bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Inquiry in the Meno
Authors: Fine Gail
Published: November 2023

In most of the Socratic dialogues, Socrates professes to inquire into some virtue.1 At the same time, he professes not to know what the virtue in question is. How, then, can he inquire into it? Doesn’t he need some knowledge to guide his inquiry? Socrates’ disclaimer of knowledge seems to preclude Socratic inquiry.2 This difficulty must confront any reader of the Socratic dialogues; but one searches them in vain for any explicit statement of the problem or for any explicit solution to it. The Meno, by contrast, both raises it explicitly and proposes a solution.
Knowledge and Belief in Republic V
Authors: Fine Gail
Published: November 2023

It is often said that Plato distinguishes knowledge and belief by reference to their objects, so that one can have knowledge, but not beliefs, about forms, and beliefs, but not knowledge, about sensibles. If I know, I can know only a form; and if I have a belief, it must be directed to sensibles. Call this the Two Worlds Theory (TW).1
Knowledge and Logos in the Theaetetus
Authors: Fine Gail
Published: November 2023

At least as early as the Meno, Plato is aware that true belief, though necessary for knowledge, is not sufficient. In addition, he claims, true belief must be ‘fastened with an explanatory account [aitias logismos]’ (98 a). Plato’s claim has often been linked to modern accounts of knowledge, according to which S knows that p if and only if p is true, S believes that p, and S has adequate justification or grounds for believing that p.2 In the end I believe this linkage is correct, but it is as well to issue a caveat at the outset. In the modern account, the definiendum concerns one’s knowledge that a particular proposition is true.
Dramatic Dialectic in Republic’ Book 1
Authors: Gifford Mark
Published: November 2023

It is a fine thing, then, not to engage in idle discussion at the feet of Socrates, having abandoned literacy culture and neglecting the most important elements in the art of tragedy.
Philosophical Introduction
Authors: Fine Kit
Published: November 2023

An abstraction principle associates objects with the items from a given domain, the objects associated with two items being the same when the items are suitably related and the objects being distinct when the items are not so related. For example: we may abstract on concepts in accordance with the principle that concepts between which there exists a one-one correspondence are to be associated with the same number; or we may abstract on lines in accordance with the principle that parallel lines are to be associated with the same direction.

We shall follow Frege (1892) in taking there to be a basic distinc tion between objects and concepts. Objects are referred to by means of singular terms and concepts by means of predicates; and variables for objects and concepts are respectively taken to occupy either a nominal or a predicative position. Although concepts may correspond to objects, no concept can sensibly be said to be an object, since this would involve a grammatical confusion between a singular term and a predicate.
The Analysis of Acceptability
Authors: Fine Kit
Published: November 2023

The present part centres on several questions concerning the accept ability of a theory of abstraction. Sections 1-3 are devoted to prelim inaries: sect. 1 describes the basic languages and systems of interest to us; sect. 2 specifies the semantics for the languages; and sect. 3 establishes some basic proof- and model-theoretic results. Sections 4-6 deal with various requirements for acceptability: sect. 4 contains some preliminary results on tenability> which will later be refined in the section on invariance; sect. 5 introduces the notion of a generated model; and sect. 6 shows how an abstraction theory may be categor ical with respect to its generated models. Sections 7-9 are devoted to the topic of invariance: sect. 7 provides an intrinsic analysis of those criteria of identity that are invariant and non-inflationary; sect. 8 builds on these results to determine when the class of all invariant methods of abstraction will not ‘hyperflate ‘ over a given domain; and sect 9 shows how the results on invariance may be internalized to a theory of abstraction and limits thereby set on which abstraction principles can consistently be assumed.
The General Theory of Abstraction
Authors: Fine Kit
Published: November 2023

We develop a general theory of abstraction, one that is intended to account for the existence and behaviour of abstracts in general, and not of any kind of abstract in particular. The material is in three sections; first we outline the systems; then we look at their models; and finally we show how they serve to provide a foundation for both arithmetic and analysis.
The Criterion
Authors: Harding Jason
Published: November 2023

In this detailed study of literary culture in the inter-war period, Jason Harding examines the standing of T. S. Eliot’s journal the Criterion in relation to other literary periodicals and, beyond that, to the larger cultural networks of the time. The Criterion may at first sight seem a well-studied publication, often dismissed as predictably conservative, even proto-Fascist. However, through his examination of insufficiently known archive material and interviews with living witnesses to the period, Harding significantly alters our understanding of the journal and of Eliot’s role as editor. More than that, by carefully resituating the journal in its relations of both competition and co-operation with a range of other literary periodicals (for the most part little-studied themselves), he shows himself an authoritative and discriminating guide to the often complex networks within which Eliot worked. The Criterion: Cultural Politics and Periodical Networks in Inter-War Britain defends the journal against charges of Fascism and anti-Semitism: it is an invaluable book for scholars of Eliot and an original and incisive exploration of difficult areas of literary-cultural exchange.
Projection and Objectification
Authors: Langton Rae
Published: November 2023

