Date
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Speaker, title, abstract
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24 February
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Henning Strandin
- Interpreting Causal
Claims
Abstract
A model M
for interpreting causal claims is given, and
some truth conditions for causal claims are defined over this model.
Causal claims are taken to be claims about consequences of physical law. Physical law is here
understood in the purely modal sense of physical necessity, and the model
suggested for interpretation models the relation of physical necessity
between the sentences of the object language. The model M is
a modified version of the kind of Kripke structure used in the
semantics for Computation Tree Logic.
Thus, M models physically possible worlds as
physically possible world histories,
determined by a set of physically possible world states and a relation
of physically possible state transitions. A factual causal claim "The
fact that ϕ at time t
caused it to be the case that ψ at t+i (for some i>0)", where "ϕ" and
"ψ" indicate sentences in the object language, is understood as meaning
that, in virtue of physical law, given the circumstances at t and that it was the case that
ϕ at t, it had to be the case that ϕ
at t+i, and had it not been the case
that ϕ at t, it could not have been the case
that ψ at t+i. In short, the truth of the
antecedent in the causal claim is supposed physically sufficient and
necessary for the truth of the consequent at a later moment, given the
background conditions.
Beyond navigating around some of the traditional issues
of interpreting causal claims, a large part of the purpose of the
theory is to understand how background conditions relate logically to
the causal relations they enable. The theory deals initially only with
singular causal claims, but something might also be said about
generalization, universal causal claims, and causal laws. It has also
seemed desirable to keep the theory neutral as far as possible with
respect to the ontology of causal relata and the specifics of the
object language.
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9 March
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Jonas Åkerman
Indexicals, intuitions and
semantic content
Abstract
It is an uncontroversial fact that natural languages contain indexical
and demonstrative expressions, like, ‘I’, ‘here’, ‘now’, and ‘that’,
whose semantic content varies with certain features of the utterance
situation. But what features of the utterance situation are relevant
for determining the semantic contents of indexical expressions
contained in the sentence uttered? This is the central question of the
recent debate on indexical reference, and there are various answers on
offer. Some identify the content determinative features with mental
states of speakers or audiences, while others claim that only objective
features of the utterance situation are semantically relevant. I shall
discuss some of the arguments that have been put forward for and
against these different theories. The focus will be on arguments
against intentionalism, i.e. the view that the speaker’s intentions
determine the semantic content of indexicals, and I shall argue against
the two following general claims: (i) The central question of the
debate on indexical reference can be settled by appeal to intuitions.
(ii) Considerations about the connection between semantic content and
communication can be invoked in order to exclude (strong)
intentionalism about indexical reference. An interesting corollary is
that if the methodological claims I defend are sound, there is reason
to question one of the assumptions that the whole debate on indexical
reference rests on, namely the assumption that there is a unique
semantic content expressed in each situation where a semantic content
is expressed at all.
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16 March
|
Tor Sandqvist, KTH
Generalizing
Recursive Enumerability
Abstract
The technical concept of recursive enumerability, as applied to
relations among natural numbers, can be thought of as capturing at
least three different informal notions: effective enumerability,
effective semidecidability, and what might be called "finitary
groundedness". A generalization of the concept of recursive
enumerability to arbitrary domains might take extensionally different
forms depending on which one of these intuitive notions one has in
mind. The author's concept of a "vincular relation'", it will be
suggested, provides a neat general notion of "finitary groundedness".
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23 March
|
Dag Westerståhl
Common Sense About Names?
Abstract
A recent trend among philosophers and some linguists (e.g. Burge, Bach,
Graff Fara, Geurts, Elbourne, Matushanski) is that names are predicates
or (almost equivalently) nominal descriptions: a name 'N' is taken to
stand for 'being called 'N'' or 'the one called 'N''. In this talk I'll
look at some of the arguments put forward for this view. But I will end
up with an untrendy defense of the common sense view that names are
primarily referring expressions.
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30 March
|
No speaker
No title
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20 April
|
Sara Packalén
Semantics and Pragmatics
Abstract
In this talk I do three things. First, I spell out what I take the
semantics/pragmatics distinction to be about. Second, I map out four
main positions in the contemporary debate on the issue: radical
autonomous semantics, moderate autonomous semantics, moderate
truth-conditional pragmatics and radical truth-conditional pragmatics.
Third I discuss the motivations behind the different views, and what I
take to be their most significant benefits and problems.
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27 April
|
Matthias Schirn,
Munich
Logical Abstraction and Logical
Objects
Abstract
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4 May
|
Workshop
EuroUnderstanding CCCOM
Stockholm University
May 4, 2012, Room D271
9.30 – 10.45
Peter Pagin (Stockholm University):
When does Communication
Succeed?
10.45 – 11.00
Coffee
11.00 – 12.15
Steffen Borge (Norwegian University of Science and
Technology):
How to Be a Communicator
12.15 – 14.00
Lunch (Skafferiet)
14.00 – 15.15
Nat Hansen (Umeå University):
Missing the Point:
Neo-Ordinary Language Philosophy and the Pragmatics of Experimental
Surveys
15.15 – 16.30
Andreas Stokke (University of Lisbon):
Is the Lying-Misleading
Distinction Context-Sensitive?
16.30 – 16.46
Coffee
16.45 – 18.00
Teresa Marques (University of Lisbon):
Disagreement in context:
metalinguistic negation and coordination
|
|
Emma Wallin
Psychological Essentialism in Support for
Semantic Internalism
Abstract
Psychological essentialism is the thesis that
we are psychologically biased to presuppose kind specific essences.
Roughly the theory is that although we use global similarity as a rule
of the thumb in categorizing objects into kinds, we proceed under the
supposition that there are underlying properties, which explain these
similarities. It has been suggested that evidence for psychological
essentialism supports semantic externalism (Jylkkä, Railo, and
Haukioja, 2008). In opposition to this I argue, that even though
semantic externalism relies on the truth of psychological essentialism
(or some closely related thesis), the reversed is not the case.
Psychological essentialism is compatible with semantic internalism.
From this it follows, not only that psychological essentialism is
independent of semantic externalism, but also that it may figure in an
argument against it. The reason for this is that the hypothesis allows
us to give a semantically internalist account of intuitions, commonly
suggested to support semantic externalism. More specifically, it allows
us to give an internalist account of the intuitions typically brought
out by Putnam’s Twin Earth scenario, and Burge’s
Arthritis-in-the-thigh-scenario.
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25 May
|
Ivan Kasa
Grundlagen 64: Aboutness in Abstraction
Principles
Abstract
I propose a new account of content carving, where
Fregean abstraction is a method of re-dividing logical space embedding
a proposition. For this, I appeal to Stephen Yablo’s variant of the
Lewisian view on subject matters as covers of logical space, to argue
that subject matters of identity statements between abstracts are
trivializations of the subject matters of correlated equivalence
statements. It turns out that the possibility of content carving in
this sense turns on the specifics of identity and equivalence, in a way
that accords surprisingly well with Frege’s rather cryptic remarks in
Gl64. Moreover, Yabloan subject matters of the conceptually richer
identity statements between abstracts are included in the subject
matters of their conceptually less demanding equivalents under Fregean
principles of abstraction. This can be taken to support the neo-Fregean
contention that abstraction is ontologically and conceptually revealing
without being ontologically inflationary. Thirdly, key ingredients of
standard solutions to Caesar-type problems, usually invoked ad hoc, can
now be reached abductively from the requisite subject matter inclusion
relations. To view abstraction as content carving has therefore
substantial advantages over a less constrained understanding of
abstraction as implicit definition.
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