Delia Belleri

An influential critique of ontology, traditionally linked to Rudolf Carnap, logical empiricism, and verificationism, has it that ontological questions and statements are meaningless. In recent years, Amie Thomasson has revived this Carnapian critique, albeit in a non-verificationist version. This chapter argues that the meaningfulness of ontological statements can be vindicated by appealing to considerations compatible with Thomasson’s Carnapian approach. Two possible avenues are explored. The first is that of specifying the assertibility conditions of ontological statements like ‘There are Fs’, by providing an adequate rule of use. The second is that of spelling out the truth-conditions of the same ontological statements by means of a T-schema where the right-hand side is a sentence formulated in a language specifically introduced for doing ontology—what several authors call ‘Ontologese’. It is proposed that Ontologese be introduced as a bona-fide Carnapian framework, and this option is defended against a number of objections.

This chapter defends a notion of “minimal substantivity” for ontological disputes, focusing on persistence and composition as case-studies. Deflationists argue that these disputes are defective: they are merely verbal, or epistemically underdetermined. Anti-Deflationists emphasize the substantivity of these controversies, either in Quinean terms, or in terms of fundamentality. This chapter aims at striking a mid-way between these approaches, thus outlining a Minimal Anti-Deflationism. First, it is shown that even if these ontological disputes are merely verbal, they can be recast as non-verbal metalinguistic disputes. These exchanges have in turn an ontological substantivity if we understand them as disputes about which ontological commitments we should undertake. This substantivity is however minimal, because it need not be articulated either naturalistically or in terms of fundamentality. In closing, an illustration is provided of the fruitfulness of the minimal substantivity notion for cases of conceptual engineering.

Even though the principle of charity is often invoked in contemporary discussions in the philosophy of language and mind, it is rarely the primary topic of investigation. This special issue revisits questions about the nature, status, scope, and justification of the principle; furthermore, it explores how reflection on these questions helps address a wide range of topics. The contributions are divided into two broad themes. The first theme is an investigation of the grounds and limits of the role of the principle of charity in our engagements with others. What, if anything, makes it the case that understanding others requires counting them right in most matters? The second set of contributions concerns not the justification of the principle of charity but its consequences. The contributors explore how the principle might enable us to tackle further questions and make progress on other fronts, not only concerning language, mind, and knowledge, but also concerning reasons, actions, and values.

This paper focusses on ontological disputes that seem to have reached a stalemate, in that all the ontological theories competing in them explain the same data while facing equivalent losses of simplicity—whether in the ontology or in the ideology. Plus, no further evidence, or considerations regarding the priority of ontological or ideological simplicity, seem forthcoming. After reviewing a number of options as to the significance of such stalemates, a view called “Veritic Metaontological Pluralism” is explored, whereby all the theories involved in the stalemate are true.

Some conceptual engineering projects ambitiously propose large-scale conceptual and meaning changes. Yet, these processes may mostly be out of our control, thus posing a challenge for the implementation of conceptual engineering. In this paper, I articulate a version of such implementation challenge, focussing on the engineer’s lack of control on their inter-subjective sphere, which exposes them to a constant risk of non-compliance by their target audience. To begin addressing this non-compliance challenge, I link a speaker’s becoming compliant and their becoming “metalinguistically aware”. I then suggest that one possible, promising avenue to compliance has to do with stimulating metalinguistic awareness. I list a number of strategies that might serve this purpose, reviewing their costs and benefits. I argue that, ideally, explicitly metalinguistic strategies, or at any rate, strategies that are as explicitly metalinguistic as possible, are more recommendable for raising metalinguistic awareness.

Conceptual engineering projects have been targeted by what is known as the “implementation challenge,” which calls for an account of how it is possible to change meanings, given that we have no control over the complex ways in which meaning supervenes (for example) on patterns of use. In the first part of this paper, this supervenience‐based formulation of the challenge is questioned, and a new formulation is proposed, which strives to be as metasemantically neutral as possible. The new challenge is called “the uptake challenge,” and its theoretical advantages are defended over those of the supervenience‐based version. In the second part of the paper, a response to the uptake challenge is outlined. This involves reflecting on the notion of control, especially on aspects that pertain to its gradability and relativity to an agent's goals. The aim is to put into proper perspective, and ultimately question, the threat posed by (this version of) the implementation challenge.

