What Makes True Universal Statements True?

2020 ◽  
pp. 104-123
Author(s):  
Bob Hale
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Account ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
Kit Fine ◽  
Truthmaker Semantics

What makes true universal statements true? For example, what makes the statement that all aardvarks are insectivorous true? In addressing this question, this chapter focuses especially on how it is to be answered within the framework of what Kit Fine calls exact truthmaker semantics. The main aim is to promote an alternative account of the truthmakers for quantified propositions. This chapter also gives some attention to two closely-related questions: first, when, and why, we should favour an alternative to the standard account, and second, whether the alternative account proposed can be accommodated within the framework of exact truthmaker semantics, in Fine’s sense.

scholarly journals Relative Necessity and Propositional Quantification

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 703-726
Author(s):  
Alexander Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Logic ◽  
Propositional Logic ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Symbolic Logic ◽  
Philosophical Logic ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
Current Article ◽  
Modal Propositional Logic ◽  
Propositional Quantification

AbstractFollowing Smiley’s (The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 28, 113–134 1963) influential proposal, it has become standard practice to characterise notions of relative necessity in terms of simple strict conditionals. However, Humberstone (Reports on Mathematical Logic, 13, 33–42 1981) and others have highlighted various flaws with Smiley’s now standard account of relative necessity. In their recent article, Hale and Leech (Journal of Philosophical Logic, 46, 1–26 2017) propose a novel account of relative necessity designed to overcome the problems facing the standard account. Nevertheless, the current article argues that Hale & Leech’s account suffers from its own defects, some of which Hale & Leech are aware of but underplay. To supplement this criticism, the article offers an alternative account of relative necessity which overcomes these defects. This alternative account is developed in a quantified modal propositional logic and is shown model-theoretically to meet several desiderata of an account of relative necessity.

Thege- Participle Prefix in Early New High German and the Modern Dialects

1998 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-278
Author(s):  
David Fertig
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Large Collection ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
German Dialects ◽  
Early New High German ◽  
German Situation

During much of the Early New High German period, a small group of verbs with stem-initialg− and k− commonly formed their past participle without the prefixge-.The standard account attributes this development to Upper German syncope. Quantitative data from a large collection of Nuremberg texts strongly suggests that this account is untenable, and a careful examination of the modern dialects shows that it is in fact the nonsyncopating Central German dialects that most strongly resemble the Early New High German situation. This paper proposes an alternative account involving inflectional haplology as the mechanism responsible for the loss of the prefix in theg-lk-verbs. This analysis answers many questions that the standard account raises, as well as explaining some striking patterns that the previous literature does not mention.

The way worship works in mission: Proposing an alternative to the standard account

2021 ◽  
pp. 009182962110117
Author(s):  
David E Fitch
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Formation ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
Cultural Engagement ◽  
Evangelical Protestantism ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This article examines the relationship of worship to mission in the life of the church. How does worship shape the Christian for mission and the work of God’s justice in the world? The article sketches what the author contends to be “the standard account” of how worship works within North American mainstream evangelical Protestantism, drawing on several authors who write on spiritual formation, liturgy, and cultural engagement. Exemplary of this standard account is the influential theology of church and culture found within neo-Calvinism. By parsing the social architecture of these authors, this article reveals its strengths and weaknesses—an analysis that can be applied more widely to Protestantism as a whole in North America. Then, the article moves on to propose an alternative account for the relationship of worship to mission that overcomes the weaknesses of the standard account. This alternative approach is labeled “faithful presence,” an approach which has affinities with an Anabaptist approach to worship and mission.

Relative Necessity Reformulated with Jessica Leech

2020 ◽  
pp. 149-172
Author(s):  
Bob Hale
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Account ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
Suitable Constant ◽  
Crucial Information ◽  
Physical Laws

This chapter discusses some serious difficulties for what it calls the standard account of various kinds of relative necessity, according to which any given kind of relative necessity may be defined by a strict conditional—necessarily, if C then p—where C is a suitable constant proposition, such as a conjunction of physical laws. It is argued, with the help of Humberstone (1981), that the standard account has several unpalatable consequences. It is argued that Humberstone’s alternative account has certain disadvantages, and another—considerably simpler—solution is offered. The proposed alternative takes seriously the idea that the standard account omits crucial information which, if suitably replaced, allows the problems to be solved.

scholarly journals Transitivity, Moral Latitude, and Supererogation

Utilitas ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 286-298 ◽  
Author(s):  
DOUGLAS W. PORTMORE
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Moral Reason ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
The One ◽  
One Act

On the standard account of supererogation, an act is supererogatory if and only if it is morally optional and there is more moral reason to perform it than to perform some permissible alternative. And, on this account, an agent has more moral reason to perform one act than to perform another if and only if she morally ought to prefer its outcome to that of the other. I argue that this account has two serious problems. The first, the latitude problem, is that it has counterintuitive implications in cases where the duty to be exceeded is one that allows for significant latitude in how to comply with it. The second, the transitivity problem, is that it runs afoul of the plausible idea that the one-reason-morally-justifies-acting-against-another relation is transitive. I argue that both problems can be overcome by an alternative account: the maximalist account.

The Model of a True Demonstrative: Extra-linguistic Effects on Situated Meaning

2021 ◽  
pp. 23-32
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Logical Form ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Traditional Model ◽  
Context Change ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
Systematic Account ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Current Context

This chapter introduces the standard account of context-sensitivity, focusing on true demonstratives, the model for most context-sensitive expressions. The account involves an idealization that utterances are interpreted in a single, unchanging context. But this is problematic: it has a consequence that demonstratives are either indefinitely lexically ambiguous, or indefinitely ambiguous at the level of logical form. The chapter argues this is theoretically problematic. Relaxing this idealization, we could let the context change between occurrences of demonstratives. A demonstrative could then have an unambiguous meaning, selecting the prominent interpretation in the current context. However, if prominence is determined extra-linguistically, as the traditional model assumes, we would still lack a systematic account of context-change, facing much of the same problems. An alternative account is outlined, which the chapter argues avoids the problems: the context is shifty, but the mechanisms of context-change are linguistic, and so the content of demonstratives is fully linguistically determined.

Frustrating Absences

Disputatio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (53) ◽  
pp. 45-62
Author(s):  
André J. Abath
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
The World

Abstract Experiences of absence are common in everyday life, but have received little philosophical attention until recently, when two positions regarding the nature of such experiences surfaced in the literature. According to the Perceptual View, experiences of absence are perceptual in nature. This is denied by the Surprise-Based View, according to which experiences of absence belong together with cases of surprise. In this paper, I show that there is a kind of experience of absence—which I call frustrating absences—that has been overlooked by the Perceptual View and by the Surprise Based-View and that cannot be adequately explained by them. I offer an alternative account to deal with frustrating absences, one according to which experiencing frustrating absences is a matter of subjects having desires for something to be present frustrated by the world. Finally, I argue that there may well be different kinds of experiences of absence.

Simples, Representational Activity, and the Communication among Substances: Leibniz and Wolff on pre-established Harmony

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-128
Author(s):  
Gastón Robert
Keyword(s):  
Standard Account ◽  
Representational Power

This article aims to make further progress in revising the standard account of Wolff’s philosophy as a popularisation and systematisation of Leibniz’s doctrines. It focuses on the topic of the communication among substances and the metaphysics of simples and activity underlying it. It is argued that Wolff does not accept the pre-established harmony (PEH) in its orthodox Leibnizian version. The article explains Wolff’s departure from Leibniz’s PEH as stemming from his rejection of Leibniz’s construal of the activity of every simple as representational power and of the metaphysics of unity and activity in which that construal is rooted.

Introduction to the cognitive abilities account for the reminiscence bump in the temporal distribution of autobiographical memory

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve M. J. Janssen
Keyword(s):  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Memory Function ◽  
Early Adulthood ◽  
Temporal Distribution ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Reminiscence Bump ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
Cue Words

People tend to recall more specific personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than from other lifetime periods, a finding known as the reminiscence bump. Several explanations have suggested that events from the reminiscence bump are especially emotional, important, or positive, but studies using cue words have not found support for these claims. An alternative account postulates that cognitive abilities function optimally in adolescence and early adulthood, which may cause more memories to be stored in those lifetime periods. Although other studies have previously discussed the cognitive abilities account as a possible explanation for the reminiscence bump, it was only recently shown that cognitive abilities are indeed related to autobiographical memory performance. When this recent finding is combined with previous findings that cognitive abilities as well as autobiographical memory function optimally in adolescence and early adulthood, they suggest that the cognitive abilities account is a promising explanation for the reminiscence bump in the temporal distribution of word-cued memories. However, because the account does not aim to explain the reminiscence bump in the distribution of highly significant events, it should be regarded as complementary to the existing accounts.

Higgins' Argument for Section 116 of the Constitution

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-415
Author(s):  
Luke Beck
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Standard Account

The argument that led to the inclusion of s 116 of the Constitution, a provision that provides a limited guarantee of religious freedom in Australia, has not been properly understood. The standard account of the argument presented by the proponent of the clause, Henry Bournes Higgins, holds that it was included to ensure that no inferential power to legislate with respect to religion could be drawn from the religious words of the constitutional preamble. This article argues that the standard account of Higgins' argument is wrong and that the substance of Higgins' concern was a realisation that the Commonwealth's enumerated powers were wide enough to authorise legislation dealing with religion.

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