The Liar Paradox and related semantic antinomies seem to challenge our deepest intuitions about language, truth and logic. Many philosophers believe that to solve them, we must give up either classical logic, or the expressive resources of natural language, or even the “naïve theory of truth” (according to which "P" and “it is true that 'P'” always entail each other). A particularly extreme form of radical surgery is proposed by figures like Graham Priest, who argues for “dialetheism”—the position that some contradictions are actually true—on the basis of the paradoxes. While Priest’s willingness to dispense with the Law of Non-Contradiction may be unpopular in contemporary analytic philosophy, figures as significant as Saul Kripke and Hartry Field have argued that, in light of the paradoxes, we can only save Non-Contradiction at the expense of the Law of the Excluded Middle, abandoning classical logic in favor of a “paracomplete” alternative in which P and ~P can simultaneously fail to hold. I believe that we can do better than that, and I argue for a more conservative approach, which retains not only “monaletheism” (the orthodox position that no sentence, either in natural languages or other language, can have more than one truth-value at a time), but the full inferential resources of classical logic.

There’s a widespread conviction in the norms of assertion literature that an agent’s asserting something false merits criticism. As Williamson puts it, asserting something false is likened to cheating at the game of assertion. Most writers on the topic have consequently proposed factive norms of assertion – ones on which truth is a necessary condition for the proper performance of an assertion. However, I argue that this view is mistaken. I suggest that we can illuminate the error by introducing a theoretical distinction between the norm of a practice and its goal. In light of this distinction, we can see that proponents of factive norms tend to mistake the goal of a practice for the norm. In making my case, I present an analogy between the norms and goals of placing wagers and the norms and goals of assertion. One may place a bet and lose without being subject to criticism, while one may win and be worthy of criticism. Whether one wins or loses is irrelevant to the normative evaluation of a bet. What is relevant is whether the bet maximizes the bettor's expected value, which is a function of what might be lost, what might be gained, and how likely those prospects are, given the bettor's evidence. Similarly, I argue, whether one's assertion is true or false is not strictly relevant to the normative evaluation of an assertion. What is relevant is whether the speaker has adequate supporting reasons for the assertion, and that the necessary conventional and pragmatic features are present. However, context will determine what count as supportive reasons for a given proposition, what counts as relevant, and what count as conventional and pragmatic elements possessing that relevance. My proposed norm, the Supportive Reasons Norm, is thus sensitive to the context of assertion and shifts from context to context.

In my Thesis I investigate many of the standard accounts of knowledge. I argue that epistemic fallibilism, infallibilism, and contextualism fail as viable accounts. I defend an account of knowledge according to which 'knows' is ambiguous. More specifically, I promote an account of knowledge according to which 'knows' is polysemous. This position was advanced by Rene Van Woudenberg. At the end of my thesis, I propose an adjustment to Van Woudenberg's view that will protect his account from problematic implications.

The tradition of semantic externalism that follows Kripke (1972) and Putnam (1975) is built on the assumption that the folk have essentialist commitments about natural kinds. Externalists commonly take the body of empirical data concerning psychological essentialism as support for this claim. However, recent empirical findings (Malt, 1994; Kalish, 2002) call the psychological theory of essentialism into question. This thesis examines the relevance of these findings to both essentialism and semantic externalism. I argue that these findings suggest that these theories fail to reflect folk beliefs about natural kinds and folk natural kind term usage. This leads me to propose an alternative thesis-- the Ambiguity Thesis-- that is better able to accommodate the existing body of empirical data.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Piers Rawling, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Philosophy. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Apr. 8,04). Includes bibliographical references.

Die These, sprachliche Bedeutung sei normativ, wird erklärt und verteidigt. Im ersten Kapitel wird die Fragestellung vorgestellt und von anderen verwandten Fragestellungen abgegrenzt sowie ein Überblick über die Geschichte des Themas gegeben. Im zweiten Kapitel wird das der Arbeit zugrundeliegende Verständnis von Normativität vorgestellt. Im dritten Kapitel wird das sog. Korrektheitsargument für die Normativitätsthese vorgestellt und zurückgewiesen. Im vierten bis sechsten Kapitel wird die Normativitätsthese anhand von Überlegungen zum Regelfolgenproblem, zum Begriff der konstitutiven Regel und zur Unterscheidung einer erklärenden und einer verstehenden Perspektive auf sprachliche Bedeutung verteidigt. Im siebten Kapitel wird diese Konzeption semantischer Normativität auf Sprachwissen und im achten Kapitel auf Referenz angewendet.

