This chapter reviews the major contributions of Donald Davidson to philosophy in the 20th century.

A cohesive power of a structure is an effective analog of the classical ultrapower of a structure. We start with a computable structure, and consider its effective power over a cohesive set of natural numbers. A cohesive set is an infinite set of natural numbers that is indecomposable with respect to computably enumerable sets. It plays the role of an ultrafilter, and the elements of a cohesive power are the equivalence classes of certain partial computable functions determined by the cohesive (...) set. Thus, unlike many classical ultrapowers, a cohesive power is a countable structure. In this paper we focus on cohesive powers of graphs, equivalence structures, and computable structures with a single unary function satisfying various properties, which can also be viewed as directed graphs. For these computable structures, we investigate the isomorphism types of their cohesive powers, as well as the properties of cohesive powers when they are not isomorphic to the original structure. (shrink)

Philosophy of language has been at the center of philosophical research at least since the start of the 20th century. Since that 'linguistic turn' much of the most important work in philosophy has related to language. But until now there has been no regular forum for outstanding original work in this area. That is what Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Language offers. Anyone wanting to know what's happening in philosophy of language could start with these volumes.

This Handbook introduces key issues in the philosophy of language as currently practised. Topics include: the nature of language; the nature and role of semantic content; the dynamics of communication and speech acts; tense and modality; discourse dynamics; and the expressive, evaluative, subjective, and social aspects of language.

Meaning and Argument shifts introductory logic from the traditional emphasis on proofs to the symbolization of arguments. It is an ideal introduction to formal logic, philosophical logic, and philosophy of language. Distinctive approach in that this text is a philosophical, rather than mathematical introduction to logic Concentrates on symbolization and does all the technical logic simply with truth tables and no derivations at all Contains numerous exercises and a corresponding answer key Extensive Appendix which allows the reader to explore subjects (...) that go beyond what is usually covered in an introductory logic course. (shrink)

This Handbook represents a collective exploration of the emerging field of applied philosophy of language. The volume covers a broad range of areas where philosophy engages with linguistic aspects of our social world, including such hot topics as dehumanizing speech, dogwhistles, taboo language, pornography, appropriation, implicit bias, speech acts, and the ethics of communication. An international line-up of contributors adopt a variety of approaches and methods in their investigation of these linguistic phenomena, drawing on linguistics and the human and social (...) sciences as well as on different philosophical subdisciplines. The aim is to map out fruitful areas of research and to stimulate discussion with thought-provoking essays by leading and emerging philosophers. (shrink)

How can we portray the history of Renaissance knowledge production through the eyes of the students? Their university notebooks contained a variety of works, fragments of them, sentences, or simple words. To date, studies on these materials have only concentrated on a few individual works within the collections, neglecting the strategy by which texts and textual fragments were selected and the logic through which the notebooks were organized. The eight chapters that make up this volume explore students' note-taking practices behind (...) the creation of their notebooks from three different angles. The first considers annotation activities in relation to their study area to answer the question of how university disciplines were able to influence both the content and structure of their notebooks. The volume's second area of research focuses on the student's curiosity and choices by considering them expressions of a self-learning practice not necessarily linked to a discipline of study or instructions from teaching. The last part of the volume moves away from the student's desk to consider instructions on note-taking methods that students could receive from manuals of various kinds. (shrink)

A study on the complex relationship between Platonism and the East, and on the Neoplatonic interpretations of some eastern cults in the Roman world, including Isis, Magna Mater, Mithras, and Sol Invictus.

We examine whether a taxpayer’s decision to choose a taxpayer-favorable characterization of income is associated with contextual and individual dimensions of that decision. Using a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design, we manipulate the prevailing social norm on whether there is a general belief that a specific form of income should be characterized as a capital gain or as ordinary income, and the group affiliation on whether the individual is making a tax characterization decision as a sole proprietor or as (...) a member of a group practice. Moreover, we measure participants’ fairness perception of characterizing the income as capital gains versus ordinary. We study the decisions of 180 graduate business and accounting students from two US business schools to explore these dimensions using a tax-ambiguous income situation. Results indicate that both contextual and individual dimensions impact taxpayer decisions. Specifically, the social norm and fairness perception of characterizing income as capital gains affects the likelihood of choosing such a characterization. Being a sole proprietor or a member of a group practice does not have any significant main effect. However, relative to all other conditions, taxpayers are most likely to characterize income as capital gains when both the social norms are for capital gains characterization and when the taxpayer is a member of a group practice. Results remain largely robust to a variety of alternative explanations. We conclude the paper with a discussion of our findings and their implications for tax policy, enforcement, and research. (shrink)

