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294Semantics, pragmatics, and the role of semantic contentIn Zoltán Gendler Szabó (ed.), Semantics Versus Pragmatics, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 111--164. 2004.Followers of Wittgenstein allegedly once held that a meaningful claim to know that p could only be made if there was some doubt about the truth of p. The correct response to this thesis involved appealing to the distinction between the semantic content of a sentence and features attaching to its use. It is inappropriate to assert a knowledge-claim unless someone in the audience has doubt about what the speaker claims to know. But this fact has nothing to do with the semantic content of knowledge…Read more
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30The Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2024.This Handbook brings together contributions from leading scholars of constitutional theory, with backgrounds in law, philosophy, and political science. Its 60 chapters not only offer an exceptional survey of the field but also provide a major contribution to it. The book explores three main areas. Firstly, the values upheld by a constitution, including rights, freedom, equality, dignity and well-being. Secondly, the modalities of a constitutional system, such as the separation of powers, democra…Read more
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17The Cambridge handbook of constitutional theory (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2024.The book is aimed at students and scholars of law, politics and philosophy. Of unprecedented breadth, it offers both a survey of, and an original contribution to, the field by some the world's leading scholars of constitutional theory.
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Part 2. Three theories of propositions. Naturalized propositionsIn Jeffrey C. King, Scott Soames & Jeff Speaks (eds.), New Thinking About Propositions, Oxford University Press. 2014.
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Part 3. Critical essays. Criticisms of Soames and SpeaksIn Jeffrey C. King, Scott Soames & Jeff Speaks (eds.), New Thinking About Propositions, Oxford University Press. 2014.
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Part 4. Further thoughts. Responses to Speaks and SoamesIn Jeffrey C. King, Scott Soames & Jeff Speaks (eds.), New Thinking About Propositions, Oxford University Press. 2014.
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Part 1. Common ground. What role do propositions play in our theories?In Jeffrey C. King, Scott Soames & Jeff Speaks (eds.), New Thinking About Propositions, Oxford University Press. 2014.
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21Context Dependent Quantifiers and Donkey AnaphoraCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 30 (sup1): 97-127. 2004.It is generally agreed that some anaphoric pronouns with quantifier antecedents occur outside the syntactic scope of their antecedents. First, there is “donkey anaphora,” of both the conditional and relative clause varieties:If Sarah owns a donkey, she beats it.Every woman who owns a donkey beats it.Without going through the details, let me just assert that there is good reason to think that the pronouns in and do not occur in the syntactic scope of the quantifier’ a donkey’. A second sort of ca…Read more
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28Felicitous Underspecification: Contextually Sensitive Expressions Lacking Unique Semantic Values in ContextOxford University Press. 2021.This book argues that contextually sensitive expressions have felicitous uses in which they lack unique semantic values in context. It formulates a rule for updating the Stalnakerian common ground in cases in which an accepted sentence contains an expression lacking a unique semantic value in context.
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26Transparent and Opaque Contextual SensitivityProtoSociology 38 87-105. 2021.Lots of contextually sensitive expressions appear to have context invariant meanings that do not by themselves suffice to secure semantic values for those expressions in context. For example, suppose I say 1. She is smart. where I do not demonstrate any female, I don’t intend that some female is the semantic value of my use of ‘she’, no female is uniquely salient in the context of utterance, and no female has been under discussion. It would appear in such a case that the context invariant meanin…Read more
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173New Thinking About PropositionsOxford University Press. 2014.Philosophy, science, and common sense all refer to propositions--things we believe and say, and things which are true or false. But there is no consensus on what sorts of things these entities are. Jeffrey C. King, Scott Soames, and Jeff Speaks argue that commitment to propositions is indispensable, and each defend their own views on the debate
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2Propositions and truth-bearersIn Michael Glanzberg (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Truth, Oxford University Press. pp. 307-332. 2018.
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266Binding, Compositionality, and Semantic ValuesPhilosophers' Imprint 20. 2020.In this paper, we defend a traditional approach to semantics, that holds that the outputs of compositional semantics are propositional, i.e. truth conditions. Though traditional, this view has been challenged on a number of fronts over the years. Since classic work of Lewis, arguments have been offered which purport to show that semantic composition requires values that are relativized, e.g. to times, or other parameters that render them no longer propositional. Focusing in recent variants of th…Read more
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Adult rat hypothalamo-pituitary axis and choroid plexus are rich in basic fibroblast growth factor which likely has a role in fluid homeostasis. Towards this end, we characterized the distribution and modulation of FGF2 in the human and rat central nervous system. To ascertain a functional link between arginine vasopressin and FGF2, a rat model of chronic dehydration was used to test the hypothesis that FGF2 expression, like that of AVP, is altered by perturbed fluid balance.Immunohistochemistry…Read more
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12On the Possibility of Correct Apparently Circular Dispositional AnalysesPhilosophical Studies 98 (3): 257-278. 2000.
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4Two Sorts of Claim about 'Logical Form'In Gerhard Preyer Georg Peter (ed.), Logical Form and Language, Clarendon Press. 2002.
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28Kent Bach on Speaker Intentions and ContextCroatian Journal of Philosophy 13 (2): 161-168. 2013.It is generally believed that natural languages have lots of contextually sensitive expressions. In addition to familiar examples like ‘I’, ‘here’, ‘today’, ‘he’, ‘that’ and so on that everyone takes to be contextually sensitive, examples of expressions that many would take to be contextually sensitive include tense, modals, gradable adjectives, relational terms , possessives and quantifi ers . With the exception of contextually sensitive expressions discussed by Kaplan [1977], there has not bee…Read more
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95Complex Demonstratives: A Quantificational AccountMIT Press. 2001.A challenge to the orthodoxy, which shows that quantificational accounts are not only as effective as direct reference accounts but also handle a wider range of ...
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154Questions of UnityProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 109 (1pt3): 257-277. 2009.In The Principles of Mathematics, Bertrand Russell famously puzzled over something he called the unity of the proposition. Echoing Russell, many philosophers have talked over the years about the question or problem of the unity of the proposition. In fact, I believe that there are a number of quite distinct though related questions all of which can plausibly be taken to be questions regarding the unity of propositions. I state three such questions and show how the theory of propositions defended…Read more
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71Can Propositions Be Naturalistically Acceptable?Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19 (1): 53-75. 1994.
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93Supplementives, the coordination account, and conflicting intentionsPhilosophical Perspectives 27 (1): 288-311. 2013.
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230Propositional unity: what’s the problem, who has it and who solves it?Philosophical Studies 165 (1): 71-93. 2013.At least since Russell’s influential discussion in The Principles of Mathematics, many philosophers have held there is a problem that they call the problem of the unity of the proposition. In a recent paper, I argued that there is no single problem that alone deserves the epithet the problem of the unity of the proposition. I there distinguished three problems or questions, each of which had some right to be called a problem regarding the unity of the proposition; and I showed how the account of…Read more
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