•  271
    The thesis, typical among dualists, that there are no necessitation relations between events of consciousness and physical events implies that it is prima facie lucky that in our world the apparently existing psychophysical laws usually match events of consciousness and physical events in a “harmonious” way. The lucky psychophysical laws argument concludes that typical dualism amounts to a psychophysical parallelism that is prima facie too improbable to be true. I argue that an anthropic reasoni…Read more
  •  121
    The question whether the notion of rigidity can be extended in a fruitful way beyond singular terms has received a standard answer in the literature, according to which non-singular terms designate kinds, properties or other abstract singular objects and generalized rigidity is the same thing as singular term rigidity, but for terms designating such objects. I offer some new criticisms of this view and go on to defend an alternative view, on which non-singular terms designate extensions in gener…Read more
  •  396
    Modal Realism and Anthropic Reasoning
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Some arguments against David Lewis’s modal realism seek to exploit apparent inconsistencies between it and anthropic reasoning. A recent argument, in particular, seeks to exploit an inconsistency between modal realism and typicality anthropic premises, premises common in the literature on physical multiverses, to the effect that observers who are like human observers in certain respects must be typical in the relevant multiverse. Here I argue that typicality premises are not applicable to the de…Read more
  •  111
    Reference Fixing and the Paradoxes
    In Mattia Petrolo & Giorgio Venturi (eds.), Paradoxes between Truth and Proof, Springer. forthcoming.
    I defend the hypothesis that the semantic paradoxes, the paradoxes about collections, and the sorites paradoxes, are all paradoxes of reference fixing: they show that certain conventionally adopted and otherwise functional reference-fixing principles cannot provide consistent assignments of reference to certain relevant expressions in paradoxical cases. I note that the hypothesis has interesting implications concerning the idea of a unified account of the semantic, collection and sorites paradox…Read more
  •  78
    The Sorites, Content Fixing, and the Roots of Paradox
    In Otávio Bueno & Ali Abasnezhad (eds.), On the Sorites Paradox, Springer. forthcoming.
    The presentation of the “dual picture of vagueness” in my earlier work is supplemented here with a number of additional considerations. I emphasize how the picture lends itself naturally to treatments of the contribution of a typical degree adjective to propositional content and to truth conditions. A number of reasonable refinements of the picture are presented, especially concerning occasions of use of a degree adjective in which a class containing a sorites series is somehow involved in conte…Read more
  •  12
    Filipe Martone argues that reference-fixing intentions where the intended object is represented by means of a description can never fix the reference of a demonstrative, and that a speaker, as a matter of empirical fact, never has simultaneous perceptual and non-perceptual reference-fixing intentions that she can intend as fixing the reference of a demonstrative. In this note I reject Martone’s arguments for these claims.
  •  3
    Eleonora Orlando argues that one must understand some descriptivist theories of names that I criticize in my book Roads to Reference as ceteris paribus generalizations, and that on this understanding they survive my criticisms; she also introduces some doubts about my views on the knowledge speakers have of the reference-fixing conventions I postulate for proper names. In this note I argue against Orlando’s suggestion about ceteris paribus provisos and explain my view of the epistemology of refe…Read more
  •  25
    I offer new criticisms of invariantist views of logicality, objecting especially to Gila Sher’s arguments for invariantism’s ability to explain the formality, necessity, apriority and normative force of logic. I argue that the semantic conception of logic can do perfectly well without a model-theoretic notion of logicality, and that the descriptive and explanatory theoretical roles sometimes ascribed to invariantism can be played by a non-model-theoretic account of logicality, specifically by on…Read more
  •  53
    I reply to comments and criticism of my book Roads to Reference by Scott Soames (on the referents of ordinary substance terms and the conventions governing reference fixing for demonstratives, proper names, and color adjectives), Panu Raatikainen (on the exact scope of my critique of descriptivism and on the relation between referential indeterminacy and ‘‘partial reference’’), and Michael Devitt (on the role of referential intentions and anti-descriptivism in the metasemantics of demonstratives…Read more
  •  20
    Précis of Roads to reference
    Philosophical Studies 179 (3): 973-976. 2021.