It is hard to say anything uncontroversial about present feminist work in philosophy, let alone about prospects for the future. All the same, I shall begin by picking up two ideas, and saying something about why they have mattered, and will continue to matter. They are the ideas of autonomy and of projection. These two have mattered to different camps within feminist philosophy, camps that have sometimes disagreed in ways that roughly, though not exactly, mirror an older division between analytic and continental philosophers. I shall be wanting to see how the two ideas unite in a phenomenon of wider interest: that of sexual objectification. Pioneer feminists viewed women’s oppression in terms of women’s autonomy and its thwarting, and this concern has remained central to the work of many liberal feminists, and those working in analytic philosophy.
Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy
Authors: Sedley David
Published: November 2023

With an excellent range of topics and an international line-up of contributors, this twenty-first volume is a welcome addition to the Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. It includes detailed articles and critical notices of major books.
On the Senses of ‘Symbebekos’ in Aristotle
Authors: Tierney Richard
Published: November 2023

In Posterior Analytics I. 4 Aristotle draws what appears to be a sharp distinction between what belongs to something in itself (rn0’ mh6) and what belongs to it intidentally (KaTa avµ,/3e/317K6s), or its incidentally (avµ,/3e/JTJK6ra). In the process of doing so he describes two different ways of belonging in itself-which I shall refer to as in itself1 and in itself-2-and he indicates that whatever belongs to something incidentally is to be distinguished from what belongs to it in itself, in either of these two ways.
Negation
Authors: Brook Clodagh J
Published: November 2023

Figurative language is a powerfi1] tool for expression in Montage’s poetry, but even the evident care with which he selects metaphors, similes, and other tropes cannot conceal his underlying distrust of the expressive capacities of his medium. Following his realization of the unattainability of a total language, he resigns himself to the ‘elegiac’ and the ‘start syllabi’ which later evolve into the ‘balbuzie’ and the ‘mezzo parlor’ of Saturn. Such an abdication of belief is illustrative of his deep-seated distrust in the ability of language to express reality. Although critics such as Carbon and Jacuzzi have tended to emphasize the role of negative modes of expression in the later Montale, negation has an important, if less conspicuous, part to play in the earlier poetry, with de-attribution, contradiction (including paradoxes and oxymora), and the via  negative all instrumental in the bringing into language of the inexpressible.
Philosophy of Mind
Authors: Campbell John
Published: November 2023

The last fifty years has seen intense and broad development in philosophy of mind, unprecedented in the whole history of the subject. In this essay I will try to convey something of the broad sweep of developments, but I may as well say now that (a) it would have been possible, even for this author, let alone someone with a quite different approach to the subject, to write a review of the period that focused mostly on material I have either not mentioned or mentioned only in passing, and (b) it is not possible within the scope of a single essay to convey the depth with which every single topic in the area has been dis¬ cussed. It would, for example, be quite possible to write a long and interesting book that simply reviewed all that has been said about the inverted spectrum during the last fifty years. I have kept references to a minimum.
Interpreting Theories: The Case of Statistical Mechanics
Authors: Sklar Lawrence
Published: November 2023

If we take a comparative look at what goes on when a fundamental theory is said to be interpreted, I think there is little doubt that we will agree that ‘interpretation’ is a family-resemblance term. There may be some chain of relevant pairwise similarities that connect all the standard cases of interpretation into a chain, but there are plainly pairs of interpretations of theories that have few interesting common elements. A very wide range of theories have been subjected to interpretive programs. But in order to focus our attention it will be best to look just at those interpretations directed toward foundational theories in physics. Even with this restriction, we shall see, there is quite a diversity of things that goes on when one is said to be offering an interpretation of one of these fundamental physical theories.
Global Environmental Justice
Authors: Jamieson Dale
Published: November 2023

Philosophers, like generals, tend to fight the last war. While activists and policy-makers are in the trenches fighting the problems of today, intellectuals are typically studying the problems of yesterday. There are some good reasons for this. It is more difficult to assess and interpret present events than those which are behind us. Time is needed for reflection and to gather reliable information about what has occurred. The desire to understand leads to a style of life that is primarily contemplative and retrospective.
Sustainability and Beyond
Authors: Jamieson Dale
Published: November 2023

During the decade of the 1980s the phrase “sustainable development” migrated from an obscure report produced by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 1980, through several popular “green” books, to become the central organizing concept of the Brundtland Commission report. Convened by the General Assembly of the United Nations and known officially as the World Commission on Environment and Development, the Brundtland Commission identified sustainable development as the criterion against which human changes of the environment should be assessed, and defined it as development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (The World Commission on Environment and Development 1987: 43).
Brandom’s Burdens: Compositionality and lnferentialism
Authors: Fodor Jerry , Lepore Ernest
Published: November 2023

