Archive for the ‘Philosophy of Language’ Category

Stereotypes

Sunday, November 9th, 2008

I’m trying to understand what a stereotype is.  My guess is that the word has different senses, and there will be some need to make distinctions as the discussion progresses.

1) S is a stereotype if and only if S is a universal generalization about a group of people.

But consider the universal generalization: “All White people are human people.”  This doesn’t strike me as a stereotype.
2) S is a stereotype if and only if S is a false universal generalization about a group of people.

This also doesn’t strike me as right.  “All Latinos are aliens” doesn’t strike me as a stereotype.

3) S is a stereotype for a person P if and only if S is a universal generalization which is made on the basis of insufficient evidence by P.

(3) relativizes stereotypeness to persons.  Suppose I meet one American Indian who likes baseball, and I conclude that “All American Indians like baseball.”  It strikes me that I have made a stereotype.

These are all first approximations.  What do you think?

Melnyk on Millikan on New Referential Terms

Monday, April 7th, 2008

In a paper for the Kline Colloquium, Melnyk defends Millikan’s view of the introduction of new referential terms (e.g. names). For those not familiar, I’m not going to rehash all of the details of his defense or Millikan’s view here. I will only mention that Millikan’s view stands in contrast to Kripke’s causal-historical view of the introduction of new referential terms. Melnyk presents the following slight modification on her view, (which he seems to think presents the spirit of Millikan’s position):

MM:Term token T refers to entity E iff (1) T is a token of some type t such that there is some population P of two or more speakers each member of which has in his or her repertoire the practice of uttering a token of t when he or she speaker-refers to E, and (2) T is a copy of a copy…of a copy of, or identical with, some token of t uttered by a member of P who was speaker-referring to E (Melnyk, “What Explains the Introduction of New Referential Terms?”, Kline Workshop Paper, p. 16).

Two objections come to mind. First, MM requires that (i) two or more people are in the population in order for the copying to occur. The copying is a necessary condition of the successful introduction of new referential terms. Second, MM seems to imply that (ii) the necessary copying must occur verbally (cf. “uttering a token”) to be successfully. I don’t believe either of these hold.

(more…)

Propositions, Beliefs, and Superman

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

It’s been so long that I’m forgetting some of the basic moves in phil. language.  Can anyone point me in the right direction here?

Lois Lane believes each of the following:

  • Superman is strong.
  • Clark Kent is not strong.

I forgot the resolution to this puzzle.  Do philosophers agree that the statements indicate the same proposition in each case (i.e. P in the first case and ~P in the second)?

Intuition Check in Language

Monday, October 1st, 2007

Please let me know what you think, as it may effect my phil. language paper.

Consider the following sentences:

1) Lex Luthor believes that Lois Lane, who is the coworker of Clark Kent, is a troublemaker.

2) Lex Luthor believes that Lois Lane, who is the coworker of Superman, is a troublemaker.

Can 1) be true and 2) be false?  Do 1) and 2) have the same content?

Nature of Necessity Outline (C. 1-3)

Saturday, July 14th, 2007

Chapter 1 Preliminary Distinctions and Remarks

1. Necessity Circumscribed

P. distinguishes between logical necessity, causal necessity, and broadly (more…)

Necessity and the Language Game

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

In Chapter 6 Lycan talks about ‘Use’ Theories such as the Wittgensteinian view.  According to these views language does not bear the expressing relation to propositions, instead language is an activity similar to a game.  So, as Lycan says according to these theories “a linguistic expression’s meaning is constituted by the tacit rules governing its correct conversational use” (pg. 91).  Here’s my worry—if meaning is determined conventionally according to the rules of the language game, what implications does this have for our conceptions of necessity and possibility?  It seems to me that if the meaning of a sentence that we normally think expresses a necessary truth only has that meaning through convention and it is not expressing a proposition that is a necessary truth, then that sentence does not express a necessary truth because the rules of the language game, which are established by convention, could be different.  So, how are expressions that contain modal concepts understood given a ‘use’ theory?

Gödel or Schmidt?

Saturday, June 9th, 2007

Kripke has an example (pg. 45 Lycan book) where a man named Schmidt is the one who actually proved the Incompleteness Theorem and Kurt Gödel merely discovered Schmidt’s manuscript and published it under his own name.  Most people only know Gödel as the man who proved the Incompleteness Theorem, yet when these people utter “Gödel” they are referring to Gödel, not Schmidt.  Would this way of referring occur in the following example: 

Assume the same information from Kripke’s example. Bob knows Schmidt by sight and he knows that Schmidt is really the one who proved the Incompleteness Theorem.  Joe doesn’t know anything about Schmidt, he knows Gödel as the man who proved the Incompleteness Theorem, but doesn’t know Gödel by sight.  Jim doesn’t know anything about Schmidt or Gödel.  Bob, Joe, Jim, and Schmidt are all at a party, Gödel is not there.  Bob sees Schmidt and points him out to Joe by telling him “that man is the one who proved the Incompleteness Theorem.”  Joe later bumps into Jim at this party and tells Jim “Kurt Gödel is at this party”.  In this case, is Joe actually referring to Gödel by uttering “Kurt Gödel” or is he referring to the man that proved the Incompleteness Theorem, who Bob pointed out to him?  If Joe is actually referring to Schmidt, what is the difference between this case and Kripke’s?  Thoughts?