Herman Cappelen’s book The Concept of Democracy makes a case for ‘abolitionism’, that is, abandonment of the word ‘democracy’ and related terminology (‘D-words’). Cappelen’s strategy includes a direct argument for abandonment, aiming to show that D-words are meaningless; and an indirect argument, based on a comparison of abandonment with other options (for instance, replacement or amelioration). In this critical notice, I focus on his comparative case, arguing that the competing options and their respective challenges are not so well demarcated—where this negatively affects the abandonment proposal. Furthermore, I present and defend a yet unexplored alternative: awareness. Awareness is a worthy candidate for its little costs and significant benefits in comparison to abandonment, thus deserving consideration alongside the options assessed by Cappelen.

Conceptual engineering projects are sometimes criticized for ‘changing the subject’. In this paper, I first discuss three strategies that have been proposed to address the change of subject objection. I notice that these strategies fail in similar ways: they all deploy a ‘loose’ notion of subject matter, while the objector can always reply deploying a ‘strict’ notion. Based on this, I then argue that at least current formulations of the change of subject objection (together with the response strategies just mentioned), create an overall defective dialectic, whereby no progress can be made on either side. After considering how such defective dialectic could be (at least partly) fixed, it is concluded that current formulations of the change of subject objection may be dismissed on dialectical grounds, even though some practical lessons may still be retained from the objection.

The recent debate on Semantic Contextualism and Relativism has definitely brought the phenomenon of disagreement under the spotlight. Relativists have considered disagreement as a means to accomplish a defence of their own position regarding the semantics of knowledge attributions, epistemic modals, taste predicates, and so on. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, we argue that several specific notions of disagreement can be subsumed under a common “schema” which provides a unified and overarching notion of disagreement. Secondly, we avail ourselves of such a unified notion of disagreement to assess the arguments devised especially by Relativists in order to criticise certain forms of Contextualism, which crucially rely on the idea that Relativism is better suited than Contextualism to capture certain intuitions of disagreement.

Conceptual engineering has been linked by Herman Cappelen to a position called “representational skepticism”, described as one’s refusal to uncritically take over the conceptual representations one is handed. This position is contrasted with an uncritical attitude, called “representational complacency”. Arguably, neither position, or a hybrid of the two, is rationally sustainable. This paper therefore proposes an alternative option, called “critical concept conservatism”, stating that having a concept makes it rational (in a suitable sense of “rational”) for one to retain it, unless there are grounds to question it. Critical concept conservatism avoids the drawbacks of skepticism and complacency; plus, it is independently supported by both positive and negative considerations. Furthermore, it complies with the demanding attitude towards conceptual representations that a conceptual engineer would be expected to have.

Eli Hirsch argues that certain ontological disputes involve a conflict between “equivalent” languages, and that the principle of charity compels each disputant to interpret the other as speaking truly in their own language. For Hirsch, a language’s semantics maps sentences (in context) onto sets of possible worlds but assigns no role to reference. I argue that this method leads to an overly uncharitable portrayal of the disputes at issue – whereby ontologists who speak “equivalent” languages can only argue about syntax. Lack of charity stems from the fact that this portrayal likely fails to uphold the self-conception of the disputants – and particularly what I will call “the weak self-conception”. As a result, Hirsch’s deflationism falls victim of the same principle of charity that informs it.

Pluralism is relevant to conceptual engineering in many ways. First of all, we face the issue of pluralism when trying to characterise the very object(s) of conceptual engineering. Is it just concepts? Could concepts be pluralistically conceived for the purposes of conceptual engineering? Or rather, is it concepts and other representational devices as well? Second, one may wonder whether concepts have only one function in our mental life (representation) or, rather, a plurality of functions (including non-representational ones). Third, it is a contended question whether conceptual engineering projects should pursue only one set of values and goals (epistemic ones) or, rather, a variety of values and goals, including non-epistemic ones. Finally, the engineering of a concept may result in a form of “local” conceptual pluralism, which gives rise to its own ontological and semantic challenges. Having explored the various ways in which pluralism becomes important for conceptual engineers, this contribution presents and summarizes the articles published in this special issue.

