Conventions’ Revenge: Davidson,Derangement, and Dormativity

Davidson advocates a radical and powerful form of anti-conventionalism, on which the scope of a semantic theory is restricted to the most local of contexts: a particular utterance by a particular speaker. I argue that this hyper-localism undercuts the explanatory grounds for his assumption that semantic meaning is systematic, which is central, among other things, to his holism. More importantly, it threatens to undercut the distinction between word meaning and speaker’s meaning, which he takes to be essential to semantics. I argue that a moderate form of conventionalism can restore systematicity and the word/speaker distinction while accommodating Davidson’s insights about the complexities and contextual variability of language use.     

Indispensability and Holism

It is claimed that the indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical entities (IA) works in a way that allows a proponent of mathematical realism to remain agnostic with regard to how we establish that mathematical entities exist. This is supposed to be possible by virtue of the appeal to confirmational holism that enters into the formulation of IA. Holism about confirmation is supposed to be motivated in analogy with holism about falsification. I present an account of how holism about falsification is supposed to be motivated. I argue that the argument for holism about falsification is in tension with how we think about confirmation and with two principles suggested by Quine for construing a plausible variety of holism. Finally, I show that one of Quine’s principles does not allow a proponent of mathematical realism to remain agnostic with regard to how we establish that mathematical entities exist.     

Frege on the psychological significance of definitions

Conclusion In contemporary work, the distinction between the proposition expressed by a sentence and its psychological significance is usually motivated by a familiar kind of counterfactual argument; and the discussion of these issues usually centers around the role of external factors in determining the meaning of our words. My primary goal in this paper has been to show that a similar, though not identical, distinction between two aspects of meaning can be developed entirely on the basis of considerations internal to language users — their cognitive limitations. To make this point, I have focused on symbols introduced through stipulative definitions. In a language containing such symbols, certain expressions and their definitional reductions will seem to differ in psychological significance for creatures with limited intellects, and so in any aspect of meaning that is supposed to correlate with psychological significance; but it seems also that there is some important aspect of meaning that they share.I have argued that a distinction in meaning like this — between sense and psychological significance — should be drawn even in the kind of languages of most concern to Frege, and that his failure to do so led to tensions in his thought. Of course, this observation only touches on the many issues involved in interpreting Frege's theory of definition more generally. I have not tried to describe here, for example, the ways in which the weak interpretation of fruitfulness might interact with the more robust interpretation mentioned earlier; I have only mentioned Frege's view on explicative definitions and the paradox of analysis, and failed even to mention either his treatment of contextual definition, or his peculiar objections to conditional definitions. I do want to emphasize, however, that the distinction drawn here is not simply a matter of Frege scholarship, but that it has some contemporary relevance as well. As we have seen, Frege's semantic goals often coincide with our own; and a number of contemporary writers are explicitly concerned, like Frege, to construct a semantic theory that is able to account for differences in meaning among logically equivalent expressions. Any such theorist should recognize a distinction like that drawn here between sense and psychological significance, and should avoid subjecting an account of one notion to constraints appropriate only for the other.     

Holism,Communication, and the Emergence of Public Meaning: Lessons from an Economic Analogy

Holistic accounts of meaning normally incorporate a subjective dimension that invites the criticism that they make communication impossible, for speakers are bound to differ in ways the accounts take to be relevant to meaning, and holism generalises any difference over some words to a difference about all, and this seems incompatible with the idea that successful communication requires mutual understanding. I defend holism about meaning from this criticism. I argue that the same combination of properties (subjective origins of value, holism among values, and ultimate publicity of value) is exhibited by monetary value and take the emergence of equilibrium prices as a model for the emergence of public meanings.

