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163Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went WrongPhilosophical Review 109 (4): 627. 2000.As the dust jacket proclaims, “this is surely Fodor’s most irritating book in years …. It should exasperate philosophers, linguists, cognitive psychologists, and cognitive neuroscientists alike.” Yes, Fodor is an equal-opportunity annoyer. He sees no job for conceptual analysts, no hope for lexical semanticists, and no need for prototype theorists. When it comes to shedding light on concepts, these luminaries have delivered nothing but moonshine. Fodor aims to remedy things, and not just with sn…Read more
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183What's in a nameAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 59 (4). 1981.This Article does not have an abstract
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219Knowledge in and out of contextIn Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O.’Rourke & Harry S. Silverstein (eds.), Knowledge and Skepticism, Mit Press. pp. 105--36. 2007.In this chapter, the author offers another explanation of the variation in contents, which is explained by contextualism as being related to a variation in standards. The author’s explanation posits that the contents of knowledge attributions are invariant. The variation lies in what knowledge attributions we are willing to make or accept. Although not easy to acknowledge, what contextualism counts as knowledge varies with the context in which it is attributed. A new rival to contextualism, know…Read more
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26Replies to My CriticsCroatian Journal of Philosophy 13 (2): 217-249. 2013.I thank my critics for time, thought, and effort put into their commentaries. Since obviously I can’t respond to everything, I will try to address what strike me as the most important questions they ask and objections they raise. I think I have decent answers to some questions and decent responses to some objections, in other cases it seems enough to clarify the relevant view, and in still others I need to modify the view in question. One complication, which I won’t elaborate on, is that the vie…Read more
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498Frege's and Russell's views are obviously different, but because of certain superficial similarities in how they handle certain famous puzzles about proper names, they are often assimilated. Where proper names are concerned, both Frege and Russell are often described together as "descriptivists." But their views are fundamentally different. To see that, let's look at the puzzle of names without bearers, as it arises in the context of Mill's purely referential theory of proper names, aka the 'Fid…Read more
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119Terms of agreementEthics 105 (3): 604-612. 1995.Can two promises add up to an agreement? Not according to Margaret Gilbert. 1 She has forcefully challenged the orthodox view that an agreement is an exchange of promises. She works through an intricate series of examples of promise-exchanges and argues that none qualifies as an agreement. Assuming that she has not overlooked any plausible candidates, she concludes that agreements are essentially different. It seems, however, that her examples are all exchanges of promises only in an attenuated …Read more
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107Refraining, Omitting, and Negative ActsIn Timothy O'Connor & Constantine Sandis (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Action, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: Ways of Failing to Do Something Refraining Omitting Negative Acts: Inaction as Action? References.
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5Burge’s New Thought Experiment: Back to the Drawing RoomJournal of Philosophy 85 (2): 88-97. 1988.
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159Thorstein Fretheim and Jeanette K. Gundel ,Reference and Referent Accessibility (review)Pragmatics and Cognition 6 (1-2): 335-338. 1998.
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170GRICE, H. PAUL (1913-1988), English philosopher, is best known for his contributions to the theory of meaning and communication. This work (collected in Grice 1989) has had lasting importance for philosophy and linguistics, with implications for cognitive science generally. His three most influential contributions concern the nature of communication, the distinction betwen speaker's meaning and linguistic meaning, and the phenomenon of conversational implicature.
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370Applying pragmatics to epistemologyPhilosophical Issues 18 (1): 68-88. 2008.This paper offers a smattering of applications of pragmatics to epistemology. In most cases they concern recent epistemological claims that depend for their plausibility on mistaking something pragmatic for something semantic. After giving my formulation of the semantic/pragmatic distinction and explaining how seemingly semantic intuitions can be responsive to pragmatic factors, I take up the following topics: 1. Classic Examples of Confusing Meaning and Use 2. Pragmatic Implications of Hedging …Read more
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96Thinking and believing in self-deceptionBehavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (1): 105-105. 1997.Mele views self-deception as belief sustained by motivationally biased treatment of evidence. This view overlooks something essential, for it does not reckon with the fact that in self-deception the truth is dangerously close at hand and must be repeatedly suppressed. Self-deception is not so much a matter of what one positively believes as what one manages not to think.
