Manuel García-Carpintero

Imagination and Convention by Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone is a sustained attack on a standard piece of contemporary philosophical lore, Grice’s (1975) theory of conversational implicatures, and on indirect meanings in general. Although I agree with quite a lot of what they say, and with some important aspects of their theoretical stance, here I will respond to some of their criticism. I’ll assume a characterization of implicatures as theory-neutral as possible, on which implicatures are a sort of indirectly conveyed meanings, illustrated by some traditional examples. Then I will discuss the claim that one can make an assertion indirectly, through a mechanism essentially like the one envisaged by Grice in his account of implicatures. This is something that not just L&S have argued against, but other writers as well, for more or less related reasons. Since it will be clear that assertions, the way I will characterize them, “convey information inthe usual sense” and provide “information in the semantic sense of publicly accessible content that supports inquiry”, I will be thereby arguing for a claim clearly at odds with some of those made by L&S.

This paper gives a new twist to already familia refutations of Putnam's "model-theoretic" argument against realism. Recent attempts to defend the model-theoretic argument in the face of those criticisms indicate that the main point of previous rebuttals of the argument can be easily missed. The paper expounds the same point again in a different guise, by having recourse to ideas on models and the model-theoretic account of the logical properties developed by the author in earlier work. Some writers appear to think that the charge of previous criticisms is that Putnam's argument begs the question, by involving as premise a proposition which all too obviously entails the falsity of realism--precisely what the argument is designed to establish. They then defend it by claiming that Putnam does not simply _take for granted<D> the truth of the offending premise, but _argues for<D> it. This, however, does not defend Putnam's argument against the _pragmatic<D> charges of irrelevancy and potential for provoking confusion--which, the paper shows, can be taken as the main criticisms levelled against it by previous writers. The point is that, if Putnam has an independent argument for the question-begging premise, one not involving any model-theoretic considerations, then this is all that is needed; the specifically model-theoretic considerations are irrelevant and could lead to spurious debates

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 bounded regions of space, and Bob’s is true just in case Al said of each of them that it is where Ben was. However, while the supervaluationist truth-conditions for Al’s utterance might be satisfied, those for Bob’s cannot; for Al didn’t say, of any of those precisely delimited regions of space, that it is where Ben was. In an earlier version of the material presented here (García-Carpintero 2000) I replied to Schiffer’s argument that supervaluationism has an independently well-motivated defense. The response is essentially based on the point that the occurrence of ‘there’ in Bob’s utterance (and of ‘tall’ in Wright’s argument) occurs in indirect discourse, and supervaluationists may allow that it shifts its referent there. Schiffer’s reply to this response shows that it was not made sufficiently clearly. In this paper I will try to improve on that score. In his more recent reply, Schiffer (2000b, 325) dismisses a proposal like the one I will make, mainly because it “undermines … a leading virtue of supervaluationism … its implication that vagueness is … not a feature of the world.” I will argue that my reply does not undermine the fundamental contentions of the supervaluationist account.

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 expressed in Tarski’s seminal work do not support this modally deflationary interpretation, even if Tarski himself was sceptical about modalities

The truth of a statement depends on the world in two ways: what the statement says is true if the world is as the statement says it is; on the other hand, what the expressions in the statement mean depends on what the world is like (for instance, on what conventions are in place). Each of these two kinds of dependence of truth on the world corresponds to one of the dimensions on the two-dimensional semantic framework, developed in the 1970’ in the work of Evans, Kaplan, Kripke and Stalnaker. The introduction provides a systematic overview of the framework, the ideas of its earlier originators, recent developments and criticism. Finally, it gives a brief overview over the contributions to the volume.

Dennett (1988) 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 constitu‐tively representational in an externalist understanding of this. The core of the argument is contained in section 3. In the first part, I contrast a minimal conception of qualia, relative to which their existence is not under dispute, with the sort of view to which I will object. In the second part I set the stage by presenting the facts about (minimal) qualia on which a Dennett‐like argument can be based.

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 instrumentalism”, the view that “there are no substantive conditions of any sort on having singular thought. We can freely generate singular thoughts at will by manipulating the apparatus of direct reference.” Her account of singular thoughts is a psychological one, rejecting any epistemic requirement. Having singular thoughts is for her a matter of deploying “mental files” or “dossiers” that play a significant role in the cognitive life of the individual. This paper elaborates on an alternative descriptivist-friendly view, which has important points of contact with Jeshion’s. It differs, particularly in that it is an epistemic view; it is only a broadly understood acquaintance view, as it will transpire, but this does not make it a mere terminological variation on Jeshion’s acquaintanceless one. To argue for it, the paper discusses some relevant aspects of the semantics of fictional discourse.

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 Russell’s themes in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Then it sums up the main issues, describes some contributions to them in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and other historical landmarks, and indicates how they are approached today, as presented in the book's chapters. The introduction concludes with a brief discussion of research methods and problems in the field.

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 suggest acceptable approximations.

Dennett provides a much discussed argument against qualia, at least when conceived as philosophers like Block, Chalmers, Loar and Searle do. My goal in this paper is to vindicate Dennett´s argument, construed in a certain way. As I will present it, the argument supports the claim that qualia are constitutively representational. More specifically, against Block and Chalmers the argument supports the claim that the radical distinction between phenomenal and information-processing consciousness they draw does not exist; and against Loar and Searle, that qualia are constitutively representational in an externalist understanding of this

On behalf of Millian views on the meaning of proper names, Mark Textor offers in 'Knowledge Transmission and Linguistic Sense' a suggestive critical discussion of an argument for Fregean views due to Richard Heck (1995). IWhat exactly Heck's argument is, however, is not very clear, as witnessed by Byrne & Thau's (1996) efforts at reconstructing it and Heck's (1996) reply to which is not terribly illuminating. After presenting a form of a Fregean view and a Heckian argument for it, the paper argues that Texror's criticism, as addressed to that argument, is unsuccessful.

This paper argues for a conditional claim concerning a famous argument—developed by Church in elucidation of some remarks by Frege to the effect that the bedeutung of a sentence is the sentence’s truth-value—the Frege–Gödel–Church argument, or FGC for short. The point we make is this :if, and just to the extent that, Arthur Smullyan’s argument against Quine's use of FGC is sound, then essentially the same rejoinder disposes also of Davidson's use of FGC against ‘correspondence’ theories of truth. We thus dispute a contention by Professor Davidson that it is coherent to accept that Smullyan’s rejoinder takes away the force of Quine’s version of FGC, while still consistently using FGC to establish that if true sentences (or utterances) correspond to anything, they all correspond to the same thing. We show that the differences between the cases discussed by Smullyan and Davidson’s version of FGC on which Davidson relies for his contention are irrelevant to the point under dispute

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 characterization. Nonetheless, I point out that the difference between these two views might end being merely terminological, for, properly understood, a genealogical characterization will have to mention a “family of partially overlapping features” in describing the origins of Analytic Philosophy and the lines of influence among analytic philosophers.

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 perdida que equivaldría según Dummett al abandono del rasgo distintivo de esa tradición. Tomando como modelo ilustrativo las propuestas presentadas, se sugieré que tal percepción se ha revelado una moda pasajera y aventura una hipótesis explicativa.Some recent proposals in three fields in the philosophy of language are discussed: vagueness, the semantics-pragmatics distinction, and the use of “bidimensional” semantics to treat problems created by “Direct Reference” theses. Some years ago there was a perception concerning the loss of the philosophy of language, in favour ofthe philosophy of mind, of its central place in the analytic tradition -a loss which, according to Dummett, would amount to the loss of its most distinctive trait. With the discussed proposals as illustrative model, it is suggested that that perception was the product of a fleeting fashion, and an explanatory hypothesis is ventured.

This paper starts from the assumption that, while realism about natural kinds –as sustained by Putnam´s Twin Earth throught-experiment and Kripke´s analogous consideration- is correct, it should be made compatible with a principle that competent speakers know the truth-conditions their utterances signify. A distinction is drawn between a form of realism compatible with such principle and one which is not. A sensible form of realism envisages the conceptual possibility that a term applies in cases such that, no matter how ideal circumstances are epistemically for beings cognitively endowed like us, we are not in a position to know that they do. A sensible form of realism should not, however, guarantee as a matter of conceptual necessity that tis persons are provided for this, related to what the author find plausile in traditional empiricist contentions about constraints on meaningfulness. The epistemic conception of vagueness, ingeniously defended recently by Williamson, is offered as an example of a view on truth-conditions which would be rejected on the basis of the suggested empiricist limitation principle