Evidential Holism and Indispensability Arguments

The indispensability argument is a method for showing that abstract mathematical objects exist (call this mathematical Platonism). Various versions of this argument have been proposed (§1). Lately, commentators seem to have agreed that a holistic indispensability argument (§2) will not work, and that an explanatory indispensability argument is the best candidate. In this paper I argue that the dominant reasons for rejecting the holistic indispensability argument are mistaken. This is largely due to an overestimation of the consequences that follow from evidential holism. Nevertheless, the holistic indispensability argument should be rejected, but for a different reason (§3)—in order that an indispensability argument relying on holism can work, it must invoke an unmotivated version of evidential holism. Such an argument will be unsound. Correcting the argument with a proper construal of evidential holism means that it can no longer deliver mathematical Platonism as a conclusion: such an argument for Platonism will be invalid. I then show how the reasons for rejecting the holistic indispensability argument importantly constrain what kind of account of explanation will be permissible in explanatory versions (§4).     

Quine's Argument from Despair

Quine's argument for a naturalized epistemology is routinely perceived as an argument from despair: traditional epistemology must be abandoned because all attempts to deduce our scientific theories from sense experience have failed. In this paper, I will show that this picture is historically inaccurate and that Quine's argument against first philosophy is considerably stronger and subtler than the standard conception suggests. For Quine, the first philosopher's quest for foundations is inherently incoherent; the very idea of a self-sufficient sense datum language is a mistake, there is no science-independent perspective from which to validate science. I will argue that a great deal of the confusion surrounding Quine's argument is prompted by certain phrases in his seminal ‘Epistemology Naturalized’. Scrutinizing Quine's work both before and after the latter paper provides a better key to understanding his remarkable views about the epistemological relation between theory and evidence.     

Van Inwagen and the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument

In this paper I do two things: (1) I support the claim that there is still some confusion about just what the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument is and the way it employs Quinean meta-ontology and (2) I try to dispel some of this confusion by presenting the argument in a way which reveals its important meta-ontological features, and include these features explicitly as premises. As a means to these ends, I compare Peter van Inwagen’s argument for the existence of properties with Putnam’s presentation of the indispensability argument. Van Inwagen’s argument is a classic exercise in Quinean meta-ontology and yet he claims – despite his argument’s conspicuous similarities to the Quine-Putnam argument – that his own has a substantially different form. I argue, however, that there is no such difference between these two arguments even at a very high level of specificity; I show that there is a detailed generic indispensability argument that captures the single form of both. The arguments are identical in every way except for the kind of objects they argue for – an irrelevant difference for my purposes. Furthermore, Putnam’s and van Inwagen’s presentations make an assumption that is often mistakenly taken to be an important feature of the Quine-Putnam argument. Yet this assumption is only the implicit backdrop against which the argument is typically presented. This last point is brought into sharper relief by the fact that van Inwagen’s list of the four nominalistic responses to his argument is too short. His list is missing an important – and historically popular – fifth option.

Wittgenstein on the Experience of Meaning and the Meaning of Music

On the basis of some ideas of Wittgenstein’s, an argument is presented to the effect that the ability to feel or to experience meaning conditions the ability to mean, and is thus essential to our notion of meaning. The experience of meaning, as manifested in the “fine shades” of use and behaviour, is central to Wittgenstein’s late conception of meaning. In explicating the basic elements involved here, I first try to clarify the notion of feeling and its relationship to meaning, emphasising its central role in music as explanatory of its use in language. The feeling of words, in this sense, is an objective feature of their meaning and use, and should be distinguished from feelings as psychological processes or experiences that may accompany the use of words. I then explain its philosophical significance by arguing that word‐feeling, and the “experience of meaning,” are basically instances of Wittgenstein’s general conception of aspect and aspect‐perception, which are important elements in his later conception of meaning and of thought. The nature of this experience is explicated in terms of grasping internal relations and relevant comparisons, which is manifested in a “mastery of a technique,” or “feeling at home” in a certain practice. In this sense, I argue, the ability to experience the meaning of a word is essential to the very intentionality of our thought and language. The ability to experience meaning is also a precondition for using words in a “secondary sense,” which is of great significance in itself. I conclude by pointing to the application of these notions of understanding, feeling and experience, as well as their explication in terms of comparisons, internal relations and mastery of technique, to music, where they are so apt and natural.     

Metameric Whiteness and Absence of Causal Factors

Olaf Müller presents a supposedly empirically equivalent theory to Newtonian optics, which in his view is therefore threatened by underdetermination. This threat could even be expanded to modern physics, since this branch of physics is partly based on Newton’s theory. In this paper, I will show that Müller’s alternative theory contains an ill-defined concept, viz. the definition of whiteness as the absence of optical causal factors. This results from a fundamental property of whiteness: for every source of white light there exist metameric sources. I further argue that this cannot be reconciled by borrowing other concepts from modern physics, as is, I will show, tacitly presupposed in Müller’s argument. As a consequence, his alternative theory is not empirically equivalent to Newtonian optics and his argument in favour of underdetermination fails.     

Holism About Meaning And About Evidence: In Defence Of W. V. Quine

Holistic claims about evidence are a commonplace inthe philosophy of science; holistic claims aboutmeaning are a commonplace in the philosophy oflanguage. W. V. Quine has advocated both types ofholism, and argued for an intimate link between thetwo. Semantic holism may be inferred from theconjunction of confirmation holism andverificationism, he maintains. But in their recentbook Holism: a Shopper's Guide, Jerry Fodor andErnest Lepore (1992) claim that this inference isfallacious. In what follows, I defend Quine's argumentfor semantic holism from Fodor and Lepore'smulti-pronged attack.     

Defending Priority Views from the Gunk/Junk Argument

Recently, Jonathan Tallant has argued that we should reject priority views, which hold that some objects are fundamental and others are dependent. Tallant’s argument relies on two proposed mereological possibilities: a gunky world, where everything has a proper part, and a junky world, where everything is a proper part. In this paper, I criticise Tallant’s argument and argue that neither of these possibilities threaten priority views per se; at most, they threaten only particular forms of priority views that contain a certain independently controversial assumption. First, I defend priority pluralism against the gunk argument: the genuine conceivability of gunk can be plausibly doubted on the basis of a certain principle concerning metaphysical possibility, and even if this principle is false, the possibility of a gunky world poses no devastative problem for pluralism per se because it can be considered to be consistent with nonatomism. Second, I defend priority monism against the junk argument: the possibility of a junky world poses no devastative problem for monism per se because it can be considered to be consistent with nonholism in a twofold sense. Finally, I show that even monism as defined as genuinely holistic can be plausibly defended against the junk argument once the claim of the possible nonexistence of the maximal whole is reinterpreted based on the priority-based conception of existence.     

Meaning and Truth-Conditions: a Reply to Kemp

In his 'Meaning and Truth-Conditions', Gary Kemp offers a reconstruction of Frege's infamous 'regress argument', which purports to rely only upon the premises that the meaning of a sentence is its truth-condition and that each sentence expresses a unique proposition. If cogent, the argument would show that only someone who accepts a form of semantic holism can use the notion of truth to explain that of meaning. I respond that Kemp relies heavily upon what he himself styles 'a literal, rather wooden' understanding of truth-conditions. I explore alternatives, and say a few words about how Frege's regress argument might best be understood.     

Functional Concepts,Referentially Opaque Contexts,Causal Relations,and the Definition of Theoretical Terms