Quotations and the Use/Mention Distinction

Sunday, March 4th, 2007

Ernest Lepore’s talk made me think of the following.  Often, when explaining the use/mention distinction, we say that while:

1) “Quine” has five letters

is true,

2) Quine has five letters

is false.  In (2), we’re using the word “Quine”, but in (1), we’re mentioning it.  But is (1) true?  If so, then one is tempted to think that quotations only refer to written words.  But don’t they also refer to utterances?  My utterence of “Quine” doesn’t have five letters.  Consider:

3) “Quine” can be uttered faster than “dictionary”.

Is (3) false?  It seems false if (1) is true. (more…)

Philosophers’ Carnival #42

Monday, January 29th, 2007

THE PHILOSOPHERS’ CARNIVAL, VOLUME 42: INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY

NOW FULLY COLLECTED,
WITH SELECTIONS FROM ACROSS THE WEB

EDITED BY

JUSTIN MCBRAYER AND GARRETT PENDERGRAFT

ON BEHALF OF

SHOW-ME THE ARGUMENT

Preface
Philosophy is the search for reasoned answers to important, non-empirical questions. These questions include, but are not limited to, the following: Is there a God? What might God be like? If there isn’t a God, what implications does this have for human life? What does it mean to be me? Am I free? Am I responsible? Are there moral facts? What makes an action right or wrong? How ought I to live? Can we know anything? What does it mean to know something or to have a justified belief in something? What makes something beautiful? What makes something art? What is the meaning of life?

In this introductory anthology we present selections from real philosophers wrestling with real problems. With few exceptions, each of these entries was written in the last month or so and published on blogs in philosophy. In keeping with the purposes of the Philosophers’ Carnival, we have included only pieces that were nominated for publication in this issue of the Carnival. In keeping with the purposes of Show-Me the Argument (the philosophy graduate student blog of the University of Missouri), we have included only pieces that make rigorous and clear arguments concerning important philosophical questions. Political drivel and autobiographical musings didn’t make the cut.

Table of Contents

I. WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY? … 1

II. METAPHYSICS
1. Cognitive Biases and Free Will Part Two … 4
The Garden of Forking Paths

2. Presentism, Actualism, and the Triviality Objection … 8
The Alanyzer

3. A Trouble for Possible Worlds as Maximally Consistent Sets of Propositions … 11
Florida Student Philosophy Blog

4. Chalmers on Ontological Anti-realism … 22
Lemmings

III. EPISTEMOLOGY
1. May we say what we don’t know? … 26
Think Tonk

2. Disagreeing about Disagreement … 28
Thoughts, Arguments, and Rants

3. Justification, Inconsistencies, Contradictions, and Contradictories … 42
Certain Doubts

4. Epistemic ‘Ought’ Does Not Imply ‘Can’ … 73
Long Words Bother Me

6. Contradictions Rational and Justified? … 77
Knowability

IV. ETHICS
1. Desire Satisfaction Accounts of the Concept of Welfare and The Scope Problem … 80
Reflective Equilibrium

2. Philosophical Utilitarianism … 84
PEA Soup

3. Beliefs and Moral Judgments (see also Oughts and Desires on Show-Me the Argument) … 89
Atheist Ethicist

4. Infant Euthanasia and Utilitarianism … 92
Show-Me the Argument

5. Moral Intuitions and the Darwinist Dilemma (see also Moral Intuitions and Evolution on Atopian) … 105
Siris

6. Posthumous Procreation … 110
Philosophy, et cetera

V. PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
1. Consciousness and the Brainstem … 116
Brains

2. Content Internalism … 120
Brain Pains

3. Human Echolocation … 155
The Splintered Mind

VI. PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
1. Uniform Experience Against Miracles … 158
Fides Quaerens Intellectum

2. Prophecy Argument Against Open Theism … 163
Show-Me the Argument

VII. PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
1. Language and Color … 174
Language Hat

2. Talking to the Future … 177
Semantics etc.

VIII. AESTHETICS
1. Aesthetics and the Problem of Evil … 200
Prosblogion

2. The story of your life, or life as a work of art … 205
Philosophy Blog

IX. SPECIAL TOPICS
1. Thoughts about True Temp … 217
Experimental Philosophy

2. Why Truth is the Norm of Credibility … 221
Opiniatrety

3. Philosophical Failure: Peter van Inwagen and John Martin Fischer … 227
Garden of Forking Paths

4. A book review of John Searle’s Freedom and Neurobiology … 231
Show-Me the Argument

Contextualism in epistemology?

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

As a warm-up for McGrath’s seminar on contextualism next semester, I’m wondering what you, dear reader, think of DeRose’s bank cases.* I haven’t decided yet where I stand on contextualism—clearly that has to wait until after the seminar!—but I have to admit that the bank cases are fairly convincing. My (probably flawed) presentation of them after the jump. (more…)