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144The Lure of LinguistificationIn Carlo Penco & Filippo Domaneschi (eds.), What Is Said and What Is Not: The Semantics/Pragmatics Interface, Csli. 2013.Think of linguistification by analogy with personification: attributing linguistic properties to nonlinguistic phenomena. For my purposes, it also includes attributing nonlinguistic properties to linguistic items, i.e., treating nonlinguistic properties as linguistic. Linguistification is widespread. It has reached epidemic proportions. It needs to be eradicated. That’s important because the process of communication is not simply a matter of one person putting a thought into words and another de…Read more
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206How performatives really work: A reply to Searle (review)Linguistics and Philosophy 15 (1). 1992.
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30Review of Robert Fiengo, Asking Questions: Using Meaningful Structures to Imply Ignorance (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (11). 2007.
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1Barry Taylor, ed., Michael Dummett: Contributions to Philosophy Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 10 (4): 160-162. 1990.
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6Failed Reference and Feigned ReferenceGrazer Philosophische Studien 25 (1): 359-374. 1985.Nothing can be said about a nonexistent object, but something can be said about the act of (unsuccessfully) attempting to refer to one or, as in fiction, of pretending to refer to one. Unsuccessful reference, whether by expressions or by speakers, can be explained straightforwardly within the context of the theory of speech acts and communication. As for fiction, there is nothing special semantically, as to either meaning or reference, about its language. And fictional discourse is just a distin…Read more
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49Analytic social philosophy—basic conceptsJournal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 5 (2). 1975.
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142Even though it’s based on a bad argument, there’s something to Strawson’s dictum. He might have likened ‘referring expression’ to phrases like ‘eating utensil’ and ‘dining room’: just as utensils don’t eat and dining rooms don’t dine, so, he might have argued, expressions don’t refer. Actually, that wasn’t his argument, though it does make you wonder. Rather, Strawson exploited the fact that almost any referring expression, whether an indexical, demonstrative, proper name, or definite descriptio…Read more
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30Semantic slack: What is said and moreIn Savas L. Tsohatzidis (ed.), Foundations of Speech Act Theory: Philosophical and Linguistic Perspectives, Routledge. pp. 267--291. 1994.
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158Concepts: 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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179What's in a nameAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 59 (4). 1981.This Article does not have an abstract
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150Meaning and CommunicationIn G. Russell & D. G. Fara (eds.), Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Routledge. pp. 79--90. 2012.Words mean things, speakers mean things in using words, and these need not be the same. For example, if you say to someone who has just finished eating a super giant burrito at the Taqueria Guadalajara, “You are what you eat,” you probably do not mean that the person is a super giant burrito. So we need to distinguish the meaning of a linguistic expression – a word, phrase, or sentence – from what a person means in using it. To simplify matters, let us pretend that an utterance is always of a se…Read more
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18Subject and name indexIn Rita Finkbeiner, Jörg Meibauer & Petra Schumacher (eds.), What is a Context?: Linguistic Approaches and Challenges, John Benjamins. pp. 196--251. 2012.
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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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216Knowledge 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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148Thorstein 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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106Refraining, 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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366Applying 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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114Descriptions: Points of ReferenceIn Marga Reimer & Anne Bezuidenhout (eds.), Descriptions and beyond, Oxford University Press. pp. 189-229. 2004.
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