DOCSLIB.ORG

Philosophy 332

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Philosophy 332 Philosophy 332 Philosophy of Language Fall 2018 Class Information: Instructor Information: GDC 6.202 Josh Dever MW 10:00-11:30 407 Waggener Hall Office Hrs: W 3:00-4:00 [email protected] 1 Description Philosophy of language is located on the border between philosophy and lin- guistics. We’ll explore this borderland from both directions. Our central text is a standard linguistics textbook on formal semantic treatments of natural lan- guage, Semantics in Generative Grammar by Irene Heim and Angelika Kratzer. Using this book we’ll develop over the course of the semester an increasingly sophisticated formal toolkit that will allow us to give analysis of and make pre- dictions concerning specific fragments of natural language. As we develop this toolkit, we’ll examine and question many of its underlying assumptions, and raise broad and deep questions about how language works, what a theory of meaning should look like, and how questions about content and communication interact with a range of other philosophical issues in metaphysics, epistemology, and other areas of philosophy. We’ll thus read a number of classic papers in philosophy of language alongside the Heim and Kratzer book and explore the interactions between the two streams of texts. 2Texts The primary text is Semantics in Generative Grammar by Irene Heim and An- gelika Kratzer. It is available at the University Co-op. The various additional philosophical papers are available on Canvas. There are also two optional books, Context and Communication and Puzzles of Reference (both by Herman Cappe- len and Josh Dever) available at the Co-op. Both of these books are reasonably gentle introductions to a range of recent work in philosophy of language that may be helpful in providing further context for our readings and discussions. 1 3 Course Requirements There will be three short papers (~5-7 pages), and a more substantial final paper (~10-15 pages). The short papers are each worth 20% of the grade, and the final paper is worth 30%. The remaining 10% comes from class participation. 4 Schedule of Events 1. HK Chapter 1, “Truth-Conditional Semantics and the Fregean Program” and Chapter 2, “Executing the Fregean Program” Philosophical Topic: The Connection Between Truth and Meaning Donald Davidson, “Truth and Meaning” • Michael Dummett, “What is a Theory of Meaning?” • James Shaw, “Truth, Paradox, and Ine↵able Propositions” • 2. HK Chapter 3, “Semantics and Syntax” Philosophical Topic: The Nature of Our Linguistic Knowledge Noam Chomsky, “Language and Problems of Knowledge” • Gilbert Harman, “Deep Structure as Logical Form” • Stephen Crain and Paul Pietroski, “Nature, Nurture, and Universal • Grammar” 3. HK Chapter 4, “More of English: Nonverbal Predicates, Modifiers, and Definite Descriptions” Philosophical Topic: Communication, Meaning, and Intention H.P. Grice, “Meaning” • Stephen Neale, Chapter 2 of Descriptions • Robert Stalnaker, “Pragmatic Presuppositions” • 4. HK Chapter 5, “Relative Clauses, Variables, Variable Binding” Philosophical Topic: Language and Ontology W.V.O. Quine, “On What There Is” • George Boolos, “To Be Is To Be The Value of a Bound Variable (Or • Some Values of Some Bound Variables)” Kit Fine, “The Role of Variables” • 5. HK Chapter 6, “Quantifiers: Their Semantic Type” Philosophical Topic: Naming and Describing Delia Gra↵Fara, “Names are Predicates” • Robin Jeshion, “Referentialism and Predicativism about Proper Names” • Anders Schoubye, “Ghosts, Murderers, and the Semantics of Descrip- • tions” 6. HK Chapter 7, “Quantification and Grammar” Philosophical Topic: Talking About Our Minds W.V.O. Quine, “Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes” • David Kaplan, “Quantifying In” • Simon Charlow and Yael Sharvit, “Bound ’De Re’ Pronouns and the • LFs of Attitude Reports” 7. HK Chapter 8, “Syntactic and Semantic Constraints on Quantifier Move- ment” Philosophical Topic: Modality and Metaphysics Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity Lecture I • Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity Lecture II • Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity Lecture III • 8. HK Chapter 9, “Bound and Referential Pronouns and Ellipsis” Philosophical Topic: Context-Sensitivity and Language David Kaplan, “Demonstratives” • David Lewis, “Scorekeeping in a Language Game” • David Lewis, “Elusive Knowledge” • 9. HK Chapter 10, “Syntactic and Semantic Binding” Philosophical Topic: Metasemantics Hilary Putnam, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’ ” • Ofra Magidor and Stephen Kearns, “Semantic Sovereignty” • Je↵rey King, “The Metasemantics of Contextual-Sensitivity” • 10. HK Chapter 11, “E-Type Anaphora” Philosophical Topic: Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction H.P. Grice, “Logic and Conversation” • Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber, “Relevance Theory” • Michael Franke, “Game-Theoretic Pragmatics” •.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Stalnaker on Sleeping Beauty Brian Weatherson
