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138NominalismIn Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford handbook of metaphysics, Oxford University Press. 2003.…entities? 2. How to be a nominalist 2.1. “Speak with the vulgar …” 2.2. “…think with the learned” 3. Arguments for nominalism 3.1. Intelligibility, physicalism, and economy 3.2. Causal..
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662NominalismIn Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford handbook of metaphysics, Oxford University Press. 2003.…entities? 2. How to be a nominalist 2.1. “Speak with the vulgar …” 2.2. “…think with the learned” 3. Arguments for nominalism 3.1. Intelligibility, physicalism, and economy 3.2. Causal..
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4NominalismIn Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford handbook of metaphysics, Oxford University Press. 2003.…entities? 2. How to be a nominalist 2.1. “Speak with the vulgar …” 2.2. “…think with the learned” 3. Arguments for nominalism 3.1. Intelligibility, physicalism, and economy 3.2. Causal..
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„Adjective in context “in I. Kenesei and RM HarnishIn Robert M. Harrish & Istvan Kenesei (eds.), Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse, John Benjamins. 2001.
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40Adjectives in ContextIn Robert M. Harrish & Istvan Kenesei (eds.), Perspectives on Semantics, Pragmatics, and Discourse, John Benjamins. 2001.0. Abstract In this paper, I argue that although the behavior of adjectives in context poses a serious challenge to the principle of compositionality of content, in the end such considerations do not defeat the principle. The first two sections are devoted to the precise statement of the challenge; the rest of the paper presents a semantic analysis of a large class of adjectives that provides a satisfactory answer to it. In section 1, I formulate the context thesis, according to which the conten…Read more
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56Specificity and what is meantPhilosophical Studies 181 (11): 3181-3189. 2024.Felicitous underspecification—apparently flawless use of context-sensitive words in contexts where they cannot be assigned unique semantic values—is rather common in ordinary speech. King presents a hypothesis about the mechanism conversational participants employ handling felicitous underspecification, one that fits the rich data he surveys well. I will begin by illustrating how King’s account could be put to use in making sense of what happens in a real life conversation. Then I will point out…Read more
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45Internalist Semantics: Comments on Paul Pietroski, Conjoining MeaningsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 105 (3): 745-751. 2023.
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Semantic ExplanationsIn Ernest Lepore & David Sosa (eds.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Language Volume 1., Oxford University Press. pp. 240-275. 2019.
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27Logical Form through AbstractionDisputatio 12 (58): 251-263. 2020.In a recent book, Logical Form: between Logic and Natural Language, Andrea Iacona argues that semantic form and logical form are distinct. The semantic form of a sentence is something that (together with the meanings of its parts) determines what it means; the logical from of a sentence is something that (all by itself) determines whether it is a logical truth. Semantic form does not depend on context but logical form does: for example, whether ‘This is this’ is a logical truth depends on whethe…Read more
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130The Goal of ConversationAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 94 (1): 57-86. 2020.Dickie (2020) presents an argument against the traditional, broadly Gricean view of conversation. She argues that speakers must sometimes be more specific than required for sharing knowledge on a topic of common concern. Her proposed solution is to claim that the goal of conversation is not just sharing knowledge but also sharing cognitive focus. In response, I argue that her proposal faces both conceptual and empirical difficulties, and that the traditional view can handle the problem of non-sp…Read more
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21The case for compositionalityIn Markus Werning, Wolfram Hinzen & Edouard Machery (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Compositionality, Oxford University Press. 2012.This article presents three more-or-less-traditional considerations for compositionality. The first is that the usual statement of the compositionality principle is massively ambiguous. One of the eight available readings rules out all sources of multiplicity in meaning in complex expressions besides the lexicon and the syntax. Others are more permissive—how much more is not always clear. The second claim is that traditional considerations in favour of compositionality are less powerful than is …Read more
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178Bare QuantifiersPhilosophical Review 120 (2): 247-283. 2011.We design new languages, by and large, in order to bypass complexities and limitations within the languages we already have. But when we are concerned with language itself we should guard against projecting the simple and powerful syntax and semantics we have concocted back into the sentences we encounter. For some of the features of English, French, or Ancient Greek we routinely abstract away from in the process of formalization might be linguistic universals – the very features that set human …Read more
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610Epistemic comparativism: a contextualist semantics for knowledge ascriptionsPhilosophical Studies 168 (2): 491-543. 2014.Knowledge ascriptions seem context sensitive. Yet it is widely thought that epistemic contextualism does not have a plausible semantic implementation. We aim to overcome this concern by articulating and defending an explicit contextualist semantics for ‘know,’ which integrates a fairly orthodox contextualist conception of knowledge as the elimination of the relevant alternatives, with a fairly orthodox “Amherst” semantics for A-quantification over a contextually variable domain of situations. Wh…Read more
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54Christopher Gauker. Universal instantiation: a study of the role of context in logic. Erkenntnis, vol. 46 , pp. 185–214 (review)Journal of Symbolic Logic 63 (4): 1610-1611. 1998.
