Romero-Trillo J, (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context. Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 95-115., 2023
We present a novel interpretation of Frege's theories in Begriffsschrift (1879/2016) and "Über Si... more We present a novel interpretation of Frege's theories in Begriffsschrift (1879/2016) and "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" (1892a [2016]). We focus on the role of circumstances as the conceptual content of sentences in Begriffsschrift and we argue that none of the reasons Frege gives in "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" to establish truth-values as the reference of sentences justifies their elimination. This paper is not mainly historical, but rather of conceptual reconstruction. We look for the roots of a pluralist conception of sentence content (Perry, 2001/2012; Korta & Perry, 2011) in Frege.
In this paper, we focus on some misconceptions about Critical Pragmatics, what it is, what it ass... more In this paper, we focus on some misconceptions about Critical Pragmatics, what it is, what it assumes and what it proposes. Doubtless, some of these misconceptions are due to clumsy writing on our part; perhaps others are due to inattentive reading. And some may be due to an effort to shield us from the apparent implausibility of what we said-and in fact meant. It does not matter much. We focus on those misunderstandings that most matter to us, either because, by repetition, they have ended up being annoying, even if they are not, perhaps, that important; or because they are substantial enough to represent a distortion of the basic picture of Critical Pragmatics and its theoretical foundations, namely, Critical Referentialism-also known as the Reflexive-referential Theory-and, more generally, Perry's fundamental views on meaning and content(s).
In §8 of his Begriffsschrift (1879), Gottlob Frege discusses issues related to identity. Frege be... more In §8 of his Begriffsschrift (1879), Gottlob Frege discusses issues related to identity. Frege begins his most famous essay, "On Sense and Denotation" (1892), published 13 years later, by criticizing the view advocated in §8. He returns to these issues in the concluding paragraph. Controversies continue over these important passages. We offer an interpretation and discuss some alternatives. We defend that in the Begriffsschrift, Frege does not hold that identity is a relation between signs. §8 of the Begriffsschrift is motivated by the conflict between two different criteria for sameness of conceptual content of sentences. To resolve that conflict, Frege introduces '≡' in §8 and, thus, circumstances with names as constituents. To the same end, in "On Sense and Denotation," Frege introduces senses and Thoughts and abandons both '≡' and circumstances. He solves what we call the Co-instantiation problem, and disregards, but does not solve, the Name problem.
In this paper we explain two approaches to context-sensitive utterances, focussing on temporal in... more In this paper we explain two approaches to context-sensitive utterances, focussing on temporal indexicals and tense. The first approach is David Kaplan's account in " On the Logic of Demonstratives " (1979) and " Demonstratives " (1989). The second is the refexive-referential approach used by Korta and Perry in Critical Pragmatics (2011). We argue for the second approach, using a famous example of Arthur Prior's.
Singular terms without referents are called empty or vacuous terms. But not all of them are equal... more Singular terms without referents are called empty or vacuous terms. But not all of them are equally empty. In particular, not all proper names that fail to name an existing object fail in the same way: although they are all empty, they are not all equally vacuous. " Vulcan, " " Jacob Horn, " " Odysseus, " and " Sherlock Holmes, " for instance, are all empty. They have no referents. But they are not entirely vacuous or useless. Sometimes they are used in statements that are true or false. We are basically referentialists about proper names. The ordinary semantic function of a proper name is to refer to an object, and to do it directly, that is, without semantically providing any identifying condition that the object should meet to be the referent. To put it differently, we agree that statements containing proper names express singular propositions, i.e., that their truth-conditions involve the referent of the proper name, if it exists, and not any identifying condition of it. Now, since empty names lack a referent, and therefore would not express such a singular proposition, how do we explain that many, if not all, statements containing them have a truth-value? Answering this question for the case of fictional names, in particular, is the aim of this paper.
In this paper, I discuss explicit performative sentences and, in particular, those containing the... more In this paper, I discuss explicit performative sentences and, in particular, those containing the explicit performative verb " to promise. " I argue that one of the key features of explicit performative verbs is their utterance-reflexive character. In a minimal context, an utterance like " I promise I will finish the paper " can be taken either as an explicit performative utterance, a promise, or as an assertion, which does not constitute a promise but a report of one. An utterance like " I promise now I will finish the paper " , however, in a minimal context, should be taken as an explicit performative. To explain this, I use Prior and Kamp's work on " now " (Prior, 1968; Kamp, 1971) and Korta and Perry's content pluralism (Korta and Perry, 2011). I defend that the role " now " plays when embedded in a performative sentence is consistent with the role it plays when embedded in a temporal operator. In both cases, the role of " now " is to reflexively point to the time of utterance and in neither case is the " now " redundant.
Neo-Fregeanism is a combination of two ideas: logicism, according to which arithmetic can be deri... more Neo-Fregeanism is a combination of two ideas: logicism, according to which arithmetic can be derived from logic plus definitions, and Platonism, according to which there are mathematical objects (which are abstract). Neo-Fregeans propose a new interpretation of Frege's principles of abstraction (mainly the so-called Hume's Principle) and of the role of reconcep-tualization and implicit definition for the introduction of numbers into our ontology. I analyze the ontological implications of neo-Fregeanism, not only for mathematics, but for abstract entities in general. After briefly introducing some of the main elements of neo-Fregeanism, I present two possible readings of its ontological implications and I argue that none of them gives the desired results.
In Prior’s famous paper “Thank Goodness that is over” (1959), ontological, epistemic and semantic... more In Prior’s famous paper “Thank Goodness that is over” (1959), ontological, epistemic and semantic considerations are entangled in a way that creates the illusion of an ontological argument about the nature of time. In this paper, we defend the thesis that Prior’s argument is best interpreted as a “knowledge argument,” similar to that raised by Frank Jackson (1986) against physicalism. At a linguistic level, we argue that an utterance like “Thank goodness that is over [now]” expresses the same proposition as “Thank goodness the date of the conclusion of the root canal is Friday, June 15, 1954,” when uttered on the same date. At the epistemic level, we argue that they are associated with different motivating thoughts. At the ontological level we reject the assumption that the proposition related to the utterance “Thank goodness that is over [now]” and its associated thought require the existence of A-properties.
Romero-Trillo J, (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context. Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 95-115., 2023
We present a novel interpretation of Frege's theories in Begriffsschrift (1879/2016) and "Über Si... more We present a novel interpretation of Frege's theories in Begriffsschrift (1879/2016) and "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" (1892a [2016]). We focus on the role of circumstances as the conceptual content of sentences in Begriffsschrift and we argue that none of the reasons Frege gives in "Über Sinn und Bedeutung" to establish truth-values as the reference of sentences justifies their elimination. This paper is not mainly historical, but rather of conceptual reconstruction. We look for the roots of a pluralist conception of sentence content (Perry, 2001/2012; Korta & Perry, 2011) in Frege.
In this paper, we focus on some misconceptions about Critical Pragmatics, what it is, what it ass... more In this paper, we focus on some misconceptions about Critical Pragmatics, what it is, what it assumes and what it proposes. Doubtless, some of these misconceptions are due to clumsy writing on our part; perhaps others are due to inattentive reading. And some may be due to an effort to shield us from the apparent implausibility of what we said-and in fact meant. It does not matter much. We focus on those misunderstandings that most matter to us, either because, by repetition, they have ended up being annoying, even if they are not, perhaps, that important; or because they are substantial enough to represent a distortion of the basic picture of Critical Pragmatics and its theoretical foundations, namely, Critical Referentialism-also known as the Reflexive-referential Theory-and, more generally, Perry's fundamental views on meaning and content(s).
In §8 of his Begriffsschrift (1879), Gottlob Frege discusses issues related to identity. Frege be... more In §8 of his Begriffsschrift (1879), Gottlob Frege discusses issues related to identity. Frege begins his most famous essay, "On Sense and Denotation" (1892), published 13 years later, by criticizing the view advocated in §8. He returns to these issues in the concluding paragraph. Controversies continue over these important passages. We offer an interpretation and discuss some alternatives. We defend that in the Begriffsschrift, Frege does not hold that identity is a relation between signs. §8 of the Begriffsschrift is motivated by the conflict between two different criteria for sameness of conceptual content of sentences. To resolve that conflict, Frege introduces '≡' in §8 and, thus, circumstances with names as constituents. To the same end, in "On Sense and Denotation," Frege introduces senses and Thoughts and abandons both '≡' and circumstances. He solves what we call the Co-instantiation problem, and disregards, but does not solve, the Name problem.
In this paper we explain two approaches to context-sensitive utterances, focussing on temporal in... more In this paper we explain two approaches to context-sensitive utterances, focussing on temporal indexicals and tense. The first approach is David Kaplan's account in " On the Logic of Demonstratives " (1979) and " Demonstratives " (1989). The second is the refexive-referential approach used by Korta and Perry in Critical Pragmatics (2011). We argue for the second approach, using a famous example of Arthur Prior's.
Singular terms without referents are called empty or vacuous terms. But not all of them are equal... more Singular terms without referents are called empty or vacuous terms. But not all of them are equally empty. In particular, not all proper names that fail to name an existing object fail in the same way: although they are all empty, they are not all equally vacuous. " Vulcan, " " Jacob Horn, " " Odysseus, " and " Sherlock Holmes, " for instance, are all empty. They have no referents. But they are not entirely vacuous or useless. Sometimes they are used in statements that are true or false. We are basically referentialists about proper names. The ordinary semantic function of a proper name is to refer to an object, and to do it directly, that is, without semantically providing any identifying condition that the object should meet to be the referent. To put it differently, we agree that statements containing proper names express singular propositions, i.e., that their truth-conditions involve the referent of the proper name, if it exists, and not any identifying condition of it. Now, since empty names lack a referent, and therefore would not express such a singular proposition, how do we explain that many, if not all, statements containing them have a truth-value? Answering this question for the case of fictional names, in particular, is the aim of this paper.
In this paper, I discuss explicit performative sentences and, in particular, those containing the... more In this paper, I discuss explicit performative sentences and, in particular, those containing the explicit performative verb " to promise. " I argue that one of the key features of explicit performative verbs is their utterance-reflexive character. In a minimal context, an utterance like " I promise I will finish the paper " can be taken either as an explicit performative utterance, a promise, or as an assertion, which does not constitute a promise but a report of one. An utterance like " I promise now I will finish the paper " , however, in a minimal context, should be taken as an explicit performative. To explain this, I use Prior and Kamp's work on " now " (Prior, 1968; Kamp, 1971) and Korta and Perry's content pluralism (Korta and Perry, 2011). I defend that the role " now " plays when embedded in a performative sentence is consistent with the role it plays when embedded in a temporal operator. In both cases, the role of " now " is to reflexively point to the time of utterance and in neither case is the " now " redundant.
Neo-Fregeanism is a combination of two ideas: logicism, according to which arithmetic can be deri... more Neo-Fregeanism is a combination of two ideas: logicism, according to which arithmetic can be derived from logic plus definitions, and Platonism, according to which there are mathematical objects (which are abstract). Neo-Fregeans propose a new interpretation of Frege's principles of abstraction (mainly the so-called Hume's Principle) and of the role of reconcep-tualization and implicit definition for the introduction of numbers into our ontology. I analyze the ontological implications of neo-Fregeanism, not only for mathematics, but for abstract entities in general. After briefly introducing some of the main elements of neo-Fregeanism, I present two possible readings of its ontological implications and I argue that none of them gives the desired results.
In Prior’s famous paper “Thank Goodness that is over” (1959), ontological, epistemic and semantic... more In Prior’s famous paper “Thank Goodness that is over” (1959), ontological, epistemic and semantic considerations are entangled in a way that creates the illusion of an ontological argument about the nature of time. In this paper, we defend the thesis that Prior’s argument is best interpreted as a “knowledge argument,” similar to that raised by Frank Jackson (1986) against physicalism. At a linguistic level, we argue that an utterance like “Thank goodness that is over [now]” expresses the same proposition as “Thank goodness the date of the conclusion of the root canal is Friday, June 15, 1954,” when uttered on the same date. At the epistemic level, we argue that they are associated with different motivating thoughts. At the ontological level we reject the assumption that the proposition related to the utterance “Thank goodness that is over [now]” and its associated thought require the existence of A-properties.
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