Mark Sainsbury

Understanding has often been regarded as a kind of knowledge. This paper argues that this view is very implausible for understanding words. Instead, a proper account will be of the “analytic-genetic” variety: it will describe immersion in the practice of using a word in such a way that even those not previously equipped with the concepts the word expresses can become immersed. Meeting this condition requires attention to findings in developmental psychology. If you understand a declarative utterance, you thereby know what the speaker said in uttering the words she did. The converse is close to true: if you come to know what a speaker of a declarative utterance has said, then normally you understand the utterance. An example of an abnormal situation would be one in which the speaker’s utterance is in a language you do not understand, but you are authoritatively informed, and so know, what the speaker said. The connection between understanding a whole utterance and knowing something can be preserved by alluding to the basis of the knowledge: it should arise from understanding the words in the utterance, and how they are put together. This leads to a fairly uncontroversial conditional equivalence: (1) If an utterer of an utterance, U, thereby says that p then: (X knows this, on the basis of understanding the words in U and how they are put together) iff (X understands U). The relevant knowledge has no mysteries: it is propositional, typically fully explicit, and is invoked in memory and in reports of speech. The question to be addressed in this paper is whether we can apply this kind of connection between understanding and knowledge to explain what is taken for granted in the equivalence 2 above, namely, the understanding of words. I will suggest that we cannot. Under some idealizations, one can formulate necessarily true equivalences between understanding a word and knowing something, but these equivalences are unilluminating. The knowledge is not of the straightforward kind invoked in connection with whole utterances, and it is mysterious how one might come to possess it. An account of understanding words requires an “analytic-genetic” story, an analysis which offers some philosophical illumination while being consistent with what is known about the genesis of participation in linguistic practices.

Rational dialetheism is the view that for some contradictions, it is rational to believe that they are true. The view, associated with the work of among others, Graham Priest, looks as if it must lead to absurd consequences, and the present paper is an unsuccessful attempt to find them. In particular, I suggest that there is no non-question-begging account of acceptance, denial and negation which can be brought to bear against the rational dialetheist. Finally, I consider the prospect of attacking the position without trying to "refute" it, but even these approaches seem unpromising in the present case. If the drift of the paper is correct, the only strategy is to examine the paradoxes one by one, and show in each case that the best account is non-dialetheic.

Logic ought to guide our thinking. It is better, more rational, more intelligent to think logically than to think illogically. Illogical thought leads to bad judgment and error. In any case, if logic had no role to play as a guide to thought, why should we bother with it?The somewhat naïve opinions of the previous paragraph are subject to attack from many sides. It may be objected that an activity does not count as thinking at all unless it is at least minimally logical, so logic is constitutive of thought rather than a guide to it. Or it may be objected that whereas logic describes a system of timeless relations between propositions, thinking is a dynamic process involving revisions, and so could not use a merely static guide. Or again the objection may be that there is no such thing as logic, only a whole variety of different logics, not all of which could possibly be good guides.

When are two tokens of a name tokens of the same name? According to this paper, the answer is a matter of the historical connections between the tokens. For each name, there is a unique originating event, and subsequent tokens are tokens of that name only if they derive in an appropriate way from that originating event. The conditions for a token being a token of a given name are distinct from the conditions for preservation of the reference of a name. Hence a name may change its reference. Defending the theory requires considerations about the identity of acts, and about empty names and disagreement. The upshot is a causal theory of the identity of names, but not what would normally be counted as a causal theory of the reference of names. Although reference is often transmitted causally, what determines semantic reference is conventionalized speaker-reference.

Reference is a central topic in philosophy of language, and has been the main focus of discussion about how language relates to the world. R. M. Sainsbury sets out a new approach to the concept, which promises to bring to an end some long-standing debates in semantic theory. Lucid and accessible, and written with a minimum of technicality, Sainsbury's book also includes a useful historical survey. It will be of interest to those working in logic, mind, and metaphysics as well as essential reading for philosophers of language

My commentators point to respects in which the picture provided in Reference without Referents is incomplete. The picture provided no account of how sentences constructed from intensional verbs can be true when one of the referring expressions fails to refer. And it gave an incomplete, and possibly misleading, account of how to understand certain serious uses of fictional names, as in "Anna Karenina is more intelligent than Emma Bovary" and "Anna Karenina does not exist". In the present response, I indicate how I would now wish to make good these deficiencies. The truth of sentences constructed from intensional verbs can be explained in terms of the truth of sentences that are unproblematic for RWR, for example, sentences dominated by operators expressing propositional attitudes. Reflection on the way in which we can temporarily accept commitments we do not in fact share leads to a more nuanced account of serious uses of fictional names, some of which manifest precisely such a temporary acceptance. /// Mis comentadores señalan aspectos en los que la propuesta de Reference without Referents es incompleta: no ofrecía una explicación de cómo oraciones construidas con verbos intensionales pueden ser verdaderas cuando una de las expresiones referenciales no refiere; y dio una explicación incompleta, y quizás engañosa, de cómo entender ciertos usos serios de nombres de ficción como en "Anna Karenina es más inteligente que Emma Bovary" y "Anna Karenina no existe". En esta respuesta indico cómo quiero ahora subsanar estas deficiencias. La verdad de las oraciones construidas con verbos intensionales puede explicarse en términos de la verdad de oraciones que no son problemáticas para la explicación de Reference without Referents, por ejemplo, oraciones dominadas por operadores que expresan actitudes proposicionales. Una reflexión sobre cómo podemos aceptar temporalmente compromisos que de hecho no compartimos conduce a una explicación más matizada de los usos serios de los nombres de ficción, algunos de los cuales manifiestan precisamente esa aceptación temporal.

Are fictional characters such as Sherlock Holmes real? What can fiction tell us about the nature of truth and reality? In this excellent introduction to the problem of fictionalism R. M. Sainsbury covers the following key topics: what is fiction? realism about fictional objects, including the arguments that fictional objects are real but non-existent; real but non-factual; real but non-concrete the relationship between fictional characters and non-actual worlds fictional entities as abstract artefacts fiction and intentionality and the problem of irrealism fictionalism about possible worlds moral fictionalism. R. M. Sainsbury makes extensive use of examples from fiction, such as Sherlock Holmes, Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary and examines the work of philosophers who have made significant contributions to the topic, including Meinong, David Lewis, and Bas Van Fraassen. Additional features include chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary of technical terms, making _Fiction and Fictionalism_ ideal for those coming to the issue for the first time