question in the domains of both evolutionary biology and the human sciences. Do not expect me to tell you where we will stand thirty years from now. It will be enough to identify a few general tendencies. For the sake of brevity, I will not devote a preamble to explain... Contributors pp. 424-430. (shrink)

It is becoming increasingly evident that the driving forces of evolutionary novelty are not randomly derived chance mutations of the genetic text, but a precise genome editing by omnipresent viral agents. These competences integrate the whole toolbox of natural genetic engineering, replication, transcription, translation, genomic imprinting, genomic creativity, enzymatic inventions and all types of genetic repair patterns. Even the non-coding, repetitive DNA sequences which were interpreted as being ancient remnants of former evolutionary stages are now recognized as being of viral (...) descent and crucial for higher-order regulatory and constitutional functions of protein structural vocabulary. In this article I argue that non-randomly derived natural genome editing can be envisioned as (a) combinatorial (syntactic), (b) context-specific (pragmatic) and (c) content-sensitive (semantic) competences of viral agents. These three-leveled biosemiotic competences could explain the emergence of complex new phenotypes in single evolutionary events. After short descriptions of the non-coding regulatory networks, major viral life strategies and pre-cellular viral life three of the major steps in evolution serve as examples: There is growing evidence that natural genome-editing competences of viruses are essential (1) for the evolution of the eukaryotic nucleus, (2) the adaptive immune system and (3) the placental mammals. (shrink)

The majority of the extant languages have one of three dominant basic word orders: SVO, SOV or VSO. Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain this word order bias, including the existence of a universal grammar, the learnability imposed by cognitive constraints, the descent of modern languages from an ancestral protolanguage, and the constraints from functional principles. We run simulations using a multi-agent computational model to study this bias. Following a local order approach, the model simulates individual language processing (...) mechanisms in production and comprehension. The simulation results demonstrate that the semantic structures that a language encodes can constrain the global syntax, and that local syntax can help trigger bias towards the global order SOV/SVO. (shrink)

