Definitions I presented in a previous article as part of a semantic approach in epistemology assumed that the concept of derivability from standard logic held across all mathematical and scientific disciplines. The present article argues that this assumption is not true for quantum mechanics (QM) by showing that concepts of validity applicable to proofs in mathematics and in classical mechanics are inapplicable to proofs in QM. Because semantic epistemology must include this important theory, revision is necessary. (...) The one I propose also extends semantic epistemology beyond the ‘hard’ sciences. The article ends by presenting and then refuting some responses QM theorists might make to my arguments. (shrink)

Machery argues: (1) that “philosophers’ intuitions about reference are not more reliable than lay people’s—if anything, they are probably worse”; (2) that “intuitions about the reference of proper names and uses of proper names provide equally good evidence for theories of reference”. (1) lacks theoretical and empirical support. (2) cannot be right because usage provides the evidence that intuitions are reliable.Machery defiende que (1) “las intuiciones de los filósofos sobre la referencia no son más fiables que las de los legos (...) —si acaso, serían peores”; (2) las “intuiciones acerca de la referencia de los nombres propios y los usos de los nombres propios ofrecen evidencia de igual valor para las teorías de la referencia”. (1) carece de base empírica o teórica. (2) no puede ser correcta, puesto que el uso ofrece evidencia de que las intuiciones son fiables. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that philosophers’ intuitions about reference are not more reliable than lay people’s and that intuitions about the reference of proper names and uses of proper names provide equally good evidence for theories of reference.

In this article, I explore the consequences of two commonsensical premises in semantics and epistemology: (1) natural language is a complex system rooted in the communal life of human beings within a given environment; and (2) linguistic knowledge is essentially dependent on natural language. These premises lead me to emphasize the process-socio-environmental character of linguistic meaning and knowledge, from which I proceed to analyse a number of long-standing philosophical problems, attempting to throw new light upon them on these grounds. (...) In particular, I criticize the use of expressions such as ‘absolute truth’, ‘absolute existence’ and ‘the thing in itself’, arguing that they lead to what I call ‘the ultralinguistic paradox’ (a fatal antinomy). In the same way, I review a number of mainstream topics in philosophical semantics, epistemology and metaphysics, reformulating them in terms much more naturalistic – and less mysterious – than usual. (shrink)

This monograph offers a comprehensive study of contingent a priori truths. Building onto a theoretical framework developed by the philosopher and logician Saul Kripke, the author also presents a new approach to these truths. The first part of the book details the many theories on contingent a priori truths. The coverage examines the cases of Kripke and David Kaplan, Donnellan and the de re requirement, Evans and weak contingency, as well as Plantinga, Salmon, Soames, and the pseudo a priori. Overall, (...) it provides a systematic discussion and critical review of all these many positions. Next, the author develops an alternative approach. His working hypothesis is that performative verbs must play a central role in Kripke's examples, even if they do not show up at the surface structure of the corresponding sentences. This opens up an entirely new way of looking at Kripke's cases and of treating them by exploring some aspects of the theory of illocutionary acts. His discussion also examines brute facts and institutional facts, indexicals and performatives, as well as Frege's theory of definitions. Providing an authoritative exploration into contingent a priori truths, this book will be of interest to students, academics, and researchers in philosophy and logic. (shrink)

The semantic blindness objection to contextualism challenges the view that there is no incompatibility between (i) denials of external-world knowledge in contexts where radical-deception scenarios are salient, and (ii) affirmations of external-world knowledge in contexts where such scenarios are not salient. Contextualism allegedly attributes a gross and implausible form of semantic incompetence in the use of the concept of knowledge to people who are otherwise quite competent in its use; this blindness supposedly consists in wrongly judging that there (...) is genuine conflict between claims of type (i) and type (ii). We distinguish two broad versions of contextualism: relativistic-content contextualism and categorical-content contextualism. We argue that although the semantic blindness objection evidently is applicable to the former, it does not apply to the latter. We describe a subtle form of conflict between claims of types (i) and (ii), which we call différance-based affirmatory conflict. We argue that people confronted with radical-deception scenarios are prone to experience a form of semantic myopia (as we call it): a failure to distinguish between différance-based affirmatory conflict and outright inconsistency. Attributing such semantic myopia to people who are otherwise competent with the concept of knowledge explains the bafflement about knowledge-claims that so often arises when radical-deception scenarios are made salient. Such myopia is not some crude form of semantic blindness at all; rather, it is an understandable mistake grounded in semantic competence itself: what we call a competence-based performance error. (shrink)

