The Sense and Reference of Evaluative Terms

Abstract This article discusses why it is the case that we refuse to accept strange evaluative claims as being true in fictions, even though we are happy to go along with other types of absurdities in such contexts. For instance, we would refuse to accept the following statement as true, even in the context of a fiction: (i) In killing her baby, Giselda did the right thing; after all, it was a girl. This article offers a sensibilist diagnosis of this puzzle, inspired by an observation first made by David Hume. According to sensibilism, the way we feel about things settles their evaluative properties. Thus, when confronted with a fictional scenario where the configuration of non-evaluative facts and properties is relevantly similar to the actual world, we refuse to go along with evaluative properties being instantiated according to a different pattern. It is the attitudes we hold in the actual world that fix the extension of evaluative terms, even in nonactual worlds. When engaging with a fiction, we (to some extent) leave our beliefs about what the world is like behind, while taking our emotional attitudes with us into the fiction. To substantiate this diagnosis, this paper outlines a sensibilist semantics for evaluative terms based on recent discussion regarding predicates of personal taste, and explains how, together with standard assumptions about the nature of fictional discourse, it makes the relevant predictions with respect to engagement with fictions.

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On sense and reference: Examining the functional neuroanatomy of referential processing

NeuroImage ◽

10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.05.048 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 37 (3) ◽

pp. 993-1004 ◽

Cited By ~ 55

Author(s):

Mante S. Nieuwland ◽

Karl Magnus Petersson ◽

Jos J.A. Van Berkum

Keyword(s):

Functional Neuroanatomy ◽

Referential Processing ◽

Sense And Reference

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Evaluation of Nuclear Power and Renewable Alternatives as Portrayed in UK Local Press Coverage

Environment and Planning A Economy and Space ◽

10.1068/a181629 ◽

1986 ◽

Vol 18 (12) ◽

pp. 1629-1647 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

R Spears ◽

J R Eiser ◽

J van der Pligt

Keyword(s):

Content Analysis ◽

Nuclear Power Station ◽

Nuclear Power ◽

Development Stage ◽

Press Coverage ◽

Power Station ◽

Daily Newspaper ◽

People’S Attitudes ◽

Psychological Risks ◽

Evaluative Terms

A content analysis was conducted of all UK local daily newspaper articles appearing in the first half of 1981, concerned with nuclear power or renewable alternatives. Evaluative coverage of these technologies was compared on dimensions found to characterise energy issues (economic, environmental, technological, future/political, physical and psychological risks). In addition, comparisons were drawn between coverage in areas ‘threatened’ with the potential siting of a new nuclear power station and that in ‘unaffected’ areas. The development stage of the two technologies and the degree of ‘factual’ as opposed to ‘polemical’ coverage they attracted were also recorded. In evaluative terms, nuclear power was evaluated overwhelmingly negatively, and alternatives positively. Moreover, this pattern showed a degree of consistency irrespective of the dimension of evaluation. The ‘threatened’ subsample was most negatively disposed towards nuclear power. Polemical coverage was greater for nuclear power than for alternatives and greatest in the ‘threatened’ sample. This category also contained articles more likely to attract attention because of their greater headline size and length. Whereas most coverage of nuclear power concentrates on preoperational or operational stages, coverage of alternatives is more concerned with its formative and planning stages. These findings were related to people's attitudes concerning nuclear power, and the growth in antinuclear feeling in particular.

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Anaphora: Text-based or discourse-dependent?

Functions of Language ◽

10.1075/fol.17.2.03cor ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

pp. 207-241 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Francis Cornish

Keyword(s):

Dynamic Interaction ◽

Discourse Representation ◽

Computational Approaches ◽

Anaphor Resolution ◽

Language Structure ◽

Traditional Definition ◽

On Line ◽

Full Sense ◽

Definition Of ◽

Sense And Reference

The traditional definition of anaphora in purely co-textual terms as a relation between two co-occurring expressions is in wide currency in theoretical and descriptive studies of the phenomenon. Indeed, it is currently adopted in on-line psycholinguistic experiments on the interpretation of anaphors, and is the basis for all computational approaches to automatic anaphor resolution (see Mitkov 2002). Under this conception, the anaphor, a referentially-dependent expression type, requires “saturation” by an appropriate referentially-autonomous, lexically-based expression — the antecedent — in order to achieve full sense and reference. However, this definition needs to be re-examined in the light of the ways in which real texts operate and are understood, where the resulting picture is rather different. The article aims to show that the co-textual conception is misconceived, and that anaphora is essentially an integrative, discourse-creating procedure involving a three-way relationship between an “antecedent trigger”, an anaphoric predication, and a salient discourse representation. It is shown that it is only in terms of a dynamic interaction amongst the interdependent dimensions of text and discourse, as well as context, that the true complexity of anaphoric reference may be satisfactorily described. The article is intended as a contribution to the broader debate within the pages of this journal and elsewhere between the formalist and the functionalist accounts of language structure and use.

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Two‐Dimensional Semantics

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199552238.003.0024 ◽

2009 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

David J. Chalmers

Keyword(s):

External World ◽

Two Dimensions ◽

Two Dimensional ◽

Cognitive Significance ◽

Dimensional Approach ◽

Truth Conditions ◽

Semantic Value ◽

Sense And Reference ◽

Semantic Values ◽

Distinctive Role

Two-dimensional approaches to semantics, broadly understood, recognize two ‘dimensions’ of the meaning or content of linguistic items. On these approaches, expressions and their utterances are associated with two different sorts of semantic values, which play different explanatory roles. Typically, one semantic value is associated with reference and ordinary truth-conditions, while the other is associated with the way that reference and truth-conditions depend on the external world. The second sort of semantic value is often held to play a distinctive role in analyzing matters of cognitive significance and/or context-dependence. In this broad sense, even Frege's theory of sense and reference might qualify as a sort of two-dimensional approach.

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