Ken Warmbrod

Language theorists have recently come to have an increasing appreciation for the fact that context contributes heavily in determining our interpretation of what is said. Indeed, it now seems clear that no complete understanding of a natural language is possible without some account of the way in which context affects our interpretation of discourse. In this paper, I will attempt to explore one facet of the language – context relationship, namely, the relation between conditionals and context. The first part of the paper develops an account of truth for conditionals which allows them to depend on momentary features of the context in which they are uttered. In the second half of the paper, comparisons with other recent theories of the conditional will be considered. Particular attention will be given to the problem of whether the conditional really violates classical inferences such as Hypothetical Syllogism and Contraposition as has often been claimed in recent years.

Quine's thesis of translational indeterminacy is, by his own acknowledgement, a consequence of his behaviourism. Overt linguistic performances, we are told, are the sole data relevant in deciding empirically between competing translational hypotheses. Since the totality of behavioural data does not determine any single translation theory, translation is indeter- minate. But the assumption of the behaviourist methodology for linguistics is obviously critical to this line of argument for indeterminacy. The rise of cognitive psychology and neuroscience have sometimes been thought to encourage the view that the behaviourist presupposition is itself the underlying cause of the indeterminacy problem: if new data concerning neural processes and states could be brought to bear on the problem of radical translation, we might be able to reduce or eliminate the problems of indeterminacy. Quine, however, will have none of this. He has recently reaffirmed his claim that, in linguistics at least, behaviourism is essential. Further, he has expanded his presupposition of behaviourism to include an explicit denial of the relevance of neurological information to translation. In translation 'there is only the natives' verbal behaviour for the manuals of translation to be right or wrong about; no claims are laid regarding hidden neural mechanisms'. This paper will explore the questions whether Quine's strict behaviourist approach to translation is justified and whether data concerning inner states and processes are relevant to translation. I shall argue that neurological information does have a direct bearing on translation; in fact, such data provide our only means of resolving certain semantic issues. At the same time, however, it is a mistake to think that the problems of indeterminacy can be eliminated by simply eliminating behaviourism and appealing to neurological data.

One of the intriguing features of the semantic theories proposed by Jerry Fodor and Jerrold Katz is that they attempt to provide a criterion for semantic anomaly. Ostensibly, the criterion would enable one to determine when a phrase is semantically absurd or incongruous even in cases where the phrase appears to be grammatically proper. For example, phrases such as ‘spinster insecticide’ and ‘female uncle’ would be marked as anomalous in the semantic theory even though they seem grammatically on a par with ‘gaseous insecticide’ and ‘unemployed uncle’.Recently, however, a number of criticisms have been raised concerning the theoretical devices that Fodor and Katz supply for marking such anomalies. In this essay I want to examine these criticisms and suggest a modification of the theories which would answer the critics on this point and, at the same time, significantly enhance the explanatory power of the theories.

There is as yet no settled consensus as to what makes a term a logical constant or even as to which terms should be recognized as having this status. This essay sets out and defends a rationale for identifying logical constants. I argue for a two-tiered approach to logical theory. First, a secure, core logical theory recognizes only a minimal set of constants needed for deductively systematizing scientific theories. Second, there are extended logical theories whose objectives are to systematize various pre-theoretic, modal intuitions. The latter theories may recognize a variety of additional constants as needed in order to formalize a given set of intuitions

This paper develops a statistical approach to the problem of primitive representation. Representation of the kind commonly attributed to litmus paper, fuel gauges and tree rings occurs when, so to speak, there is a sufficiently good correlation between two variables. The fundamental distinction between misrepresentation and non-representation is explained in terms of the notion of an informationally useful correlation. The paper further argues that the statistical approach satisfactorily resolves well known puzzles such as Fodor's disjunction problem.

It is argued thatde dicto andde re beliefs are attitudes towards syntactically structured entities (sentences) in the head. In order to identify the content of ade dicto orde re belief, we must be able to match causal relations of belief states to natural language inferences. Such match-ups provide sufficient empirical justification for regarding those causal relations as syntactic transformations, that is, inferences. But only syntactically structured entities are capable of enjoying such inferential relations. Hence,de dicto andde re beliefs must be syntactically structured. Given that beliefs are also brain states, it follows that they are sentences in the brain. The argument presented here is shown to be an improvement over similar arguments advanced by Harman and Fodor

The issue whether there is any necessary connection between time and change turns, I argue, on the problem of what constitutes an accurate measurement of how much time passes. Given a plausible hypothesis about how time is measured, Shoemaker’s well known argument that time can pass without change can be seen to be unsound. But Shoemaker’s conclusion is not therefore false. The same hypothesis about time measurement supports a revised version of Shoemaker’s argument, and the revised argument does establish that the passage of a quantity of time does not require that change occur during that time. Though Shoemaker’s conclusion is vindicated, it does not follow that there is no necessary connection at all between time and change. On the contrary, there is a connection which is simply of a different kind from the one Shoemaker had in mind