Commitment Without Consequences. A Carnapian Approach to Fictional Objects and Negative Existence Statements

<p>The overall aim of this thesis is to present a fresh perspective on three closely related areas of enquiry: Descriptivist theories of reference, Direct Reference theories and the Carnapian approach to questions of existence and identity. This perspective is developed and tested by a critical analysis of the work of a leading Carnapian theorist, Amie Thomasson, and by looking at some of the central problems associated with our talk of fictional objects. It concludes in an account of negative existence statements and fictional objects as possibly existing objects. In Chapter one I set out the key elements of Carnap’s approach, as that approach was developed over time and in dialogue with his colleague Quine. In Chapter two I explore the relation between the previously mentioned three areas of enquiry through an examination of Amie Thomasson’s brand of Carnapian meta-ontology. In Chapters four and five I develop the view that fictional objects are objects that meet the criteria of existence and identity of at least one linguistic framework but fail to meet the criteria of another, preferred framework. This provides the basis for a neo-Carnapian account of fictional objects in terms of the relations between linguistic frameworks, a novel approach to the questions surrounding such objects. In chapter five, the concluding chapter of the thesis, I further develop my explanation of how there can be truths about fictional and non-existent objects by giving an ontological version of John MacFarlane’s relativity principle. This paves the way for a neo-Carnapian analysis of true negative existence statements. Here I integrate the story I have told about fictional objects and the relations between linguistic frameworks with theories of reference and meaning. In particular, I incorporate a satisfactory concept of the rigid designation of ordinary proper names (and, potentially, of natural and artefactual kind terms). This then leads on to an explanation of how fictional objects, contra Kripke and many others, may reasonably said to be possible objects that, though they don’t exist, might exist under different circumstances.</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>

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>

Commitment Without Consequences. A Carnapian Approach to Fictional Objects and Negative Existence Statements

<p>The overall aim of this thesis is to present a fresh perspective on three closely related areas of enquiry: Descriptivist theories of reference, Direct Reference theories and the Carnapian approach to questions of existence and identity. This perspective is developed and tested by a critical analysis of the work of a leading Carnapian theorist, Amie Thomasson, and by looking at some of the central problems associated with our talk of fictional objects. It concludes in an account of negative existence statements and fictional objects as possibly existing objects. In Chapter one I set out the key elements of Carnap’s approach, as that approach was developed over time and in dialogue with his colleague Quine. In Chapter two I explore the relation between the previously mentioned three areas of enquiry through an examination of Amie Thomasson’s brand of Carnapian meta-ontology. In Chapters four and five I develop the view that fictional objects are objects that meet the criteria of existence and identity of at least one linguistic framework but fail to meet the criteria of another, preferred framework. This provides the basis for a neo-Carnapian account of fictional objects in terms of the relations between linguistic frameworks, a novel approach to the questions surrounding such objects. In chapter five, the concluding chapter of the thesis, I further develop my explanation of how there can be truths about fictional and non-existent objects by giving an ontological version of John MacFarlane’s relativity principle. This paves the way for a neo-Carnapian analysis of true negative existence statements. Here I integrate the story I have told about fictional objects and the relations between linguistic frameworks with theories of reference and meaning. In particular, I incorporate a satisfactory concept of the rigid designation of ordinary proper names (and, potentially, of natural and artefactual kind terms). This then leads on to an explanation of how fictional objects, contra Kripke and many others, may reasonably said to be possible objects that, though they don’t exist, might exist under different circumstances.</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.

Bare singulars and singularity in Turkish

This paper explores the semantics of bare singulars in Turkish, which are unmarked for number in form, as in English, but can behave like both singular and plural terms, unlike in English. While they behave like singular terms as case-marked arguments, they are interpreted number neutrally in non-case-marked argument positions, the existential copular construction, and the predicate position. Previous accounts (Bliss, in Calgary Papers in Linguistics 25:1–65, 2004; Bale et al. in Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 20:1–15, 2010; Görgülü, in: Semantics of nouns and the specification of number in Turkish, Ph.d. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2012) propose that Turkish bare singulars denote number neutral sets and that morphologically plural marked nouns denote sets of pluralities only. This approach leads to a symmetric correlation of morphological and semantic (un)markedness. However, in this paper, I defend a strict singular view for bare singulars and show that Turkish actually patterns with English where this correlation is exhibited asymmetrically. I claim that bare singulars in Turkish denote atomic properties and that bare plurals have a number neutral semantics as standardly assumed for English. I argue that the apparent number neutrality of bare singulars in the three cases arises via singular kind reference, which I show to extend to the phenomenon called pseudo-incorporation and a construction that I call kind specification. I argue that pseudo-incorporation occurs in non-case-marked argument positions following Öztürk (Case, referentiality, and phrase structure, Amsterdam, Benjamins, Publishing Company, 2005) and the existential copular construction, whereas kind specification is realized in the predicate position. The different behaviors of bare singulars in Turkish and English stem from the fact that singular kind reference is used more extensively in Turkish than in English. Furthermore, while there are well-known asymmetries between singular and plural kind reference cross-linguistically, Turkish manifests a more restricted distribution for bare plurals than English in the positions where pseudo-incorporation and kind specification are in evidence. I explain this as a blocking effect, specific to Turkish, by singular kind terms on plural kind terms.

The Semantics of Chinese Noun Phrases

Chinese nominal phrases are typologically distinct from their English counterparts in many aspects. Most strikingly, Chinese is featured with a general classifier system, which not only helps to categorize nouns but also has to do with the issue of quantification. Moreover, it has neither noncontroversial plural markers nor (in)definite markers. Its bare nouns are allowed in various argument positions. As a consequence, Chinese is sometimes characterized as a classifier language, as an argumental language, or as an article-less language. One of the questions arising is whether these apparently different but related properties underscore a single issue: that it is the semantics of nouns that is responsible for all these peculiarities of Mandarin nominal phrases. It has been claimed that Chinese nouns are born as kind terms, from which the object-level readings can be derived, being either existential or definite. Nevertheless, the existence of classifiers in Chinese is claimed to be independent of the kind denotation of its bare nouns. Within the general area of noun semantics, a number of other semantic issues have generated much interest. One is concerned with the availability of the mass/count distinction in Mandarin nominal phrases. Another issue has to do with the semantics of classifiers. Are classifiers required by the noun semantics or the numeral semantics, when occurring in the syntactic context of Numeral/Quantifier-Classifier-Noun? Finally, how is the semantic notion of definiteness understood in article-less languages like Mandarin Chinese? Should its denotation be characterized with uniqueness or familiarity?