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5Quine on Paraphrase and RegimentationIn Ernie Lepore & Gilbert Harman (eds.), A Companion to W. V. O. Quine, Wiley-blackwell. 2013.Dagfinn Føllesdal: “Developments in Quine's Behaviorism”: Quine insisted throughout his life that he was a behaviorist. He began briefly as an “ontological behaviorist,” that is, he held that there is nothing mental. However, very early he switched to evidential behaviorism: the view that behavior provides the only evidence we have for the mental and its properties. Ultimately, Quine's behaviorism springs from his empiricism. All knowledge about the world around us and about other people reaches…Read more
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72Critical Notice: Peter Ludlow’s Living Words: Meaning Underdetermination and he Dynamic Lexicon, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014 (review)Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (1): 106-128. 2018.A provocative view has it that word meanings are underdetermined and dynamic, frustrating traditional approaches to theorizing about meaning. Peter Ludlow’s Living Words provides some of the philosophical reasons and motivations for accepting one such view, develops some of its details, and explores some of its ramifications. We critically examine some of the arguments in Living Words, paying particular attention to some of Ludlow’s views about the meanings of predicates, preservation of bivalen…Read more
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141Quine’s Behaviorism and Linguistic Meaning: Why Quine’s Behaviorism is not IllicitPhilosophia 39 (1): 51-59. 2011.Some of Quine’s critics charge that he arrives at a behavioristic account of linguistic meaning by starting from inappropriately behavioristic assumptions (Kripke 1982, 14; Searle 1987, 123). Quine has even written that this account of linguistic meaning is a consequence of his behaviorism (Quine 1992, 37). I take it that the above charges amount to the assertion that Quine assumes the denial of one or more of the following claims: (1) Language-users associate mental ideas with their linguistic …Read more
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1Quine on Paraphrase and RegimentationIn Gilbert Harman & Ernest LePore (eds.), A Companion to W. V. O. Quine, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 89--113. 2013.
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78Causal counterfactuals are not interventionist counterfactualsSynthese 194 (12): 4935-4957. 2017.In this paper I present a limitation to what may be called strictly-interventionistic causal-model semantic theories for subjunctive conditionals. And I offer a line of response to Briggs’ counterexample to Modus Ponens—given within a strictly-interventionistic framework—for the subjunctive conditional. The paper also contains some discussion of backtracking counterfactuals and backtracking interpretations. The limitation inherent to strict interventionism is brought out via a class of counterex…Read more
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58Counterlegal dependence and causation’s arrows: causal models for backtrackers and counterlegalsSynthese 194 (12): 4983-5003. 2017.A counterlegal is a counterfactual conditional containing an antecedent that is inconsistent with some set of laws. A backtracker is a counterfactual that tells us how things would be at a time earlier than that of its antecedent, were the antecedent to obtain. Typically, theories that evaluate counterlegals appropriately don’t evaluate backtrackers properly, and vice versa. Two cases in point: Lewis’ ordering semantics handles counterlegals well but not backtrackers. Hiddleston’s :632–657, 2005…Read more
Davis, California, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
20th Century Philosophy |
General Philosophy of Science |