The context principle and Wittgenstein's criticism of Russell's theory of types

In this paper, I try to uncover the role played by Wittgenstein's context principle in his criticism of Russell's theory of types. There is evidence in Wittgenstein's writings that a syntactical version of the context principle in connection with the theory of symbolism functions as a good reason for his dispensing with the theory of types.I would like to thank Michael Wrigley (UNICAMP) and Gottfried Gabriel (Universität Konstanz) as well as an anonymous journal referee for their valuable comments on a previous version of this paper.     

Parsing theory and phrase-order variation in German V2 clauses

This paper examines the syntactic processing of structural ambiguities in German verbsecond (V2) clauses. It is argued that the proposal of Grimshaw (1991, 1993) that CP and IP are verbal extended projections allows an incremental parse of these ambiguities which is consistent with the principles of simplicity(no vacuous structure building) and structural determinism(computed dominance and precedence relations cannot be altered by parser-internal operations) proposed in Gorrell (1995). It is argued that the ambiguities discussed here provide evidence against the hypothesis that the parser's initial attachment decisions follow from a maximal-licensing principle rather than a preference for minimal structure (Pritchett, 1992). Further, it is argued that, contra Fodor and Inoue (1994), theories of syntactic processing must not only incorporate some mechanism for resolving conflicts between new input and computed structure, but also distinguish the comparative costs of different reanalysis types.This is a condensed version of Gorrell (1996a). In this paper I discuss only a few of the relevant structures in German. The longer paper examines the processing ofwh-strucrures and verb-final clauses in German, omitted here. For a more detailed discussion of the properties of the parsing model outlined here, see Gorrell (1995).Many thanks are due to Gisbert Fanselow, Peter Staudacher, Matthias Schlesewsky, and Craig Thiersch for helpful comments and criticisms. This paper was written while I was a member of the University of Potsdam Linguistics Department and I want to thank Ria De Bleser, Jürgen Weissenborn, and the students in my seminars on parsing theory for helping to make Potsdam a good place to work. Jutta Kasprzik deserves special thanks for favors too numerous to list. I also want to thank audiences at the University of Jena and the workshop on sentence processing at the Einstein Forum, Potsdam.     

Semantics and supervenience

I have presented much of this research in talks at the University of Costa Rica and the University of Texas at Austin. I am grateful to my audiences for their comments and advice. I would like especially to thank Luis Camacho, Nicholas Asher, and Robert Koons. Many of the ideas in the paper stem from an informal seminar on type-free theories held at the University of Texas's Center for Cognitive Science from 1984 to 1987. I am grateful to the participants in that seminar — Ignacio Angelelli, Nicholas Asher, Herbert Hochberg, Hans Kamp, Frederick Kronz, Per Lindström and Mark Sainsbury — for their many insights into type-free semantics, and to the Center for Cognitive Science for providing such a hospitable environment for this work. I have also profited from the criticisms of two anonymous referees. Finally, I am indebted to the University of Texas's University Research Institute and to the National Science Foundation's Information Science and History and Philosophy of Science programs for grant support.     

A generalized probabilistic theory of causal relevance

I advance a new theory of causal relevance, according to which causal claims convey information about conditional probability functions. This theory is motivated by the problem of disjunctive factors, which haunts existing probabilistic theories of causation. After some introductory remarks, I present in Section 3 a sketch of Eells's (1991) probabilistic theory of causation, which provides the framework for much of the discussion. Section 4 explains how the problem of disjunctive factors arises within this framework. After rejecting three proposed solutions, I offer in Section 6 a new approach to causation that avoids the problem. Decision-theoretic considerations also support the new approach. Section 8 develops the consequences of the new theory for causal explanation. The resulting theory of causal explanation incorporates the new insights while respecting important work on scientific explanation by Salmon (1971), Railton (1981), and Humphreys (1989). My conclusions are enumerated in Section 9.I would like to thank Nuel Belnap, John Earman, Richard Gale, Paul Humphreys, Satish Iyengar, Wes Salmon, and two anonymous referees for comments and discussion. I am also indebted to the members of an audience at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where some of the ideas contained in this paper were presented.     

