Professor
Dept. of Philosophy
Area of Specialty
CV
Publications
Editorships
Workshops
- Switcher Semantics for Singular and General Terms, financed by the Swedish Research Council (VR), 2010-12.
Abstract of the project description:
This project aims at
providing an alternative semantic theory for two important and heavily
debated phenomena of natural language: The meaningful use of empty
proper names such as 'Vulcan' or 'Odysseus', and the name-like behavior
of certain general terms such as 'water' or 'tiger'. More precisely,
the aim is to extend the "evaluation switcher semantics" (ESS)
suggested in "Proper Names and Relational Modality" (Glüer&Pagin
2006) to these phenomena. ESS is a version of possible worlds
semantics, but it uses more than one semantic evaluation function.
Modal operators, such as 'it might have been the case', work as
"evaluation switchers". ESS allows proper names to have descriptive
contents while accounting for their seemingly rigid modal behavior,
thus combining the advantages of traditional descriptivism with those
of non-descriptive semantic theories. So far, ESS has only been worked
out for non-empty names and modal operators, but its basic mechanism
appears very versatile; ESS thus promises a systematic, unifying
explanation for a wide range of seemingly incompatible semantic
phenomena. Extending ESS to empty names and natural kind terms is the
natural first step towards such unification and might contribute to
breaking the long-standing deadlock between descriptivism and
non-descriptivism in natural language semantics. This would not only
bring philosophical semantics and linguistics closer together, but also
be of significance for metaphysics and epistemology.
- Perspectival Thoughts and Facts (Petaf), Marie Curie Actions—Networks for Initial Training (ITN), FP7-PEOPLE-ITN-2008, Project number 238128, 2010-2014.
FP7 Marie Curie Initial
Training Network PETAF is the first research and training network
exclusively in philosophy ever to be financed by the European
Commission. It aims to serve as a European research and training
platform for joint philosophical research on perspectival thought, its
linguistic expression and its consequences for our conception of
objective, mind-independent reality.
-
The Nature of Assertion: Implications for Relativism and Fictionalism, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2010-16049), PI Manuel García-Carpintero, 2011-2013.
Summary:
Timothy Williamson’s 1996 paper „Knowing and Asserting“ reopened the interest in normative accounts of assertion, which had been in disfavour after Strawson’s influential Gricean criticism of Austin’s normative account. Williamson’s proposal has been the focus of ongoing discussion in the years since. The main goal of this project is to contribute to the goal of clarifying the nature of the speech act of assertion, and that of its internal mental correlate, judgment, by focusing on contemporary discussion of two related sets of issues: issues concerning proposals to relativize truth, and issues concerning seeming assertions involving apparent reference to fictional entities, and fictionalist proposals in general. We plan to contrast normative and descriptive accounts of assertoric force, by appraising how they fare when it comes to evaluating proposals for relativizing truth, on the one hand, and to what extent they underwrite fictionalist accounts in different fields on the other, in particular in the case of claims apparently involving reference to fictional characters, claims about the content of narratives in general and fictional narratives in particular, and claims about the narrative identity of the Self. The initial hypothesis is that normative accounts of assertoric force pose very serious difficulties for radical truth-relativism – proposals for relativizing truth as a property of assertions and judgments, not just of the contents of those acts – and that they help motivating fictionalist proposals.
-
PERSP - Philosophy of Perspectival Thouths and Facts, funded by the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Scheme, Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, PI: Manuel García-Carpintero, 2009 - 2014.
Summary:
According to a natural way of thinking, objective reality is independent from us – independent from our thought and talk. Hence, when we have knowledge of it, it allows for a description whose truth does not depend on our perspectives. Nonetheless, we are familiar with the phenomenon that the truth-value of some of our claims, on the face of it perfectly apt to represent how things objectively are, essentially varies depending on our perspectives.
