Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Unexpected Substitutions

Context: The facts below (seem to) show that if (OP₁) and (OP₂) hold, they do not suffice, for they can only to account for the cases of unsuccessful substitutions, and the successful cases remain unexplained:

(OP₁)Opaque context (classic version)
A sentential context φ containing an occurrence of a term t is opaque, if the substitution of co-referential terms is an invalid mode of inference with respect to this occurrence. (See Mckinsey 1998, Quine 1956)

(OP₂)Church’ Substitutability of Identicals
Things are identical if the name of one can be substituted for that of the other without loss of truth.

Failure in Transparent Contexts

The first argument against the strict association between substitutability and opacity is that even in certain transparent contexts, i.e., where no propositional attitude is reported, the application of the substitutability principle does yield odd results. This evidences that one thing is independent from the other.
Consider the famous Fregean examples: since Venus has is styled Venus, morning star and evening star, the three expressions should be perfectly inter-exchangeable in a transparent context. But, if one takes the sentence (1a) and substitutes the evening star for Venus, the result (2b) is odd:

(1)a. Venus appears in the morning.==>
b. #The evening star appears in the morning.

An interpretation of Frege’s work traditionally attributes the oddity of (1b) to the sense versus referent distinction. Regardless of how to characterise it in theoretic terms of a semantic framework, it is clear that what is in question is not whether (1b) can be inserted into a believe clause, but the very presence of the adjective evening that modifies star in contradiction to the predicate appears in the morning.
Indeed there are numerous analogous examples that show called impossible syllogisms in transparent contexts, involving what is herein:

(2)a. Lepidopterans (can) fly.
b. Caterpillars are Lepidopterans. ==>
c. ƒ Caterpillars (can) fly.

In (2) there is no obvious evidence of a (hidden) propositional operator. Rather, what happens to (2) reflects revision of information and the defeasibility property of natural languages. Accordingly (2) states a default rule for the class of Lepidopterans, the exception being the stage of their lives when they are caterpillars. In other words, (2) is susceptible of reviewing, as most statements in natural languages. This same reasoning can be applied to sentences containing proper nouns, like (3):

(3) a. Captain Marvel looses his super-strength and his capacity to fly when he says the magic word.
b. Billy Batson is Captain Marvel. ==>
c. ƒ Billy Batson looses his super-strength and his capacity to fly when he says the magic word.

Sentence (3c) is the wrong depiction of the Comics book mentioned, since Billy Batson actually gains super-strength and the capacity to fly when he says the magic word (and consequently transforms into Captain Marvel).
Of course, in comparison, (6) cannot be explained solely in relation to defeasibility, although one could think of a context where it its uttered as a consequence of someone’s astronomical discovery, which forced him to review his former beliefs respecting the stars. The oddity of (6) has to do with issues of consistency, wherefrom one concludes that there is at least another fundamental semantic property involved.
Anyway, the examples above suffice to show that restrictions on substitutions transcend the case of propositional attitude ascriptions.

Non-Uniformity of Results in Opaque Contexts

The second argument is against the idea that attitude ascriptions always block Leibniz’ substitutability. Indeed, the substitution tests do not uniformly yield false results in all opaque context. On the contrary, some substitutions might yield even true results. Let us give one initial example, where the same object is designated by different names. Yet none of the possible alternative names or expressions to designate the same object changes the truth of the statement:

(4) Every visitor to the Louvre intends to see the Mona Lisa/ La Gioconda/ da Vinci’s most famous painting.

Of course, there are some tricks to make unlikely substitutions work. For instance, a true sentence like even Jameson believes that Peter Parker is a mere photographer does not normally yield a true result, if, as in (5a), one substitutes Spiderman for Peter Parker. But in a context like (5b) the substitution preserves the truth:

(5) a. ƒ Even Jameson believes that Spiderman is a mere photographer.
b. T The disguise is so convincing that even Jameson believes that Spiderman is a mere photographer. (See Berg 1988, Mckinsey 1999)

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Strict Identity with No Overlap

By Achille C. Varzi

It is natural to think that a standard, Kripke-style semantics for quantified modal logic (QML) is incompatible with the view that no individual can exist in more than one possible world, a view that seems to require a Lewis-style, counterpart-theoretic semantics instead. Strictly speaking, however, this thought is wrong-headed. A standard semantics regards a modal statement such as ?I might have been fat? as true only if I am in the extension of ?is fat? at some other possible world, whereas counterpart theory regards it as true only if a counterpart of mine is in the extension of ?is fat?. But just as the truth conditions of counterpart theory are in principle compatible with the possibility (rejected by Lewis) that some individuals qualify as their own other-wordly counterparts, the truth conditions of a standard semantics are in principle compatible with the possibility (dismissed by Kripke) that all individuals are world-bound. Here is how.
Source: Online Papers in Philosophy

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

ON HIGGINBOTHAM'S LINKING THEORY

The occurence and the behaviour of co-referential nominals in sentences, under the labels of binding and control, have been classically treated as mainly syntactic phenomena, where the syntactic structure was licensed by teleological co-indexation considerations.

