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7Five Flies in the Ointment: Some Challenges for Traditional Semantic TheoryIn Richard Schantz (ed.), Prospects for Meaning, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 287-308. 2012.
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53Review of Robert Andrew Wilson: Cartesian Psychology and Physical Minds: Individualism and the Sciences of the Mind (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (1): 151-156. 1997.
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41Knowledge of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantic TheoryPhilosophical Review 106 (1): 122. 1997.To the best of my knowledge, no one in recent decades has written a book of this magnitude about the semantics of natural language. Certainly, nothing available today matches this volume in depth, precision, and coherence. The authors present classical and recent results of linguistic semantics within the framework of interpretative T-theories and defend the philosophical foundations of their approach by showing how it fits into the larger enterprise of cognitive linguistics. The book also inclu…Read more
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89Hope as a Primitive Mental StateRatio 28 (2): 207-222. 2015.We criticize attempts to define hope in terms of other psychological states and argue that hope is a primitive mental state whose nature can be illuminated by specifying key aspects of its functional profile
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249Indexical PredicatesMind and Language 24 (4): 467-493. 2009.We discuss the challenge to truth-conditional semantics presented by apparent shifts in extension of predicates such as ‘red’. We propose an explicit indexical semantics for ‘red’ and argue that our account is preferable to the alternatives on conceptual and empirical grounds.
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Truth and MeaningIn Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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18Consciousness, by W. G. Lycan (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (1): 240-243. 1991.
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151The causal efficacy of contentPhilosophical Studies 63 (July): 1-30. 1991.Several philosophers have argued recently that semantic properties do play a causal role. 1 It is our view that none of these arguments are satisfactory. Our aim is to reveal some of the deficiencies of these arguments, and to reassess the question in our own way. In section 1, we shall explain in more detail what is involved in the pretheoretical idea of a causally efficacious property and so provide a fuller sense of the issue. In section 2 we shall discuss Fodor's and Kim's arguments that the…Read more
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24Commentary on Hanna Pickard, “The Purpose in Chronic Addiction”American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 3 (2): 63-64. 2012.
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81Two Theories of NamesRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 51 75-93. 2002.The aim of this paper is to assess the relative merits of two accounts of the semantics of proper names. The enterprise is of particular interest because the theories are very similar in fundamental respects. In particular, they can agree on three major features of names: names are rigid designators; different co-extensive names can have different cognitive significance; empty proper names can be meaningful. Neither theory by itself offers complete explanations of all three features. But each th…Read more
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32The Causal Inefficacy of ContentMind and Language 24 (1): 80-102. 2009.The paper begins with the assumption that psychological event tokens are identical to or constituted from physical events. It then articulates a familiar apparent problem concerning the causal role of psychological properties. If they do not reduce to physical properties, then either they must be epiphenomenal or any effects they cause must also be caused by physical properties, and hence be overdetermined. It then argues that both epiphenomenalism and over‐determinationism are prima facie perfe…Read more
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28Addiction and Choice: Rethinking the Relationship (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2016.Views on addiction are often polarised - either addiction is a matter of choice, or addicts simply can't help themselves. But perhaps addiction falls between the two? This book contains views from philosophy, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, and the law exploring this middle ground between free choice and no choice.
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27Consciousness, by W. G. Lycan (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (1): 240-243. 1991.
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186The Causal Inefficacy of ContentMind and Language 24 (1): 80-102. 2009.The paper begins with the assumption that psychological event tokens are identical to or constituted from physical events. It then articulates a familiar apparent problem concerning the causal role of psychological properties. If they do not reduce to physical properties, then either they must be epiphenomenal or any effects they cause must also be caused by physical properties, and hence be overdetermined. It then argues that both epiphenomenalism and over‐determinationism are prima facie perfe…Read more
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141A Slim Book About Narrow ContentMIT Press. 2000.The book, written in a clear, engaging style, contains four chapters.
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10Review of Robert A. Wilson: Cartesian psychology and physical minds: Iindividualism and the sciences of mind (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (1): 151--156. 1997.
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104Knowledge of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantic TheoryMIT Press. 1995.Current textbooks in formal semantics are all versions of, or introductions to, the same paradigm in semantic theory: Montague Grammar. Knowledge of Meaning is based on different assumptions and a different history. It provides the only introduction to truth- theoretic semantics for natural languages, fully integrating semantic theory into the modern Chomskyan program in linguistic theory and connecting linguistic semantics to research elsewhere in cognitive psychology and philosophy. As such, i…Read more
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33Common Sense, Science, and ‘Spirituality’Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 20 (4): 325-328. 2013.
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17Verdad y significadoIdeas Y Valores 53 (125): 49-79. 2004.The paper provides a sketch of the place of the work of Donald Davidsonin the study of formal semantics for natural languages. It discusses someimportant relations between Davidsons work and ideas due to Frege,Tarski, Quine and Chomsky. A criticism of Davidsons behaviouristicmethodology is offered..
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Allow me to recapitulate some territory that will be familiar to most readers. Here is how the problem of mental causation has typically been set up since shortly after the onset of non-reductive physicalism. It is now widely assumed that the realm of the physical is causally closed: every physical event has a complete physical cause, a cause that is sufficient for the event’s occurrence. This apparently leaves us with a limited number of options concerning psychological causation, none of which…Read more
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62Truth and MeaningIn Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2006.This article says something about previous work related to truth and meaning, goes on to discuss Davidson and related papers of his, and then discusses some issues arising. It begins with the work of Gottlob Frege. Much work in the twentieth century developed Frege's ideas. A great deal of that work continued with the assumption that semantics is fundamentally concerned with the assignments of entities to expressions. So, for example, those who tried to develop a formal account of sense did so b…Read more
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87Alcoholism, Disease, and InsanityPhilosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 20 (4): 297-315. 2013.It is argued that alcoholism, and substance addiction generally, is a disease. It is not of its nature chronic or progressive, although it is in serious cases. It is better viewed as a psychological disease than a neurological one. It is argued that each time an alcoholic takes a drink, this is the result of choice; however, in cases of serious affliction, such choices are compulsive and may be called 'involuntary' in that they are made against the subject's will, motivated by an overwhelmingly …Read more
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28Four arguments for the indeterminacy of translationIn A. Orenstein & Petr Kotatko (eds.), Knowledge, Language and Logic: Questions for Quine, Kluwer Academic Print On Demand. pp. 131--139. 2000.
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140Cognitive content and propositional attitude attributionsIn Brian P. McLaughlin & Jonathan D. Cohen (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. 2006.Tyler Burge (Burge (1979)) has developed a very influential line of anti-individualistic thought. He argued that the cognitive content of a person