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503Realism, reference & perspectiveEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 10 (3): 1-22. 2020.This paper continues the defense of a version of scientific realism, Tautological Scientific Realism, that rests on the claim that, excluding some areas of fundamental physics about which doubts are entirely justified, many areas of contemporary science cannot be coherently imagined to be false other than via postulation of radically skeptical scenarios, which are not relevant to the realism debate in philosophy of science. In this paper we discuss, specifically, the threats of meaning change an…Read more
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476How to Test the Ship of TheseusDialectica 74 (3). 2020.The story of the Ship of Theseus is one of the most venerable conundrums in philosophy. Some philosophers consider it a genuine puzzle. Others deny that it is so. It is, therefore, an open question whether there is or there is not a puzzle in the Ship of Theseus story. So, arguably, it makes sense to test empirically whether people perceive the case as a puzzle. Recently, David Rose, Edouard Machery, Stephen Stich and forty-two other researchers from different countries have undertaken that task…Read more
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401Against semantic multi-culturalismAnalysis 69 (1): 42-48. 2009.E. Machery, R. Mallon, S. Nichols and S. Stich, have argued that there is empirical evidence against Kripke’s claim that names are not descriptive. Their argument is based on an experiment that compares the intuitions about proper name use of a group of English speakers in Hong Kong with those of a group of non-Chinese American students. The results of the experiment suggest that in some cultures speakers use names descriptively. I argue that such a conclusion is incorrect, for the experiment do…Read more
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396The Problem of Taste to the Experimental TestAnalysis. forthcoming.A series of recent experimental studies have cast doubt on the existence of a traditional tension that aestheticians have noted in our aesthetic judgments and practices, viz. the problem of taste. The existence of the problem has been acknowledged since Hume and Kant, though not enough has been done to analyse it in depth. In this paper, we remedy this by proposing six possible conceptualizations of it. Drawing on our analysis of the problem of taste, we argue that the experimental results in qu…Read more
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258The source of intensionalityPhilosophical Perspectives 7 197-206. 1993.There are obvious differences between (1) Mary is talking to the Dean and (2) Mary is looking for the Dean. In (1) we can replace "the Dean" by any other coextensional term and preserve truth value; also, from (1) we can infer that there is someone Mary is talking to. Such behavior breaks down in (2): neither intersubstitution of coextensional terms nor existential generalization guarantee preservation of truth value in a sentence like (2). (1) is purely extensional; (2) is intensional.
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207Direct Reference and Definite DescriptionsDialectica 62 (1): 43-57. 2008.According to Donnellan the characteristic mark of a referential use of a definite description is the fact that it can be used to pick out an individual that does not satisfy the attributes in the description. Friends and foes of the referential/attributive distinction have equally dismissed that point as obviously wrong or as a sign that Donnellan's distinction lacks semantic import. I will argue that, on a strict semantic conception of what it is for an expression to be a genuine referential de…Read more
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191Editor's IntroductionTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 28 (3): 357-357. 2013.Editor's introduction to a section devoted to Ruth Barcan Marcus (1921-2012).
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166The Question of Rigidity in New Theories of ReferenceNoûs 37 (1). 2003.In the semantic revolution that has led many philosophers of language away from Fregeanism and towards the acceptance of direct reference, the notion of rigidity introduced by Saul Kripke in Naming and Necessity has played a crucial role. The notions of rigidity and direct reference are indeed different, but proponents of new theories of reference agree that there is a one way connection between them: although not all rigid terms are directly referential (witness rigid definite descriptions), al…Read more
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142Rigidity and general termsProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 104 (1): 131-148. 2004.In this paper I examine two ways of defining the rigidity of general terms. First I discuss the view that rigid general terms express essential properties. I argue that the view is ultimately unsatisfactory, although not on the basis of the standard objections raised against it. I then discuss the characterisation in terms of sameness of designation in every possible world. I defend that view from two objections but I argue that the approach, although basically right, should be interpreted cauti…Read more
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118Names, Descriptions and Causal Descriptions. Is the Magic Gone?Topoi 39 (2): 1-9. 2020.Some of the fundamental lessons of the so-called revolution against descriptivism that occurred in the 70s are negative and it is not immediately apparent what kind of semantic theory should emerge as regards proper names, the alleged paradigms of genuinely referential terms. Some of the claims about names, most notably Ruth Barcan Marcus’ characterization of names as tags, appear to be too picturesque to provide the basis for a positive theory and, without a theory, it would seem that the refer…Read more
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117Water has a microstructural essence after allEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (1): 1-15. 2018.In recent years attacks on the Kripke-Putnam approach to natural kinds and natural kind terms have proliferated. In a recent paper, Häggqvist and Wikforss (The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1–23, 2017) attack the once-dominant essentialist account of natural kinds. Häggqvist & Wikforss also suggest that it is time to return to some sort of cluster-based descriptivist semantics for natural kind terms, thus targeting both the metaphysical and semantic tenets that underpin the Krip…Read more
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112Rigidity and the Description of Counterfactual SituationsTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 13 (3): 477-490. 1998.In this paper I discuss two approaches to rigidity. I argue that they differ in the general conception of semantics that each embraces. Moreover, I argue that they differ in how each explains the rigidity of general terms, and in what each presupposes in that explanation.
