-
29Literal meaning, minimal propositions, and pragmatic processingJournal of Pragmatics 34 (4): 433-456. 2002.
-
170Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication (review)Mind 114 (455): 722-728. 2005.
-
72An Essay on Belief and Acceptance (review)Review of Metaphysics 50 (2): 392-394. 1996.As the title suggests, this book is centered around a distinction between belief and acceptance. A parallel distinction is drawn between desire and intention. Cohen argues that acceptance and intention are voluntary states, whereas belief and desire are involuntary dispositions. Acceptance is active, whereas belief is passive. Acceptance is subjectively closed under deducibility, whereas belief is not. Acceptance is an all-or-nothing affair, whereas belief comes in degrees, ranging from having a…Read more
-
412The coherence of contextualismMind and Language 21 (1). 2006.Cappelen and Lepore (2005) begin their critique of contextualism with an anecdote about an exercise they do with their undergraduate students (who I take it are meant to be naïve subjects whose linguistic intuitions have not been contaminated by mistaken philosophical theories). The test is to ask students to categorize types of expressions. Students quickly get the hang of the idea that referring expressions (like indexicals and pronouns) belong to a single category. They’re then asked whether …Read more
-
88Presupposition Failure and the Assertive EnterpriseTopoi 35 (1): 23-35. 2016.I outline a discourse-based account of presuppositions that relies on insights from the writings of Peter Strawson, as well as on insights from more recent work by Robert Stalnaker and Barbara Abbott. One of the key elements of my account is the idea that presuppositions are “assertorically inert”, in the sense that they are background propositions, rather than being part of the “at issue” or asserted content. Strawson is often assumed to have defended the view that the falsity of a presuppositi…Read more
-
79Is verbal communication a purely preservative process?Philosophical Review 107 (2): 261-288. 1998.In a recent paper titled “Content Preservation”, Tyler Burge argues that certain psychological processes play a purely preservative role, and not a justificatory role. Burge’s claim is that the justificatory force of the beliefs sustained by these processes is independent of features of these processes, such as their reliability. The function of these psychological processes is merely to preserve the beliefs in order to “assure the proper working of other cognitive capacities over time”. In part…Read more
-
35Demonstrative modes of presentationCommunication and Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly Journal. forthcoming.
-
1Distinguishing Semantics and PragmaticsIn Joseph K. Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & David Shier (eds.), Meaning and Truth: Investigations in Philosophical Semantics., Seven Bridges Press. pp. 284--310. 2002.
-
67The Impossibility of Punctate Mental RepresentationsGrazer Philosophische Studien 46 (1): 197-212. 1993.In Holism: A Shopper's Guide Fodor and LePore contend that there could be punctate minds; minds capable of being in only a single type of representational state. The Kantian idea that the construction of perceptual representations requires the synthesizing activity of the mind is invoked to argue against the possibility of punctate minds. Fodor's commitment to an inferential theory of perception is shown to share crucial assumptions with the Kantian view and hence to lead to the same conclusion.…Read more
-
204Pragmatics, semantic undetermination and the referential/attributive distinctionMind 106 (423): 375-409. 1997.It has long ben recognised that there are referential uses of definite descriptions. It is not as widely recognised that there are atttributives uses of idexicals and other such paradigmatically singular terms. I offer an account of the referential/attributive distinction which is intended to give a unified treatment of both sorts of cases. I argue that the best way to account for the referential/attributive distinction is to treat is as semantically underdetermined which sort of propositions is…Read more
-
21Holism: A Consumer UpdateGrazer Philosophische Studien 46 197-212. 1993.In Holism: A Shopper's Guide Fodor and LePore contend that there could be punctate minds; minds capable of being in only a single type of representational state. The Kantian idea that the construction of perceptual representations requires the synthesizing activity of the mind is invoked to argue against the possibility of punctate minds. Fodor's commitment to an inferential theory of perception is shown to share crucial assumptions with the Kantian view and hence to lead to the same conclusion.…Read more
-
H7, l40, l45In Jaroslav Peregrin (ed.), Meaning: the dynamic turn, Elsevier Science. pp. 271. 2003.
