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31Replies to Cepollaro and Torrengo, Táíwò, and AmorettiDisputatio 10 (51): 345-359. 2018.In this short piece belonging to a book symposium on my book How Propaganda Works (Oxford University Press, 2015), I reply to the objections, comments and suggestions provided by the contributors: Bianca Cepollaro and Giuliano Torrengo, Olúfémi O. Táíwò, and Maria Cristina Amoretti. I show how some of the objections can be accommodated by the framework adopted in the book, but also how various comments and suggestions have contributed to the development, in future work, of several threads pertai…Read more
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20Names and Rigid DesignationIn Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Wiley. 2017.This chapter discusses a version of the descriptive account of content which is compatible with rigidity thesis (RT) and critiques of RT. The rigidity of proper names demonstrates that utterances of sentences containing proper names, and utterances of sentences differing from those sentences only in containing non‐rigid descriptions in place of the proper names, differ in content. The fact that natural‐language proper names are rigid designators is an empirical discovery about natural language. …Read more
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14Précis of Knowledge and Practical InterestsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (1): 168-172. 2007.
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1Interest‐Relative Invariantism versus RelativismIn Knowledge and practical interests, Oxford University Press. 2005.Relativism about knowledge-attributions is the thesis that knowledge attributions express propositions the truth of which is relative to a judge. On this view, a knowledge attribution may express a proposition that is true for one judge, and false for another. This chapter explains and criticizes various versions of relativism about knowledge attributions.
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1Rigidity and ContentIn Richard G. Heck (ed.), Language, Thought, and Logic: Essays in Honour of Michael Dummett, Oxford University Press. 1997.
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Knowledge Ascriptions and GradabilityIn Knowledge and practical interests, Oxford University Press. 2005.Many expressions in natural language, such as adjectives like tall and flat, or verbs such as like and regret are gradable, meaning that they occur in comparative constructions. It makes sense to speak of something being taller than another thing, or regretting something more than something else. It is argued that ‘know’ is not a gradable expression. This raises serious worries for versions of contextualism that treat ‘know’ as denoting relations of varying strength, relative to different contex…Read more
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Contextualism on the Cheap?In Knowledge and practical interests, Oxford University Press. 2005.This chapter argues that the attempt to derive the context-sensitivity of an expression from the context-sensitivity of expressions used in a putative conceptual analysis of the property or properties expressed by that expression fails.
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Democratic lies and fascist liesIn Melissa Schwartzberg & Philip Kitcher (eds.), Truth and evidence, Nyu Press. 2021.
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Interest‐Relative Invariantism versus ContextualismIn Knowledge and practical interests, Oxford University Press. 2005.This chapter is devoted to a thorough-going comparison of Interest-Relativism Invariantism and contextualism. It argues that the contextualist is committed to a worse error-theory than the advocate of Interest-Relativism Invariantism. It concludes by arguing that neither contextualism nor Interest-Relative Invariantism helps with the problem of skepticism.
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Knowledge Ascriptions and Context‐SensitivityIn Knowledge and practical interests, Oxford University Press. 2005.This chapter considers a range of context-dependent constructions, and concludes that there are sufficiently significant disanalogies between all of them and the behavior of epistemic predicates such as ‘know that the bank is open’ to cast doubt upon contextualism in epistemology. It is argued that even if knowledge ascriptions were context-sensitive, this fact about them would not have the explanatory value accorded to it by the contextualist.
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Meaning and MetatheoryDissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995.Semantic theory has been used for many different philosophical purposes. This thesis investigates two such uses of semantic theory. The first is the use of semantic theory in providing a justification for a formal theory. The second is the use of semantic theory in yielding an account of understanding. ;The first paper is "Truth and Metatheory in Frege". In this paper, it is contended, against much recent work in Frege interpretation, that Frege should be credited with the first semi-rigourous f…Read more
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IntroductionIn Knowledge and practical interests, Oxford University Press. 2005.This chapter lays out the basic evidence for the thesis that whether or not someone knows a proposition at a given time is partly determined by his or her practical interests. It considers and rejects a range of responses to the evidence that would undermine the case for Interest-Relative Invariantism.
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Contextualism, Interest‐Relativism, and Philosophical ParadoxIn Knowledge and practical interests, Oxford University Press. 2005.This chapter discusses contextualist and interest-relative accounts of the sorites paradox and the Liar Paradox. It concludes that a pure interest-relative account is completely untenable for such cases. Thus, Interest-Relative Invariantism is plausible in the epistemic case only because of specific features of epistemic notions.
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Interest‐Relative InvariantismIn Knowledge and practical interests, Oxford University Press. 2005.This chapter explains and develops a version of Interest-Relative Invariantism about knowledge, according to which whether or not someone knows that p at a certain time depends in part on what is at stake for them in being right about p at that time.
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ContextualismIn Knowledge and practical interests, Oxford University Press. 2005.This chapter introduces the thesis of contextualism about knowledge attributions, which is the view that the proposition expressed by a sentence such as ‘John knows that the bank is open at 2 p.m. EST on October 3, 2006’ varies depending upon the context of its utterance. Different versions of the thesis are explained.
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Semantic knowledge and practical knowledgeIi: Hornsby on the Phenomenology of Speecharistotelian Society Supplementary Volume 7. 2005.
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