This piece, included in the drift special issue of continent. , was created as one step in a thread of inquiry. While each of the contributions to drift stand on their own, the project was an attempt to follow a line of theoretical inquiry as it passed through time and the postal service(s) from October 2012 until May 2013. This issue hosts two threads: between space & place and between intention & attention . The editors recommend that to experience the (...) drifiting thought that attention be paid to the contributions as they entered into conversation one after another. This particular piece is from the BETWEEN INTENTION & ATTENTION thread: Jeremy Fernando, Sitting in the Dock of the bay, watching... * R.H. Jackson, Reading Eyes * Gina Rae Foster, Nyctoleptic Nomadism: The Drift/Swerve of Knowing * Bronwyn Lay, Driftwood * Patricia Reed, Sentences on Drifitng * David Prater, drift: a way * * * * The gaze drifts where the stare dares not. The gaze is attentive while the stare is intent. Dériver : Equally to drift and/or to derive. —When drifting then, something must be taken along. Something must be derived from the drift. Something of oneself must always become other. Incorporating the other, incorporating oneself as other. Je est un autre , Rimbaud disait; 1 this in his last letter to Georges Izambard, a final correspondence to a former mentor and friend, from whom he was drifting away, having derived much. The drift is a control incomplete. To drift is to come closer and closer, but to always be turning away, pulling apart, pulling oneself apart. It is parabolic in the sense that it is always eluding a formerly established intent. Of all axes, it never finds room to rest. Filling new spaces, always changing places, ever escaping the Cartesian; the indubitable pinpointing of position. It is never pinned down. Love together what we will be apart. Once together, we will drift apart. Il le faut . Attention is held; it traces the path. It follows each point which traces the arc, the line, the swerve. It is not concerned with the figure being drawn, but rather the movement between one point and the next. The smallest movement. The clinamen of De Rerum Natura is the smallest of swerves, it is nothing more than the minimum — nec plus quam minimum . Michel Serres says of the clinamen , that it is an absurdity — a logical, geometrical, mechanical, physical absurdity. 'The clinamen, from here (its state of absurdity), finds refuge in subjectivity; it passes from the world to the soul, from the physical to the metaphysical, from the theory of inert bodies in freefall to the theory of the free movements of the living.' 2 So this swerve is something of the mind and something of the body, both in action, rather than a body which is merely acted upon. Swerve, however, has a connotation of suddenness. It is a movement which is made to avoid an otherwise inevitable impact. Drift, on the other hand, is the unleashing of something which is then allowed to follow a more complex series of forces. These forces now come from within as well as without. It is no longer tethered; now following tides, winds, flows or pitched slopes, now acting on its own. We are not atoms in freefall. Our attention long ago pulled us from this precipitous descent. We now live, ourselves, as one of the many forces. In the drift, as with the gaze, there is an ease. ‘Ease is the proper name of this unrepresentable space.’ It is the space nearest, the next, the neighboring space. To occupy this space requires a turn, a shift or a drift. It cannot be reached by proceeding straight ahead. ‘..the space adjacent, the empty place where each can move freely, in a semantic constellation where spatial proximity borders on opportune time (ad-agio, moving at ease) and convenience borders on the correct relation.’ 3 Intention always seeks to straighten this line, to make it less complex, to isolate the point of departure and the desired destination. It believes there can be two points and, between them, there must be a straight line. Can there be? Maybe. Must there be? Never. Straight lines may exist, but they can never be followed to the finish. After leaving this point, we will never reach that one without being buffeted at least a little — at least the least. One foot in front of the other, this is a very restrictive dance, less even than a two-step. Straight lines lead only to lost intentions, being the shortest and quickest way to get there. When attention drifts it slowly turns away from the intended target, leaving it for something which pulls the attention away. Now we are for a moment free; all at once we can pivot, now we can waltz. Drifting along the page, deriving from what is seen. Reading is seeing; the movement of the eyes as they drift. Reading in the eyes what has been seen, what has been derived from the act of reading. Reading eyes drift back and forth down the page, now and then jump back and forth, up to the top, one word, back down, quickly a few pages back, now gaze out towards the horizon. When attention drifts it is the gaze that follows. Our attention is not restricted to the path the words follow, but links them together; deriving what is to be seen, rather than read. La philosophie fait voir . ‘Thus, philosophers speak through proverbs, and demonstrate. They connect their imaginations with foreign rings, flown into famous tombs.’ 4 Now drifting off to sleep, dreams come as unintended visions. To dream is pure drift, vision without an object, gazing into the dark, reading the unknown of the night. NOTES: Arthur Rimbaud, Poésies (Paris: Bibliothéque de Cluny, 1958), 57. Michel Serres, La Naissance de la Physique (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1977), 10. Translation courtesy of R.H. Jackson. Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1993), 25. Louis Aragon, Une Vague des Rêves (Paris: Editions Seghers, 2006), 10. Translation courtesy of R.H. Jackson.  . (shrink)

ANGLO-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE has tended to define itself squarely against the kinds of so-called metaphysical approaches that have characterized so-called continental philosophy in the line of descent from Husserl. Indeed, Husserl’s project of phenomenological enquiry was the target of criticism by Frege—and later by Gilbert Ryle—which pretty much set the agenda for subsequent debate. That project seemed to them some form of argument that reveals his basically psychologistic approach, one that purported to address issues of truth, validity, rational (...) warrant, and so forth, but which fell far short of the logical rigor attained by thinkers in the analytic tradition. Thus Husserl might claim—like Descartes and Kant before him—to be raising questions about the a priori forms of human knowledge and experience, forms that were given or necessarily presupposed in every possible act of cognition. Moreover, he might claim to have advanced beyond Kant in distinguishing more clearly between formal and transcendental logic, or judgments whose necessity follows from the ground rules of this or that logically binding system of thought, and judgments that result from a rigorous reflection on the genesis and structure of human understanding in general. However these claims counted for little with Husserl’s critics in the other, that is, post-Fregean analytical camp. What they chiefly objected to in Husserl’s project was the approach via thoughts and ideas in the mind of some perceiving or reasoning subject, even though Husserl was very often at pains to reject any merely empirical or psychologistic construal of his claims. To their way of thinking, all this talk about transcendental truth- and validity-conditions was just another variant of the bad old Cartesian-Kantian retreat to consciousness as the last court of appeal in epistemological matters. Only by rejecting that entire line of thought—that is to say, by adopting a strictly analytical or logico-semantic approach—could philosophy at last break free of its attachment to naive, subject-centered, or metaphysical notions of meaning and truth. (shrink)