ROBERT BRANDOM has it in mind to run a ‘pragmatist’ theory of content(/concept possession/linguistic competence). That is, he wants to reconstruct notions like saying such and such or believing such and such (and, eventually, notions like knowing what a word means and having a concept) in terms of a distinctive kind of knowing how or being able to do something (2000: 17).‘So what? ‘, you might reasonably inquire. ‘Isn ‘t practically everybody a pragmatist these days by that criterion?’ Well, it ‘s true that lots of people think that ‘knowing how’ is at the bottom of the heap when questions about content arise. But, not every pragmatist is also what Brandom calls an inferentialist. Most semantic pragmatists hold one or another kind of ‘dual aspect’ theory about the kind of know-how that content supervenes on. Roughly, they think that grasping content is both a matter of knowing how a word/concept behaves in inferences, and also a matter of knowing how to apply the concept to things in its extension. Having the concept DOG is being able (and disposed) to do a little inferring (e.g., from DOG to ANIMAL); and it ‘s also being able to do a little applying (e.g., of DOG to dogs in conditions that are favorable for dog-spotting). What ‘s striking about Brandom ‘s inferentialist pragmatism is that the applying part more or less drops out in favor of the inferring part.
Kant and Strawson on the First Person
Authors: Gaynesford Maximilian De
Published: November 2023

Peter Strawson thinks it the ‘veriest truism ‘ and an answer to a question that no one with ‘ordinary linguistic competence ‘ and ordinary philosophical innocence would even think of asking, that the very understanding of I requires the understanding of it as referring to a subject which is also a corporeal being among others in an objective world, namely, a human being.
A Problem for Expressivism
Authors: Jackson Frank , Pettit Philip
Published: November 2023

Language, Truth and Logic added expressivism to the inventory of substantive positions in meta-ethics, and the recent defences of versions of it by Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard have enhanced its status as a major position.1 Ayer presented the doctrine as an improvement on subjectivism-that is, on the doctrine that ethical sentences serve to report attitudes of approval and disapproval-and it is widely supposed to be an internally coherent and interesting position. We argue, however, that there is a serious problem that expressivists, unlike subjectivists, have to face which has not been adequately addressed in the development of the doctrine.
Brandt on Self-Control
Authors: Pettit Philip , Smith Michael
Published: November 2023

There are three questions about self00ADcontrol that we discuss in this essay. The first is, what occasions self00ADcontrol: what circumstances call for the exercise of the virtue? The second is, what constitutes self00ADcontrol: what sort of psychological traits can realize it? And the third is, what recommends self00ADcontrol: what is there to be said in favour of the virtue? Richard Brandt has put forward views, explicitly and implicitly, on all of these questions and the aim of the essay is to examine his views critically. We are in sympathy with many aspects of his approach but, as will appear, we defend a picture that differs significantly from that which we find in his works.
Evolutionary Biology and Teleological Thinking
Authors: Ruse Michael
Published: November 2023

There is something distinctive about biological language, particularly evolutionary biological language. There one finds talk of ‘purposes’ or ‘functions’ or ‘ends’ in a way missing from the physical sciences. In biology, it makes perfectly good sense to ask a question like: ‘What function does the sail on the back of Dimetrodon serve?’ Or: ‘What is the purpose of the appendix in the human being?’ Or: ‘Do vertebrates have sex in order to spread new mutations?’ None of this forward-looking language, commonly known as ‘teleological’ language—language where one is trying to understand the present or the past in terms of the future—seems generally appropriate in the physico-chemical sci-ences.
Brentano’s Chestnuts
Authors: Walsh D M
Published: November 2023

Consider two puzzles for philosophical naturalism: Paley’s problem and Brentano’s problem. The first is that of explaining the biological phenomenon of adaptedness: how can a trait of an organism be an adaptation for dealing with some state of the environment. The second is that of explaining the psychological phenomenon of intentionality: how can a state of an agent be about some (putative) feature of the environment. There are evident similarities: each of these phenomena, adaptedness and aboutness, involves a norm-governed relation between an individual—organism or agent—and its environment. Indeed, there is growing interest in the view that these are not so much two distinct problems as one and as such they have the same solution.
Is the World One?’ A New Interpretation of Plato’s Parmenides
Authors: Brisson Luc
Published: November 2023

OF all Plato’s dialogues, the Parmenides remains the most fascinating and the most controversial. This twofold characteristic has a lengthy tradition, reaching back to the birth of Neoplatonism, which replaced the Middle Platonist dialogue of reference, the Timaeus, with its own, the Parmenides. From the third century AD on, this dialogue became the laboratory for the production of a new interpretation of Plato. The reading of the Parmenides which is proposed in this paper breaks with the grand tradition that sees the second part of the dialogue as a description of the degrees of being, which flow like divinities from the One. Paradoxically, my rejection of this interpretation is the result of prolonged study of Proclus and Damascius, whose exegetical skills I came to admire; the subtlety and scope of their arguments justify the influence they have had in the history of ‘Western thought, particularly through authors such as Marsilio Ficino. The present reading also eschews a formal interpretation, already evident in antiquity, that considers the Parmenides an exercise in logic, aimed at refuting Zeno in his own field, and providing an example of Platonic logic.
Diffusional Phenomena in Phonology
Authors: Aikhenvald Alexandra Y
Published: November 2023

