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129Minding the gapIn Claudia Bianchi (ed.), The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction, Csli Publications. pp. 27--43. 2004.
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51Critical noticeIn Brian P. McLaughlin & Amelie 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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210Loaded 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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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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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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27The 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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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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23Self-deception unmasked (review)Philosophical Psychology 15 (2): 203-206. 2002.Al Mele has been as persistent as anyone in his pursuit of self-deception. He has taken it on in a series of papers over the past twenty years and at various places in previous books. The present book brings together his main ideas on the subject, and readers unfamiliar with its puzzles or Mele's approach to it will learn a lot. The cognoscenti will not only have their memories refreshed but will be treated to much that is new, including recent experimental work that Mele marshals in support of …Read more
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4"De re" belief and methodological solipsismIn Andrew Woodfield (ed.), Thought And Object: Essays On Intentionality, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1982.
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170It is widely though not universally accepted what speakers refer to in using demonstratives or “discretionary” (as opposed to “automatic”) indexicals depends on their intentions. Even so, people tend not to appreciate the consequences of this claim for the view that demonstratives and most indexicals refer as a function of context: these expressions suffer from a “character deficiency.” No wonder I am asked from time to time why I resist the temptation to include speaker intentions as a paramete…Read more
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161In my commentary on Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore’s aptly titled book, Insensitive Semantics, I stake out a middle ground between their version of Semantic Minimalism and Contextualism. My kind of Semantic Minimalism does without the “minimal propositions” posited by C&L. It allows that some sentences do not express propositions, even relative to contexts. Instead, they are semantically incomplete. It is not a form of contextualism, since being semantically incomplete is not a way of being co…Read more
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168Many of our thoughts are about particular individuals (persons, things, places, etc.). For example, one can spot a certain Ferrari and think that it is red. What enables this thought to latch onto that particular object? It cannot be how the Ferrari looks, for this could not distinguish one Ferrari from another just like it. In general, how a thought represents something cannot determine which thing it represents. What a singular thought latches onto seems to depend also on features of the conte…Read more
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132The Predicate View of Proper NamesPhilosophy Compass 10 (11): 772-784. 2015.The Millian view that the meaning of a proper name is simply its referent has long been popular among philosophers of language. It might even be deemed the orthodox view, despite its well-known difficulties. Fregean and Russellian alternatives, though widely discussed, are much less popular. The Predicate View has not even been taken seriously, at least until fairly recently, but finally, it is receiving the attention it deserves. It says that a name expresses the property of bearing that name. …Read more
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112Conversational implicitureIn Maite Ezcurdia & Robert J. Stainton (eds.), The Semantics-Pragmatics Boundary in Philosophy, Broadview Press. pp. 284. 1994.
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Hilary Putnam's "Meaning and the Moral Sciences" (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 40 (1): 137. 1979.
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48Review of Krista Lawlor, New Thoughts About Old Things: Cognitive Policies As the Ground of Singular Concepts (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002 (2). 2002.
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