In Consciousness Explained, Dennett systematically deconstructs the notion of consciousness, emptying it of its central and essential features. He fails to recognize the self?intimating nature of experience, in effect reducing experiences to reports or judgments that so?and?so is the case. His information?processing model of meaning is unable to account for semantics, the way in which speakers and hearers relate strings of symbols to the world. This ability derives ultimately from our animal nature as experiencers, though culturally supplemented in various ways. (...) But Dennett, while successful in rebutting Cartesianism about the mind, fails to take into account our natural history. He claims descent from Wittgenstein in his philosophy of mind, but he shows awareness only of Wittgensteinian's demolition of the private object of experience and overlooks the equally Wittgensteinian theme of humans as products of nature. (shrink)

David Hull's (1988c) model of science as a selection process suffers from a two-fold inability: (a) to ascertain when a lineage of theories has been established; i.e., when theories are descendants of older theories or are novelties, and what counts as a distinct lineage; and (b) to specify what the scientific analogue is of genotype and phenotype. This paper seeks to clarify these issues and to propose an abstract model of theories analogous to particulate genetic structure, in order to reconstruct (...) relationships of descent and identity. (shrink)

For many years the evolution of language has been seen as a disreputable topic, mired in fanciful “just so stories” about language origins. However, in the last decade a new synthesis of modern linguistics, cognitive neuroscience and neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory has begun to make important contributions to our understanding of the biology and evolution of language. I review some of this recent progress, focusing on the value of the comparative method, which uses data from animal species to draw inferences about (...) language evolution. Discussing speech first, I show how data concerning a wide variety of species, from monkeys to birds, can increase our understanding of the anatomical and neural mechanisms underlying human spoken language, and how bird and whale song provide insights into the ultimate evolutionary function of language. I discuss the “descended larynx” of humans, a peculiar adaptation for speech that has received much attention in the past, which despite earlier claims is not uniquely human. Then I will turn to the neural mechanisms underlying spoken language, pointing out the difficulties animals apparently experience in perceiving hierarchical structure in sounds, and stressing the importance of vocal imitation in the evolution of a spoken language. Turning to ultimate function, I suggest that communication among kin (especially between parents and offspring) played a crucial but neglected role in driving language evolution. Finally, I briefly discuss phylogeny, discussing hypotheses that offer plausible routes to human language from a non-linguistic chimp-like ancestor. I conclude that comparative data from living animals will be key to developing a richer, more interdisciplinary understanding of our most distinctively human trait: language. (shrink)

I develop an expressivist account of verbal disagreements as practical disagreements over how to use words rather than factual disagreements over what words actually mean. This account enjoys several advantages over others in the literature: it can be implemented in a neo-Stalnakerian possible worlds framework; it accounts for cases where speakers are undecided on how exactly to interpret an expression; it avoids appeals to fraught notions like subject matter, charitable interpretation, and joint-carving; and it naturally extends to an analysis of (...) metalinguistic negotiations. (shrink)

The concept of narrow content is still under discussion in the debate over mental representation. In the paper, one-factor dimensional accounts of representation are analyzed, particularly the case of Fodor's methodological solipsism. In methodological solipsism, semantic properties of content are arguably eliminated in favor of syntactic ones. If “narrow content” means content properties independent of external factors to a system (as in Segal's view), the concept of content becomes elusive. Moreover, important conceptual problems with one-factor dimensional account are pointed (...) out as a result of analysis arguments presented by J. Searle, S. Harnad and T. Burge. Furthermore, these problems are illustrated with psychological and ethological examples. Although understanding content as partially independent from contextual factors allows theorists to preserve content properties, it seems that understanding content in total abstraction from external factors of these properties is implausible. As a result, internalism is rejected in favor of externalism. (shrink)

The present article is the third part of a trilogy of papers, devoted to analysing the influence of semantic Platonism on contemporary philosophy of language. In Part I (Picazo 2021), the discussion was set out by examining a number of typical traces of Platonism in semantic theory since Frege. In Part II (Picazo 2021a), additional illustrations of such traces were provided, taken from a collection of recent commissioned essays on the philosophy of language (Schantz 2012). The present part (...) is devoted to providing yet additional illustrations of such traces, taken from a collection of classic essays on the subject: the book Modern Philosophy of Language, edited by Maria Baghramian in 1998. We shall, thus, describe a number of examples in which the influence of semantic Platonism on these essays can be felt. Prominent among these examples are the confusion between sentences and propositions (and related confusions), the avoidant attitude with respect to basic aspects of linguistic meaning, the overuse of analytic methodology for semantic research, the adoption of a background Platonic metaphysics of meanings and the overreaction against semantic Platonism and germane views, witnessing an inverse influence (‘by opposition’) from these views. (shrink)