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25Philosophy of LanguageCambridge University Press. 2018.This unique textbook introduces linguists to key issues in the philosophy of language. Accessible to students who have taken only a single course in linguistics, yet sophisticated enough to be used at the graduate level, the book provides an overview of the central issues in philosophy of language, a key topic in educating the next generation of researchers in semantics and pragmatics. Thoroughly grounded in contemporary linguistic theory, the book focus on the core foundational and philosophica…Read more
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135What is a quantifier?Analysis 78 (3): 463-472. 2018.I argue that standard definitions of quantifiers are inadequate and offer a new one. The new definition categorizes expressions as quantifiers in accordance with our pre-theoretical judgments, it is broadly applicable to both formal and natural languages, and it eschews unnecessary theoretical commitments about the details of the syntax and semantics of these expressions.
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4Eugen Fischer, Linguistic Creativity: Exercises in 'Philosophical Therapy' (review)Philosophy in Review 22 (5): 320-323. 2002.
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Andrew Brook and Robert Stainton, Knowledge and Mind: A Philosophical Introduction (review)Philosophy in Review 21 (4): 239-242. 2001.
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64In Defense of Indirect CommunicationInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (2): 163-174. 2016.In Imagination and Convention, Ernest Lepore and Matthew Stone claim that there are no conversational implicatures. They argue that the scope of the conventional is wider and the scope of communication narrower than followers of Grice tend to assume, and so, there is simply no room for the sort of indirect communication based on reasoning about intentions conversational implicatures are supposed to exemplify. This way they seek to rehabilitate the old Lockean model of linguistic communication. I…Read more
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57The Loss of UniquenessMind 114 (456): 1185-1222. 2005.Philosophers and linguists alike tend to call a semantic theory ‘Russellian’ just in case it assigns to sentences in which definite descriptions occur the truth-conditions Russell did in ‘On Denoting’. This is unfortunate; not all aspects of those particular truth-conditions do explanatory work in Russell's writings. As far as the semantics of descriptions is concerned, the key insights of ‘On Denoting’ are that definite descriptions are not uniformly referring expressions, and that they are sco…Read more
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163Sententialism and Berkeley's master argumentPhilosophical Quarterly 55 (220). 2005.Sententialism is the view that intensional positions in natural languages occur within clausal complements only. According to proponents of this view, intensional transitive verbs such as 'want', 'seek' or 'resemble' are actually propositional attitude verbs in disguise. I argue that 'conceive' cannot fit this mould: conceiving-of is not reducible to conceiving-that. I offer a new diagnosis of where Berkeley's 'master argument' goes astray, analysing what is odd about saying that Hylas conceives…Read more
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73Against logical formIn Gerhard Preyer (ed.), Donald Davidson on truth, meaning, and the mental, Oxford University Press. 2012.
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