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50Tarski on Variable DomainsProceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 13 47-52. 2008.In earlier work I claimed that when Tarski wrote his seminal 1936 paper on logical consequence, he had in mind a now nonstandard convention, that he also used in his 1937 logic manual, requiring the domain of quantification of the different interpretations of a first-order mathematical language to covary with changes in the interpretation of a non-logical “domain predicate”. Recently Paolo Mancosu has rejected this claim, holding that it can be established on the basis of a passage from Tarski’s…Read more
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49Report of an unsuccessful search for nonconceptual contentPhilosophical Issues 9 369-379. 1998.In his “What Might Nonconceptual Content Be?”, Robert Stalnaker finds no good argument for the claim that certain intuitive differences between perception and belief must be explained by a distinction between the kinds of content of perception states (which would have nonconceptual content) and belief states (which would have conceptual content). I object to Stalnaker that he does not examine arguments for this claim actually produced by its defenders. But I reach a conclusion of the same kind a…Read more
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49The Private Language Argument and the Analogy between Rules and GroundsProceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 39 49-54. 2008.I identify one neglected source of support for a Kripkean reading of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: the analogy between rules and epistemic grounds and the existence of a Kripkean anti-privacy argument about epistemic grounds in On Certainty. This latter argument supports Kripke’s claims that the basic anti-privacy argument in the Investigations (a) poses a question about the distinguishability of certain first-person attributions with identical assertability conditions, (b) conclu…Read more
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46Quantifiers and Referential UseIn Alessandro Torza (ed.), Quantifiers, Quantifiers, and Quantifiers: Themes in Logic, Metaphysics, and Language, Springer. pp. 97-124. 2015.Referential uses of quantified determiner phrases other than descriptions have not been extensively considered. In this paper they are considered in some detail, and related to referential uses of descriptions. The first aim is to develop the observation that, contrary to the currently received view that it is only for descriptions that referential uses are frequent and standard, arising in run-of-the-mill contextual scenarios, this is in fact the case for all usual kinds of quantifier phrases. …Read more
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45Kripke on Color Words and the Primary-Secondary Quality DistinctionIn Alan Berger (ed.), Saul Kripke, Cambridge University Press. pp. 290-323. 2011.An exposition of Kripke's unpublished critique of dispositionalism about color, followed by a review of some recent defenses of dispositionalism and a sketch of some objections that could be made to these defenses from a broadly Kripkean perspective.
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43Beyond Rigidity? Essentialist Predication and the Rigidity of General TermsCritica 36 (108): 37-54. 2004.I offer a brief formal exploration of a certain natural extension of the notion of rigidity to predicates, the notion of an essentialist predicate. I show that, under reasonable assumptions, true "identification sentences" involving essentialist predicates are necessary, and hence that the notion of essentiality is formally analogous in this respect to the notion of singular term rigidity. /// El artículo hace una breve exploración formal de una extensión natural de la noción de rigidez a los pr…Read more
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40Context-sensitive reference fixing and objectivity. Reply to BarcelóManuscrito 43 (4): 13-21. 2020.Axel Barceló has extended the objectivist apparatus for handling color terms that I develop in my book Roads to Reference, so that the extension covers also some aesthetic predicates. In this note I argue that Barceló’s extension probably attempts to go too far.
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38What Quotations Refer ToIn Elke Brendel (ed.), Understanding Quotation, De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 139--160. 2011.When quotations are used with a purely referential purpose, they are mostly used with the purpose of referring to expressions, in the sense of rather abstract expression types. However, in many cases purely referential quotations are used with the purpose of referring to things other than very abstract expression types, such as boldface types, sounds, particular tokens, etc. The paper deals with the question of what mechanism underlies the possibility of successfully referring to different thing…Read more
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35The Sorites, Linguistic Preconceptions, and the Dual Picture of VaguenessIn Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and Clouds. Vagueness, its Nature and its Logic, Oxford University Press. pp. 228-253. 2010.I postulate that the extension of a degree adjective is fixed by implicitly accepted non-analytic reference-fixing principles (“preconceptions”) that combine appeals to paradigmatic cases with generic principles designed to expand the extension of the adjective beyond the paradigmatic range. In regular occasions of use, the paradigm and generic preconceptions are jointly satisfied and determine the existence of an extension/anti-extension pair dividing the adjective’s comparison class into two m…Read more
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32Numerals, positionality, and reference fixing. Reply to VivancoManuscrito 43 (4): 165-176. 2020.Melisa Vivanco objects to my theory of the Arabic numerals in Roads to Reference that the reference fixing procedure that I postulate doesn’t exploit the morphological structure of the Arabic numerals, but it should. Against Vivanco, I argue that the procedure in question does exploit the morphological structure of the numerals in an essential way.