In his recent article, ``Self-Consciousness', George Bealer has set outa novel and interesting argument against functionalism in the philosophyof mind. I shall attempt to show, however, that Bealer's argument cannotbe sustained.In arguing for this conclusion, I shall be defending three main theses.The first is connected with the problem of defining theoreticalpredicates that occur in theories where the following two features arepresent: first, the theoretical predicate in question occurswithin both extensional and non-extensional contexts; secondly, thetheory in question asserts that the relevant theoretical states enterinto causal relations. What I shall argue is that a Ramsey-styleapproach to the definition of such theoretical terms requires twodistinct quantifiers: one which ranges over concepts, and theother which ranges over properties in the world.My second thesis is a corollary: since the theories on whichBealer is focusing have both of the features just mentioned, and sincethe method that he employs to define theoretical terms in his argumentagainst functionalism does not involve both quantifiers that range overproperties and quantifiers that range over concepts, that method isunsound.My final thesis is that when a sound method is used, Bealer's argumentagainst functionalism no longer goes through.The structure of my discussion is as follows. I begin by setting out twoarguments – the one, a condensed version of Bealer's argument, andthe other, an argument that parallels Bealer's argument very closely.The parallel argument leads to a conclusion, however, that, rather thanbeing merely somewhat surprising, seems very implausible indeed. Forwhat the second argument establishes, if sound, is that there can betheoretical terms that apply to objects by virtue of their first-orderphysical properties, but whose meaning cannot be defined via aRamsey-style approach.Having set out the two parallel arguments, I then go on to focus uponthe second, to determine what is wrong with it. My diagnosis will bethat the problem with the argument arises from the fact that it involvesdefining a theoretical term that occurs both inside and outside ofopaque contexts, for the method employed fails to take into account thefact that the types of entities that are involved in the relevanttruthmakers are different when a sentence occurs within an extensionalcontext from those involved when a sentence occurs within anon-extensional context.I then go on to discuss how one should define a theoretical term thatoccurs within such theories, and I argue that in such a case one needstwo quantifiers, ranging over different types of entities – on theone hand, over properties and relations, and the other, over concepts. Ithen show that, when such an approach is followed, the argument inquestion collapses.I then turn to Bealer's argument against functionalism, and I show,first, that precisely the same method of defining theoretical terms canbe applied there, and, secondly, that, when this is done, it turns outthat that argument is also unsound.Next, I consider two responses that Bealer might make to my argument,and I argue that those responses would not succeed.Finally, I conclude by asking exactly where the problem lies in the caseof Bealer's argument. My answer will be that it is not simply the factthat one is dealing with a theoretical term that occurs in bothextensional and non-extensional contexts. It is rather the combinationof that feature together with the fact that the theory in questionasserts that the relevant type of theoretical state enters into causalrelations. For the first of these features means that the Ramseysentence for the theory must involve quantification over concepts, whilethe presence of the second feature means that the Ramsey sentence mustinvolve quantification over properties in the world, and so no attemptto offer a Ramsey-style account of the meaning of the relevanttheoretical term can succeed unless one employs both quantification overconcepts and quantification over properties. Bealer, however, in hisargument against functionalism, uses a method of defining theoreticalterms that does not involve both types of quantification, and it isprecisely because of this that his argument does not in the end succeed.     

Reichenbach’s cubical universe and the problem of the external world

This paper is a sympathetic critique of the argument that Reichenbach develops in Chap. 2 of Experience and Prediction for the thesis that sense experience justifies belief in the existence of an external world. After discussing his attack on the positivist theory of meaning, I describe the probability ideas that Reichenbach presents. I argue that Reichenbach begins with an argument grounded in the Law of Likelihood but that he then endorses a different argument that involves prior probabilities. I try to show how this second step in Reichenbach’s approach can be strengthened by using ideas that have been developed recently for understanding causation in terms of the idea of intervention.     

On the Argument from Divine Arbitrariness

William Rowe in his Can God be Free? (2004) argues that God, if there is a God, necessarily chooses the best. Combined with the premise that there is no best act of creation, this provides an a priori argument for atheism. Rowe assumes that necessarily God is a ??morally unsurpassable?? being, and it is for that reason that God chooses the best. In this article I drop that assumption and I consider a successor to Rowe??s argument, the Argument from Arbitrariness, based on the premise that God does not act arbitrarily. My chief conclusion will be that this argument fails because, for all we know, there can be non-arbitrary divine choices even if there is no best act of creation.     

