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336Truth conditions and communicationMind 104 (416): 827-862. 1995.The paper addresses itself to the "Homeric struggle" in the theory of meaning between those (e.g., Grice) who try to analyze declarative meaning in terms of an intention to induce a belief and those (e.g., Davidson) for who declarative meaning consists in truth conditions. (The point of departure is Strawson's celebrated discussion of this issue, in his Inaugural Lecture.) I argue that neither style of analysis is satisfactory, and develop a "hybrid" that may be-although what I take from the Gri…Read more
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141Sense and EvidenceThe Monist 96 (2): 177-204. 2013.There are many theories which say how the truth-value (the Fregean reference) of a complete sentence depends on the references of its parts. The present paper proposes a theory of how the Fregean sense of a sentences depends on the senses of its parts. A sentence's sense is related to the evidence that would justify its assertion. The theory characterizes the senses of 'and', 'or', 'not', and 'if...then'.
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44Making it Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment (review)Philosophical Review 106 (3): 437. 1997.In developing his alternative, Brandom starts from a version of inferential-role semantics according to which an assertion's content is constituted by its place in a field of inferential relations. It is because we have "an independent theoretical grip on the notion of an inference", and of its goodness or badness, that we are able to attain a notion of content that is prior to any of the representational concepts. He stresses that the relevant assessment of inferences is not whether they are lo…Read more
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136Co-ordination principles: A replyMind 117 (468): 1059-1063. 2008.I explain why Fernando Ferreira's interesting formal result does not threaten the bilateralist account of the sense of the connectives.
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112The vagaries of paraphrase: A reply to Holton on the counting problemAnalysis 56 (4). 1996.In his 'paratactic' analysis of indirect speech reports, Davidson took the occurrence of 'that' in 'Galileo said that the Earth moves' to be a demonstrative expression which refers to the reporter's subsequent utterance of 'the Earth moves'. Ian McFetridge used his 'counting problem' to argue that we get a better version of the paratactic theory if we take the demonstrative 'that' to refer to the proposition expressed by the reporter's utterance, rather than to the utterance itself. In this note…Read more
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584Objects of ThoughtIn Gary Ostertag (ed.), Meanings and Other Things: Themes From the Work of Stephen Schiffer, Oxford University Press. 2016.In his book The Things We Mean, Stephen Schiffer advances a subtle defence of what he calls the ‘face-value’ analysis of attributions of belief and reports of speech. Under this analysis, ‘Harold believes that there is life on Venus’ expresses a relation between Harold and a certain abstract object, the proposition that there is life on Venus. The present essay first proposes an improvement to Schiffer’s ‘pleonastic’ theory of propositions. It then challenges the face-value analysis. There w…Read more
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92Singular terms and arithmetical logicismPhilosophical Books 44 (3): 193--219. 2003.This article is a critical notice of Bob Hale and Crispin Wright's *The Reason's Proper Study* (OUP). It focuses particularly on their attempts (crucial to their neo-logicist project) to say what a singular term is. I identify problems for their account but include some constructive suggestions about how it might be improved.
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3Plural terms: another variety of referring expression?In José Luis Bermúdez (ed.), Thought, Reference, and Experience: Themes From the Philosophy of Gareth Evans, Clarendon Press. 2005.
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156Logical NecessityIn Bob Hale & Aviv Hoffmann (eds.), Modality: metaphysics, logic, and epistemology, Oxford University Press. 2010.Book synopsis: The philosophy of modality investigates necessity and possibility, and related notions--are they objective features of mind-independent reality? If so, are they irreducible, or can modal facts be explained in other terms? This volume presents new work on modality by established leaders in the field and by up-and-coming philosophers. Between them, the papers address fundamental questions concerning realism and anti-realism about modality, the nature and basis of facts about what is…Read more
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107Concepts and CountingProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102 (1): 41-68. 2002.Frege's analysis of Zahlangaben is expounded and evaluated.
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127The categoricity problem and truth-value gapsAnalysis 57 (4). 1997.In his article 'Rejection' (1996), Timothy Smiley had shown how a logical system allowing rules of rejection could provide a categorical axiomatization of the classical propositional calculus. This paper shows how rules of rejection, when placed in a multiple conclusion setting, can also provide categorical axiomatizations of a range of non-classical calculi which permit truth-value gaps, among them the calculus in Smiley's own 'Sense without denotation' (1960).
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336Savoir FaireJournal of Philosophy 100 (3): 158-166. 2003.This paper challenges the linguistic arguments Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson gave in support of their thesis that knowing how is a species of knowing that.
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108Old Adams BuriedAnalytic Philosophy 54 (2): 157-188. 2013.I present some counterexamples to Adams's Thesis and explain how they undermine arguments that indicative conditionals cannot be truth-evaluable propositions
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46Donald Davidson and the Mirror of MeaningPhilosophical Quarterly 45 (178): 136. 1995.Review of J.E. Malpas, *Donald Davidson and the Mirror of Meaning* (CUP)
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18The vagaries of paraphrase: a reply to Holton on the counting problemAnalysis 56 (4): 246-250. 1996.Peer Reviewed.
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623Tempered pragmatismIn Cheryl Misak & Huw Price (eds.), The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century, Oup/ba. 2016.This paper assesses the prospects of a pragmatist theory of content. I begin by criticising the theory presented in D.H. Mellor’s essay ‘Successful Semantics’. I then identify problems and lacunae in the pragmatist theory of meaning sketched in Chapter 13 of Dummett’s The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. The prospects are brighter, I contend, for a tempered pragmatism, in which the theory of content is permitted to draw upon irreducible notions of truth and falsity. I sketch the shape of such a…Read more
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47Truth and the determination of content: Variations on themes from frege’sGrazer Philosophische Studien 82 (1): 1-48. 2011.
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195Ricky ponting and the judgesAnalysis 70 (2): 205-210. 2010.This article proposes revisions to the Laws of Cricket and to the criminal law of England. The Laws of Cricket should be revised so that an umpire may give a batsman out without having to specify precisely how he got out. The criminal law should be revised so that (e.g.) aiding and abetting a murderer is not subsumed under the crime of murder.
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5Meaning and understandingIn Frank Jackson & Michael Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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133On A Neglected Path to IntuitionismTopoi 31 (1): 101-109. 2012.According to Quine, in any disagreement over basic logical laws the contesting parties must mean different things by the connectives or quantifiers implicated in those laws; when a deviant logician ‘tries to deny the doctrine he only changes the subject’. The standard semantics for intuitionism offers some confirmation for this thesis, for it represents an intuitionist as attaching quite different senses to the connectives than does a classical logician. All the same, I think Quine was wrong, ev…Read more
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243Knowledge by deductionGrazer Philosophische Studien 77 (1): 61-84. 2008.It seems beyond doubt that a thinker can come to know a conclusion by deducing it from premisses that he knows already, but philosophers have found it puzzling how a thinker could acquire knowledge in this way. Assuming a broadly externalist conception of knowledge, I explain why judgements competently deduced from known premisses are themselves knowledgeable. Assuming an exclusionary conception of judgeable content, I further explain how such judgements can be informative. (According to the exc…Read more
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Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Mathematics |
20th Century Philosophy |