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UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Tracking down the Conditions for Singular Thought Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8tf002wz Author Lee, Jeonggyu Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Tracking down the Conditions for Singular Thought A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy by Jeonggyu Lee Committee in charge: Professor Nathan Salmon, Chair Professor Daniel Korman Professor Teresa Robertson September 2018 The dissertation of Jeonggyu Lee is approved. _____________________________________________ Daniel Korman _____________________________________________ Teresa Robertson _____________________________________________ Nathan Salmon, Committee Chair August 2018 Tracking down the Conditions for Singular Thought Copyright © 2018 by Jeonggyu Lee iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Studying philosophy in UCSB has been a very special experience for me. I was extremely lucky to have had the chance to study and interact with many nice people in the UCSB philosophy community. So, I first would like to thank everyone in this community. I have got much help from them not only academically but also socially and mentally. Being adjusted to the new environment was not easy, but with their help, I have been able to pursue my Ph.D., and this dissertation finally comes to have the property of existence. I am especially grateful to my committee members: Nathan Salmon, Daniel Korman, and Teresa Robertson. It was Teresa’s class that I took for the first time in UCSB, so this class considerably affected me to build my way to do philosophy. From her, I have learned some basic skills, which are essential for being a good scholar in the tradition of analytic philosophy. As a committee member for both of my qualifying paper and dissertation, she also has provided me with extremely helpful comments for my dissertation; we sometimes discuss it via Skype. I would like to express my deepest gratitude for all of her help. Dan has been the best critic of some of my ideas. He has always provided insightful comments and forceful objections. It was sometimes really challenging to come up with replies to his comments; we sometimes debated more than 2 hours at a café in Santa Barbara downtown. It is undeniable that having a debate with him, the quality of my dissertation has significantly improved. He has also helped me know how to formulate my ideas in a clear and neutral way, and I sometimes got the information of related articles from his extensive knowledge about anthologies. Dan might not agree with this, but I would like to heartfully appreciate the fact that Dan is not an ordinary object but is an extraordinarily helpful object for me. iv My greatest philosophical debt is to Nathan. The motivation of this dissertation is from Nathan’s thought-provoking seminars in Spring 2013 and in Spring 2015, and especially from his insightful paper, “How to Measure the Standard Meter”. I was first interested in the contingent a priori , and wanted to develop the idea in his paper. However, studying this topic, I realized that since it is about knowing the singular contingent proposition a priori , I had to study about the conditions for singular thought first, which constitutes the main part of my dissertation. I can’t thank Nathan enough for being patient with me to write this dissertation. I think that I am fortunate to be on the right track for studying philosophy as a beginning scholar in that his teaching has made me stay focused on trying to know well about some foundational issues for studying philosophy. He has always been willing to help me, and now I got more than 10 hardcopy papers with his written comments. I come to have the tendency to think that the name “Nathan” is the abbreviation of the definite description “the greatest academic advisor of mine”. I also would like to thank so much to Kyle Dickey, Paolo Bonardi, Jordan Dopkins, Sam Cumming, Billy Dunaway, and Noa Latham for their helpful written comments on some parts of my dissertation. Very special thanks to my English advisor, David Mokriski. He has proofread almost most parts of my dissertation (except these acknowledgements. So, if there is some clumsy English wording here, then it is my fault.) I am also grateful to people outside of UCSB. First, I must thank Jinho Kang, my former advisor in Seoul National University, for introducing me philosophy of language when I was in South Korea. He encouraged me to study philosophy of language abroad, which now turned out the very good decision. I also thank Wooram Lee, who started his Ph.D. at USC in the same year I did. Studying philosophy abroad, we become familiar friends by having v casual philosophical discussions, sharing our difficulties as a typical Asian student in philosophy, but especially by making philosophically terrible and sarcastic jokes. Some people in the Korean community in Santa Barbara deserve more than common thanks. Changmin Lee, a postdoc researcher in materials at UCSB, has built lots of unforgettable memories I have in the past six years. Joonho Back, a graduate student in ECE, and I have explored various aspects of American culture as much as possible. My colleague Sangsu Kim has always supported me and made the department life more pleasant. I also thank Hoontaek Oh and Seon Kim for being my friends in Santa Barbara. Finally, I would like to thank my old friends and family. Thanks to Kwangdong Roh, Jongbong Lee, Jeongwoo Park and Seonghoon Jeong for providing me the emotional support. Above all, this dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Kyunjae Lee and Jinhee Ahn (as well as my brother Seonggyu Lee). Without their support, financial, emotional, and otherwise, I would be entirely incapable of pursuing my Ph.D. in philosophy and of writing this dissertation. vi VITA OF JEONGGYU LEE July 2018 EDUCATION B.S. Physics Education, Seoul National University (2007) B.A. Philosophy, Seoul National University (2007) M.A. Western Philosophy, Seoul National University (2009) Ph.D. Student Philosophy, Seoul National University (2009 – 2012) M.A. Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara (2015) Ph.D. (expected) Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara (2018) PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT 2010-12: Teaching Assistant, Department of Philosophy, Seoul National University 2013-2017: Teaching Assistant, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara PUBLICATIONS “In Defense of Hume’s Skeptical Argument against Induction” (2015) Chulhak (Philosophy) 123: 153-169 “Contextualism, Relativism, and the ‘Faultless Disagreement’” (2012) Chulhakjuk Bunsuk (Philosophical Analysis) 26: 45-73 “On the Problem of Fixing the Reference of a Name and a New Description Theory” (in Korean) (2010) Chulhak (Philosophy) 102: 81-107 PRESENTATIONS “Tracking down the Conditions for Singular Thought” Conference on Contemporary Philosophy in East Asia , National Chengchi University, Taiwan (August 2018) Berkeley-Stanford-Davis Grad Conference , Stanford University (May 2018) “Against Predicativism about Names” the Society for Exact Philosophy , University of Connecticut (May 2018) American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Colloquium Session, San Diego (March 2018) Central States Philosophical Association ,Washington University in St. Louis (October 2017) “Knowing-wh and Singular Thought” Grad Colloquium , University of California, Santa Barbara (December 2016) “In Defense of Skepticism about Knowing Contingent Truths A Priori ” Conference on Contemporary Philosophy in East Asia , Seoul National University, South Korea (August 2016) “Logical Pluralism as Contextualism” Language & Epistemology Workshop , Yonsei University, South Korea (September 2014) “Contextualism, Relativism, and the ‘Faultless Disagreement’” Seoul Philosophy Graduate Student Conference , Yonsei International Campus, South vii Korea (May 2012) “Towards a New Description Theory of Reference” BESETO Conference of Philosophy , Peking University, Beijing, China (January 2011) “A New Description Theory of Reference Fixing and a Solution to Semantic Objections” BESETO Conference of Philosophy , Seoul National University, South Korea (January 2010) “The Fundamentality of Success in Science” BESETO Conference of Philosophy , University of Tokyo, Japan (January 2009) “Is A Posteriori Necessary Truth Possible?” World Congress of Philosophy , Seoul National University, South Korea (July - August 2008) “The Problem of Reference in Science” Philosophy Graduate Workshop , Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (February 2008) SCHOLARSHIPS The Ralph W. Church Scholarship, University of California, Santa Barbara (2012 – 2017) The Brain Korea 21 Scholarship, Department of Philosophy, Seoul National University (2007 –2012) Full Scholarship, Department of Philosophy, Seoul National University (2012) Honor Student Scholarship, Department of Physics Education, Seoul National University (2002-2006) AWARDS The Aida and Philip F. Siff Prize in Philosophy for Best Essay, University of California, Santa Barbara (2018) The Woogok Grand Prize for the best M.A. Thesis, Department of Philosophy, Seoul National University (2009) The Myungkyung Grand Prize for the best B.A. Thesis, Department of Philosophy, Seoul National University (2007) The Excellence Prize for Essay Writing Competition, Center for Teaching and Learning, Seoul
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