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272Gaskin's ideal unityDialectica 64 (2): 279-288. 2010.Critical notice of Richard Gaskin's "The Unity of the Proposition" (OUP 2008).
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265Fictional singular imaginingsIn Robin Jeshion (ed.), New Essays on Singular Thought, Oxford University Press. pp. 273--299. 2010.In a series of papers, Robin Jeshion has forcefully criticized both Donnellan's and Evans’ claims on the contingent a priori, and she has developed an “acquaintanceless” account of singular thoughts as an alternative view. Jeshion claims that one can fully grasp a singular thought expressed by a sentence including a proper name, even if its reference has been descriptively fixed and one’s access to the referent is “mediated” by that description. But she still wants to reject “semantic instrumen…Read more
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263Sense data: The sensible approachGrazer Philosophische Studien 62 (1): 17-63. 2001.In this paper, I present a version of a sense-data approach to perception, which differs to a certain extent from well-known versions like the one put forward by Jackson. I compare the sense-data view to the currently most popular alternative theories of perception, the so-called Theory of Appearing (a very specific form of disjunctivist approaches) on the one hand and reductive representationalist approaches on the other. I defend the sense-data approach on the basis that it improves substantia…Read more
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263Editorial Introduction: History of the Philosophy of LanguageIn Manuel García-Carpintero & Max Kölbel (eds.), The Continuum Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Continuum International. pp. 1. 2012.The chapter draws a very rough (and rather idiosyncratic) map of the terrain of the contemporary scene in the philosophy of language, as it was set out in the work of Frege, Russell and the early Wittgenstein – the presupposed common background, taught to beginners in the discipline, for the themes to be further explored from a present-day perspective in the rest of the book. The chapter outlines some core issues as they are presented in the insightful systematic articulation of Frege’s and Russ…Read more
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259A genealogical notionTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 30 (1): 43-52. 2011.After a critical examination of several attempts to characterize the Analytic tradition in philosophy, in the book here discussed Hanjo Glock goes on to contend that Analytic Philosophy is “a tradition that is held together both by ties of influence and by a family of partially overlapping features”. Here I question the need to appeal to a “family resemblance” component, arguing instead (in part by drawing on related attempts to characterize art, art genres and art schools) for a genealogical ch…Read more
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247Two-Dimensional Semantics (edited book)Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2006.Two-dimensional semantics is a framework that helps us better understand some of the most fundamental issues in philosophy: those having to do with the relationship between the meaning of words, the way the world is, and our knowledge of the meaning of words. This selection of new essays by some of the world's leading authorities in this field sheds fresh light both on foundational issues regarding two-dimensional semantics and on its specific applications. Contributors: Richard Breheny, Alex By…Read more
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246The Mill-Frege Theory of Proper NamesMind 127 (508): 1107-1168. 2018.This paper argues for a version of metalinguistic descriptivism, the Mill-Frege view, comparing it to a currently popular alternative, predicativism. The Mill-Frege view combines tenets of Fregean views with features of the theory of direct reference. According to it, proper names have metalinguistic senses, known by competent speakers on the basis of their competence, which figure in ancillary presuppositions. In support of the view the paper argues that the name-bearing relation—which predicat…Read more
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244Voltolini's fictaDialectica 63 (1): 57-66. 2009.As the subtitle “A Syncretistic Account of Fictional Entities” makes clear, Alberto Voltolini intends in this book to argue for a syncretic view of the ontology and the semantics of fiction. In the process, he offers sympathetic and clear presentations of the main contenders in the field, discussing first ontological matters (chapters 1–4) and then semantic questions (chapters 5–6), and concluding with an ‘ontological’ argument for the allegedly syncretic brand of realism about fictional entitie…Read more
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239This critical review of John Perry’s recent compilation of his work (Perry (1993) is mainly devoted to surveying the path leading towards a certain rapprochement between philosophers with Fregean inclinations and philosophers attracted by the picture of thought and meaning brought out by Direct Reference theorists like Donnellan, Kaplan, Kripke, Putnam, and, of course, Perry himself, by taking advantage of the suggestions in the postscripts to very well-known and deservedly influential articles.
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230Singular Thought and the Contingent A PrioriRevue Internationale de Philosophie 1 79-98. 2008.De re or singular thoughts are, intuitively, those essentially or constitutively about a particular object or objects; any thought about different objects would be a different thought. How should a philosophical articulation or thematization of their nature look like? In spite of extended discussion of the issue since it was brought to the attention of the philosophical community in the late fifties by Quine (1956), we are far from having a plausible response. Discussing the matter in connection…Read more
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219Supervaluationism and the Report of Vague ContentsIn Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and Clouds: Vaguenesss, its Nature and its Logic, Oxford University Press. 2010.Schiffer has given an argument against supervaluationist accounts of vagueness, based on reports of vague contents. Suppose that Al tells Bob ‘Ben was there’, pointing to a certain place, and later Bob says, ‘Al said that Ben was there’, pointing in the same direction. According to supervaluationist semantics, Schiffer contends, both Al’s and Bob’s utterances of ‘there’ indeterminately refer to myriad precise regions of space; Al’s utterance is true just in case Ben was in any of those precisely…Read more
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215Qualia that it is right to QuinePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2): 357-377. 2003.Dennett provides a much discussed argument for the nonexistence of qualia, as conceived by philosophers like Block, Chalmers, Loar and Searle. My goal in this paper is to vindicate Dennett's argument, construed in a certain way. The argument supports the claim that qualia are constitutively representational. Against Block and Chalmers, the argument rejects the detachment of phenomenal from information-processing consciousness; and against Loar and Searle, it defends the claim that qualia are con…Read more
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213Gómez-Torrente on Modality and Tarskian Logical ConsequenceTheoria 18 (2): 159-170. 2010.Gómez-Torrente’s papers have made important contributions to vindicate Tarski’s model-theoretic account of the logical properties in the face of Etchemendy’s criticisms. However, at some points his vindication depends on interpreting the Tarskian account as purportedly modally deflationary, i.e., as not intended to capture the intuitive modal element in the logical properties, that logical consequence is (epistemic or alethic) necessary truth-preservation. Here it is argued that the views expres…Read more
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206Homophonic PrejudicesCritica 40 (120): 67-84. 2008.I critically discuss some aspects of Mark Sainsbury's Reference without Referents, from an otherwise sympathetic viewpoint. My objections focus on the adequacy of the truth-conditional framework that Sainsbury presupposes. I argue that, as semantic theories, truth-conditional accounts are both too ambitious, and too austere to be fully explanatory, and that both problems have consequences for an account of reference. The latter problem has to do with the difficulties to capture in a truth-condit…Read more
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203Fregean versus Kripkean ReferenceTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 17 (1): 21-44. 1998.n this paper I take up these proposals, giving reasons to incorporate semantic features associated with proper names over and above their referent in any (genuine) semantic account of natural language. I also argue that my proposal is compatible with the main points made in Naming and Necessity, by contending that not Millianism but externalism was the claim most forcefully argued for in that impressive piece of work
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196Gómez-Torrente on Modality and Tarskian Logical ConsequenceTheoria 18 (2): 159-170. 2003.Gómez-Torrente’s papers have made important contributions to vindicate Tarski’s model-theoretic account of the logical properties in the face of Etchemendy’s criticisms. However, at some points his vindication depends on interpreting the Tarskian account as purportedly modally deflationary, i.e., as not intended to capture the intuitive modal element in the logical properties, that logical consequence is (epistemic or alethic) necessary truth-preservation. Here it is argued that the views expres…Read more
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193Relative truth (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2008.With contributions from some of the key figures in the contemporary debate on relativism this book is about a topic that is the focus of much traditional and ...
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177Las concepciones de la filosofía del lenguaje (review)Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 17 (2). 1998.A critical notice of A. García-Suárez "Ñas concepciones de la filosofía del lenguaje"
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176Co‐Identification and Fictional NamesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (1): 3-34. 2020.Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.
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174Constructing the World by Chalmers, David J.: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. xxvi + 494, £30.00 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (2): 388-391. 2014.Review of Chalmers' "Constructing the World"
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170Las normas Y su puesta en vigor: Respuesta a Josep CorbíCrítica. Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía 49 (145): 113-132. 2017.In his paper “Obras de ficción, formas de conciencia y literatura”, Josep Corbí raises a few sharp objections to my distinction between fiction and non-fiction, as I formulate it in my recently published Relatar lo ocurrido como invención. In this response, I present first in a compact form such ideas, and then I try to answer to Corbí’s criticisms.