    This is a summary of the contents of my book Roads to Reference, with emphasis on its proposal that the conventions governing reference fixing for demonstratives, proper names, and ordinary natural kind terms adopt the form of lists of roughly sufficient conditions for reference or reference failure; and its defense of anti-eliminativist views of the referents of ordinary natural kind terms, numerals, and terms for sensible qualities traditionally considered as “seconday”.
  •  13
    Sobre el regreso de Carroll, el convencionalismo y los fundamentos de la lógica
    Análisis Filosófico 40 (Especial): 111-131. 2021.
    Propongo que el argumento carrolliano de Quine en “Truth by Convention” no refuta una variedad especialmente genuina de convencionalismo acerca de la lógica. También argumento que la lección carrolliana básica acerca del convencionalismo es que la introducción de convenciones o tesis aceptadas acerca de qué es lógicamente correcto no puede por sí sola instaurar las disposiciones inferenciales correspondientes. Apoyándome en mi discusión del regreso carrolliano, indico finalmente que hay cuando m…Read more
  •  13
    Luis Fernández Moreno has given a number of arguments that descriptive knowledge or stipulations have a greater role in the fixing of the reference of natural kind terms than I allow in my book Roads to Reference. In this note I criticize Fernández Moreno’s arguments.
  •  16
    Axel Barceló has extended the objectivist apparatus for handling color terms that I develop in my book Roads to Reference, so that the extension covers also some aesthetic predicates. In this note I argue that Barceló’s extension probably attempts to go too far.
  •  10
    Logical Form, Truth Conditions, and Adequate Formalization
    Disputatio 12 (58): 209-222. 2020.
    I discuss Andrea Iacona’s idea that logical form mirrors truth conditions, and that logical form, and thus truth conditions, are in turn represented by means of adequate formalization. I criticize this idea, noting that the notion of adequate formalization is highly indefinite, while the pre-theoretic idea of logical form is often much more definite. I also criticize Iacona’s claim that certain distinct sentences, with the same truth conditions and differing only by co-referential names, must be…Read more
  •  11
    Matheus Valente presents a number of examples designed to show that my theory of reference fixing for demonstratives violates the desideratum that demonstrative thoughts should be transparent to speakers. In this note I argue that the alleged desideratum is not really such and defend my theory against other criticisms made by Valente.
  •  18
    Melisa Vivanco objects to my theory of the Arabic numerals in Roads to Reference that the reference fixing procedure that I postulate doesn’t exploit the morphological structure of the Arabic numerals, but it should. Against Vivanco, I argue that the procedure in question does exploit the morphological structure of the numerals in an essential way.
  •  11
    According to Ricardo Mena, a demonstrative refers to all the objects that the utterer has an intention for it to refer to, which may be more than one in cases where her referential intentions conflict. In this note I argue that Mena’s proposal has several serious problems.
  •  10
    My proposed mechanism of reference fixing for ordinary natural kind terms in the book Roads to Reference appeals to the ordinary notion of substance. In this note I reply to an objection by Martín Abreu Zavaleta that that notion is too vague to allow for a sufficiently constrained property to become the referent of a given ordinary substance term. I argue that the notion of substance is far less vague than Abreu Zavaleta claims.
  •  10
    Ordinary kinds and ontological angst. Reply to Demartini
    Manuscrito 43 (4): 215-220. 2020.
    Thainá Demartini has criticized my view that ordinary natural kind terms refer to vague non-scientific kinds and defended the more traditional view that they refer to precise kinds discovered by science. In this note I reject Demartini’s worries as based on inadequate ontological scruples.
