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logic and language

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1  Descriptions

Are definite descriptions quantifier expressions, or referring expressions? Or are they lexically ambiguous?

Reading

Peter Ludlow, `Descriptions', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Zalta (ed.),
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descriptions/.
Russell, `On Denoting', Mind 14 (1905): 479-93. Reprinted in Martinich (ed.), Ostertag (ed.) and in R.C. Marsh (ed.), Logic and Knowledge. Alternatively:
* Russell, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, Ch. 16. Reprinted as `Descriptions' in Ludlow (ed.), Martinich (ed.), Moore (ed.) and in Ostertag (ed.).
* Strawson, `On Referring', Mind 59 (1950): 320-44. Reprinted in Ludlow, Martinich, Moore and Ostertag.
* Donnellan, `Reference and Definite Descriptions', Philosophical Review 75 (1966): 281-304. Reprinted in Ludlow, Martinich and Ostertag.
Grice, `Logic and Conversation' in P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts (Academic Press, 1975). Reprinted in Grice's Studies in the Ways of Words (Harvard UP, 1989), pp. 22-40, and in S. Davis (ed.) Pragmatics: A Reader (OUP). [Background on implicature for the following readings.]
* Kripke, `Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference', in French, Uehling and Wettstein (eds) Midwest Studies in Philosophy 2: 255-76. Reprinted in Ludlow, Martinich and Ostertag.
Evans, The Varieties of Reference (OUP, 1982), Chs 2 & 9, §§1-3.
Neale, Descriptions (MIT Press, 1990), Ch. 3. Reprinted as `Context and Communication' in Ludlow and Ostertag.

Further reading

Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory, pp. 78-93 (an argument for a difference in the meaning of, e.g., `and' and `Ù' that Grice's concept of implicature might be thought to undercut); 184-90 (on descriptions, including alleged referring uses of indefinite descriptions).
Recanati, Direct Reference, (Blackwell, 1993), Chs 13 (more on implicature) and 15.
Neale, Descriptions, Chs 2 & 5.
Fodor & Sag, `Referential and Quantificational Indefinites', Linguistics and Philosophy 5 (1982): 355-98. Reprinted in Ludlow.
Ludlow & Neale, `Indefinite Descriptions: In Defense of Russell', Linguistics and Philosophy 14 (1991): 171-202. Reprinted in Ludlow.

Hot off the press

Marga Reimer & Anne Bezuidenhout (eds), Descriptions and Beyond (OUP, 2004).

2  Proper Names

Do proper names have senses? If they do, can you explain the fact that they are rigid designators? (Are they?) If they don't, can you explain the meaningfulness of sentences containing empty names?

Reading

* Frege, `On Sense and Reference' in his Philosophical Writings, trans. by Max Black and Peter Geach. This translation first appeared in Philosophical Review 57 (1948): 209-30. Translations reprinted in Ludlow, Martinich and Moore.
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §§79-87.
J. Searle, `Proper Names', Mind 67 (1958): 166-73. Reprinted in Ludlow and Martinich.
* Kripke, Naming and Necessity, Lectures I and (especially) II. Lecture II is reprinted in Ludlow; extracts from both lectures are in Martinich.
Tyler Burge, `Reference and Proper Names', Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973): 425-39. Reprinted in Ludlow.
M. Dummett, Frege: the Philosophy of Language, 2nd edition (Duckworth/Harvard UP, 1981), Appendix to Ch. 5, pp. 110-51.
* Evans, `The causal theory of names'. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 47 (1973):187-208. Reprinted in Ludlow, Martinich, Moore, and in Evans's Collected Papers (OUP, 1985).
Evans, The Varieties of Reference (OUP, 1982), Ch. 11.
Jason Stanley, `Names and Rigid Designation' in Hale and Wright (eds).

Further reading

Soames, Beyond Rigidity, (OUP, 2002), especially Chs 2-3.
John McDowell, `On the Sense and Reference of a Proper Name', Mind 86 (1977): 159-85. Reprinted in Moore.
Dummett, `Frege's distinction between sense and reference' in his Truth and Other Enigmas (Duckworth/Harvard UP, 1978). Reprinted in Moore.
Stalnaker, `Reference and Necessity', in Hale and Wright (eds).
Kit Fine, The John Locke Lectures (2003), Lecture 2, `Frege's Puzzle', and Lecture 3, `Names'. Available at:
http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/misc/johnlocke/index.shtml.

3  Truth

Is truth correspondence with the facts?

Reading

* Ralph Walker, `Theories of Truth', in Hale and Wright (eds).
Quine, Philosophy of Logic, 2nd edn, (Harvard University Press), Chs 1,2 and, especially, 3.
* Tarski, `The Semantic Conception of Truth', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 4 (1944): 341-376. Reprinted in Blackburn and Simons (eds), Truth (OUP, 1999), and in Martinich (ed.).
Scott Soames, Understanding Truth (OUP, 1999), Chs 3-4.
* Ramsey, `On Facts and Propositions', in his Philosophical Papers (CUP, 1990). Reprinted in Blackburn and Simmons (eds).
* J. L. Austin, `Truth', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 24 (1950): 111-29. Reprinted in Blackburn and Simons.
P. F. Strawson, `Truth', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 24 (1950): 129-56. Reprinted in Blackburn and Simons.
J. L. Austin, `Unfair to Facts', Philosophical Papers (OUP, 1961), pp. 102-22. Reprinted in Blackburn and Simons.
* Donald Davidson, `The Structure and Content of Truth', Journal of Philosophy, 87 (1990): 279-328.
Paul Horwich, Truth, 2nd edn (OUP, 1998), Postscript. Reprinted in Blackburn and Simons.

Further reading

Karl Popper, `Some Philosophical Comments on Tarski's Theory of Truth', in his Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (OUP, 1972), pp. 319-40.
Field, `Tarski's Theory of Truth'. Reprinted in his Truth and the Absence of Fact.
Putnam, Reason Truth and History (CUP, 1981), Ch. 3.
Wolfgang Künne, Conceptions of Truth (OUP, 2003).
Scott Soames, Understanding Truth (OUP, 1999), Chs 1-2, 8.
Paul Horwich, Truth, 2nd edn (OUP, 1998).
Donald Davidson, `True to the Facts', Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 748-64.
Donald Davidson, `The Folly of Trying to Define Truth', Journal of Philosophy 93 (1996): 263-278. Reprinted in Blackburn and Simons.
Anil Gupta, `A critique of deflationism', Philosophical Topics 21 (1993): 57-81. Reprinted in Blackburn and Simons.
Hartry Field, `Deflationist Views of Meaning and Content', Mind 103 (1994): 249-285. Reprinted in Blackburn and Simons, and in his Truth and the Absence of Fact.

4  Meaning

What is the relation between understanding a sentence and knowing its truth conditions?

Reading

* Frege, `The Thought: A Logical Inquiry', in his Philosophical Writings, trans. by Geach and Black. Reprinted in Ludlow. This translation also appeared in Mind 65 (1956): 289-311.
Frege, `Letter to Jourdain', Reprinted in Beaney (ed.) The Frege Reader (Blackwell, 1997) and in Moore.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, §§4-4.53.
* Quine, Word and Object (MIT Press, 1960), Ch. 2. Reprinted in Ludlow.
* Grice, `Meaning', Philosophical Review 66 (1957): 377-388. Reprinted in his Studies in the Way of Words (Harvard University Press, 1989) and in Martinich.
* Davidson, `Truth and Meaning', Synthese 17 (1967): 304-23. Reprinted in his Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (OUP, 1984, 2001), and in Ludlow, Moore and Martinich.
Dummett, `What is a theory of meaning? I' Guttenplan (ed.) Mind and Language (OUP, 1974). Reprinted in his The Seas of Language (OUP, 1993) and in Ludlow.
* Dummett, `What is a theory of meaning? II' in Evans and McDowell (eds) Truth and Meaning: Essays in Semantics (OUP, 1976). Reprinted in his The Seas of Language.
* James Higginbotham, `Truth and understanding', Philosophical Studies 65 (1992): 3-16.
David Wiggins, `Meaning and truth conditions: from Frege's grand design to Davidson's', in Hale and Wright (eds).

