•  336
    Igal Kvart A Coding Conception in Action-Directed-Pragmatics I present formal Pragmatics for a domain in Pragmatics that I call Action-Directed Pragmatics, which focuses on the Pragmatic riddle of how implicit contents are conveyed and understood, by adopting a coding model, in which the speaker and addressee simulate each other iteratively in a deliberative context (an ‘action-pregnant’ one). The implicit content, conveyed by a speaker and decoded by her addressee, in s…Read more
  • The Paradox Of Surprise Examination
    Logique Et Analyse 21 (82): 337-344. 1978.
  • The omnipotence puzzle
    Logique Et Analyse 25 (97): 75. 1982.
  •  63
    The Hesperus-Phosphorus case
    Theoria 50 (1): 1-35. 1984.
  •  19
    The steering thrust phenomenon in action-directed-pragmatics
    Synthese 198 (Suppl 7): 1639-1671. 2020.
    In this paper I explore the pragmatic phenomenon of Steering Thrust, and specifically how speakers steer others to action and the mechanism that underpins how they so steer. In addition to opening the door to a rich pragmatic domain, understanding the pragmatics of various locutions and assertions in deliberative action-oriented contexts resolves the puzzle of bank-type cases by a pragmatic treatment of the puzzle, and undermines the motivation to seek a semantic remedy, such as via Pragmatic En…Read more
  •  17
  •  68
    Quine and Modalities De Re
    Journal of Philosophy 79 (6): 295-328. 1982.
  •  131
    The Counterfactual Analysis of Cause
    Synthese 127 (3): 389-427. 2001.
    David Lewis’s counterfactual analysis of cause consisted of the counterfactual conditional closed under transitivity.2 Namely, a sufficient condition for A’s being a cause of C is that ∼A > ∼C be true; and a necessary as well as sufficient condition is that there be a series of true counterfactuals ∼A > ∼E1, ∼E1 > ∼E2, . . . , ∼En >∼C (n > 0).
  •  63
    Probabilistic cause and the thirsty traveler
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 31 (2): 139-179. 2002.
    In this paper I start by briefly presenting an analysis of token cause and of token causal relevance that I developed elsewhere, and then apply it to the famous thirsty traveler riddle. One general outcome of the analysis of causal relevance employed here is that in preemption cases (early or late) the preempted cause is not a cause since it is causally irrelevant to the effect. I consider several variations of the thirsty traveler riddle. In the first variation the first enemy emptied the cante…Read more
  •  18
    In this paper I undertake to resolve a main pragmatic puzzle triggered by Bank-type cases. After accepting ‘sanitized’ intuitions about Truth-Values, as reflected in x-phi experiments, the pragmatic puzzle about whether the husband is inconsistent remains, and if he isn’t, which intuitively is the case, how are we to explain it. The context in such cases is pragmatic, with awareness of high risks, and the treatment I propose is pragmatic as well, but not Gricean. I offer a new Pragmatics whose m…Read more
  •  128
    Seeing that and seeing as
    Noûs 27 (3): 279-302. 1993.
  •  28
    Pragmatic Structures for Action‐Directed Pragmatics
    Philosophical Perspectives 32 (1): 219-253. 2018.
    Philosophical Perspectives, EarlyView.
  •  46
    Overall Positive Causal Impact
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 24 (2). 1994.
  •  2
  •  11
    Kripke’s Belief Puzzle
    Philosophy Research Archives 9 369-412. 1983.
    This article offers a resolution of Kripke’s well-known belief puzzle.
  •  38
    Counterexamples to Lewis' ‘Causation as Influence’
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (3): 411-23. 2001.
  •  146
    Lewis’s ’Causation as Influence’
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (3). 2001.
    In his ‘Causation as Influence’,1 David Lewis proposed a counterfactual theory of cause which was designed to improve on his previous account.2 Here I offer counter-examples to this new account, involving early preemption and late preemption, and a revised account, which is no longer an influence theory, that handles those counter-examples.
  •  50
    The problem facing us in this paper is that of how to analyze the notion of causal relevance. This is the inverse relation of causal dependence: A is causally irrelevant to C iff C is causally independent of A. As an example of causal relevance, consider: Example 1: A - The American astronaut on Mir scratched his left ear exactly an hour ago B - I am writing this paper right now. Intuitively, A was not causally relevant to B. It is this kind of intuition that I’ll mostly be relying on when analy…Read more
  •  30
    Kripke’s Belief Puzzle
    Philosophy Research Archives 9 369-412. 1983.
    This article offers a resolution of Kripke’s well-known belief puzzle.
  •  72
    Causal independence
    Philosophy of Science 61 (1): 96-114. 1994.
    In Kvart (1991a), I discussed the analysis of causal relevance presented in A Theory of Counterfactuals (1986) (and first in 1975). I explained there in what respect the notion captured by the analysis of Kvart (1986) is a mere approximation to the requisite notion of causal relevance. In this paper I present another analysis of causal relevance, devoid of the shortcoming of its predecessor. The present analysis of causal relevance is, again, grounded in a chancelike notion of objective probabil…Read more
  •  76
    In this paper I rely on my account of counterfactuals in order to argue that supervenience and epiphenomenalism are incompatible. This argument is strong when directed against a freestanding epiphenomenalism. Along the way I will also argue that Davidson’s argument in favor of mental causation is not valid. A crucial intermediate point in the argument is the issue of counterfactual transitivity. I argue that, even though in general counterfactual transitivity is invalid, a valid sub-inference ca…Read more
  • Contrafácticos
    Dianoia 34 (34): 93. 1988.
  •  81
    In this paper I explore the ambiguity that arises between two readings of the counterfactual construction, then–d and thel–p, analyzed in my bookA Theory of Counterfactuals. I then extend the analysis I offered there to counterfactuals with true antecedents, and offer a more precise formulation of the conception of temporal divergence points used in thel–p interpretation. Finally, I discuss some ramifications of these issues for counterfactual analyses of knowledge.