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242Sentences whose semantic contents seem to differ in different contexts, in virtue of containing expressions of such sorts as the following (there may be others).
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183Group slurs are applied to a whole category of people. Whereas slurs like jerk, creep, and hag are generally directed at individuals because of the personal traits (behavior, personality, looks, etc.), group slurs, like spic, commie, and infidel, are applied across the board to members of a category. Even when directed at a particular individual, ethnic, religious, and political slurs are applied on the basis of group membership rather than anything about the person in particular. Before asking …Read more
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175Referentially Used Descriptions: A Reply to DevittEuropean Journal of Analytic Philosophy 3 (2): 33-48. 2007.This paper continues an ongoing debate between Michael Devitt and me on referential uses of definite descriptions. He has argued that definite descriptions have referential meanings, and I have argued that they do not. Having previously rebutted the view that referential uses are akin to particularized conversational implicatures, he now he rebuts the view that they are akin to generalized conversational implicatures. I agree that the GCI is not the best model, but I maintain that in exploiting …Read more
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745Conversational ImplicitureMind and Language 9 (2): 124-162. 1994.Confusion in terms inspires confusion in concepts. When a relevant distinction is not clearly marked or not marked at all, it is apt to be blurred or even missed altogether in our thinking. This is true in any area of inquiry, pragmatics in particular. No one disputes that there are various ways in which what is communicated in an utterance can go beyond sentence meaning. The problem is to catalog the ways. It is generally recognized that linguistic meaning underdetermines speaker meaning becaus…Read more
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16Three other motivational factorsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (5): 651-652. 2005.Ainslie uses his hyperbolic discount model to explain a dazzling array of puzzling motivational phenomena. In so doing, he assumes that the motivational force of a given option at a given time is directly proportional to its discount-adjusted reward as assessed at that time. He overlooks three other factors which, independently of the perceived reward, can affect motivational force.
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120Knowledge, wine, and taste: What good is knowledge (in enjoying wine)In Barry C. Smith (ed.), Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine, Oxford University Press. pp. 21--40. 2007.
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30Review: Has Semantics Rested on a Mistake? And Other Essays, by Howard Wettstein (review)Mind 101 (402). 1992.
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9Thorstein Fretheim and Jeanette K. Gundel , Reference and Referent AccessibilityPragmatics and Cognition 6 (1): 335-338. 1998.
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147Giorgione was so-called because of his namePhilosophical Perspectives 16 73-103. 2002.Proper names seem simple on the surface. Indeed, anyone unfamiliar with philosophical debates about them might wonder what the fuss could possibly be about. It seems obvious why we need them and what we do with them, and that is to talk about particular persons, places, and things. You don't have to be as smart as Mill to think that proper names are simply tags attached to individuals. But sometimes appearances are deceiving.
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98Review of Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong (review)Philosophical Review. 2000.As the dust jacket proclaims,
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184A Rationale for ReliabilismThe Monist 68 (2): 246-263. 1985.What bothers people about reliabilism as a theory of justified belief? It has yet to be formulated adequately, but most philosophical theories have that problem. People seem to be bothered by the very idea of reliabilism, with its apparent disregard for believers’ rationality and responsibility. Yet its supporters can’t seem to understand its opponents complaints. I believe that the conflict can be clarified, if not resolved, by drawing certain important distinctions.
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152Review of Christopher Potts, The Logic of Conventional ImplicaturesJournal of Linguistics 42 (2). 2006.Paul Grice warned that ‘the nature of conventional implicature needs to be examined before any free use of it, for explanatory purposes, can be indulged in’ (1978/1989: 46). Christopher Potts heeds this warning, brilliantly and boldly. Starting with a definition drawn from Grice’s few brief remarks on the subject, he distinguishes conventional implicature from other phenomena with which it might be confused, identifies a variety of common but little-studied kinds of expressions that give rise to…Read more
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84How to delimit semantics is an ongoing problem in linguistics and philosophy of language. Like syntax, semantics is concerned only with information that competent speakers can glean from linguistic items apart from particular contexts of utterance. Anything a hearer infers from collateral information about the context of a particular utterance thus counts as nonsemantic information. Even so, it is a semantic fact about certain linguistic items, notably indexicals (such as 'she', 'here', and 'the…Read more
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155Default Reasoning: Jumping to Conclusions and Knowing When to Think TwicePacific Philosophical Quarterly 65 (1): 37. 1984.Look before you leap. - Proverb. He who hesitates is lost. - Another proverb
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275You Don't Say?Synthese 128 (1-2): 15-44. 2001.This paper defends a purely semantic notionof what is said against various recent objections. Theobjections each cite some sort of linguistic,psychological, or epistemological fact that issupposed to show that on any viable notion of what aspeaker says in uttering a sentence, there ispragmatic intrusion into what is said. Relying on amodified version of Grice's notion, on which what issaid must be a projection of the syntax of the utteredsentence, I argue that a purely semantic notion isneeded t…Read more
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129Minding the gapIn Claudia Bianchi (ed.), The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction, Csli Publications. pp. 27--43. 2004.
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308The theory of speech acts is partly taxonomic and partly explanatory. It must systematically classify types of speech acts and the ways in which they can succeed or fail. It must reckon with the fact that the relationship between the words being used and the force of their utterance is often oblique. For example, the sentence 'This is a pig sty' might be used nonliterally to state that a certain room is messy and filthy and, further, to demand indirectly that it be straightened out and cleaned u…Read more
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51Critical noticeIn Brian P. McLaughlin & Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), Perspectives on Self-Deception, University of California Press. 1988.As philosophical topics go, self-deception has something for everyone. It raises basic questions about the nature of belief and the relation of belief to thought, desire, and the will. It provokes further questions on such topics as reasoning, attention, self-knowledge, the unity of the self, intentional action, motivation, self-esteem, psychic defenses, the unconscious, personal character, and interpersonal relations. There are two basic questions about self-deception itself, which each take a …Read more
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20"The Structure of Emotions" by Robert M. Gordon (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 49 (2): 362. 1988.
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213Loaded Words: On the Semantics and Pragmatics of SlursIn David Sosa (ed.), Bad Words: Philosophical Perspectives on Slurs, Oxford University Press. pp. 60-76. 2018.There are many mean and nasty things to say about mean and nasty talk, but I don't plan on saying any of them. There's a specific problem about slurring words that I want to address. This is a semantic problem. It's not very important compared to the real-world problems presented by bigotry, racism, discrimination, and worse. It's important only to linguistics and the philosophy of language.
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205Context DependenceIn Manuel García-Carpintero & Max Kölbel (eds.), The Continuum Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Continuum International. 2012.All sorts of things are context-dependent in one way or another. What it is appropriate to wear, to give, or to reveal depends on the context. Whether or not it is all right to lie, harm, or even kill depends on the context. If you google the phrase ‘depends on the context’, you’ll get several hundred million results. This chapter aims to narrow that down. In this context the topic is context dependence in language and its use. It is commonly observed that the same sentence can be used to convey…Read more
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1231. Sentences have implicatures. (11, 14, 19)** 2. Implicatures are inferences. (12. 14) 3. Implicatures can’t be entailments. 4. Gricean maxims apply only to implicatures. (16, 17) 5. For what is implicated to be figured out, what is said must be determined first. (12, 13) 6. All pragmatic implications are implicatures. 7. Implicatures are not part of the truth-conditional contents of utterances. (20) 8. If something is meant but unsaid, it must be implicated. (20) 9. Scalar “implicatures” are i…Read more
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166I am often asked to explain the difference between my notion of impliciture (Bach 1994) and the relevance theorists’ notion of explicature (Sperber and Wilson 1986; Carston 2002). Despite the differences between the theoretical frameworks within which they operate, the two notions seem very similar. Relevance theorists describe explicatures as “developments of logical forms,” whereas I think of implicitures as “expansions” or “completions” of semantic contents (depending on whether or not the se…Read more
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But merely in what is indicated by (the presence of) the word 'but':(1) Shaq is huge but he is agileLinguistics and Philosophy 22 327-366. 1999.
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28The Excluded Middle: Semantic Minimalism without Minimal PropositionsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2): 435-442. 2007.Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore’s book is ultimately a defense of their self-styled Semantic Minimalism, but it’s mainly a protracted assault on semantic Contextualism, both moderate and radical. They argue at length that Moderate Contextualism leads inevitably to Radical Contextualism and at greater length that Radical Contextualism is misguided. Supposing that “[Radical Contextualism] is the logical consequence of denying Semantic Minimalism”, they think they have given an indirect argument f…Read more
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126Getting a Thing into a ThoughtIn Robin Jeshion (ed.), New Essays on Singular Thought, Oxford University Press. pp. 39. 2010.
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