Peter Pagin

Empty names such as ‘Vulcan’ or ‘Sherlock Holmes’ have intrigued philosophers of language at least since Frege. They are clearly problematic for Millian accounts of the semantics of proper names, but also for certain recent versions of descriptivism trying to accommodate Kripkean intuitions regarding proper names. In ‘Proper Names and Relational Modality’ (2006), we suggest an alternative to such semantics: introducing the technique of semantic evaluation switching, we develop a semantics allowing (non-empty) proper names to have descriptive contents while accommodating Kripkean modal intuitions. This chapter extends the switcher semantics to empty names.

This chapter proposes a new account of the semantics of vague expressions in natural language. It assumes that vague expressions are semantically tolerant. It is observed that the intuitive statement of tolerance corresponds to two different first-order formalizations. Both yield the Sorites contradiction for domains that contain a Sorites sequence of object with respect to some predicate /F/ in the language. But suppose there is a /significant central gap/, i.e. an area in the scale that is larger than the tolerance margin (in the context of use) such that objects with measures above the gap satisfy /F/ and objects with measures below that gap do not, while no object has a measure in the gap. Then one of the two tolerance principles is false. The other is true, but does not induce a Sorites contradiction. The main idea of the proposal is to use the idea of /domain restriction/ so that utterances are interpreted as concerning domains of object so restricted that they contain central gaps. This allows us to retain tolerance, consistency, and bivalence.

This paper deals with three prima facie problems for the compatibility of the principle of semantic compositionality with semantic holism. The first problem concerns the order and mode of determination of the meaning of complex expressions. The second concerns the individuation of meanings, and, as a consequence, the possibility of communication. The third problem concerns the role of compositionality in explaining the understanding of new sentences, and, in conjunction with that, the possibility of language learning. It is argued that each has an acceptable solution.

The standard argument against ordered tuples as propositions is that it is arbitrary what truth-conditions they should have. In this paper we generalize that argument. Firstly, we require that propositions have truth-conditions intrinsically. Secondly, we require strongly equivalent truth-conditions to be identical. Thirdly, we provide a formal framework, taken from Graph Theory, to characterize structure and structured objects in general. The argument in a nutshell is this: structured objects are too fine-grained to be identical to truth-conditions. Without identity, there is no privileged mapping from structured objects to truth-conditions, and hence structured objects do not have truth-conditions intrinsically. Therefore, propositions are not structured objects.

