Este artículo investiga dos problemas principales en los conocidos argumentos de San Agustín en pro de la certeza, contra los escépticos. En realidad, son más bien dos niveles de una misma cuestión "metodológica": la interioridad del conocimiento y la reflexión, como vía de certeza. Conclusión principal de este estudio es que ambas dimensiones son correlativas: la reflexión supone interioridad, N la interioridad exige reflexión, como ría de certeza. La última parte del artículo examina la doctrina agustiniana de la reflexión, en (...) el contexto de su "filosofía del espíritu". La presente investigación intenta mostrar en este punto que, de hecho, San Agustín tematiza o supone, a lo largo de su obra tres grandes modos de reflexión, correspondientes a otros tantos modos de autoconocimiento del alma: el noticial, el cogitativo y el fenomenológico. (shrink)

How do hearers manage to understand speakers? And how do speakers manage to shape hearers' understanding? Lepore and Stone show that standard views about the workings of semantics and pragmatics are unsatisfactory. They advance an alternative view which better captures what is going on in linguistic communication.

This paper articulates and defends a conception of logical form as semantic form revealed by a compositional meaning theory. On this conception, the logical form of a sentence is determined by the semantic types of its primitive terms and their mode of combination as it relates to determining under what conditions it is true. We develop this idea in the framework of truth-theoretic semantics. We argue that the semantic form of a declarative sentence in a language L is revealed by (...) a (canonical) proof of its T- sentence in an interpretive truth theory for L. We give a precise characterization of sameness of logical form between any two declarative sentences in any two languages in terms of the notion of corresponding proofs in interpretive truth theories for the languages. We illustrate the utility of this approach with a number of examples. We then extend the characterization to non-declaratives in a generalization of truth-theoretic semantics that appeals to fulfillment conditions, of which truth conditions are one variety. On this approach, logical forms are not reified, and the notion of sameness of logical form is treated as conceptually basic. We discuss the relation of this conception of logical form to the project of identifying logical constants, reviewing two approaches, one of which takes topic neutrality as central, the other recursion. We argue that the project of identifying logical constants for the purposes of classifying together valid arguments is largely independent of that identifying logical form of sentences, and urge an ecumenical approach to extending talk of logical constants beyond where it is currently well-grounded. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbooks series is a major new initiative in academic publishing. Each volume offers an authoritative and up-to-date survey of original research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned essays from leading figures in the discipline give critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspectives upon a wide range of subjects in the humanities and social sciences. Ernie Lepore and Barry Smith present the definitive reference work for (...) this diverse and fertile field of philosophy. A superb international team contribute more than forty brand-new essays covering topics from the nature of language to meaning, truth, and reference, and the interfaces of philosophy of language with linguistics, psychology, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. It will be an essential resource for anyone working in the central areas of philosophy, for linguists interested in syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and for psychologists and cognitive scientists working on language. (shrink)

Distensión de la finitud y belleza son paralelas en Agustín, su deducción y su calificación estética. Ontología de lo finito es, por ello, a la vez, discurso estético en tres grandes dimensiones: a) fundación y estructura de lo finito; b) sucesión temporal ; c) devenir histórico . Podríamos, sin reduccionismo alguno, interpretar su doctrina estética como >?.Distension of the finiteness and beauty are parallel in St. Augustine, its deduction and its aesthetic qualification. Ontology of finiteness is therefore, at the same (...) time, aesthetic thought in three dimensions: a) foundation and structure of the finetenesss; b) temporal succession ; c) historic becoming . Could we, with no reduction, interpret his aesthetic doctrine as >? (shrink)

Two claims that are hard to deny are that slurs can be offensive, and that not all uses of language are communicative. It’s therefore perplexing why no one has considered the possibility that slurs might be offensive not because of what they communicate but rather because of interpretive effects their uses might exact. In what follows, we intend to argue just that, namely, that confrontations with slurs can set in motion a kind of imaginative engagement that rouses objectionable psychological states. (...) We believe this view has precedence in Frege’s account of tone. (shrink)

Terence Keel's Divine Variations: How Christian Thought Became Racial Science attributes the origins of “racial science” to Christian intellectual history. This is a bold and original argument, but it is not without deep difficulties, particularly in the early sections of the book. The concept of “race” is not sufficiently historicized and the treatment of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach needs to be more firmly grounded in the world of eighteenth‐century natural history.

