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LINGUISTIX&LOGIK, Tony Marmo's blog
Wednesday, 26 September 2007

Topic: Polemics

ON A SIDE EFFECT OF SOLVING FITCH’S PARADOX BY TYPING KNOWLEDGE

By Volker Halbach

 

It has been proposed to block Fitch’s paradox by disallowing a predicate or sentential operator of knowledge that can be applied to sentences containing the same predicate or operator of knowledge. Furthermore it has been claimed that this move is not ad hoc as there is independent motivation for this restriction, because this restriction provides a solution also to paradoxes arising from selfreference like the paradox of the Knower. A solution to paradoxes arising from selfreference is only needed if knowledge is treated as a predicate that can be diagonalized. However, if knowledge and possibility are conceived as such predicates with type restrictions, a new paradox arises. Very basic, jointly consistent assumptions on the predicates of knowledge and possibility yield an inconsistency if (a typed version of) the verifiability principle is added.

[read more]

Analysis 68 (2008), to appear


Posted by Tony Marmo at 19:29 BST
Updated: Wednesday, 26 September 2007 19:31 BST
Friday, 31 August 2007

Topic: Counterfactuals
THE COUNTERFACTUAL ANALYSIS OF CAUSE
By Igal Kvart

In this paper I first go through an argument against cause transitivity, then sketch the theories of probabilistic cause and counterfactuals that I advanced. I then proceed to the main goal of this paper: to present the counterfactual analysis of cause that follows from them.

Appeared in Synthese 127: 389-427, 2001.

Posted by Tony Marmo at 18:48 BST

Topic: Counterfactuals

COUNTERFACTUALS

AND EPISTEMIC PROBABILITY

By Richard Otte

Philosophers have often attempted to use counterfactual conditionals to analyze probability. This article focuses on counterfactual analyzes of epistemic probability by Alvin Plantinga and Peter van Inwagen. I argue that a certain type of counterfactual situation creates problems for these analyses. I then argue that Plantinga's intuition about the role of warrant in epistemic probability is mistaken. Both van Inwagen's and Plantinga's intuitions about epistemic probability are flawed.

Source: Online Papers in Philosophy



Posted by Tony Marmo at 18:27 BST
Updated: Friday, 31 August 2007 18:44 BST

Topic: Counterfactuals
Impossible Worlds and Knowledge of Necessary Truths
By Allan Hazlett

I propose that safety and sensitivity conditionals may be used to explain the reliability of beliefs in necessary truths, by appeal to a non-standard semantics for counterfactuals with impossible antecedents and necessarily true consequents. 
 
Link:
http://www.cassetteradio.com/hazlett/impossible.pdf 
 
Source: Online Papers in Philosophy  

Posted by Tony Marmo at 18:11 BST
Friday, 29 June 2007

On the Distinction between Relational and Functional Type Theory
 
By Paul E. Oppenheimer and Edward N. Zalta
 
It is commonly believed that it makes no difference whether one starts with relational types or functional types in formulating type theory, since one can either start with relations as primitive and represent functions as relations or start with functions as primitive and represent relations as functions. It is also commonly believed that the formula-based logic of relational type theory is equivalent to the term-based logic of functional type theory. However, in this paper, the authors argue that there are systems with logics that can be properly characterized in relational type theory, but not in functional type theory.
 
Source: Online Papers in Philosophy 

Posted by Tony Marmo at 17:08 BST
Updated: Friday, 29 June 2007 17:19 BST
Wednesday, 6 June 2007

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Context, Content and Relativism


By Michael Glanzberg

Here is a simple and inviting picture: the semantic values of sentences, relative to contexts,are sets of possible worlds. These are the truth conditions of assertions of those sentences in contexts. They are thus the contents of assertions, or the objects of attitudes we might take towards such contents.
There have been many questions raised about the simple picture. I propose to ignore these questions to focus on whether the semantic values of sentences hould be sets of something more than possible worlds.
My main concern here shall be with the philosophy of language side of this debate. I shall argue that in fact, thinking about the way language works does not give us any argument for relativism. I shall also suggest, in the end, that the argument which leads to this kind of rampant relativism hinges on a particularly stringent view about the way context fixes contextual parameters. I shall suggest this stringent view is not well-justified, and that language shows us many contextual effects which do not conform to it. This will not constitute a knock-down argument against relativism, but I do hope to show that sober reflection on language offers relativism no support.

