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205Complex demonstratives, QI uses, and direct referencePhilosophical Review 117 (1): 99-117. 2008.result from combining the determiners `this' or `that' with syntactically simple or complex common noun phrases such as `woman' or `woman who is taking her skis off'. Thus, `this woman', and `that woman who is taking her skis off' are complex demonstratives. There are also plural complex demonstratives such as `these skis' and `those snowboarders smoking by the gondola'. My book Complex Demonstratives: A Quantificational Account argues against what I call the direct reference account of complex …Read more
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168Semantics for monistsMind 115 (460): 1023-1058. 2006.Assume that the only thing before you is a statue made of some alloy. Call those who think that there is one thing before you in such a case monists. Call those who think there are at least two things before you in such a case pluralists. The most common arguments for pluralism run as follows. The statue is claimed to have some property P that the piece of alloy lacks (or vice versa), and hence it is concluded that they are distinct. Most often, the predicates employed in such arguments to expre…Read more
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163Acquaintance, singular thought and propositional constituencyPhilosophical Studies 172 (2): 543-560. 2015.In a recent paper, Armstrong and Stanley argue that despite being initially compelling, a Russellian account of singular thought has deep difficulties. I defend a certain sort of Russellian account of singular thought against their arguments. In the process, I spell out a notion of propositional constituency that is independently motivated and has many attractive features
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204What in the world are the ways things might have been? (review)Philosophical Studies 133 (3). 2007.Robert Stalnaker is an actualist who holds that merely possible worlds are uninstantiated properties that might have been instantiated. Stalnaker also holds that there are no metaphysically impossible worlds: uninstantiated properties that couldn't have been instantiated. These views motivate Stalnaker's "two dimensional" account of the necessary a posteriori on which there is no single proposition that is both necessary and a posteriori. For a (metaphysically) necessary proposition is true in a…Read more
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949The Metasemantics of Contextual SensitivityIn Alexis Burgess & Brett Sherman (eds.), Metasemantics: New Essays on the Foundations of Meaning, Oxford University Press. pp. 97-118. 2014.Some contextually sensitive expressions are such that their context independent conventional meanings need to be in some way supplemented in context for the expressions to secure semantic values in those contexts. As we’ll see, it is not clear that there is a paradigm here, but ‘he’ used demonstratively is a clear example of such an expression. Call expressions of this sort supplementives in order to highlight the fact that their context independent meanings need to be supplemented in context fo…Read more
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89Pronouns, descriptions, and the semantics of discoursePhilosophical Studies 51 (3): 341--363. 1987.
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84Context Dependent Quantifiers and Donkey AnaphoraCanadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (sup1): 97-127. 2004.
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191The nature and structure of contentOxford University Press. 2007.Belief in propositions has had a long and distinguished history in analytic philosophy. Three of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and G. E. Moore, believed in propositions. Many philosophers since then have shared this belief; and the belief is widely, though certainly not universally, accepted among philosophers today. Among contemporary philosophers who believe in propositions, many, and perhaps even most, take them to be structured entities with in…Read more
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28Kent Bach on Speaker Intentions and ContextCroatian Journal of Philosophy 13 (2): 161-168. 2013.It is generally believed that natural languages have lots of contextually sensitive expressions. In addition to familiar examples like ‘I’, ‘here’, ‘today’, ‘he’, ‘that’ and so on that everyone takes to be contextually sensitive, examples of expressions that many would take to be contextually sensitive include tense, modals, gradable adjectives, relational terms , possessives and quantifi ers . With the exception of contextually sensitive expressions discussed by Kaplan [1977], there has not bee…Read more
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95Complex Demonstratives: A Quantificational AccountMIT Press. 2001.A challenge to the orthodoxy, which shows that quantificational accounts are not only as effective as direct reference accounts but also handle a wider range of ...
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109Questions of UnityProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 109 (1pt3): 257-277. 2009.In The Principles of Mathematics, Bertrand Russell famously puzzled over something he called the unity of the proposition. Echoing Russell, many philosophers have talked over the years about the question or problem of the unity of the proposition. In fact, I believe that there are a number of quite distinct though related questions all of which can plausibly be taken to be questions regarding the unity of propositions. I state three such questions and show how the theory of propositions defended…Read more
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72Can Propositions Be Naturalistically Acceptable?Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1): 53-75. 1994.
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94Supplementives, the coordination account, and conflicting intentionsPhilosophical Perspectives 27 (1): 288-311. 2013.
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232Propositional unity: what’s the problem, who has it and who solves it?Philosophical Studies 165 (1): 71-93. 2013.At least since Russell’s influential discussion in The Principles of Mathematics, many philosophers have held there is a problem that they call the problem of the unity of the proposition. In a recent paper, I argued that there is no single problem that alone deserves the epithet the problem of the unity of the proposition. I there distinguished three problems or questions, each of which had some right to be called a problem regarding the unity of the proposition; and I showed how the account of…Read more
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330Designating propositionsPhilosophical Review 111 (3): 341-371. 2002.Like many, though of course not all, philosophers, I believe in propositions. I take propositions to be structured, sentence-like entities whose structures are identical to the syntactic structures of the sentences that express them; and I have defended a particular version of such a view of propositions elsewhere. In the present work, I shall assume that the structures of propositions are at least very similar to the structures of the sentences that express them. Further, I shall assume that or…Read more
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A Formal Semantics for Some Discourse AnaphoraDissertation, University of California, San Diego. 1985.The dissertation is an attempt to provide a formal semantics for occurrences of anaphoric pronouns and definite descriptions whose quantifier antecedents occur in sentences other than those in which the anaphoric pronouns and descriptions themselves occur, . The predominant view of anaphoric pronouns whose quantifier antecedents occur in the same sentence as they do is that they function as bound variables . Chapter 1 of this dissertation is constituted by a series of arguments against a bound v…Read more
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244On fineness of grainPhilosophical Studies 163 (3): 763-781. 2013.A central job for propositions is to be the objects of the attitudes. Propositions are the things we doubt, believe and suppose. Some philosophers have thought that propositions are sets of possible worlds. But many have become convinced that such an account individuates propositions too coarsely. This raises the question of how finely propositions should be individuated. An account of how finely propositions should be individuated on which they are individuated very finely is sketched. Objectio…Read more
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79Complex demonstratives as quantifiers: objections and repliesPhilosophical Studies 141 (2): 209-242. 2008.In “Complex Demonstratives: A Quantificational Account” (MIT Press 2001) (henceforth CD), I argued that complex demonstratives are quantifiers. Many philosophers had held that demonstratives, both simple and complex, are referring terms. Since the publication of CD various objections to the account of complex demonstratives I defended in it have been raised. In the present work, I lay out these objections and respond to them.
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58Remarks on the Syntax and Semantics of Day DesignatorsNoûs 35 (s15). 2001.Though these expressions are often called “names of months”, there is good reason to hold that they are not names at all. Syntactically, these words behave as count nouns. They combine with determiners such as ‘every’, ‘many’, ‘exactly three’ etc. to form restricted quantifiers:3 (1) Every January I go skiing. (2) I spent many Januarys at Squaw Valley. (3) I wasted exactly three Januarys in Bakersfield. Like other count nouns, they can take relative clauses in constructions such as (1)-(3): (1a)…Read more
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113Strong Contextual Felicity and Felicitous UnderspecificationPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 97 (3): 631-657. 2017.
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