N. Denyer, Language, thought and falsehood in ancient Greek philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. xi + 222 pp. £35.00 Luis Vega, La trama de la demostración.. Madrid: 1990, Alianza Editorial, 413 pp. No price stated Daniel D. Merrill, Augustus De Morgan and the logic of relations. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990. xi + 259 pp. Dfl. 185/$ 114.00/£64.00 Georg Cantor, Briefe. Edited by Herbert Meschkowski and Winfried Nilson. Berlin, etc: Springer‐Verlag, 1991, viii + 535 pp. DM 158. The selected letters of Bertrand Russell. Volume 1: the private years. Edited by N. Griffin. London: Allen Lane. The Penguin Press, 1992. xxi + 553 pp. £25.00 Hourya Sinaceur, Corps et modèles. Paris, Vrin, 1991. 496 pp. 198 Ffr William Aspray, John von Neumann and the origins of modern computing. Cambridge, Mass, and London: The MIT Press, 1990. xvii + 376 pp., 8 + 22 pits. £31.50 Charles S. Chihara, Constructibilily and mathematical existence. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. xv + 282 pp. £32.50 Penelope Maddy, Realism in mathematics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. xi + 204 pp. £25.00 Peter Hylton, Russell, idealism, and the emergence of analytic philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. xvii + 420 pp. £48.00/$!20.00 R. Barrett and R. Gibson. Perspectives on Quine. Oxford: basil blackweil, 1990. xxiii ‐f 358 pp. £31.50 D. Bell and Cooper, The analytic tradition. Meaning, thought and knowledge. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. xi + 225 pp. £35.00 Francis Watanabe, Critical thinking; an introduction to reasoning. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. xv+542 pp. £25.00 A. Cattani, forme delVargomentare. II ragionamento tra logica e retorica. Padova: Edizicmi C.B. 1990. 174 pp. 22.00 lire J. K. Lambert, Philosophical applications of free logic. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. 309pp. £40.00 G. Priest, R. Routley and J. Norman, Paraconsistent logic. Essays on the inconsistent. München, Hamden, Wien: Philosophia Verlag, 1989. xxii + 716pp. 398 DM Timoethy Williamson, Identity and discrimination. Oxford: Blackwell. 1990. xi + 173 pp. £30.00 Victor Sánchez, Studies on natural logic and categorial grammar. Amsterdam. 1991. vi + 197 pp. No price stated G. Klima, Ars Artium: essays in philosophical semantics, mediaeval and modern. Budapest: Institute of Philosophy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1988. 185 pp. No price stated Andrea Nye, Words of power: a feminist reading of the history of logic, New York and London, Routlcdge, 1990. xiii + 190pp. £9.99 T. M. Seebhom, D. Follesdal and J. N. Mohanty, Phenomenology and the formal sciences. Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kiuwer Academic Publishers, 1991. viii + 262 pp. £51,00/$!86.00/DK 150 Hans Burkhardt and Barry Smith, Handbook of metaphysics and ontology, 2 vols. Philosophia Verlag, Munich, Philadelphia, Vienna: 1991. 1005 pp. DM650/$ 433.50/£210

Naive speakers find some logical contradictions acceptable, specifically borderline contradictions involving vague predicates such as Joe is and isn’t tall. In a recent paper, Cobreros et al. (J Philos Logic, 2012) suggest a pragmatic account of the acceptability of borderline contradictions. We show, however, that the pragmatic account predicts the wrong truth conditions for some examples with disjunction. As a remedy, we propose a semantic analysis instead. The analysis is close to a variant of fuzzy logic, but conjunction and disjunction are interpreted as intensional operators.

For Frege’s general views about truth the standard reference is the first couple of pages of ‘The Thought’. Less attention has been paid to a short passage in ‘On Sense and Reference’ -- in, fact, only one paragraph long -- where Frege argues indirectly for the view that the relation between the thought and the True is an instance of the relation between sense and reference. He argues for this by discrediting the alternative view that it is an instance of the relation between “subject and predicate”. Here is the paragraph: One might be tempted to regard the relation of the thought to the True not as that of sense to reference, but rather as that of subject to predicate. One can, indeed, say: ‘The thought, that 5 is a prime number, is true’. But closer examination shows that nothing more has been said than in the simple sentence ‘5 is a prime number’. The truth claim arises in each case from the form of the declarative sentence, and when the latter lacks its usual force, e.g. in the mouth of an actor upon stage, even the sentence ‘The thought that 5 is a prime number is true’ contains only a thought, and indeed the same thought as the simple ‘5 is a prime number’. It follows that the relation of the thought to the True may not be compared with that of subject and predicate. Subject and predicate (understood in the logical sense) are indeed elements of thoughts; they stand on the same level for knowledge. By combining subject and predicate, one reaches only a thought, never passes from sense to reference, never from thought to its truth value. One moves at the same level but never advances from one level to the next. A truth value cannot be part of a thought, any more than, say, the Sun can, for it is not a sense but an object. (Frege 1892, pp 34-35). Two subordinate, but still major, positive ideas are expressed in this passage

This paper concerns the connection between speech act theory, especially the theory of assertion, and deduction, especially Natural Deduction.From a very abstract point of view, an assertion of a content p can be described as the ascription of the property of being p to the actual index, or point of evaluation. This is the abstract characterization of assertoric force. Let’s assume that the actual index is a possible world, namely the actual world. Thus, the conclusion of a closed argument, as an act, is an assertion, and thereby characterized as the ascription of the conclusion content as a property to the actual world.The question that will concern us in this talk is how this idea extends to the status of other acts in the practice of Natural Deduction. In these terms, what is the force of an inference that depends on one or more open assumptions? What is the force of the assumption itself? What is the force of an assertion that depends on an entire derivation? Do we need to ascribe a force to the derivation as a whole? Is there a coherent complete theory of act forces of Natural Deduction along these lines? What is the relation of such a theory to the theory of validity of an argument?

This paper contains a discussion of how the concept of compositionality is to be extended from context invariant to context dependent meaning, and of how the compositionality of natural language might conflict with context dependence. Several new distinctions are needed, including a distinction between a weaker (e-) and a stronger (ec-) concept of compositionality for context dependent meaning. The relations between the various notions are investigated. A claim by Jerry Fodor that there is a general conflict between context dependence and compositionality is considered. There is in fact a possible conflict betwee ec-compositionality and context dependence, but not of the kind Fodor suggests. It turns on the presence of so-called unarticulated constituents, in John Perry’s sense. Because of this phenomenon, on some semantic accounts there might be a variation in the meaning of a complex expression between contexts without any corresponding variation in any of the syntactic parts of that complex. The conflict can be resolved in several ways. One way is to make the unarticulated context dependence explicit only in the meta-language, which makes it into an unarticulated constituent account. A recent argument by Jason Stanley against such accounts is discussed. According to Stanley, certain readings of English sentences involving binding of contextual variables, are unavailable in these theories. After considering a reply to Stanley by François Recanati, I present an outline of a fully compositional theory, of the unarticulated constituent variety, which does deliver these readings. Concluding remarks on, inter alia, the semantics/pragmatics distinction.

Peter Hylton: Quine's Naturalism Revisited: Naturalism is Quine's overarching view. In thinking about the world, we must begin where we are; for Quine, that means within a system of knowledge which, as developed and improved, becomes natural science. There is no distinctively philosophical standpoint outside this system. So the philosopher draws on the results of science, which show, for example, that our knowledge of the world comes from stimulation of our sensory nerves. But the philosopher's work is also subject to scientific standards of clarity and rigor. Terms such as ‘meaning’, and even ‘experience’, do not meet these standards and cannot be taken for granted at the outset. Quinean epistemology attempts to account for our knowledge using only terms that Quine takes to be sufficiently clear. The Quinean analogue of metaphysics relies on an ideal of regimented theory: all of our scientific knowledge reformulated so as to make it as clear, simple, and systematic as possible. His claims about ontology, for example, are answerable to that theory. The epistemological project can then be understood as an attempt to show that human knowledge can be accounted for within the narrow confines of regimented theory – and thus treated as a purely natural phenomenon.

Concepts associated with general terms vary substantially between speakers, even between speakers of the same language. There can be differences even about topics as basic as whether the hand is part of the arm, i.e. about the meaning of ‘arm’. Still, such differences are rarely detected in normal communication. Two questions arise. The first is whether communication fails in the case of interpersonal conceptual differences, or whether there are differences that, depending on the relevant requirements of the context, don’t matter, so that communication (in some cases) succeeds despite the variation. To answer this, we need a model of communicative success. The second question is why even such basic differences as in the example typically fail to come to light. What mechanism of communication allows it to flow smoothly despite the variation? This chapter attempts to answer both these questions.

This essay provides a general, abstract characterization of the content-force connection: the force of an utterance applies the content to the actual index of evaluation, for instance the actual world. It then considers two possible counterexamples to this general connection: Sextus Empiricus’ claim that talk about appearances is not assertoric, despite being concerned with the actual world, and that assumptions made in arguments concern the actual world, despite lacking assertoric force. The chapter notes that by modern standards, talk about appearance is assertoric. It also argues that, contrary to appearance, assumptions do not concern the actual world. The possible counterexamples are therefore not real.