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213David’s epistemic understanding of two-dimensional semantics has these two features. First, although he considers at least two construals of epistemically possible worlds, on one of them they are centered metaphysically possible worlds. Second, David intends epistemic two-dimensional semantics to yield a theory of propositional-attitude content, as well as having application to the semantics of natural language expressions. These two features come together in David’s “The Components of Conten…Read more
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102Evidence= Knowledge: Williamson's Solution to Skepticism?In Duncan Pritchard & Patrick Greenough (eds.), Williamson on Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 183--202. 2009.A single argument template---the EPH template---can be used to generate versions of the best known and most challenging skeptical problems. In his brilliantly groundbreaking book Knowledge and Its Limits, Timothy Williamson presents a theory of knowledge and evidence which he clearly intends to provide a response to skepticism in its most important forms. After laying out EPH skepticism and reviewing possible ways of responding to it, I show how elements of Williamson’s theory motivate a hithert…Read more
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219Yes, a reply to Brian Loar's "can we confirm supervenient properties?"Philosophical Issues 4 93-100. 1993.
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234Descriptions, indexicals, and belief reports: Some dilemmas (but not the ones you expect)Mind 104 (413): 107-131. 1995.
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119Remnants of MeaningMIT Press. 1987.In this foundational work on the theory of linguistic and mental representation, Stephen Schiffer surveys all the leading theories of meaning and content in the philosophy of language and finds them lacking. He concludes that there can be no correct, positive philosophical theory or linguistic or mental representation and, accordingly advocates the deflationary "no-theory theory of meaning and content." Along the way he takes up functionalism, the nature of propositions and their suitability as …Read more
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233The things we meanOxford University Press. 2003.Stephen Schiffer presents a groundbreaking account of meaning and belief, and shows how it can illuminate a range of crucial problems regarding language, mind, knowledge, and ontology. He introduces the new doctrine of 'pleonastic propositions' to explain what the things we mean and believe are. He discusses the relation between semantic and psychological facts, on the one hand, and physical facts, on the other; vagueness and indeterminacy; moral truth; conditionals; and the role of propositiona…Read more
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164S produces the sounds “It’s snowing” in the presence of A, and A instantaneously comes to know that it’s snowing. S has communicated to, or told, A that it’s snowing, and, as a result of S’s speech act, A came to know that it was snowing. Philosophical interest in communication turns on four inter-related questions. The first is about the logical structure of communication, or, more specifically, about whether communication is a relation that holds among three things just in case the first commu…Read more
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116The language-of-thought relation and its implicationsPhilosophical Studies 76 (2-3): 263-85. 1994.
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1Propositional attitudes in direct-reference semanticsIn Katarzyna Jaszczolt (ed.), The Pragmatics of Propositional Attitude Reports, Elsevier. pp. 14--30. 2000.
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2720Meaning and Formal Semantics in Generative GrammarErkenntnis 80 (1): 61-87. 2015.A generative grammar for a language L generates one or more syntactic structures for each sentence of L and interprets those structures both phonologically and semantically. A widely accepted assumption in generative linguistics dating from the mid-60s, the Generative Grammar Hypothesis , is that the ability of a speaker to understand sentences of her language requires her to have tacit knowledge of a generative grammar of it, and the task of linguistic semantics in those early days was taken to…Read more
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594MeaningClarendon Press. 1972.What is it for marks or sounds to have meaning, and what is it for someone to mean something in producing them? Answering these and related questions, Schiffer explores communication, speech acts, convention, and the meaning of linguistic items in this reissue of a seminal work on the foundations of meaning. A new introduction takes account of recent developments and places his theory in a broader context.
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244Russell's theory of definite descriptionsMind 114 (456): 1135-1183. 2005.The proper statement and assessment of Russell's theory depends on one's semantic presuppositions. A semantic framework is provided, and Russell's theory formulated in terms of it. Referential uses of descriptions raise familiar problems for the theory, to which there are, at the most general level of abstraction, two possible Russellian responses. Both are considered, and both found wanting. The paper ends with a brief consideration of what the correct positive theory of definite descriptions m…Read more
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1Functionalism and beliefIn Myles Brand (ed.), The Representation Of Knowledge And Belief, Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 1986.
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10What Do Belief Ascrebers Really Mean? A Reply to Stephen SchifferPacific Philosophical Quarterly 77 (4): 404-423. 2017.Stephen Schiffer has recently claimed that the currently popular “hidden‐indexical” theory of belief reports is an implausible theory of such reports. His central argument for this claim is based on what he refers to as the “meaning‐intention” problem. In this paper, I claim that the meaning‐intention problem is powerless against the hidden‐indexical theory of belief reports. I further contend that the theory is in fact a plausible theory of such reports.