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53There is a problem when these people list all these flavours and aromas they think they have detected. It then gets on to the label of the bottle and what you are looking at appears to be a recipe for fruit salad. – Hugh Johnson.
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186Review, Jason Stanley, Know How (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2012.Stanley’s insightful new book refines his earlier formulation of intellectualism. Indeed, it does a whole lot more, but leaves open some tough questions. He makes a powerful case for the view that knowing how to do something is to know, of a certain way, that one could do that thing in that way. But he says surprisingly little about what ways are, and how they might differ, depending on the kind of case. And he doesn't exclude the possibility that in some cases what one knows in knowing-how is a…Read more
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114Descriptions: Points of ReferenceIn Marga Reimer & Anne Bezuidenhout (eds.), Descriptions and beyond, Oxford University Press. pp. 189-229. 2004.
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Self-deceptionIn Brian P. McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind, Oxford University Press. 2007.
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559The Semantics Pragmatics Distinction: What it is and Why it MattersIn K. Turner (ed.), The Semantics-Pragmatics Interface From Different Points of View, Elsevier. pp. 65--84. 1997.The distinction between semantics and pragmatics is easier to apply than to explain. Explaining it is complicated by the fact that many conflicting formulations have been proposed over the past sixty years. This might suggest that there is no one way of drawing the distinction and that how to draw it is merely a terminological question, a matter of arbitrary stipulation. In my view, though, these diverse formulations, despite their conflicts, all shed light on the distinction as it is commonly a…Read more
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230Intentions and DemonstrationsAnalysis 52 (3): 140--146. 1992.MARGA REIMER has forcefully challenged David Kaplan's recent claim ([3], pp. 582-4) that demonstrative gestures, in connnection with uses of demonstrative expressions, are without semantic significance and function merely as 'aids to communication', and that speaker intentions are what determine the demonstratum. Against this Reimer argues that demonstrations can and do play an essential semantic role and that the role of intentions is marginal at best. That is, together with the linguistic mean…Read more
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Review of Thornstein, F. and Gundel, J.(eds.), Reference and referent accessibility (review)Pragmatics and Cognition 8 335-338. 1998.
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Barry Taylor, ed., Michael Dummett: Contributions to Philosophy (review)Philosophy in Review 10 160-162. 1990.
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30The Main Bone of ContentionEuropean Journal of Analytic Philosophy 3 (2): 55-58. 2007.I enumerate the main disagreements between Devitt and me, and then elucidate the most fundamental one. It concerns what it takes to refer to something. Devitt takes a liberal view on this, according to which a speaker’s having a certain object in mind and intending to refer to it puts the hearer in a position to form singular thoughts about it. There is no requirement that the hearer have any independent access to the object. My view is more restrictive, not allowing “reference borrowing” of the…Read more
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114Nowadays the traditional quest for certainty seems not only futile but pointless. Resisting skepticism no longer seems to require meeting the Cartesian demand for an unshakable foundation for knowledge. True beliefs can be less than maximally justified and still be justified enough to qualify as knowledge, even though some beliefs that are justified to the same extent are false. Yet a few philosophers suggest that there is a special sort of justification that only true beliefs can have. Call it …Read more
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239The excluded middle: Semantic minimalism without minimal propositions (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2). 2006.Insensitive Semantics is mainly a protracted assault on semantic Contextualism, both moderate and radical. Cappelen and Lepore argue that Moderate Contextualism leads inevitably, like marijuana to heroin or masturbation to blindness, to Radical Contextualism and in turn that Radical Contextualism is misguided. Assuming that the only alternative to Contextualism is their Semantic Minimalism, they think they’ve given an indirect argument for it. But they overlook a third view, one that splits the …Read more
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Epistemology |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
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Epistemology |
Metaphilosophy |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Language |
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