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Jul 24th 2018 GMT

1. Towards a Theory of Singular Thought About Abstract Mathematical Objects.James E. Davies - forthcoming - Synthese.
   This essay uses a mental files theory of singular thought—a theory saying that singular thought about and reference to a particular object requires possession of a mental store of information taken to be about that object—to explain how we could have such thoughts about abstract mathematical objects. After showing why we should want an explanation of this I argue that none of three main contemporary mental files theories of singular thought—acquaintance theory, semantic instrumentalism, and semantic cognitivism—can give it. I argue for two claims intended to advance our understanding of singular thought about mathematical abstracta. First, that the conditions for possession of a file for an abstract mathematical object are the same as the conditions for possessing a file for an object perceived in the past—namely, that the agent retains information about the object. Thus insofar as we are able to have memory-based files for objects perceived in the past, we ought to be able to have files for abstract mathematical objects too. Second, at least one recently articulated condition on a file’s being a device for singular thought—that it be capable of surviving a certain kind of change in the information it contains—can be satisfied by files for abstract mathematical objects.
2. Moral Twin Earth, Reference and Disagreements.Heimir Geirsson - 2018 - In Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy, Volume 53. pp. 53-57.
   Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have written a number of articles where they use their Moral Twin Earth thought experiment to attack the new moral realism. The new moral realism is based on advances made in the philosophy of language that allows us to introduce synthetic definitions of moral terms. The Moral Twin Earth thought experiment relies in crucial ways on the use of intuitions. Specifically, it relies on the intuitions that were Earthers and Twin Earthers to meet, they would be able to have genuine moral disagreements. Horgan and Timmons rely on that intuition when they argue that the meaning of the relevant terms on Earth and Twin Earth must be the same. I will argue that we can accept that Earthers and Twin Earthers can have genuine moral disagreement while at the same time claim that the terms they use have different referents and so different semantic meaning. That is, having genuine disagreements does not require that the semantic meaning or the reference of the terms used in the debate being the same.
3. Logics for Modelling Collective Attitudes.Daniele Porello - 2018 - Fundamenta Infromaticae 158 (1-3):239-27.
   We introduce a number of logics to reason about collective propositional attitudes that are defined by means of the majority rule. It is well known that majoritarian aggregation is subject to irrationality, as the results in social choice theory and judgment aggregation show. The proposed logics for modelling collective attitudes are based on a substructural propositional logic that allows for circumventing inconsistent outcomes. Individual and collective propositional attitudes, such as beliefs, desires, obligations, are then modelled by means of minimal modalities to ensure a number of basic principles. In this way, a viable consistent modelling of collective attitudes is obtained.
4. Anaphoric Deflationism, Primitivism, and the Truth Property.Pietro Salis - 2018 - Acta Analytica:1-18.
   Anaphoric deflationism is a prosententialist account of the use of “true.” Prosentences are, for sentences, the equivalent of what pronouns are for nouns: as pronouns refer to previously introduced nouns, so prosentences like “that’s true” inherit their content from previously introduced sentences. This kind of deflationism concerning the use of “true” (especially in Brandom’s version) is an explanation in terms of anaphora; the prosentence depends anaphorically on the sentence providing its content. A relevant implication of this theory is that “true” is not understood as a predicate and that truth is not a property. Primitivism, defended by Frege, Moore, and Davidson, is associated with two ideas: (1) that truth is a primitive and central trait of our conceptual system and (2) that truth, as such, cannot be defined. This second claim can be called “negative primitivism,” and it especially points out the facts about the “indefinability” of truth generally advocated by primitivists. In what follows, a connection is established between the deflationist’s rejection of the predicate and of the property and facts (and primitivist ideas) about the indefinability of truth. This connection establishes a common framework to lend further explanatory power to both options. According to the resulting view, this indefinability can explain the appeal and soundness of a deflationist dismissal of predicates and properties dealing with truth.

Jul 23rd 2018 GMT

1. Semantics, Two-Dimensional.Jens Kipper - 2018 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
   Two-dimensional semantic theories distinguish between two different aspects, or ‘dimensions’, of the meaning of linguistic expressions. Many other theories identify the meaning of an expression with a dependency of its extension on the state of the world. (The extension of a sentence is its truth-value, and the extension of a sub-sentential expression … Continue reading Semantics, Two-Dimensional →.
2. Independence Day?Matthew Mandelkern & Daniel Rothschild - forthcoming - Journal of Semantics.
   Two recent and influential papers, van Rooij 2007 and Lassiter 2012, propose solutions to the proviso problem that make central use of related notions of independence—qualitative in the first case, probabilistic in the second. We argue here that, if these solutions are to work, they must incorporate an implicit assumption about presupposition accommodation, namely that accommodation does not interfere with existing qualitative or probabilistic independencies. We show, however, that this assumption is implausible, as updating beliefs with conditional information does not in general preserve independencies. We conclude that the approach taken by van Rooij and Lassiter does not succeed in resolving the proviso problem.

