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.

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What is the best way to understand 'applies to' when it is said of a linguistic theory that it applies to a particular language-user? We can answer by saying that a linguistic theory is applicable to an individual language-user just in case that individual tacitly-knows the theory. But this is an uninformative answer until we are told how to understand 'tacit-knowledge'. The end goal of this thesis is to defend the claim that we should take tacit-knowledge to be, simply, knowledge. Towards this end I argue against the satisfactoriness of competing ways of understanding 'tacit-knowledge'. For example, the instrumentalist position is neutral on whether linguistic theories are actually known by the ordinary language-users who tacitly-know them; instead, linguistic theories are to be such that knowing them would enable someone to do whatever it is that the tacit-knower can do. Other competing positions hold that, though tacit-knowledge is a psychological relation of some sort, it is not genuine knowledge. I also attempt to meet specific objections to the claim that a typical language-user (as opposed to a linguistic theorist) could plausibly be said to know a linguistic theory. An objection on which I focus is based on the claim that typical language-users do not possess the requisite concepts for having genuine knowledge of a linguistic theory. The aim in attempting to meet these objections is to open up the way for the linguistic theorist to exploit a paradigm of explanation: explanation of behaviour by knowledge attribution. Attributing knowledge of linguistic theories would be potentially explanatory of linguistic behaviour in exactly the same way that attributions of knowledge in non-linguistic spheres are potentially explanatory of behaviour. Finally, because my emphasis is specifically on semantic theories, I attempt to explicate and defend the claim that a semantic theory could and should have the form of a theory of truth.

A central task of contemporary analytic philosophy is to develop an understanding of how our minds are connected to the external (or mind-independent) world. Arising from this task is the need to explain how thoughts represent things in the world. Giving such an explanation is the central endeavor of this dissertation—the aim being to contribute to our understanding of what it is for a subject to be thinking of a particular object. The structure of the dissertation is set, in part, by responding to the commonly held view that a satisfactory explanation of what it is to think of a particular object can be drawn out of, or extended from, an explanation of what it is to be referring to that particular object. Typically, in investigating these matters, it is accepted that there is an explanatory priority of language over thought. This is the Priority Thesis. Some take the Priority Thesis to reflect an appropriate methodological strategy. In this form, it implies the methodological point that the best way to describe thoughts is by describing them as they are expressed in language. Most, however, seem to take the Priority Thesis to be symptomatic of a substantive, metaphysical truth. This, to put it one way, is that the content of a thought is paralleled by the content of the associated linguistic expression. I call this the Assumption of Parallelism. This characterizes what we call Linguistic Turn philosophy (i.e., analytic philosophy). The body of the dissertation arises out of questioning the extent of the application ofthe Priority Thesis in developing theories of reference and thought. I call the move of the partial overturning ofthe Priority Thesis the Linguistic U-Turn. The overall conclusion is that we cannot explain what it is to think of a particular object by extending explanations of what it is to be referring to that particular object. In particular, I reject what I call the Causal Theory of Thought—the view that the representational properties of a thought are explained by the referential properties of the appropriate singular term. My aim, then, is to show that a popular conviction concerning the representational properties of thoughts about things in the world is not warranted.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

This essay deals with certain problems in the theory of singular reference. The following question is taken as central: What role is to be assigned to nonempty and syntactically simple singular terms in fixing the semantic contents of utterances of declarative sentences in which they may occur? I focus on those aspects of the current dispute between Millian and neo-Fregean approaches to singular reference which are related to issues about the cognitive significance of language use; the following two issues are singled out as crucial: the issue about (alleged) potential differences in informativeness between sentences constructed out of co-referential singular terms; and the issue about (alleged) failures of substitutivity salva veritate of co-referential singular terms in propositional-attitude contexts. The general direction of my arguments is as follows. On the one hand, I argue that "notational variance" claims recently advanced on both sides of the dispute should be deemed unsound; and hence that one is really confronted with separate accounts of singular content. On the other, I argue that Milllanism does not provide us with a satisfactory solution to the problems about cognitive significance; and hence that a framework of singular senses is Indispensable to deal with such problems in an adequate way. I also discuss the problem of Cognitive Dynamics, i.e. the issue of attitude-retention and persistence of mental content, in connection with the individuation of indexical thought. I argue that the standard Intuitive Criterion of Difference for thoughts might be reasonably extended to the diachronic case, allowing thus the possibility of discriminating between thoughts entertained by a thinker at different times.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request

Thesis (M.A.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1991. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-108).