Semantic Thesis Research Articles

Temporal Parts and Time Travel

This paper argues that, in light of certain scenarios involving time travel, Sider's definition of 'instantaneous temporal part' cannot be accepted in conjunction with a semantic thesis that perdurantists often assume. I examine a rejoinder from Sider, as well as Thomson's alternative definition of 'instantaneous temporal part', and show how neither helps. Given this, we should give up on the perdurantist semantic thesis. I end by recommending that, once we no longer accept such semantics, we should accept a new set of definitions, which are superior in certain respects to Sider's original set.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Locke on Language

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Locke on Language

WHAT'S WRONG WITH CONTEXTUALISM?

This paper addresses two worries that might be raised about contextualism in epistemology and that carry over to its moral analogues: that contextualism robs epistemology (and moral theory) of a proper subject-matter, and that contextualism robs knowledge claims (and moral claims) of their objectivity. Two theses are defended: (1) that these worries are appropriately directed at interest-dependent theories in general rather than at contextualism in particular, and (2) that the two worries are over-stated in any case. Finally, the paper offers some considerations in favour of attributor contextualism over ‘subject-sensitive invariantism’, both in epistemology and in moral theory. But here we note an interesting result: the very considerations that support contextualism as a semantic thesis, threaten to rob that position of its anti-sceptical force.

How to Be a Contextualist

According to Keith DeRose, epistemological contextualism is the position that “the truth-conditions of knowledge ascribing and knowledge denying sentences (sentences of the form “S knows that p” and “S doesn’t know that p”...) vary in certain ways according to the context in which they are uttered. What so varies is the epistemic standards that S must meet... in order for such a statement to be true”.1 According to the contextualist, a sentence of the form “S knows that p” does not express a complete proposition. Different utterances of the sentence, in different contexts of utterance, can express different propositions: “know” is context-dependent. Little attention has been paid to a precise formulation of the semantic contextualist thesis grounding epistemological contextualism. Many scholars refer to some kind of “hidden-indexical” theory of knowledge sentences, or claim that “know” is itself indexical. My goal is then to assess differences and similarities between “know” and context-sensitive terms in natural language—in particular pure indexicals, on the one hand, and demonstratives, on the other hand. This paper is structured as follows. In section 2, I briefly present a standard version of epistemological contextualism. In section 3, I sketch the contextualist response to scepticism. In section 4, I present the general semantic thesis grounding epistemological contextualism. In section 5 and 6, I examine and criticise a strategy in terms of pure indexicals. In section 7 and 8, I examine and criticise a strategy in terms of demonstratives. In the conclusion, I argue that only an accurate analysis of the different varieties of context sensitivity secures us a better understanding and a clearer evaluation of the contextualist approach, and of its response to the sceptic.

The Contextualist Evasion of Epistemology

Keith DeRose's contextualism offers both good news and bad news for the skeptic.1 The good news is that when the skeptic utters the words, don't know anything about the external world, and neither do you, the skeptic is making a true claim. The bad news is that when the anti-skeptic utters the words, do know a great deal about the external world and so does almost everyone else, the anti-skeptic is making a true claim as well. Put somewhat differently: the claim the skeptic makes is irrelevant to the claim the anti-skeptic makes. Ernest Sosa2 offers both good news and bad news for Keith DeRose's contextualism. The good news is that the semantic thesis which DeRose offers about uses of the term 'knowledge' may be true. The bad news is that this semantic thesis is largely irrelevant to epistemological concerns. My own sympathies here lie very much with Ernest Sosa. Indeed, I believe that Sosa is extremely charitable in his description of the epistemological import of DeRose's contextualism. I will thus attempt to reinforce some of the points which Sosa has made, and argue for a somewhat less cautious thesis: First, I believe

The Contextualist Evasion of Epistemology

Keith DeRose's contextualism offers both good news and bad news for the skeptic.1 The good news is that when the skeptic utters the words, "I don't know anything about the external world, and neither do you," the skeptic is making a true claim. The bad news is that when the anti-skeptic utters the words, "I do know a great deal about the external world and so does almost everyone else," the anti-skeptic is making a true claim as well. Put somewhat differently: the claim the skeptic makes is irrelevant to the claim the anti-skeptic makes. Ernest Sosa2 offers both good news and bad news for Keith DeRose's contextualism. The good news is that the semantic thesis which DeRose offers about uses of the term 'knowledge' may be true. The bad news is that this semantic thesis is largely irrelevant to epistemological concerns. My own sympathies here lie very much with Ernest Sosa. Indeed, I believe that Sosa is extremely charitable in his description of the epistemological import of DeRose's contextualism. I will thus attempt to reinforce some of the points which Sosa has made, and argue for a somewhat less cautious thesis: First, I believe

Some Pragmatist Themes in Hegel's Idealism: Negotiation and Administration in Hegel's Account of the Structure and Content of Conceptual Norms

This paper could equally well have been titled ‘Some Idealist Themes in Hegel’s Pragmatism’. Both idealism and pragmatism are capacious concepts, encompassing many distinguishable theses. I will focus on one pragmatist thesis and one idealist thesis (though we will come within sight of some others). The pragmatist thesis (what I will call ‘the semantic pragmatist thesis’) is that the use of concepts determines their content, that is, that concepts can have no content apart from that conferred on them by their use. The idealist thesis is that the structure and unity of the concept is the same as the structure and unity of the self. The semantic pragmatist thesis is a commonplace of our Wittgensteinean philosophical world. The idealist thesis is, to say the least, not. I don’t believe there is any serious contemporary semantic thinker who is pursuing the thought that concepts might best be understood by modelling them on selves. Indeed, from the point of view of contemporary semantics it is hard to know even what one could mean by such a thought: what relatively unproblematic features of selves are supposed to illuminate what relatively problematic features of concepts? Why should we think that understanding something about, say, personal identity would help us understand issues concerning the identity and individuation of concepts? From a contemporary point of view, the idealist semantic thesis is bound to appear initially as something between unpromising and crazy. My interpretive claim here will be that the idealist thesis is Hegel’s way of making the pragmatist thesis workable, in the context of several other commitments and insights. My philosophical claim here will be that we actually have a lot to learn from this strategy about contemporary semantic issues that we by no means see our way to the bottom of otherwise. In the space of this essay, I cannot properly justify the first claim textually, nor the second argumentatively. I will confine myself of necessity to sketching the outlines and motivations for the complex, sophisticated, and interesting view on the topic I find Hegel putting forward.

Varietà di naturalismo

The object of this paper is to point out the different interpretations to which the idea of naturalism (and naturalization) has given rise during the last two decades in the philosophy of language. Within Quine's conception of naturalized epistemology the author distinguishes a semantic thesis and an epistemological thesis. The consequences of Quine's semantic thesis are examined in the light of recent discussions concerning, (a) the externalism/internalism debate, and (b) the features of normativity and rationality, characteristic of linguistic activity, emphasized by Davidson and Dummett. The conclusion reached in this paper is that while it is doubtful whether Davidson's conception of meaning falls within the bounds of naturalized epistemology, Dummett's conception of language clearly does not. The conception of language as a natural object, put forward by Chomsky, is surveyed in the light of the two tenets of Quine's idea of naturalized epistemology and found irreconciliable with both

THANK GOODNESS THAT'S NON-ACTUAL

Frege held the truth values of thoughts temporally absolute. Once a thought is characterisedfully its truth value can be evaluated without further ado. In particular, one needn’t consider a time with respect to which the evaluation is to be effected - neither the time at which the evaluation is made, nor a time at which the thought might be entertained. Times do have an important semantic role to play, but only because they can help fix the identity of thoughts themselves. For our language is temporally indexical: it contains sentence types expressing different thoughts when uttered at different times. It is for this reason alone that the evaluation of a token utterance can require knowledge of the time at which it is uttered. The two elements of Frege’s analysis should be clearly distinguished. The first is an explicitly semantic thesis to the effect that a sentence type like ‘Thatcher is sleeping’ can be used at different times to express different thoughts. The second, the thesis that thoughts have temporally absolute truth values, is somewhat more metaphysical. What these theses amount to depends on one’s notion of ‘thought’. In Frege’s usage, thoughts are composed of senses, and their identity is determined by their constituents and their manner of combination. Since he takes the truth value of a thought to be determined by the referents of its senses, and since different senses can have the same referents necessarily, for Frege there can be different thoughts which must have the same truth value. However, his claim that a single tensed sentence type can be used at different times to express different thoughts is stronger: it allows their having different truth values. In his terms, that

Why the semantic incommensurability thesis is self-defeating

Why the semantic incommensurability thesis is self-defeating

Cardinality logics. Part II: Definability in languages based on ‘exactly’

This paper continues the project initiated in [5]: a model-theoretic study of the concept of cardinality within certain higher-order logics. As recommended by an editor of this Journal, I will digress to say something about the project's motivation. Then I will review some of the basic definitions from [5]; for unexplained notation the reader should consult [5].The syntax of ordinary usage (with respect to the construction of arguments as well as the construction of individual sentences) makes it natural to classify numerals and expressions of the form ‘the number of F's’ as singular terms, expressions like ‘is prime’ or ‘is divisible by’ as predicates of what Frege called “level one”, and expressions like ‘for some natural number’ as first-order quantifier-phrases. From this syntatic classification, it is a short step—so short as to be frequently unnoticed—to a semantic thesis: that such expressions play the same sort of semantic role as is played by the paradigmatic (and nonmathematical) members of these lexical classes. Thus expressions of the first sort are supposed to designate objects (in post-Fregean terms, entities of type 0), those of the second sort to be true or false of tuples of objects, and those of the third sort to quantify over objects. All this may be summed up in Frege's dictum: “Numbers are objects.”

Locke on Language

Locke's main semantic thesis is that words stand for, or signify, ideas. He says this over and over again, though the phraseology he employs varies. In Book III chapter 2 alone we find the following statements of the thesis: (1) ‘ …Words… come to be made use of by Men, asthe Signsof theirIdeas’[III.2.1; 405:10-11); (2) The use then of Words, is to be sensible Marks ofIdeas;and theIdeasthey stand for, are their proper and immediate Signification’ [III.2.1; 405:15-17]; (3) ‘Words in their primary or immediate Signification, stand for nothing, but theIdeasin the Mind of him that uses them’[III.2.2; 405:21-2]; (4) That then which Words are the Marks of, are theIdeasof the Speaker’ [III.2.2; 405:27-8]; (5) ‘ …