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28Is There Such a Thing as a Language?Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (2): 163-190. 1992.‘There is no such thing as a language,’ Donald Davidson tells us. Though this is a startling claim in its own right, it seems especially puzzling coming from a leading theorizer about language. Over the years, Davidson’s important essays have sparked the hope that there is a route to a positive, nonskeptical theory of meaning for natural languages. This hope would seem to be dashed if there are no natural languages. Unless Davidson’s radical claim is a departure from his developed views, the Dav…Read more
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6i. Introduction: Naturaiizing Semantics It seems as though everyone these days is in the business of ‘naituraIizing': apistamologists, philosophers of mind and language, even moral phi- `lcscpheers and philosophers of mathematics. Quine is cften cited as the one who started Et, but expressions of the naturalizing urge can no doubt be found much earlier in the history of phiioscphy. Lccsaly speaking, the- naturalizing urge is the desire to fashion human epistemic achievements in particular arcs a…Read more
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2Postscript to 'Deflationism, Meaning and Truth-Conditions'In J. C. Beall & B. Armour-Garb (eds.), Deflationary Truth, Open Court. 2005.
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54Neo-expressivism: avowals' security and privileged self-knowledgeIn Anthony Hatzimoysis (ed.), Self-Knowledge, Oxford University Press. 2008.Here are some things that I know right now: that I’m feeling a bit hungry, that there’s a red cardinal on my bird feeder, that I’m sitting down, that I have a lot of grading to do today, that my daughter is mad at me, that I’ll be going for a run soon, that I’d like to go out to the movies tonight. As orthodoxy would have it, some among these represent things to which I have privileged epistemic access, namely: my present states of mind . I normally know these states directly, immediately, non-i…Read more
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165Origins of Meaning: Must We ‘Go Gricean’?Mind and Language 28 (3): 342-375. 2013.The task of explaining language evolution is often presented by leading theorists in explicitly Gricean terms. After a critical evaluation, I present an alternative, non‐Gricean conceptualization of the task. I argue that, while it may be true that nonhuman animals, in contrast to language users, lack the ‘motive to share information’ understoodà laGrice, nonhuman animals nevertheless do express states of mind through complex nonlinguistic behavior. On a proper, non‐Gricean construal of expressi…Read more
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17Here are some things that I know right now: that I’m feeling a bit hungry, that there’s a red cardinal on my bird feeder, that I’m sitting down, that I have a lot of grading to do today, that my daughter is mad at me, that I’ll be going for a run soon, that I’d like to go out to the movies tonight. As orthodoxy would have it, some among these represent things to which I have privileged epistemic access, namely: my present states of mind. I normally know these states directly, immediately, non-in…Read more
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921Pragmatic Interpretation and Signaler-Receiver Asymmetries in Animal CommunicationIn Kristin Andrews & Jacob Beck (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds, Routledge. pp. 291-300. 2017.Researchers have converged on the idea that a pragmatic understanding of communication can shed important light on the evolution of language. Accordingly, animal communication scientists have been keen to adopt insights from pragmatics research. Some authors couple their appeal to pragmatic aspects of communication with the claim that there are fundamental asymmetries between signalers and receivers in non-human animals. For example, in the case of primate vocal calls, signalers are said to p…Read more
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16“Meaning” Reconstructed: Grice and the Naturalizing of SemanticsPacific Philosophical Quarterly 76 (2): 83-116. 1995.
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26Lionspeak: communication, expression, and meaningIn James R. O'Shea & Eric Rubenstein (eds.), Self, Language, and World: Problems From Kant, Sellars, and Rosenberg, Ridgeview Publishing Co.. pp. 89--106. 2010.
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175Indeterminacy of Translation—Theory and PracticePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (4): 781-810. 1993.To an ordinary translator, the idea that there are too many perfect translation schemes between any two languages would come as a surprise. Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation expresses just this idea. It implies that most of the 'implicit canons' actual translators use in their assessment of translations lack objective status. My dissertation is an attempt to present a systematic challenge to Quine's view of language and to support the idea that one could develop an objective the…Read more
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74Is there such a thing as a language?Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (2): 163-190. 1992.‘There is no such thing as a language,’ Donald Davidson tells us. Though this is a startling claim in its own right, it seems especially puzzling coming from a leading theorizer about language. Over the years, Davidson’s important essays have sparked the hope that there is a route to a positive, nonskeptical theory of meaning for natural languages. This hope would seem to be dashed if there are no natural languages. Unless Davidson’s radical claim is a departure from his developed views, the Dav…Read more
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155First-Person Authority: Dualism, Constitutivism, and Neo-ExpressivismErkenntnis 71 (1): 53-71. 2009.What I call “Rorty’s Dilemma” has us caught between the Scylla of Cartesian Dualism and the Charybdis of eliminativism about the mental. Proper recognition of what is distinctively mental requires accommodating incorrigibility about our mental states, something Rorty thinks materialists cannot do. So we must either countenance mental states over and above physical states in our ontology, or else give up altogether on the mental as a distinct category. In section 2, “Materialist Introspectionism—…Read more
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11Expression, truth, and reality : some variations on themes from WrightIn Annalisa Coliva (ed.), Mind, meaning, and knowledge: themes from the philosophy of Crispin Wright, Oxford University Press. 2012.Expressivism, broadly construed, is the view that the function of utterances in a given area of discourse is to give expression to our sentiments or other (non-cognitive) mental states or attitudes, rather than report or describe some range of facts. This view naturally seems an attractive option wherever it is suspected that there may not be a domain of facts for the given discourse to be describing. Familiarly, to avoid commitment to ethical facts, the ethical expressivist suggests that ethica…Read more
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131Expressive Communication and Continuity SkepticismJournal of Philosophy 110 (6): 293-330. 2013.
