•  1370
    Pronouns and Gender
    In Luvell Anderson & Ernie LePore (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Applied Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    This chapter introduces readers to the empirical questions at issue in debates over gendered pronouns and assesses the plausibility of various possible answers to these questions. It has two parts. The first is a general introduction to the linguistics and psychology of grammatical gender. The second focuses on the meanings of gendered pronouns in English. It begins with a discussion of some methodological limitations of empirical approaches to the topic and the normative implications of those l…Read more
  •  351
    Context, content, and relativism
    Philosophical Studies 136 (1): 1--29. 2007.
    This paper argues against relativism, focusing on relativism based on the semantics of predicates of personal taste. It presents and defends a contextualist semantics for these predicates, derived from current work on gradable adjectives. It then considers metasemantic questions about the kinds of contextual parameters this semantics requires. It argues they are not metasemantically different from those in other gradable adjectives, and that contextual parameters of this sort are widespread in n…Read more
  •  292
    A contextual–hierarchical approach to truth and the liar paradox
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 33 (1): 27-88. 2004.
    This paper presents an approach to truth and the Liar paradox which combines elements of context dependence and hierarchy. This approach is developed formally, using the techniques of model theory in admissible sets. Special attention is paid to showing how starting with some ideas about context drawn from linguistics and philosophy of language, we can see the Liar sentence to be context dependent. Once this context dependence is properly understood, it is argued, a hierarchical structure emerge…Read more
  •  264
    The Liar Paradox
    In Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Csli Publications. 2010.
    The first sentence in this essay is a lie. There is something odd about saying so, as has been known since ancient times. To see why, remember that all lies are untrue. Is the first sentence true? If it is, then it is a lie, and so it is not true. Conversely, suppose that it is not true. As we (viz., the authors) have said it, presumably with the intention of you believing it when it is not true, it is a lie. But then it is true!
  •  263
    Meaning, Concepts, and the Lexicon
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 11 (1): 1-29. 2011.
    This paper explores how words relate to concepts. It argues that in many cases, words get their meanings in part by associating with concepts, but only in conjunction with substantial input from language. Language packages concepts in grammatically determined ways. This structures the meanings of words, and determines which sorts of concepts map to words. The results are linguistically modulated meanings, and the extralinguistic concepts associated with words are often not what intuitively would…Read more
  •  242
    Binding, Compositionality, and Semantic Values
    Philosophers' Imprint 20. 2020.
    In this paper, we defend a traditional approach to semantics, that holds that the outputs of compositional semantics are propositional, i.e. truth conditions. Though traditional, this view has been challenged on a number of fronts over the years. Since classic work of Lewis, arguments have been offered which purport to show that semantic composition requires values that are relativized, e.g. to times, or other parameters that render them no longer propositional. Focusing in recent variants of th…Read more
  •  227
    Circularity, Definition and Truth
    Philosophical Review 111 (3): 465-470. 2002.
    This is a collection of eighteen solicited papers on the topics of the title: circularity, definition, and truth. The papers are loosely connected in subject matter, but present a great variety of issues, theories, and approaches. Amongst the many subjects discussed are: the revision theory of truth and applications of revision rules, partiality and fixed point constructions, substitutional quantification, fuzzy logic, negation, belief revision, context dependence, hierarchies, Tarski on truth, …Read more
  •  214
    Context and discourse
    Mind and Language 17 (4). 2002.
    Current theories of context see context as composed of information that is localizable to individual utterances. Current theories of discourse grant that discourses have important global properties that are not so localizable. In this paper, I argue that context, even narrowly construed as whatever combines with a sentence to determine truth conditions, must have a discourse -global component. I identify a context-dependence phenomenon related to the linguistic concepts of topic and focus, isola…Read more
  •  210
    Truth
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.
    Truth is one of the central subjects in philosophy. It is also one of the largest. Truth has been a topic of discussion in its own right for thousands of years. Moreover, a huge variety of issues in philosophy relate to truth, either by relying on theses about truth, or implying theses about truth.
  •  191
    Quantification and realism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (3). 2004.
    This paper argues for the thesis that, roughly put, it is impossible to talk about absolutely everything. To put the thesis more precisely, there is a particular sense in which, as a matter of semantics, quantifiers always range over domains that are in principle extensible, and so cannot count as really being ‘absolutely everything’. The paper presents an argument for this thesis, and considers some important objections to the argument and to the formulation of the thesis. The paper also offers…Read more
  •  182
    The liar in context
    Philosophical Studies 103 (3). 2001.
    About twenty-five years ago, Charles Parsons published a paper that began by asking why we still discuss the Liar Paradox. Today, the question seems all the more apt. In the ensuing years we have seen not only Parsons’ work (1974), but seminal work of Saul Kripke (1975), and a huge number of other important papers. Too many to list. Surely, one of them must have solved it! In a way, most of them have. Most papers on the Liar Paradox offer some explanation of the behavior of paradoxical sentences,…Read more
  •  182
    Semantics and truth relative to a world
    Synthese 166 (2): 281-307. 2009.
    This paper argues that relativity of truth to a world plays no significant role in empirical semantic theory, even as it is done in the model-theoretic tradition relying on intensional type theory. Some philosophical views of content provide an important notion of truth at a world, but they do not constrain the empirical domain of semantic theory in a way that makes this notion empirically significant. As an application of this conclusion, this paper shows that a potential motivation for relativ…Read more
  •  159
    Truth, reflection, and hierarchies
    Synthese 142 (3). 2005.
    A common objection to hierarchical approaches to truth is that they fragment the concept of truth. This paper defends hierarchical approaches in general against the objection of fragmentation. It argues that the fragmentation required is familiar and unprob-lematic, via a comparison with mathematical proof. Furthermore, it offers an explanation of the source and nature of the fragmentation of truth. Fragmentation arises because the concept exhibits a kind of failure of closure under reflection. …Read more
  •  153
    The story goes that Epimenides, a Cretan, used to claim that all Cretans are always liars. Whether he knew it or not, this claim is odd. It is easy to see it is odd by asking if it is true or false. If it is true, then all Cretans, including Epimenides, are always liars, in which case what he said must be false. Thus, if what he says is true, it is false. Conversely, suppose what Epimenides said is false. Then some Cretan at some time speaks truly. This might not tell us anything about Epimenide…Read more
  •  145
    Discussion – truth, disquotation, and expression: On McGinn's theory of truth (review)
    Philosophical Studies 118 (3): 413-423. 2004.
    In Logical Properties, Colin McGinn offers a new theory of truth, which he describes as “thick disquotationalism.” In keeping with wider theme of the book, truth emerges as conceptually primitive. Echoing Moore, it is simple and unanalyzable. Though truth cannot be analyzed, in the sense of giving a conceptual decomposition, McGinn argues that truth can be defined. A non-circular statement of its application conditions can be given. This makes truth a singularly remarkable property. Indeed, by McG…Read more
  •  142
    Minimalism and Paradoxes
    Synthese 135 (1): 13-36. 2003.
    This paper argues against minimalism about truth. It does so by way of a comparison of the theory of truth with the theory of sets, and consideration of where paradoxes may arise in each. The paper proceeds by asking two seemingly unrelated questions. First, what is the theory of truth about? Answering this question shows that minimalism bears important similarities to naive set theory. Second, why is there no strengthened version of Russell's paradox, as there is a strengthened Liar paradox? An…Read more
  •  141
    In this paper, we offer a theory of the role of the nominal in complex demonstrative expressions, such as 'this dog' or 'that glove with a hole in it'.
  •  135
    A great deal of discussion in recent philosophy of language has centered on the idea that there might be hidden contextual parameters in our sentences. But relatively little attention has been paid to what those parameters themselves are like, beyond the assumption that they behave more or less like variables do in logic. My goal in this paper is to show this has been a mistake. I shall argue there are at least two very different sorts of contextual parameters. One is indeed basically like varia…Read more
  •  123
    More on Operators and Tense
    Analysis 71 (1): 112-123. 2011.
    Cappelen and Hawthorne’s Relativism and Monadic Truth (2009) offers an extended defense of a thesis they call simplicity, which, in brief, holds that propositions are true or false simpliciter. Propositions are cast in their traditional roles as the contents of assertions, and as the semantic values of declarative sentences in contexts. Simplicity stands in sharp contrast to forms of relativism including, for instance, a form that hold that our claims are true or false only relative to a judge. …Read more
  •  121
    Supervenience and Infinitary Logic
    Noûs 35 (3): 419-439. 2001.
