90 found
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  1. Compositionality I: Definitions and Variants.Peter Pagin & Dag Westerståhl - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (3):250-264.
    This is the first part of a two-part article on semantic compositionality, that is, the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts and the way they are put together. Here we provide a brief historical background, a formal framework for syntax and semantics, precise definitions, and a survey of variants of compositionality. Stronger and weaker forms are distinguished, as well as generalized forms that cover extra-linguistic context dependence as well as linguistic (...)
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  2. Problems with Norms of Assertion.Peter Pagin - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (1):178-207.
    In this paper I draw attention to a number of problems that afflict norm accounts of assertion, i.e. accounts that explain what assertion is, and typically how speakers understand what assertion is, by appeal to a norm of assertion. I argue that the disagreements in the literature over norm selection undermines such an account of understanding. I also argue that the treatment of intuitions as evidence in the literature undermines much of the connection to empirical evidence. I further argue that (...)
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  3. (1 other version)Assertion.Peter Pagin - 2015 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    An assertion is a speech act in which something is claimed to hold, e.g. that there are infinitely many prime numbers, or, with respect to some time t, that there is a traffic congestion on Brooklyn Bridge at t, or, of some person x with respect to some time t, that x has a tooth ache at t. The concept of assertion has often occupied a central place in the philosophy of language, since it is often thought that making assertions (...)
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  4. Compositionality II: Arguments and Problems.Peter Pagin & Dag Westerståhl - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (3):265-282.
    This is the second part of a two-part article on compositionality, i.e. the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts and the way they are put together. In the first, Pagin and Westerståhl (2010), we provide a general historical background, a formal framework, definitions, and a survey of variants of compositionality. It will be referred to as Part I. Here we discuss arguments for and against the claim that natural languages have (...)
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  5. Rules of Meaning and Practical Reasoning.Peter Pagin - 1998 - Synthese 117 (2):207 - 227.
    Can there be rules of language which serve both to determine meaning and to guide speakers in ordinary linguistic usage, i.e., in the production of speech acts? We argue that the answer is no. We take the guiding function of rules to be the function of serving as reasons for actions, and the question of guidance is then considered within the framework of practical reasoning. It turns out that those rules that can serve as reasons for linguistic utterances cannot be (...)
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  6.  29
    Interpreting Davidson.Petr Kot̓átko, Peter Pagin & Gabriel Segal (eds.) - 2001 - Center for the Study of Language and Inf.
    Donald Davidson is, arguably, the most important philosopher of mind and language in recent decades. His articulation of the position he called "anomalous monism" and his ideas for unifying the general theory of linguistic meaning with semantics for natural language both set new agendas in the field. _Interpreting Davidson_ collects original essays on his work by some of his leading contemporaries, with Davidson himself contributing a reply to each and an original paper of his own.
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  7. (1 other version)Compositionality and context.Peter Pagin - 2005 - In Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter (eds.), Contextualism in philosophy: knowledge, meaning, and truth. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 303-348.
    This paper contains a discussion of how the concept of compositionality is to be extended from context invariant to context dependent meaning, and of how the compositionality of natural language might conflict with context dependence. Several new distinctions are needed, including a distinction between a weaker (e-) and a stronger (ec-) concept of compositionality for context dependent meaning. The relations between the various notions are investigated. A claim by Jerry Fodor that there is a general conflict between context dependence and (...)
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  8. Pure quotation and general compositionality.Peter Pagin & Dag Westerståhl - 2010 - Linguistics and Philosophy 33 (5):381-415.
    Starting from the familiar observation that no straightforward treatment of pure quotation can be compositional in the standard (homomorphism) sense, we introduce general compositionality, which can be described as compositionality that takes linguistic context into account. A formal notion of linguistic context type is developed, allowing the context type of a complex expression to be distinct from those of its constituents. We formulate natural conditions under which an ordinary meaning assignment can be non-trivially extended to one that is sensitive to (...)
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  9. (1 other version)Is compositionality compatible with holism?Peter Pagin - 1997 - Mind and Language 12 (1):11-33.
    Peter Pagin Is the principle of semantic compositionality compatible with the principle of semantic holism? The question is of interest, since both principles have a lot that speaks for them, and since they do seem to be in conflict. The view that natural languages have compositional structure is almost unavoidable, since linguistic communication by means of new combinations of words would be virtually incomprehensible otherwise. And holism too seems generally plausible, since the meaning of an expression is directly connected with (...)
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  10. Communication and strong compositionality.Peter Pagin - 2003 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 32 (3):287-322.
    Ordinary semantic compositionality (meaning of whole determined from meanings of parts plus composition) can serve to explain how a hearer manages to assign an appropriate meaning to a new sentence. But it does not serve to explain how the speaker manages to find an appropriate sentence for expressing a new thought. For this we would need a principle of inverse compositionality, by which the expression of a complex content is determined by the expressions of it parts and the mode of (...)
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  11. Information and Assertoric Force.Peter Pagin - 2011 - In Jessica Brown & Herman Cappelen (eds.), Assertion: New Philosophical Essays. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
  12. What is communicative success?Peter Pagin - 2008 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 38 (1):pp. 85-115.
    Suppose we have an idea of what counts as communication, more precisely as a communicative event. Then we have the further task of dividing communicative events into successful and unsuccessful. Part of this task is to find a basis for this evaluation, i.e. appropriate properties of speaker and hearer. It is argued that success should be evaluated in terms of a relation between thought contents of speaker and hearer. This view is labelled ‘classical’, since it is justifiably attributable to both (...)
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  13. Proper Names and Relational Modality.Peter Pagin & Kathrin Gluer - 2006 - Linguistics and Philosophy 29 (5):507 - 535.
    Saul Kripke's thesis that ordinary proper names are rigid designators is supported by widely shared intuitions about the occurrence of names in ordinary modal contexts. By those intuitions names are scopeless with respect to the modal expressions. That is, sentences in a pair like (a) Aristotle might have been fond of dogs, (b) Concerning Aristotle, it is true that he might have been fond of dogs will have the same truth value. The same does not in general hold for definite (...)
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  14. Meaning Theory and Autistic Speakers.Kathrin Gluer & Peter Pagin - 2003 - Mind and Language 18 (1):23-51.
    Some theories of linguistic meaning, such as those of Paul Grice and David Lewis, make appeal to higher–order thoughts: thoughts about thoughts. Because of this, such theories run the risk of being empirically refuted by the existence of speakers who lack, completely or to a high degree, the capacity of thinking about thoughts. Research on autism during the past 15 years provides strong evidence for the existence of such speakers. Some persons with autism have linguistic abilities that qualify them as (...)
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  15. Content, Context and Composition.Peter Pagin & Francis Jeffry Pelletier - 2007 - In G. Preyer (ed.), Context-Sensitivity and Semantic Minimalism: New Essays on Semantics and Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press.
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  16. General Terms and Relational Modality.Kathrin Glüer & Peter Pagin - 2012 - Noûs 46 (1):159-199.
    Natural kind terms have exercised philosophical fancy ever since Kripke, in Naming and Necessity, claimed them to be rigid designators. He there drew attention to the peculiar, name-like behavior of a family of prima facie loosely related general terms of ordinary English: terms such as ‘water’, ‘tiger’, ‘heat’, and ‘red’. Just as for ordinary proper names, Kripke argued that such terms cannot be synonymous with any of the definite descriptions ordinary speakers associate with them. Rather, the name-like behavior of these (...)
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  17. Assertion, inference, and consequence.Peter Pagin - 2012 - Synthese 187 (3):869 - 885.
    In this paper the informativeness account of assertion (Pagin in Assertion. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011) is extended to account for inference. I characterize the conclusion of an inference as asserted conditionally on the assertion of the premises. This gives a notion of conditional assertion (distinct from the standard notion related to the affirmation of conditionals). Validity and logical validity of an inference is characterized in terms of the application of method that preserves informativeness, and contrasted with consequence and logical (...)
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  18. Is assertion social?Peter Pagin - 2004
    In 1956 J. L. Austin presented his famous distinction between performative and constative.1 Roughly, whereas in a constative utterance you report an already obtaining state of affairs—you say something—in a performative utterance you create something new: you do something.2 Paradigm examples of performatives were utterances by means of which actions such as baptizing, congratulating and greeting are performed.
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  19. (1 other version)Meaning Holism.Peter Pagin - 2006 - In Ernest LePore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Language. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
    The term ‘meaning holism’ has been used for a number of more or less closely interrelated ideas. According to one common view, meaning holism is the thesis that what a linguistic expression means depends on its relations to many or all other expressions within the same totality. Sometimes these relations are called ‘conceptual’ or ‘inferential’. A related idea is that what an expression means depends, mutually, on the meaning of the other expressions in the totality, or alternatively on some semantic (...)