Context Shifting Arguments (CSA) ask us to consider two utterances of an unambiguous, non-vague, non-elliptic sentence S. If the consensus intuition is that what’s said, or expressed or the truth-conditions, and so possibly the truthvalues, of these utterances differ, then CSA concludes S is context sensitive. Consider, for example, simultaneous utterances of ‘I am wearing a hat’, one by Stephen, one by Jason. Intuitively, these utterances can vary in truth-value contingent upon who is speaking the sentence, while holding hat-wearing constant, (...) and so they express distinct propositions and differ in their truth conditions. Since these differences are not the result of ambiguity (lexical or structural), vagueness, conversational implicature, or syntactic ellipsis, we have pretty strong evidence that ‘I am wearing a hat’ is context sensitive. (shrink)

This chapter presents an overview of Lewis's theory of convention, and explores its implications for linguistic theory, and especially for problems at the interface of the semantics and pragmatics of natural language. It discusses Lewis's understanding of coordination problems, emphasizing how coordination allows for a uniform characterization of practical activity and of signaling in communication. The chapter introduces Lewis's account of convention and shows how he uses it to make sense of the idea that a linguistic expression can come to (...) be associated with its meaning by a convention. Lewis's account has come in for a lot of criticism. The chapter closes in by addressing some of the key difficulties in thinking of meaning as conventional in Lewis's sense. It highlights that Lewis's contribution is achieved through ideas whose influence has only increased over time. (shrink)

I propose a way of thinking aboout content, and a related way of thinking about ontological commitment. (This is part of a series of four closely related papers. The other three are ‘On Specifying Truth-Conditions’, ‘An Actualist’s Guide to Quantifying In’ and ‘An Account of Possibility’.).

In this paper, we defend Davidson's program in truth-theoretical semantics against recent criticisms by Scott Soames. We argue that Soames has misunderstood Davidson's project, that in consequence his criticisms miss the mark, that appeal to meanings as entities in the alternative approach that Soames favors does no work, and that the approach is no advance over truth-theoretic semantics.

We cannot explain our diverse practices for engaging with imagery through general pragmatic mechanisms. There is no general mechanism behind practices like metaphor and irony. Metaphor works the way it works; irony works the way it works.

Critical discourse analysis has become an effective multidisciplinary approach to uncovering hidden ideologies and powers along with the changing times and the increasing prevalence of various discourses in society, both in the form of information written in text and distributed in the digital world. Discourse battles are commonplace in the context of life—as a form of dialectics and freedom to convey ideas. Researchers through this article discuss basic assumptions about the basic or main principles of critical discourse analysis developed by (...) Norman Fairclough and Ruth Wodak. The basic assumptions are that critical discourse analysis focuses on social issues, power relations are discursive, discourse shapes society and culture, discourse manages ideological works, discourse is historical, the relationship between text and society is mediated (discourse), discourse analysis is interpretive and explanatory, and discourse is a form of social action. The article also discusses three models of discourse analysis: the Sociocultural (Norman Fairclough), Socio-cognitive (Teun A. van Dijk), and Historical-Discourse (Ruth Wodak) models. Fairclough’s sociocultural model interprets text not only through the way objects are described but also through the relationships between objects that are defined. Meanwhile, Teun A. van Dijk’s socio-cognitive model emphasizes text, social cognition, and social context, forming a chain of analysis. Lastly, Ruth Wodak’s historical-discourse model puts historical aspects of discourse into his analysis. (shrink)

This is a paper is about a particular subclass of pejoratives, namely, slurs. These are epithets that denigrate a group on the basis of membership alone, e.g., on the basis of race, ethnicity, origin, religion, gender, or ideology. They carrry a characteristic sting, prone to cause outrage and even injury. As to the source of their characteristic sting, the predominant position invokes some aspect of meaning. Some of the few who reject this assumption locate the source of the sting in (...) the taboo status of pejoratives. Others think slurs can sting because of negative associations they carry across time. We challenge both approaches and defend an alternative, for which negative associations are triggered not by every token of a pejorative, but rather by certain of its articulations. (shrink)