The paper addresses the problem of imaginative resistance in science, that is, why and under what circumstances imagination sometimes resists certain scenarios. In the first part, the paper presents and discusses two accounts concerning the problem and relevant for the main thesis of this study. The first position is that of Gendler, The Architecture of the Imagination: New essays on pretence, possibility and fiction, Oxford University Press, New York, 2006a), The routledge companion to philosophy of literature, Routledge, New York, 2016), (...) according to which imaginative resistance mainly concerns evaluative scenarios, presenting deviant moral attitudes. The second account examined is that of Kim et al. Advances in experimental philosophy of aesthetics, Bloomsbury, London, 2018), who insisted on the link between imaginative resistance on the one hand and counterfactual and counterdescriptive scenarios on the other. In the light of both theories, this paper discusses the importance of addressing the problem of imaginative resistance in the scientific enterprise in the light of some mechanisms of embodied simulation, based on the activity of mirror neurons and investigated within the framework of the Embodied Simulation Theory. (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)

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)

Bortolotti argues that we cannot distinguish delusions from other irrational beliefs in virtue of their epistemic features alone. Although her arguments are convincing, her analysis leaves an important question unanswered: What makes delusions pathological? In this paper I set out to answer this question by arguing that the pathological character of delusions arises from an executive dysfunction in a subject’s ability to detect relevance in the environment. I further suggest that this dysfunction derives from an underlying emotional imbalance—one that leads (...) delusional subjects to regard some contextual elements as deeply puzzling or highly significant. (shrink)

Disorders of agency could be described as cases where people encounter difficulties in assessing their own degree of responsibility or involvement with respect to a relevant action or event. These disturbances in one’s sense of agency appear to be meaningfully connected with some mental disorders and with some symptoms in particular—i.e. auditory verbal hallucinations, thought insertion, pathological guilt. A deeper understanding of these experiences may thus contribute to better identification and possibly treatment of people affected by such disorders. In this (...) paper I explore disorders of agency to flesh out their phenomenology in more detail as well as to introduce some theoretical distinctions between them. Specifically, I argue that we may better understand disorders of agency by characterizing them as dimensional. In §1 I explore the cases of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations (AVH) and pathological guilt and I show that they lie at opposite ends of the agency spectrum (i.e. hypoagency versus hyperagency). In §2 I focus on two intermediate cases of hypo- and hyper- agency. These are situations that, despite being very similar to pathological ones, may be successfully distinguished from them in virtue of quantitative factors (e.g. duration, frequency, intensity). I first explore the phenomenon of mind wandering as an example of hypoagency, and I then discuss the phenomenon of false confessions as an example of hyperagency. While cases of hypoagency exemplify situations where people experience their own thoughts, bodies, or actions as something beyond their control, experiences of hyperagency provide an illusory sense of control over actions or events. (shrink)

Introduction to the special issue "The Bounds of Rationality".