Conceptual engineering projects have been criticized for creating discontinuities of subject-matter and, as a result, discontinuities in inquiries: call this the Change of Subject objection. In this paper, I explore a way of dealing with the objection that clarifies its scope and eventually downplays it. First, two strategies aimed at saving subject-continuity are examined and found wanting: Herman Cappelen’s appeal to topics, and the account in terms of concept function. Second, the idea is introduced that one can begin an object-level inquiry either with a ‘semantically conservative’ approach, whereby semantic change is not permitted, or with a ‘semantically progressive’ approach, whereby semantic change is permitted. This distinction helps one significantly downplay the Change of Subject objection.

The reliability challenge to ontology can be summarized as the complaint that no satisfying explanation is available of how one can have true ontological beliefs, given that the relevant belief-forming methods are noncausal (for example, not perception based or memory based). This paper first presents a version of the reliability challenge against realist approaches to ontology, put forward by Jared Warren. It then explores a response to the challenge on behalf of the realist that appeals to the use of abduction. This response does not satisfactorily deal with the reliability challenge, though, and even leads to a further epistemic impasse. At this point, a version of ontological pluralism is presented, according to which all the competing theories in a certain ontological dispute can be true—in a sense of “true” to be articulated. The final step shows how this version of pluralism deals with the reliability challenge, especially with the complaint that we lack an explanation for our true ontological beliefs.

Some non-appropriated uses of slurs seem to be non–derogatory. In this paper, I argue that in a range of cases, the lack of derogation is owed to the term not being genuinely used. I first examine so–called pedagogical uses and show that they can be assimilated to what I call “distancing uses.” I then turn to a range of other apparently non–derogatory, non–appropriated uses of slurs – such as non–weapon uses, comedic uses – and argue that they can depart from standard, genuine usage in relevant ways. I finally turn to so–called “affectionate” uses, and show that, if the conditions in which they obtain can be described as standard, then they are derogatory because they are genuine uses, no matter the benevolent feelings of the speaker.

Paradigmatic cases of ontological disputes are taken to concern whether or not certain objects exist. Some theorists, however, prefer to view ontologists as really debating about what we should mean with the term “exist” (or other cognate terms). This implies interpreting ontological disputes as metalinguistic negotiations, in keeping with a recent trend to interpret other philosophical disputes along these lines (Plunkett and Sundell. Philosopher's Imprint; 2013;13:1–37). A number of issues arise from such proposal. The first is what counts as evidence that an object‐level dispute is actually a metalinguistic negotiation. The second regards the dialectical relevance of considering metalinguistic negotiation as even just a possible interpretative option. The third issue concerns whether, and why, certain object‐level disputes (and especially ontological ones) should be understood as metalinguistic negotiations.

It is common to criticize a debate by alleging that it is a “merely verbal dispute.” But how conclusive would an argument based on such allegations be? This article takes the material‐composition debate as a case study and argues that the merely verbal dispute objection is less decisive than one might expect. While assessing the dialectical effectiveness of the mere‐verbality move, the article also tries to mark some progress in the philosophical understanding and appreciation of the phenomenon itself of merely verbal disputes. Its contribution consists in shedding light on a distinction between the “faultlessness” and “faultiness” of a merely verbal dispute.

The aim of this paper is to explore the view that some ontological disputes are “metalinguistic negotiations”, and to make sense of the significance of these controversies in a way that is still compatible with a broadly deflationist approach. I start by considering the view advocated by Eli Hirsch to the effect that some ontological disputes are verbal. I take the Endurantism–Perdurantusm dispute as a case-study and argue that, while it can be conceded that the dispute is verbal at the object-level, this does not rule out the possibility of a non-verbal disagreement at the metalinguistic level. I then explore the metalinguistic dispute hypothesis by seeing how it can be defended from a first objection playing on the idea of inter-translatability, as well as a second objection raising the question of equal theoretical virtues.