The logic of questions as a theory of erotetic arguments

This paper argues for the idea that the logic of questions should focus its attention on the analysis of arguments in which questions play the role of conclusions. The relevant concepts of validity are discussed and the concept of the logic of questions of a semantically interpreted formalized language is introduced.This paper was presented at the symposium Erotetic Logic. A Dialogue organized by the Center for the Philosophy and History of Science of Boston University (February, 1994) and prepared during my stay at the Department of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside as a Fulbright grantee.I would like to thank Professors David Harrah and Sylvain Bromberger for valuable suggestions and comments.     

Relevant logic and the theory of information

This paper provides an interpretation of the Routley-Meyer semantics for a weak negation-free relevant logic using Israel and Perry's theory of information. In particular, Routley and Meyer's ternary accessibility relation is given an interpretation in information-theoretic terms.I am indebted to Max Cresswell for invariable conversations relating to the topic and encouraging me to provide a philosophical explanation of the ternary semantics for relevant logic and to Errol Martin also for useful discussions and encouragement. I am also grateful to Greg Restall who made his work available to me while I was finishing this project. While working on this project, I was supported by a grant from the Centre for Information Science Research at The Australian National University. I am grateful to John Slaney and Michael McRobbie for securing this grant. I gave an earlier version of this paper to the Basser School of Computer Science at the University of Sydney and to the philosophy department at Victoria University of Wellington. I thank all those in attendance especially John Bacon, Norman Foo, Abhaya Nayak, Kim Sterelny, and James Maclaurin.     

Individualism,causal powers,and explanation

Versions of this paper were presented at the 17th Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology in June 1991, at Cornell University in October 1991, and at Queen's University in January 1992; I thank Terence Horgan and Carl Ginet, respectively, for their comments on the first two of these occasions. I would also like to thank Terence Irwin, Sydney Shoemaker, Bob Stalnaker, Ed Stein, and J. D. Trout for comments on earlier versions of the paper, and Joe Moore, Dave Robb and Sergio Sismondo for useful discussion.     

Category theory and the foundations of mathematics: Philosophical excavations

The aim of this paper is to clarify the role of category theory in the foundations of mathematics. There is a good deal of confusion surrounding this issue. A standard philosophical strategy in the face of a situation of this kind is to draw various distinctions and in this way show that the confusion rests on divergent conceptions of what the foundations of mathematics ought to be. This is the strategy adopted in the present paper. It is divided into 5 sections. We first show that already in the set theoretical framework, there are different dimensions to the expression foundations of. We then explore these dimensions more thoroughly. After a very short discussion of the links between these dimensions, we move to some of the arguments presented for and against category theory in the foundational landscape. We end up on a more speculative note by examining the relationships between category theory and set theory.Various versions of this paper have been read by many people, many of whom have made crucial comments. Needless to say, I am entirely responsible for the claims made in this paper. I would particularly like to thank, in alphabetical order, Mario Bunge, Marta Bunge, Michael Hallett, Andrew Irvine, Saunders Mac Lane, Collin McLarty, Peneloppe Maddy and Mihaly Makkai. Part of the work was done while the author was a visiting fellow at REHSEIS in Paris and at the Center for Philosophy of Science in Pittsburgh. I would like to thank everyone for his or her help and support. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support received from the SSHRC of Canada while this work was done.     

Counterfactual analysis: Can the metalinguistic theory be revitalized?

This paper evaluates the recent trend to renounce the similarity approach to counterfactuals in favor of the older metalinguistic theory. I try to show, first, that the metalinguistic theory cannot work in anything like its present form (the form described by many in the last decade who claim to be able to solve Goodman's old problem of cotenability). This is so, I argue, because the metalinguistic theory requires laws of nature of a sort that we (apparently) do not have: current physical theory cannot underwrite the metalinguistic theory. Second, I draw from the first point a motivation for the similarity approach, a motivation based on theoretical considerations apart from the standard ones of pretheoretical intuition.I would like to thank Arthur Fine, Dorothy Grover, Anil Gupta, Alan Nelson, Larry Sklar, and Paul Teller for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

What can prosody tell a parser?

In this paper, I consider how a sentence processor might use specific prosodic cues at various points in the processing of particular sentences containing (at least temporary) syntactic ambiguity. In principle, the usefulness of prosodic information depends on what a given cluster of prosodic cues typically signifies, and on which syntactic options exist for a given string: in only some instances can prosodic information provide useful disambiguating information.This work was supported by Grant #DC-01409, a Research and Training Grant funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders to the National Center for Neurogenic Communication Disorders, University of Arizona. I wish to thank Andrew Barss for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

A note on the deontic system DL of Jones and Pörn

I would like to thank Ingmar Pörn for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Skepticism and legal interpretation

For comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article, I would like to thank Kendall Walton, Edward Averill, Marcia Baron, Richard Brandt, and Walter Schaller. This paper was first developed while in residence as a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I wish to thank both that institution for making its resources available to me during the 1986–87 academic year, and my home institution for granting me the Developmental Leave that permitted me to pursue my research. Finally, I wish to thank Thomas W. Pogge for helping me to make several substantive clarifications in the final version of this paper.     

Hierarchical semantics for relevant logics

This paper was presented to the 1990 meeting of the Australasian Association for Logic held at the University of Sydney, and I thank those present for helpful comments made.     

The structuralist view of mathematical objects

This paper is based on lectures given to meetings of the Society for Exact Philosophy in Toronto, May 17, 1985, and of the Association for Symbolic Logic in Washington, DC, December 29, 1985. Some of the material had been presented in lectures at Dartmouth College in 1981 and at the University of Padua in 1983. I am indebted to comments from all four audiences, and also to correspondence with Michael Resnik and especially W. W. Tait. This paper was written while I was at Columbia University, to which I and it owe much. Support of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.     

Spacetime theory as physical geometry

Discussions of the metaphysical status of spacetime assume that a spacetime theory offers a causal explanation of phenomena of relative motion, and that the fundamental philosophical question is whether the inference to that explanation is warranted. I argue that those assumptions are mistaken, because they ignore the essential character of spacetime theory as a kind of physical geometry. As such, a spacetime theory does notcausally explain phenomena of motion, but uses them to construct physicaldefinitions of basic geometrical structures by coordinating them with dynamical laws. I suggest that this view of spacetime theories leads to a clearer view of the philosophical foundations of general relativity and its place in the historical evolution of spacetime theory. I also argue that this view provides a much clearer and more defensible account of what is entailed by realism concerning spacetime.I would like to thank William Demopoulos and Michael Friedman for their comments on earlier drafts. I also thank the anonymous referees forErkenntnis for their suggestions. Work on this paper was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.     

Constitution and ontology: Some remarks on Husserl's ontological position in the Logical Investigations

This paper is based on studies made during a stay at the University in Wuppertal, Germany. I thank Professor Klaus Held and Dr. Dieter Lohmar for their various comments upon my initial research.     

