• Paradox and the A Priori
    In Tamar Szabo Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology Volume 1, Oxford University Press Uk. 2005.
  • Paradox and the A Priori
    Oxford Studies in Epistemology 1. 2006.
  •  79
    Amie Thomasson's Easy Approach to Ontology
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (1): 244-250. 2019.
    Philosophers have long debated whether abstract objects such as numbers and properties exist, but in recent years philosophical debate about what things exist has been ratcheted up more than a notch to question whether even ordinary objects such as pineapples and tables exist. One view has it that all existence questions are difficult questions whose answers hang on achieving an ontological theory that succeeds in carving nature at its joints. Some proponents of this view further claim to have s…Read more
  •  472
    Brian Loar attempted to provide the Gricean program of intention-based semantics with an account of expression-meaning. But the theory he presented, like virtually every other foundational semantic or meta-semantical theory, was an idealization that ignored vagueness. What would happen if we tried to devise theories that accommodated the vagueness of vague expressions? I offer arguments based on well-known features of vagueness that, if sound, show that neither Brian’s nor any other extant theor…Read more
  •  50
    Gricean Semantics and Vague Speaker-Meaning
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 17 (3): 293-317. 2017.
    Presentations of Gricean semantics, including Stephen Neale’s in “Silent Reference,” totally ignore vagueness, even though virtually every utterance is vague. I ask how Gricean semantics might be adjusted to accommodate vague speaker-meaning. My answer is that it can’t accommodate it: the Gricean program collapses in the face of vague speaker-meaning. The Gricean might, however, find some solace in knowing that every other extant meta-semantic and semantic program is in the same boat.
  •  323
    XIII*—Contextualist Solutions to Scepticism
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 96 (1): 317-334. 1996.
    Stephen Schiffer; XIII*—Contextualist Solutions to Scepticism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 317–334, https://
  •  3
    III*—Intentionality and the Language of Thought
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 87 (1): 35-56. 1987.
    Stephen Schiffer; III*—Intentionality and the Language of Thought, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 87, Issue 1, 1 June 1987, Pages 35–56, https
  • Meaning
    Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 35 (3): 669-671. 1973.
  • The Things We Mean
    Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 66 (2): 395-395. 2003.
  •  1
    Remnants of Meaning
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (2): 409-423. 1989.
  •  31
    Précis of The Things We Mean
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (1): 208-210. 2006.
    In The Things We Mean I argue that there exist such things as the things we mean and believe, and that they are what I call pleonastic propositions. The first two chapters offer an initial motivation and articulation of the theory of pleonastic propositions, and of pleonastic entities generally. The remaining six chapters bring that theory to bear on issues in the theory of content: the existence and nature of meanings; knowledge of meaning; the meaning relation and compositional semantics; the …Read more
  • Meaning
    Philosophy 51 (195): 102-109. 1972.
  •  79
    Horwich on Meaning
    Philosophical Quarterly 50 (201): 527-536. 2000.
  • The Things We Mean
    Philosophical Quarterly 56 (223): 301-303. 2006.
  •  16
    Précis of The Things We Mean
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (1): 208-210. 2007.
    In The Things We Mean I argue that there exist such things as the things we mean and believe, and that they are what I call pleonastic propositions. The first two chapters offer an initial motivation and articulation of the theory of pleonastic propositions, and of pleonastic entities generally. The remaining six chapters bring that theory to bear on issues in the theory of content: the existence and nature of meanings; knowledge of meaning; the meaning relation and compositional semantics; the …Read more
  •  10
    Facing Facts’ Consequences
    ProtoSociology 23 50-66. 2006.
  •  78
    A central claim of Paul Horwich’s 1998 book Meaning was that meaning properties reduce to acceptance properties, where  a meaning property is a property of the form e means m for x, e being “a word or phrase—whether it be spoken, written, signed, or merely thought (i.e. an item of ‘mentalese’)” (44);  an acceptance property for an expression e relative to a person x is a relation of the form x is disposed to accept an e-containing sentence of kind … in circumstances of kind …
  •  16
    Book review (review)
    Linguistics and Philosophy 19 (1): 91-102. 1996.
  •  70
    Pleonastic Propositions
    In J. C. Beall & B. Armour-Garb (eds.), Deflationary Truth, Open Court. pp. 353--81. 2005.
    Pleonastic entities are entities whose existence is secured by something-from-nothing transformations, these being conceptually valid inferences that take one from a statement in which no reference is made to a thing of a certain kind to a statement—often a pleonastic equivalent of the first statement—in which there is a reference to a thing of that kind. The possibility of pleonastic entities is further explained in terms of the notion of one theory being a conservative extension of another. Pr…Read more
  •  322
    (1) The propositions we believe and say are _Russellian_ _propositions_: structured propositions whose basic components are the objects and properties our thoughts and speech acts are about. (2) Many singular terms
  •  28
    On Saying and Being
    Analysis 25 (Suppl-3). 1965.
  •  94
    Two Issues of Vagueness
    The Monist 81 (2): 193--214. 1998.
    Two issues of vagueness, which may together exhaust its philosophical interest, are, first, to solve the sorites paradox and, second, to explain the notion of a borderline case. I’ll try to make a little headway on both issues.
  • Meaning
    Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 163 478-479. 1973.
  •  2
    Truth and the theory of content
    In Herman Parret & Jacques Bouveresse (eds.), Meaning and understanding, W. De Gruyter. 1981.
  •  20
    Overview of the Book
    Mind and Language 3 (1): 1-8. 1988.
  •  157
    Vague properties
    In Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and Clouds: Vagueness, its Nature, and its Logic, Oxford University Press. pp. 109--130. 2010.
    I. Vague Properties and the Problem of Vagueness The philosophical problem of vagueness is to say what vagueness is in a way that helps to resolve the sorites paradox. Saying what vagueness is requires saying what kinds of things can be vague and in what the vagueness of each kind consists. Philosophers dispute whether things of this, that, or the other kind can be vague, but no one disputes that there are vague linguistic expressions. Among vague expressions, predicates hold a special place in …Read more