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7Five Flies in the Ointment: Some Challenges for Traditional Semantic TheoryIn Richard Schantz (ed.), Prospects for Meaning, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 287-308. 2012.
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53Review of Robert Andrew Wilson: Cartesian Psychology and Physical Minds: Individualism and the Sciences of the Mind (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (1): 151-156. 1997.
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41Knowledge of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantic TheoryPhilosophical Review 106 (1): 122. 1997.To the best of my knowledge, no one in recent decades has written a book of this magnitude about the semantics of natural language. Certainly, nothing available today matches this volume in depth, precision, and coherence. The authors present classical and recent results of linguistic semantics within the framework of interpretative T-theories and defend the philosophical foundations of their approach by showing how it fits into the larger enterprise of cognitive linguistics. The book also inclu…Read more
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89Hope as a Primitive Mental StateRatio 28 (2): 207-222. 2015.We criticize attempts to define hope in terms of other psychological states and argue that hope is a primitive mental state whose nature can be illuminated by specifying key aspects of its functional profile
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248Indexical PredicatesMind and Language 24 (4): 467-493. 2009.We discuss the challenge to truth-conditional semantics presented by apparent shifts in extension of predicates such as ‘red’. We propose an explicit indexical semantics for ‘red’ and argue that our account is preferable to the alternatives on conceptual and empirical grounds.
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Truth and MeaningIn Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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18Consciousness, by W. G. Lycan (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (1): 240-243. 1991.
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151The causal efficacy of contentPhilosophical Studies 63 (July): 1-30. 1991.Several philosophers have argued recently that semantic properties do play a causal role. 1 It is our view that none of these arguments are satisfactory. Our aim is to reveal some of the deficiencies of these arguments, and to reassess the question in our own way. In section 1, we shall explain in more detail what is involved in the pretheoretical idea of a causally efficacious property and so provide a fuller sense of the issue. In section 2 we shall discuss Fodor's and Kim's arguments that the…Read more
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24Commentary on Hanna Pickard, “The Purpose in Chronic Addiction”American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 3 (2): 63-64. 2012.
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81Two Theories of NamesRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 51 75-93. 2002.The aim of this paper is to assess the relative merits of two accounts of the semantics of proper names. The enterprise is of particular interest because the theories are very similar in fundamental respects. In particular, they can agree on three major features of names: names are rigid designators; different co-extensive names can have different cognitive significance; empty proper names can be meaningful. Neither theory by itself offers complete explanations of all three features. But each th…Read more
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32The Causal Inefficacy of ContentMind and Language 24 (1): 80-102. 2009.The paper begins with the assumption that psychological event tokens are identical to or constituted from physical events. It then articulates a familiar apparent problem concerning the causal role of psychological properties. If they do not reduce to physical properties, then either they must be epiphenomenal or any effects they cause must also be caused by physical properties, and hence be overdetermined. It then argues that both epiphenomenalism and over‐determinationism are prima facie perfe…Read more
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28Addiction and Choice: Rethinking the Relationship (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2016.Views on addiction are often polarised - either addiction is a matter of choice, or addicts simply can't help themselves. But perhaps addiction falls between the two? This book contains views from philosophy, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, and the law exploring this middle ground between free choice and no choice.
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28Four arguments for the indeterminacy of translationIn A. Orenstein & Petr Kotatko (eds.), Knowledge, Language and Logic: Questions for Quine, Kluwer Academic Print On Demand. pp. 131--139. 2000.
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140Cognitive content and propositional attitude attributionsIn Brian P. McLaughlin & Jonathan D. Cohen (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. 2006.Tyler Burge (Burge (1979)) has developed a very influential line of anti-individualistic thought. He argued that the cognitive content of a person
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20A Slim Book on Narrow ContentMIT Press. 1999.A good understanding of the nature of a property requires knowing whether that property is relational or intrinsic. Gabriel Segal's concern is whether certain psychological properties—specifically, those that make up what might be called the "cognitive content" of psychological states—are relational or intrinsic. He claims that content supervenes on microstructure, that is, if two beings are identical with respect to their microstructural properties, then they must be identical with respect to t…Read more
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14Representing representationsIn P. Carruthers & J. Boucher (eds.), Language and Thought: Interdisciplinary Themes, Cambridge University Press. pp. 146--161. 1998.
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20Ignorance of meaningIn Alex Barber (ed.), Epistemology of Language, Oxford University Press. 2003.Article
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104A preference for sense and referenceJournal of Philosophy 86 (2): 73-89. 1989.The topic of this paper is the semantic structure of belief reports of the form 'a believes that p'. it is argued that no existing theory of these sentences satisfactorily accounts for anaphoric relations linking expressions within the embedded complement sentence to expressions outside. a new account of belief reports is proposed which assigns to embedded expressions their normal semantic values but which also exploits frege's idea of using senses to explain the apparent failures of extensional…Read more
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15Truth and senseIn Petr Kotatko & John Biro (eds.), Frege: Sense and Reference One Hundred Years Later, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 15--24. 1995.
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68This paper is principally devoted to comparing and contrasting poverty of stimulus arguments for innate cognitive apparatus in relation to language and in relation to folk psychology. These days one is no longer allowed to use the term ‘innate’ without saying what one means by it. So I will begin by saying what I mean by ‘innate’. Sections 2 and 3 will discuss language and theory of mind, respectively. Along the way, I will also briefly discuss other arguments for innate cognitive apparatus in t…Read more