The present article is the first of a trilogy of papers, devoted to analysing the influence of semantic Platonism on contemporary philosophy of language. In the present article, I lay out the discussion by contrasting semantic Platonism with two other views of linguistic meaning: the socio-environmental conception of meaning and semantic anti-representationalism. Then, I identify six points in which the impregnation of semantic theory with Platonism can be particularly felt, resulting in shortcomings and inaccuracies of various (...) kinds. These points are the following: the limitations of regarding logico-philosophical analysis as the only working methodology; the tendency to avoid investigating a number of aspects of linguistic meaning; the recurring confusion between sentences, statements, and propositions; the weakness of transcendent assumptions about meaning; the weakness of meaning assumptions adopted on the basis of pure intuition; and inconsistencies caused by some over-eager attempts to escape semantic Platonism. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on the alleged distinction between speaker’s reference and semantic reference. I begin by discussing Saul Kripke’s notion of speaker’s reference and the theoretical roles it is supposed to play, arguing that they do not justify the claim that reference comes in two different sorts and highlighting that Kripke’s own definition makes the notion incompatible with the nowadays widely endorsed Gricean project, which aims at explaining semantic reference in terms of speaker’s reference. I then (...) examine an alternative account of speaker’s reference offered by Michael Devitt within his causal theory and express some doubts about its suitability for explaining proper name semantic reference. From all this, I conclude that there is at least some tension between Kripke’s chain of communication picture and the attempt to explain (Griceanly, so to say) semantic properties in terms of speakers’ mental states. (shrink)

There is no consensus yet on the definition of semantic information. This paper contributes to the current debate by criticising and revising the Standard Definition of semantic Information (SDI) as meaningful data, in favour of the Dretske‐Grice approach: meaningful and well‐formed data constitute semantic information only if they also qualify as contingently truthful. After a brief introduction, SDI is criticised for providing necessary but insufficient conditions for the definition of semantic information. SDI is incorrect because truth‐values (...) do not supervene on semantic information, and misinformation (that is, false semantic information) is not a type of semantic information, but pseudo‐information, that is not semantic information at all. This is shown by arguing that none of the reasons for interpreting misinformation as a type of semantic information is convincing, whilst there are compelling reasons to treat it as pseudo‐information. As a consequence, SDI is revised to include a necessary truth‐condition. The last section summarises the main results of the paper and indicates some interesting areas of application of the revised definition. (shrink)

The present article is the second part of a trilogy of papers, devoted to analysing the influence of semantic Platonism on contemporary philosophy of language. In Part I (Picazo 2021), the discussion was set out by examining a number of typical traces of Platonism in semantic theory since Frege. In a subsequent paper that shall be published elsewere, additional illustrations of such traces will be provided, taken from a collection of classic texts in the philosophy of language, also (...) from Frege onwards (Baghramian 1998). Then, the present paper is devoted to providing yet additional illustrations of those traces, but this time taken from a collection of recent commissioned essays on the subject: the book Prospects for Meaning, edited by Richard Schantz in 2012. We shall, thus, describe a considerable number of examples in which the influence of semantic Platonism on these essays can be felt. Prominent among these examples are the adhesion to pseudo-Platonism in the form of semantic mentalism; the typical limitations of avoidant and trivializing semantic accounts; the confinement to logico-philosophical analysis as the only methodology for semantic research; the excesses committed by some radical semantic anti-representationalists and some radical semantic biologists; and the adhesion to hardcore semantic Platonism itself. (shrink)

This paper argues for a distinction between fictional characters, as parts of intentionally created abstract artifacts, and intentional objects, as nonexistent objects generated by referential acts that fail to refer. It argues that intentional objects as the nonexistent objects of imagination and other objectual attitudes are well-reflected in natural language, though in a highly restricted way, reflecting their ontological dependence on referential acts. The paper elaborates how that ontological dependence can be understood.