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2Gödel: Facts and DescriptionsIn Facing Facts, Clarendon Press. 2001.Sets out Kurt Gödel's slingshot argument. The original argument—or, at least, the premisses of the argument that Neale attributes to Gödel—can be found in a fleeting footnote to a discussion of the relationship between Bertrand Russell's Theory of Descriptions and Theory of Facts. Usually each theory is viewed as quite independent of the other, but Gödel argues otherwise: that the viability of the latter depends upon the viability of the former. Neale summarizes Gödel's standpoint as follows: ‘i…Read more
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The End of Representation?In Facing Facts, Clarendon Press. 2001.Introduces the criticisms put forward by philosophers such as Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty to the idea that one thing might represent another: that thoughts, utterances, and inscriptions are said to have content by virtue of their power to represent reality; and that those that do the job accurately are true, they correspond to the facts, or mirror reality—they are representations of reality. The author then outlines the deductive proof that he will present in the book to show that Davidson…Read more
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2Davidson: Truth and CorrespondenceIn Facing Facts, Clarendon Press. 2001.Discusses the philosophy of Donald Davidson, who appears to have brought the slingshot argument to the current prominence within philosophical discussions. It examines Davidson's semantic programme, the relation between semantics and ontology that he champions, his arguments against facts and the scheme–content distinction, and the ways in which he and Richard Rorty assail the notion of representation. The chapter is arranged in nine parts: Introductory Remarks; Meaning and Truth; Reference and …Read more
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2Inference PrinciplesIn Facing Facts, Clarendon Press. 2001.Chs. 7 set out and clean the formal tools that are needed in the remaining chapters to prove that Donald Davidson's and Richard Rorty's cases against facts and the representation of facts are unfounded, and their slingshot arguments for discrediting the existence of facts unsatisfactory. The previous chapter clarified what is meant by such terms as ‘extensions’, ‘extensionality’ and ‘scope’, and this one separates various inference principles common in extensional logic. The six sections of the …Read more
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Gödelian EquivalenceIn Facing Facts, Clarendon Press. 2001.Chs. 9 convert the two basic forms of slingshot argument—one used by Alonzo Church, W. V. Quine, and Donald Davidson, the other by Kurt Gödel—into knock‐down deductive proofs that Donald Davidson's and Richard Rorty's cases against facts and the representation of facts are unfounded, and their slingshot arguments for discrediting the existence of facts unsatisfactory. The proofs are agnostic on key semantic issues; in particular, they assume no particular account of reference and do not even ass…Read more
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Logical EquivalenceIn Facing Facts, Clarendon Press. 2001.Chs. 8 and 9 convert the two basic forms of slingshot argument—one used by Alonzo Church, W. V. Quine, and Donald Davidson, the other by Kurt Gödel—into knock‐down deductive proofs that Donald Davidson's and Richard Rorty's cases against facts and the representation of facts are unfounded, and their slingshot arguments for discrediting the existence of facts unsatisfactory. The proofs are agnostic on key semantic issues; in particular, they assume no particular account of reference and do not ev…Read more
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Russell: Facts and DescriptionsIn Facing Facts, Clarendon Press. 2001.Examines the work of Bertrand Russell. It looks at Russell's idea that true sentences stand for facts and the philosophical and formal details of his Theory of Facts and Theory of Descriptions, both of which Neale describes as being poorly understood to this day. The six sections of the chapter are: Facts and their Parts; Representing Russellian Facts; The Theory of Descriptions; Abbreviation; Scope; Quantification and Notation. An appendix to the book looks further at Russell's definition of de…Read more
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Description and EquivalenceIn Facing Facts, Clarendon Press. 2001.Revolves around the matter of whether the stronger results that W. V. Quine and Donald Davidson were attempting to derive from slingshot arguments over facts might be forthcoming if other theories of descriptions were assumed. This also provides an opportunity to evaluate various theories as potential competitors to Bertrand Russell's theory. The four sections of the chapter are: Introductory Remarks; Hilbert and Bernays ; Fregean Theories ; and Strawsonian Theories.
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ExtensionalityIn Facing Facts, Clarendon Press. 2001.Chs. 6 and 7 set out and clean the formal tools that are needed in the remaining chapters to prove that Donald Davidson's and Richard Rorty's cases against facts and the representation of facts are unfounded, and their slingshot arguments for discrediting the existence of facts unsatisfactory. Clarifies what is meant by such terms as ‘extensions’, ‘extensionality’ and ‘scope’, and the next separates various inference principles. The four sections of the chapter are: Extensions and Sentence Conne…Read more
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Facts RevisitedIn Facing Facts, Clarendon Press. 2001.With the Descriptive Constraint discussed in Ch. 9 at hand, Ch. 11 examines diverse theories of facts with a view to establishing how viable they are, and then turns to claims about the semantics of causal statements that have been used to motivate ontologies of facts and events. Neale makes the point that there is considerable confusion in the literature on the matter of whether causal statements are extensional, but shows that once the clarifications effected in earlier chapters are brought to…Read more
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Frege: Truth and CompositionIn Facing Facts, Clarendon Press. 2001.Looks at the work of Gottlob Frege on truth and composition. It investigates Frege's idea that a sentence refers to a truth‐value, his Principle of Composition, and his abandonment of what Donald Davidson calls ‘semantic innocence’. Neale explains what kinds of slingshotian considerations prevented Frege from accepting facts as denotations of sentences and made him see sentences rather as names of truth‐values. The three sections of the chapter are: Reference and Composition; Innocence Abandoned…Read more
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6H. P. Grice (1913–1988)In Aloysius Martinich & David Sosa (eds.), A companion to analytic philosophy, Blackwell. 2001.This chapter contains sections titled: Life Meaning, use, and ordinary language The theory of conversation Philosophical psychology The logic of natural language The theory of meaning Utterer's meaning Sentence meaning and saying.
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4DescriptionsIn Michael Devitt & Richard Hanley (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Language, Wiley-blackwell. 2006.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Theory of Descriptions Motivating the Theory of Descriptions Attributive and Referential Three Ambiguity Arguments Synthesis Three More Ambiguity Arguments Indefinite Descriptions Indefinites as Logically Basic? Conclusion.
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98Facing FactsClarendon Press. 2001.This book is an original examination of attempts to dislodge a cornerstone of modern philosophy: the idea that our thoughts and utterances are representations ...
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16The Place of LanguageAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 67 (1): 153-174. 1993.This paper attempts to raise a question for the everyday view that language is a means of communication, a system of marks or sounds which we use to convey thoughts and describe the world. It first isolates the assumptions behind this everyday view before raising questions about them.
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196The Place of LanguageProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 94. 19934.This paper attempts to raise a question for the everyday view that language is a means of communication, a system of marks or sounds which we use to convey thoughts and describe the world. It first isolates the assumptions behind this everyday view before raising questions about them.
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13The Place of LanguageAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 67 (1): 153-174. 1993.This paper attempts to raise a question for the everyday view that language is a means of communication, a system of marks or sounds which we use to convey thoughts and describe the world. It first isolates the assumptions behind this everyday view before raising questions about them.
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22Papers from the 1993 Joint Session: The Place of LanguageProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 94 (1): 215-228. 1994.Michael Morris, Stephen Neale; Papers from the 1993 Joint Session: The Place of Language, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 19.
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1Silent ReferenceIn Gary Ostertag (ed.), Meanings and Other Things: Themes From the Work of Stephen Schiffer, Oxford University Press. 2016.
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‘Denotowanie’ Russella: wiek później (tłum. Michał Sala)Przeglad Filozoficzny - Nowa Seria 75. 2010.
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79On a Milestone of empiricismIn Alex Orenstein & Petr Kotatko (eds.), Knowledge, Language and Logic: Questions for Quine, Kluwer Academic Print On Demand. pp. 237--346. 2000.
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153This, That, and the OtherIn Marga Reimer & Anne Bezuidenhout (eds.), Descriptions and beyond, Oxford University Press. pp. 68-182. 2004.
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696Paul Grice and the philosophy of languageLinguistics and Philosophy 15 (5). 1992.The work of the late Paul Grice (1913–1988) exerts a powerful influence on the way philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists think about meaning and communication. With respect to a particular sentence φ and an “utterer” U, Grice stressed the philosophical importance of separating (i) what φ means, (ii) what U said on a given occasion by uttering φ, and (iii) what U meant by uttering φ on that occasion. Second, he provided systematic attempts to say precisely what meaning is by providing…Read more
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110 On LocationIn Michael O'Rourke & Corey Washington (eds.), Situating Semantics: Essays on the Philosophy of John Perry, Mit Press. pp. 251. 2005.
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20Gramatická forma, logická forma a neúplné symbolyOrganon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 11 (3): 294-334. 2005.
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90Coloring and compositionIn Philosophy and Linguistics, Boulder: Westview Press. pp. 35--82. 1999.The idea that an utterance of a basic (nondeviant) declarative sentence expresses a single true-or-false proposition has dominated philosophical discussions of meaning in this century. Refinements aside, this idea is less of a substantive theses than it is a background assumption against which particular theories of meaning are evaluated. But there are phenomena (noted by Frege, Strawson, and Grice) that threaten at least the completeness of classical theories of meaning, which associate with an…Read more
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Persistence and PolarityIn Klaus von Heusinger & Urs Egli (eds.), Reference and Anaphoric Relations, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2000.
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