scholarly journals Subject Matter: A Modest Proposal

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matteo Plebani ◽  
Giuseppe Spolaore
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Central Task ◽  
Modest Proposal ◽  
Question Under Discussion

Abstract The notion of subject matter is a key concern of contemporary philosophy of language and logic. A central task for a theory of subject matter is to characterise the notion of sentential subject matter, that is, to assign to each sentence of a given language a subject matter that may count as its subject matter. In this paper, we elaborate upon David Lewis’ account of subject matter. Lewis’ proposal is simple and elegant but lacks a satisfactory characterisation of sentential subject matter. Drawing on linguistic literature on focus and on the question under discussion, we offer a neo-Lewisian account of subject matter, which retains all the virtues of Lewis’ but also includes an attractive characterisation of sentential subject matter.

Aboutness

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Yablo
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Library Science ◽  
Philosophical Methodology ◽  
Major Advance ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Made In

Aboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. Attempts have even been made, in library science and information theory, to operationalize the notion. However, it has played no real role in philosophical semantics, which is surprising. This is the first book to examine through a philosophical lens the role of subject matter in meaning. A long-standing tradition sees meaning as truth conditions, to be specified by listing the scenarios in which a sentence is true. Nothing is said about the principle of selection—about what in a scenario gets it onto the list. Subject matter is the missing link here. A sentence is true because of how matters stand where its subject matter is concerned. This book maintains that this is not just a feature of subject matter, but its essence. One indicates what a sentence is about by mapping out logical space according to its changing ways of being true or false. The notion of content that results—directed content—is brought to bear on a range of philosophical topics, including ontology, verisimilitude, knowledge, loose talk, assertive content, and philosophical methodology. The book represents a major advance in semantics and the philosophy of language.

The Fragmented Mind

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Implicit Attitudes ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Belief State ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Relationship

Mental fragmentation is the thesis that the mind is fragmented, or compartmentalized. Roughly, this means that an agent’s overall belief state is divided into several sub-states—fragments. These fragments need not make for a consistent and deductively closed belief system. The thesis of mental fragmentation became popular through the work of philosophers like Christopher Cherniak, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker in the 1980s. Recently, it has attracted great attention again. This volume is the first collection of essays devoted to the topic of mental fragmentation. It features important new contributions by leading experts in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. Opening with an accessible Introduction providing a systematic overview of the current debate, the fourteen essays cover a wide range of issues: foundational issues and motivations for fragmentation, the rationality or irrationality of fragmentation, fragmentation’s role in language, the relationship between fragmentation and mental files, and the implications of fragmentation for the analysis of implicit attitudes.

Borges on Replication and Concept Formation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yemima Ben-Menahem
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Concept Formation ◽  
Jorge Luis Borges ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Common Theme ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
The Common

This chapter examines three stories by Jorge Luis Borges: “Funes: His Memory,” “Averroës's Search,” and “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” Each of these highlights the intricate nature of concepts and replication in the broad sense. The common theme running through these three stories is the word–world relation and the problems this relation generates. In each story, Borges explores one aspect of the process of conceptualization, an endeavor that has engaged philosophers ever since ancient Greece and is still at the center of contemporary philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Together, Borges's stories present a complex picture of concepts and processes of conceptualization.

Metaphor

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marga Reimer ◽  
Elisabeth Camp
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Conceptual Structures ◽  
Linguistic Phenomenon ◽  
Rule Out

Metaphor has traditionally been construed as a linguistic phenomenon: as something produced and understood by speakers of natural language. So understood, metaphors are naturally viewed as linguistic expressions of a particular type, or as linguistic expressions used in a particular type of way. This linguistic conception of metaphor is adopted in this article. In doing so, the article does not intend to rule out the possibility of non-linguistic forms of metaphor. Many theorists think that non-linguistic objects (such as paintings or dance performances) or conceptual structures (like love as a journey or argument as war) should also be treated as metaphors. Indeed, the idea that metaphors are in the first instance conceptual phenomena, and linguistic devices only derivatively, is the dominant view in what is now the dominant area of metaphor research: cognitive science. In construing metaphor as linguistic, the article merely intends to impose appropriate constraints on a discussion whose focus is the understanding and analysis of metaphor within contemporary philosophy of language.

Philosophy of Language, Translation Theory and a Third Way in Semantics

2007 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-28
Author(s):  
Shyam Ranganathan ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Language Translation ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Translation Theory ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Semantic Minimalism ◽  
The Way

In this paper I address anew the problem of determinacy in translation by examining the Western philosophical and translation theoretic traditions of the last century. Translation theory and the philosophy of language have largely gone their separate ways (the former opting to rebrand itself as “translation studies” to emphasize its empirical and anti-theoretical underpinnings). Yet translation theory and the philosophy of language predominantly share a common assumption that stands in the way of determinate translation. It is that languages, not texts, are the objects of translation and the subjects of semantics. The way to overcome the theoretical problems surrounding the possibility and determinacy of translation is to marry the philosopher of language’s concern for determinacy and semantic accuracy in translation with the notion of a “text-type” from the translation theory literature. The resulting theory capable of explaining determinacy in translation is what I call the text-type conception of semantics (TTS). It is a novel alternative to the salient positions of Contextualism and Semantic Minimalism in the contemporary philosophy of language.

Varieties of Aboutness

Aboutness ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Yablo
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Equivalence Relations ◽  
Logical Space ◽  
Nelson Goodman ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
The One ◽  
Ways Of Being

A few philosophers have tried to think systematically about subject matter. Gilbert Ryle thought a sentence was about the items mentioned in it. Nelson Goodman thought it was about the items mentioned in certain consequences. David Lewis was the first to consider subject matters as entities in their own right, and the first to link a sentence's subject matter to what it says, as opposed to what it mentions. Lewisian subject matters are equivalence relations on, or partitions of, logical space. A sentence S is wholly about m if its truth-value in a world w is fixed by how matters stand m-wise in w. But he never identified anything as the subject matter of sentence S—the one it is exactly about. This chapter defines it as the m that distinguishes worlds according to S's changing ways of being true in them. Subject anti-matter is defined analogously, and S's overall subject matter is the two together. Aboutness comes out independent of truth-value, as we would hope. A sentence is not about anything different from its negation.

Truth, Narrative, and the Materiality of Memory: An Externalist Approach in the Philosophy of History

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 328-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Malpas
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Historical Thinking ◽  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Externalist Approach

AbstractOne of the most influential and significant developments in the philosophy of language over the last thirty years has been the rise of externalist conceptions of content. This essay aims to explore the implications of a form of externalism, largely derived from the work of Donald Davidson, for thinking about history, and in so doing to suggest one way in which contemporary philosophy of language may engage with contemporary philosophy of history. Much of the discussion focuses on the elaboration of the externalism that is at issue, along with the holistic approach to content with which it is connected. It will be argued that such holistic externalism is itself thoroughly in keeping with the very character of historical inquiry itself, and can be seen to provide an underpinning to certain contemporary developments in historical thinking.

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