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The emperor's new 'knows'In Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter (eds.), Contextualism in philosophy: knowledge, meaning, and truth, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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2Language, Logic, and FormIn Dale Jacquette (ed.), A Companion to Philosophical Logic, Blackwell. 2006.This chapter contains sections titled: Sentential Connectives Quantifiers and Quantified Noun Phrases Proper Names and Individual Constants Adjectives Adverbs and Events Utterance Modifiers Logical Form as Grammatical Form Summary.
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15Speech Acts and PragmaticsIn Michael Devitt & Richard Hanley (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Language, Wiley-blackwell. 2006.This chapter contains sections titled: Performative Utterances Locutionary, Illocutionary, and Perlocutionary Acts Classifying Illocutionary Acts Communicative Speech Acts and Intentions Conversational Implicature and Impliciture Conventional Implicature The Semantic‐Pragmatic Distinction Applications of the Semantic‐Pragmatic Distinction.
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21Change in View: Principles of ReasoningPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 48 (4): 761-764. 1988.
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68Picoeconomics (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (4): 981-983. 1995.There is a simple view of motivation on which desires are like pain-killers; they come in different strengths, and their strength determines their efficacy. That is, the stronger a desire the greater its motivational force and, when two desires conflict, the stronger one “wins out” over the weaker. This view makes it puzzling how anyone could ever exhibit “strength of will” and act on the weaker desire, even when it is a desire for something more highly valued than what is more strongly desired.…Read more
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Context DependenceIn Manuel García-Carpintero & Max Kölbel (eds.), The Continuum companion to the philosophy of language, Continuum International. 2012.
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Schiffer on Russell's Theory and Referential UsesIn Gary Ostertag (ed.), Meanings and Other Things: Themes From the Work of Stephen Schiffer, Oxford University Press. 2016.
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5Failed Reference and Feigned Reference: Much ado about NothingGrazer Philosophische Studien 26 (1): 359-374. 1985.Nothing can be said about a nonexistent object, but something can be said about the act of (unsuccessfully) attempting to refer to one or, as in fiction, of pretending to refer to one. Unsuccessful reference, whether by expressions or by speakers, can be explained straightforwardly within the context of the theory of speech acts and communication. As for fiction, there is nothing special semantically, as to either meaning or reference, about its language. And fictional discourse is just a distin…Read more
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The Semantics and Pragmatics of ReferenceIn Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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3Review of Fretheim & Gundel (1996): Reference and Referent Accessibility (review)Pragmatics and Cognition 6 (1-2): 335-338. 1998.
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117Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for RealismPhilosophy of Science 52 (3): 477-478. 1985.
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Drawing More Lines: Response to Depraetere and SalkieIn Raphael Salkie & Ilse Depraetere (eds.), Semantics and Pragmatics: Drawing a Line, Springer Verlag. 2016.
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955Linguistic Communication and Speech ActsMIT Press. 1979.a comprehensive, somewhat Gricean theory of speech acts, including an account of communicative intentions and inferences, a taxonomy of speech acts, and coverage of many topics in pragmatics
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1A Rationale for ReliabilismIn Sven Bernecker & Fred I. Dretske (eds.), Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology, Oxford University Press. 2000.
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35Burnham, Douglas and Ole Martin Skilleås. The Aesthetics of Wine. Malden, MA: Wiley‐Blackwell, 2012, ix + 227 pp., $119.95 cloth (review)Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 71 (4): 388-389. 2013.
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94Sometimes a Great Notion: A Critical Notice of Mark Crimmins’Talk About BeliefsMind and Language 8 (3): 431-441. 1993.Anyone weary of endless philosophical debate on belief reports will find welcome relief in this book. Talking not just about belief talk but about belief itself, it offers much that is new, interesting, and subtle. The central thesis, though interestingly and subtly developed, is not exactly new. It is a version of the “hidden indexical theory” (HIT) of..
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74Review: Robert J. Stainton: Words and Thoughts: Subsentences, Ellipsis, and the Philosophy of Language (review)Mind 117 (467): 739-742. 2008.
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114Nowadays the traditional quest for certainty seems not only futile but pointless. Resisting skepticism no longer seems to require meeting the Cartesian demand for an unshakable foundation for knowledge. True beliefs can be less than maximally justified and still be justified enough to qualify as knowledge, even though some beliefs that are justified to the same extent are false. Yet a few philosophers suggest that there is a special sort of justification that only true beliefs can have. Call it …Read more
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238The excluded middle: Semantic minimalism without minimal propositions (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2). 2006.Insensitive Semantics is mainly a protracted assault on semantic Contextualism, both moderate and radical. Cappelen and Lepore argue that Moderate Contextualism leads inevitably, like marijuana to heroin or masturbation to blindness, to Radical Contextualism and in turn that Radical Contextualism is misguided. Assuming that the only alternative to Contextualism is their Semantic Minimalism, they think they’ve given an indirect argument for it. But they overlook a third view, one that splits the …Read more
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139If you think that semantic minimalism is the only alternative to contextualism but you’d rather do without Cappelen and Lepore’s mysteriously minimal “propositions,” you can. You just have to recognize that being semantically incomplete does not make a sentence context-sensitive. You don’t have to go through the ritual of repeatedly incanting things like this: “John is ready” expresses the proposition that John is ready. Instead, you can opt for Radical Minimalism and suppose that “John is ready…Read more
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116Paradoxical though it may seem, there are certain things one can do just by saying what one is doing. This is possible if one uses a verb that names the very sort of act one is performing. Thus one can thank someone by saying 'Thank you', fire someone by saying 'You're fired', and apologize by saying 'I apologize'. These are examples of 'explicit performative utterances', statements in form but not in fact. Or so thought their discoverer, J. L. Austin, who contrasted them with 'constatives'. The…Read more
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