•  52
    Foreword: Three-valued logics and their applications
    Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics 24 (1-2): 1-11. 2014.
  •  115
    Predicting moral judgments from causal judgments
    Philosophical Psychology 28 (1): 21-48. 2015.
    Several factors have been put forward to explain the variability of moral judgments for superficially analogous moral dilemmas, in particular in the paradigm of trolley cases. In this paper we elaborate on Mikhail's view that (i) causal analysis is at the core of moral judgments and that (ii) causal judgments can be quantified by linguistic methods. According to this model, our moral judgments depend both on utilitarian considerations (whether positive effects outweigh negative effects) and on a…Read more
  •  31
    From many-valued consequence to many-valued connectives
    Synthese 198 (S22): 5315-5352. 2018.
    Given a consequence relation in many-valued logic, what connectives can be defined? For instance, does there always exist a conditional operator internalizing the consequence relation, and which form should it take? In this paper, we pose this question in a multi-premise multi-conclusion setting for the class of so-called intersective mixed consequence relations, which extends the class of Tarskian relations. Using computer-aided methods, we answer extensively for 3-valued and 4-valued logics, f…Read more
  •  89
    Editorial: Objects and Sound Perception (review)
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (1): 5-17. 2010.
    Editorial: Objects and Sound Perception Content Type Journal Article Pages 5-17 DOI 10.1007/s13164-009-0006-3 Authors Nicolas J. Bullot, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage (CRAL/CNRS) 96 Bd Raspail 75006 Paris France Paul Égré, Institut Jean-Nicod (ENS/EHESS/CNRS) Département d’Etudes Cognitives de l’ENS 29 rue d’Ulm 75005 Paris France Journal Review of Philosophy and Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158 Journal Volume Vo…Read more
  •  144
    Knowing whether A or B
    with Maria Aloni and Tikitu de Jager
    Synthese 190 (14): 2595-2621. 2013.
    The paper examines the logic and semantics of knowledge attributions of the form “s knows whether A or B”. We analyze these constructions in an epistemic logic with alternative questions, and propose an account of the context-sensitivity of the corresponding sentences and of their presuppositions.
  •  221
    Alternative questions and knowledge attributions
    Philosophical Quarterly 60 (238): 1-27. 2010.
    We discuss the 'problem of convergent knowledge', an argument presented by J. Schaffer in favour of contextualism about knowledge attributions, and against the idea that knowledge- wh can be simply reduced to knowledge of the proposition answering the question. Schaffer's argument centrally involves alternative questions of the form 'whether A or B'. We propose an analysis of these on which the problem of convergent knowledge does not arise. While alternative questions can contextually restrict …Read more
  •  40
    On the optimality of vagueness: “around”, “between” and the Gricean maxims
    with Benjamin Spector, Adèle Mortier, and Steven Verheyen
    Linguistics and Philosophy 46 (5): 1075-1130. 2023.
    Why is ordinary language vague? We argue that in contexts in which a cooperative speaker is not perfectly informed about the world, the use of vague expressions can offer an optimal tradeoff between truthfulness (Gricean Quality) and informativeness (Gricean Quantity). Focusing on expressions of approximation such as “around”, which are semantically vague, we show that they allow the speaker to convey indirect probabilistic information, in a way that can give the listener a more accurate represe…Read more
  •  221
    Vagueness: A Conceptual Spaces Approach
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 42 (1): 137-160. 2013.
    The conceptual spaces approach has recently emerged as a novel account of concepts. Its guiding idea is that concepts can be represented geometrically, by means of metrical spaces. While it is generally recognized that many of our concepts are vague, the question of how to model vagueness in the conceptual spaces approach has not been addressed so far, even though the answer is far from straightforward. The present paper aims to fill this lacuna.
  •  118
    Vagueness, Truth and Permissive Consequence
    In T. Achourioti, H. Galinon, J. Martínez Fernández & K. Fujimoto (eds.), Unifying the Philosophy of Truth, Imprint: Springer. pp. 409-430. 2015.
    We say that a sentence A is a permissive consequence of a set X of premises whenever, if all the premises of X hold up to some standard, then A holds to some weaker standard. In this paper, we focus on a three-valued version of this notion, which we call strict-to-tolerant consequence, and discuss its fruitfulness toward a unified treatment of the paradoxes of vagueness and self-referential truth. For vagueness, st-consequence supports the principle of tolerance; for truth, it supports the requi…Read more
  •  84
    Recent experiments have shown that naive speakers find borderline contradictions involving vague predicates acceptable. In Cobreros et al. we proposed a pragmatic explanation of the acceptability of borderline contradictions, building on a three-valued semantics. In a reply, Alxatib et al. show, however, that the pragmatic account predicts the wrong interpretations for some examples involving disjunction, and propose as a remedy a semantic analysis instead, based on fuzzy logic. In this paper we…Read more
  •  28
    Version of March 05, 2007. An extended abstract of the paper appeared in the Proceedings of the 2006 Prague Colloquium on "Reasoning about Vagueness and Uncertainty".
  •  108
    Vagueness: Why Do We Believe in Tolerance?
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 44 (6): 663-679. 2015.
    The tolerance principle, the idea that vague predicates are insensitive to sufficiently small changes, remains the main bone of contention between theories of vagueness. In this paper I examine three sources behind our ordinary belief in the tolerance principle, to establish whether any of them might give us a good reason to revise classical logic. First, I compare our understanding of tolerance in the case of precise predicates and in the case of vague predicates. While tolerance in the case of…Read more
  •  475
    On Three-Valued Presentations of Classical Logic
    with Bruno da Ré, Damian Szmuc, and Emmanuel Chemla
    Review of Symbolic Logic 1-23. forthcoming.