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  20.  39
    De se communication: centered or uncentered?Peter Pagin - 2016 - In Manuel García-Carpintero & Stephan Torre (eds.), About Oneself: De Se Thought and Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    It was pointed out, first by Robert Stalnaker, then also by Andy Egan, that David Lewis’s model of centered-worlds contents has undesired consequences for communication of de se contents. The recent years have seen a number of attempts to save the model by amending it to handle de se communication. Proposals include the appeal to sequences of individuals in the centers, to ersatz classical propositions, and to operations of “re-centering”. The authors are Dilip Ninan and Stephan Torre, Sarah Moss and (...)
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  21. When does communication succeed? The case of general terms.Peter Pagin - 2020 - In Teresa Marques & Åsa Wikforss (eds.), Shifting Concepts: The Philosophy and Psychology of Conceptual Variability. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  22. Relational modality.Kathrin Glüer & Peter Pagin - 2008 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 17 (3):307-322.
    Saul Kripke’s thesis that ordinary proper names are rigid designators is supported by widely shared intuitions about the occurrence of names in ordinary modal contexts. By those intuitions names are scopeless with respect to the modal expressions. That is, sentences in a pair like (a) Aristotle might have been fond of dogs (b) Concerning Aristotle, it is true that he might have been fond of dogs will have the same truth value. The same does not in general hold for definite (...)
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  23. Semantic triangulation.Peter Pagin - manuscript
    Suppose you are stranded on an island and you want to get over to the nearby mainland. Your only option is to swim. But is the other shore close enough? If you embark and it isn’t, you drown. So you prefer to know before taking off. Happily, you are well equipped. You have not only a yardstick, but also a theodolite for measuring angles, and a good knowledge of trigonometry. You then determine the distance to the other shore by means (...)
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  24. Communication And The complexity of semantics.Peter Pagin - 2012 - In Markus Werning, Wolfram Hinzen & Edouard Machery (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality. Oxford University Press.
    This article focuses on the relevance of computational complexity for cognition. The syntactic items may be expressions that are surface strings. But in general, strings are syntactically ambiguous in that they can be generated in more than one way from atomic expressions and operations. The semantic function must take disambiguated items as arguments. When expressions are ambiguous, expressions cannot be the arguments. Instead, it is common to take the arguments to be terms, whose surface syntax reflects the derivation of the (...)
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  25.  17
    (1 other version)Compositionality.Peter Pagin & Dag Westerståhl - 2011 - In Klaus von Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn & Paul Portner (eds.), Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 96-123.
    This article is concerned with the principle of compositionality, i.e. the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is a function of the meanings of its parts and its mode of composition. After a brief historical background, a formal algebraic framework for syntax and semantics is presented. In this framework, both syntactic operations and semantic functions are partial. Using 20 the framework, the basic idea of compositionality is given a precise statement, and several variants, both weaker and stronger, as (...)
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  26.  64
    Compositionality, Computability, and Complexity.Peter Pagin - 2021 - Review of Symbolic Logic 14 (3):551-591.
    This paper starts from the observation that the standard arguments for compositionality are really arguments for the computability of semantics. Since computability does not entail compositionality, the question of what justifies compositionality recurs. The paper then elaborates on the idea of recursive semantics as corresponding to computable semantics. It is then shown by means of time complexity theory and with the use of term rewriting as systems of semantic computation, that syntactically unrestricted, noncompositional recursive semantics leads to computational explosion (factorial (...)
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  27.  64
    Vagueness and Central Gaps.Peter Pagin - 2010 - In Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and clouds: vagueness, its nature, and its logic. New York: Oxford University Press.
  28.  95
    Radical interpretation and compositional structure.Peter Pagin - manuscript
    In this paper I shall be concerned with the relation between a particular account of linguistic meaning and the property of compositionality in natural language.1 The account, proposed by Donald Davidson, is that based on considerations about radical interpretation. I shall argue that there is a fundamental conflict between, on the one hand, the view that the meaning of expressions of natural languages is determined purely according to canons of radical interpretation, and, on the other hand, the view that natural (...)
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  29. Pragmatic enrichment as coherence raising.Peter Pagin - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 168 (1):59-100.
    This paper concerns the phenomenon of pragmatic enrichment, and has a proposal for predicting the occurrence of such enrichments. The idea is that an enrichment of an expressed content c occurs as a means of strengthening the coherence between c and a salient given content c’ of the context, whether c’ is given in discourse, as sentence parts, or through perception. After enrichment, a stronger coherence relation is instantiated than before enrichment. An idea of a strength scale of types of (...)
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  30. Compositionality, Understanding, and Proofs.Peter Pagin - 2009 - Mind 118 (471):713 - 737.
