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30Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. Pp. xi + 234. H/b £?.??, $?.??, P/b £?.??, $?.??. If asked for an example of a rigid designator it is likely that one would suggest a name, like ‘Aristotle’ or ‘Tony Blair’, or a demonstrative, like ‘that book’ said whilst pointing at a certain text. Intuitively, what these expressions have in common is the central role they accord to perception of an object: you can see the book you want to talk about, there are people around in our community who have bumped into…Read more
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169Complex demonstrativesPhilosophical Studies 97 (2): 229-249. 2000.Some demonstrative expressions, those we might term ‘bare demonstratives’, appear without any appended descriptive content (e.g. occurrences of ‘this’ or ‘that’ simpliciter). However, it seems that the majority of demonstrative occurrences do not follow this model. ‘Complex demonstratives’ is the collective term I shall use for phrases formed by adjoining one or more common nouns to a demonstrative expression (e.g. ‘that cat’, ‘this happy man’) and I will call the combination of predicates immed…Read more
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15Review: M Devitt, and R Hanley (eds.), The Blackwell guide to philosophy of language. Wiley-Blackwell, 2006. (review)Philosophy in Review 27 (1): 18-20. 2007.
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179Minimal semanticsOxford University Press. 2004.Minimal Semantics asks what a theory of literal linguistic meaning is for - if you were to be given a working theory of meaning for a language right now, what would you be able to do with it? Emma Borg sets out to defend a formal approach to semantic theorising from a relatively new type of opponent - advocates of what she call 'dual pragmatics'. According to dual pragmatists, rich pragmatic processes play two distinct roles in linguistic comprehension: as well as operating in a post-semantic ca…Read more
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13The Semantic Significance of What is SaidProtoSociology 17 7-25. 2002.It is often held that a correct semantic theory should assign a semantic content, p, to a given sentence, s, just in case a speaker who utters s says that p – thus ‘what is said’ is taken to be a semantically significant notion. This paper explores what exactly such a claim amounts to and offers five versions of the relationship between a semantic theory and judgements of what is said. The first three of these versions embody the central claim of semantic significance; however, I argue that none…Read more
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4Gary Ostertag, ed., Definite Descriptions: A Reader (review)Philosophy in Review 19 (4): 272-274. 1999.
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116Pointing at jack, talking about Jill: Understanding deferred uses of demonstratives and pronounsMind and Language 17 (5). 2002.The aim of this paper is to explore the proper content of a formal semantic theory in two respects: first, clarifying which uses of expressions a formal theory should seek to accommodate, and, second, how much information the theory should contain. I explore these two questions with respect to occurrences of demonstratives and pronouns – the so- called ‘deferred’ uses – which are often classified as non-standard or figurative. I argue that, contrary to initial impressions, they must be treated a…Read more
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64Minimalism and the content of the lexiconIn Erich Rast & Luiz Carlos Baptista (eds.), Meaning and Context, Peter Lang. pp. 51--77. 2010.
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190Intention-Based SemanticsIn Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. pp. 250--266. 2006.There is a sense in which it is trivial to say that one accepts intention- (or convention-) based semantics.[2] For if what is meant by this claim is simply that there is an important respect in which words and sentences have meaning (either at all or the particular meanings that they have in any given natural language) due to the fact that they are used, in the way they are, by intentional agents (i.e. speakers), then it seems no one should disagree. For imagine a possible world where there are…Read more
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Deferred DemonstrativesIn Joseph K. Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & David Shier (eds.), Meaning and Truth: Investigations in Philosophical Semantics., Seven Bridges Press. pp. 214--230. 2002.
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114Meaning and context: a survey of a contemporary debateIn Daniel Whiting (ed.), The later Wittgenstein on language, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.relevant to the differences between the two speakings, Odile’s words in the first case said what was false, while in the second case they said what was true. Both spoke of the same state of the world, or the same refrigerator in the same condition. So, in the first case, the words said what is false of a refrigerator with but a milk puddle; in the second case they said what is true of such a refrigerator.
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HUEMER, M. - Skepticism and the Veil of Perception (review)Philosophical Books 43 (4): 307-308. 2002.
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65Semantics without pragmaticsIn Keith Allan & Kasia Jaszczolt (eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Pragmatics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 513--528. 2012.
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38An expedition abroad: Metaphor, thought, and reportingMidwest Studies in Philosophy 25 (1). 2001.
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66This paper examines the claim that mirror neuron activity is the mechanism by which we come to know about the action-related intentions of others (e.g. Gallese et al 1996, Rizzolatti et al 2009), i.e. that they are a mechanism for ‘mindreading’. I agree with recent authors (e.g. Hickok 2008, Jacob 2008) who reject this view but nevertheless I argue that mirror neurons may still have a role to play in the ways in which we understand one another (social cognition). If we adopt a certain kind of pl…Read more
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41Ruth Garrett Millikan is one of the most important thinkers in philosophy of mind and language of the current generation. Across a number of seminal books, and in the company of theorists such as Jerry Fodor and Fred Dretske, she has championed a wholly naturalistic, scientific understanding of content, whether of thought or words. Many think that naturalism about meaning has found its most defensible form in her distinctively “teleological” approach, and in Language: A Biological Model she cont…Read more
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165‘Pragmaticist’ positions posit a three-way division within utterance content between: (i) the standing meaning of the sentence, (ii) a somewhat pragmatically enhanced meaning which captures what the speaker explicitly conveys (following Sperber and Wilson 1986, I label this the ‘explicature’), and (iii) further indirectly conveyed propositions which the speaker merely implies. Here I re-examine the notion of an explicature, asking how it is defined and what work explicatures are supposed to do. …Read more
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183Minimalism versus Contextualism in SemanticsIn Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter (eds.), Context-sensitivity and semantic minimalism: new essays on semantics and pragmatics, Oxford University Press Uk. 2007.
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3Meaning and Representation (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2002.This prestigious collection of papers discusses the relationship between meaning and representation. Illustrates the differences that exist on the question of how formal representations relate to semantic representations. Includes contributions by Tim Crane, Jerry Fodor, Paul Horwich, John Hyman, Ernie Lepore, Gregory McCulloch and Mark Sainsbury.
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199Must a Semantic Minimalist be a Semantic Internalist?Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 83 (1): 31-51. 2009.I aim to show that a semantic minimalist need not also be a semantic internalist. §I introduces minimalism and internalism and argues that there is a prima facie case for a minimalist being an internalist. §II sketches some positive arguments for internalism which, if successful, show that a minimalist must be an internalist. §III goes on to reject these arguments and contends that the prima facie case for uniting minimalism and internalism is also not compelling. §IV returns to an objection fro…Read more
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |