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78Language Turned on Itself: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Metalinguistic DiscourseOxford University Press. 2007.This is the first book devoted to the question of how language can be used to talk about language. Cappelen and Lepore examine the semantics, the pragmatics, and the syntax of linguistic devices that can be used in this way, and present a new account of our use of quotation in a variety of different contexts.
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75In Insensitive Semantics (INS) and earlier work (see for example C&L (1997), (1998), (2004), (2005)) we defend a combination of two views: speech act pluralism and semantic minimalism. We're not alone advocating speech act pluralism; a modified version of it can be found in Mark Richard (1998), and we're delighted to have found a recent ally in Scott Soames (see chapter 3 of Soames (2001)1). There's less explicit support for minimalism, though we think it’s one way to interpret parts of Donald D…Read more
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64Propositional Skeletons and Disquotational ReportsProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 107 (1pt2): 207-227. 2007.One of the three central issues in Lloyd Humberstone's ‘Sufficiency and Excess’ is what he calls ‘the Complete Thought Issue’ (CTI, for short). This is the question of whether some declarative sentences have proposition radicals, rather than full-blown propositions, as their semantic values. My focus in this reply is exclusively on Humberstone's comments about CTI and on CTI more generally. The goal of Humberstone's discussion of CTI is to defend ‘[Kent] Bach's claim against Cappelen and Lepore'…Read more
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60Bad LanguageOxford University Press. 2019.Bad Language is the first textbook on an emerging area in the study of language: non-idealized language use, the linguistic behaviour of people who exploit language for malign purposes. This lively, accessible introduction offers theoretical frameworks for thinking about such topics as lies and bullshit, slurs and insults, coercion and silencing.
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60According to Kent Bach (forthcoming), our book, Insensitive Semantics (IS), suffers from its 'implicit endorsement' of (1): (1) Every complete sentence expresses a proposition (this is Propositionalism, a fancy version of the old grammar school dictum that every complete sentence expresses a complete thought) (Bach (ms.)) In response (C&L, forthcoming), we claim to be unaware of endorsing (1). No argument in IS depends on (1), we say. We don't claim to have shown that that there couldn't be gram…Read more
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55Radical and Moderate Pragmatics: Does Meaning Determine Truth Conditions?In Zoltan Gendler Szabo (ed.), Semantics Versus Pragmatics, Oxford University Press. 2005.But the sort of context sensitivity exhibited in such sentences does not compromise the claim that meaning determines truth conditions, since recourse to context here is directed and restricted by conventional meaning alone. Anyone who understands sentence (2) knows that its utterances are true just in case whatever object is demonstrated in the context of utterance is nice; and he also knows that any utterance of (2) says of, or expresses about, whichever object is demonstrated that it’s nice. …Read more
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52Knowing, Being, DoingGyldendal. 2021.What does it mean to possess knowledge about something? What kinds of things exist and can be known? How should we live? What matters and what has value? In this book, we seek to answer these questions by examining contributions from the history of philosophy, science and ethics. The book has 20 chapters divided into three parts. Part 1, Knowing, asks questions about knowledge. Part 2, Being, starts by asking about what is real. Part 3, Doing, is devoted to ethics. Every chapter has an introduc…Read more
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51Vite, Være, GjøreGyldendal. 2021.Hva vil det si å ha kunnskap om noe? Hva slags ting finnes i verden, og hva går det an å vite noe om? Hvordan bør vi leve? Hva er verdifullt? I denne boka søkes svar på disse spørsmålene gjennom eksempler fra filosofi- og vitenskapshistorien og fra etikk. Boka har 20 kapitler fordelt på tre deler. Del 1 – vite – stiller spørsmål om kunnskap. Del 2 – være – tar utgangspunkt i hva som er virkelig. Del 3 – gjøre – er viet etikk. Hvert kapittel har en introduksjon samt én til to originaltekster som …Read more
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50Puzzles Of ReferenceOxford University Press. 2018.It is a fundamental feature of language that words refer to things. Much attention has been devoted to the nature of reference, both in philosophy and in linguistics. Puzzles of Reference is the first book to give a comprehensive accessible survey of the fascinating work on this topic from the 1970s to the present day. Written by two eminent philosophers of language, Puzzles of Reference offers an up-to-date introduction to reference in philosophy and linguistics, summarizing ideas such as Krip…Read more
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45ResponseMind and Language 21 (1): 50-73. 2006.We start off with some points of clarification about the view we defend in Insensitive Semantics, before going on to consider responses from Charles Travis, Zoltan Szabo,Anne Bezuidenhout, Steven Gross, and Francois Recanati
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40Assertion: An introduction and overviewIn Jessica Brown & Herman Cappelen (eds.), Assertion: New Philosophical Essays, Oxford University Press. pp. 1-17. 2011.We introduce the concept of assertion, survey existing views about it, and detail the contents of the remainder of the book
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38In Insensitive Semantics (INS) and several earlier articles (see C&L 1997, 1998, 2003, 2004) we appeal to a range of procedures for testing whether an expression is semantically context sensitive. We argue that claims to the effect that an expression, e, is semantically context sensitivity should be made only after checking whether e passes these tests. We use these tests to criticize those we classify as Radical and Moderate Contextualist (Taylor is one of our targets in the latter category.).Read more
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34One of Szabo's central objections is his ‘reservations about the alleged slide from moderate to radical contextualism’. First, some background: the argument Szabo expresses doubt about is essential both to the critical part of our book and to its positive part. Our argument against what we call moderate contextualism depends on the assumption that it collapses into radical contextualism. Our positive view depends on the assumption that for any utterance, we can trigger the intuition that many di…Read more
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31Davidson: sobre decir-lo-mismoIdeas Y Valores 53 (125): 7-21. 2004.Three basic elements for a neodavidsonian semantics are presented in thisarticle. Firstly, a rejection of the thesis according to which the semanticcontent is identical with the speech act content. Secondly, the adoption ofsemantic minimalism as the proper domain where a truth-conditionalsemantics ..
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31IntuitionsFacta Philosophica: Internazionale Zeitschrift für Gegenwartsphilosophie 1 (1): 197-216. 1999.This paper examines two attempts to justify the way in which intuitions about specific cases are used as evidence for and against philosophical theories. According to the concept model, intuitions about cases are trustworthy applications of one’s typically tacit grasp of certain concepts. We argue that regardless of whether externalist or internalist accounts of conceptual content are correct, the concept model flounders. The second justification rests on the less familiar belief model, which ha…Read more
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29Relativism and Monadic TruthOxford University Press. 2009.Cappelen and Hawthorne present a powerful critique of fashionable relativist accounts of truth, and the foundational ideas in semantics on which the new relativism draws. They argue compellingly that the contents of thought and talk are propositions that instantiate the fundamental monadic properties of truth and falsity.
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28Semantic Theory and Indirect SpeechProtoSociology 10 4-18. 1997.Much work in the philosophy of language assumes that a semantic theory T, for a language L should assign p as the semantic content of an utterance u, by A, of a sentence S in L, if and only if “A said that p” is true. This assumption is mistaken. More generally, the aim of semantics cannot be to capture the extension of English expressions such as “meaning” or “what was said”. This provides support for Davidson’s paratactic theory of indirect speech and for the view that a semantic theory should…Read more
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22The concept of democracy: an essay on conceptual amelioration and abandonmentOxford University Press. 2023.This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. If we don't know what the words 'democracy' and 'democratic' mean, then we don't know what democracy is. This book defends a radical view: these words mean nothing and should be abandoned. The argument for Abolitionism is simple: those terms are defective and we can easily do better…Read more
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20Insensitive Semantics: A Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act PluralismPhilosophical Quarterly 57 (228): 472-478. 2007.
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18Context and CommunicationOxford University Press UK. 2016.Context and Communication offers an introduction to a central theme in the study of language: the various ways in which what we say depends on the context of speech and thought. The period since 1970 has produced a vast literature on this topic, both by philosophers and by linguists. This book explores key data, questions, concepts, and theories of context sensitivity. It is written to be accessible to someone with no prior knowledge of the material or, indeed, any prior knowledge of philosophy,…Read more
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18Filosofi I Norge I fremtiden: Gi opp Dyrehagemodellen og bruk alle ressurser på ekspertisegrupperNorsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 50 (3): 119-128. 2015.I argue that philosophy department should be reorganised: they should be built up around strong research groups in restricted fields. Another way to think of this: departments should model themselves on research centres. Members of such research centres / departments would teach outside their area of competency. At the BA level teaching can remain as it is, but those teaching classes will often be teaching outside the area of expertise. That is not a problem. PhD supervision would be within the …Read more
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14Language Turned on Itself: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Metalinguistic DiscourseOxford University Press UK. 2007.Language Turned on Itself examines what happens when language becomes self-reflexive; when language is used to talk about language. Those who think, talk, and write about language are habitual users of various metalinguistic devices, but reliance on these devices begins early: kids are told, 'That's called a "rabbit"'. It's not implausible that a primitive capacity for the meta-linguistic kicks in at the beginning stages of language acquisition. But no matter when or how frequently these devices…Read more
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13The methodology of political theoryIn Herman Cappelen, Tamar Gendler & John P. Hawthorne (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology, Oxford University Press. 2016.This article examines the methodology of a core branch of contemporary political theory or philosophy: “analytic” political theory. After distinguishing political theory from related fields, such as political science, moral philosophy, and legal theory, the article discusses the analysis of political concepts. It then turns to the notions of principles and theories, as distinct from concepts, and reviews the methods of assessing such principles and theories (e.g., the reflective-equilibrium meth…Read more
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8Liberating ContentOxford University Press UK. 2015.This volume brings together two series of papers: one began with Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore's 1997 paper 'On an Alleged Connection Between the Theory of Meaning and Indirect Speech'. The other series started with their 1997 paper 'Varieties of Quotation'. The central theme throughout is that only when communicative content is liberated from semantic content will we make progress in understanding language, communication, contexts, and their interconnection. These are the papers in which Cap…Read more
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7IntuitionsThe Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 17 13-19. 1998.This paper examines two attempts to justify the way in which intuitions about specific cases are used as evidence for and against philosophical theories. According to the concept model, intuitions about cases are trustworthy applications of one’s typically tacit grasp of certain concepts. We argue that regardless of whether externalist or internalist accounts of conceptual content are correct, the concept model flounders. The second justification rests on the less familiar belief model, which ha…Read more
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