The minimal A-theory

Timothy Williamson thinks that every object is a necessary, eternal existent. In defense of his view, Williamson appeals primarily to considerations from modal and tense logic. While I am uncertain about his modal claims, I think there are good metaphysical reasons to believe permanentism: the principle that everything always exists. B-theorists of time and change have long denied that objects change with respect to unqualified existence. But aside from Williamson, nearly all A-theorists defend temporaryism: the principle that there are temporary existents. I think A-theorists are better off without this added commitment, but I will not argue for that in any great detail here. Instead, I will contend that a very tempting argument for temporaryism is unsound. In the first half of the paper, I will develop the Moorean ??common sense?? argument for temporaryism and dispute its central premise, namely that temporaryism is the best generalization from our ordinary beliefs about creation, destruction, coming to be, and passing away. I will argue that given the pervasive vagueness in our ordinary beliefs and the background commitments of all A-theories, temporaryists cannot claim to have the common sense view because no party can accommodate most of our common sense beliefs. In the second half of the paper, I will propose a permanentist A-theory that explains all change over time as a species of property change. I call it the minimal A-theory, since it dispenses with the change in existence assumption. As we??ll see, the permanentist alternative performs well enough in explaining our ordinary beliefs, and it has better prospects for answering three objections commonly levied against A-theories.     

The use theory of meaning and semantic stipulation

According to Horwich’s use theory of meaning, the meaning of a word W is engendered by the underived acceptance of certain sentences containing W. Horwich applies this theory to provide an account of semantic stipulation: Semantic stipulation proceeds by deciding to accept sentences containing an as yet meaningless word W. Thereby one brings it about that W gets an underived acceptance property. Since a word’s meaning is constituted by its (basic) underived acceptance property, this decision endows the word with a meaning. The use-theoretic account of semantic stipulation contrasts with the standard view that semantic stipulation proceeds by assigning the meaning (reference) to W that makes a certain set of sentences express true propositions. In this paper I will argue that the use-theoretic account does not work. I take Frege to have already made the crucial point: "a definition does not assert anything but lays down something ["etwas festsetzt"]” (Frege 1899, 36). A semantic stipulation for W cannot be the decision to accept a sentence containing W or be explained in terms of such an acceptance. Semantic stipulation constitutes a problem for Horwich's use theory of meaning, especially his basic notion of acceptance.

Predication

In Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) the meaning of a word is represented as a vector in a high-dimensional semantic space. Different meanings of a word or different senses of a word are not distinguished. Instead, word senses are appropriately modified as the word is used in different contexts. In N-VP sentences, the precise meaning of the verb phrase depends on the noun it is combined with. An algorithm is described to adjust the meaning of a predicate as it is applied to different arguments. In forming a sentence meaning, not all features of a predicate are combined with the features of the argument, but only those that are appropriate to the argument. Hence, a different "sense" of a predicate emerges every time it is used in a different context. This predication algorithm is explored in the context of four different semantic problems: metaphor interpretation, causal inferences, similarity judgments, and homonym disambiguation.     

‘Ought’ and Control

Ethical theorists often assume that the verb ‘ought’ means roughly ‘has an obligation’; however, this assumption is belied by the diversity of ‘flavours’ of ought-sentences in English. A natural response is that ‘ought’ is ambiguous. However, this response is incompatible with the standard treatment of ‘ought’ by theoretical semanticists, who classify ‘ought’ as a member of the family of modal verbs, which are treated uniformly as operators. To many ethical theorists, however, this popular treatment in linguistics seems to elide an important distinction between agential and non-agential ought-statements. The thought is that ‘ought’ must have at least two senses, one implicating agency and connected to obligations, and another covering other uses. In this paper, I pursue some resolution of this tension between semantic theory and ethical theory with respect to the meaning of ‘ought’. To this end, I consider what I believe to be the most linguistically sophisticated argument for the view that the word ‘ought’ is ambiguous between agential and non-agential senses. This argument, due to Mark Schroeder, is instructive but based on a false claim about the syntax of agential ought-sentences—or so I attempt to show by first situating Schroeder's argument in its proper linguistic background and then discussing some syntactic evidence that he fails to appreciate. Then, I use the failure of this argument to motivate some more general reflections on how the standard treatment of ‘ought’ by theoretical semanticists might be refined in the light of the distinction important to ethical theory between agential and non-agential ought-statements, but also on how ethical theory might benefit from more careful study of the dominant treatment of modals as operators in theoretical semantics.