Further reading

Grayling, An Introduction to Philosophical Logic (Blackwell) Chs 8 & 9.
Evans and McDowell (eds) Truth and Meaning: Essays in Semantics (OUP, 1976), Introduction.
Scott Soames, `Truth, meaning and understanding', Philosophical Studies 65 (1992).
James Higginbotham, `Elucidations of Meaning', Linguistics and Philosophy 12 (1989): 465-517. Reprinted in Ludlow.
Larson and Segal, Knowledge of Meaning: An Introduction to Semantic Theory (MIT Press, 1995), Ch. 2. Reprinted as `Knowledge of Meaning and Theories of Truth' in Ludlow.
Grice, `Utterer's Meaning and Intention', Philosophical Review 78 (1969): 147-77. Reprinted in Studies in the Way of Words and in Ludlow.
Anita Avramides, `Intention and Convention' in Hale and Wright (eds.).
Strawson, `Meaning and truth', in his Logico-Linguistic Papers. Reprinted in Martinich.
Edward Craig, `Meaning and Privacy', in Hale and Wright (eds.).
Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Chs 4, 5, 9, 12.
Dummett, The Seas of Language (OUP, 1993).

5  Adverbs and Logical Form

What is the logical form of `Alice typed the essay quickly'?

Reading

Sainsbury, Logical Forms, 2nd edn (Blackwell, 2001), Ch. 6 & Ch. 4, §6.
* Davidson, `The Logical Form of Action Sentences', in N. Rescher (ed.) The Logic of Decision and Action (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1967), pp. 81-95. Reprinted in his Essays on Actions and Events (OUP, 1980), pp. 105-22, and in Ludlow (ed.).
* P. F Strawson, `On Understanding the Structure of one's Language', in his Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (Methuen, 1974). Reprinted in Evans and McDowell (eds), Truth and Meaning (OUP, 1976), pp. 189-98.
Gareth Evans, `Semantic Structure and Logical Form', in Evans and McDowell (eds). Reprinted (with an afterthought, pp. 405-7) in his Collected Papers (OUP, 1985), and in Ludlow (ed.).
David Wiggins, `Verbs and Adverbs and some other modes of grammatical combination', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 86 (1986): 273-306.

Further reading

M. Dummett, Frege: the Philosophy of Language, 2nd edn (Duckworth/Harvard UP, 1981), Ch. 2.
Terence Horgan, `The Case Against Events', Philosophical Review 87 (1978): 28-47.
Terence Parsons, `Underlying Events in the Logical Analysis of English', in E. Lepore and B. McLaughlin (eds) Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Blackwell, 1985), pp. 235-67.
Jonathan Bennett, Events and their Names (OUP, 1988), Ch. 11.
Roberto Casati & Achille Varzi, `Events', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2002/entries/events/.

6  The Indeterminacy of Reference

Is reference indeterminate?

Reading

* Quine, `Ontological Relativity', in his Ontological Relativity and Other Essays (Columbia University Press, 1969).
* Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (CUP, 1981), Ch. 2, `A problem about reference', and appendix.
* Gareth Evans, `Identity and Predication', Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 343-63.
* David Lewis, `Putnam's Paradox', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (1984): 221-36. Reprinted in his Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology (CUP, 1999).
Crispin Wright, `The Indeterminacy of Translation', in Hale and Wright (eds), pp. 397-426.
Hale and Wright, `Putnam's model-theoretic argument against realism', in Hale and Wright (eds), pp. 427-457.

Further reading

Quine, Word and Object (MIT Press, 1960), Ch. 2. Reprinted in Ludlow.
Quine, Pursuit of Truth, revised edn, (Harvard University Press, 1990), Chs 3 & 4.
Davidson, `Radical Translation', Dialectica 27 (1973): 313-27. Reprinted in his Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (OUP, 1984, 2001).
Davidson, `On the very idea of a conceptual scheme'. Reprinted in his Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (OUP, 1984, 2001).
Bas C. van Fraassen, `Putnam's Paradox: Metaphysical Realism Revamped and Evaded', Philosophical Perspectives 11 (1997): 17-42. Supplement to Noûs 31 (1997).

7  Conditionals

Do conditionals have truth conditions?

Reading

* Robert Stalnaker, `A Theory of Conditionals', in J. W. Cornman (ed.) Studies in Logical Theory (Blackwell, 1968), pp. 98-112. Reprinted in Jackson (ed.) Conditionals, (OUP, 1991).
David Lewis, Counterfactuals (Blackwell, 1973, 2001), Ch. 1
* Frank Jackson, `On Assertion and Indicative Conditionals', Philosophical Review, 88 (1979): 565-589.
* Sainsbury, Logical Forms, 2nd edn, (Blackwell, 2001), Ch. 2, §4.4-§8; Ch. 3; and Ch. 5, §2.
* Dorothy Edgington, `Conditionals', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conditionals/.
Dorothy Edgington, `On Conditionals', Mind 104 (1995): 235-329. Especially §§5-7.

Further reading

V. H. Dudman, `On Conditionals' Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994): 113-28. Links to other papers by Dudman are available here:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/ ball0888/manifesto/dudman.htm.
Jonathan Bennett, A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals (OUP, 2003).
Grice, Studies in the Ways of Words (Harvard UP, 1989), pp. 58-85. Extracts also reprinted in Jackson (ed.).
David Lewis, `Probabilities of Conditionals and Conditional Probabilities', Philosophical Review 85 (1976): 297-315. Reprinted in his Philosophical Papers, Vol. 2 (OUP, 1986). (But see Edgington (1995), §6, or Sainsbury.)
David Lewis, `Probabilities of Conditionals and Conditional Probabilities II', Philosophical Review 95 (1986): 581-9.
Michael Woods, Conditionals (OUP, 1997).

8  Propositional Attitudes

What is the best account of sentences like "Sadie believes that John is a spy"?

Reading

* Frege, `On Sense and Reference' in his Philosophical Writings, trans. by Max Black and Peter Geach. This translation first appeared in Philosophical Review 57 (1948): 209-30. Translations reprinted in Ludlow, Martinich and Moore.
* Quine, Word and Object (MIT Press, 1960), Ch. 4, §30-32. Reprinted in Ludlow (ed.) as `Vagaries of Reference'. Alternatively: `Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes', Journal of Philosophy 53 (1956): 177-187.
* Davidson, `On Saying That', Synthese 19 (1968): 130-46. Reprinted in his Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (OUP, 1984, 2001), and in Ludlow (ed.).
* Kripke, `A Puzzle about Belief', in Margalit (ed.), Meaning and Use (Reidel, 1979). Reprinted in Salmon & Soames (eds), Propositions and Attitudes (OUP, 1988), and in Ludlow (ed.).
Crimmins & Perry, `The Prince and the Phone Booth: Reporting Puzzling Beliefs', Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989): 685-711. Reprinted in Ludlow (ed.).
Ian Rumfitt, `Content and Context: the Paratactic Theory Revisited and Revised', Mind 102 (1993): 429-54.

Further reading

McKay, Thomas, `Propositional Attitude Reports', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prop-attitude-reports/.
M. Richard, `Propositional Attitudes', in Hale and Wright (eds), pp. 197-226.
Kit Fine, John Locke Lectures 2003, Lectures 3, 4 and 5.
Nathan Salmon, `Being of two minds: Belief with doubt', Noûs 29 (1995): 1-20.
Bryan Frances, `Defending Millian Theories', Mind 107: 703-28.
J. G. Moore, `Misdisquotation and substitutivity: when not to infer belief from assent', Mind 108 (1999): 335-66.
David Braun, `Understanding Belief Reports', Philosophical Review 107 (1998): 555-95.
Scott Soames, Beyond Rigidity, (OUP, 2002), Chs 3, 6, 7, 8.
Nathan Salmon, Frege's Puzzle (MIT Press, 1986), esp. Chs 5 and 6, 8.
Salmon and Soames (eds), Propositions and Attitudes (OUP, 1988).


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On 28 Nov 2004, 15:36.