To what extent are meaning, on the one hand, and knowledge, on the other, determined by aspects of the 'outside world'? Internalism and Externalism in Semantics and Epistemology presents twelve specially written essays exploring these debates in metaphysics and epistemology and the connections between them. In so doing, it examines how issues connected with the nature of mind and language bear on issues about the nature of knowledge and justification. Topics discussed include the compatibility of semantic externalism (...) and epistemic internalism, the variety of internalist and externalist positions, semantic externalism's implications for the epistemology of reasoning and reflection, and the possibility of arguments from the theory of mental content to the theory of epistemic justification. (shrink)

Quine’s arguments in the final two sections of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” bring semantic and epistemic concerns into spectacular collision. Many have thought that the arguments succeed in irreparably smashing a conception of a distinctively analytic and a priori philosophy to pieces. In Constructing the World, David Chalmers argues that much of this distinctively analytical and a priori conception of philosophy can be reconstructed, with Quine’s criticisms leaving little lasting damage. I agree with Chalmers that Quine’s arguments do not (...) have the lasting damage some take them to have. However, I do not think that Chalmers has succeeded in explaining why. The core of Chalmers’s error lies in the rational dispositionalism that forms the metasemantics of his Carnapian intensionalism. Responding to Quine requires recognizing conceptions of both concepts and epistemic normativity that go beyond the opposition between irrationality and conceptual change that Chalmers brings to bear on Quine. I explain this expanded conception of concepts and epistemic normativity in terms of another fundamental aim of Constructing the World, namely that of providing an account of Fregean sense, or more generally of defending what Chalmers calls epistemological semantics. (shrink)

Internalism and Externalism in Semantics and Epistemology presents eleven specially written essays exploring these debates in metaphysics and epistemology and ...

Philosophers have recognized for some time the usefulness of semantic conceptions of truth and belief. That the third member of the knowledge triad, evidence, might also have a useful semantic version seems to have been overlooked. This paper corrects that omission by defining a semantic conception of evidence for science and mathematics and then developing a semantic conception of knowledge for these fields, arguably mankind’s most important knowledge repository. The goal is to demonstrate the advantages of (...) having an answer to the more modest question “What is necessary and sufficient for introducing a knowledge predicate into scientific and mathematical languages?” – as contrasted with the ambitious Platonic question “What is knowledge?” After presenting the theory, the paper responds to a wide range of objections stemming from traditional philosophical concerns. (shrink)

Even though he is not very explicit about it, in “Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language” Kripke discusses two different, albeit related, skeptical theses ‒ the first one in the philosophy of mind, the second one in the philosophy of language. Usually, what Kripke says about one thesis can be easily applied to the other one, too; however, things are not always that simple. In this paper, I discuss the case of the so-called “Normativity Argument” against semantic dispositionalism (which (...) I take to be epistemological in nature) and argue that it is much stronger as an argument in the philosophy of mind than when it is construed as an argument in the philosophy of language. (shrink)

_Insensitive Semantics_ is an overview of and contribution to the debates about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one. Provides detailed and wide-ranging overviews of the central positions and arguments surrounding contextualism Addresses broad and varied aspects of the distinction between the semantic and non-semantic content of language Defends (...) a distinctive and explanatorily powerful combination of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism Confronts core problems which not only run to the heart of philosophy of language and linguistics, but which arise in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy as well. (shrink)