Descriptive semantic theories purport to characterize the meanings of the expressions of languages in whatever complexity they might have. Foundational semantics purports to identify the kind of considerations relevant to establish that a given descriptive semantics accurately characterizes the language used by a given individual or community. Foundational Semantics I presents three contrasting approaches to the foundational matters, and the main considerations relevant to appraise their merits. These approaches contend that we should look at the contents of speakers’ intuitions; at the deep psychology of users and its evolutionary history, as revealed by our best empirical theories; or at the personal‐level rational psychology of those subjects. Foundational Semantics II examines a fourth view, according to which we should look instead at norms enforced among speakers. The two papers aim to determine in addition the extent to which the approaches are really rival, or rather complementary

In this paper I elaborate on previous criticisms of the influential Stalnakerian account of presuppositions, pointing out that the well-known practice of informative presupposition puts heavy strain on Stalnaker’s pragmatic characterization of the phenomenon of presupposition, in particular of the triggering of presuppositions. Stalnaker has replied to previous criticisms by relying on the well-taken point that we should take into account the time at which presupposition-requirements are to be computed. In defense of a different, ‘semantic’ account of the phenomenon of presupposition, I argue that that point does not suffice to rescue the Stalnakerian proposal, and I portray Lewisian ‘accommodation’ as one way in which speakers adjust themselves to one another in the course of conversation.

Contemporary semantics assumes two influential notions of context: one coming from Kaplan (1989), on which contexts are sets of predetermined parameters, and another originating in Stalnaker (1978), on which contexts are sets of propositions that are “common ground”. The latter is deservedly more popular, given its flexibility in accounting for context-dependent aspects of language beyond manifest indexicals, such as epistemic modals, predicates of taste, and so on and so forth; in fact, properly dealing with demonstratives (perhaps ultimately all indexicals) requires that further flexibility. Even if we acknowledge Lewis (1980)’s point that, in a sense, Kaplanian contexts already include common ground contexts, it is better to be clear and explicit about what contexts constitutively are. Now, Stalnaker (1978, 2002, 2014) defines context-as-common-ground as a set of propositions, but recent work shows that this is not an accurate conception. The paper explains why, and provides an alternative. The main reason is that several phenomena (presuppositional treatments of pejoratives and predicates of taste, forces other than assertion) require that the common ground includes non-doxastic attitudes such as appraisals, emotions, etc. Hence the common ground should not be taken to include merely contents (propositions), but those together with attitudes concerning them: shared commitments, as I will defend.

In recent work, Williamson has defended a suggestive account of assertion. Williamson claims that the following norm or rule (the knowledge rule) is constitutive of assertion, and individuates it: (KR) One must ((assert p) only if one knows p) Williamson is not directly concerned with the semantics of assertion-markers, although he assumes that his view has implications for such an undertaking; he says: “in natural languages, the default use of declarative sentences is to make assertions” (op. cit., 258). In this paper I will explore Williamson’s view from this perspective, i.e., in the light of issues regarding the semantics of assertion-markers. I will end up propounding a slightly different account, on which, rather than KR, what is constitutive and individuating of assertion is an audience-involving transmission of knowledge rule: (TKR) One must ((assert p) only if one’s audience comes thereby to be in a position to know p) I will argue that TKR, of which KR is an illocutionary consequence (but not the other way around), has all the virtues that Williamson claims for his account and no new defect.

Descriptive semantic theories purport to characterize the meanings of the expressions of languages in whatever complexity they might have. Foundational semantics purports to identify the kind of considerations relevant to establish that a given descriptive semantics accurately characterizes the language used by a given individual or community. Foundational Semantics I presents three contrasting approaches to the foundational matters, and the main considerations relevant to appraise their merits. These approaches contend that we should look at the contents of speakers’ intuitions; at the deep psychology of users and its evolutionary history, as revealed by our best empirical theories; or at the personal‐level rational psychology of those subjects. Foundational Semantics II examines a fourth view, according to which we should look instead at norms enforced among speakers. The two papers aim to determine in addition the extent to which the approaches are really rival, or rather complementary

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 perdida que equivaldría según Dummett al abandono del rasgo distintivo de esa tradición. Tomando como modelo ilustrativo las propuestas presentadas, se sugieré que tal percepción se ha revelado una moda pasajera y aventura una hipótesis explicativa.Some recent proposals in three fields in the philosophy of language are discussed: vagueness, the semantics-pragmatics distinction, and the use of “bidimensional” semantics to treat problems created by “Direct Reference” theses. Some years ago there was a perception concerning the loss of the philosophy of language, in favour ofthe philosophy of mind, of its central place in the analytic tradition -a loss which, according to Dummett, would amount to the loss of its most distinctive trait. With the discussed proposals as illustrative model, it is suggested that that perception was the product of a fleeting fashion, and an explanatory hypothesis is ventured