Tadeusz Ciecierski

Can a subject who expresses a belief with ‘today’ on a given day, and subsequently loses track of time, retain and re-express that belief on a future, potentially distant day? Since Kaplan’s tentative remarks on Rip Van Winkle, it has become popular to answer this question in the positive. However, a remarkably simple variation of the Rip Van Winkle story can show that this kind of view leads to a puzzling dilemma: either subjects cannot re-express a belief with utterances of ‘today’ on the same day, or else they may rationally exhibit conflicting stances toward the same ‘today’-belief. This result may be seen as supporting the claim that retention of ‘today’-belief over time requires the tracking of days. Yet it may also spur further research into the capacities involved in belief retention and re-expression to solve the puzzle.

One may not only represent the same objects of one’s past, but also represent them as the same objects across time. I call this phenomenon “Remembering as the Same” (RaS). In this article, I aim to bring out the connection between the simulationist model of cognitive memory and this underexplored aspect of memory experience. I shall suggest that, unlike the causalist contender, the simulationist is in an advantageous position to properly capture RaS, especially when subjects represent past objects as the same in cross-temporal trains of thought that are also future-oriented. In the course of defending this claim, I will highlight the significance of RaS in the study of memory and cross-temporal reference, critically examine the resources available to causalist approaches, and reject too simplistic incorporations of RaS within the simulationist framework.

One of the great successes in the study of language has been the application of formal methods, including those of formal logic. Even so, this chapter argues against one way of accounting for this success, by arguing that the study of natural language semantics and of logical consequence relations are not the same. There is indeed a lot we can glean about logic from looking at our languages, and at our inferential practices, but the semantic properties of natural languages do not determine genuine logical consequence relations. We can get from natural language semantics to logical consequence, but only by a significant process of identification of logical constants, abstraction, and idealization. The chapter also discusses different approaches to the nature of logical consequence, and examines which allow logic and natural language to come closer together.

The idea that concepts play a significant role in some perceptions is widespread but everybody seems to differ as to where to draw the line. Some researchers say that the difference between direct and indirect, concept driven acts of perception manifests itself whenever we perceive abstract or general properties. Others point at second order properties or causal properties. I call this inability to precisely differentiate between acts of direct and indirect perception “The Division Problem”. Furthermore there is always a question as to how widespread indirect perceptions are. Can we attribute them to prelingual cognitive systems? I call this second problem “The Distribution Problem”. -/- The main aim of the paper is providing a solution to both problems by proposing a naturalistic explication of the notion of “concept”. -/- I propose to identify the role concepts were supposed to play in perception with a mechanism of “soft detection”. Unlike hard detectors which react to a specific target in virtue of their constitution and placement in the system, soft detectors are understood as dynamic categorization devices enabling the cognitive system to selectively react to an undetectable property via flexible exploitation of data from hard detectors. -/- I conclude by showing how the notion of soft detection retains some of the aspects traditionally attributed to concepts and how does it differ from similar accounts known from contemporary literature.

The paper traces how disappointment with the notion of linguistic meaning has led to a shift towards the new, technical term of “narrow content”. In the first part of the paper I analyze the ways “narrow content” is understood in the literature. I show two important distinctions which have to be applied to the term in order to avoid confusion – the difference between context and functional theories of narrow content, and the difference between mental and linguistic narrow content. I argue that the most controversial combination of both distinctions is the idea of functional linguistic narrow content. In the second part of the paper I show that, contrary to the initial impression, this controversial, cut back notion of narrow content sheds some much needed light on several key semantic phenomena which we might otherwise be unable to explain – and because of this can be seen as a rightful descendant of the notion of meaning.

This book presents a new approach to semantics based on Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s Directival Theory of Meaning, which in effect reduces semantics of the analysed language to the combination of its syntax and pragmatics. The author argues that the DTM was forgotten because for many years philosophers didn’t have conceptual tools to appreciate its innovative nature, and that the theory was far ahead of its time. The book shows how a redesigned and modernised version of the DTM can deliver a new solution to the problem of defining linguistic meaning and that the theory can be understood as a new type of functional role semantics. The defining feature of the DTM is that it presents meaning as a product of constraints on the usage of words. According to the DTM meaning is not use, but the avoidance of misuse. Readers will see how the DTM was shelved for reasons that we don’t find so dramatic anymore, and how it contains enough original ideas and solutions to warrant developing it into a full-blown contemporary account. It is shown how many of the underlying ideas of the theory have been embraced later by philosophers and treated simply as brute facts about natural languages or even as new philosophical discoveries. Philosophers of language and researchers with an interest in how languages and the mind work will find this book a fascinating read.

In the paper I explore some hints one can find in an updated version of Ajdukiewicz’s radical conventionalism that may help to resolve some controversies within hinge epistemology, i.e. a family of positions that invoke Wittgenstein’s idea of groundless grounds of knowledge. In particular I put into doubt whether there is a real difference between pragmatic and transcendental justification of hinges, I reject epistemological disjunctivism, and I argue for anti-realistic reading of truth in a context determined by particular hinges while retaining the classical notion of truth as a regulative idea of knowledge that governs the possible revisions of hinges.

The standard truth-conditional semantics for substitutional quantification, due to Saul Kripke, does not specify what proposition is expressed by sentences containing the particular substitutional quantifier. In this paper, I propose an alternative semantics for substitutional quantification that does. The key to this semantics is identifying an appropriate propositional function to serve as the content of a bound occurrence of a formula containing a free substitutional variable. I apply this semantics to traditional philosophical reasons for interest in substitutional quantification, namely, theories of truth and ontological commitment

Theories of propositions as sets of truth-supporting circumstances are committed to the thesis that sentences or other representations true in all and only the same circumstances express the same proposition. Theories of propositions as complex, structured entities are not committed to this thesis. As a result, structured propositions can play a role in our theories of language and thought that sets of truth-supporting circumstances cannot play. To illustrate this difference, I sketch a theory of transparent, non-deflationary truth consistent with some theories of structured propositions, but inconsistent with any theory of propositions as sets of truth-supporting circumstances.

In Context and Coherence (2021), Una Stojnić defends two theses about demonstrative reference: that the deictic gestures accompanying uses of demonstratives are syntactically encoded in multi-modal syntactic constructions, and that deictic gestures so encoded are syntactically individuated by objects and individuals. Critical scrutiny of both theses reveals surprising lessons about the relationship between demonstratives and logic, but such scrutiny also reveals weaknesses in Stojnić’s arguments for the theses.

A recent argument by Gillian Russell for logical nihilism raises fundamental questions about logic. Using expressions sensitive to some feature of their linguistic context (I call such expressions _referentially promiscuous_ (Georgi 2015, 2020 ), Russell offers counterexamples to the simplest logical laws (Russel, 2017, 2018 ). Recent objections to Russell by Dicher ( 2021 ) and Haze ( 2022 ) have challenged her inclusion of referentially promiscuous expressions in instances of logical laws, but neither objection is wholly successful. The objections do, however, suggest a general strategy for objecting to Russell’s argument. In this paper I develop a version of this strategy into a successful objection according to which referential promiscuity is written into the laws of logic.

In his seminal paper On the Notion of the Cause, Bertrand Russell famously attempts to show why the view that causation is a real and mind-independent feature of the world - called "causal realism" is false. His arguments are often cited as a definitive challenge to the metaphysical tradition that takes causality as a fundamental principle of reality. Yet, despite the apparent plausibility and power of his arguments, causal realism is still a predominant view within philosophy of causation today. This paper seeks to explore how causal realism has endured Russell's attack, examining not only the weaknesses in his arguments, but also the ways in which contemporary philosophers have redefined and strengthened the realist position. By analyzing the responses to Russell's arguments, we will try to pinpoint the lessons learned from his critique and demonstrate how it has informed the development of more sophisticated theories of causation. Doing so will also contribute to a redefinition of causal realism, showing how the debate with Russell has enriched our understanding of what it means for causal theory to be realistic.