In this paper, I will trace a distinction between two different ways of thinking about doxastic conflicts. The first way emphasises what is going on at the level of semantics, when two subjects disagree by uttering certain sentences or accepting certain contents. The second way emphasises some aspects that are epistemic in kind, which concern what subjects are rationally required to do whenever they disagree with someone. The semantics-oriented and epistemically-oriented notions will serve for the purpose of assessing some aspects of the debate that revolves around the notions of disagreement on matters of inclination. These aspects include: (i) the idea that disagreements in areas of inclination are somehow defective (Egan 2010); (ii) the idea that Relativism makes disagreement epistemically insignificant (Carter 2013); (iii) the idea that there can be faultless disagreements in which faultlessness is epistemic in kind (Schafer 2011)

In this paper, I address the idea that certain sentences suffer from what is generally called semantic unspecificity: their meaning is determinate, but their truth conditions are not. While there tends to be agreement on the idea that semantic unspecificity differs from phenomena such as ambiguity and vagueness, some theorists have defended an account which traces it to indexicality, broadly construed. Some authors have tried to vindicate the distinction between unspecificity and indexicality and, in this paper, I pursue the same cause, but with a critical stance towards previously employed strategies. I urge that the central argument employed by Sainsbury to trace this difference fails suitably to set unspecificity apart from indexicality and I propose a new argument, which helps to trace this distinction more perspicuously. The argument is based on embeddings of indexical and unspecific expressions within modal operators and on the ways in which the truth conditions of utterances of the resulting, complex expressions are thereby affected.

The Effability thesis has it that all propositions can be encoded by a sentence. By contrast, the Ineffability thesis has it that no proposition can be encoded by a sentence. In this article, I undermine an important motivation for the Ineffability thesis and advance a proposal concerning what is effable and what is not. My strategy will be as follows: First, I'll note that the Ineffability thesis assumes that propositions/thoughts are determinate. I'll point out that propositions/thoughts qua the things we believe and mean by our utterances may in fact be indeterminate with regard to, for instance, mental predication and mental reference. I'll then propose a “Gradable Effability”: propositions/thoughts are more or less determinate according to the aims, interests, available information of thinkers, and sentences too encode propositions depending on the aims, interests, available information in the speakers' conversational setting.

The thesis of Ineffability has it that no proposition can be fully expressed by a sentence, this meaning that no sentence-type, or even sentence-token whose indexicality and ambiguities have been resolved, can fully encode a proposition. The thesis of the propositionality of thoughts has it that thoughts are propositional. An implication of the joint endorsement of these two theses is that thoughts are ineffable. The aim of this paper is to argue that this is not the case: there are effable thoughts, and we can even safely say that, generally, thoughts are effable. In order to defend this insight, I first counter the thesis of the propositionality of thought by bringing some counterexamples to it, which amount to cases of non-fully propositional thought. I then argue that, if thoughts can be and often are non-fully propositional, they can be expressed by sentences that fail to fully express a proposition. I also show that the propositional thoughts that we can entertain are after all effable (in a suitable, relevant sense) and resist some alleged examples of insurmountable ineffability.

It has been argued by many authors that sentences fail to express full-blown propositions: a phenomenon known as semantic underdeterminacy. In some cases, this thesis is accompanied by a conception of thought as fully propositional. This implies that sentences fail to fully express our thoughts. Against this, I argue that many thoughts can be fully expressed by sentences, where by ‘fully expressed’ I mean encoded by a sentence plus minimal contextual information. These are thoughts that may be characterized as less than fully propositional. I provide examples of such thoughts and argue that they plausibly constitute a non-negligible part of our mental life. As I show, these thoughts can be fully expressed by sentences that fail to express full-blown propositions. So it is not the case that sentences even generally fail to fully express our thoughts.