25 found
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  1. Hedging and the ignorance norm on inquiry.Yasha Sapir & Peter van Elswyk - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):5837-5859.
    What sort of epistemic positions are compatible with inquiries driven by interrogative attitudes like wonder and puzzlement? The ignorance norm provides a partial answer: interrogative attitudes directed at a particular question are never compatible with knowledge of the question’s answer. But some are tempted to think that interrogative attitudes are incompatible with weaker positions like belief as well. This paper defends that the ignorance norm is exhaustive. All epistemic positions weaker than knowledge directed at the answer to a question are (...)
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  2. Assertion remains strong.Peter van Elswyk & Matthew A. Benton - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (1):27-50.
    Assertion is widely regarded as an act associated with an epistemic position. To assert is to represent oneself as occupying this position and/or to be required to occupy this position. Within this approach, the most common view is that assertion is strong: the associated position is knowledge or certainty. But recent challenges to this common view present new data that are argued to be better explained by assertion being weak. Old data widely taken to support assertion being strong has also (...)
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  3. Hedged Assertion.Matthew A. Benton & Peter Van Elswyk - 2018 - In Sanford C. Goldberg (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Assertion. Oxford University Press. pp. 245-263.
    Surprisingly little has been written about hedged assertion. Linguists often focus on semantic or syntactic theorizing about, for example, grammatical evidentials or epistemic modals, but pay far less attention to what hedging does at the level of action. By contrast, philosophers have focused extensively on normative issues regarding what epistemic position is required for proper assertion, yet they have almost exclusively considered unqualified declaratives. This essay considers the linguistic and normative issues side-by-side. We aim to bring some order and clarity (...)
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  4. Representing knowledge.Peter van Elswyk - 2021 - The Philosophical Review 130 (1):97-143.
    A speaker's use of a declarative sentence in a context has two effects: it expresses a proposition and represents the speaker as knowing that proposition. This essay is about how to explain the second effect. The standard explanation is act-based. A speaker is represented as knowing because their use of the declarative in a context tokens the act-type of assertion and assertions represent knowledge in what's asserted. I propose a semantic explanation on which declaratives covertly host a "know"-parenthetical. A speaker (...)
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  5. Humean laws and circular explanation.Michael Townsen Hicks & Peter van Elswyk - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (2):433-443.
    Humeans are often accused of accounting for natural laws in such a way that the fundamental entities that are supposed to explain the laws circle back and explain themselves. Loewer (2012) contends this is only the appearance of circularity. When it comes to the laws of nature, the Humean posits two kinds of explanation: metaphysical and scientific. The circle is then cut because the kind of explanation the laws provide for the fundamental entities is distinct from the kind of explanation (...)
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  6. Generic Animalism.Andrew M. Bailey & Peter van Elswyk - 2021 - Journal of Philosophy 118 (8):405-429.
    The animalist says we are animals. This thesis is commonly understood as the universal generalization that all human persons are human animals. This article proposes an alternative: the thesis is a generic that admits of exceptions. We defend the resulting view, which we call ‘generic animalism’, and show its aptitude for diagnosing the limits of eight case-based objections to animalism.
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  7. Hedged testimony.Peter van Elswyk - 2022 - Noûs 57 (2):341-369.
    Speakers offer testimony. They also hedge. This essay offers an account of how hedging makes a difference to testimony. Two components of testimony are considered: how testimony warrants a hearer's attitude, and how testimony changes a speaker's responsibilities. Starting with a norm-based approach to testimony where hearer's beliefs are prima facie warranted because of social norms and speakers acquire responsibility from these same norms, I argue that hedging alters both components simultaneously. It changes which attitudes a hearer is prima facie (...)
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  8. Why animalism matters.Andrew M. Bailey, Allison Krile Thornton & Peter van Elswyk - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (9):2929-2942.
    Here is a question as intriguing as it is brief: what are we? The animalist’s answer is equal in brevity: we are animals. This stark formulation of the animalist slogan distances it from nearby claims—that we are essentially animals, for example, or that we have purely biological criteria of identity over time. Is the animalist slogan—unburdened by modal or criterial commitments—still interesting, though? Or has it lost its bite? In this article we address such questions by presenting a positive case (...)
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  9. Deceiving without answering.Peter van Elswyk - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 177 (5):1157-1173.
    Lying is standardly distinguished from misleading according to how a disbelieved proposition is conveyed. To lie, a speaker uses a sentence to say a proposition she does not believe. A speaker merely misleads by using a sentence to somehow convey but not say a disbelieved proposition. Front-and-center to the lying/misleading distinction is a conception of what-is-said by a sentence in a context. Stokke (2016, 2018) has recently argued that the standard account of lying/misleading is explanatorily inadequate unless paired with a (...)
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  10. Hedging in Discourse.Peter van Elswyk - 2024 - Synthese 204 (3):1-31.
    Epistemic terms of various syntactic categories can uniformly be used to do the same thing—to hedge. This essay clarifies hedging as a phenomenon and explains how hedging happens by advancing the positional theory. The guiding idea is that, in uttering declaratives, speakers signal what their epistemic position is towards the content put into play by the declarative. The default signal is that the speaker knows. But when an epistemic term hedges, the term overrides the default. The non-default signal sent is (...)
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  11. What the metasemantics of "know" is not.Peter van Elswyk - 2020 - Linguistics and Philosophy 43 (1):69-82.
    Epistemic contextualism in the style of Lewis (1996) maintains that ascriptions of knowledge to a subject vary in truth with the alternatives that can be eliminated by the subject’s evidence in a context. Schaffer (2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2015), Schaffer and Knobe (2012), and Schaffer and Szabo ́ (2014) hold that the question under discussion or QUD always determines these alternatives in a context. This paper shows that the QUD does not perform such a role for "know" and uses this (...)
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  12. Hedging and the Norm of Belief.Peter van Elswyk & Christopher Willard-Kyle - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    We argue that knowledge is not the norm of belief given that ‘I believe’ is used to hedge. We explore the consequences of this argument for the normative relationship between belief and assertion.
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  13. Propositional anaphors.Peter van Elswyk - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (4):1055-1075.
    Propositions are posited to perform a variety of explanatory roles. One important role is being what is designated by a dedicated linguistic expression like a "that"-clause. In this paper, the case that propositions are needed for such a role is bolstered by defending that there are other expressions dedicated to designating propositions. In particular, it is shown that natural language has anaphors for propositions. Complement "so" and the response markers "yes" and "no" are argued to be such expressions.
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  14. The linguistic basis for propositions.Peter van Elswyk - 2019 - In Chris Tillman & Adam Murray (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Propositions. Routledge. pp. 57-78.
    Propositions are traditionally regarded as performing vital roles in theories of natural language, logic, and cognition. This chapter offers an opinionated survey of recent literature to assess whether they are still needed to perform three linguistic roles: be the meaning of a declarative sentence in a context, be what is designated by certain linguistic expressions, and be the content of illocutionary acts. After considering many of the relevant choice-points, I suggest that there remains a linguistic basis for propositions, but not (...)
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  15. Asking expresses a desire to know.Peter van Elswyk - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.
    A speaker’s use of a sentence does more than contribute a content to a conversation. It also expresses the speaker’s attitude. This essay is about which attitude or attitudes are expressed by using an interrogative sentence to ask a question. With reference to eight lines of data about how questions are circulated in conversation, it is argued that a desire to know the question’s answer(s) is expressed.
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  16. Contrast and constitution.Peter van Elswyk - 2018 - Philosophical Quarterly 68 (270):158-174.
    The pluralist about material constitution maintains that a lump of clay is not identical with the statue it constitutes. Although pluralism strikes many as extravagant by requiring distinct things to coincide, it can be defended with a simple argument. The monist is less well off. Typically, she has to argue indirectly for her view by finding problems with the pluralist's extravagance. This paper offers a direct argument for monism that illustrates how monism about material constitution is rooted in commonsense as (...)
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  17. Teaching Philosophy through Lincoln-Douglas Debate.Jacob Nebel, Ryan W. Davis, Peter van Elswyk & Ben Holguin - 2013 - Teaching Philosophy 36 (3):271-289.
