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19Propositional AttitudesIn Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Wiley-blackwell. 1997.This chapter argues that some have wanted to reserve the term 'propositional attitude' for states which are 'in principle accessible' to consciousness, or that are 'inferentially integrated' with other propositional attitudes. Some of the contention and research surrounding propositional attitudes and sentences ascribing them results from their importance to epistemology, philosophy of mind, and action theory. Perhaps the primary reason is the view that propositional attitudes are relations to p…Read more
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8Truth and truth bearersOxford University Press. 2015.This book collects nine seminal essays by Mark Richard published between 1980 and 2014, alongside four new essays and an introduction that puts the essays in context. Each essay is an attempt, in one way or another, to understand the idea of a proposition. Part I discusses whether the objects of thought and assertion can change truth value over time. Part II develops and defends a relativist view of the objects of assertion and thought; it includes discussions of the nature of disagreement, mora…Read more
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6Analysis, Synonymy, and SenseIn C. Anthony Anderson & Michael Zelëny (eds.), Logic, meaning, and computation: essays in memory of Alonzo Church, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 545-571. 2001.
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81Is Reference Essential to Meaning?Metaphysics 3 (1): 68-80. 2020.Most linguists and philosophers will tell you that whatever meaning is, it determines the reference of names, the satisfaction conditions of nouns and verbs, the truth conditions of sentences; in linguist speak, meaning determines semantic value. So a change in semantic value implies a change in meaning. So the semantic value a meaning determines is essential to that meaning: holding contributions from context constant, if two words have different semantic values they cannot mean the same thing.…Read more
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28Meanings as SpeciesOxford University Press. 2019.Mark Richard presents an original theory of meaning, as the collection of assumptions speakers make in using it and expect their hearers to recognize as being made. Meaning is spread across a population, inherited by each new generation of speakers from the last, and evolving through the interactions of speakers with their environment.
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39Marcus on Belief and Belief in the ImpossibleTheoria 28 (3): 407-420. 2013.I review but don’t endorse Marcus’ arguments that impossible beliefs are impossible. I defend her claim that belief’s objects are, in some important sense, not the bearers of truth and falsity, discuss her disposition- alism about belief, and argue it’s a good fit with the idea that belief’s objects are Russellian states of affairs.
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25Precis of When Truth Gives OutCroatian Journal of Philosophy 11 (2): 143-147. 2011.When Truth Gives Out discusses some of the relations between performative and expressive aspects of language and those aspects of language that determine truth conditions. Among the topics it takes up are slurring speech, the ‘Frege-Geach’ objection to expressivism, vagueness, and relativism. It develops an alternative to standard truth conditional semantics, one based on the notion of a commitment.
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5Truth and Truth Bearers: Meaning in Context, Volume IiOxford University Press UK. 2015.This book collects nine seminal essays by Mark Richard published between 1980 and 2014, alongside four new essays and an introduction that puts the essays in context. Each essay is an attempt, in one way or another, to understand the idea of a proposition. Part I discusses whether the objects of thought and assertion can change truth value over time. Part II develops and defends a relativist view of the objects of assertion and thought; and Part III discusses issues having to do with relations b…Read more
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28Demonstratives, Indexicals, and Tensed Attributions of BeliefDissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst. 1982.Sentences of natural languages are often said to express propositions and to have meanings . This work is about the nature of such entities and their role in an account of the truth conditions of tensed attributions of belief containing demonstratives and indexicals. ;In Chapter I, I discuss the temporal properties of propositions. Two views concerning the temporal properties of propositions--temporalism and eternalism--are characterized; eternalism is defended as the correct view. I show that t…Read more
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4Semantic pretenseIn T. Hofweber & A. Everett (eds.), Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles of Non-Existence, Csli Publications. pp. 205--32. 2000.
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107Seeking a centaur, adoring adonis: Intensional transitives and empty termsMidwest Studies in Philosophy 25 (1). 2001.
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129Precis of When Truth Gives Out (review)Philosophical Studies 160 (3): 441-444. 2012.Precis of When Truth Gives Out Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-4 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9792-4 Authors Mark Richard, Philosophy Department, Harvard University, Emerson Hall, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.
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IndexicalsIn William Bright (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press. 2003.
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30Context, Vagueness, and OntologyIn Patrick Greenough & Michael Patrick Lynch (eds.), Truth and realism, Oxford University Press. pp. 162. 2006.
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183Relativistic content and disagreement (review)Philosophical Studies 156 (3): 421-431. 2011.Herman Cappelen and John Hawthorne’s Relativism and Monadic Truth presses a number of worries about relativistic content. It forces one to think carefully about what a relativist should mean by saying that speakers disagree or contradict one another in asserting such content. My focus is on this question, though at points (in particular in Sect. 4) I touch on other issues Cappelen and Hawthorne (CH) raise.
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29OpacityIn Ernie Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2005.There seems to be a lot of opacity in our language. Quotation is opaque. The modal idioms are apparently opaque. Propositional attitude ascriptions seem opaque, as do the environments created by verbs such as ‘seeks’ and ‘fears’. Opacity raises a number of issues — first and foremost, whether there is such a thing. This article concentrates on the question of whether there is any opacity to be found in natural language, examining various reasons one might have for denying that apparent opacity i…Read more
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77When Truth Gives OutOxford University Press. 2008.Is the point of belief and assertion invariably to think or say something true? Is the truth of a belief or assertion absolute, or is it only relative to human interests? Most philosophers think it incoherent to profess to believe something but not think it true, or to say that some of the things we believe are only relatively true. Common sense disagrees. It sees many opinions, such as those about matters of taste, as neither true nor false; it takes it as obvious that some of the truth is rela…Read more
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |