Demonstratives, Misc

According to Maite Ezcurdia, demonstratives are directly referential expressions with complex linguistic meanings. This distinction between levels of meaning resulting from her analysis of how different types and uses of demonstratives anaphorically interact leads her to conclude that simple demonstratives are non-compositionally complex, while complex demonstratives are so, partially, due to composition. In this article, I both extend her methodology and discuss her conclusions. I argue that the distinction between demonstratives results from how different types of contexts of use work (...) to select the referent, not from semantic composition. As Maite taught us, complexity isn’t always compositional. (shrink)

This paper argues, based on Lewis’ claim that communication is a coordination game (Lewis in Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp 3–35, 1975), that we can account for the communicative function of demonstratives without assuming that they semantically refer. The appeal of such a game theoretical version of the case for non-referentialism is that the communicative role of demonstratives can be accounted for without entering the cul de sac of trying to construct conventions (...) of ever-increasing complexity. Instead communication via demonstratives is explained with reference to the general, non-domain specific ability of human beings to solve games of coordination. Furthermore, there is empirical support for such a view. Judgments concerning demonstrative reference have been shown to be sensitive to judgments concerning common ground (Clark et al. in J Verb Learn Verb Behav 22:245–258, 1983), which is exactly what the non-referentialist account would predict. The game theoretical account also allows for an intuitively plausible, non-referentialist treatment of Speaks’ ‘trumping argument’ (Speaks in Philos Stud 174:709–734, 2017), as well as the Carnap/Agnew puzzle (Kaplan in Syntax Semant 9:221–43, 1970). (shrink)

In Felicitous Underspecification, Jeffrey King draws our attention to a rich and underexplored collection of linguistic data. These are uses of context-sensitive expressions which seem perfectly felicitous despite being such that, on plausible assumptions, the context in which they are used falls short of securing for them a unique semantic value. This raises an immediate puzzle: if, as King argues, these uses of expressions really do lack unique semantic values in context, how can they—as they manifestly do—make contributions to the (...) conversations in which they occur? King answers this question with a novel theory of conversational updating. Here I focus less on this theory than on King’s examples, and consider some ways of accommodating them without positing felicitous underspecification. In some cases I give some reasons for thinking that the alternative explanation is superior. But my aim is less to establish this conclusion than to suggest some new options for thinking about these examples, and hopefully by so doing to advance the conversation about the data to which King has drawn our attention. (shrink)

As it is broadly accepted, typical uses of demonstratives are accompanied by demonstrations. The concept of demonstration, however, manifests the action–product ambiguity analogous to that visible in the opposition between jumping and the resulting jump, talking and the resulting talk or crying and the resulting cry. It is also a heterogeneous concept that enables demonstrations to vary significantly. The present paper discusses action–product ambiguity as applied to demonstrations as well as the heterogeneity of the latter. An account that acknowledges ambiguity (...) and heterogeneity of demonstrations is sketched in the paper. It is argued that it has a rich explanatory and descriptive potential. (shrink)

Deictic (or pointing) gestures are traditionally known to have a simple function: to supply something as the referent of a demonstrative linguistic expression. I argue that deixis can have a more complex function. A deictic gesture can be used to _say something_ in conversation and can thereby become a full discourse move in its own right. To capture this phenomenon, which I call _rich demonstration_, I present an update semantics on which deictic gestures can indicate situations from a conversation’s context (...) and those situations coherently connect to prior discourse to generate information. (shrink)