Binding and Control theories are the oldest and most resilient component of Generative thought that has survived to present day. The basic assumptions and core concepts of Classical Binding and Control theory have their origins in Langacker (1966), Rosenbaun (1967), Postal (1970), Jackendoff (1972) (Chapters 4 and 5), Chomsky (1973) and Lasnik (1976), who had tackled most of the main issues from a transformational perspective. Thereafter, this conceptual Binding theoretic nucleus has been re-formulated based on the theoretic refinement and enlargement of the application of Langacker's (1966) notion of command in Reinhart (1976) and Chomsky (1980, 1981 and 1982), together and in parallel with Bresnam (1982) and Manzini (1983). The format of Binding theory has remained almost unaltered since that time. Later proposals of reformulation, such as Reinhart and Reuland (1993), Reinhart (1999, 2000), Heim (2004) etc, have kept the essence of the model virtually intact.

One alternative that I consider at least captivating is Higginbotham's (1983) Linking theory. But, as far as I know, it has not been used by many.

If anyone reading this blog works with James Higginbotham's linking theory, please put a comment to let me know about your work. Thanks!

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

The (Non-)Transitivity of Knowledge reports

If some propositional attitudes are interpretable as negation of propositions, should veridical reports containing verbs like to know interpreted as the simple statement of the propositions? This question seems to make sense, since it has been observed that to know something entails that that thing is true. However, a claim like (1a) might mean that the propositional attitude contributes nothing to the meaning of the whole expression. Moreover, if (1a) is true, then (1b) should be the case:

(1) Hypothesis A
a. Γ (π)|=π
b. (Γ (π)|=π)&(π|=β) → Γ (π)|=β

Let us call one of the ideas that seems to underlie the intuition formalised in (1a) Hypothesis A? and re-write it as (2):

(2) Hypothesis A?
a. Γ (π)=π
b. ∴ Adding to know to a proposition σ adds nothing to its meaning.

Hypothesis A? would lead to think that the negation of Γ (π) is the negation of π itself:

(2?) ¬Γ (π)=¬π

Should (2?) hold, then statements of the type not know π and those of the type to know that π is the not case would mean the same. But the evident contrast between sentences (3a) and (b) below does not confirm such prediction:

(3) a. We know that Giselle is not a singer. ≠
b. We do not know that Giselle is a singer.

This contrast suggests that Γ (π) is not equal to π but rather that it means one epistemic agent has access to a truth π , while ¬Γ (π) does not mean that ¬π , but rather that an agent has not access to a truth π .
Still this finding only excludes hypothesis A?, while it would be possible to maintain hypothesis A. Additional evidences, on the contrary, suggest that to know is perhaps the most opaque of the attitudinal verbs, in the sense that sentences with to know somehow block transitivity. Consider this example:

(4) a. People can skate on the lake. |= Its water has frozen.
b. John knows that people can skate on the lake. |≠ Its water has frozen.

Being the entailment in (4a) valid, and if (1b) applies, then the addition of John knows? should not affect the entailment. But (4b) disconfirms such expectation: the mere fact that John knows that people can skate on the lake does not mean right at the same moment that the water of the lake is covered by a thick layer of ice.
Now consider this other hypothesis:

(5) Hypothesis B
(π |=β) → (Γ (π)|= Γ (β))

This second hypothesis is not true either, as shown by (6)

(6) a. Oedipus killed the man he met at the crossroads.
|= The oracle has been fulfilled.
b. Oedipus knows he killed the man he met at the crossroads.
|≠ Oedipus knows the oracle has been fulfilled.

So evidences point to the contrary conclusion, although an expression of the type to know π entails the truth of π , it somehow unmakes π |=β :

(7) Non-transitivity
(Γ (π)|=π)&(π |= β) → (Γ (π)|≠β)& (Γ (π) |≠ Γ (β))

The non-transitivity of veridical reports requires closer examination and more attention. For the sake of economy, such topic cannot and will not be herein investigated in more detail. Here it will suffice to say that the apparent non-transitivity of veridical reports is also an anti-trivialisation mechanism.

