Krasimira Filcheva

This paper argues that there is a general problem for the application of a broadly abductive methodology in logical theory choice. According to the Generalized Quinean Challenge, logical disagreement is not genuinely possible because rival logics do not share the meanings of their respective logical constants and the meanings of the metalogical predicates such as “is valid.” I argue that the Generalized Quinean Challenge is a serious problem for anti-exceptionalists about logic who want to maintain the validity of a broadly abductive methodology in the epistemology of logic.

Can natural language represent logically impossible circumstances? Can there be logically impossible contents? The received view on semantic content allows for logically impossible contents. Much recent work in the philosophy of language and logic meant to account for hyperintensional phenomena also assumes that the answer to both of these questions is “yes.” I want to argue that this widespread assumption is indefensible. Representing the logically impossible in language, contrary to the dominant view in semantics, is not truly possible. The main argument for this position appeals to a highly plausible and minimal condition for the possession of semantic content. I call this the negative coherence condition. Any candidate's meaningful sentence S possesses semantic content only if the content of S is logically compossible with the content of the meaning-constituting sentences associated with each of the descriptive constituent terms of S. However, the sentences of L thought to express logically impossible contents that cannot meet the negative coherence condition on semantic content. In an intuitive sense, sentences with logically impossible contents are incoherent with the conditions of their own meaningfulness.

This paper challenges the widespread view that contradictions have semantic content. I argue that contradictory sentences in natural language, taken literally and occurring within assertoric contexts, lack content. I present an extended twofold argument, which rests on a set of considerations about the fundamental connection between meaning-constitutivity in natural language and the semantic status of contradictions. First, I argue that the contradictory negations of analytic statements cannot have semantic content as a necessary condition for the possibility of meaning-constitutive facts in natural language. Second, I argue that the special role of contradictions in the constitution of sameness and difference of content in natural language is incompatible with the view that non-analytic contradictions could have semantic content. These two arguments jointly imply that all contradictions in natural language lack content.

The dream sceptic argues that our ordinary beliefs are not justified because we cannot know that we have not always been dreaming. This is the Always Dreaming Hypothesis (ADH). I develop the traditional coherence objection to dream scepticism and argue that the coherence objection can be reformulated in a way that makes it both plausible and defensible. Considerations about the incoherence of dreams can be given probabilistic expression in a way that shows ADH to be highly improbable. Given the evidence of coherence, ADH can be rationally rejected. Even if ADH is augmented with causal information sufficient to account for the coherence and order of conscious experience, the resulting dream scepticism would then reduce to a BIV-type scepticism and thus fail to possess independent sceptical force.

The aim of this article is to argue against the real possibility of languages without subject‐predicate structure, so‐called feature‐placing languages. They were first introduced by Strawson (1959/1990), later given formal expression through Quine's Predicate Functor Logic (Quine, 1960, Quine, 1971/Quine, 1976, Quine, 1992), and further elaboration in (Hawthorne & Cortens, 1995). I argue that, on the presumption that feature‐placing languages are not mere notational variants on first‐order languages, the idea of such languages is incoherent. The argument for this view rests on two highly plausible views about the conditions for the possibility of sentential meaning in natural languages. If accepted, these two views jointly imply that the sentences of feature‐placing languages lack sufficient internal structure to meet the conditions for sentential meaning. Feature‐placing languages cannot then count as genuine languages.

According to the unrestricted version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), every truth has an explanation. I argue that there is defeasible methodological justification for belief in an unrestricted PSR. The argument is based on considerations about our cognitive limitations. It is possible that our cognitive limitations prevent us from even recognizing the explanatorily open character of some propositions we can now represent: the fact that these propositions are explicable in the first place. If this is the case, then a proper recognition of our limitations and a standing goal of reasoning to attain complete explanatory knowledge justify the adoption of an unrestricted PSR.