Thus, the statement "Dinosaurs last roamed the earth 60 million years ago", true when uttered now, would not have been true if it had been uttered, say, 10 million years ago; the claim "Time is running slower for Pollux, because he's travelling at 99% of the speed of light" might be true uttered relative to some reference frame but not others; “Lentils are tasty” and, more controversially, “Gay marriage is acceptable” are also perhaps true only when made relative to particular gustative or moral perspectives; and, to provide a totally commonplace example, the claim “I am hungry” is true when uttered by some agents at some times, but not when uttered by others, or by the same agent at a different time. How can this variation in truth-value be reconciled with our conception of facts as being perspective-independent? Are not those perspectives from which the truth-value of claims like these essentially depends also an aspect of objective reality? Our project aims to contribute to the field of research aiming at its core to answer questions like these. These issues have been studied in depth in contemporary philosophy by researchers working on only some of the crucial cases for understanding the perspectival character of our thought, and their work has provided important results. However, while the complexity and diversity of the phenomena makes understandable the piecemeal approach that so far has been taken, we think that a unified attack is needed, for which the exploiting of synergies and complementarities and the collaborative efforts that a CONSOLIDER project allows are mandatory.
According to a natural way of thinking, objective reality is independent from us – independent from our thought and talk. Hence, when we have knowledge of it, it allows for a description whose truth does not depend on our perspectives. Nonetheless, we are familiar with the phenomenon that the truth-value of some of our claims, on the face of it perfectly apt to represent how things objectively are, essentially varies depending on our perspectives.
Thus, the statement "Dinosaurs last roamed the earth 60 million years ago", true when uttered now, would not have been true if it had been uttered, say, 10 million years ago; the claim "Time is running slower for Pollux, because he's travelling at 99% of the speed of light" might be true uttered relative to some reference frame but not others; “Lentils are tasty” and, more controversially, “Gay marriage is acceptable” are also perhaps true only when made relative to particular gustative or moral perspectives; and, to provide a totally commonplace example, the claim “I am hungry” is true when uttered by some agents at some times, but not when uttered by others, or by the same agent at a different time. How can this variation in truth-value be reconciled with our conception of facts as being perspective-independent? Are not those perspectives from which the truth-value of claims like these essentially depends also an aspect of objective reality? Our project aims to contribute to the field of research aiming at its core to answer questions like these. These issues have been studied in depth in contemporary philosophy by researchers working on only some of the crucial cases for understanding the perspectival character of our thought, and their work has provided important results. However, while the complexity and diversity of the phenomena makes understandable the piecemeal approach that so far has been taken, we think that a unified attack is needed, for which the exploiting of synergies and complementarities and the collaborative efforts that a CONSOLIDER project allows are mandatory.
-
Theories of the a priori: Critique and Alternatives, led by Fredrik Stjernberg, financed by the Swedish Research Council (VR), 2008-10.
- The Semantics of Experience, financed by the Swedish Research Council (VR), 2006-8.
Abstract of the project description:
Since antiquity,
perception is one of the central topics of the philosophical tradition.
It involves questions at the very core of our conception of ourselves
as thinking creatures in cognitive contact with our world. One such
question concerns the content and objects of experience. Since the 17th
Century, the area was dominated by empiricist epistemology. The
resulting theory emphasized the epistemic role of experience as
evidence for our beliefs about the world and concluded that the direct
objects of perception are not material objects, but private, mental
objects called “sense data”. Today, the content of experiences is once
again a ‘hot’ topic. The interest comes mostly from the philosophy of
mind, however, where almost everyone has abandoned sense data.
Experiences now are taken to have representational contents and their
objects to be material objects. A decisive question then concerns the
properties experiences ascribe to these objects. The most popular
account has it that these are sensible properties like color or shape.
Since that means that experiences and basic beliefs have precisely the
same contents, it is further held that experiences cannot be beliefs.
That, however, leaves us without any plausible account of both the
characteristic psychological and epistemic role of experience. This
project aims to reintegrate especially epistemological questions into
the philosophy of perception and, thus, to develop an alternative
account of the content of experience.
- Knowledge of Meaning, led by Peter Pagin, finances by the Swedish Research Council (HSFR), 1999-2001.
Stockholm University
Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm | Tel: +46 8 16 20 00 | kathrin.gluer @ philosophy.su.se