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164Norms of Fiction-MakingBritish Journal of Aesthetics 53 (3): 339-357. 2013.I provide a variation on ideas presented by Walton and Currie, elaborating the view that fictive utterances are characterized by a specific form of illocutionary force in the family of directives – a proposal or invitation to imagine. I make some points on the relation between the proposal and the current debates on intentionalist and conventionalist views, and I discuss interesting recent objections made by Stacie Friend to the related, but crucially different, Gricean view of such force advanc…Read more
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135Pursuing Meaning, by Emma BorgMind 122 (486). 2013.This is a review of Emma Borg's Pursuing Meaning
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135On the Nature of Presupposition: A Normative Speech Act AccountErkenntnis 85 (2): 269-293. 2020.In this paper I provide a new account of linguistic presuppositions, on which they are ancillary speech acts defined by constitutive norms. After providing an initial intuitive characterization of the phenomenon, I present a normative speech act account of presupposition in parallel with Williamson’s analogous account of assertion. I explain how it deals well with the problem of informative presuppositions, and how it relates to accounts for the Triggering and Projection Problems for presupposit…Read more
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135Lying versus misleading, with language and pictures: the adverbial accountLinguistics and Philosophy 46 (3): 509-532. 2023.We intuitively make a distinction between _lying_ and _misleading_. On the explanation of this phenomenon favored here—the _adverbial_ account—the distinction tracks whether the content and its truth-committing force are literally conveyed. On an alternative _commitment_ account, the difference between lying and misleading is predicated instead on the strength of assertoric commitment. One lies when one presents with full assertoric commitment what one believes to be false; one merely misleads w…Read more
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135Bivalence and what is saidDialectica 61 (1). 2007.On standard versions of supervaluationism, truth is equated with supertruth, and does not satisfy bivalence: some truth-bearers are neither true nor false. In this paper I want to confront a well-known worry about this, recently put by Wright as follows: ‘The downside . . . rightly emphasized by Williamson . . . is the implicit surrender of the T-scheme’. I will argue that such a cost is not high: independently motivated philosophical distinctions support the surrender of the T- scheme, and sugg…Read more
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132Minimalism on quotation? Critical review of Cappelen and Lepore’s language turned on itselfPhilosophical Studies 161 (2): 207-225. 2012.Research on quotation has mostly focussed in the past years on mixed or open quotation. In a recent book-length discussion of the topic, Cappelen and Lepore have abandon their previous Davidsonian allegiances, proposing a new view that they describe as minimalist, to a good extend on the basis of facts concerning mixed quotation. In this paper I critically review Cappelen and Lepore’s new minimalist proposals, briefly outlining my preferred Davidsonian view as a useful foil. I explore first thei…Read more
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114Semantics of fictional termsTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 38 (2): 73-100. 2019.The paper provides an opinionated survey of recent contributions – roughly, in the last decade – to our understanding of how names and other referring expressions work in fictional discourse and addresses well-known philosophical worries that they raise. Views about the semantics of referring expressions in fictional discourse are usually accompanied by metaphysical views on the ontology of fictional characters, so this will also come under our focus.
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111Estado de la cuestión: Filosofia Del lenguaje (state of the art: Philosophy of language)Theoria 20 (2): 223-238. 2005.Se presentan propuestas recientes en tres ámbitos de la filosofía del lenguaje en que se están haciendo contribuciones significativas: el fenómeno de la vaguedad; la distinción entre semántica y pragmática, y el uso de semánticas “bidimensionales” para tratar problemas generados por las tesis de “referencia directa”. Hace unos años existia una percepción de la pérdida por la filosofia del lenguaje, en favor de la filosofia de la mente, del lugar central ocupado en la tradición analítica -una per…Read more
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107The philosophical significance of the De SeInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 60 (3): 253-276. 2017.Inspired by Castañeda, Perry and Lewis argued that, among singular thoughts in general, thoughts about oneself ‘as oneself’ – first-personal thoughts, which Lewis aptly called de se – call for special treatment: we need to abandon one of two traditional assumptions on the contents needed to provide rationalizing explanations, their shareability or their absoluteness. Their arguments have been very influential; one might take them as establishing a new ‘effect’ – new philosophical evidence in nee…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |