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2570Meaning and Formal Semantics in Generative GrammarErkenntnis 80 (1): 61-87. 2015.A generative grammar for a language L generates one or more syntactic structures for each sentence of L and interprets those structures both phonologically and semantically. A widely accepted assumption in generative linguistics dating from the mid-60s, the Generative Grammar Hypothesis , is that the ability of a speaker to understand sentences of her language requires her to have tacit knowledge of a generative grammar of it, and the task of linguistic semantics in those early days was taken to…Read more
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585MeaningClarendon Press. 1972.What is it for marks or sounds to have meaning, and what is it for someone to mean something in producing them? Answering these and related questions, Schiffer explores communication, speech acts, convention, and the meaning of linguistic items in this reissue of a seminal work on the foundations of meaning. A new introduction takes account of recent developments and places his theory in a broader context.
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432Expression-Meaning and VaguenessIn Arthur Sullivan (ed.), Sensations, Thoughts, and Language: Essays in Honor of Brian Loar, Routledge. 2019.Brian Loar attempted to provide the Gricean program of intention-based semantics with an account of expression-meaning. But the theory he presented, like virtually every other foundational semantic or meta-semantical theory, was an idealization that ignored vagueness. What would happen if we tried to devise theories that accommodated the vagueness of vague expressions? I offer arguments based on well-known features of vagueness that, if sound, show that neither Brian’s nor any other extant theor…Read more
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321A problem for a direct-reference theory of belief reportsNoûs 40 (2): 361-368. 2006.(1) The propositions we believe and say are _Russellian_ _propositions_: structured propositions whose basic components are the objects and properties our thoughts and speech acts are about. (2) Many singular terms
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321XIII*—Contextualist Solutions to ScepticismProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 96 (1): 317-334. 1996.Stephen Schiffer; XIII*—Contextualist Solutions to Scepticism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 317–334, https://
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274Meaning In Speech and In ThoughtPhilosophical Quarterly 63 (250): 141-159. 2013.If we think in a lingua mentis, questions about relations between linguistic meaning and propositional-attitude content become questions about relations between meaning in a public language (p-meaning) and meaning in a language of thought (t-meaning). Whether or not the neo-Gricean is correct that p-meaning can be defined in terms of t-meaning and then t-meaning defined in terms of the causal-functional roles of mentalese expressions, it's apt to seem obvious that separate accounts are needed of…Read more
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251Propositional contentIn Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2006.To a first approximation, _propositional content_ is whatever _that-clauses_ contribute to what is ascribed in utterances of sentences such as Ralph believes _that Tony Curtis is alive_. Ralph said _that Tony Curtis is alive_. Ralph hopes _that Tony Curtis is alive_. Ralph desires _that Tony Curtis is alive_.
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242Russell's theory of definite descriptionsMind 114 (456): 1135-1183. 2005.The proper statement and assessment of Russell's theory depends on one's semantic presuppositions. A semantic framework is provided, and Russell's theory formulated in terms of it. Referential uses of descriptions raise familiar problems for the theory, to which there are, at the most general level of abstraction, two possible Russellian responses. Both are considered, and both found wanting. The paper ends with a brief consideration of what the correct positive theory of definite descriptions m…Read more
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232Descriptions, indexicals, and belief reports: Some dilemmas (but not the ones you expect)Mind 104 (413): 107-131. 1995.
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228The things we meanOxford University Press. 2003.Stephen Schiffer presents a groundbreaking account of meaning and belief, and shows how it can illuminate a range of crucial problems regarding language, mind, knowledge, and ontology. He introduces the new doctrine of 'pleonastic propositions' to explain what the things we mean and believe are. He discusses the relation between semantic and psychological facts, on the one hand, and physical facts, on the other; vagueness and indeterminacy; moral truth; conditionals; and the role of propositiona…Read more
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228Propositions, What Are They Good For?In Richard Schantz (ed.), Prospects for Meaning (Current Issues in Theoretical Philosophy, Vol. 3), Walter De Gruyter. 2012.Although there is a vast literature on whether propositional attitudes are relations to propositions, a crucial question that ought to lie at the heart of this debate is not often enough seriously addressed. This is the question of the contribution propositions make to the ways in which we benefit from having our propositional-attitude concepts, if those concepts are concepts of relations to propositions. Unless propositions can be shown to confer a benefit that no non-propositions could provide…Read more
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218Yes, a reply to Brian Loar's "can we confirm supervenient properties?"Philosophical Issues 4 93-100. 1993.
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211David’s epistemic understanding of two-dimensional semantics has these two features. First, although he considers at least two construals of epistemically possible worlds, on one of them they are centered metaphysically possible worlds. Second, David intends epistemic two-dimensional semantics to yield a theory of propositional-attitude content, as well as having application to the semantics of natural language expressions. These two features come together in David’s “The Components of Conten…Read more
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187Evidence= Knowledge: Williamson's Solution to Skepticism?In Patrick Greenough, Duncan Pritchard & Timothy Williamson (eds.), Williamson on Knowledge, Oxford University Press. pp. 183--202. 2009.A single argument template---the EPH template---can be used to generate versions of the best known and most challenging skeptical problems. In his brilliantly groundbreaking book Knowledge and Its Limits, Timothy Williamson presents a theory of knowledge and evidence which he clearly intends to provide a response to skepticism in its most important forms. After laying out EPH skepticism and reviewing possible ways of responding to it, I show how elements of Williamson’s theory motivate a hithert…Read more
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185Philosophical & Jurisprudential Issues of VaguenessIn Ralf Geert Keil & Poscher (ed.), Vagueness and the Law: Philosophical and Legal Approaches, Not Yet Known. forthcoming.
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164S produces the sounds “It’s snowing” in the presence of A, and A instantaneously comes to know that it’s snowing. S has communicated to, or told, A that it’s snowing, and, as a result of S’s speech act, A came to know that it was snowing. Philosophical interest in communication turns on four inter-related questions. The first is about the logical structure of communication, or, more specifically, about whether communication is a relation that holds among three things just in case the first commu…Read more
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157Vague propertiesIn Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and Clouds: Vagueness, its Nature, and its Logic, Oxford University Press. pp. 109--130. 2010.I. Vague Properties and the Problem of Vagueness The philosophical problem of vagueness is to say what vagueness is in a way that helps to resolve the sorites paradox. Saying what vagueness is requires saying what kinds of things can be vague and in what the vagueness of each kind consists. Philosophers dispute whether things of this, that, or the other kind can be vague, but no one disputes that there are vague linguistic expressions. Among vague expressions, predicates hold a special place in …Read more
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