Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

 

Between the Proximal and the Distal: An Interpretation of Quine’s Semantics

Issue: • Author/s: Marta Maria Vilardo
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of language, Theoretical philosophy

The debate on internalism/externalism both in semantics and in epistemology concerns the core relations between the mind and the world. I will use this dichotomy to assess whether and how optimal coordination can be worked out between the different parts of Quine’s philosophy: semantics and epistemology in his earlier development. Since Quine has emphasized that his examination of translation is epistemological and since his epistemological project is an internalist one, it should be logical to assume that his semantics proceeded in the same way. But in Word and Object it…

Opening Up New (and Old) Vistas on the Contextualist-Minimalist Debate [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 15 • Author/s: Ernesto Perini-Santos
Topics: Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind, Theoretical philosophy

The border war between semantics and pragmatics has an early version in the dispute between Mates and Cavell. While Mates argues for a strict separation between semantic inferences and mere pragmatic regularities, Cavell argues for a “logic of ordinary language”, identifying the commitments following the act of saying something. This answer gives a clue to the contemporary debate between minimalists and contextualists: we may either think that pragmatic inferences are only effective after the proposition is grasped, or think that it is part of the determination of what is said.…

Lying and Misleading in Context [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 15 • Author/s: Palle Leth
Topics: Epistemology, Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of language, Theoretical philosophy

In this paper I question the lying/misleading distinction from three different angles. I argue, first, that if speakers are responsible for what they explicitly say only and hearers for what they infer that speakers implicitly convey, it is practically impossible to enforce speaker responsibility. An implication of this view is that the lying/misleading distinction is untenable. Other attempts at questioning the distinction have been countered by empirical evidence of the robustness of the distinction. However, there is also contrasting empirical evidence that people do think that it is possible to…

Future Contingents, Open Futurism, and Ontic Indeterminacy [Critical Discussion]

Issue: Issue 17 • Author/s: Giuseppe Spolaore
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Modal Logic, Philosophical logic, Philosophy of language, Theoretical philosophy

This paper critically discusses Patrick Todd’s book, The Open Future: Why Future Contingents Are All False (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).

Non-Persistent Truths and Alethic Charity [Critical Note]

Issue: Issue 18 • Author/s: Peter Ludlow
Topics: Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of language, Theoretical philosophy

In his fascinating paper on non-persistent truths, Andrea Bonomi makes the case that the truth value of propositions may shift over time, and he takes issue with Gareth Evans’ criticism of such a view. Some of the linguistic evidence provided by Bonomi may strike philosophers as suspect, but I build a case for the legitimacy of such evidence under a principle that I call “alethic charity,” which governs folk truth attributions. I also speculate that some of Bonomi’s judgments may reflect the hidden presence of epistemic modality.

Between Gareth Evans and Bill Evans: Andrea Bonomi’s Multi-Propositionalism [Critical Note]

Issue: Issue 18 • Author/s: Carlo Penco
Topics: Metaphysics, Philosophical logic, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of Time, Theoretical philosophy

Evans claims that a sentence should always be considered correct or incorrect at the time of its utterance, to preserve what is called the “stability principle”. To introduce the debate, I refer to some remarks by Kamangar and Perry, who show how Frege could have treated future contingents in a way that would contrast Evans’ claim. I then discuss the more traditional contrast between Frege and Prior on different conceptions of propositions that lies at the core of Evans’ view, and I show how Dummett seems to find a compromise…