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Deferential Utterances

By Isidora Stojanovic, Philippe De Brabanter, Neftali Villanueva Fernandez and David Nicolas

Our aim in this paper is to clarify the distinctions and the relationships among several phenomena, each of which has certain characteristics of what is generally called "deference". We distinguish linguistic deference, which concerns the use of language and the meaning of the words we use, from epistemic deference, which concerns our reasons and evidence for making the claims we make. In our in-depth study of linguistic deference, we distinguish two subcategories: default deference (roughly, the ubiquitous fact, noted by externalists like Burge or Putnam, that the truth conditions of our utterances are determined with respect to the language parameter supplied by the context), and deliberate deference (roughly, the intentional, commu-nicative act of using a given expression the way it is used in some contextu-ally specified idiolect or dialect). We also discuss the phenomenon of im-perfect mastery, often associated with deference, and which we show to be independent both of linguistic deference and of epistemic deference. If our analysis is correct, then some recent debates on deference (e.g. between Recanati and Woodfield) can be shown to result from a failure to appreciate all the distinctions that we draw here.

Source: Jean Nicod Institute

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Semantic Minimalism and Non-Indexical Contextualism

By John MacFarlane

On this picture, the sentence Chiara is tall is not context-sensitive in the sense that it expresses different propositions at different contexts. But it is context-sensitive in the sense that the truth value of an utterance of it depends on features of the context—not just the world of the context, but the speaker’s intentions, the conversational common ground, and other such things. Accordingly, this brand of Semantic Minimalism might also be described as a Non-indexical Contextualism. This way of describing it brings out how close it is to Radical Contextualism. Too close, Cappelen and Lepore may feel! However, it is immune to their best arguments against Radical Contextualism, so if they are going to reject it, they need fresh reasons.

An advantage of the framework I have just sketched is that it offers a different (and perhaps deeper) diagnosis than Cappelen and Lepore’s of what goes wrong in Moderate Contextualists’ uses of Context Shifting Arguments. (Unlike Cappelen and Lepore’s diagnosis, this one does not require Speech Act Pluralism, though it is consistent with it.)

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Triggering from Alternative Sets and Projection of Pragmatic Presuppositions

By Dorit Abusch

This paper takes up the problem from Stalnaker (1974) of deriving the pragmatic presuppositions of verbs such as know, stop and win as conversational implicatures, without hypothesizing a semantic presupposition. I interpret data discussed by Karttunen (1969), Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet (1990), Simons (2001) and others as indicating that there is a distinct group of “soft” presupposition triggers whose pragmatic presuppositions, though systematic, are also context-dependent and easily suspendable. These are distinguished from “hard” presuppositions triggers like it-clefts and too which on the assumptions of this paper introduce semantic presuppositions. These distinctions are defended in sections 1 and 2. Sections 3 and 4 review and criticize proposals from Stalnaker (1974) and Simons (2001) for deriving the pragmatic presuppositions of soft triggers as conversational implicatures. Section 5 introduces the hypothesis that the pragmatic presuppositions of soft triggers come from alternatives to lexical meanings, such as the alternative lose to win. A pragmatic presupposition is derived as the default assumption that some alternative is true. In section 6, the default existential presupposition of intonational focus is attributed to the same process. Section 7 proposes a systematic pragmatic derivation of a conversational implicature, using a specific default axiom called G, and a general pragmatic process of enrichment reasoning. Sections 8, 9, and 10 address the projection problem for the pragmatic presuppositions of soft triggers. It is shown that projection data for these triggers is the same as what is seen for hard triggers, which would seem to favor an analysis using semantic presuppositions. The puzzle is resolved by replacing G with a default generalization L which refers to the local information states manipulated by compositional semantics in dynamic compositional theories. Section 9 also considers general issues of the interface between pragmatics and compositional semantics. Section 11 shows that the derivation using L also deals with projection data for focus.

Source: Semantics Archive

Topic: HUMAN SEMANTICS

Implying Existence

By Daniel Rothschild

This short paper tries to give a common explanation of two different semantic phenomena. One is the fact that certain uses of non-referring definite descriptions give an appearance of truth-value gaps while others uses do not. The other is that bare plurals in English sometimes have existential readings and sometimes have generic readings. I think the explanation involves the distinction between two kinds of predicates. One type of predicate places items within some realm of discourse (like the actual world), other predicates just attribute properties to objects that aren?t linked to any particular situation. This distinction reveals something about the relationship between predication and possible situations.

Source: Online Papers in Philosophy

Posted by Tony Marmo at 01:57 GMT

Updated: Tuesday, 15 March 2005 02:00 GMT

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