Recently, Charles Goldhaber (2019) has argued that Tyler Burge’s (2005, 2010, 2011) arguments against disjunctivism in the philosophy of perception fail when juxtaposed with the literature in perceptual psychology. In addition, Goldhaber traces Burge’s motives for dismissing disjunctivism: his underlying theoretical assumptions vis-à-vis human rationality virtually force him to maintain that there is a genuine inconsistency between disjunctivism and perceptual psychology. While Goldhaber aims to defend epistemological disjunctivism à la John McDowell, my concern will be the other target of Burge’s (...) attack, namely John Campbell’s (2002a, 2002b, 2011a) relationism. I will reexamine the Burge/Campbell debate concerning the role of perceptual psychology in theorizing about the nature of perception and the status of perceptual beliefs so that I can support Goldhaber’s stance that Burge’s plan to put the kibosh on disjunctivism backfires in the end. Finally, by using the challenge of cognitive penetrability, I show how Burge’s argumentation strategy can be turned against him. (shrink)

This paper presents a dual intention model (DIM) of demonstrations as actions to show the agentive nature of demonstrations. According to the DIM, demonstrations are complex actions that contain as components at least three elements: an abductive intention, a deictic intention, and a basic ostensive act of indication. This paper unpacks these three components and discusses their roles from the viewpoint of the philosophy of action and the philosophy of language. It also shows how the DIM applies in selected practical (...) examples and explains the merits of the model in the context of other views on demonstrations and demonstratives. (shrink)

The paper discusses the answering machine puzzle and cases of non-standard uses of ‘I’. It offers an analysis of the phenomena that is conservative with respect to the Kaplanian account of indexicality. The point of departure of the paper is the observation that some proper indexicals have demonstrative uses. It is argued that treating some occurrences of ‘now’ as cases of such uses results in an intuitive and simple solution to the answering machine puzzle. At the same time, treating some (...) occurrences of ‘I’ in an analogous manner explains away the impression that some non-standard uses of ‘I’ enforce a modification of the standard semantics of the first-person pronoun. (shrink)

The phenomenon of context dependence is so multifaceted that it is tempting to classify it as hetergenous. It is especially evident in the case of the difference between context dependence as understood in the philosophy of language and context dependence as understood in the philosophy of mind. One of the aims of the present volume is to show that as varied as the phenomenon of context dependence is, the similarities between its different manifestations are profound and undeniable. More importantly, as (...) evidenced in a number of papers presented on the subsequent pages of this volume, a broad perspective on the phenomenon of context dependence helps us to re-apply theories devised for one of the subfields of philosophy to the other subfields. Since the connections and analogies between many uses of contextualism may not be initially obvious, keeping an open perspective and the willingness to learn from the work of others may sometimes be crucial for finding new, satisfactory solutions. (shrink)

According to the Self-Location Thesis, certain types of visual experiences have self-locating and so first-person, spatial contents. Such self-locating contents are typically specified in relational egocentric terms. So understood, visual experiences provide support for the claim that there is a kind of self-consciousness found in experiential states. This paper critically examines the Self-Location Thesis with respect to dynamic-reflexive visual experiences, which involve the movement of an object toward the location of the perceiving subject. The main aim of this paper is (...) to offer an alternative interpretation of these cases which resists attributing them self-locating content, arguing for a replacement of the de se component with a non-conceptual equivalent of the indexical ‘here’. In its final section, the paper also considers an extension of the h-replacement account to cases of visual kinesthesis. (shrink)

It is increasingly common for philosophers to rely on the notion of an idealised listener when explaining how the semantic values of context-sensitive expressions are determined. Some have identified the semantic values of such expressions, as used on particular occasions, with whatever an appropriately idealised listener would take them to be. Others have argued that, for something to count as the semantic value, an appropriately idealised listener should be able to recover it. Our aim here is to explore the range (...) of ways that such idealisation might be worked out, and then to argue that none of these results in a very plausible theory. We conclude by reflecting on what this negative result reveals about the nature of meaning and responsibility. (shrink)