  •  79
    How is it that words come to stand for the things they stand for? Is the thing that a word stands for - its reference - fully identified or described by conventions known to the users of the word? Or is there a more roundabout relation between the reference of a word and the conventions that determine or fix it? Do words like 'water', 'three', and 'red' refer to appropriate things, just as the word 'Aristotle' refers to Aristotle? If so, which things are these, and how do they come to be referre…Read more
  •  57
    In the first part of this paper, I express doubts that Tarski and Carnap were guilty of some confusions about the relations between truth and meaning, attributed to them by Soames. In the second part, I consider Quine's Carrollian argument against conventionalism about logical truth, discussed only briefly and approvingly by Soames, and I explore the question whether some not obviously incorrect forms of conventionalism about logical truth, such as what I call "finitary conventionalism", are imm…Read more
  •  24
    Semantics vs. Pragmatics in Impure Quotation
    In Paul Saka & Michael Johnson (eds.), The Semantics and Pragmatics of Quotation, Springer. pp. 135-167. 2017.
    I defend a semantic theory of quotation marks, according to which these are ambiguous, as they have several different acceptations involving corresponding different conventional indications. In particular, in allusion (“mixed”) uses, the corresponding conventional indication is one with an adverbial or prepositional content, roughly equivalent to “using the quoted expression or an appropriate version of it”. And in “scare” uses, the corresponding conventional indication is that the enclosed expr…Read more
  • Notas sobre el “Wahrheitsbegriff”, II
    Análisis Filosófico 21 (2): 149-186. 2001.
    This is the second part of a two-part paper devoted to a study of some historical, logical and philosophical issues arising from a reading of Tarski´s celebrated “Wahrheitsbegriff” monograph. This second part concentrates on issues related to Tarski´s “Wahrheitsbegriff” version of the theorem on the indefinability of truth. One of these issues is the correct exegesis of Tarski´s claim that a truth definition cannot be constructed in a metalanguage if its order is not higher than that of the obje…Read more
  • Notas sobre el “Wahrheitsbegriff”, I
    Análisis Filosófico 21 (1): 5-42. 2001.
    This is the first part of a two-part paper devoted to a study of some historical, logical and philosophical issues arising from a reading of Tarski´s celebrated “Wahrheitsbegriff” monograph. This first part starts with an exposition of Tarski´s “Wahrheitsbegriff” theory of truth which is historically accurate but more easily intelligible to the modern reader than Tarski´s “Wahrheitsbegriff” presentation. This exposition is then used in the refutation of some historical, logical and philosophical…Read more
  • La teoría de los modos infinitos de Spinoza
    Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofia 23 (2): 295-318. 1997.
  •  219
    Logical Consequence and Logical Expressions
    Theoria 18 (2): 131-144. 2003.
    The pretheoretical notions of logical consequence and of a logical expression are linked in vague and complex ways to modal and pragmatic intuitions. I offer an introduction to the difficulties that these intuitions create when one attempts to give precise characterizations of those notions. Special attention is given to Tarski’s theories of logical consequence and logical constancy. I note that the Tarskian theory of logical consequence has fared better in the face of the difficulties than the …Read more
  •  9
    Letters to the Editor
    with James Evans and Mario Gomez-Torrente
    Isis 90 95-97. 1999.
  •  245
    The problem of logical constants
    Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 8 (1): 1-37. 2002.
    There have been several different and even opposed conceptions of the problem of logical constants, i.e. of the requirements that a good theory of logical constants ought to satisfy. This paper is in the first place a survey of these conceptions and a critique of the theories they have given rise to. A second aim of the paper is to sketch some ideas about what a good theory would look like. A third aim is to draw from these ideas and from the preceding survey the conclusion that most conceptions…Read more
  •  145
    I offer a new objectivist theory of the contents of color language and color experience, intended especially as an account of what normal intersubjective variation in color perception and classification shows about those contents. First I explain an abstract account of the contents of color and other gradable adjectives; on the account, these contents are certain objective properties constituted in part by contextually intended standards of application, which are in turn values in the dimensions…Read more