    The principle of semantic compositionality, as Jerry Fodor and Ernie Lepore have emphasized, imposes constraints on theories of meaning that it is hard to meet with psychological or epistemic accounts. Here, I argue that this general tendency is exemplified in Michael Dummett's account of meaning. On that account, the so-called manifestability requirement has the effect that the speaker who understands a sentence s must be able to tell whether or not s satisfies central semantic conditions. This requirement is not met (...)
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  31. A general argument against structured propositions.Peter Pagin - 2019 - Synthese 196 (4):1501-1528.
    The standard argument against ordered tuples as propositions is that it is arbitrary what truth-conditions they should have. In this paper we generalize that argument. Firstly, we require that propositions have truth-conditions intrinsically. Secondly, we require strongly equivalent truth-conditions to be identical. Thirdly, we provide a formal framework, taken from Graph Theory, to characterize structure and structured objects in general. The argument in a nutshell is this: structured objects are too fine-grained to be identical to truth-conditions. Without identity, there is (...)
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  32. Bivalence: Meaning theory vs metaphysics.Peter Pagin - 1998 - Theoria 64 (2-3):157-186.
    This paper is an attack on the Dummett-Prawitz view that the principle of bivalence has a crucial double significance, metaphysical and meaning theoretical. On the one hand it is said that holding bivalence valid is what characterizes a realistic view, i.e. a view in metaphysics, and on the other hand it is said that there are meaning theoretical arguments against its acceptability. I argue that these two aspects are incompatible. If the failure of validity of bivalence depends on properties of (...)
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  33.  64
    Publicness and indeterminacy.Peter Pagin - 2000 - In Alex Orenstein & Petr Kotatko (eds.), Knowledge, Language and Logic: Questions for Quine. Dordrecht, Netherland: Kluwer Academic Print on Demand. pp. 163--180.
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  34. 1 Accounts of Assertoric Force.Peter Pagin - 2011 - In Jessica Brown & Herman Cappelen (eds.), Assertion: New Philosophical Essays. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 97.
     
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  35.  54
    The Cognitive Significance of Mental Files.Peter Pagin - 2013 - Disputatio 5 (36):133-145.
    Pagin-Peter_The-cognitive-significance-of-mental-files.
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  36.  91
    Schiffer on communication.Peter Pagin - 2003 - Facta Philosophica 5 (1):25-48.
  37.  45
    Sensation Terms.Peter Pagin - 2000 - Dialectica 54 (3):177-199.
    Are sensation ascriptions descriptive, even in the first person present tense? Do sensation terms refer to, denote, sensations, so that truth and falsity of sensation ascriptions depend on the properties of the denoted sensations? That is, do sensation terms have a denotational semantics? As I understand it, this is denied by Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein rejects the idea of a denotational semantics for public language sensation terms, such as‘pain’. He also rejects the idea that speakers can recognizesensations. I think these views are (...)
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  38.  83
    Assertion not possibly social.Peter Pagin - unknown
    In his paper ‘Why assertion may yet be social’ (Pegan 2009), Philip Pegan directs two main criticisms against my earlier paper ‘Is assertion social?’ (Pagin 2004). I argued that what I called “social theories”, are inadequate, and I suggested a method for generating counterexamples to them: types of utterance which are not assertions by intuitive standards, but which are assertion by the standards of those theories. Pegan’s first criticism is that I haven’t given an acceptable characterization of the class of (...)
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  39. Tolerance and higher-order vagueness.Peter Pagin - 2017 - Synthese 194 (10):3727-3760.
    The idea of higher-order vagueness is usually associated with conceptions of vagueness that focus on the existence of borderline cases. What sense can be made of it within a conception of vagueness that focuses on tolerance instead? A proposal is offered here. It involves understanding ‘definitely’ not as a sentence operator but as a predicate modifier, and more precisely as an intensifier, that is, an operator that shifts the predicate extension along a scale. This idea is combined with the author’s (...)
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  40.  98
    Frege on truth and judgment.Peter Pagin - 2001 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 8 (1):1-13.
    For Frege’s general views about truth the standard reference is the first couple of pages of ‘The Thought’. Less attention has been paid to a short passage in ‘On Sense and Reference’ -- in, fact, only one paragraph long -- where Frege argues indirectly for the view that the relation between the thought and the True is an instance of the relation between sense and reference. He argues for this by discrediting the alternative view that it is an instance of (...)
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  41.  83
    Vagueness and domain restriction.Peter Pagin - unknown
    This paper develops an idea of saving ordinary uses of vague predicates from the Sorites by means of domain restriction. A tolerance level for a predicate, along a dimension, is a difference with respect to which the predicate is semantically insensitive. A central gap for the predicate+dimension in a domain is a segment of an associated scale, larger than this difference, where no object in the domain has a measure, and such that the extension of the predicate has measures on (...)