This article is about the conception of truth and signification in Augustine's early philosophical writings. In the first, semantic-linguistic part, the gradual shift of Augustine's position towards the Academics is treated closely. It reveals that Augustine develops a notion of sign which, by integrating elements of Stoic epistemology, is suited to function as a transmitter of true knowledge through linguistic expressions. In the second part, both the ontological structure of signified (sensible) things and Augustine's solution to the apparent (...) tautologies of mathematical truths are examined. Again his notion of sign turns out to be the keystone; this time, however, the natural in contrast to the conventional sign of linguistic expressions. In their complementarity, both parts show how Augustine intensely struggles with and (partially) overcomes the skepticism of the sensible world through his conception of sign and signification. (shrink)

This paper draws upon the works of Wilfred Sellars, Jerry Fodor, and Ruth Millikan to argue against epistemological holism and conceptual holism. In the first section, I content that contrary to confirmation holism, there are individual beliefs ("basic beliefs") that receive nondoxastic/noninferential warrant. In the earliest stages of cognitive development, modular processes produce basic beliefs about how things are. The disadvantage of this type of basic belief is that the person may possess information that should have defeated the belief but (...) that was not taken into account in the module's operations. For this reason, at more advanced stages of cognitive development, basic beliefs concern how things appear to be. These appearance beliefs are not formed holistically but should be checked against background beliefs before the person infers how things are. In the second section, I argue against functional-role/inferential-role semantics. Championing teleosemantics, I argue that many concepts' meanings are not determined by the meanings of other concepts. Rather, many concepts are skills of knowing how to identify of what the concept is. These skills can be developed independently of other beliefs or skills and are, in an important sense, theory-neutral. (shrink)

The issue as to whether an atomistic or holistic viewof knowledge and meaning is correct relies on the way part/whole relationships is analysed,exactly as the issue as to whether a constructive or realistic view of knowledge and meaningis correct relies on the way internal/external relationships is analysed. Both theprinciple of compositionality and the context principle depend on how finely the constituents,the nature and the size of the context are identified; both the notion of meaning andthe notion of truth depend on (...) the resources of internalisation/externalisation. Thus thespectrum of semantic and epistemological theories varies from (global) atomismto (global) holism, and from minimal to maximal internalisation. Are compositionaltheories necessarily extensional? Does formal semantics necessarily rely on set theory?Does the domain-specific character of the notions of element, part and whole prevent anygeneral, non-trivial account? The aim of the present paper is to provide a negative answerto these questions by exploring some of the features a theory covering the phenomenologyof part and whole should have. This phenomenology will only be sketched through a fewparadigmatic examples, showing how the reference of notions of part and wholevaries and which are the constraints inherentin such variation. Categorytheory provides the tools for fashioning this framework, since it allows describing any coherentcollection of objects (with actions defined over them) and (action preserving) maps betweenthe objects, as well as the variation of such collections in terms of suitablefunctors, coding the ways parts and wholes undergo co-variation. The main thesis is thatthere are interference patterns between the two pairs Local/Global and Internal/External,only in terms of which the above phenomenology can be properly described.Se mai tu diventeraimetá di te stesso, e te l''auguro, ragazzo, capirai cose al di lá della comune intelligenza dei cervelli interi.Avrai perso metá di te e del mondo, ma la realtá rimasta sará mille volte piú profonda e preziosa. E tupure vorrai che tutto sia dimezzato e straziato a tua immagine, perchè bellezza e sapienza e giustizia ci sono soloin ció che é fatto a brani. (shrink)

The book develops and synthesises two main ideas: contextualism about knowledge ascriptions and a knowledge-first approach to epistemology. The theme of the book is that these two ideas fit together much better than it's widely thought they do. Not only are they not competitors: they each have something important to offer the other.