Almost any aspect of phonological structure can be borrowed—this covers not only sounds, but also types of phonological contrasts and phonotactic restrictions, as well as allophonic variation, i.e. habits of pronunciation. The loss of contrast could be areally diffused, such as loss of vowel length or aspiration (see Dixon 2002: chap. 12, for discussion of phonological diffusion operating in Australian languages). Phonological diffusion can operate in the domain of individual sounds, and also in the domain of larger units—such as phonological word, phonological phrase, and clause.
The Impact of Portuguese on Tariana
Authors: Aikhenvald Alexandra Y
Published: November 2023

Most Tariana speakers have a good command of Portuguese. Portuguese words are regularly employed when talking about matters relating to ‘the white man’s’ environment. Most schooling is in Portuguese (a little Tucano is taught at a sec-ondary college in the mission centre). Switching to Portuguese, the ‘white man’s language’, is obligatory in all the environments associated with ‘white people’: schools, church services, sports and games, hospital and commercial activities (see Silva 1999, on the expansion of Western-style football in the Vaup,es environment and the competitive spirit that goes with it; cf. also Schmidt 1987: 203, on the high frequency of forms from Standard Fijian instead of from the local dialect in the special speech style used during netball games in a Fijian village, since this sport was acquired through the school system). All written communication between lit-erate Indians is in Portuguese. Radio communication is also in Portuguese. Many Tariana who live in IauaretCe have access to national television programmes—all in Portuguese. Recently, a telephone has been installed; again, Portuguese is the preferred language. This indicates the presence of ‘a functional differentiation’ of existing languages, known as diglossia (see Ferguson 1964; and Schiffrin 1998). The conditions under which Tariana–Portuguese code-switching occurs are discussed in §8.2, together with pejorative connotations of ‘overusing’ Portuguese and thus ‘showing off’ one’s knowledge of it. The relationship between Tariana and Portuguese can be described as a case of diglossia. This is markedly different from the relationship between Tariana and other indigenous languages—Baniwa or East Tucanoan—which are spoken in the same context.
Diffusion of Patterns and Direct Diffusion in the Vaup’es
Authors: Aikhenvald Alexandra Y
Published: November 2023

We have seen that the diffusion of patterns (indirect diffusion) from the East Tucanoan languages into Tariana resulted in a massive restructuring of the Tariana grammar to match East Tucanoan-type patterns. Conventions regulating code-switching work against an influx of borrowed forms. Additional mechanisms of language awareness help control the East Tucanoan influence at all levels of linguistic structure. As a result, the amount of direct diffusion—loan morphemes—is minimal. Its effects are summarized in §10.1. East Tucanoan influence on the structure of the Tariana lexicon and lexical semantics is discussed in §10.2.
Some Problems in Anatolian Phonology and Etymology
Authors: Hart Gillian R
Published: November 2023

There are several Hittite words which appear to have cognates in Cuneiform Luwian and sometimes other Anatolian languages as well, which are written with syllabic signs of the #Ŝ-series in Hittite and the d- or t-series in Luwian. Such apparent correspondences are found both in initial and internal position. They are not regular in the sense that inherited *snormally yields sboth in Hittite and Luwian, and inherited dental plosives likewise appear as dental plosives in both languages. Another source of  in Hittite is found in the assibilation of initial *diand *dyto #Ŝi.
Old Welsh Dinacat , Cunedag , Tutagual: Fossilized Phonology in Brittonic Personal Names
Authors: Russell Paul
Published: November 2023

That personal names can preserve phonological patterns which have long since vanished in lexical items is a familiar phenomenon. Anna Morpurgo Davies has herself commented upon this in a discussion of Greek personal names: in a literate society (or for that matter in a society which is rich in oral poetic performances) older forms of words may be recorded in writing or in the poetic tradition. In the case of names, the incentive to resurrect them or to continue them in the original form may be stronger than for other lexical items. (Morpurgo Davies 2000: 23)
Promising Perspective or Dead End? The Issue of Metrical Passages in the Old Persian Inscriptions
Authors: Schmitt Rügdier
Published: November 2023

Since 1928 several scholars have put forward the theory that the Achaemenid royal inscriptions in the Old Persian language, or at least parts of them, are written in verse. The first to claim this was Johannes Friedrich (1928) who posited a metrical structure such as that assumed for the Younger Avestan texts by Johannes Hertel (1927), viz. verses of eight, ten, or twelve syllables. Friedrich had a predecessor, however, in Paul Tedesco (1923: 44), who regarded the (obviously inherited) phrase avam ubrtam abaram‘him I treated well’ (DB I 21–2 etc.)
The Celtic Studies of Lorenzo Hervás’s in the Context of the Linguistics of his Time
Authors: Hoz Javier de
Published: November 2023

Anna Morpurgo Davies already underlined in her first, and important, contribution to linguistic historiography that Hervás’s work needed more attention than it had received (Morpurgo Davies 1975: 616, 618). Since then some work has been done but not in proportion to what the increasing interest in linguistic historiography might lead one to expect. The present small contribution excuses its scantiness as being at least some attempt to respond to Anna’s wish.
Intellectual Autobiography
Authors: Sorabji Richard
Published: November 2023

I was born in 1934 and my first lessons, aged 4, in 1938 were with my English grandmother, May Monkhouse, in our Oxford home. She told me of the Greeks and Romans, and put to me philosophical questions. ‘What are you thinking about?’, she once asked me. ‘Nothing’, I replied. ‘It is impossible to think of nothing’, she said sternly. Next time I said, ‘Something black’, which seemed to me positive enough to avoid the rebuke, but close enough to ‘Nothing’ to preserve the truth.
How to Engage Reason: The Problem of Regress
Authors: Railton Peter
Published: November 2023

Risky indeed. And didn’t you just say confirmation of confirmation might be a good idea? ‘Yes. But enough is enough.’ You’d like to be able to reason with the computer, so that you could exercise some judgement about when enough is enough rather than simply turn the confirmation function off. But isn’t your problem precisely too many occasions for judgement? You preferred the older version of the program, which obeyed your first replacement confirmation command without further question, even though this sometimes led to it taking the next step too hastily. You see at once that requiring a judgement at each step is self00ADdefeating, so prefer to ‘automatize’ the process of confirming confirmations themselves are to be ‘followed blindly’. As Wittgenstein infamously said, we, too, can obey a rule a rule of inference, say only if we can obey a rule ‘blindly’, with-out further question, choice, judgement, or interpretation.
Information Structure Constraints
Authors: Erteschik-Shir Nomi
Published: November 2023

The purpose of this chapter is to show that the processing of information structure plays an important role with respect to constraints which have traditionally been viewed as syntactic constraints. The first section demonstrates that word order in simple sentences is constrained by the need to avoid an ambiguous parse of the linear string. This is demonstrated for Danish and Hebrew. The second section deals with constraints on extraction including the sentential subject constraint and the that-t effect and argues that dependencies can be processed only within canonical f-structures. The third section shows that the fact that canonical f-structure is parameterized across languages affords an explanation for the difference in superiority effects in different languages. The languages discussed in this section are English, Hebrew, German, and Danish. Section 4 shows that the constraint on extraction introduced in section 2 not only accounts for extraction from complex NPs, it also predicts extraposition from NP. Section 5 discusses evidence for an account of extraction constraints in terms of processing.
Aspectual Focus
Authors: Erteschik-Shir Nomi
Published: November 2023

In the last chapter, we saw several instances in which lexical properties of verbs have an effect on f-structure: Manner-of-speaking verbs block focusing on the subordinate clause, and hence on extraction (Chapter 4, section 2.3). Creation verbs allow focusing on the complement of the picture noun phrase and hence license extraction (Chapter 4, section 4.2). The same effect was also seen with respect to extraposition (Chapter 4, section 4.1). Finally, sentence completeness was seen to be affected by properties of the verb as well (Chapter 4, section 4.2). In addition, the lexical properties themselves can be affected by context: We saw that a meaning component can be backgrounded if its content is contextually prominent and that contrast and modification can force focus on a verb even though the verb itself does not require it. This chapter discusses these and similar phenomena and offers a framework within which they can be analyzed. Section 1 briefly outlines the lexical theory of atoms and introduces the notion of aspectual focus. Section 2 elucidates the lexical properties of manner-of speaking verbs predicting both the extraction facts and completeness facts. It goes on to distinguish the lexical properties of the different verb types which take picture NPs as their complements, again deriving their extraction and completeness properties. Then f-structure constraints on extraction in double object constructions are shown to follow from their lexical structure. The topic of section 3 is missing objects which form structures with characteristic information structure properties. Finally, section 4 accounts for the unusual stress patterns assigned to out-of-the-blue change-events pointed out in Chapter 2, section 2.3.
The Division of Labor between Syntax and IS
Authors: Erteschik-Shir Nomi
Published: November 2023