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104The essence of genuine referenceJournal of Philosophical Logic 24 (3): 275-289. 1995.We have witnessed a fundamental change of perspective in the conception of reference. What the proponents of the new approach criticized and what they proposed to abandon is relatively clear; it is much less clear though what is at the heart of the philosophy that inspired the change. The proponents of the new approach all agreed in disagreeing with Frege: natural languages may, and in fact do, contain expressions that refer without the mediation of a Fregean sense. The core motto of the revolu…Read more
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100General terms, rigidity and the trivialization problemSynthese 181 (2). 2011.We defend the view that defines the rigidity of general terms as sameness of designated universal across possible worlds from the objection that such a characterization is incapable of distinguishing rigid from non-rigid readings of general terms and, thus, that it trivializes the notion of rigidity. We also argue that previous attempts to offer a solution to the trivialization problem do no succeed
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77Empirical Data and the Theory of ReferenceIn William P. Kabasenche, Michael O'Rourke & Matthew H. Slater (eds.), Reference and Referring: Topics in Contemporary Philosophy, Volume 10, Mit Press. pp. 63-82. 2012.This paper is an extended response to Machery, Olivola and De Blanc (2009). I argue that the concerns I raised about Machery, Mallon, Nichols and Stich (2004) in Marti (2009) still stand.
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73Aboutness and SubstitutivityMidwest Studies in Philosophy 14 (1): 127-139. 1989.The following Principle of Substitutivity holds for the former, but not for the latter sentence: (PS) The truth value of (the proposition expressed by) a sentence that contains an occurrence of t1 remains constant when t2 is substituted for t1, provided that t1 and t2 are codesignative singular terms. It is an undeniable fact that different sentences behave differently when it comes to which substitutions preserve their truth value. What is curious is that this fact has been presented by the phi…Read more
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71The significance of the distinction between concept mastery and concept possessionPhilosophical Issues 9 163-167. 1998.A discussion of Higginbotham's distinction between mastering and possessing a concept.
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68On modality and reference: Ruth Barcan Marcus (1921-2012)Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 31 (2): 203-212. 2012.Obituary. Ruth Barcan Marcus' contributions to modal logic and to semantics are discussed.
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57Do Modal Distinctions Collapse in Carnap’s System?Journal of Philosophical Logic 23 (6). 1994.Føllesdal (1966 and 1969) claims that modal distinctions collapse, that is that p and Necessarily p are equivalent, in any system of modal logic that incorporates a standard theory of definite descriptions, like the one proposed by Carnap in M&N. I argue that his argument fails.
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54Rethinking Quine’s Argument on the Collapse of Modal DistinctionsNotre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 38 (2): 276-294. 1997.This paper examines and discusses an argument for the collapse of modal distincions offered by Quine in "Reference and Modality" and in Word and Object that relies exclusively on a version of the Principle of Substitution. It is argued that the argument does not affect its historical targets: Carnap's treatment of modality, presented in Meaning and Necessity, and Church's Logic of Sense and Denotation, developed by Kaplan; nor does it affect a treatment of modality inspired in Frege's treatment …Read more
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51For the Disunity of SemanticsMind and Language 29 (4): 485-489. 2014.John Hawthorne and David Manley (The Reference Book, OUP 2012) endorse a unified treatment of the semantics of four kinds of expressions that can be said to have referential uses: specific indefinite descriptions, definite descriptions, demonstratives and proper names. The semantic theory the authors propose treats all these expressions as having a quantificational structure that achieves uniqueness of application via the presence of covert material contributing to the restriction of the domain…Read more
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47Empty Representations: Reference and Non-Existence (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2014.The contents of linguistic and mental representations may seem to be individuated by what they are about. But a problem arises with regard to representation of the non-existent - words and thoughts that are about things that don't exist. Fourteen new essays get to grips with this much-debated problem
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47The Nature and Structure of Content, by Jeffrey King, Oxford University Press, 2007 (review)Mind 119 (475): 814-819. 2010.
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46Weak and strong directness: reference and thought (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (3): 730-737. 2007.
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46Tolerance, flexibility and the application of kind termsSynthese (Suppl 12): 1-14. 2018.We explore two ways of distinguishing the semantic operation of kind terms. First, we focus on a distinction between terms with a flexible versus terms with an inflexible semantics. Flexibility depends on whether some changes in the domain of application are taken to be possible while being consistent with past usage and what is intuitively the same meaning. On the other hand we discuss terms whose mode of operation is tolerant, in that the cohabitation in the speakers’ community of more than on…Read more
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45Review of Scott Soames, Beyond Rigidity: The Unfinished Semantic Agenda of Naming and Necessity (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002 (12): 392. 2002.
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42Substitution, Identity, and the Subject-Predicate StructureIn Michael O'Rourke Corey Washington (ed.), Situating Semantics: Essays on the Philosophy of John Perry, . pp. 93. 2007.One of the many important tasks of semantics is to provide an account of the substitution patterns of a language—that is, to furnish an explanation of the conditions under which semantic values of complexes are preserved when components are replaced. The importance of this issue is plain: we only have to recall the debates regarding substitutivity between proponents of direct reference theories and advocates of some version of Fregeanism, as well as the disagreements among different proponents o…Read more
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39General terms as designators : a defence of the viewIn Helen Beebee & Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (eds.), The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds, Routledge. pp. 46--63. 2010.We argue that the view that kind terms designate universals does not fall prey to the trivialization problem. We also argue that the view can respond to other challenges, specifically, the claims that an adequate notion of rigidity for kind terms must: (a) classify natural kind terms as rigid and classify many other general terms as non-rigid and (b) account for the necessity of true theoretical identifications involving rigid terms
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31Stern, David. Wittgenstein on Mind and Language (review)Review of Metaphysics 50 (4): 922-923. 1997.
Genoveva Martí
ICREA And University Of Barcelona
Universitat de Barcelona
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ICREA And University Of BarcelonaRegular Faculty
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Universitat de BarcelonaProfessor
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
20th Century Philosophy |
Modal and Intensional Logic |