Contemporary philosophy standardly accepts Frege's conceptions of sense as the determiner of reference and of analyticity as (necessary) truth in virtue of meaning. This paper argues that those conceptions are mistaken. It develops referentially autonomous notions of sense and analyticity and applies them to the semantics of natural kind terms. The arguments of Donnellan, Putnam, and Kripke concerning natural kind terms are widely taken to refute internalist and rationalist theories of meaning. This paper shows that the counter-intuitive consequences about the (...) reference of natural kind terms depend as much on Frege's conceptions of sense and analyticity as on what such theories of meaning say about the senses of natural kind terms. Rather than refuting the internalist and rationalist theories of meaning, the arguments of Donnellan, Putnam, and Kripke are best recast as refutations of their own Fregean assumptions. The paper also shows how autonomous notions of sense and analyticity enable us to reconstruct such theories, formulate an internalist/ rationalist account of semantic knowledge, and preserve Donnellan's, Putnam's, and Kripke's insights about reference. (shrink)

This book examines how the semantics and metaphysics of disagreement affect the epistemology of disagreement. It thus broadens the philosophical discourse by relating the epistemological discussion of (peer) disagreement to inquiries into the nature of disagreement and disagreeing. By doing this, it paints a new picture of the epistemological situation evoked by disagreement: To the same extent that an interpersonal dispute undermines the justification of the disputing persons’ beliefs, it also presents an obstacle to interpersonal understanding. This follows from (...) the nature of meaning, belief and communication, rightly understood. In demonstrating the relevance of this to philosophical reflections on peer disagreement and resolution of disagreement, the book addresses arguably the most contentious kind of disagreement, namely, religious disagreement. It shows that apparent disagreement in religion suggests that the dialog partners might not have reached sufficient mutual understanding. This has important ramifications for the rationally right conduct in the face of religious disagreement, and for the possibility of rational resolution of religious disputes. (shrink)

It has recently been proposed that the framework of semantic relativism be put to use to describe mental content, as deployed in some of the fundamental operations of the mind. This programme has inspired in particular a novel strategy of accounting for the essential egocentricity of first-personal or de se thoughts in relativist terms, with the advantage of dispensing with a notion of self-representation. This paper is a critical discussion of this strategy. While it is based on a plausible (...) appeal to cognitive economy, the relativist theory does not fully account for the epistemic profile that distinguishes de se thinking, as some of its proponents hope to do. A deeper worry concerns the reliance of the theory on a primitive notion of “centre” that hasn’t yet received enough critical attention, and is ambiguous between a thin and a rich reading. I argue that while the rich reading is required if the relativist analysis of the de se is to achieve its most ambitious aims, it also deprives the theory of much of its explanatory power. (shrink)

This paper explores an alternative to the metaphysical challenge to physicalism posed by Jackson and Kripke and to the epistemological one exemplified by the positions of Nagel, Levine and McGinn. On this alternative the mind‐body gap is neither ontological nor epistemological, but semantic. I claim that it is because the gap is semantic that the mind‐body problem is a quintessentially philosophical problem that is not likely to wither away as our natural scientific knowledge advances.1.

Since the heyday of ordinary language philosophy, Anglophone epistemologists have devoted a great deal of attention to the English word ‘know’ and to English sentences used to attribute knowledge. Even today, many epistemologists, including contextualists and subject-sensitive invariantists are concerned with the truth conditions of “S knows that p,” or the proposition it expresses. In all of this literature, the method of cases is used, where a situation is described in English, and then philosophers judge whether it is true that (...) S knows that p, or whether saying “S knows that p” is false, deviant, etc. in that situation. However, English is just one of over 6000 languages spoken around the world, and is the native language of less than 6% of the world’s population. When Western epistemology first emerged, in ancient Greece, English did not even exist. So why should we think that facts about the English word “know,” the concept it expresses, or subtle semantic properties of “S knows that p” have important implications for epistemology? Are the properties of the English word “know” and the English sentence ‘S knows that p’ shared by their translations in most or all languages? If that turned out to be true, it would be a remarkable fact that cries out for an explanation. But if it turned out to be false, what are the implications for epistemology? Should epistemologists study knowledge attributions in languages other than English with the same diligence they have shown for the study of English knowledge attributions? If not, why not? In what ways do the concepts expressed by ‘know’ and its counterparts in different languages differ? And what should epistemologists make of all this? (shrink)