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  42. Indeterminacy and the analytic/synthetic distinctions: a survey.Peter Pagin - 2008 - Synthese 164 (1):1-18.
    It is often assumed that there is a close connection between Quine's criticism of the analytic/synthetic distinction, in 'Two dogmas of empiricism' and onwards, and his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation, in Word and Object and onwards. Often, the claim that the distinction is unsound (in some way or other) is taken to follow from the indeterminacy thesis, and sometimes the indeterminacy thesis is supported by such a claim. However, a careful scrutiny of the indeterminacy thesis as stated by (...)
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  43. Compositionality in Davidson’s Early Work.Peter Pagin - 2019 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 7 (2):76-89.
    Davidson’s 1965 paper, “Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages”, has invariably been interpreted, by others and by myself, as arguing that natural languages must have a compositional semantics, or at least a systematic semantics, that can be finitely specified. However, in his reply to me in the Żegleń volume, Davidson denies that compositionality is in any need of an argument. How does this add up? In this paper I consider Davidson’s first three meaning theoretic papers from this perspective. I conclude (...)
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  44.  24
    Assertion, Assumption, and Deduction.Peter Pagin - 2024 - In Antonio Piccolomini D'Aragona (ed.), Perspectives on Deduction: Contemporary Studies in the Philosophy, History and Formal Theories of Deduction. Springer Verlag. pp. 211-232.
    This paper concerns the connection between speech act theory, especially the theory of assertion, and deduction, especially Natural Deduction.From a very abstract point of view, an assertion of a content p can be described as the ascription of the property of being p to the actual index, or point of evaluation. This is the abstract characterization of assertoric force. Let’s assume that the actual index is a possible world, namely the actual world. Thus, the conclusion of a closed argument, as (...)
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  45. Knowledge of proofs.Peter Pagin - 1994 - Topoi 13 (2):93-100.
    If proofs are nothing more than truth makers, then there is no force in the standard argument against classical logic (there is no guarantee that there is either a proof forA or a proof fornot A). The standard intuitionistic conception of a mathematical proof is stronger: there are epistemic constraints on proofs. But the idea that proofs must be recognizable as such by us, with our actual capacities, is incompatible with the standard intuitionistic explanations of the meanings of the logical (...)
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  46. Rule-following, compositionality and the normativity of meaning.Peter Pagin - 2002 - In D. Prawitz (ed.), Meaning and Interpretation. Konferenser.
    However, if Wittgenstein’s so called rule-following considerations are correct, then this reason for believing in the validity of (C), is mistaken. The conclusion of those considerations is that we must reject the idea that rules are things which determine possible cases of application before those cases are actually encountered and decided by speakers. If this is right, then there is no rule which determines the meanings of new sentences, i.e. before those sentences have actually been used. Therefore, it might seem (...)
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  47.  54
    Informativeness and Moore's Paradox.Peter Pagin - 2008 - Analysis 68 (1):46-57.
    The first case is usually referred to as omissive and the second as commissive. What is traditionally perceived as paradoxical is that although such statements may well be true, asserting them is clearly absurd. An account of Moore’s Paradox is an explanation of the absurdity. In the last twenty years, there has also been a focus on the incoherence of judging or believing such propositions.
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  48.  86
    Predicate logic with flexibly binding operators and natural language semantics.Peter Pagin & Dag Westerståhl - 1993 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 2 (2):89-128.
    A new formalism for predicate logic is introduced, with a non-standard method of binding variables, which allows a compositional formalization of certain anaphoric constructions, including donkey sentences and cross-sentential anaphora. A proof system in natural deduction format is provided, and the formalism is compared with other accounts of this type of anaphora, in particular Dynamic Predicate Logic.
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  49. The force of assumptions and self-attributions.Peter Pagin - 2020 - In Justin Vlasits & Katja Maria Vogt (eds.), Epistemology after Sextus Empiricus. New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
     
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  50. The status of charity II: Charity, probability, and simplicity.Peter Pagin - 2006 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 14 (3):361 – 383.
    Treating the principle of charity as a non-empirical, foundational principle leads to insoluble problems of justification. I suggest instead treating semantic properties realistically, and semantic terms as theoretical terms. This allows us to apply ordinary scientific reasoning in meta-semantics. In particular, we can appeal to widespread verbal agreement as an empirical phenomenon, and we can make use of probabilistic reasoning as well as appeal to theoretical simplicity for reaching the conclusion that there is a high rate of agreement in belief (...)
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