Research into the syntax–IS interface has been hampered by the fact that no agreement has been achieved among researchers as to what a theory of IS should look like to the extent that definitions of the basic IS notions are still controversial. This is not to say that the role of IS in determining syntactic properties such as word order has not been recognized, yet the precise nature of how this comes about is still quite vague across linguistic frameworks. In view of this state of affairs, I thought it best to try to promote research in this area by emphasizing the particular methodology needed to sharpen both the theory of IS as well as its application to syntactic questions. In so doing I have also attempted to show how far-reaching the purview of IS is within grammar. Yet although some theories view IS as an integral part of grammar, others relegate it to the interfaces. Within minimalism, for example, the Rizzi-type approach to the left periphery discussed in Chapter 3 integrates topic and focus features into the grammar, while other minimalists (e.g., Reinhart 2006, Chomsky in Stemmer 1999) view IS as operating on the interfaces. Chomsky 1999 expresses his view as follows:
Transformational Grammar
Authors: Farrell Patrick
Published: November 2023

From the classical models (Chomsky 1957, 1965) through Government-Binding (GB) theory (Chomsky 1981, 1986) and the more recent Minimalist program (Chomsky 1995), (Generative- )Transformational Grammar (TG) has concerned itself primarily with an understanding of constituent structure and the implications of constituent structure for grammatical phenomena, including case marking, agreement, and other phenomena in which grammatical relations such as subject and object are implicated. The main idea is that representations of sentence structure primarily show the syntactic categories of elements (i.e. noun, verb, adjective, noun phrase, verb phrase, etc.), relations of constituency and containment (i.e. in what way elements, including words and phrases, are contained within larger phrases), and the linear order of constituents. Unlike in Relational Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar, and most other theories, both syntactic functions and semantic roles can and often do have a defining configurational instantiation. Unlike in other theories in which constituent structure plays a central role, such as Head-Driven Phrase-Structure Grammar (Pollard and Sag 1994), mismatches between linear order and grammatical relation and/or grammatical-relation sharing, splitting, or ambiguity can be attributed, at least in part, to transformations, that is movements of constituents within structures. Having been the most widely used theory of syntax for some time, it has been employed in analyses of countless phenomena in many languages and consequently has remained in considerable flux. Thus any detailed characterization of the theory” s approach to grammatical relations is necessarily era- and movement-contingent to some extent.
Conceptual connections and other minds
Authors: Shoemaker Sydney
Published: November 2023

I wish to consider a view which is often labelled “behaviorist,” but which seems to me not open to the objections that are fatal to logical behaviorism properly so-called. This is the view that some of the connections between mental states and behavior are “logical” or “essential” or “conceptual” rather than “contingent.” I shall call this the “conceptual connection view.”

One source of this view has been the conviction that it is our only defense against complete skepticism concerning other minds; those who think this argue that the analogical position is mistaken, and conclude from this that if all connections between mental states and behavior were contingent there would be no way at all in which such connections could be known, and so no way at all in which the mental states of others could be known. But it is, quite independently of this, quite plausible to maintain that there is some sort of logical, or conceptual, connection between (for example) fearing something and avoiding it, or between desiring something and pursuing it.
Some varieties of functionalism
Authors: Shoemaker Sydney
Published: November 2023

I take as my point of departure a procedure for formulating functional definitions which is due to David Lewis.1 To appreciate the virtues of this procedure one should recall the circularities that have plagued attempts to give behavioral definitions of mental states. Someone who believes that it is raining may be disposed to take an umbrella when he goes out- but only if he wants to keep dry. And someone who wants to keep dry may be disposed to take an umbrella - but only if he believes that it is raining. It appears that to give a behavioral definition of either of these mental states (the belief, or the want), one would have to mention the other; so there appears to be no way of formulating a noncircular dispositional definition of both, or a purely behavioral definition of either.
On the Singularity Theory of Denotation
Authors: Beall JC
Published: November 2023

What do denotation paradoxes teach us about English? According to Keith Simmons (Chapter I 1 in this volume) they teach us that ‘denotes’ is contextually sensitive, that its extension may change from context to context. As with T or ‘here’, the meaning-constitutive principle governing ‘denotes’ is parametric; it has a parameter for context. Hy recognizing the parametric character of ‘denotes’ we thereby resolve the denotation paradoxes—or so Simmons argues.
Saying What We Mean
Authors: Stevenson Anne
Published: November 2023

Disciples of J. L. Austin may well be disappointed by this response to Tori. I Moi’s ‘Meaning What We Say: The “Politics of Theory” and the Responsibility of Intellectuals’, for there is no way in which I can ‘pounce upon’ an illuminating disagreement with its salient points. I agree with Moi that intellectuals would do well to abandon their search for a general theory of literature that guarantees political radicalism (or even specific political results). Her arguments against demanding an absolute ‘politics of theory’ (whatever that may mean) and for sup planting such an intangible generality with a willingness to engage with particular, down-to-earth situations seem to me irrefutable and wonderful.
Self
Authors: Sorabji Richard
Published: November 2023

Richard Sorabji presents a brilliant exploration of the history of our understanding of the self, which has remained elusive and mysterious throughout the spectacular development of human knowledge of the outside world. He ranges from ancient to contemporary thought, Western and Eastern, to reveal and assess the insights of a remarkable variety of thinkers. He discusses a set of topics which are at the heart of our understanding of ourselves: personal identity; memory; the importance of seeing one’s life as a whole; the relation between self, intellect, will, and agency; self-awareness; the stream of consciousness; embodiment; death and survival. He rejects the view, found in various philosophical and religious writings, that the self is an illusion, and develops his own original conception of the self as essential to our ownership of our experience and our apprehension of the world.
The Self: is there such a thing?
Authors: Sorabji Richard
Published: November 2023

Is there such a thing as the Self? In analytic philosophy, this has often been denied. In Germany, Nietzsche denied it and gave rise to another tradition of denial. Both traditions have been influenced directly or indirectly by the earlier denial of David Hume. The Buddhists have been in conflict for over two millennia with other Indian schools concerning their view that there is no continuous self. Thus there is skepticism in all these traditions. In psychology and psychiatry too, various schools have fragmented the selves of their patients or of everyone.1
Same person in eternal recurrence, resurrection, and teletransportation
Authors: Sorabji Richard
Published: November 2023

One topic concerning the self is this: what makes an individual the same individual over a period of time? Before Plato, the comic playwright Epichamus (if the text is his) entertained the idea of growth as continuous destruction,1 and the philosopher Heraclitus considered the flux of things to be so great that one could not step into the same river, nor touch the same mortal substance, twice.2
Memory: Locke ;S Return To Epicureans And Stoics
Authors: Sorabji Richard
Published: November 2023

John Locke has been called the father of the modern theory of personal identity, thanks to the second edition (1694) of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, with its new chapter on identity. At that time, the Christian view prevailed, that personal identity depended partly on the persistence of an undetectable immaterial substance, the soul. In addition, in the resurrection, our bodies would be restored to us, although Locke drew attention to the view we have found in Origen, that we might then be given new bodies. Indeed, as Philoponus argues, St. Paul speaks of a new heaven and a new earth.1
Self As Practical Reason: Epictetus’ Inviolable Self And Aristotle’s Deliberate Choice
Authors: Sorabji Richard
Published: November 2023

This seems not to be straightforwardly the case for everyone, for elsewhere he says1 that you can locate ‘in the flesh, or in external possessions, or in your will. If so, there is good will and bad will. Those who locate in the flesh or external possessions, instead of in a good will, can be said to be expressing a bad will, but have not located their ‘I’ in a good will. In Epictetus’ case, the will is a good one and is set only on those very few things that are under the control of the will, namely good character and rationality.
Impossibility Of Self-Knowledge
Authors: Sorabji Richard
Published: November 2023

Self-awareness is a subject not entirely distinct from selfhood. For the kind of identity I discussed in chapters eight through ten depends partly on a person ;s conception of his or her self. Self-awareness in other forms was already an important subject for Plato, especially if he was the author of the First Alcibiades, and for Aristotle, especially in his treatment of friendship. But the Stoics, given their interest in self-interrogation, in basing decisions on the individual persona, in finding some truths within and in the newborn ;s consciousness of its own person, made it more important still.
Infallibility of self-knowledge: Cogito and Flying Man
Authors: Sorabji Richard
Published: November 2023

Augustine stands the puzzle tackled by Plotinus on its head, when he argues in On the Trinity that the soul knows itself by being present ( praesens) to itself,1 not absent.2
Prototype Categories: I
Authors: Taylor John R
Published: November 2023

Chapter 2 presented the classical theory of categories, according to which a category is deﬁned in terms of a set of necessary and suﬃcient conditions for membership. The chapter also raised a number of critical issues with respect to classical categories. What is the status of the features which deﬁne a category? Are they conceptually primitive? Do all members of a category necessarily share a set of criterial properties? Are word meanings reducible to sets of primitive semantic components? What is the status of ‘expected’, as opposed to ‘necessary’ features? Is it legitimate to make a distinction between a person’s linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge? Can we ever know the meaning of a word independently of our acquaintance with the relevant facts of the world? The classical theory of categorization has also been challenged by experimental work in psychology (Smith and Medin 1981). In this chapter we review some of the better-known empirical ﬁndings and introduce an alterna-tive to the classical approach, namely categorization by prototype. We will also consider, in a preliminary fashion, the potential relevance of prototype categorization to linguistic inquiry.
Prototype Categories: II
Authors: Taylor John R
Published: November 2023