An analysis of the role of language in basic and applied science from the semantics of science and the theory of reference requires several steps. First, to specify the field of analysis in the light of several factors: the semantic problems of science; the reference in its triple dimension of relation between language and reality, of referent and of transmission in science; and the link between meaning and reference in science.Second, to consider the central approach to the semantics of (...) science, which forks into two main directions: the semantic line and the pragmatic path. De facto, they lead to different interpretations of the role of language in basic science and in applied science. The semantic line focuses on the content expressed through terms, statements and theories, which has been influential in important philosophical trends and still is prominent in some versions of scientific realism. Meanwhile, the pragmatic path emphasizes the meaning as use, which has influenced philosophers of science of diverse tendencies, such as S. Toulmin, Th. Kuhn, American pragmatists and supporters of the methodological pluralism.Third, to make explicit the leading conceptions regarding the theory of reference, both for the formal sciences and for the empirical sciences. There are a number of options, four of which are analyzed here. The view associated with the semantic role and the semantic value, which connects semantic, epistemological and ontological realms in basic science and in applied science. The causal theory of reference, which has shifted towards internal realism. Anti-realistic semantics, where truth is replaced by proof and the reference is the use made by someone of a term in a context. Kuhn’s approach in his linguistic period, where he rethinks the scientific revolutions taking into account the causal theory of reference.Fourth, to be aware of the consequences of these analyses for basic science and applied science in two ways: on the one hand, for the semantic differences between them, and, on the other, for the perspective of reference. (shrink)

Kripke-Wittgenstein meaning skepticism appears as a serious threat to the idea that there could be meaning-constituting facts. Some people argue that the only viable response is to adopt semantic primitivism (SP). SP is the doctrine that meaning-facts are _sui generis and irreducibly semantic. The idea is that by allowing such primitive semantic facts into our ontology Kripke's skeptical paradox cannot arise. I argue that SP is untenable in spite of its apparent resourcefulness. (edited).

When William of Ockham lectured on Lombard's "Sentences" in 1317-1319, he articulated a new theory of knowledge.

The title is an allusion to the fact that, traditionally, propositions have served at least two distinct functions in philosophy, even though these functions have not usually been distinguished. Propositions have been invoked as the ‘meanings’ or ‘intensions’ of sentences and as the objects of propositional attitudes. Thus the proposition that Socrates is wise is the meaning of the English sentence, ‘Socrates is wise,’ and is what Charles believes when he believes that Socrates is wise. ‘Means that’ and ‘believes that’ (...) take the same kind of object. I shall argue, first, that there are two quite different functions here and it takes two quite different kinds of proposition to serve these distinct functions. The second thing I want to do is examine the suggestion that we can treat propositions as sets of possible worlds. There is a serious difficulty here, and so I shall want to turn that idea on its side: I shall define possible worlds as sets of G-propositions and then define E-propositions as sets of possible worlds. (shrink)

Continuity lies at the heart of the recent naturalistic turn in epistemology. Naturalists are united by a shared commitment to the continuity of science and epistemology, and tend to advocate one or more species of continuity: contextual, semantic, epistemological methodological, metaphysical, and axiological. Naturalists divide, however, over the interpretation and scope of this continuity. The naturalism of Goldman, Kim and Sosa is criticised for leaving meta-epistemology methodologically and epistemologically autonomous from science. A more plausible approach naturalizes (...) epistemology 'all the way up', i.e., including meta-epistemology itself. (shrink)

A new direction in philosophy Between 1920 and 1940 logical empiricism reset the direction of philosophy of science and much of the rest of Anglo-American philosophy. It began as a relatively organized movement centered on the Vienna Circle, and like-minded philosophers elsewhere, especially in Berlin. As Europe drifted into the Nazi era, several important figures, especially Carnap and Neurath, also found common ground in their liberal politics and radical social agenda. Together, the logical empiricists set out to reform traditional philosophy (...) with a new set of doctrines more firmly grounded in logic and science. Criticism and decline Because of Nazi persecution, most of the European adherents of logical empiricism moved to the United States in the late 1930s. During the 1940s, many of their most cherished tenets became targets of criticism from outsiders as well as from within their own ranks. Philosophers of science in the late 1950s and 1960s rejected logical empiricism and, starting in the 1970s, presented such alternative programs such as scientific realism with evolutionary epistemology. A resurgence of interest During the early 1980s, philosophers and historians of philosophy began to study logical empiricism as an important movement. Unlike their predecessors in the 1960s-for whom the debate over logical empiricism now seems to have been largely motivated by professional politics-these philosopher no longer have to take positions for or against logical empiricism. The result has been a more balanced view of that movement, its achievements, its failures, and its influence. Hard-to-find core writings now available This collection makes available a selection of the most influential and representative writings of the logical empiricists, important contemporary criticisms of their doctrines, their responses, as well as the recent reappraisals. Introductions to each volume examine the articles in historical context and provide importantbackground information that is vital to a full understanding of the issues discussed. They outline prevalent trends, identifying leading figures and summarize their positions and reasoning, as well as those of opposing thinkers. (shrink)

In this article, I present different characteristics of de jure coreference, including an epistemological one and a logical one. Then, I present the semantic relation of coordination as what explains or grounds the phenomenon of de jure coreference. And I compare two theories of relational semantics, Fine’s (2007) and Taschek’s (1995a, 1995b, 1998), with respect to two famous puzzles in the philosophy of language, Frege’s puzzle and Kripke’s puzzle about belief. Lastly, I briefly discuss coordination between empty terms.

The purpose of this dissertation is to clarify the relationship between two traditions within analytic philosophy: the epistemologically-centered philosophy exemplified by C. I. Lewis and other logical empiricists; and the semantically-generated philosophy which derives from certain views of Frege and Russell and which is exemplified in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Logical empiricists generate their views by pursuing concerns with justification and evidence; the early Wittgenstein generates his views by pursuing concerns with the nature of language. I argue, however, that although they develop (...) their views by pursuing wholly different, and perhaps apparently unrelated, initial concerns, the early Wittgenstein and logical empiricists arrive at conflicting, and not merely unrelated, philosophical positions. ;In particular, I argue that solely by accepting certain basic views of the nature of language, each of which either Frege or Russell accepts, Wittgenstein is led in his Tractatus to reject certain views--including views of the issue of scepticism and of the nature of sense-experience--which logical empiricists generate through their concerns with justification. In doing so, I seek not only to clarify the Tractatus as well as logical empiricism, but also to show that accepting either of these positions requires rejecting the other. ;I conclude by arguing that understanding the relationship between the Tractatus and logical empiricism helps to clarify the work of Donald Davidson, a recent philosopher who rejects logical empiricism. As opposed to certain other commentators , I argue that Davidson is best understood as rejecting logical empiricism, not because he somehow rejects traditional philosophy altogether, but rather because he pursues the same sorts of philosophical concerns with the nature of language which preoccupy the early Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Operational epistemology is, to a first approximation, the attempt to provide cognitive rules such that one is in principle always in a position to know whether one is complying with them. In Knowledge and its Limits, I argue that the only such rules are trivial ones. In this paper, I generalize the argument in several ways to more thoroughly probabilistic settings, in order to show that it does not merely demonstrate some oddity of the folk epistemological conception of knowledge. (...) Some of the generalizations involve a formal semantic framework for treating epistemic probabilities of epistemic probabilities and expectations of expectations. The upshot is that operational epistemology cannot work, and that knowledge-based epistemology has the right characteristics to avoid its problems. (shrink)

The positivists’ notion of truth in virtue of meaning presupposes that the truth of certain sentences can be explained merely by reference to semantic rules. The currently most popular objection to the notion denies the possibility of such semantic explanations, on the grounds that semantic rules can only explain what a sentence says, but not whether what a sentence says is true. Though recent critics of the objection have insisted that semantic rules do explain the truth (...) of certain sentences, the very notion of a semantic explanation is often left unclear. This paper proposes to define the notion of semantic explanation as a valid argument that derives the truth of a sentence from accepted semantic rules. The account offered will then be used to respond to some of the most pressing objections to the idea of truth in virtue of meaning. (shrink)