This chapter further develops the idea that discourse conventions govern the dynamics of prominence, and determine the state of the conversational record, fixing the interpretation of an occurrence of a prominence-sensitive expression, such as a demonstrative pronoun. The chapter identifies a range of linguistic mechanisms—discourse conventions—that affect prominence as a matter of their grammatical contribution reflected in the logical form of a discourse. Specifically, it is argued that mechanisms of discourse coherence—the inferential connections between individual utterances that signal how they (...) are organized into a coherent discourse—affect the contextual prominence ranking of candidate interpretations for demonstrative pronouns as a matter of their grammatically encoded contribution. The meaning of a demonstrative is then determined linguistically through and through. While demonstratives are prominence-sensitive, they are not sensitive to non-linguistic features of utterance situation. (shrink)

The chapter provides an introduction to the key themes of the book. It introduces the problem of context-sensitivity, and its theoretical significance. It then outlines the key elements of the account the book develops—the notion of context, of content, and of context-content interaction—situating them with respect to the dominant tradition in theorizing about context-sensitivity. The chapter, finally, outlines some of the philosophical ramifications of this account and of its criticism of the traditional model for the nature of context, content, and (...) their interaction. The book argues that the traditional model of context-sensitivity underlies the linguistic arguments for non-propositional accounts of content and non-classical semantics that have gained support in recent literature. But it is the traditional model that should be abandoned instead, and replaced with a more adequate linguistic model of context this book develops. (shrink)

Natural languages are riddled with context-sensitivity. One and the same string of words can express many different meanings on occasion of use, and yet we understand one another effortlessly, on the fly. How do we do so? What fixes the meaning of context-sensitive expressions, and how are we able to recover the meaning so effortlessly? -/- This book offers a novel response: we can do so because we draw on a broad array of subtle linguistic conventions that determine the interpretation (...) of context-sensitive items. Contrary to the dominant tradition, which maintains that the meaning of context-sensitive language is underspecified by grammar and that interpretation relies on non-linguistic cues and speakers' intentions, this book argues that meaning is determined entirely by discourse conventions, rules of language that have largely been missed and the effects of which have been mistaken for extra-linguistic effects of an utterance situation on meaning. The linguistic account of context developed here sheds new light on the nature of linguistic content and the interaction between content and context. At the same time, it provides a novel model of context that should constrain and help evaluate debates across many subfields of philosophy where appeal to context has been common, often leading to surprising conclusions such as epistemology, ethics, value theory, metaphysics, metaethics, and logic. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the standard account of context-sensitivity, focusing on true demonstratives, the model for most context-sensitive expressions. The account involves an idealization that utterances are interpreted in a single, unchanging context. But this is problematic: it has a consequence that demonstratives are either indefinitely lexically ambiguous, or indefinitely ambiguous at the level of logical form. The chapter argues this is theoretically problematic. Relaxing this idealization, we could let the context change between occurrences of demonstratives. A demonstrative could then have (...) an unambiguous meaning, selecting the prominent interpretation in the current context. However, if prominence is determined extra-linguistically, as the traditional model assumes, we would still lack a systematic account of context-change, facing much of the same problems. An alternative account is outlined, which the chapter argues avoids the problems: the context is shifty, but the mechanisms of context-change are linguistic, and so the content of demonstratives is fully linguistically determined. (shrink)

An influential alternative account of context that likewise models context as a body of information that changes with an evolving discourse is Stalnakerian common ground model. On this model, however, the context is projected from a body of information mutually accepted by the interlocutors for the purposes of a conversation—a common ground. While the context constantly changes, these changes simply reflect the agents’ rational and cooperative response to manifest evidence. Might one attempt to assimilate the kinds of effects on prominence (...) simply to such rational responses to manifest evidence? Might we then do without the rich discourse structure posited in this chapter? It is argued here that this account would be empirically inadequate, failing to capture the special status linguistic conventions have when weighed against our overall evidence. (shrink)