    Stalnaker on Sleeping Beauty Brian Weatherson The Sleeping Beauty puzzle provides a nice illustration of the approach to self-lo- cating belief defended by Robert Stalnaker in Our Knowledge of the Internal World (Stalnaker, 2008), as well as a test of the utility of that method. The setup of the Sleeping Beauty puzzle is by now fairly familiar. On Sunday Sleeping Beauty is told the rules of the game, and a (known to be) fair coin is flipped. On Monday, Sleeping Beauty is woken, and then put back to sleep. If, and only if, the coin landed tails, she is woken again on Tuesday after having her memory of the Monday awakening erased.1 On Wednesday she is woken again and the game ends. There are a few ques- tions we can ask about Beauty’s attitudes as the game progresses. We’d like to know what her credence that the coin landed heads should be (a) Before she goes to sleep Sunday; (b) When she wakes on Monday; (c) When she wakes on Tuesday; and (d) When she wakes on Wednesday? Standard treatments of the Sleeping Beauty puzzle ignore (d), run together (b) and (c) into one (somewhat ill-formed) question, and then divide theorists into ‘halfers’ or ‘thirders’ depending on how they answer it. Following Stalnaker, I’m going to focus on (b) here, though I’ll have a little to say about (c) and (d) as well. I’ll be following 1 orthodoxy in taking 2 to be the clear answer to (a), and in taking the correct answers to (b) and (c) to be independent of how the coin lands, though I’ll briefly question that assumption at the end.
    [Show full text]
  • Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association
    September 2007 Volume 81, Issue 1 Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association apa THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION Eastern Division Program University of Delaware Newark, DE 19716 www.apaonline.org The American Philosophical Association Eastern Division One Hundred Fourth Annual Meeting Marriott Waterfront Hotel Baltimore, MD December 27 - 30, 2007 Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association (ISSN 0065-972X) is published five times each year and is distributed to members of the APA as a benefit of membership and to libraries, departments, and institutions for $75 per year. It is published by The American Philosophical Association, 31 Amstel Ave., University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. Second-Class Postage Paid at Newark, DE and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Proceedings and Addresses, The American Philosophical Association, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716. Editor: David E. Schrader Phone: (302) 831-1112 Publications Coordinator: Erin Shepherd Fax: (302) 831-8690 Associate Editor: Richard Bett Web: www.apaonline.org Meeting Coordinator: Linda Smallbrook Proceedings and Addresses of The American Philosophical Association, the major publication of The American Philosophical Association, is published five times each academic year in the months of September, November, January, February, and May. Each annual volume contains the programs for the meetings of the three Divisions; the membership list; Presidential Addresses; news of the Association, its Divisions and Committees, and announcements of interest to philosophers. Other items of interest to the community of philosophers may be included by decision of the Editor or the APA Board of Officers.
    [Show full text]
  • Semantical Paradox* Tyler Burge
    4 Semantical Paradox* Tyler Burge Frege remarked that the goal of all sciences is truth, but that it falls to logic to discern the laws of truth. Perceiving that the task of determining these laws went beyond Frege’s conception of it, Tarski enlarged the jurisdiction of logic, establishing semantics as truth’s lawyer.1 At the core of Tarski’s theory of truth and validity was a diagnosis of the Liar paradox according to which natural language was hopelessly infected with contradiction. Tarski construed himself as treating the disease by replacing ordinary discourse with a sanitized, artificial construction. But those interested in natural language have been dissatisfied with this medication. The best ground for dis­ satisfaction is that the notion of a natural language’s harboring contradictions is based on an illegitimate assimilation of natural language to a semantical system. According to that assimilation, part of the nature of a “language” is a set of postulates that purport to be true by virtue of their meaning or are at least partially constitutive of that “language”. Tarski thought that he had identified just such postulates in natural language as spawning inconsistency. But postulates are contained in theories that are promoted by people. Natural languages per se do not postulate or Tyler Burge, “Semantical Paradox", reprinted from The Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979), 169-98. Copyright © 1979 The Journal of Philosophy. Reprinted by permission of the Editor of The Journal of Philosophy and the author. * I am grateful to Robert L. Martin for several helpful discussions; to Herbert Enderton for proving the consistency (relative to that of arithmetic) of an extension of Construction C3; to Charles Parsons for stimulating exchanges back in 1973 and 1974; and to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for its support.