This paper attempts to clarify the role mass nouns play in our language, including what they designate and how they designate it. In particular, this paper focuses on demonstrating that mass nouns do not individuate the stuff they designate and consequences for this non-individuative theory. In order to demonstrate that mass nouns do not individuate, I examine grammatical rules for mass nouns and contrast them with rules for singular and plural count nouns. Furthermore, I examine several possible truth conditions for sentences involving mass nouns and demonstrate that no truth conditions which individuate are acceptable. Once this lack of individuation has been demonstrated, I examine issues that arise in language and metaphysics. This examination is necessary because most of our understanding of language and metaphysics centers around medium sized objects. Since mass nouns do not individuate, they are not designating medium sized objects. When examining developments in language, I suggest that the term “the” does not imply uniqueness but rather exhaustiveness and there is already an intuitive way to capture this in first order logic using universals. Furthermore, I suggest that stuff designated by mass nouns cannot be directly referred to and hence cannot occur in a singular term in first-order logic. Finally, I suggest that identity statements should be treated without the identity relation and instead using a biconditional and a universal. When examining developments in metaphysics, I suggest that there cannot be a criterion of identity for stuff because a criterion of identity asks what a single instance is and stuff does not occur in individual instances. Furthermore, I suggest that identity and persistence conditions differentiate for stuff in a way that they do not for individual things. Finally, I address what more must be done in order to have a complete treatment of mass nouns and stuff. This section focuses primarily on first-order logic and how to make stuff a value of a variable while maintaining ontological import. Work in this area still needs to be done and is, I believe, of significant importance. / Thesis (Master, Philosophy) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-27 08:36:48.049

There’s a widespread conviction in the norms of assertion literature that an agent’s asserting something false merits criticism. As Williamson puts it, asserting something false is likened to cheating at the game of assertion. Most writers on the topic have consequently proposed factive norms of assertion – ones on which truth is a necessary condition for the proper performance of an assertion. However, I argue that this view is mistaken. I suggest that we can illuminate the error by introducing a theoretical distinction between the norm of a practice and its goal. In light of this distinction, we can see that proponents of factive norms tend to mistake the goal of a practice for the norm. In making my case, I present an analogy between the norms and goals of placing wagers and the norms and goals of assertion. One may place a bet and lose without being subject to criticism, while one may win and be worthy of criticism. Whether one wins or loses is irrelevant to the normative evaluation of a bet. What is relevant is whether the bet maximizes the bettor's expected value, which is a function of what might be lost, what might be gained, and how likely those prospects are, given the bettor's evidence. Similarly, I argue, whether one's assertion is true or false is not strictly relevant to the normative evaluation of an assertion. What is relevant is whether the speaker has adequate supporting reasons for the assertion, and that the necessary conventional and pragmatic features are present. However, context will determine what count as supportive reasons for a given proposition, what counts as relevant, and what count as conventional and pragmatic elements possessing that relevance. My proposed norm, the Supportive Reasons Norm, is thus sensitive to the context of assertion and shifts from context to context.

This thesis is about Plato‘s dialogue Cratylus, which is one of the earliest texts in the history ofphilosophy of language and has generated much interpretive controversy. In the dialogue, Platoexamines two theories on the correctness of names; conventionalism and naturalism. However,there is no clear positive outcome in the dialogue in regard to the debate betweenconventionalism and naturalism. Therefore, scholars have long been divided as to what Plato‘sown position on the correctness of names is. Another puzzling feature of the dialogue concernsthe etymological section, which has often been ignored or treated in isolation in modernscholarship. This section takes up about half of the dialogue and offers elaborate explanations ofa large number of words in the Greek language. Some recent studies of the Cratylus, however,are shedding much welcome light on the etymological section and the role it plays in thedialogue as a whole. In this thesis, I compare two competing interpretations of the etymologicalsection and discuss how an understanding of the etymologies can help us understand Plato‘sposition on the correctness of names and the purpose of the dialogue as a whole. In TimothyBaxter‘s interpretation, the etymological section should be read as a parody which amounts to aPlatonic critique of a mistaken attitude towards names and language found especially in thepoetry and philosophy in Plato‘s time. David Sedley, on the other hand, argues that theetymologies are seriously intended by Plato as a method of linguistic and historical analysis, amethod he himself endorsed and practiced. If the etymologies are taken seriously, Sedley argues,they show that Plato favored a form of naturalism in regard to the correctness of names. Afterproviding an outline and evaluation of these two interpretations, the thesis concludes with myown proposal. Although I disagree with some of Sedley‘s particular interpretations andarguments, I find myself in broad agreement with his general conclusions.

While a symbol based system externally, there is evidence that, internally the realization of language is much different. Through revisiting the foundations of our perceptions and assumptions about language and cognition, the presented argument will coalesce into an illustration of the unsuitability of symbolic systems for recreating the functions which we call "mind". Simply stated, computational models of mind are the latest arguments of the Cartesian paradigm. The thesis concludes with an argument for the exploration of a symbol-less architecture of cognition based upon a model found repeatedly throughout nature: swarms. Discussions of some of the impacts are presented.