The observation that demonstrative expressions allow for both bound and referential readings, and can be bound across sentence boundaries, provides independent motivation for a shifty account of context. Dynamic semantics offers an elegant model of shiftiness, in treating the context as a running record of potential interpretive dependencies, and utterances as instructions to update and possibly change extant dependencies. Such an account advances over the static Kaplanean model insofar as it allows for the interpretation to be dynamically affected by the (...) linguistic elements in the preceding discourse. However, due to the way it represents linguistic dependencies, and due to its reliance on both linguistic and non-linguistic effects of context to determine interpretation, the account still makes demonstrative pronouns indefinitely ambiguous at the level of logical form, thus inheriting some of the theoretical problems of the static account. (shrink)

This chapter draws theoretical conclusions and outlines directions for future developments. It summarizes the key theoretical and philosophical upshots of the account developed in the book and discusses further extensions of this framework. It discusses how the account can be applied to model context-sensitivity of situated utterances, in a way that can offer insights into puzzles concerning disagreement in discourse and communication under ignorance, which have plagued standard accounts of context and content. Further, it outlines the way the account is (...) to be extended and applied to various types of context-sensitive items, including relational expressions, gradable adjectives, and domain restriction. (shrink)

This chapter tackles the challenge of non-propositionalism. It argues that the source of the puzzle motivating non-propositionalism is the implicit assumption of the traditional, extra-linguistic account of context-sensitivity resolution. The problem is not in the idea that modal claims express truth-conditional content, but in the underlying assumption of how a context operates to determine this content. With a more nuanced understanding of the linguistic mechanisms driving context-sensitivity resolution, which captures the effects of discourse conventions, the apparent non-propositionality of modal discourse (...) turns out to be an illusion. The account delivers ordinary propositional content even for discourses that _prima facie_ evade propositionalist treatment. More importantly, a broader range of data suggests that such propositional content is required to properly account for the range of interpretations modal discourses allow. Thus, any adequate account has to take into account how discourse conventions identified in this chapter interact with the interpretation of modality. (shrink)

Recent literature has presented a serious challenge for propositional accounts of content. It has been argued that certain bits of natural language discourse, in particular, modal claims, pose a fundamental challenge for propositional accounts, as they fail to express propositional content even relative to a context. The puzzling linguistic behavior of modal discourse suggests that context simply cannot determine propositional content for such claims. This appears to call for a re-thinking of the interaction between context and content, and their role (...) in communication. Indeed, various non-propositionalist accounts that have been proposed to capture this puzzling behavior call for such re-thinking. Such accounts have received various implementations, for instance, in various expressivist and dynamic update semantics. These accounts deny that modals express ordinary propositional content, and they also deliver a non-classical logic. This chapter introduces the challenge, and the main features of non-propositional accounts that have been proposed as a solution. (shrink)

This chapter provides the key elements of the account of context and context-sensitivity. Like the shifty, dynamic account of context in Chapter 3, this account models context as a running record of candidate interpretations for context-sensitive items, for exmaple, demonstrative pronouns. However, by contrast, the chapter argues that context organizes candidate interpretations by prominence. Further, it argues that prominence is fully linguistically determined: the context is updated exclusively by linguistic rules, through effects triggered by elements in the logical form of (...) a discourse. These elements are richer than standardly thought, including, for example, contributions of demonstrative gestures. A demonstrative, then, receives a simple unambiguous meaning: as a matter of its meaning, it simply selects the most prominent interpretation that satisfies its lexically encoded constraints. This account is argued to be empirically more adequate, and avoids the theoretical challenges facing the alternatives discussed in earlier chapters. (shrink)

On the traditional picture, sentences express content relative to context. This content then is, or determines, truth-conditional, propositional content, which is what we assert and believe, and which can guide our action. If I have a thought about the world, and I want to convey it to you, I should utter a sentence which, in this context, expresses that thought. You can then understand it, and come to believe it, and it might guide your action. But on the current proposal (...) the context is constantly changing, even mid-utterance, and utterances are interpreted as instructions to update the context. What of our simple account of thought, communication, and action? This chapter shows our dynamic account still delivers propositional content. While utterances are semantically assigned dynamic meaning, this meaning serves as an instruction to build ordinary propositional content. (shrink)

This chapter develops a formal model of context-sensitivity of modal discourse. Much like demonstrative pronouns, modals are prominence-sensitive, selecting the most prominent candidate interpretation. The prominence ranking of candidate interpretations is recorded in the conversational record, and is maintained through the effects of discourse conventions represented in the logical form of a discourse. In this way arguments are individuated as structured discourses that underwrite a particular propositional pattern. It is shown that such account provably preserves classical logic. Further, this chapter (...) argues that its model offers a more satisfactory account of the individuation of argument patterns in natural language discourse then the competing alternatives. Any adequate account, it is here argued, will have to take into account not just the contribution of individual sentences, but also of discourse conventions. Indeed, the contribution of discourse conventions is crucial for determining the contribution of individual sentences in the first place. (shrink)

Non-propositionalism has additionally been fueled by the fact that modals and conditionals seem to give raise to failure of classical patterns of inference, for instance, _modus ponens_ and _modus tollens._ Since non-propositionalist accounts typically invalidate some of these patterns of inference, the apparent counterexamples have been taken as further data in support of such treatments. This chapter argues that this is a mistaken reaction to the apparent counterexamples. The seeming violations of classical patterns of inference yet again result from a (...) faulty assumption of the extra-linguistic account of context-sensitivity resolution, and a failure to account for the effects of discourse conventions on the interpretation of modal discourse. The chapter’s account of modality, which treats them as prominence-sensitive expressions whose interpretation is determined by discourse conventions, predicts and explains the apparent counterexamples, while nevertheless preserving classical logic. (shrink)

The popular interpretation of token‐reflexivism states that at the level of logical form, indexicals and demonstratives are disguised descriptions that employ complex demonstratives or special quotation‐mark names involving particular tokens of the appropriate expression‐types. In this article I first demonstrate that this interpretation of token‐reflexivism is only one of many, and that it is better to think of token‐reflexivism as denoting a family of distinct theoretical frameworks. Second, I contrast two interpretations of the idea of the token‐reflexive paraphrase of an (...) indexical sentence. The utterance approach claims that token‐reflexive paraphrases involve tokens of entire utterances. The sub‐utterance approach maintains that token‐reflexive paraphrases involve tokens of the particular indexical words used in the utterance. Next, I pose a problem that shows that neither of the two approaches is correct. The problem shows that the only viable version of the token‐reflexive proposition must somehow take into account the referential intentions of the speaker of the context. Therefore I conclude the article by sketching the framework of restricted intentional token‐reflexivism. I argue that it is an attractive semantic theory of distributed utterances that, among other things, enables automatic and intentional indexicals to be distinguished. (shrink)

In an earlier defense of the view that the fundamental logical properties of logical truth and logical consequence obtain or fail to obtain only relative to contexts, I focused on a variation of Kaplan’s own modal logic of indexicals. In this paper, I state a semantics and sketch a system of proof for a first-order logic of demonstratives, and sketch proofs of soundness and completeness. (I omit details for readability.) That these results obtain for the first-order logic of demonstratives shows (...) that the significance of demonstratives for logic exceeds their behavior as rigid designators in counterfactual reasoning, or reasoning about alternative possibilities. Furthermore, the results in this paper help address one common objection to the view that logical truth and consequence obtain only relative to contexts. According to this objection, the view entails that logical consequence is not formal. (shrink)

When characterizing the content of a subject’s perceptual experience, does their seeing an object entail that their visual experience represents it as being a certain way? If it does, are they thereby in a position to have perceptually-based thoughts about it? On one hand, representationalists are under pressure to answer these questions in the affirmative. On the other hand, it seems they cannot. This paper presents a puzzle to illustrate this tension within orthodox representationalism. We identify several interesting morals which (...) may be drawn in response, each of which teaches us something interesting and important about perceptual experience and its interface with cognition and related phenomena. (shrink)

Nowak and Michaelson have done us the service of presenting direct and clear worries about our account of demonstratives. In response, we use the opportunity to engage briefly with their remarks as a useful way to clarify our view.