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334Ethical neo-expressivismIn Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 4, Oxford University Press. pp. 132-65. 2009.A standard way to explain the connection between ethical claims and motivation is to say that these claims express motivational attitudes. Unless this connection is taken to be merely a matter of contingent psychological regularity, it may seem that there are only two options for understanding it. We can either treat ethical claims as expressing propositions that one cannot believe without being at least somewhat motivated (subjectivism), or we can treat ethical claims as nonpropositional and as…Read more
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138Crude Meaning, Brute ThoughtJournal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 7 (2): 29-46. 2019.I address here the question what sense to make of the idea that there can be thought prior to language. I begin by juxtaposing two familiar and influential philosophical views, one associated with the work of Paul Grice, the other associated with the work of Donald Davidson. Grice and Davidson share a broad, rationalist perspective on language and thought, but they endorse conflicting theses on the relation between them. Whereas, for Grice, thought of an especially complex sort is a precondition…Read more
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132Anti-realism and speaker knowledgeSynthese 106 (2). 1996.Dummettian anti-realism repudiates the realist's notion of verification-transcendent truth. Perhaps the most crucial element in the Dummettian attack on realist truth is the critique of so-called realist semantics, which assigns verification-transcendent truth-conditions as the meanings of (some) sentences. The Dummettian critique charges that realist semantics cannot serve as an adequate theory of meaning for a natural language, and that, consequently, the realist conception of truth must be re…Read more
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80Varieties of DeflationismIn Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2006.There is a core metaphysical claim shared by all deflationists: truth is not a genuine, substantive property. But anyone who denies that truth is a genuine property must still make sense of our pervasive truth talk. In addressing questions about the meaning and function of ‘true’, deflationists engage in a linguistic or semantic project, a project that typically goes hand-in-hand with a deflationary account of the concept of truth. A thoroughgoing deflationary account of truth will go beyond the…Read more
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146Avowals: Expression, security, and knowledge: Reply to Matthew Boyle, David Rosenthal, and Maura Tumulty (review)Acta Analytica 25 (1): 47-63. 2010.In my reply to Boyle, Rosenthal, and Tumulty, I revisit my view of avowals’ security as a matter of a special immunity to error, their character as intentional expressive acts that employ self-ascriptive vehicles (without being grounded in self-beliefs), Moore’s paradox, the idea of expressing as contrasting with reporting and its connection to showing one’s mental state, and the ‘performance equivalence’ between avowals and other expressive acts.
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21Discrimination, individual justice and preferential treatmentPublic Affairs Quarterly 4 (2): 111-137. 1990.
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207Avowals and first-person privilegePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (2): 311-35. 2001.When people avow their present feelings, sensations, thoughts, etc., they enjoy what may be called “first-person privilege.” If I now said: “I have a headache,” or “I’m thinking about Venice,” I would be taken at my word: I would normally not be challenged. According to one prominent approach, this privilege is due to a special epistemic access we have to our own present states of mind. On an alternative, deflationary approach the privilege merely reflects a socio-linguistic convention governing…Read more
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14As I am sitting at my desk in front of my computer, a thought crosses my mind: There's water in the glass. The thought has a particular content: that there is water in the glass. And, if all is well, there is water in the glass, so my thought is true. According to external-world skepticism, I still do not know that there is water in the glass, because my way of telling what's in front of me does not allow me to rule out the possibility that I’m only under some kind of illusion about what's in fr…Read more
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82Semantic verificationism, linguistic behaviorism, and translationPhilosophical Studies 66 (3). 1992.
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155Précis of Dorit Bar-On’s Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge (review)Acta Analytica 25 (1): 1-7. 2010.In my reply to Boyle, Rosenthal, and Tumulty, I revisit my view of avowals’ security as a matter of a special immunity to error, their character as intentional expressive acts that employ self-ascriptive vehicles, Moore’s paradox, the idea of expressing as contrasting with reporting and its connection to showing one’s mental state, and the ‘performance equivalence’ between avowals and other expressive acts.
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189The use of force against deflationism: Assertion and truthIn Dirk Greimann & Geo Siegwart (eds.), Truth and Speech Acts: Studies in the Philosophy of Language, Routledge. pp. 61--89. 2007.
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215Externalism and self-knowledge: Content, use, and expressionNoûs 38 (3): 430-55. 2004.Suppose, as I stare at a glass in front of me, I say or think: There
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854These summary notes on Ruth Millikan’s latest book Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information (OUP, 2017) were prepared by Dorit Bar-On for a discussion group that met in Summer 2018. The notes have been lightly edited by Millikan and prepared for online publication with the help of Drew Johnson.
Dorit Bar-On
University of Connecticut
University Of Connecticut, Storrs
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University Of Connecticut, StorrsPhilosophy, University Of Connecticut, StorrsProfessor Of Philosophy
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Storrs, Connecticut, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
1 more
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Epistemology |
Pragmatics |
Truth |
Philosophy of Linguistics |
Areas of Interest
2 more
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Epistemology |
Linguistics |
Cognitive Sciences, Misc |
Psychology |