Embeddings

I consider the results of embedding sentences containing felicitous underspecified expressions in certain environments. In particular, I consider embeddings under negation, and verbs of propositional attitude. These cases give rise to a new possibility for update. The update rule from Chapter 3 is shown to handle these embedded cases.

Felicitous Underspecification

Felicitous uses of contextually sensitive expressions generally have unique semantic values in context. For example, a felicitous use of the singular pronoun ‘she’ generally has a single female as its unique semantic value in context. In the present work, it is argued that contextually sensitive expressions have felicitous uses where they lack unique semantic values in context. The author calls such uses instances of felicitous underspecification. In these uses, the underspecified expression is associated with a range of candidate semantic values in context. A rule is provided for updating the Stalnakerian common ground when sentences containing felicitous underspecified expressions are uttered and accepted in a conversation. The author also gives an account of the mechanism that associates the range of candidate semantic values in context with an underspecified expression. Sentences containing felicitous underspecified expressions can be embedded in various constructions. The author considers the result of embedding such sentences under negation and verbs of propositional attitude. He also examines the question of why some uses of underspecified expressions are felicitous and others aren’t. This investigation yields the notion of a context being appropriate for a sentence (LF), where a context is appropriate for a sentence containing an underspecified expression if the sentence is felicitous in that context. Finally, some difficulties are covered that arise in virtue of the fact that pronouns and demonstratives have some sorts of implications of uniqueness that clash with their being underspecified.

Vagueness-Related Partial Belief and the Constitution of Borderline Cases

This chapter, specially written for a Philosophy and Phenomenological Research book symposium on the Stephen Schiffer’s The Things We Mean, is focused on Schiffer’s proposal there concerning the most central and important question about vagueness: namely, what, specifically, something’s being a borderline case of a vague expression consists in. Schiffer argues for a new kind of approach, according to which vagueness is constitutively a psychological phenomenon, grounded in a supposedly distinctive propositional attitude taken by practitioners of vague discourse: vagueness-related partial belief (VPB), contrasting in ways Schiffer details with standard partial belief (SPB). Two principal problems are raised for this proposal. First, on Schiffer’s account, VPB looks to be characteristic of a wider range of kinds of indeterminacy besides the targeted soritical vagueness. Second, there is an awkward dilemma arising over whether or why a thinker could not, as a matter of psychological contingency, adopt a VPB towards a precise proposition.

Suǒyǐ ‘so’, they are different: an integrated subjectivity account of Mandarin RESULT connectives in conversation, microblog and newspaper discourse

In this study, we analyze the meaning and use of Mandarin causal connectives kějiàn ‘therefore/it can be seen that’, suǒyǐ ‘so’, yīncǐ ‘for this reason’, and yúshì ‘thereupon/as a result’ in terms of causality and subjectivity. We adopt an integrated approach to subjectivity and analyze the subjectivity profile of a causal construction in terms of three features: the propositional attitude of the consequent, the identity of the subject of consciousness (SoC), and the linguistic realization of the SoC. The investigation is based on natural discourse produced in fundamentally distinctive channels, namely, spontaneous conversation, microblogging, and formal writing. Compared to previous studies, the empirical foundation is therefore enlarged and more varied. The results show that these connectives differ systematically from each other with regard to the above three features, and that the differences remain robust across the three discourse types. The relative importance of each feature in characterizing the connectives is also determined. The propositional attitude appears to be the most important subjectivity feature, followed by the linguistic realization of the SoC and the identity of the SoC.

Implicit Bias as Mental Imagery

What is the mental representation that is responsible for implicit bias? What is this representation that mediates between the trigger and the biased behavior? My claim is that this representation is neither a propositional attitude nor a mere association (as the two major accounts of implicit bias claim). Rather, it is mental imagery: perceptual processing that is not directly triggered by sensory input. I argue that this view captures the advantages of the two standard accounts without inheriting their disadvantages. Further, this view also explains why manipulating mental imagery is among the most efficient ways of counteracting implicit bias.

Semantic Potential of the Speech Pattern not exactly..., but in the Context of Expressing Opinion

The article deals with the logical analysis of a syntactic Russian pattern ‘ne to chtoby..., no’ (“not exactly..., but”, “I would say … a sort of”), the turn widely used in the practical reasoning. Its usage is underpinned by two major reasons - dialogical nature of the speech activity as well as one’s desire to accentuate his or her position in the debate. But it is also related to one’s aspiration to rectify the assessment, to uncertainty in choosing adequate words, and sometimes the need to increase the expressiveness of the message. In its essence, the relationship between the two parts of the pattern separated by conjunction “no” (“but”) is dialogically polemical. The first conjunct signals an approximate character of the chosen nomination or qualification, it represents a kind of preliminary assessment marked by semantics of doubt, while the second makes the necessary adjustments so as to better characterize the subject of speech. This alternative, albeit not always exhaustive definition may belong to categories of knowledge, opinion or belief. Whatever were the subject of evaluation - object, property, state or action, - the “rectifying” description / nomination / qualification placed in the second part of the construction after the conjunction ‘no” (“but”) can be identified in all cases of use as the attitude for understanding a relative accuracy of its expression. Moreover, it is possible to establish how adequate the object’s qualification is in a given context of expressing opinion only within the framework of a given opinion setting, including what the subject of opinion thinks, what he is convinced of, or believes in. It is impossible to know in advance whether such an opinion is reliable or not from the objective point of view, but it is possible to assert its unconditional credibility within the accepted framework of a certain system of ideas, e.g. what should be in an “acceptable situation” properties, activities or states of the object of judgment to be assessed. In this context, it is not the denotatum that is actually brought into focus of attention, but rather its qualifications or characteristics (they is the meaning of the item) within the scope of the propositional attitude of opinion.