Under what conditions are two utterances utterances of the same word? What are words? That these questions have not received much attention is rather surprising: after all, philosophers and linguists frequently appeal to considerations about word and sentence identity in connection with a variety of puzzles and problems that are foundational to the very subject matter of philosophy of language and linguistics.1 Kaplan’s attention to words is thus to be applauded. And there is no doubt that his discussion contains many (...) useful insights. Nevertheless, we find his picture deeply flawed for a variety of crosscutting reasons. Our aim in this paper is to further advance an understanding of the nature of words, both by remedying the problems with Kaplan’s account, and also by achieving a suitable perspective on what the metaphysical investigation of word identity can hope to achieve. Our discussion divides into four parts. In Part One, we examine and critique Kaplan’s discussion of a contrast integral to his own account: that between the type-token and the stage-continuant conceptions of words. In Part Two, we present three constraints on any account of words and two further themes in Kaplan’s discussion central to his conception of words – the role of repetition and the constitutive authority of intentions. While these ideas have laudable motivations, we argue they are far from the best way of making good on the insights that drive them. The final two sections take a skeptical turn. In Part Three, we express doubt about Kaplan’s presumption of the importance of what he calls ‘common currency names’, thus raising a suspicion that he may be in pursuit of chimera. Finally, in Part Four, we express pessimism about whether interesting answers to question above will be forthcoming, and suggest that the legitimacy of our word ontology need not depend on the availability of such answers. Along the way, we tease apart a number of metaphysical questions in the vicinity of the topic of word individuation – questions that are often not disentangled – and consider how the discussion of the previous parts bears on them.. (shrink)

According to an increasing number of authors, the best, if not the only, argument in favour of physicalism is the so-called 'overdetermination argument'. This argument, if sound, establishes that all the entities that enter into causal interactions with the physical world are physical. One key premise in the overdetermination argument is the principle of the causal closure of the physical world, said to be supported by contemporary physics. In this paper, I examine various ways in which physics may support the (...) principle, either as a methodological guide or as depending on some other laws and principles of physics. (shrink)

We give a precis of our book Insensitive Semantics.

Ernie Lepore and Barry Loewer present a series of papers on three key ideas of contemporary philosophy: that a theory of meaning for a language is best understood as a theory of truth for that language; that thought and language are best understood together via a theory of interpretation; and that the mental is irreducible to the physical.

Die Autorinnen und Autoren dieses Bandes analysieren in kritischer Weise die Breite und Tiefe des Diskurses zu Neuro-Enhancement, der sich aber nicht nur durch ethische Fragen auszeichnet. Sie zeigen, dass es darüber hinaus grundlegende philosophische, anthropologische und gesellschaftstheoretische Aspekte sind, die im Steigerungsbedürfnis spätmoderner Leistungsgesellschaften zu Tage treten. So scheint eine neue Wunschwelt vor der Tür zu stehen: Doping fürs Gehirn! Der rasante Fortschritt der Neurowissenschaften hat das menschliche Gehirn erreicht. Die Möglichkeiten der Leistungssteigerung könnten bald auch das „Innerste“ des (...) Menschen essentiell betreffen: sein Denken und Fühlen, Entscheiden und Handeln. Die Herausgeber Prof. Dr. Nicola Erny ist Professorin für Philosophie an der Hochschule Darmstadt. Dr. Matthias Herrgen lehrte am Philosophischen Seminar der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität in Münster. Prof. Dr. Jan Cornelius Schmidt unterrichtet Philosophie, Ethik und Technikfolgenabschätzung an der Hochschule Darmstadt. (shrink)

Most linguists think that there are infinitely many sentences, that languages are productive and systematic. Maybe the most remarkable achievement of our lives is that we learn this thing with infinite power. But the whole thing hangs on those sentences being built up out of their components, which are words. So it’s not even clear what one of the more striking theses in the development of linguistics over the last half century signifies or means without an account of the atoms, (...) so to speak, out of which we build these things. (shrink)

Most linguists think that there are infinitely many sentences, that languages are productive and systematic. Maybe the most remarkable achievement of our lives is that we learn this thing with infinite power. But the whole thing hangs on those sentences being built up out of their components, which are words. So it’s not even clear what one of the more striking theses in the development of linguistics over the last half century signifies or means without an account of the atoms, (...) so to speak, out of which we build these things. (shrink)