The expression tode ti, commonly translated as ‘a this’, plays a key role in Aristotle’s metaphysics. Drawing lightly on theories of demonstratives in contemporary linguistics, I discuss the expres...

It is commonly supposed that an utterance of a demonstrative, such as “that”, refers to a given object only if the speaker intends to refer to that object. This paper poses three challenges to this theory. First, the theory threatens to beg the question by defining the content of the speaker’s intention in terms of reference. Second, the theory makes psychologically implausible demands on the speaker. Third, the theory entails that there can be no demonstratives in thought.

Intentionalism about demonstratives is the view that the referent of a demonstrative is determined solely by the speaker's intentions. Intentionalists can disagree about the nature of these intentions, but are united in rejecting the relevance of other factors, such as the speaker's gestures, her gaze, and any facts about the addressee or the audience. In this paper, I formulate a particular version of this view, and I defend it against six objections, old and new.

Philosophy, scientific psychology, and common sense all distinguish perception from cognition. While there is little agreement about how the perception–cognition boundary ought to be drawn, one prominent idea is that perceptual states are dependent on a stimulus, or stimulus-dependent, in a way that cognitive states are not. This paper seeks to develop this idea in a way that can accommodate two apparent counterexamples: hallucinations, which are prima facie perceptual yet stimulus-independent; and demonstrative thoughts, which are prima facie cognitive yet stimulus-dependent. (...) The payoff is not only a specific proposal for marking the perception–cognition boundary, but also a deeper understanding of the natures of hallucination and demonstrative thought. (shrink)

According to intentionalism, a demonstrative d refers to an object o only if the speaker intends d to refer to o. Intentionalism is a popular view in metasemantics, but Gauker has recently argued that it is circular. We defend intentionalism against this objection, by showing that Gauker’s argument rests on a misconstrual of the aim of metasemantics. We then introduce two related, but distinct circularity objections: the worry that intentionalism is uninformative, and the problem of intentional bootstrapping, according to which (...) it is impossible to have referential intentions. We also show how intentionalists could respond to these new objections. (shrink)

Montague and Kaplan began a revolution in semantics, which promised to explain how a univocal expression could make distinct truth-conditional contributions in its various occurrences. The idea was to treat context as a parameter at which a sentence is semantically evaluated. But the revolution has stalled. One salient problem comes from recurring demonstratives: "He is tall and he is not tall". For the sentence to be true at a context, each occurrence of the demonstrative must make a different truth-conditional contribution. (...) But this difference cannot be accounted for by standard parameter sensitivity. Semanticists, consoled by the thought that this ambiguity would ultimately be needed anyhow to explain anaphora, have been too content to posit massive ambiguities in demonstrative pronouns. This article aims to revived the parameter revolution by showing how to treat demonstrative pronouns as univocal while providing an account of anaphora that doesn't end up re-introducing the ambiguity. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to lay out a number of theses which are very widely held in contemporary philosophy of language and linguistics, and to argue that, given some extra theses for which I’ll argue, they are inconsistent. Some of this will involve going through some very well-trodden territory—my hope is that presenting this familiar ground in the way that I do will help to make plain the problem that I aim to identify.