    The discussion of supervenience is replete with the use of in?nitary logical operations. For instance, one may often ?nd a supervenient property that corresponds to an in?nite collection of supervenience-base properties, and then ask about the in?nite disjunction of all those base properties. This is crucial to a well-known argument of Kim (1984) that supervenience comes nearer to reduction than many non-reductive physicalists suppose. It also appears in recent discussions such as Jackson (1998)…Read more
  •  108
    Against Truth-value gaps
    In J. C. Beall (ed.), Liars and Heaps, Oxford University Press. pp. 151--94. 2003.
    ∗Thanks to J. C. Beall, Alex Byrne, Jason Decker, Tyler Doggett, Paul Elbourne, Adam Elga, Warren Goldfarb, Delia Graff, Richard Heck, Charles Parsons, Mark Richard, Susanna Siegel, Jason Stanley, Judith Thomson, Carol Voeller, Brian Weatherson, Ralph Wedgwood, Steve Yablo, Cheryl Zoll, and an anonymous referee for valuable comments and discussions. Versions of this material were presented in my seminar at MIT in the Fall of 2000, and at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Parts of this…Read more
  •  90
    Definite Descriptions and Quantifier Scope: Some Mates Cases Reconsidered
    European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 3 (2): 133-158. 2007.
    This paper reexamines some examples, discussed by Mates and others, of sentences containing both definite descriptions and quantifiers. It has frequently been claimed that these sentences provide evidence for the view that definite descriptions themselves are quantifiers. The main goal of this paper is to argue this is not so. Though the examples are compatible with quantificational approaches to definite descriptions, they are also compatible with views that treat definite descriptions as basic…Read more
  •  88
    In this paper, I shall explore a determiner in natural language which is ambivalent as to whether it should be classified as quantificational or objectdenoting: the determiner both. Both in many ways appears to be a paradigmatic quantifier; and yet, I shall argue, it can be interpreted as having an individual—an object—as semantic value. To show the significance of this, I shall discuss two ways of thinking about quantifiers. We often think about quantifiers via intuitions about kinds of thoughts. Cer…Read more
  •  55
    One of the mainstays of the theory of definite descriptions since Russell (1905) has been their interaction with negation. In particular, Russellians, who advocate the view that definite descriptions are a kind of quantifier, point to these interactions as evidence in favor of the their view. The argument runs roughly as follows.
  •  53
    The taming of the true
    Philosophical Review 109 (2): 290-293. 2000.
    The Taming of the True continues the project Neil Tennant began in Anti-realism and Logic of investigating and defending anti-realism. Tennant’s earlier book anticipated a second volume, in which issues related to empirical discourse would be addressed in greater detail. The Taming of the True provides this sequel. It also attempts a ground-clearing project, by addressing challenges to some of the presuppositions and implications of Tennant’s anti-realist position. Finally, it takes an opportuni…Read more
  •  50
    A great deal of discussion in recent philosophy of language has centered on the idea that there might be hidden contextual parameters in our sentences. But relatively little attention has been paid to what those parameters themselves are like, beyond the assumption that they behave more or less like variables do in logic. My goal in this paper is to show this has been a mistake. I argue there are at least two very different sorts of contextual parameters. One is indeed basically like variables i…Read more
  •  49
    Unrestricted quantification and extraordinary context dependence?
    Philosophical Studies 180 (5-6): 1-22. 2021.
    This paper revisits a challenge for contextualist approaches to paradoxes such as the Liar paradox and Russell’s paradox. Contextualists argue that these paradoxes are to be resolved by appeal to context dependence. This can offer some nice and effective ways to avoid paradox. But there is a problem. Context dependence is, at least to begin with, a phenomenon in natural language. Is there really such context dependence as the solutions to paradoxes require, and is it really just a familiar lingu…Read more
  •  49
    Quantifiers
    In Ernest Lepore & Barry Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. pp. 794--821. 2006.
    The study of quantification in natural language has made remarkable progress. Quantification in natural language has been investigated extensively by philosophers, logicians, and linguists. The result has been an elegant and far-reaching theory. This article presents a survey of some of the important components of this theory. The first section presents the core of the theory of generalized quantifiers. This theory explores the range of expressions of generality in natural language, and studies …Read more
  •  35
    Formal Theories of Truth
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
    Three leading philosopher-logicians present a clear and concise overview of formal theories of truth, explaining key logical techniques. Truth is as central topic in philosophy: formal theories study the connections between truth and logic, including the intriguing challenges presented by paradoxes like the Liar.