Marián Zouhar

The article contains several applications of the version of the historical theory of proper names presented in the previous article . They are designed to defend its epistemologically meager point of view . It is argued that the distinction between reference of an expression and that of a speaker which lies in the very heart of the theory enables one to handle with many well-known examples . Then bounds of referential uses of proper names are tested with respect to some other examples as well . The point is that the theory is neither too narrow nor too broad: it does not exclude, on the one hand, those uses of a name that are demonstrably referrential and it does not, on the other hand, count as referring clearly non-referrential “uses” of a name

The chief aim of the article is to give an analysis of Russellś semantical theory of ordinary proper names with respect to the problem of reference. The problem can be stated in the following way: proper names are employed as devices for identifying objects - how is it possible that they can serve for this purpose? It is argued that Russellś semantics is unable to solve the problem and, moreover, it is impossible to state the problem within its conceptual framework. Russellś identification of the referent of a name with nameś meaning, together with his logico-semantical distinction between complete and incomplete symbols, and his epistemology of sense-data implies that grammatically proper names are, in fact, disguised descriptions. It is argued that in order for the theory to work it must rely on an infallible or ideal speaker

The main aim of the paper is to reject the idea that predicates of personal taste express normative meanings. According to a recent theory proposed by Daniel Gutzmann, predicates of personal taste express both a truth-conditional content and a use-conditional content, the latter being normative. The purported normativity of predicates of personal taste is supposed to consist in that when producing utterances containing such predicates, their speakers suggest how other people ought to experience the objects of taste under discussion. The paper provides a bunch of evidence to show there are utterances containing predicates of personal taste that cannot be used normatively in this sense. In particular, it is claimed that one can make such an utterance and then add a related normative piece of information without doing anything redundant; one can also make such an utterance and then deny the related normative piece of information without generating any contradiction or infelicity. At the same time, it is admitted there are situations in which the speakers do communicate something normative by producing utterances containing predicates of personal taste. We thus need an explanation to cope with such cases. Although the paper does not offer one, it provides some reasons to the effect that a correct explanation has to be pragmatic rather than semantic.

According to contextualism, the propositions expressed by utterances of certain kinds of sentences often involve constituents that are unarticulated at the level of syntactic representation. This claim is usually supported by a set of examples collected from everyday communication in which the utterances are taken as expressing richer contents than those determined solely by semantic conventions and compositionality. The present paper tries to show that this kind of evidence cannot be used to uphold contextualism without further arguments. In other words, contextualism is underdetermined by this kind of evidence. It is argued that other approaches can accommodate the same set of examples and provide the same predictions. They can do so despite the fact that the purported unarticulated constituents are taken to be somehow articulated at the level of syntactic representation. These approaches are, thus, non-contextualist in the above sense. Consequently, to win her case, the contextualist has to demonstrate that all relevant competitors to her theory that provide the same predictions are defective for some reason or other.

Critical statements, if true, bear ontological commitments to fictional entities. A well-known version of fictionalism about fictional characters tries to eliminate these ontological commitments by proposing that we understand critical statements as prefixed by a special sentential operator, such as ‘according to a fictional realist theory’. The aim of the present paper is to show that fictionalism about fictional characters is underdeveloped as it stands because it can be shown to be systematically inadequate. Because the fictionalist’s paraphrases of critical statements suggest that fictional realists affirm the propositions expressed by critical statements, the fictionalist mistakenly attributes to fictional realists an expertise in matters that pertain to literary criticism. Importantly, this problem of misattributed expertise paves the way to other issues that might be much more devastating to the fictionalist project. It can be shown that, because she wrongly attributes expertise to fictional realists, the fictionalist unintentionally portrays fictional realist theories in a way that renders them inconsistent and self-defeating. This undermines fictionalism about fictional characters because it leaves no workable fictional realist account in which to ground a fictionalist explanation. This is why the fictionalist about fictional characters should try to eliminate the problem of misattributed expertise and its related issues. At the end of the paper, I sketch some of the available options in this regard.

Disagreements about matters of personal taste are a rather resilient kind of phenomenon that calls for an unorthodox solution. Hybrid taste-expressivism seems to provide such a solution because it explains taste disagreements in non-doxastic terms. According to it, utterances of taste sentences play a dual role—on the one hand, they are used to express propositions in which objects are ascribed taste properties and, on the other hand, they are used to manifest evaluations of the objects contained in the propositions. The non-doxastic nature of taste disagreements is derived from the latter. My aim is to cast some doubt on the prospects of the hybrid taste-expressivist account. Although I admit that this explanation is on the right track in treating taste disagreements as non-doxastic, hybrid taste expressivism does not seem to be general enough. There are some instances of taste disagreement that are not amenable to this kind of explanation. I provide an alternative explanation that retains the non-doxastic nature of taste disagreements, but does not suffer from its limited explanatory power.

It is sometimes claimed that intuitions are an indispensable part of the evidential support provided for, or against, philosophical theses concerning a wide rangeof topics. This view is ingeniously argued for by George Bealer. His approach is based on a close connection between the modal nature of philosophy and theindispensability of intuitions as sources of modally-oriented evidence. This paper is aimed at a critical assessment of this approach. It is claimed that philosophy,though being modal at bottom, need not rely on (modal) intuitions as sources of evidence. In particular, it is shown (i) that at least some of Bealer’s crucial philosophical arguments do not rest on intuitions as evidence and (ii) that one may find modal philosophical claims of considerable importance that do not require modal intuitions for support. As a result, (modal) intuitions need not be considered indispensable for gaining philosophical knowledge, even when philosophy is understood along Bealer’s lines.