    This paper is about teaching philosophy to high school students through Lincoln-Douglas (LD) debate. LD, also known as “values debate,” includes topics from ethics and political philosophy. Thousands of high school students across the U.S. debate these topics in class, after school, and at weekend tournaments. We argue that LD is a particularly effective tool for teaching philosophy, but also that LD today falls short of its potential. We argue that the problems with LD are not inevitable, and we offer (...)
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  18. Reviving the performative hypothesis?Peter van Elswyk - 2021 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 10 (4):240-248.
    A traditional problem with the performative hypothesis is that it cannot assign proper truth-conditions to a declarative sentence. This paper shows that the problem is solved by adopting a multidimensional semantics on which sentences have more than just truth-conditions. This is good news for those who want to at least partially revive the hypothesis. The solution also brings into focus a lesson about what issues to consider when drawing the semantics/pragmatics boundary.
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  19. Testimony and grammatical evidentials.Peter Van Elswyk - 2019 - In Miranda Fricker, Peter Graham, David Henderson & Nikolaj Jang Pedersen (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology. New York, USA: Routledge. pp. 135-144.
    Unlike other sources of evidence like perception and memory, testimony is intimately related to natural language. That intimacy cannot be overlooked. In this chapter, I show how cross-linguistic considerations are relevant to the epistemology of testimony. I make my case with declaratives containing grammaticalized evidentials. My discussion has a negative and a positive part. For the negative part, it is argued that some definitions of testimony are mistaken because they do not apply to testimony offered by a declarative containing an (...)
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  20. Metalinguistic apophaticism.Peter van Elswyk - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion.
    A conviction had by many Christians over many centuries is that natural language is inadequate for describing God. This is the doctrine of divine ineffability. Apophaticism understands divine ineffability as it being justified or proper to negate statements that describe God. This paper develops and defends a version of apophaticism in which the negation involved is metalinguistic. The interest of this metalinguistic apophaticism is two-fold. First, it provides a philosophical model of historical apophaticisms that shows their rational coherence. Second, metalinguistic (...)
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  21. "That"-clauses and propositional anaphors.Peter van Elswyk - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (10):2861-2875.
    This paper argues that "that"-clauses do not reference propositions because they are not intersubstitutible with other expressions that do reference propositions. In particular, "that"-clauses are shown to not be intersubstitutible with propositional anaphors like "so." The substitution failures are further argued to support a semantics on which "that"-clauses are predicates.
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  22.  66
    Un/qualified declaratives.Peter van Elswyk - 2018 - Dissertation, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
    Declarative sentences in English are either unqualified or qualified with an epistemic expression like a parenthetical verb. In this dissertation, I defend parentheticalism, the view that most apparently unqualified declaratives in English covertly contain the verb "know" with a first-person subject in parenthetical position. Paired with a multidimensional semantics for parenthetical verbs, parentheticalism predicts that the use of an apparently unqualified declarative represents the speaker as knowing the at-issue proposition expressed by the declarative in the context. Since the representation of (...)
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  23. Expressing belief with evidentials: A case study with Cuzco Quechua on the dispensability of illocutionary explanation.Peter van Elswyk - forthcoming - Journal of Pragmatics.
    Evidentials indicate a source of evidence for a content, and sometimes do more. Depending on the language, they also express the speaker's belief in that content or its possibility. This paper is about how to explain the expression of belief. It argues that semantic explanations are better than illocutionary explanations in two ways. First, a general argument is provided that a semantic explanation is preferable. Second, a case study is given to the evidentials of Cuzco Quechua to argue that a (...)
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  24.  20
    Unstructured Content.Peter van Elswyk, Dirk Kindermann, Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini & Andy Egan (eds.) - 2025 - Oxford University Press.
    The original essays in this volume present new research on unstructured theories of content, which have traditionally played a central role in linguistics and philosophy of language. The volume explores a wide range of themes related to unstructured content, including both the continued controversy over whether unstructured theories individuate contents too coarsely and various applications of unstructured theories to topics like rationality, epistemic commitment, semantic expressivism, relevance, and propositional attitude ascriptions. It contains contributions from different theoretical perspectives, including both those (...)
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  25. Semantics for Reasons, by Bryan Weaver and Kevin Scharp. [REVIEW]Daniel Fogal & Peter Van Elswyk - 2021 - Ethics 131 (2):420-427.