Many philosophers believe in things, propositions, which are the things that we believe, assert etc., and which are the contents of sentences. The act-type theory of propositions is an attempt to say what propositions are, to explain how we stand in relations to them, and to explain why they are true or false. The core idea of the act-type theory is that propositions are types of acts of predication. The theory is developed in various ways to offer explanations of the important properties of propositions. I present the core idea of the theory, and some developments of it. I discuss the relationship between the theory and the content–force distinction. I also present an important type of objection that has been raised to the explanations offered by the act-type theory.

In this essay, I explain how certain suggestions put forth by Frege. Wittgenstein, and Schlick regarding the interpretation of indexical expressions may be incorporated within a systematic semantic account. I argue that the 'hybrid' approach they propose is preferable to more conventional systems, in particular when it comes to the interpretation of cases of cross-contextual ellipsis. I also explain how the hybrid view entails certain important and independently motivated distinctions among contextually dependent expressions, for instance between 'here' and 'local'.

The distinction between a merely ‘rigidifying’ dthat and a directly-referential take on dthat-terms is well known, and is explicitly highlighted by Kaplan in Afterthoughts, his 1989 commentary on Demonstratives. What is not equally widely recognized is that Afterthoughts also oscillates between three different directly referential proposals. This essay discusses the semantic and philosophical implications of these different directly-referential interpretations of ‘dthat’, paying particular attention to the relationships between syntactic and propositional structure, the structure and makeup of contexts in the semantics of indexical languages, the significance of context shifting devices and of so-called operators on character, and the aims and scope of propositional semantics.

This essay discusses some aspects of the logical behaviour of sentences in languages containing indexical and demonstrative expressions. After some preliminary remarks in section one, sections two and three focus on instances of logically true sentences that may be uttered falsely, and on cases of logically equivalent sentences whose utterances may have distinct truth-values. The logical and semantic problems taken into consideration include the validity of a Principle of Translation, the so-called ‘puzzle of addressing’, and examples related to measurement and approximation. Section four discusses the complementary phenomenon of sentences that may presumably always be uttered truly, but that do not qualify as logically true. In particular, I argue against the widespread tendency to consider ‘I am here now’ or ‘I exist’ as truths of the logic of indexicals

In this paper, I propose a new way to distinguish between indexicals, like “I” and “today”, and demonstratives, like “she” and “this”. The main test case is the second person singular pronoun “you”. The tradition would generally count it as a demonstrative, because the speaker’s intentions play a role in providing it with a semantic value. I present cross-linguistic data and explanations offered of the data in typology and semantics to show that “you” belongs on the indexical side, and argue that they can be generalized to a novel criterion for distinguishing between indexicals and demonstratives. The central theoretical claim is that the semantic values of indexicals are objects which play certain utterance-related roles, which are fixed independently of the words being used in the utterance. For instance, the speaker plays the speaker role whether or not she uses the word “I”, and the addressee plays that role whether or not the speaker uses the word “you”. Demonstratives, on the other hand, pick out objects that play no such role, and are instead helped by the speaker’s word-specific intentions.

Synonymy, at its most basic, is sameness of meaning. A token-reflexive expression is an expression whose meaning assigns a referent to its tokens by relating each particular token of that particular expression to its referent. In doing so, the formulation of its meaning mentions the particular expression whose meaning it is. This seems to entail that no two token-reflexive expressions are synonymous, which would constitute a strong objection against token-reflexive semantics. In this paper, I propose and defend a notion of synonymy for token-reflexive expressions that allows such expressions to be synonymous, while being a fairly conservative extension of the customary notion of synonymy.

A simple view about “now” is that it picks out the time of the speech act in which it is used. A major advantage of this view is that it incorporates a semantical claim about reference in the larger framework of speech acts. However, the view cannot account for uses of “now” in so-called “answering machine” cases of speech acts, where we lack both clear intuitions and a widely accepted metaphysical view about their temporal locations. I first show that this problem is not limited to indexicals and answering machines. I then propose a different token-reflexive, speech act-friendly view: that speakers set detonation conditions for tokens of “now”, which, when the conditions are met, pick out the time of their detonation.