Traditionally, pronouns are treated as ambiguous between bound and demonstrative uses. Bound uses are non-referential and function as bound variables, and demonstrative uses are referential and take as a semantic value their referent, an object picked out jointly by linguistic meaning and a further cue—an accompanying demonstration, an appropriate and adequately transparent speaker’s intention, or both. In this paper, we challenge tradition and argue that both demonstrative and bound pronouns are dependent on, and co-vary with, antecedent expressions. Moreover, the semantic (...) value of a pronoun is never determined, even partly, by extra-linguistic cues; it is fixed, invariably and unambiguously, by features of its context of use governed entirely by linguistic rules. We exploit the mechanisms of Centering and Coherence theories to develop a precise and general meta-semantics for pronouns, according to which the semantic value of a pronoun is determined by what is at the center of attention in a coherent discourse. Since the notions of attention and coherence are, we argue, governed by linguistic rules, we can give a uniform analysis of pronoun resolution that covers bound, demonstrative, and even discourse bound readings. Just as the semantic value of the first-person pronoun ‘I’ is conventionally set by a particular feature of its context of use—namely, the speaker—so too, we will argue, the semantic values of other pronouns, including ‘he’, are conventionally set by particular features of the context of use. (shrink)

Demonstratives have different semantic values relative to different contexts of utterance. But it is surprisingly difficult to describe the function from contexts to contents which determines the semantic value of a given use of a demonstrative. It is very natural to think that the intentions of the speaker should play a significant role here. The aim of this paper is to discuss a pair of problems that arise for views which give intentions this central role in explaining the characters of (...) demonstratives. As will emerge, these problems lead quickly to a foundational question about the semantics of demonstratives and many other context-sensitive expressions: the question of whether, in explaining their characters, we need to understand them as sensitive, not just to facts about the psychology of the speaker of the context, but also to facts about the audience of the context. I critically examine Jeffrey King’s theory of demonstratives, which answers this question in the affirmative, and argue that it ultimately collapses into a purely speaker-based view of the character of demonstratives. I then show how to develop a much simpler speaker-based theory which both handles all of the cases handled by King’s theory and avoids some of the more serious problems which King’s theory faces. Towards the end I consider how we might solve the very difficult problems which result from cases in which speakers use demonstratives with conflicting referential intentions. (shrink)

In demonstration, speakers use real-world activity both for its practical effects and to help make their points. The demonstrations of origami mathematics, for example, reconfigure pieces of paper by folding, while simultaneously allowing their author to signal geometric inferences. Demonstration challenges us to explain how practical actions can get such precise significance and how this meaning compares with that of other representations. In this paper, we propose an explanation inspired by David Lewis’s characterizations of coordination and scorekeeping in conversation. In (...) particular, we argue that words, gestures, diagrams and demonstrations can function together as integrated ensembles that contribute to conversation, because interlocutors use them in parallel ways to coordinate updates to the conversational record. (shrink)

This paper argues that the obvious validity of certain inferences involving indirect speech reports as premises and truth or falsity ascriptions as conclusions is incompatible with Davidson's so-called "paratactic" analysis of the logical form of indirect discourse. Besides disqualifying that analysis, this problem is also claimed to indicate that the analysis is doubly in tension with Davidson's metasemantic views. Specifically, it can be reconciled neither with one of Davidson's key assumptions regarding the adequacy of the kind of semantic theory he (...) recommends nor with one of his key assumptions regarding the inadequacy of a kind of semantic theory he rejects. (shrink)

In order to capture our intuitions about the logical consistency of sentences and the logical validity of arguments, a semantics for a natural language has to allow for the fact that different occurrences of a single bare demonstrative, such as “this”, may refer to different objects. But it is not obvious how to formulate a semantic theory in order to achieve this result. This paper first criticizes several proposals: that we should formulate our semantics as a semantics for tokens, not (...) expressions, Kaplan’s idea that syntax associates a demonstration with each occurrence of a demonstrative, Braun’s idea that a context may specify shifts in context across the evaluation of the expressions in a sentence; and Predelli’s idea that we should countenance different classes of contexts. Finally, a solution is proposed that allows that a natural language persists across the addition of basic lexical items but defines logical properties in terms of language stages. A surprising result is that we do not need to think of demonstratives as taking different referents in different situations. (shrink)

