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19Propositional AttitudesIn Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Wiley-blackwell. 1997.This chapter argues that some have wanted to reserve the term 'propositional attitude' for states which are 'in principle accessible' to consciousness, or that are 'inferentially integrated' with other propositional attitudes. Some of the contention and research surrounding propositional attitudes and sentences ascribing them results from their importance to epistemology, philosophy of mind, and action theory. Perhaps the primary reason is the view that propositional attitudes are relations to p…Read more
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8Truth and truth bearersOxford University Press. 2015.This book collects nine seminal essays by Mark Richard published between 1980 and 2014, alongside four new essays and an introduction that puts the essays in context. Each essay is an attempt, in one way or another, to understand the idea of a proposition. Part I discusses whether the objects of thought and assertion can change truth value over time. Part II develops and defends a relativist view of the objects of assertion and thought; it includes discussions of the nature of disagreement, mora…Read more
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6Analysis, Synonymy, and SenseIn C. Anthony Anderson & Michael Zelëny (eds.), Logic, meaning, and computation: essays in memory of Alonzo Church, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 545-571. 2001.
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80Is Reference Essential to Meaning?Metaphysics 3 (1): 68-80. 2020.Most linguists and philosophers will tell you that whatever meaning is, it determines the reference of names, the satisfaction conditions of nouns and verbs, the truth conditions of sentences; in linguist speak, meaning determines semantic value. So a change in semantic value implies a change in meaning. So the semantic value a meaning determines is essential to that meaning: holding contributions from context constant, if two words have different semantic values they cannot mean the same thing.…Read more
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28Meanings as SpeciesOxford University Press. 2019.Mark Richard presents an original theory of meaning, as the collection of assumptions speakers make in using it and expect their hearers to recognize as being made. Meaning is spread across a population, inherited by each new generation of speakers from the last, and evolving through the interactions of speakers with their environment.
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39Marcus on Belief and Belief in the ImpossibleTheoria 28 (3): 407-420. 2013.I review but don’t endorse Marcus’ arguments that impossible beliefs are impossible. I defend her claim that belief’s objects are, in some important sense, not the bearers of truth and falsity, discuss her disposition- alism about belief, and argue it’s a good fit with the idea that belief’s objects are Russellian states of affairs.
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25Precis of When Truth Gives OutCroatian Journal of Philosophy 11 (2): 143-147. 2011.When Truth Gives Out discusses some of the relations between performative and expressive aspects of language and those aspects of language that determine truth conditions. Among the topics it takes up are slurring speech, the ‘Frege-Geach’ objection to expressivism, vagueness, and relativism. It develops an alternative to standard truth conditional semantics, one based on the notion of a commitment.
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5Truth and Truth Bearers: Meaning in Context, Volume IiOxford University Press UK. 2015.This book collects nine seminal essays by Mark Richard published between 1980 and 2014, alongside four new essays and an introduction that puts the essays in context. Each essay is an attempt, in one way or another, to understand the idea of a proposition. Part I discusses whether the objects of thought and assertion can change truth value over time. Part II develops and defends a relativist view of the objects of assertion and thought; and Part III discusses issues having to do with relations b…Read more
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28Demonstratives, Indexicals, and Tensed Attributions of BeliefDissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst. 1982.Sentences of natural languages are often said to express propositions and to have meanings . This work is about the nature of such entities and their role in an account of the truth conditions of tensed attributions of belief containing demonstratives and indexicals. ;In Chapter I, I discuss the temporal properties of propositions. Two views concerning the temporal properties of propositions--temporalism and eternalism--are characterized; eternalism is defended as the correct view. I show that t…Read more
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4Semantic pretenseIn T. Hofweber & A. Everett (eds.), Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles of Non-Existence, Csli Publications. pp. 205--32. 2000.
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77When Truth Gives OutOxford University Press. 2008.Is the point of belief and assertion invariably to think or say something true? Is the truth of a belief or assertion absolute, or is it only relative to human interests? Most philosophers think it incoherent to profess to believe something but not think it true, or to say that some of the things we believe are only relatively true. Common sense disagrees. It sees many opinions, such as those about matters of taste, as neither true nor false; it takes it as obvious that some of the truth is rela…Read more
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74Quantification and Leibniz's lawPhilosophical Review 96 (4): 555-578. 1987.The Philosophical Review, Vol. XCVI, No. 4 (October 1987). Categorically proves that Leibniz's Law (the principle that any instance of _for any x and y, if x=y, then if ...x..., then ..y..._ is true) is not a principle of which is true of natural language objectual quantification.
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Indeterminacy and Truth Value GapsIn Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and clouds: vagueness, its nature, and its logic, Oxford University Press. 2010.
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62Defective Contexts, Accommodation, and NormalizationCanadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (4). 1995.Propositional Attitudes defends an account of ‘believes’ on which the verb is contextually sensitive. x believes that S says that x has a belief which is ‘well rendered’ or acceptably translated by S; since contextually variable information about what makes for a good translation helps determine the extension of ‘believes,’ the verb is contextually sensitive. Sider and Soames criticize this account. They say it has unacceptable consequences in cases in which we make multiple ascriptions of belie…Read more
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53Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the MindPhilosophical Review 106 (4): 614. 1997.When I started the book, I thought that if there are beliefs, then they are brain states. I still believe that. I express three caveats about the book.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |