Category: Language, Philosophy of
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Generic Statements
Statements divide into the singular and the general. General statements divide into the universal, the particular, and the generic. Generic statements are interesting not only to the logician and linguist and philosopher but also to critics of ideology and conservative critics of leftist ideology critique. For example, leftists will find something 'ideological' about the generic…
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‘Women are Better at Looking After Children’
The Opponent supplies the above-captioned sentence for analysis. He reports that a female family member was widely defriended (unfriended?) on Facebook for agreeing that it is true. Of course the sentence is true as anyone with common sense and experience of life knows. It is an example of a generic statement or generic generalization. It…
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On the Expressibility of ‘Something Exists’
I am trying to soften up the Opponent for the Inexpressible. Here is another attempt. …………………….. Surely this is a valid and sound argument: 1. Stromboli exists.Ergo2. Something exists. Both sentences are true; both are meaningful; and the second follows from the first. How do we translate the argument into the notation of standard first-order…
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Meaning is Tied to Use; Syntax Too?
It would seem so. Consider the way Peggy Noonan, no slouch of a political commentator, uses the adjective 'crazy' in this passage about Donald Trump: He had to be a flame-haired rebuke to the establishment. He in fact had to be a living insult—no political experience, rude, crude ways—to those who’ve failed us. He had…
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Exaggeration and the Erosion of Credibility
Why do people exaggerate in serious contexts? The logically prior question is: What is exaggeration, and how does it differ from joking, lying, bullshitting, and metaphorical uses of language? Donald Trump in the first of his presidential debates with Hillary Clinton made the astonishing claim that she has been fighting ISIS all her adult life.…
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The Debate That Won’t Go Away: Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?
Not again! Yes, again. On 5 September 2016 anno domini, in the pages of Crisis Magazine, Fr. Brandon O'Brien opined (emphasis added): While some similarities may exist between the Christian and Muslim conceptions of God, it is certain that the Christian who prays “Our Father, Who art in Heaven” each day is not praying to…
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God as Biblical Character and as Divine Reality
When Thomas Aquinas and Baruch Spinoza write about the God of the Old Testament, they write about numerically the same Biblical character using the same Latin word, Deus. They write about this character, refer to it, and indeed succeed in referring to it. But Aquinas and Spinoza do not believe in the same divine reality.…
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Direct and Indirect Reference: Questions and Puzzles
London Ed asks: Exactly what does ‘refer’ mean? And when we talk about ‘direct reference’ and ‘indirect reference’, are we really talking about exactly the same relation, or only the same in name? The second question got me thinking. The paradigms of direct reference are the indexicals and the demonstratives. The English letter 'I' is…
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Indicative Mood and Assertoric Force
Assertion is a speech act of an agent, a speaker. This topic belongs to pragmatics. But one can also speak of the assertoric force of a sentence, considered apart from a context of use. So considered, assertoric force is presumably an aspect of a sentence's semantics along with the sentence's content. That is what I…
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The Univocity of ‘Exist(s)’: Obsessing Further
The general existential, 'Philosophers exist,' is reasonably construed as an instantiation claim: G. The concept philosopher has one or more instances. But a parallel construal seems to fail in the case of the singular existential, 'Socrates exists.' For both of the following are objectionable: S1. The concept Socrates has one or more instances. S2. The…
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On an Argument for the Univocity of ‘Exist(s)’
Here is an argument adapted from Peter van Inwagen for the univocity of 'exist(s)' across general and singular existentials. a. Number-words are univocal. b. 'Exist(s)' is a number-word. Therefore c. 'Exist(s)' is univocal. (a) is plainly true. The words 'six' and 'forty-nine' have the same sense regardless of what we are counting. As van Inwagen…
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Lukas Novak Against the Millian Theory of Names
Lukas Novak in a comment writes, It seems to me that the theory [the Millian theory of proper name] must fail as soon as its psychological implications are considered (those about beliefs are among them). In a judgement "Peter is wise" Peter must be somehow represented, not just linguistically but mentally. And since we are…
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Kripke, Belief, Irrationality, and Contradiction
London Ed comments: I also note a confusion that has been running through this discussion, about the meaning of ‘contradiction’. I do not mean to appeal to etymology or authority, but it’s important we agree on what we mean by it. On my understanding, a contradiction is not ‘the tallest girl in the class is…
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What Exactly is Kripke’s Puzzle About Belief?
I will try to explain it as clearly and succinctly as I can. I will explain the simplest version of the puzzle, the 'monoglot' version. We shall cleave to English as to our dear mother. The puzzle is generated by the collision of two principles, one concerning reference, the other concerning disquotation. Call them MILL…
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Ortcutt and Paderewski: Against the Millian Theory of Proper Names
Saul Kripke's Paderewski puzzle put me in mind of a rather similar puzzle — call it the Ortcutt puzzle — from W.V. Quine's seminal 1956 J. Phil. paper, "Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes" (in The Ways of Paradox, Harvard UP, 1976, pp. 185-196). Back to Ortcutt! The ordinary language 'Ralph believes that someone is a spy' …