Concepts, Conceptions in the Psychology of the Referring Mind

Concepts function to make objects available for thinking and talking about; conceptions mediate and help guide our reasoning about those objects. Concepts unite all subjects who are capable of thinking and talking about the same thing(s)—subjects whose conceptions of that thing may differ. This distinction is integral to the picture of the psychology of the referring mind that is developed in this chapter: a picture with internalist, externalist, and “communitarian” elements. In the first part of the chapter, the concept/conception-distinction is discussed at length, and important implications of it for our understanding of coreference puzzles and propositional attitude ascriptions are drawn out. In the second part, an overall account of rational cognition and conation that fits with the recommended picture of the referring mind is sketched.

Language of Gestures: Mudrā, Mirror, and Meaning in Śākta Philosophy

By contextualizing the ways gestures are used and interpreted in tantric practice and philosophy, this paper explores the cultural and cognitive domains of corporeal expression. Initiating the conversation with descriptions of basic dance gestures and widely understood emotional expressions, the paper proceeds to address the generative nature of corporeal language as it contextualizes varied forms of esoteric experience. Confronting simplistic readings of gestural language, the core argument here is that tantric gestures introduce a distinctive form of embodied language that relies on a propositional attitude for deciphering their meanings. This process becomes a ritual in its own right. Even when we accept that gestures represent meaning, tantric gestures are understood to mirror the innate experience, prior to being shaped by language and culture, and in this sense they reflect the absolute. As a consequence, language becomes physical in time and space, and even when language transcends itself, it remains embodied. In sum, tantric gestures can be deciphered to unravel the deeper layers inherent to the sign system, and this is possible only when we are open to critically engaging folk theories.

Platonism and Mathematical Explanations

Ontological parsimony requires that if we can dispense with A when best explaining B, or when deducing a nominalistically statable conclusion B from nominalistically statable premises, we must indeed dispense with A. When A is a mathematical theory and it has been established that its conservativeness undermines the platonistic force of mathematical derivations (Field), or that a non numerical formulation of some explanans may be obtained so that the platonistic force of the best numerical-based account of the explanandum is also undermined (Rizza), the parsimony principle has been respected. Since derivations resorting to conservative mathematics and proofs involved in non numerical best explanations also require abstract objects, concepts, and principles under the usual reading of “abstract,” one might complain that such accounts turn out to be as metaphysically loaded as their platonistic counterparts. One might then urge that ontological parsimony is also required of these nominalistic accounts. It might, however, prove more fruitful to leave this particular worry to the side, to free oneself, as it were, from parsimony thus construed and to look at other important aspects of the defeating or undermining strategies that have been lavished on the disposal of platonism. Two aspects are worthy of our attention: epistemic cost and debunking claims. Our knowledge that applied mathematics is conservative is established at a cost, and so is our knowledge that nominalistic proofs play a genuine theoretical role in best explanations. I will suggest that the knowledge one must acquire to show that nominalistic deductions and explanations do indeed play their respective theoretical role involves some question-begging assumptions regarding the nature and validity of proofs. As for debunking, even if the face value content of either non numerical claims, or conservative mathematical claims, or platonistic mathematical claims didn’t figure in our causal explanation of why we hold the mathematical beliefs that we do, construed or understood as beliefs about such contents, or as beliefs held in either of these three ways, we could still be justified in holding them, so that the distinction between nominalistic deductions or non numerical explanations on the one hand and platonistic ones on the other turns out to be spurious with respect to the relevant propositional attitude, i.e., with respect to belief.

Meinong’s Theory of Assumptions

The article clarifies the reasons why A. Meinong expands the classification of mental phenomena proposed by F. Brentano and places the class of assumptions between the classes of presentations and judgments. Meinong understands acts of assumption as propositional acts, the specificity of which is that they lack the affirmative force or the moment of seriousness characteristic for acts of judgment. Meinong demonstrates the impossibility of reducing the acts of assumption to the acts of presentation on the example of negative assumptions: the negative characteristics of objects grasped in such assumptions are not captured by the presentations. It is demonstrated that the theory of modes of presentation put forward by Brentano and Marty in response to this argument of Meinong does not allow us to defend the thesis of the reducibility of assumptions to presentations: even with the help of a new notion of presentation, it is not possible to explain such phenomena as play, pretense and lies without artificial complications. The article goes on to discuss some of the details of Meinong’s semantic theory that are in need for resolving the issue of the difference between assumptions and judgments. The author points out the peculiarity of Meinong's understanding of words and sentences meanings, and gives a brief description of the theory of objectives. After the explanations made, an argument is discussed that allows Meinong to justify the difference between acts of assumption and acts of judgment. The argument is constructed as a sequential analysis of sentences, the task is to show that sentences of different types, both simple, and loaded with subordinate clauses, and composite, in different circumstances express a propositional attitude devoid of affirmative force.