This dissertation sets out to answer the question ''What fixes the semantic values of context-sensitive referential terms—like names, demonstratives, and pronouns—in context?'' I argue that it is the speaker's intentions that play this role, as constrained by the conventions governing the use of particular sorts of referential terms. These conventions serve to filter the speaker's intentions for just those which meet these constraints on use, leaving only these filtered-for intentions as semantically relevant. By considering a wide range of cases, including (...) many involving confused and deceptive speakers, I argue that this 'constraint theory' provides a better account of linguistic reference than does any extant alternative, whether intentionalist or non-intentionalist. Along the way, I argue that semantics cannot depend on the reactions of idealized listeners, that speaker meaning is far less clear, and helpful, a notion than it is standardly taken to be, and that speakers needn't aim to be cooperative in order to fix the meaning of their terms in context. (shrink)

Based on the notion of a trope, this paper gives a novel analysis of identificational sentences such as 'this is Mary','this is a beautiful woman', 'this looks like Mary', or 'this is the same lump of clay, but not the same statue as that'.

In this paper I apply a well known tension between cognitive and semantic aspects in Frege’s notion of sense to his treatment of indexicals. I first discusses Burge’s attack against the identification of sense and meaning, and Kripke’s answer supporting such identification. After showing different problems for both interpreters, the author claims that the tension in Frege’s conception of sense (semantic and cognitive) accounts for some shortcomings of both views, and that considering the tension helps in understanding apparently contradictory Fregean (...) claims about sameness of sense of sentences with indexicals. I conclude that the Fregean notion of sense, also in its cognitive aspect, cannot be reduced to linguistic meaning, and that the Fregean tension between two notions of sense may also explain the discussion Frege gives on the indexical “I”, proposing to develop a picture of indexicals as hidden complex demonstratives, as originally suggested by Burge. (shrink)

This paper is a comparison of Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations of Frege’s theory of indexicals, especially concerning Frege’s remarks on time as “part of the expression of thought”. I analyze the most contrasting features of Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations of Frege’s remarks on indexicals. Subsequently, I try to identify a common ground between Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations, and hint at a possible convergence between those two views, stressing the importance given by Frege to nonverbal signs in defining the content of (...) thought. I conclude by indicating a possible direction for further research. (shrink)

This dissertation is about the meaning of phrases like "That man" or "This bag". These phrases are described as Complex Demonstratives. There is a difference of opinion regarding whether these phrases are directly referential or quantificational. I have weighed the arguments regarding this debate in the dissertation. I have concluded that there are cogent arguments to believe that such phrases are quantificational. However, one cannot retain the insights of the directly referential account inside the quantificational account. That is a creditable (...) move, but the move abandons a crucial property of quantifiers: permutation invariance. Since that is the case, I have suggested that given the evidence at hand, and the examination of the evidence in the dissertation, we may settle for a simpler theory that does not accommodate the intuitions of the direct referentialist. Those intuitions have to be accounted for through the intentions of a speaker when she utters phrases using complex demonstratives. (shrink)

Phrases like "That man" are called complex demonstrative phrases. They are usually considered to be directly referential in nature. There are many arguments to suggest that such phrases are not directly referential, but are quantificational. This work examines the philosophical debate over the semantic status of complex demonstratives at length, arriving at the conclusion that the quantificational view is right. A new logical form is also suggested for complex demonstratives.

This paper presents a precise semantics for incomplete predicates such as “ready”. Incomplete predicates have distinctive logical properties that a semantic theory needs to accommodate. For instance, “Tipper is ready” logically implies “Tipper is ready for something”, but “Tipper is ready for something” does not imply “Tipper is ready”. It is shown that several approaches to the semantics of incomplete predicates fail to accommodate these logical properties. The account offered here defines contexts as structures containing an element called a proposition (...) set, which contains atomic propositions and negations of atomic propositions. The condition under which “Tipper is ready” is true in a context is defined in terms of the contents of the proposition set for the context. On this account, the content of the context pertinent to a conversation must be determined not by what speakers have in mind but by relations of objective relevance. (shrink)