    Given a three-valued definition of validity, which choice of three-valued truth tables for the connectives can ensure that the resulting logic coincides exactly with classical logic? We give an answer to this question for the five monotonic consequence relations $st$, $ss$, $tt$, $ss\cap tt$, and $ts$, when the connectives are negation, conjunction, and disjunction. For $ts$ and $ss\cap tt$ the answer is trivial (no scheme works), and for $ss$ and $tt$ it is straightforward (they are the collaps…Read more
  •  23
    Editorial Introduction: Substructural Logics and Metainferences
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 51 (6): 1215-1231. 2022.
    The concept of _substructural logic_ was originally introduced in relation to limitations of Gentzen’s structural rules of Contraction, Weakening and Exchange. Recent years have witnessed the development of substructural logics also challenging the Tarskian properties of Reflexivity and Transitivity of logical consequence. In this introduction we explain this recent development and two aspects in which it leads to a reassessment of the bounds of classical logic. On the one hand, standard ways of…Read more
  •  17
    Knowledge, justification, and adequate reasons—erratum
    with Paul Marty and Bryan Renne
    Review of Symbolic Logic 1-1. forthcoming.
  •  61
    Knowledge, justification, and adequate reasons
    with Paul Marty and Bryan Renne
    Review of Symbolic Logic 14 (3): 687-727. 2021.
    Is knowledge definable as justified true belief? We argue that one can legitimately answer positively or negatively, depending on whether or not one’s true belief is justified by what we call adequate reasons. To facilitate our argument we introduce a simple propositional logic of reason-based belief, and give an axiomatic characterization of the notion of adequacy for reasons. We show that this logic is sufficiently flexible to accommodate various useful features, including quantification over …Read more
  •  41
    Suszko’s problem: Mixed consequence and compositionality
    Review of Symbolic Logic 12 (4): 736-767. 2019.
    Suszko’s problem is the problem of finding the minimal number of truth values needed to semantically characterize a syntactic consequence relation. Suszko proved that every Tarskian consequence relation can be characterized using only two truth values. Malinowski showed that this number can equal three if some of Tarski’s structural constraints are relaxed. By so doing, Malinowski introduced a case of so-called mixed consequence, allowing the notion of a designated value to vary between the prem…Read more
  •  188
    Inexact Knowledge with Introspection
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 38 (2): 179-227. 2009.
    This paper supersedes an ealier version, entitled "A Non-Standard Semantics for Inexact Knowledge with Introspection", which appeared in the Proceedings of "Rationality and Knowledge". The definition of token semantics, in particular, has been modified, both for the single- and the multi-agent case.
  •  22
    Vagueness and Degrees of Truth by Nicholas J. J. Smith (review)
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (1): 177-80. 2011.
  •  80
    Borderline Cases, Incompatibilism, and Plurivaluationism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (2): 457-466. 2015.
  •  139
    Moral asymmetries and the semantics of many
    Semantics and Pragmatics 8 (13): 1-45. 2015.
    We present the results of four experiments concerning the evaluation people make of sentences involving “many”, showing that two sentences of the form “many As are Bs” vs. “many As are Cs” need not be equivalent when evaluated relative to a background in which B and C have the same cardinality and proportion to A, but in which B and C are predicates with opposite semantic and affective values. The data provide evidence that subjects lower the standard relevant to ascribe “many” for the more nega…Read more
  •  145
    Vagueness and Degrees of Truth
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (1): 177-180. 2011.
    Nicholas Smith argues that an adequate account of vagueness must involve\ndegrees of truth. The basic idea of degrees of truth is that while\nsome sentences are true and some are false, others possess intermediate\ntruth values: they are truer than the false sentences, but not as\ntrue as the true ones. This idea is immediately appealing in the\ncontext of vagueness--yet it has fallen on hard times in the philosophical\nliterature, with existing degree-theoretic treatments of vagueness\nfacing a…Read more
  •  97
    Explanation in Linguistics
    Philosophy Compass 10 (7): 451-462. 2015.
    The aim of the present paper is to understand what the notions of explanation and prediction in contemporary linguistics mean, and to compare various aspects that the notion of explanation encompasses in that domain. The paper is structured around an opposition between three main styles of explanation in linguistics, which I propose to call ‘grammatical’, ‘functional’, and ‘historical’. Most of this paper is a comparison between these different styles of explanations and their relations. A secon…Read more
  •  2
    REVIEWS-Mainstream and format epistemology
    Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 13 (1): 110-114. 2007.
  •  37
    Metacognitive perspectives on unawareness and uncertainty
    In Michael J. Beran, Johannes Brandl, Josef Perner & Joëlle Proust (eds.), The foundations of metacognition, Oxford University Press. pp. 322. 2012.
  •  198
    This paper examines an hypothesis put forward by Pettit and Knobe 2009 to account for the Knobe effect. According to Pettit and Knobe, one should look at the semantics of the adjective “intentional” on a par with that of other gradable adjectives such as “warm”, “rich” or “expensive”. What Pettit and Knobe’s analogy suggests is that the Knobe effect might be an instance of a much broader phenomenon which concerns the context-dependence of normative standards relevant for the application of grada…Read more
  •  140
    Our paper addresses the following question: Is there a general characterization, for all predicates P that take both declarative and interrogative complements , of the meaning of the P-interrogative clause construction in terms of the meaning of the P-declarative clause construction? On our account, if P is a responsive predicate and Q a question embedded under P, then the meaning of ‘P + Q’ is, informally, “to be in the relation expressed by P to some potential complete answer to Q”. We show th…Read more