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.

This thesis comprises three main chapters-each comprising one relatively standalone paper. The unifying theme is fragmentalism about truth, which is the view that the predicate 'true' either expresses distinct concepts or expresses distinct properties. In Chapter 1, I provide a formal development of alethic pluralism. Pluralism is the view that there are distinct truth properties associated with distinct domains of subject matter, where a truth property satisfies certain truth-characterizing principles. On behalf of pluralists, I propose an account of logic and semantics that shows how they can answer central conceptual and logical challenges for their view. In Chapter 2, I motivate and develop a modal account of propositions on the basis of an iterative conception of propositions, where the modality is logico-mathematical. The modal account of propositions takes the conception to motivate an inherently potential hierarchy of propositions. I show that the account helps provide satisfying solutions to the intensional paradoxes of Russell-Myhill, Kaplan, and Prior. In Chapter 3, I propose that 'true' is polysemous. I suggest that 'true' is initially polysemous between correspondence truth and disquotational truth, and further polysemous between the meanings corresponding to the subconcepts of the concept truth generated by the indefinite extensibility of that concept. I show that the proposal provides satisfying solutions to the semantic paradoxes.

There has been much philosophical debate about whether the meaning of pictures can be analysed using theoretical frameworks normally employed within philosophy of language. A specific question within this debate is the question of whether pictures can express propositions. Instead of addressing this question in of pictures in a broad sense, this essay focuses on a specific category of pictures referred to as pictorial signs. These signs constitute a pictorial form of communication that we use in our everyday lives. The question of whether pictorial signs can express propositions should, because of this communicative use, be more approachable than the same question applied to pictures in general. While a standard approach to the question has been to investigate the extent to which pictures may share some syntactic or semantic features with natural language, the approach in this essay is instead to look at how pictorial signs are used. The suggested strategy is to approach the question of propositionality by attempting to translate a particular sign into some sentence in natural language on the basis of how the sign is used, rather than analysing its structure.

This paper tries to provide an interpretation of the concept of culture in the work of one of German Enlightenment's most versatile personalities: Johann Gottfried Herder. The emphasis will be placed on this concept within the framework of a new interpretation of the historicity and essence of language as a medium of knowledge, understanding and communication, leading towards an examination of Herder's contribution to the philosophy of language and processuality as the basis of a project of an universal, but immanently historical anthropology. Furthermore, we will introduce Herder's integration of the enlightened rationality and classical metaphysics as expressed in his aesthetics and poetry. We also will reconstruct the foundations and future influence of Herder's linking of universalist humanism with the new awareness of the national and social determination of being. Namely, being as something actively and freely appropriated in an integrated manner that is however not arbitrary. Key words: Herder, Enlightenment, culture, philosophy of language

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This thesis attempts to clarify a particular epistemological problem which surfaces in Chomsky's attempt to attain an objective psychological distance from the language used in his scientific theorizing, in taking language as an epistemological object. This is accomplished by examining the presumed objectivity underlying the theoretical basis of Chomskyan linguistics in its hermeneutical relation to the theories of language advocated by Quine, Wittgenstein, and other philosophers. / The thesis begins by situating the "metalanguage" in which the argumentation between Chomsky and Quine takes place in the Western philosophical tradition. It continues by outlining an historic-hermeneutic link between classical philosophy, early modernism and some twentieth century philosophies of language, most particularly those articulated by Wittgenstein in his two major works. Finally, the thesis concludes by identifying the hermeneutical nature of the philosophical discourse from which Chomsky's linguistics gains its epistemological force.