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30Essentiality and Theoretical Identifications: Reply to AhmedMind 118 (469): 135-148. 2009.In reply to Arif Ahmed, I argue that the apparatus of essentiality and qualified and unqualified possibilist identifications, developed in my paper 'Rigidity and Essentiality', can be used to provide a flawless reconstruction of several Kripkean ideas about the semantics of typical natural kind predicates, the essence of natural kinds, the contingency of usual descriptive identifications, and the arguments against psychophysical identity theories
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28The Problem of Logical Constants and the Semantic Tradition: From Invariantist Views to a Pragmatic AccountIn Gil Sagi & Jack Woods (eds.), The Semantic Conception of Logic : Essays on Consequence, Invariance, and Meaning, Cambridge University Press. pp. 35-54. 2021.I offer new criticisms of invariantist views of logicality, objecting especially to Gila Sher’s arguments for invariantism’s ability to explain the formality, necessity, apriority and normative force of logic. I argue that the semantic conception of logic can do perfectly well without a model-theoretic notion of logicality, and that the descriptive and explanatory theoretical roles sometimes ascribed to invariantism can be played by a non-model-theoretic account of logicality, specifically by on…Read more
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28Semantics vs. Pragmatics in Impure QuotationIn Paul Saka & Michael Johnson (eds.), The Semantics and Pragmatics of Quotation, Springer. pp. 135-167. 2017.I defend a semantic theory of quotation marks, according to which these are ambiguous, as they have several different acceptations involving corresponding different conventional indications. In particular, in allusion (“mixed”) uses, the corresponding conventional indication is one with an adverbial or prepositional content, roughly equivalent to “using the quoted expression or an appropriate version of it”. And in “scare” uses, the corresponding conventional indication is that the enclosed expr…Read more
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27Are Conflicting Reference-Fixing Intentions Possible? Reply to MartoneManuscrito 43 (4): 59-73. 2020.Filipe Martone argues that reference-fixing intentions where the intended object is represented by means of a description can never fix the reference of a demonstrative, and that a speaker, as a matter of empirical fact, never has simultaneous perceptual and non-perceptual reference-fixing intentions that she can intend as fixing the reference of a demonstrative. In this note I reject Martone’s arguments for these claims.
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26Are There Model-Theoretic Logical Truths that Are not Logically True?In Douglas Patterson (ed.), New Essays on Tarski and Philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 340-368. 2008.Tarski implicitly postulated that a certain pre-theoretical concept of logical consequence and his technical concept of logical consequence are co-extensional. This chapter makes explicit a few theses about logical consequence or logical truth that sound Tarskian somehow, including one that most deserves the name ‘Tarski's Thesis’. Some of these theses are probably true or close to true but weaker than Tarski's. Some are false but stronger than Tarski's. Tarski's Thesis plausibly postulated that…Read more
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26Précis of Roads to referencePhilosophical Studies 179 (3): 973-976. 2021.This is a summary of the contents of my book Roads to Reference, with emphasis on its proposal that the conventions governing reference fixing for demonstratives, proper names, and ordinary natural kind terms adopt the form of lists of roughly sufficient conditions for reference or reference failure; and its defense of anti-eliminativist views of the referents of ordinary natural kind terms, numerals, and terms for sensible qualities traditionally considered as “seconday”.
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26Do conflicting intentions give rise to multiple demonstrative reference? Reply to MenaManuscrito 43 (4): 189-198. 2020.According to Ricardo Mena, a demonstrative refers to all the objects that the utterer has an intention for it to refer to, which may be more than one in cases where her referential intentions conflict. In this note I argue that Mena’s proposal has several serious problems.
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21On the ordinary notion of substance. Reply to Abreu ZavaletaManuscrito 43 (4): 108-115. 2020.My proposed mechanism of reference fixing for ordinary natural kind terms in the book Roads to Reference appeals to the ordinary notion of substance. In this note I reply to an objection by Martín Abreu Zavaleta that that notion is too vague to allow for a sufficiently constrained property to become the referent of a given ordinary substance term. I argue that the notion of substance is far less vague than Abreu Zavaleta claims.