This chapter continues the discussion of prototype categories begun in Chapter 3. A number of issues need to be dealt with. Firstly, the notion of prototype itself needs to be given more substance. What exactly are proto-types? The discussion will lead us to reconsider the status of classical cate-gories. If all kinds of entities – natural and artefactual, those denoted by nouns as well as those denoted by verbs and adjectives, even, as we shall see in later chapters, the categories of linguistic structure itself – are categorized by prototype, what, if anything, is left of the classical model? Do all categories have a prototype structure, or are there still categories which conform with Aristotelian principles, i.e. categories with necessary and suﬃcient conditions for membership, with clear-cut boundaries, and with only two degrees of membership, i.e. member and non-member? We shall see that Aristotelian categories may still need to be recognized, although their status will need to be reassessed. First, though, I shall spell out in more detail exactly what is meant by a prototype, and consider some of the diﬃculties associated with prototype categorization.
Polysemous Categories in Intonation
Authors: Taylor John R
Published: November 2023

Although polysemy is generally regarded as a property of lexical items, we have seen (Chapter 9) that the association of more than one meaning with a single linguistic form is not limited to the lexicon. Polysemy also characterizes morphological, morph syntactic, and even syntactic categories. In this chapter we explore the polysemy of prosodic categories involved in a description of intonation. The main burden of the chapter will be, ﬁrstly, to demonstrate that the formal categories employed in an analysis of intonation are indeed polysemous, and, secondly, to show the inadequacy of attempts to state the semantic contribution of intonation in terms of core meanings. Some data pertinent to an important component of English intonation will be analysed with a view to explicating the family resemblance structure of the category. Intonation is one of the most diﬃcult areas of linguistic description. Even linguistically naïve speakers are aware that intonation contributes, in some vaguely felt way, to the total meaning of an utterance. It is the task of the linguist to explicate this semantic contribution. This involves setting up a formal descriptive apparatus, associating a meaning, or range of meanings, to each formal element of the descriptive system.
Gerunds
Authors: Hudson Richard
Published: November 2023

This chapter is adapted from Hudson 2003b, where I offer a WG account of English gerunds1 such as having in (127). (127) (We were talking about) John having a sabbatical. What makes gerunds interesting and challenging is that they combine the internal characteristics of a clause with the external characteristics of a noun phrase. Previous analyses have tried to recognize the mixed character of gerunds by assigning them two separate nodes, one verbal and the other nominal. However dependency analyses such as WG syntax allow only one node per word, so they do not allow analyses of this kind. Twonode analyses would be strong evidence against dependency analysis so it is important to be sure whether they are needed. This chapter presents an analysis similar to the one proposed by Malouf in which the verbal and nominal classifications are combined on a single node which inherits both verbal and nominal characteristics (Malouf 2000); but unlike Malouf’s analysis it does not assume phrase structure. Like his, it exploits the logic of multiple default inheritance which allows a single node to inherit from two supercategories—in this case from both Verb and Noun. As Malouf points out, multiple inheritance works because English grammar is organized in such a way that the characteristics of these categories are orthogonal.
Meaning: Semantics and Sociolinguistics
Authors: Hudson Richard
Published: November 2023

What do semantics and sociolinguistics have in common? Very little, to judge by traditional approaches to the two subjects. Semantic studies of quantifiers, anaphora, and even lexical semantics seem to be located in a different intellectual world from sociolinguistic studies of accents and dialects, politeness forms, and the like. However I think this separation misses an important point which has been made strongly by functional and cognitive linguists, and perhaps especially by Halliday (Halliday 1978).
A Theory of Properties
Authors: Inwagen Peter van
Published: November 2023

1. IT WOULD BE BETTER NOT TO BELIEVE IN ABSTRACT OBJECTS IF WE COULD GET AWAY WITH IT

In their book A Subject without an Object: Strategies for the Nominal istic Interpretation of Mathematics (the main topic of the book is well conveyed by its subtitle), John Burgess and Gideon Rosen suggest that-in fact, they argue at some length for the conclusion that-the motivation for undertaking nominalistic reconstructions of mathemat ics has not been clearly and persuasively formulated.2 This seems to me to be wrong. At any rate, it seems to me that it is not hard to formulate the motivation (or a sufficient motivation) for this project clearly and persuasively. Suppose one could show this: it would be better not to believe in abstract objects if one could get away with it. Or this, if it is not the same: it would be philosophically desirable to accept only philosophical positions that do not require their adherents to affirm the existence of abstract objects. I will take it that it is evident why someone who accepted this conclusion (or either of them, if they are different) would have a strong motivation for wishing that a nominalis tic reconstruction or interpretation of mathematics were available.
How Do Particulars Stand to Universals?
Authors: Armstrong D M
Published: November 2023

The theory advanced in this paper is not mine. It was put forward by Donald Baxter in a remarkable paper read to a departmental meeting at the University of Connecticut in the spring semester of 1999. It is now, I am glad to say, published (Baxter, 2001). Illuminating discussions with Baxter have continued, including his comments on this paper, but I will present what I take to be his central inspiration in my own way. (We diverge on one important point, to be indicated.) His theory seems to me to be very attractive, and well worth further investigation.