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563Hornsby on the phenomenology of speechAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 79 (1). 2005.The central claim is that the semantic knowledge exercised by people when they speak is practical knowledge. The relevant idea of practical knowledge is explicated, applied to the case of speaking, and connected with an idea of agents’ knowledge. Some defence of the claim is provided.
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139Truth and Metatheory in FregePacific Philosophical Quarterly 77 (1): 45-70. 1996.In this paper it is contended, against a challenging recent interpretation of Frege, that Frege should be credited with the first semirigorous formulation of semantic theory. It is argued that the considerations advanced against this contention suffer from two kinds of error. The first involves the attribution to Frege of a skeptical attitude towards the truth-predicate. The second involves the sort of justification which these arguments assume a classical semantic theory attempts to provide. Fi…Read more
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224Making it articulatedMind and Language 17 (1-2). 2002.I argue in favor of the view that all the constituents of the propositions hearers would intuitively believe to be expressed by utterances are the result of assigning values to the elements of the sentence uttered, and combining them in accord with its structure. The way I accomplish this is by questioning the existence of some of the processes that theorists have claimed underlie the provision of constituents to the propositions recovered by hearers in linguistic interpretation, processes that …Read more
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1716Knowledge and certaintyPhilosophical Issues 18 (1): 35-57. 2008.This paper is a companion piece to my earlier paper “Fallibilism and Concessive Knowledge Attributions”. There are two intuitive charges against fallibilism. One is that it countenances the truth (and presumably acceptability) of utterances of sentences such as “I know that Bush is a Republican, though it might be that he is not a Republican”. The second is that it countenances the truth (and presumably acceptability) of utterances of sentences such as “I know that Bush is a Republican, even tho…Read more
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845“Assertion” and intentionalityPhilosophical Studies 151 (1): 87-113. 2010.Robert Stalnaker argues that his causal-pragmatic account of the problem of intentionality commits him to a coarse-grained conception of the contents of mental states, where propositions are represented as sets of possible worlds. Stalnaker also accepts the "direct reference" theory of names, according to which co-referring names have the same content. Stalnaker's view of content is thus threatened by Frege's Puzzle. Stalnaker's classic paper "Assertion" is intended to provide a response to this…Read more
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81Replies to Dickie, Schroeder and Stalnaker (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (3): 762-778. 2012.
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163Knowledge, Habit, Practice, SkillJournal of Philosophical Research 40 (Supplement): 315-323. 2015.According to Pierre Bourdieu, practices and habits are out the realm of rationality; this claim about their nature explains their peculiar resistance to rational revision. I argue that one can explain the fact that practices and habits are difficult to revise, without abandoning the view that they are within the space of reasons.
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346Fallibilism and concessive knowledge attributionsAnalysis 65 (2): 126-131. 2005.Lewis concludes that fallibilism is uncomfortable, though preferable to scepticism. However, he believes that contextualism about knowledge allows us to ‘dodge the choice’ between fallibilism and scepticism. For the contextualist semantics for ‘know’ can explain the oddity of fallibilism, without landing us into scepticism.
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734On 'Average'Mind 118 (471). 2009.This article investigates the semantics of sentences that express numerical averages, focusing initially on cases such as 'The average American has 2.3 children'. Such sentences have been used both by linguists and philosophers to argue for a disjuncture between semantics and ontology. For example, Noam Chomsky and Norbert Hornstein have used them to provide evidence against the hypothesis that natural language semantics includes a reference relation holding between words and objects in the worl…Read more
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184Review of Robyn Carston, Thoughts and Utterances (review)Mind and Language 20 (3). 2005.Relevance Theory is the influential theory of linguistic interpretation first championed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. Relevance theorists have made important contributions to our understanding of a wide range of constructions, especially constructions that tend to receive less attention in semantics and philosophy of language. But advocates of Relevance Theory also have had a tendency to form a rather closed community, with an unwillingness to translate their own special vocabulary and dis…Read more
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98Philosophy of Language in the Twentieth CenturyIn Dermot Moran (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 382-437. 2008.In the Twentieth Century, Logic and Philosophy of Language are two of the few areas of philosophy in which philosophers made indisputable progress. For example, even now many of the foremost living ethicists present their theories as somewhat more explicit versions of the ideas of Kant, Mill, or Aristotle. In contrast, it would be patently absurd for a contemporary philosopher of language or logician to think of herself as working in the shadow of any figure who died before the Twentieth Century…Read more
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20th Century Philosophy |