Jul 22nd 2018 GMT

1. A Solution to Karttunen's Problem.Matthew Mandelkern - 2017 - In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 21.
   There is a difference between the conditions in which one can felicitously assert a ‘must’-claim versus those in which one can use the corresponding non-modal claim. But it is difficult to pin down just what this difference amounts to. And it is even harder to account for this difference, since assertions of 'Must ϕ' and assertions of ϕ alone seem to have the same basic goal: namely, coming to agreement that [[ϕ]] is true. In this paper I take on this puzzle, known as Karttunen’s Problem. I begin by arguing that a ‘must’-claim is felicitous only if there is a shared argument for its prejacent. I then argue that this generalization, which I call Support, can explain the more familiar generalization that ‘must’-claims are felicitous only if the speaker’s evidence for them is in some sense indirect. Finally, I sketch a pragmatic derivation of Support.
2. Against Preservation.Matthew Mandelkern & Justin Khoo - forthcoming - Analysis.
   Richard Bradley offers a quick and convincing argument that no Boolean semantic theory for conditionals can validate a very natural principle concerning the relationship between cre- dences and conditionals. We argue that Bradley’s principle, Preservation, is, in fact, invalid; its appeal arises from the validity of a nearby, but distinct, principle, which we call Local Preservation, and which Boolean semantic theories can non-trivially validate.

Jul 20th 2018 GMT

1. A Defence of Intentionalism About Demonstratives.Alex Radulescu - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
   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.

Jul 19th 2018 GMT

1. Uniformity Motivated.Cameron Domenico Kirk-Giannini - forthcoming - Linguistics and Philosophy:1-20.
   Can rational communication proceed when interlocutors are uncertain which contents utterances contribute to discourse? An influential negative answer to this question is embodied in the Stalnakerian principle of uniformity, which requires speakers to produce only utterances that express the same content in every possibility treated as live for the purposes of the conversation. The principle of uniformity enjoys considerable intuitive plausibility and, moreover, seems to follow from platitudes about assertion; nevertheless, it has recently proven controversial. In what follows, I defend the principle by developing two arguments for it based on premises reflecting the central aims and assumptions of possibility-carving frameworks for modeling inquiry—that is, frameworks which describe the evolution of individuals’ attitudinal states in terms of set-theoretic operations defined over a domain of objects representing possibilities.
2. Quantification and Paradox.Edward Ferrier - 2018 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
   I argue that absolutism, the view that absolutely unrestricted quantification is possible, is to blame for both the paradoxes that arise in naive set theory and variants of these paradoxes that arise in plural logic and in semantics. The solution is restrictivism, the view that absolutely unrestricted quantification is not possible.

   It is generally thought that absolutism is true and that restrictivism is not only false, but inexpressible. As a result, the paradoxes are blamed, not on illicit quantification, but on the logical conception of set which motivates naive set theory. The accepted solution is to replace this with the iterative conception of set.

   I show that this picture is doubly mistaken. After a close examination of the paradoxes in chapters 2--3, I argue in chapters 4 and 5 that it is possible to rescue naive set theory by restricting quantification over sets and that the resulting restrictivist set theory is expressible. In chapters 6 and 7, I argue that it is the iterative conception of set and the thesis of absolutism that should be rejected.

Jul 18th 2018 GMT

1. Gary Ostertag (Ed.), Meanings and Other Things: Themes From the Work of Stephen Schiffer.Indrek Reiland - 2018 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 7.
   
   
2. Colivan Committment Vis-a-Vis Moore's Paradox.T. Parent - forthcoming - Philosophia.
   This is a contribution to a symposium on Annalisa Coliva's book _The Varieties of Self-Knowledge_. I present her notion of a "commitment" and how it is used in her treatment of Moore paradoxical assertions and thoughts (e.g., "I believe that it is raining, but it is not;" "It is raining but I do not believe that it is"). The final section notes the points of convergence between her constitutivism about self-knowledge of commitments, and the constitutivism from my book _Self-Reflection for the Opaque Mind_.