Source: Semantics Archive 


Posted by Tony Marmo at 16:18 BST
Updated: Wednesday, 6 June 2007 16:33 BST
Monday, 4 June 2007

Topic: GENERAL LOGIC
A propositional logic for Tarski's consequence operator

By Hércules de Araújo Feitosa, Mauri Cunha do Nascimento & Maria Claudia Cabrini Grácio

This paper presents the TK-algebras associated to Tarski's consequence operator and introduces the TK Logic. So it shows the adequacy (soundness and completeness) of TK Logic relative to the algebraic model given by TK-algebras.

Source: CLE e-prints Vol. 7(1), 2007

Posted by Tony Marmo at 15:19 BST
Updated: Monday, 4 June 2007 15:37 BST
Friday, 1 June 2007

Topic: PARACONSISTENCY

Sylvan's Box: A Short Story and Ten Morals

By Graham Priest

The paper contains a short story which is inconsistent, essentially so, but perfectly intelligible. The existence of such a story is used to establish various views about truth in fiction and impossible worlds.

Source: Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic Volume 38, Number 4 (1997), 573-582.
 Check peer's review here. 

Posted by Tony Marmo at 18:45 BST
Updated: Friday, 1 June 2007 18:58 BST

Topic: PARACONSISTENCY

Properties and Paradox in Graham Priest's

Towards Non-Being

 

 By Daniel Nolan
 
Graham Priest's book is a treasure-trove, with many interesting things to discuss, but in these remarks, I want to address two main questions.  The first concerns what properties and relations Priest's non-existent objects should have simpliciter.  The second is the question of whether Priest's framework needs dialetheism - should the framework only be attractive to those who accept true contradictions?  In these remarks I plan to grant, for the sake of discussion at least, that there are non-existent objects.  I take it that the question of whether there really are things that don't exist is one that is to be settled once  we see how well the rival theories do - and so developing a theory of non-existent objects seems to me an important preliminary to the judgement of whether there are, after all, such things.

 

To appear in a book symposium in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Source: Online Papers in Philosophy 


Posted by Tony Marmo at 09:21 BST
Updated: Friday, 1 June 2007 09:46 BST

Topic: PARACONSISTENCY
A Consistent Reading of Sylvan's Box
 
By Daniel Nolan

This paper argues that Graham Priest's story Sylvan's Box has an attractive, consistent reading. Priest's hope to use that story as an example of a non-trivial essentially inconsistent story is thus threatened. The paper then makes some observations about the role Sylvan's Box might play in a theory of unreliable narrators.
Source: Online Papers in Philosophy 

Posted by Tony Marmo at 09:01 BST
Updated: Friday, 1 June 2007 09:30 BST
Friday, 25 May 2007

Language Acquisition, Concept Acquisition, and Intuitions about Semantic Properties:

Defending the Syntactic Solution to Frege's Puzzle


By Robert D. Rupert

In this paper, I explore the ways in which even the most individualistic of theories of mental content can, and should, accommodate social effects. I focus especially on the way in which inferential relations, including those that are socially taught,influence language-learning and concept acquisition. I argue thatthese factors affect the way subjects conceive of mental and linguistic content. Such effects have a dark side: the social and inferential processes in question give rise to misleading intuitions about content itself. They create the illusion that inferential relations somehow constitute content. This illusion confounds an otherwise attractive solution to what is known as `Frege's puzzle' (Salmon, 1986). I conclude that, once we haveidentified the source of these misleading intuitions, Frege's puzzle appears much less puzzling.

Source: Online Papers in Philosophy


Posted by Tony Marmo at 17:58 BST
Updated: Friday, 25 May 2007 18:18 BST
Friday, 20 April 2007

Topic: PARACONSISTENCY
Inconsistency Theories:
The Importance of Being Metalinguistic
By Douglas Patterson 
This is a discussion of different ways of working out the idea that the semantic paradoxes show that natural languages are somehow 'inconsistent'. I take the workable form of the idea to be that there are expressions such that a necessary condition of understanding them is that one be inclined to accept inconsistent claims (a conception also suggested by Matti Eklund). I then distinguish 'simple' from 'complex' forms of such views. On a simple theory, such expressions are meaningless, while on a complex theory they are not. I argue that complex theories are incompatible with truth conditional semantics and that simple theories are only coherent when the inconsistent claims are metalingusitic attributions of meaning. I close with a discussion of the version of the simple metalinguistic theory I have defended in 'Understanding the Liar' and other papers.
Source: Online Papers in Philosophy 

Posted by Tony Marmo at 08:41 BST
Updated: Friday, 20 April 2007 08:50 BST

Topic: GENERAL LOGIC
Truth-Definitions and Definitional Truth
By Douglas Patterson 
Putnam, Etchemendy, Heck and others have criticized Tarski’s definitions of truth on the grounds that they turn what ought to be contingent truths about the truth conditions of sentences into logical, mathematical or necessary truths. I argue that this criticism rests on the misguided assumption that substitution in accord with a good definition preserves logical, mathematical or necessary truth. I give a number of examples intended to show that substitution in accord with good definitions need preserve none of these. The paper should be of interest not only to students of Tarski, but to anyone interested in definition and analyticity, and it includes some discussion of the contingent a priori, logicism, the nature of applied mathematics, and early Wittgensteinian doctrines about showing and saying.
Source: Online Papers in Philosophy 

Posted by Tony Marmo at 08:33 BST
Wednesday, 21 March 2007

Topic: Ontology&possible worlds

WHAT IS WRONG WITH NEGATIVE PROPERTIES

By Richard Vallée

Negative properties, like not flying, are controversial. I introduce negative properties, and offer semantic arguments against the inclusion of such properties in ontology. I distinguish predicate negation and sentential negation, and examine the syntactic and semantic behaviour of predicate negation. I contend that predicate negation is identical with sentential negation. If it is not, then we lose a lot of intuitive inferences found in natural languages and make no clear metaphysical gain. Other arguments based on Ockham's razor are offered. Finally, I address the problem raised by words like ‘immortal'. These words apparently express negative properties. My views have interesting consequences on the ontological scope of these words.

Key-words: Metaphysics. Properties. Negation. Semantics. Logic.

Published in Manuscrito Volume 27, #2, 2004


Posted by Tony Marmo at 17:12 BST
Updated: Wednesday, 21 March 2007 17:30 BST
Tuesday, 6 March 2007

Topic: Cognition & Epistemology

Innateness and the Situated Mind

By Robert Rupert 

Many advocates of situated approaches to the study of cognition (e.g., Griffiths and Stotz, 2000; Thelen and Smith, 1994) explicitly take exception to cognitive science’s pronounced nativist turn.

Other proponents of situated models seek to mitigate strong nativist claims, by, for example, finding ways to acknowledge innate contributions to cognitive processing while at the same time downplaying those contributions (Wilson, 2004, Chapter 3).

Still others leave implicit their apparent opposition to nativism: they emphasize the environment’s contribution to cognition so strongly as to suggest antinativist views but do not take up the issue explicitly (Clark, 1997; Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, 1991). Thus, situated theorists have reached something approximating an antinativist consensus.

In this chapter, I argue that they should not embrace the antinativist view so readily. To this end, I divide the situated approach into two species, extended and embedded views of cognition, arguing that each version of the situated view admits of a plausible nativist interpretation with respect to at least some important cognitive phenomena.

In contrast, I also argue for the nonnativist interpretation of certain cognitive phenomena; nevertheless, these antinativist recommendations come heavily hedged -- in some cases, at the expense of a robust reading of the situated program or one of its subdivisions.

Forthcoming in P. Robbins and M. Aydede (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition (Cambridge UP)

Source: Online Papers in Philosophy


Posted by Tony Marmo at 04:34 GMT
Updated: Friday, 9 March 2007 12:58 GMT

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