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>

Paradoxical Aspects of the Russellian Conception of Existence

In this paper, the authors try to clarify the relations between Meinong’s and Russell's thoughts on the ontological ideas of existence. The Meinongian theory on non-existent objects does not in itself violate the principle of non-contradiction, since the problem that this hypothesis offers to the theory of definite descriptions is not so much a logical problem as an ontological problem. To demonstrate this we will establish what we believe are the two main theses basic to the theory of descriptions: the epistemological thesis and logical thesis.

Same: structural sources of anaphora and relativization

This paper offers a unified view of the structures giving rise to anaphora and relativization within same-expressions. Taking as a point of departure the proposal that indices occupy syntactic positions in anaphoric DPs (Schwarz 2009, Simonenko 2014, a.o.), I examine the open issue of how anaphoric modifiers, particularly same, are predicted to interact with this proposed structural complexity. Based on the morphosyntactic behavior of definite descriptions with same, I argue that indices may be housed in DP structure in different ways. I argue moreover that the behavior of same in both anaphoric and non-anaphoric contexts supports the view that same is syntactically an equative degree head (Alrenga 2007, Oxford 2010), whose selectional properties are mirrored in a range of equative constructions. Finally, I propose an analysis of as-relatives selected by same that accounts for their alternation with anaphora, and offer a comparison with restrictive relatives.

The interpretative options of anaphoric complex demonstratives

In this paper, we present experimental evidence from a ‘yes’/’no’ judgement task and twoacceptability rating studies (Experiments 1a-c) for the claim made in Hinterwimmer (2019) thatsentences with two anaphorically interpreted complex demonstratives are less acceptable thansentences with two anaphorically interpreted definite descriptions and sentences where one ofthe two previously introduced referents is picked up by a complex demonstrative, while the otherone is picked up by a definite description. The results of Experiment 1a and 1b are in principlecompatible with the account argued for in Hinterwimmer (2019), according to which the (potentiallyabstract) demonstrations presupposed by demonstratives may not have overlapping trajectories.However, sentences with two anaphorically interpreted complex demonstratives are not judgedas unacceptable as would be expected if they involved a presupposition violation. Therefore, wepropose an alternative, economy-based pragmatic account that builds on Ahn (2019) and Nowak(2019). The question of whether the observed pattern is more compatible with the accountproposed by Hinterwimmer (2019) or the alternative pragmatic account is directly addressed in afurther acceptability rating study (Experiment 1c). The design of that study is similar to that ofExperiment 1b, but it includes as fillers both sentences clearly violating a presupposition andsentences violating a pragmatic constraint. Since the ratings for sentences containing twoanaphorically interpreted complex demonstratives are closer to the ratings for sentences violatinga pragmatic constraint than for sentences violating a presupposition, we conclude that thealternative pragmatic account is preferable to the account by Hinterwimmer (2019).

On Free Description Logics with Definite Descriptions

Definite descriptions are phrases of the form ‘the x such that φ’, used to refer to single entities in a context. They are often more meaningful to users than individual names alone, in particular when modelling or querying data over ontologies. We investigate free description logics with both individual names and definite descriptions as terms of the language, while also accounting for their possible lack of denotation. We focus on the extensions of ALC and, respectively, EL with nominals, the universal role, and definite descriptions. We show that standard reasoning in these extensions is not harder than in the original languages, and we characterise the expressive power of concepts relative to first-order formulas using a suitable notion of bisimulation. Moreover, we lay the foundations for automated support for definite descriptions generation by studying the complexity of deciding the existence of definite descriptions for an individual under an ontology. Finally, we provide a polynomial-time reduction of reasoning in other free description logic languages based on dual-domain semantics to the case of partial interpretations.

A Binary Quantifier for Definite Descriptions for Cut Free Free Logics

This paper presents rules in sequent calculus for a binary quantifier I to formalise definite descriptions: Ix[F, G] means ‘The F is G’. The rules are suitable to be added to a system of positive free logic. The paper extends the proof of a cut elimination theorem for this system by Indrzejczak by proving the cases for the rules of I. There are also brief comparisons of the present approach to the more common one that formalises definite descriptions with a term forming operator. In the final section rules for I for negative free and classical logic are also mentioned.

A Puzzle about Logical Analysis

In this paper, I will present a puzzle for logical analyses, such as Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions and Recanati’s analysis of ‘that’-clauses. I will argue that together with Kripke’s disquotational principles connecting sincere assent and belief such non-trivial logical analyses lead to contradictions. Following this, I will compare the puzzle about logical analysis with Frege’s puzzle about belief ascriptions. We will see that although the two puzzles do have similarities, the solutions to Frege’s puzzle cannot be applied mutatis mutandis to the puzzle about logical analysis. Hence, to say it with Kripke, the main thesis of this paper is that the puzzle is a puzzle. A complete solution to the puzzle promises a better understanding of both logical analyses and belief ascriptions.

nà-Cleft (non-)exhaustivity: Variability in Akan

This paper presents two experimental studies on the exhaustive inference associated with focus-background nà-clefts in Akan (among others, Boadi 1974; Duah 2015; Grubic, Renans &amp; Duah 2019; Titov 2019), with a direct comparison to two recent experiments on German es-clefts employing an identical design (De Veaugh-Geiss et al. 2018). Despite the unforeseen response patterns in Akan in the incremental information-retrieval paradigm used, a post-hoc exploratory analysis reveals striking parallels between the two languages. The results are compatible with a unified approach both (i) cross-linguistically between Akan and German; and (ii) cross-sententially between nà-clefts (α nà P, ’It is α who did P’) and definite pseudoclefts, i.e., definite descriptions with identity statements (Nipa no a P ne α , ’The person who did P is α ’) (Boadi 1974; Ofori 2011). Participant variability in (non-)exhaustive interpretations is accounted for with a discourse-pragmatic analysis of cleft exhaustivity (Pollard &amp; Yasavul 2016; De Veaugh-Geiss et al. 2018; Destruel &amp; De Veaugh-Geiss 2018).

Definite Descriptions in the Light of the Comprehension vs. Acceptance Distinction: Comparing Self-Paced Reading with Eye-Tracking Measures

This paper presents two experiments on the processing of informative definite descriptions in plausible vs. implausible contexts. Experiment 1 is a self-paced reading task (with French native speakers, n = 69), with sentences containing a definite vs. indefinite NP, each preceded by plausible or implausible contexts. Our study replicated Singh and colleagues’ findings, namely that definite descriptions are significantly costlier when they occur in implausible contexts. The translation of the original stimuli from English to French did not affect the results, suggesting that the phenomenon applies cross-linguistically. Experiment 2 consists in an eye-tracking task, designed to measure the participants’ (n = 44) gaze patterns on complete sentences with the same four conditions (definite vs. indefinite NP; implausible vs. implausible contexts). A mixed effect model analysis revealed that (a) the total gaze duration on target segments and (b) the processing of the complete sentence were significantly longer in implausible conditions. These results show that implausible contexts predict a marked increase in the offline processing costs of definite descriptions. However, no significant difference was found for online processing measures (i.e., first fixation duration, first-pass reading time and regression path time measures) across all experimental conditions. These results suggest that it is only once the sentence is fully processed that implausible contexts increase processing costs. Furthermore, these results raise methodological issues related to the study of the online processing of definite descriptions, to the extent that self-paced reading and eye-tracking methods in the present study lead to incompatible results. With respect to the eye-tracking results, we suggest that the contrast between online and offline processing is likely to reflect the fact that participants first adopt a stance of trust to understand utterances before filtering the information through their epistemic vigilance module.