-
276Truth-Conditional PragmaticsPhilosophical Perspectives 16 105-134. 2002.Introduction The mainstream view in philosophy of language is that sentence meaning determines truth-conditions. A corollary is that the truth or falsity of an utterance depends only on what words mean and how the world is arranged. Although several prominent philosophers (Searle, Travis, Recanati, Moravcsik) have challenged this view, it has proven hard to dislodge. The alternative view holds that meaning underdetermines truth-conditions. What is expressed by the utterance of a sentence in a co…Read more
-
65Language as internalIn Barry C. Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. pp. 127--139. 2006.According to internalist conceptions of language, languages are properties of the mind/brains of individuals and supervene entirely on the internal states of these mind/brains. Hence, languages are primarily to be studied by the mind and/or brain sciences — psychology, neuroscience, and the cognitive sciences more generally. This is not to deny that other sciences may contribute to our understanding too. The internalist conception of language is most associated with Chomsky, who has argued for i…Read more
-
130The Gricean distinction between saying and implicating suggests a clear division of labour between semantics and pragmatics. The standard view that a semantic theory delivers truth-conditions for every well-formed sentence of a language has been grafted onto a Gricean view of the semantics-pragmatics divide. Consequently, many believe that truth-conditions can be specified in a way that is essentially free from pragmatic considerations. This view has been challenged, by those who argue for pragm…Read more
-
27Contextualism and Information Structure: Towards a Science of PragmaticsIn Erich Rast & Luiz Carlos Baptista (eds.), Meaning and Context, Peter Lang. pp. 2--79. 2010.
-
152The Philosophy of P. F. StrawsonPhilosophical Review 110 (3): 460. 2001.This is the twenty-sixth volume in the Library of Living Philosophers, a series founded by Paul A. Schilpp in 1939 and edited by him until 1981, when the editorship was taken over by Lewis E. Hahn. This volume follows the design of previous volumes. As Schilpp conceived this series, every volume would have the following elements: an intellectual autobiography of the philosopher, a series of expository and critical articles written by exponents and opponents of the philosopher's thought, replies …Read more
-
57Resisting the step toward naturalismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (4): 743-770. 1996.
-
97Metaphorical Singular Reference. The Role of Enriched Composition in Reference ResolutionThe Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 3. 2007.It is widely accepted that, in the course of interpreting a metaphorical utterance, both literal and metaphorical interpretations of the utterance are available to the interpreter, although there may be disagreement about the order in which these interpretations are accessed. I call this the dual availability assumption. I argue that it does not apply in cases of metaphorical singular reference. These are cases in which proper names, complex demonstratives or definite descriptions are used metap…Read more
-
1„How context-dependent are attitude ascriptions?‟ In: D. Jutronic“In Dunja Jutronic (ed.), The Maribor Papers in Naturalized Semantics, Maribor. 1997.
-
12Centering Theory (CT) as articulated by Grosz et al. (1995) is a theory intended to model some of the factors that influence local coherence in a discourse. The idea is that at any one time there are a number of entities that are at the center of attention. Each utterance n that makes up a discourse potentially has two sorts of discourse ‘centers’, an ordered set of forward-looking centers, Cf(uttn), that provide potential links to upcoming utterances, and a single backward-looking center, Cb(ut…Read more
-
64Pragmatics and Singular ReferenceMind and Language 11 (2): 133-159. 1996.:I present arguments in favour of the view that the propositions expressed by utterances containing singularly referring terms have modes of presentation of the objects referred to by those terms as constituents. I rely on recent work by Sperber and Wilson, Recanati and other pragmatists, and claim that a Fregean account of singular reference is supported by this work. This is in opposition to Recanati himself, who in his book Direct Reference has argued for a view which is closer to that of som…Read more
-
60The Implicit Dimension of Meaning: Ways of “Filling In” and “Filling Out” ContentErkenntnis 80 (1): 89-109. 2015.I distinguish between the classical Gricean approach to conversational implicatures , which I call the action-theoretic approach, and the approach to CIs taken in contemporary cognitive science. Once we free ourselves from the AT account, and see implicating as a form of what I call “conversational tailoring”, we can more easily see the many different ways that CIs arise in conversation. I will show that they arise not only on the basis of a speaker’s utterance of complete sentences but also on …Read more
-
118Procedural meaning and the semantics/pragmatics interfaceIn Claudia Bianchi (ed.), The Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction, Csli Publications. pp. 101--131. 2004.
-
273Metaphor and what is said: A defense of a direct expression view of metaphorMidwest Studies in Philosophy 25 (1). 2001.According to one widely held view of metaphor, metaphors are cases in which the speaker (literally) says one thing but means something else instead. I wish to challenge this idea. I will argue that when one utters a sentence in some context intending it to be understood metaphorically, one directly expresses a proposition, which can potentially be evaluated as either true or false. This proposition is what is said by the utterance of the sentence in that context. We don’t convey metaphorical mea…Read more
-
1Generalized Conversational Implicatures and Default Pragmatic InferencesIn Joseph K. Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & David Shier (eds.), Meaning and Truth: Investigations in Philosophical Semantics., Seven Bridges Press. pp. 257--283. 2002.
Columbia, South Carolina, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |