Showing papers in "The Philosophical Review in 1979"

Word Meaning and Montague Grammar

Abstract: The first € price and the £ and $ price are net prices, subject to local VAT. Prices indicated with * include VAT for books; the €(D) includes 7% for Germany, the €(A) includes 10% for Austria. Prices indicated with ** include VAT for electronic products; 19% for Germany, 20% for Austria. All prices exclusive of carriage charges. Prices and other details are subject to change without notice. All errors and omissions excepted. D.R. Dowty Word Meaning and Montague Grammar

Attitudes de dicto and de se

Abstract: If I hear the patter of little feet around the house, I expect Bruce. What I expect is a cat, a particular cat. If I heard such a patter in another house, I might expect a cat but no particular cat. What I expect then seems to be a Meinongian incomplete cat. I expect winter, expect stormy weather, expect to shovel snow, expect fatigue-a season, a phenomenon, an activity, a state. I expect that someday mankind will inhabit at least five planets. This time what I expect is a state of affairs. If we let surface grammar be our guide, the objects of expectation seem quite a miscellany. The same goes for belief, since expectation is one kind of belief. The same goes for desire: I could want Bruce, want a cat but no particular cat, want winter, want stormy weather, want to shovel snow, want fatigue, or want that someday mankind will inhabit at least five planets. The same goes for other attitudes to the extent that they consist partly of beliefs or desires or lacks thereof. But the seeming diversity of objects might be an illusion. Perhaps the objects of attitudes are uniform in category, and it is our ways of speaking elliptically about these uniform objects that are diverse. That indeed is our consensus. We mostly think that the attitudes uniformly have propositions as their objects. That is why we speak habitually of "propositional attitudes." When I hear a patter and expect Bruce, for instance, there may or may not be some legitimate sense in which Bruce the cat is an object of my attitude. But, be that as it may, according to received opinion my expectation has a propositional object. It is directed upon a proposition to the effect that Bruce is about to turn up. If instead I expect a cat but no particular cat, then the object of my expectation is a different proposition to the effect that some cat or other is about to turn up. Likewise for our other examples. The case of expecting a cat shows one advantage of our policy of uniformly assigning propositional objects. If we do not need a Meinongian incomplete cat as object of this attitude, then

The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality

Abstract: This book is concerned with the nature of law and its relation to morality, concentrating on the proper moral attitude of a citizen towards the law of his country. The author begins by presenting a new analysis of the concept of legitimate authority and then gives a detailed explanation of the legal positivist's approach to law. Within this framework the author examines several areas where legal analysis is often thought to be impregnated with moral values, namely the social functions of law, the ideals of the rule of law, and the role of the courts. The last part of the book is devoted to some key substantive problems. The author argues that there is no obligation to obey the law. He provides a new analysis of respect for law, emphasizing its moral importance. The author maintains there is no right to civil disobedience in a liberal state (though actos of civil disobedience may occasionally be justified even in such a state) and he argues for a right of conscientious objection in certain areas.

Two Conceptions of Happiness

Abstract: L'A. oppose a la maniere aristotelicienne de considerer la vie heureuse la sienne propre. Aristote insiste sur les criteres objectifs et rigoureux de ce qui constitue l'eudaimonia, tandis que ceux que l'A. utilise sont, tel le sentiment, plus subjectifs et flexibles.

On assertion and indicative conditionals

Abstract: T he circumstances in which it is natural to assert the ordinary indicative conditional "If P then Q" are those in which it is natural to assert "Either not P or, P and Q." and conversely. For instance, the circumstances in which it is natural to assert "If it rains, the match will be cancelled" are precisely those in which it is natural to assert "Either it won't rain or, it will and the match will be cancelled." Similarly, the circumstances in which it is natural to assert "Not both P and Q" are precisely those in which it is natural to assert "Either not P or not Q." We explain the latter coincidence of assertion conditions by a coincidence of truth conditions. Why not do the same in the case of the conditional? Why not, that is, hold that "If P then Q" has the same truth conditions as "Either not P or, P and Q"? This hypothesis-given the standard and widely accepted truth functional treatments of "not," "or,"5 and "and"-amounts to the Equivalence thesis: the thesis that (P Q) is equivalent to (P D Q). (I will use "-*" for the indicative conditional, reserving "0-*" for the subjunctive or counterfactual conditional.) In this paper I defend a version of the Equivalence thesis. As a rule, our intuitive judgements of assertability match up with our intuitive judgements of probability, that is, S is assertable to the extent that it has high subjective probability for its assertor. Now it has been widely noted that when (P D Q) is highly probable but both -P and Q are not highly probable, it is proper to assert (P Q).1 The problem for the Equivalence thesis is to explain away the putative counter examples to "-P e (P-Q)J" and "Q H (P -> Q)," the only too familiar cases where despite the high probability of -P or of Q. and so of (P D Q), (P -* Q) is

Sinning against Frege

Abstract: F regean Sinn has been provocative, seminal, and prolific. But ever since it was propagated in English speaking philosophy, it has been widely misunderstood. Recent condemnations of Sinn-from Searle and Wittgenstein to Kripke and Donnellan-have to a significant degree rested on misunderstanding. My mission here is primarily historical. It is to trace the misunderstanding, and right some of the historical wrongs. I will not try to redeem Frege from all transgression, nor will I count Sinn a virtue. But I believe that better acquaintance with Sinn is a precondition for successfully eschewing it. The basic misunderstanding is the identification of Frege's notion of Sinn (sense) with the notion of linguistic meaning. The misunderstanding is an easy one to fall into for two reasons. For one, the term "meaning" has always been vague, multi-purposed, and to some extent adaptive to the viewpoint of different theories. Pressing the term into service to characterize Frege's notion has seemed harmless enough, as long as it is made clear that the notion is restricted to an aspect of meaning relevant to fixing the truth value of sentences. A second reason for the misunderstanding has been that Frege did not lavish any considerable attention on the area in which the differences between sense and the ordinary notion of meaning are clearest-contextdependent reference. Although the differences between meaning and sense are easiest to notice with indexicals (including proper names), the distinction issues from the fundamental cast of Frege's work, a cast discernible throughout his career independently of issues about indexicals. Baldly put, Frege was primarily interested in the eternal structure of thought, of cognitive contents, not in conventional linguistic meaning. He pursued this interest by investigating the structure of language, and much of his work may be seen as directly relevant to theories of linguistic meaning.

The semantic paradoxes: A diagnostic investigation

Abstract: I n this paper, I shall give "diagnoses" of the principal semantic paradoxes (or antinomies) that have played such a significant role in developments in the foundations of logic and mathematics.1 I use the term 'diagnoses' rather than the more standard 'solutions' for two principal reasons. First of all, I wish to indicate that I am concerned with only one of two closely related problems raised by the paradoxes. Alfred Tarski once remarked: "The appearance of an antinomy is for me a symptom of disease."2 But what disease? That is the diagnostic problem. We have an argument that begins with premises that appear to be clearly true, that proceeds according to inference rules that appear to be valid, but that ends in a contradiction. Evidently, something appears to be the case that isn't. The problem of pinpointing that which is deceiving us and, if possible, explaining how and why the deception was produced is what I wish to call 'the diagnostic problem of the paradox'. The related problem of de-

Foundationalism, epistemic principles, and the cartesian circle

Abstract: T HE problem of the Cartesian Circle is sometimes treated as though it were merely an exercise for scholars: Descartes fell into it, and theirjob is to get him out of it. But more is at stake than extricating Descartes. In its generalized form, the Cartesian Circle is none other than the Problem of the Criterion, a problem that any epistemology must face. Moreover, to solve the problem of the Circle one must answer questions about epistemic principles that are pivotal in contemporary debates between foundationalists and coherentists. There is reason to hope, therefore, that by examining Descartes's problem we can throw light on problems of our own. This paper is divided into two parts. In Part One I examine solutions to the problem of the Circle that are possible within Descartes's own framework. In Part Two I show how what we learn in Part One may be used to resolve some contemporary disputes that hinge on the status of epistemic principles.

What Kant Might Have Said: Moral Worth and the Overdetermination of Dutiful Action

Abstract: M Y purpose is to account for some oddities in what Kant did and did not say about "moral worth," and for another in what commentators tell us about his intent. The stone with which I hope to dispatch these several birds is-as one would expect a philosopher's stone to be-a distinction. I distinguish between two things Kant might have had in mind under the heading of moral worth. They come readily to mind when one both takes account of what he actually said about it and notices a fact which he did not seem to notice: namely, that dutiful actionaction which, whatever its motive, fulfills a duty-can be overdetermined, and determined in particular by both respect for duty and some consortium of inclinations and prudence. It may be otiose to begin by reminding the reader of another and more familiar distinction-that which Kant draws between an action's conforming to duty and its having moral worth-but since such distinguished commentators as Broad, Sidgwick, and Ross have so seriously misrepresented Kant when they discussed these notions,' a few words on them seem advisable. The first formulation of the Categorical Imperative is: "I should never act in such a way that I could not will that my

Hans Reichenbach : logical empiricist

Abstract: The Philosophy of Hans Reichenbach.- Inference, Practice and Theory.- Relative Frequencies.- The Probabilities of Theories as Frequencies.- Reichenbach, Reference Classes, and Single Case 'Probabilities'.- Reichenbach's Entanglements.- Reichenbach on Convention.- Hans Reichenbach's Relativity of Geometry.- Elective Affinities: Weyl and Reichenbach.- Reichenbach and Conventionalism.- The Geometry of the Rotating Disk in the Special Theory of Relativity.- Two Lectures on the Direction of Time.- What Might Be Right about the Causal Theory of Time.- Concerning a Probabilistic Theory of Causation Adequate for the Causal Theory of Time.- Why Ask, 'Why?'?-An Inquiry Concerning Scientific Explanation.- Hans Reichenbach on the Logic of Quantum Mechanics.- Reichenbach and the Logic of Quantum Mechanics.- Reichenbach and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.- Causal Anomalies and the Completeness of Quantum Theory.- Metaphysical Implications of the Quantum Theory.- Consistency Proofs for Applied Mathematics.- A Generative Model for Translating from Ordinary Language into Symbolic Notation.- Laws, Modalities and Counterfactuals.- Reichenbach's Theory of Nomological Statements.- Appreciation and Criticism of Reichenbach's Meta-ethics: Achilles' Heel of the System?.- Index of Names.- Analytical Index of Subjects.

Knowledge and logos in the theaetetus

Abstract: At least as early as the Meno, Plato is aware that true belief, although necessary for knowledge, is not sufficient. In addition, he claims, true belief must be "fastened with an explanatory account (aitias logismos)" (98a). Plato's claim has often been linked to modern accounts of knowledge, according to which S knows that p if and only if p is true, S believes that p, and S has adequate justification or grounds for believing that p.2 In the end I believe this linkage is correct, but it is as well to issue a caveat at the outset. In the modern account, the definiendum concerns one's knowledge that a particular proposition is true. Plato tends instead to speak of knowing things (virtue, knowledge, Theaetetus, and the sun are among the examples he gives of things one may know or fail to know). But this difference should not be pressed too far. First, the account that certifies that one knows a particular thing will itself be a proposition: one knows a thing through or by knowing certain propositions to be true of it. Knowledge of things, for Plato, is description-dependent, not description-independent. Second,

Emotion, thought, and therapy

Abstract: Hume and Spinoza are the most systematic representatives of two opposing traditions of argument about the relation of thought and feeling in the emotions. The Humeans treat emotions as essentially feelings (impressions or affects) with thoughts incidentally attached. The Spinozists say roughly the reverse, treating emotions as essentially thoughts ('ideas' or 'beliefs') with feelings incidentally attached. It is argued that the Spinozists are closer to the truth, that is, that thoughts are of greater importance than feelings fin the narrow sense of felt sensations) in the classification and discrimination of emotional states. It is then argued that if the Spinozists are closer to the truth, we have the beginning of an argument to show that Freudian or, more generally, analytic therapies make philosophic sense. That is, we can begin to understand how people's emotional lives might be trans- formed by consideration and interpretation of their memories, beliefs, etc.; how knowledge might help make one free. [continued in text ...]

Groundless Belief: An Essay on the Possibility of Epistemology.

Abstract: Acknowledgments vii Preface to the Second Edition ix I Introduction: Epistemology and Scepticism 1 2 The Appeal to the Given 25 3 The Regress of Justification 60 4 Meaning or Theory? 116 5 Basic Propositions 145 Afterword 183 Index 203

Indicative and subjunctive conditionals

Abstract: Indicative and subjunctive conditionals have different truth conditions. I seek to account for this difference within the general possible-worlds framework developed by Stalnaker and Lewis. I argue that their truth conditions hold for indicative conditionals, and that similar but different conditions hold for subjunctive conditionals. An indicative conditional is true only if its consequent is true in the antecedent-world that is most similar to the actual world overall. A subjunctive conditional is true only if its consequent is true in the antecedent-world that is most similar to the actual world before the antecedent event. A whole set of extant counterexamples to the Stalnaker-Lewis account of subjunctives confirms it for indicatives. This simple development renders similarity theory both more general and more accurate. I also point out that a subjunctive conditional is incorrect in some way if its consequent refers to an earlier time than its antecedent. Indicative and subjunctive independence will be briefly defined and distinguished.'

Spinoza's "ontological" argument

Abstract: J reposition XI of Part I of Spinoza's Ethics is the claim that " 'God or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists." Spinoza employs four proofs to establish this important proposition, but it is far from obvious how they are to be construed. Almost the only point on which commentators agree is that the proofs include an ontological argument-and even in this, I believe, they are somewhat mistaken. I hope to show that Spinoza is best understood as offering four interrelated arguments which resemble ontological arguments in being essentially a priori and relying on a definition of "God," but which resemble cosmological arguments in depending on a version of the principle of sufficient reason. After some preliminaries, I will discuss the four proofs in order, showing how they rely on the principle of sufficient reason and how they relate to each other. The last two proofs, it will be seen, serve partly to forestall an objection which can be raised about the generalizability of the first two. Finally, I will discuss the implications of Spinoza's proofs and their relation to traditional ontological and cosmological arguments.

Meaning and contrastive stress

Abstract: W A T ith the possible exception of intonation contour and its obvious connection with generic illocutionary force, the contribution of the phonological features of sentences to their overall significance has not received much attention from philosophers of language. One of the few philosophers to recognize the importance of phonological considerations in philosophical linguistics is Fred Dretske, whose pioneering studies [5] and [6] not only provide a rich source of provocative data concerning the phenomenon of contrastive stress but also attempt to weave these data into semantic theory in the large. The resulting theory of the semantic role of contrastive stress is then alleged to have novel and far-reaching consequences for epistemology and metaphysics. Since contrastive stress seems to provide a paradigm case of phonological features affecting our interpretation of utterances, it behooves us to understand its workings aright. Accordingly, my aim in this essay is twofold: first, to criticize Dretske's account of his data and its alleged philosophical fallout; second, and more importantly, to discern the source of Dretske's error and to erect a correct theory of the effect of contrastive stress on our interpretation of utterances. Section I offers an overview of the salient features of Dretske's theory of contrastive stress. Section II points out some unpleasant consequences of adopting such a view. Section III locates Dretske's error at the methodological level and introduces a crucial consideration about the "ranking" of his data. In light of this ranking, it is argued that contrastive stress can play three importantly different roles in our interpretation of utterances: a syntactic role, detailed in Section IV; a semantic-pragmatic role, detailed in Sections V-VI; and a purely pragmatic role, detailed in Sections VII-VIII.

A note on Locke's theory of tacit consent

Abstract: T he theory of tacit consent which Locke puts forward in his Second Treatise is interesting because it shows the lengths to which Locke was driven in order to maintain that government power and authority must be based on consent. The attempt to make consent central to the justification of government occurs throughout the history of political philosophy. I believe this attempt is doomed to failure. Locke's difficulties show nicely the problems involved, so it is worth looking carefully into his attempt. Locke invents his theory of tacit consent to solve a problem created for his account of political power by his view that legitimate political power is founded on consent. Let us begin our investigation of Locke's views by trying to understand what he means by "political power." Locke says the following by way of "explaining what [he] take[s] to be Political Power":1

Semantics and Conceptual Change

Abstract: The discussion of conceptual change that has taken place over the last two decades is peculiar in an important respect: meaning and change of meaning loom large in these discussions, yet no consideration seems to have been given to what linguistics says on these topics. It is almost perverse that in discussions of science carried out by philosophers of science, in which highly controversial claims concerning science turn on assumptions about meaning, there is no attempt to use ideas from the science that studies meaning.1 In ignoring linguistics, these discussions restrict themselves to an overly narrow range of positions on conceptual change in science. In the present paper, I will show that linguistics has a significant contribution to make in extending this range of positions. I will show that there are ideas in linguistics that lead to a new position on con-