Those who naturalize semantics concentrate on avoiding difficulties in getting the right sort of cause for the biological item which is to possess semantic properties (to be ‘true of or to be ‘about’ some physical item). Using an analogy with sense‐data, I argue that the real difficulties will be trying to get any proposed neural representation to be the right sort of effect of natural processes. The idea of a biological item which can be a semantic ‘primitive’ is (...) as bankrupt as the idea of a mental item which could be a perceptual ‘primitive’. Eventually I propose a technique for finding naturalized representations without these problems. (shrink)

Theories of reference have been central to analytic philosophy, and two views, the descriptivist view of reference and the causal-historical view of reference, have dominated the field. In this research tradition, theories of reference are assessed by consulting one’s intuitions about the reference of terms in hypothetical situations. However, recent work in cultural psychology (e.g., Nisbett et al. 2001) has shown systematic cognitive differences between East Asians and Westerners, and some work indicates that this extends to intuitions about philosophical cases (...) (Weinberg et al. 2001). In light of these findings on cultural differences, two experiments were conducted which explored intuitions about reference in Westerners and East Asians. Both experiments indicate that, for certain central cases, Westerners are more likely than East Asians to report intuitions that are consistent with the causal-historical view. These results constitute prima facie evidence that semantic intuitions vary from culture to culture, and the paper argues that this fact raises questions about the nature of the philosophical enterprise of developing a theory of reference. (shrink)

There is a long-standing view in epistemology that perception is a way of knowing. There is a less long-standing but increasingly popular view that knowledge attributions have a relativist semantics. I discuss three things here. First, I show that it is a consequence of the logic of RKA that WOK and RKA are incompatible. Second, I argue that, even if WOK is incompatible with the main rivals to RKA, this is not a consequence of the logics of these views. (...) RKA comes with a hitherto unobserved philosophical consequence that its main rivals do not come with. Third, I consider some responses to the effect that it does not matter that RKA comes with this consequence, and argue that they are all unsatisfactory as they stand. I conclude that, at the very least, the onus is placed on relativists to engage with more epistemology than they currently do to show that we do not need to worry about the incompatibility of WOK and RKA. I conclude with some suggestions about the broader relevance and implications of this paper. (shrink)

Semantic externalism is the view that the meanings of referring terms, and the contents of beliefs that are expressed by those terms, are not fully determined by factors internal to the speaker but are instead bound up with the environment. The debate about semantic externalism is one of the most important but difficult topics in philosophy of mind and language, and has consequences for our understanding of the role of social institutions and the physical environment in constituting language (...) and the mind. In this long-needed book, Jesper Kallestrup provides an invaluable map of the problem. Beginning with a thorough introduction to the theories of descriptivism and referentialism and the work of Frege and Kripke, Kallestrup moves on to analyse Putnam’s Twin Earth argument, Burge’s arthritis argument and Davidson’s Swampman argument. He also discusses how semantic externalism is at the heart of important topics such as indexical thoughts, epistemological skepticism, self-knowledge, and mental causation. Including chapter summaries, a glossary of terms, and an annotated guide to further reading, _Semantic Externalism_ an ideal guide for students studying philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Recently, some philosophers have argued that we should take quantification of any (finite) order to be a legitimate and irreducible, sui generis kind of quantification. In particular, they hold that a semantic theory for higher-order quantification must itself be couched in higher-order terms. Øystein Linnebo has criticized such views on the grounds that they are committed to general claims about the semantic values of expressions that are by their own lights inexpressible. I show that Linnebo’s objection rests on (...) the assumption of a notion of semantic value or contribution which both applies to expressions of any order, and picks out, for each expression, an extra-linguistic correlate of that expression. I go on to argue that higher-orderists can plausibly reject this assumption, by means of a hierarchy of notions they can use to describe the extra-lingustic correlates of expressions of different orders. (shrink)