Quelle est la place du scepticisme dans l'œuvre d'un philosophe des Lumières comme Denis Diderot? Cet ouvrage vise à mettre en évidence les caractéristiques de la réception des instances sceptiques dans les œuvres de Diderot. L'analyse prend en considération l'ensemble du corpus diderotien, y compris sa contribution à l'Encyclopédie. L'objectif est aussi de montrer que la méthode sceptique de Diderot, qui consiste en l'usage de certaines argumentations, mais aussi en un ensemble de choix stylistiques, permet de mieux interpréter certaines spécificités (...) de sa pensée philosophique et de son matérialisme. Une meilleure compréhension du rôle du scepticisme dans la pensée de Diderot vise à apporter une contribution aux études sur ce qu'on définit comme le scepticisme des Lumières, en montrant qu'il serait plus exact de parler de scepticismes au pluriel, en raison des différences qui subsistent parmi les philosophes. Pour cette raison, ce livre propose des confrontations entre Diderot et ses sources sceptiques, mais aussi avec d'autres philosophes de son époque comme Montesquieu, Voltaire, D'Alembert et Hume"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This book presents a collection of chapters on the nature, flexibility and acquisition of lexical categories. These long-debated issues are looked at anew by exploring the hypothesis of lexical polycategoriality –according to which lexical forms are not fully, or univocally, specified for lexical category– in a wide number of unrelated languages, and within different theoretical and methodological perspectives. Twenty languages are thoroughly analyzed. Apart from French, Arabic and Hebrew, the volume includes mostly understudied languages, spoken in New Guinea, Australia, New (...) Caledonia, Amazonia, Meso- and North America. Resulting from a long-standing collaboration between leading international experts, this book brings under one cover new data analyses and results on word categories from the linguistic and acquisitional point of view. It will be of the utmost interest to researchers, teachers and graduate students in different fields of linguistics (morpho-syntax, semantics, typology), language acquisition, as well as psycholinguistics, cognition and anthropology. (shrink)

Ontologies represent the standard way to model the knowledge about specific domains. This holds also for the legal domain where several ontologies have been put forward to model specific kinds of legal knowledge. Both for standard users and for law scholars, it is often difficult to have an overall view on the existing alternatives, their main features and their interlinking with the other ontologies. To answer this need, in this paper, we address an analysis of the state-of-the-art in legal ontologies (...) and we characterise them along with some distinctive features. This paper aims to guide generic users and law experts in selecting the legal ontology that better fits their needs and in understanding its specificity so that proper extensions to the selected model could be investigated. (shrink)

Ontologies represent the standard way to model the knowledge about specific domains. This holds also for the legal domain where several ontologies have been put forward to model specific kinds of legal knowledge. Both for standard users and for law scholars, it is often difficult to have an overall view on the existing alternatives, their main features and their interlinking with the other ontologies. To answer this need, in this paper, we address an analysis of the state-of-the-art in legal ontologies (...) and we characterise them along with some distinctive features. This paper aims to guide generic users and law experts in selecting the legal ontology that better fits their needs and in understanding its specificity so that proper extensions to the selected model could be investigated. (shrink)

Ontologies represent the standard way to model the knowledge about specific domains. This holds also for the legal domain where several ontologies have been put forward to model specific kinds of legal knowledge. Both for standard users and for law scholars, it is often difficult to have an overall view on the existing alternatives, their main features and their interlinking with the other ontologies. To answer this need, in this paper, we address an analysis of the state-of-the-art in legal ontologies (...) and we characterise them along with some distinctive features. This paper aims to guide generic users and law experts in selecting the legal ontology that better fits their needs and in understanding its specificity so that proper extensions to the selected model could be investigated. (shrink)

This paper responds to a critical review of our 2005 book Donald Davidson: Meaning, Truth, Language and Reality, by Frederick Stoutland. It identifies a number of serious misreadings of both Davidson and the book.

This Companion brings together a team of leading figures in contemporary philosophy to provide an in-depth exposition and analysis of Quine’s extensive influence across philosophy’s many sub-fields, highlighting the breadth of his work, and revealing his continued significance today.

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)

This article focuses on cultural misunderstanding in care relations, starting from the analysis of the effects misunderstanding causes in the relation between doctor and migrant patient. The Western medical model tends to be based on objective data, which can be diagnosed through more and more precise and detailed techniques, but it excludes human and cultural aspects of subjectivity and relation from care. This exclusion creates distance, which increases when doctor and patient do not share a cultural homogeneity but differ for (...) their language and the way they conceive their body, health, and disease. By showing some clinical examples, this contribution points out how specialized competence can cause dark areas of obscurity, disagreement, and misunderstanding, although being successful in many distressing situations. The interpretation of misunderstanding in the field of healthcare delimits our observation to disease, treatment, and the relation between doctor and patient, but the identification and comprehension of misunderstanding are possible also, focusing our attention on the organizational and institutional environment where misunderstanding takes place. (shrink)