Experimental Philosophy and the Philosophy of Language: A Defence of the Ambiguity Thesis

<p>In this thesis I employ the experimental method to inform three important debates within the philosophy of language. These three debates can loosely be characterised as the following: Strawsonianism vs. Russellianism about the meaning of definite descriptions (Chapter 2), Millianism vs. Descriptivism about the meaning of proper names (Chapter 3), and Internalism vs. Externalism about natural kind terms (Chapter 4). To investigate these debates I use surveys to test the intuitions of ordinary language users, that is, non-philosophers, about the meaning of various terms and phrases in natural language. This included New Zealand undergraduate students, students in China, and participants in the US in order to investigate any cross-cultural differences. The results of these three studies indicate substantial variation in the intuitions held among ordinary language users. I use this variation to defend an ambiguity thesis. According to this thesis, some terms and phrases as they occur in natural language (specifically, proper names, natural kind terms, and definite descriptions) have multiple meanings associated them. No one disambiguation is correct outside of a context of utterance. If the ambiguity thesis is accepted, various philosophical puzzles disappear. I will also address a number of objections that face the general program of this thesis.</p>

Experimental Philosophy and the Philosophy of Language: A Defence of the Ambiguity Thesis

<p>In this thesis I employ the experimental method to inform three important debates within the philosophy of language. These three debates can loosely be characterised as the following: Strawsonianism vs. Russellianism about the meaning of definite descriptions (Chapter 2), Millianism vs. Descriptivism about the meaning of proper names (Chapter 3), and Internalism vs. Externalism about natural kind terms (Chapter 4). To investigate these debates I use surveys to test the intuitions of ordinary language users, that is, non-philosophers, about the meaning of various terms and phrases in natural language. This included New Zealand undergraduate students, students in China, and participants in the US in order to investigate any cross-cultural differences. The results of these three studies indicate substantial variation in the intuitions held among ordinary language users. I use this variation to defend an ambiguity thesis. According to this thesis, some terms and phrases as they occur in natural language (specifically, proper names, natural kind terms, and definite descriptions) have multiple meanings associated them. No one disambiguation is correct outside of a context of utterance. If the ambiguity thesis is accepted, various philosophical puzzles disappear. I will also address a number of objections that face the general program of this thesis.</p>

Kuhn, Putnam and the Reference

In some of his writings, Kuhn criticized Putnam’s causal theory of reference for natural kind terms put forward in his classic paper “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” claiming that Putnam’s theory cannot explain the reference changes of natural kind terms. After looking into Kuhn’s objections to Putnam’s reference theory, some of the main features of Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis and some traits of Putnam’s later version of his theory, we will argue, on the one hand, that Putnam’s later reference theory contains some components that enhance the explanation of the reference change of natural kind terms, and on the other hand, that Kuhn’s and Putnam’s views on reference do no differ that much, especially in virtue ofcertain similarities between Kuhn’s incommensurability thesis and Putnam’s thesis of conceptual relativity.

The Citadel Itself: Defending Semantic Internalism

Semantic internalism is the view that linguistic meaning amounts to forms of conceptual instructions, and that the process of forming linguistic representations does not involve reference to extra-mental entities. Contemporary philosophy of language remains predominantly externalist in focus, having developed systems of extensional reference which depart from classical rationalist assumptions. I will defend semantic internalism using a broad range of case studies, accruing what I see at the most convincing arguments in its favour. Particular focus will be placed on exemplar cases such as natural kind and artifactual terms. Copredication via inherent polysemy will be used as a strong source of evidence for internalism, countering the received view of the externalist character of meaning. Overall, my aim is to comprehensively defend internalism against its critics and to push the exploration of linguistic content and meaning “back into the brain”.

Recent Issues in High-Level Perception

Recently, several theorists have proposed that we can perceive a range of high-level features, including natural kind features (e.g., being a lemur), artifactual features (e.g., being a mandolin), and the emotional features of others (e.g., being surprised). I clarify the claim that we perceive high-level features and suggest one overlooked reason this claim matters: it would dramatically expand the range of actions perception-based theories of action might explain. I then describe the influential phenomenal contrast method of arguing for high-level perception and discuss some of the objections that have been raised against this strategy. Finally, I describe two emerging defenses of high-level perception, one of which appeals to a certain class of perceptual deficits and one of which appeals to adaptation effects. I sketch a challenge for the latter approach.

Géneros naturales y definición de vida

En el debate sobre la definición de vida algunos autores consideran que vida ha de entenderse como un género natural (Cleland y Chyba 2002, Diéguez 2013). Sin embargo, cuando se afirma que vida es un género natural se asumen también otras ideas vinculadas con la idea de género natural que conviene explicitar, tal y como han mostrado recientemente Bich y Green (2018) aunque de manera programática, y ese es precisamente el objetivo planteado aquí; mostrar cuáles son esas implicaciones y señalar las dificultades que surgen al adoptar el discurso sobre los géneros naturales para entender y analizar categorías científicas complejas como, por ejemplo, vida. En este trabajo extendemos esta crítica a las distintas formas de entender los géneros naturales y señalamos cuál es la principal causa de las dificultades que derivan de este planteamiento. In the contemporary philosophy of biology, some authors claim that life is better undertood as a natural kind (Cleland and Chyba 2002, Diéguez 2013). This paper questions the metaphysical commitments related to the natural kind approach in relation with the debate of defining life. The goal of this paper is to show how considering life as a natural kind carries out some difficulties and costs. Those difficulties have been partialy shown by Bich and Green (2018) concerning the essentialist view of natural kinds. In this paper we extended this criticism to other ways of understanding natural kinds and we argue that such a difficulties are due to the acceptance of an inadequate frame of reference, based on a naïve idea of naturalness and on a natural/conventional dichotomy that is not properly justified.

Reference, error, naturalism

This chapter reinforces the HPC natural-kind view about free will by considering its advantages over other approaches in more detail, including Manuel Vargas’s revisionist approach. It is argued that Vargas’s view founders on a dilemma, which the natural-kind view escapes: Either Vargas’s approach is non-descriptivist, like the natural-kind view, in which case it is not revisionist; or it is revisionist, in which case it is not clear how it is descriptivist. Moreover, this chapter argues that the natural-kind view serves Vargas’s purposes better than his own view does. Finally, the chapter compares the natural-kind view to standard compatibilist, libertarian, and hard-incompatibilist views. Among all of these views, it is argued that only the HPC view is sufficiently methodologically naturalistic in its approach.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter summarizes the central claims of the book. Additionally, it argues that the HPC natural-kind view about free actions has the resources to address various empirical threats to free will. For example, Neil Levy has argued that recent findings about how implicit biases affect actions threatens free will and moral responsibility. However, the natural-kind view defuses this threat, including Levy’s version of it. The chapter also shows how the natural-kind view can shed light on emerging questions about whether artificially intelligent agents might ever act freely or be responsible for their actions, and if so in what sense. Finally, the chapter sketches some findings indicating that folk thinking may actually assume something like the natural-kind view.

Introduction

This chapter situates the natural-kind view defended in the book in relation to standard views about free will. Typically, standard approaches assume a broadly descriptivist theory of reference, according to which the concept of free will refers (and so free will exists and we act freely) just in case it is associated with presuppositions that are (mostly) satisfied by actual human behaviors. On the natural-kind view, by contrast, the presuppositions associated with the concept do not have to be satisfied in order for reference to succeed (or for free will to exist). According to the natural-kind view, moreover, even if people’s free-agency phenomenology influences the reference conditions of the concept, the phenomenology supports both the natural-kind view and compatibilism.