    [Show full text]
  • Two Views of the De Re E) Scope Paradoxes: (5) John Thinks at Least Two Men in the Room Are Spies
    two views of the de re e) scope paradoxes: (5) John thinks at least two men in the room are spies. (John is not thinking of them as the men in the room) PLUK, Leeds, 2014 Daniel Rothschild ([email protected]) 2 neo-Fregean orthodoxy 1 de re in attitudes Kaplan [1986], building on Quine [1956] sets the standard for accounts of the de re. Basic assumption: semantic values in attitude reports present certain problems not present for other intensional contexts (such as metaphysi- cal modals). (6) (x believes α is a drunk and α denotes y) iff (9 guise g (satisfying some conditions that could make reference to x), the g = y and x A reasonable subset of the data to be captured, for the use of a term α in believes the g is drunk.) an attitude context. Covers a), b) be modified to handle c), d) and e) a) attitude about α does not require the attitude holder to think of α under the predicative content expressed by α. So substitution of co- a) we do not require that x think about y as α. extensive terms: b) we can make the with two different guises x can think y is drunk and is not drunk. (1) John thinks the mayor/the man in the corner is tall. Kaplan puts no contextual restrictions on what guises (his `names') can be, he just quantifies over them and requires them to be vivid, be an b) double vision. at least across different conversation contexts, but per- acquaintance relation for the attitude holder of the referent.
    [Show full text]
  • Mind and Language Seminar: Theories of Content
    Mind and Language Seminar: Theories of Content Ned Block and David Chalmers Meetings • Main meeting: Tuesdays 4-7pm over Zoom [4-6pm in weeks without a visitor] • Student meeting: Mondays 5-6pm hybrid • Starting Feb 22 [only weeks with a visitor] • Enrolled students and NYU philosophy graduate students only. • Feb 2: Background: Theories of Content • Feb 9: Background: Causal/Teleological Theories • Feb 16: Background: Interpretivism • Feb 23: Nick Shea • March 2: Robbie Williams • March 9: Frances Egan • March 16: Adam Pautz • March 23: Veronica Gómez Sánchez • March 30: Background: Phenomenal Intentionality • April 6: Imogen Dickie • April 13: Angela Mendelovici • April 20: Background: Conceptual-Role Semantics • April 27: Christopher Peacocke • May 4: David Chalmers Assessment • Draft paper due April 19 • Term paper due May 17 Attendance Policy • Monday meetings: Enrolled students and NYU philosophy graduate students only. • Tuesday meetings: NYU and NYC Consortium students and faculty only • Very limited exceptions • Email us to sign up on email list if you haven’t already. Introductions Short History of the 20th Century • 1900-1970: Reduce philosophical questions to issues about language and meaning. • 1970s: Theories of meaning (philosophy of language as first philosophy) • 1980s: Theories of mental content (philosophy of mind as first philosophy). • 1990s: Brick wall. Theories of Content • What is content? • What is a theory of content? Content • Content (in the broadest sense?) is intentionality or aboutness • Something has content when it is about something. Contents • Content = truth-conditions • Content = satisfaction-conditions • Content = propositions • Content = objects of intentional states • Content = … What Has Content? • What sort of thing has content? What Has Content? • What sort of thing has content? • language (esp.
    [Show full text]
  • Forcopy-Editing Only
    i i “Abstractionism_OUP_for_copyediting” — 2016/4/20 — 11:40 — page 1 — #10 i i 1 Introduction to Abstractionism Philip A. Ebert and Marcus Rossberg 1.1 WHAT IS ABSTRACTIONISM? Abstractionism in philosophy of mathematics has its origins in Gottlob Frege’s logicism—a position Frege developed in the late nineteenth and early twenti- eth century. Frege’s main aim wasfor to reduce copy-editing arithmetic and analysis to only logic in order to provide a secure foundation for mathematical knowledge. As is well known, Frege’s development of logicism failed. The infamous Basic Law V— one of the six basic laws of logic— Frege proposed in his magnum opus Grund- gesetze der Arithmetik—is subject to Russell’s Paradox. The striking feature of Frege’s Basic Law V is that it takes the form of an abstraction principle. The general form of an abstraction principle can by symbolised like this:1 ↵ = β ↵ β §( ) §( ) $ ⇠ where ‘ ’ is a term-forming operator applicable to expression of the type of ↵ § and β, and is an equivalence relation on entities denoted by expressions of ⇠ that type. Accordingly, abstraction principles are biconditionals that feature an equivalence relation on the right-hand side and an identity statement on the left-hand side. The abstracta denoted by the terms featuring in the identity statement on the left are taken to be introduced, in some sense, by the ab- straction principle, giving the equivalence on the right-hand side conceptual priority over them. More on this below. Frege’s ill-fated Basic Law V, involves co-extentionality (of functions) as the relevant equivalence relation on the right-hand side, introducing, what Frege – termed value-ranges, "' " , on the left:2 ( ) 1Here and below, we will omit prefixed universal quantifiers in abstraction principles.
    [Show full text]
  • The Logic of Provability
    The Logic of Provability Notes by R.J. Buehler Based on The Logic of Provability by George Boolos September 16, 2014 ii Contents Preface v 1 GL and Modal Logic1 1.1 Introduction..........................................1 1.2 Natural Deduction......................................2 1.2.1 ...........................................2 1.2.2 3 ...........................................2 1.3 Definitions and Terms....................................3 1.4 Normality...........................................4 1.5 Refining The System.....................................6 2 Peano Arithmetic 9 2.1 Introduction..........................................9 2.2 Basic Model Theory..................................... 10 2.3 The Theorems of PA..................................... 10 2.3.1 P-Terms........................................ 10 2.3.2Σ,Π, and∆ Formulas................................ 11 2.3.3 G¨odelNumbering................................... 12 2.3.4 Bew(x)........................................ 12 2.4 On the Choice of PA..................................... 13 3 The Box as Bew(x) 15 3.1 Realizations and Translations................................ 15 3.2 The Generalized Diagonal Lemma............................. 16 3.3 L¨ob'sTheorem........................................ 17 3.4 K4LR............................................. 19 3.5 The Box as Provability.................................... 20 3.6 GLS.............................................. 21 4 Model Theory for GL 23 5 Completeness & Decidability of GL 25 6 Canonical Models 27 7 On
    [Show full text]
  • Yesterday's Algorithm: Penrose on the Gödel Argument
    Yesterday’s Algorithm: Penrose and the Gödel Argument §1. The Gödel Argument. Roger Penrose is justly famous for his work in physics and mathematics but he is notorious for his endorsement of the Gödel argument (see his 1989, 1994, 1997). This argument, first advanced by J. R. Lucas (in 1961), attempts to show that Gödel’s (first) incompleteness theorem can be seen to reveal that the human mind transcends all algorithmic models of it1. Penrose's version of the argument has been seen to fall victim to the original objections raised against Lucas (see Boolos (1990) and for a particularly intemperate review, Putnam (1994)). Yet I believe that more can and should be said about the argument. Only a brief review is necessary here although I wish to present the argument in a somewhat peculiar form. Let us suppose that the human cognitive abilities that underlie our propensities to acquire mathematical beliefs on the basis of what we call proofs can be given a classical cognitive psychological or computational explanation (henceforth I will often use ‘belief’ as short for ‘belief on the basis of proof’). These propensities are of at least two types: the ability to appreciate chains of logical reasoning but also the ability to recognise ‘elementary proofs’ or, it would perhaps be better to say, elementary truths, such as if a = b and b = c then a = c, without any need or, often, any possibility of proof in the first sense. On this supposition, these propensities are the realization of a certain definite algorithm or program somehow implemented by the neural hardware of the brain.
    [Show full text]
  • 9:30 - 11:00 SZB, Room 240
    PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE Department of Philosophy, UT, Austin Phil 332, Spring 2013 Unique Number 42755 T/TH: 9:30 - 11:00 SZB, Room 240 INSTRUCTOR Lawrence Ray Buchanan E-mail: [email protected] Phone: (512) 471-7396 Office: Waggener Hall 4th Floor Room # 416B Office hours: Tuesdays 11:30 – 12:30 COURSE SUMMARY The course focuses on various philosophical issues concerning language. Topics to be discussed include, but are not limited to, the following: speaker-meaning, conversational implicature, sentence/expression-meaning, reference, modality, and propositional attitude ascriptions. COURSE REQUIREMENTS Assignments: • Two 6-7 page papers on topics selected from a list of prompts given by instructor. The first of these papers will be worth 20% of the student’s final grade for the course; the second will be worth 25% of the grade for the course. • One in-class midterm worth 25% of the student’s final grade. • A take-home final exam worth 25% of the grade. • Class participation and attendance (5%). Regarding the *participation* component of your grade: I expect regular attendance and participation in our course. Moreover, I expect you to have read the material for lecture carefully in advance. However, should my expectations on either front fail to be met, I reserve the right to assign (short) in-class written assignments regarding the required reading for the day that will then be counted towards the participation component of your grade. Late work: I do not accept work after the due date without a valid documented excuse. Please Note: One of the principal aims of this course is to give students experience with writing in an academic discipline.
    [Show full text]
  • The Problem of Induction
    The Problem of Induction Gilbert Harman Department of Philosophy, Princeton University Sanjeev R. Kulkarni Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University July 19, 2005 The Problem The problem of induction is sometimes motivated via a comparison between rules of induction and rules of deduction. Valid deductive rules are necessarily truth preserving, while inductive rules are not. So, for example, one valid deductive rule might be this: (D) From premises of the form “All F are G” and “a is F ,” the corresponding conclusion of the form “a is G” follows. The rule (D) is illustrated in the following depressing argument: (DA) All people are mortal. I am a person. So, I am mortal. The rule here is “valid” in the sense that there is no possible way in which premises satisfying the rule can be true without the corresponding conclusion also being true. A possible inductive rule might be this: (I) From premises of the form “Many many F s are known to be G,” “There are no known cases of F s that are not G,” and “a is F ,” the corresponding conclusion can be inferred of the form “a is G.” The rule (I) might be illustrated in the following “inductive argument.” (IA) Many many people are known to have been moral. There are no known cases of people who are not mortal. I am a person. So, I am mortal. 1 The rule (I) is not valid in the way that the deductive rule (D) is valid. The “premises” of the inductive inference (IA) could be true even though its “con- clusion” is not true.
    [Show full text]
  • Judith Jarvis Thomson's Normativity
    Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Normativity Gilbert Harman June 28, 2010 Normativity is a careful, rigorous account of the meanings of basic normative terms like good, virtue, correct, ought, should, and must. Along the way Thomson refutes almost everything other philosophers have said about these topics. It is a very important book.1 Since I am going first in this symposium, I am mainly going to summarize this excellent book. At the end, I will try to indicate briefly I think why it refutes the sort of theory I and others have previously favored. Good Thomson begins by discussing evaluations using the word good. She notes as many others have that good is always used as an attributive adjective. 1This book discusses meta-ethics. She also plans a companion work of normative theory. 1 Something may be a good K or good in a certain respect, but nothing is good period. Thomson goes on to argue this means that emotivism, expressivism, pre- scriptivism and related accounts of the meaning of good cannot be generally correct. Nor does it make sense to suppose that there is no objective test for whether something is a good K or good for such and such a purpose. She argues persuasively that there is such a property as being a good K if and only if K is a goodness fixing kind. So there is no such property as being a good pebble, good act, a good fact, a good state of affairs, a good possible world, and so on, unless what is meant is, for example, a good pebble to use as a paperweight, a morally good act, a state of affairs that is good for Jones, a possible world that is a good example in a certain discussion, and so on.
    [Show full text]
  • Modal Realism and Metaphysical Nihilism Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra
    Mind, 2004, 113 (452), pp. 683-704. Modal Realism and Metaphysical Nihilism Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra 1. Modal Realism is an ontological doctrine whose most characteristic thesis is that there exist non-actual possible individuals which are of a kind with actual individuals. That is, there are non-actual chairs, tables, donkeys, people and stars. As developed by David Lewis, Modal Realism is accompanied by a cluster of theses, for instance that all possible worlds (i.e. actual and non-actual possible worlds) exist, that all possible worlds are of a kind, that possible worlds are maximal sums of spatiotemporally related objects, and that a sentence like ‘it is possible that p’ is true just in case there is a possible world where p. Modal Realism has, among its theoretical benefits, a reductive account, within limits, of modality. Among its costs, it counts clashing with several intuitive views. One of these is the view that it is possible that nothing exists, that is, that there could have been nothing. Lewis saw that his Modal Realism is incompatible with this view (Lewis 1986, p. 73 and Lewis 1991, p. 13, footnote 6). Another closely related intuitive view with which Lewis’s Modal Realism is incompatible is what has recently been called Metaphysical Nihilism, namely that it is possible that nothing concrete exists, that is, that there could have been nothing concrete. Metaphysical Nihilism is not only intuitive, there are persuasive arguments in its favour. So, other things being equal, to be compatible with Metaphysical Nihilism is a theoretical virtue. In this paper I shall argue that Modal Realism can be modified so as to be compatible with Metaphysical Nihilism.
    [Show full text]