On the general theory of meaningful representation

The numerical representations of measurement, geometry and kinematics are here subsumed under a general theory of representation. The standard theories of meaningfulness of representational propositions in these three areas are shown to be special cases of two theories of meaningfulness for arbitrary representational propositions: the theories based on unstructured and on structured representation respectively. The foundations of the standard theories of meaningfulness are critically analyzed and two basic assumptions are isolated which do not seem to have received adequate justification: the assumption that a proposition invariant under the appropriate group is therefore meaningful, and the assumption that representations should be unique up to a transformation of the appropriate group. A general theory of representational meaningfulness is offered, based on a semantic and syntactic analysis of representational propositions. Two neglected features of representational propositions are formalized and made use of: (a) that such propositions are induced by more general propositions defined for other structures than the one being represented, and (b) that the true purpose of representation is the application of the theory of the representing system to the represented system. On the basis of these developments, justifications are offered for the two problematic assumptions made by the existing theories.Material from this paper was presented at a conference on meaningfulness in the theory of measurement held at New York University in December 1984, hosted by J. C. Falmagne. I would like to thank Patrick Suppes for arranging my invitation to this conference, and David Krantz, R. Duncan Luce, and Fred Roberts for helpful comments. I would also like to thank an anonymous referee for extremely detailed and helpful comments and suggestions, the most important of which are acknowledged in footnotes.     

RESTRICTIVE CONSEQUENTIALISM AND REAL FRIENDSHIP

A familiar objection to restrictive consequentialism is that a restrictive consequentialist is incapable of having true friendships. In this paper I distinguish between an instrumentalist and a non‐instrumentalist version of this objection and argue that while the restrictive consequentialist can answer the non‐instrumentalist version, restrictive consequentialism may still seem vulnerable to the instrumentalist version. I then suggest a consequentialist reply that I argue also works against this version of the objection. Central to this reply is the claim that a restrictive consequentialist is capable of true friendship if the value she aims for is not merely seen as a function of her self‐regarding desires, but includes as a central constituent a form of objective value often referred to as ‘flourishing’ or ‘self‐realization’. ¹ 1 Earlier versions of this paper have been presented to the Ethics Reading Group at Columbia University and to the Department Colloquia at the University of Oslo. I thank the audiences on both occasions for helpful comments.
     

Prototypes and conceptual analysis

In this paper, I explore the implications of recent empirical research on concept representation for the philosophical enterprise of conceptual analysis. I argue that conceptual analysis, as it is commonly practiced, is committed to certain assumptions about the nature of our intuitive categorization judgments. I then try to show how these assumptions clash with contemporary accounts of concept representation in cognitive psychology. After entertaining an objection to my argument, I close by considering ways in which conceptual analysis might be altered to accord better with the empirical work.Thanks are due to John Bickle, Marian David, Terence Horgan, Stephen Stich, John Tienson, Paul Weithman and an anonymous referee for several helpful comments and suggestions. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at Central Michigan University, The University of Memphis, The University of Mississipi and The Second International Conference on Cognitive Science at San Sebastian, Spain. A great deal of useful feedback was provided by these audiences.     

Syntactic Priming: A Corpus-based Approach

The present study is a corpus-based investigation of syntactic priming, i.e. the tendency to reuse syntactic constructions. On the basis of data from the ICE-GB corpus, I analyze two different pairs of syntactic patterns, the so-called dative alternation and particle placement of transitive phrasal verbs. Although it has sometimes been argued that only experimental data can contribute to studies of priming, the analysis shows that (a) the corpus-based results for datives are very similar to the experimental ones; (b) priming is also obtained for the verb-particle construction, a construction hitherto not explored in the priming literature and (c), most importantly, in line with much previous psycholinguistic and corpus-linguistic work, priming effects turn out to be strongly verb-specific such that some verbs are much more resistant or responsive to priming than others. I conclude with a discussion of how corpus data relate to experimental data and how the corpus-based findings can contribute to psycholinguistic model building.This paper is dedicated to Günter Rohdenburg on the occasion of his 65th birthday I thank (in alphabetical order) Doris Schönefeld (Ruhr University of Bochum), Anja Steinlen (University of Southern Denmark) and Stefanie Wulff (University of Bremen) for comments on a previous draft of this paper. In addition, I have benefited a lot from discussion with Benedikt Szmrecsanyi (University of Freiburg) and from the very detailed and useful comments of one anonymous reviewer, which made it possible to improve the paper considerably. Naturally, all remaining inadequacies are my own.