Las Confesiones de San Agustín son una obra muy peculiar. Lectores e investigadores convienen en ello. No es fácil ‘definir’ ni comprender ese escrito. El presente estudio intenta una aproximación a su contenido mediante un examen de ciertos rasgos característicos de la obra que derivan de su propia singularidad. Y denunciamos también algunos impedimentos de comprensión y lectura. Confiemos en que esta mirada pueda ofrecer una guía inicial, pero orientadora, a la misma. Además, el estudio formal y temático revela una (...) dinámica interna, de su estructura misma, que va del relato autobiográfico a la reflexión , de lo narrativo al pensamiento. Este avance tendencial culmina al concluir el libro IX, donde la dimensión narrativa de la obra termina. Razón por la cual los libros X-XI alcanzan el vértice teorético de las Confesiones, con su investigación de la memoria y del tiempo. El presente estudio concluye con una breve exposición del problema agustiniano de la subjetividad o el yo, en la base de esos dos libros.t. Augustine’s Confessions is a very particular work. Readers and Scholarsagree upon it. Therefore, it’s ‘definition’ and understanding are not so easy. These paper tries to provide an approach to the contents of this difficult writing, by means of an examination of some main special traits, arising from the particular work’s kind. And we betray also some new difficulties for it’s reading and understanding. It is hoped that these brief look to the famous Augustinian writing could offer an initial but adviser guide to it. Moreover, the formal and thematic inquiry reveal an internal dynamics of it’s structure, which moves from the autobiographycal account to the reflection , from the story to the thinking. This aimed advance culminates at the end of the book IX, where the work’s narrative side concludes. That’s why the books X and XI reach the theoretical summit of the Confessions through their search for memory and time. Our paper ends with an exposition of the Augustinian inquiry on the human subiectivity, underlying both these books. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate about the meaning of lexical words, i.e., words that contribute with content to the meaning of sentences. This debate has coincided with a renewal in the study of polysemy, which has taken place in the psycholinguistics camp mainly. There is already a fruitful interbreeding between two lines of research: the theoretical study of lexical word meaning, on the one hand, and the models of polysemy psycholinguists present, on the other. In this paper I aim at (...) deepening on this ongoing interbreeding, examine what is said about polysemy, particularly in the psycholinguistics literature, and then show how what we seem to know about the representation and storage of polysemous senses affects the models that we have about lexical word meaning. (shrink)

No semantic theory is complete without an account of context sensitivity. But there is little agreement over its scope and limits even though everyone invokes intuition about an expression's behavior in context to determine its context sensitivity. Minimalists like Cappelen and Lepore identify a range of tests which isolate clear cases of context sensitive expressions, such as ‘I’, ‘here’, and ‘now’, to the exclusion of all others. Contextualists try to discredit the tests and supplant them with ones friendlier to their (...) positions. In this paper we will explore and evaluate Cappelen and Hawthorne's recent attempts to discredit Cappelen and Lepore's tests and replace them with others. We will argue they have failed to provide sufficient reason to abandon minimalism. If we are right, minimalism about context sensitivity is still viable. (shrink)

In this chapter, we defend the view that Davidson aimed not to replace the theory of meaning with the theory of truth, or to capture only certain features of the ordinary notion of meaning for certain theoretical purposes, but rather to pursue the traditional project of explaining in the broadest terms “what it is for words to mean what they do” through a clever bit of indirection, namely, by exploiting the recursive structure of a Tarskian‐style truth theory, which meets certain (...) constraints in an illuminating way, to generate theorems that give truth conditions for object language sentences that at the same time provide interpretations of them. (shrink)

In our 2015 book Imagination and Convention, we explore the scope and limits of linguistic knowledge in semantics and pragmatics for natural language. We draw heavily on the notion of coordination from David Lewis' book on conventions. To the extent that the account we develop is right, general principles like Grice's cooperative principle and the maxims of conversation have little to say about about interpretation. Three commentators—Anne Bezuidenhout, Laurence Horn, and Zoltan Gendler Szabo—discuss and evaluate our program in three essays (...) in this issue. What follows is our response to their challenges. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to show that the subject-matter of ontology is richer than one might have thought. Our route will be indirect. We will argue that there are circumstances under which standard first-order regimentation is unacceptable, and that more appropriate varieties of regimentation lead to unexpected kinds of ontological commitment.

Modal logicism is the view that a metaphysical possibility is just a non-absurd way for the world to be. I argue that modal logicists should see metaphysical possibility as "open ended'': any given possibilities can be used to characterize further possibilities. I then develop a formal framework for modal languages that is a good fit for the modal logicist and show that it delivers some attractive results.

The goal of this paper is to develop a theory of content for vague language. My proposal is based on the following three theses: (1) language-mastery is not rulebased— it involves a certain kind of decision-making; (2) a theory of content is to be thought of instrumentally—it is a tool for making sense of our linguistic practice; and (3) linguistic contents are only locally defined—they are only defined relative to suitably constrained sets of possibilities. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

Martin Gustafsson: Quine's Conception of Explication – and Why It Isn't Carnap's: This chapter clarifies Quine's conception of explication and identifies its place in his overall view of the aims and methods of philosophy. It does so by way of comparing his conception with Carnap's, Carnap being the philosopher from whom Quine got the notion of explication to begin with. In contravention of Quine's own suggestion, and against the view of some commentators, it is argued that Quine's and Carnap's conceptions (...) are importantly different, especially with regard to how explication can help us dissolve verbal philosophical confusions and disputes. (shrink)

Philosophy of language has been at the center of philosophical research at least since the start of the 20th century. But till now there has been no regular forum for outstanding original work in this area. That is what Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Language offers.