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18On descriptivism and natural kind terms. Reply to Fernández MorenoManuscrito 43 (4): 86-96. 2020.Luis Fernández Moreno has given a number of arguments that descriptive knowledge or stipulations have a greater role in the fixing of the reference of natural kind terms than I allow in my book Roads to Reference. In this note I criticize Fernández Moreno’s arguments.
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16Demonstrative contents and opaque thoughts. Reply to ValenteManuscrito 43 (4): 130-141. 2020.Matheus Valente presents a number of examples designed to show that my theory of reference fixing for demonstratives violates the desideratum that demonstrative thoughts should be transparent to speakers. In this note I argue that the alleged desideratum is not really such and defend my theory against other criticisms made by Valente.
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15Sobre el regreso de Carroll, el convencionalismo y los fundamentos de la lógicaAnálisis Filosófico 40 (Especial): 111-131. 2021.Propongo que el argumento carrolliano de Quine en “Truth by Convention” no refuta una variedad especialmente genuina de convencionalismo acerca de la lógica. También argumento que la lección carrolliana básica acerca del convencionalismo es que la introducción de convenciones o tesis aceptadas acerca de qué es lógicamente correcto no puede por sí sola instaurar las disposiciones inferenciales correspondientes. Apoyándome en mi discusión del regreso carrolliano, indico finalmente que hay cuando m…Read more
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15Logical Form, Truth Conditions, and Adequate FormalizationDisputatio 12 (58): 209-222. 2020.I discuss Andrea Iacona’s idea that logical form mirrors truth conditions, and that logical form, and thus truth conditions, are in turn represented by means of adequate formalization. I criticize this idea, noting that the notion of adequate formalization is highly indefinite, while the pre-theoretic idea of logical form is often much more definite. I also criticize Iacona’s claim that certain distinct sentences, with the same truth conditions and differing only by co-referential names, must be…Read more
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13Ordinary kinds and ontological angst. Reply to DemartiniManuscrito 43 (4): 215-220. 2020.Thainá Demartini has criticized my view that ordinary natural kind terms refer to vague non-scientific kinds and defended the more traditional view that they refer to precise kinds discovered by science. In this note I reject Demartini’s worries as based on inadequate ontological scruples.
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13Logical Dilemmas: The Life and Work of Kurt Godel by John W. Dawson, Jr (review)Isis 89 356-357. 1998.
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6Ceteris Paribus Provisos, Knowledge of Reference-Fixing Conventions, and Proper Names. Reply to OrlandoManuscrito 43 (4): 35-48. 2020.Eleonora Orlando argues that one must understand some descriptivist theories of names that I criticize in my book Roads to Reference as ceteris paribus generalizations, and that on this understanding they survive my criticisms; she also introduces some doubts about my views on the knowledge speakers have of the reference-fixing conventions I postulate for proper names. In this note I argue against Orlando’s suggestion about ceteris paribus provisos and explain my view of the epistemology of refe…Read more
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3El Wittgenstein de Kripke y la analogía entre reglas y fundamentosDianoia 50 (55): 55-94. 2005.I explore an argument for epistemic non-factualism, the thesis that epistemic attributions do not describe facts. The argument is analogous to but independent of Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s argument for nonfactualism about rule-following. Some objections to the two arguments are considered and rejected, in particular accusations of incoherence and “reductivism”. The epistemic argument and a “skeptical solution” to it are argued to be part of Wittgenstein’s conception in On Certainty.
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1Tarski's Definition of Logical Consequence: Historical and Philosophical AspectsDissertation, Princeton University. 1996.Among the influential contributions of Alfred Tarski to logic and philosophy, and close in importance to his widely applied and discussed definition of truth, one finds his definition of logical consequence for formal languages. Like his definition of truth, Tarski's definition of logical consequence has been widely and fruitfully applied. Unlike the definition of truth, that of logical consequence has been rarely discussed philosophically. The main aim of this dissertation is to offer a thoroug…Read more
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Notas sobre el “Wahrheitsbegriff”, IAnálisis Filosófico 21 (1): 5-42. 2001.This is the first part of a two-part paper devoted to a study of some historical, logical and philosophical issues arising from a reading of Tarski´s celebrated “Wahrheitsbegriff” monograph. This first part starts with an exposition of Tarski´s “Wahrheitsbegriff” theory of truth which is historically accurate but more easily intelligible to the modern reader than Tarski´s “Wahrheitsbegriff” presentation. This exposition is then used in the refutation of some historical, logical and philosophical…Read more
Ciudad de México, CDMX, Mexico
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |