Arthur Sullivan - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Arthur Sullivan
Disputatio
This brief introduction to a special issue of Disputatio succinctly summarizes John Perry’s pluri... more This brief introduction to a special issue of Disputatio succinctly summarizes John Perry’s pluri-propositionalist reflexive framework and notes some potential applications to varieties of context-sensitivity.
Philosophical and Formal Approaches to Linguistic Analysis, 2012
Lingua, 2019
This paper has two interconnected goals-one defensive and fairly conservative, the other more nov... more This paper has two interconnected goals-one defensive and fairly conservative, the other more novel and enterprising. The first goal is to defend a broadly Gricean approach to verbal irony from the post-Gricean criticisms which have emerged in the intervening literature-i.e., all things considered, verbal irony is best viewed as one among many species of particularized conversational implicature. The subsequent goal is to work toward developing a significantly original theory of verbal irony, within this Gricean orientation, which aims to take into account and rectify some omissions in and shortcomings of Grice's very brief published remarks on the topic. In section one I take up the two related tasks of giving an overview of some pertinent background history, and honing a working target when it comes to the question: What exactly is verbal irony? Section two then engages with what I take to be the most significant criticisms of Grice's approach, from the post-Gricean literature. Finally, section three develops the contours of a positive account, charting an original neo-Gricean taxonomy of the varieties of verbal irony.
Dialogue, 2006
Copyright © 2005 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 Willia... more Copyright © 2005 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY All Rights Reserved Third ...
Disputatio
This is a study of an under-developed topic in philosophy of language, namely first-person plural... more This is a study of an under-developed topic in philosophy of language, namely first-person plural pronouns (‘we’, ‘us’, etc.) Richard Vallée has made very important progress by identifying crucial desiderata and putting forward an ingenious proposal about ‘we’ which addresses them. We contend that, despite this impressive progress, he makes some missteps, both omissions and errors; furthermore, his proposal appears implausible as a personal-level psychological story. We thus sketch an alternative approach to the semantics of the first-person plural indexical which, though it builds on Vallée’s important work, departs substantially from it.
§1 gives a preliminary explanation of the concept of reference. §2 is an analysis of descriptivis... more §1 gives a preliminary explanation of the concept of reference. §2 is an analysis of descriptivism, the first systematic theory of reference. §3 begins with criticisms of descriptivism, and then details the development of the causal-historical theory of reference, which has been the orthodox view of reference since the 1970s. §4 is an exposition of three concepts that play major roles in recent debates-skepticism, naturalism, and minimalism about reference. §5 gives a brief summary of the article (including a short list of the theories surveyed and acronyms employed). Main text §1: What is reference? Reference is the relation that obtains between a use of a linguistic expression and what it stands for or denotes. Philosophical theories of reference aim to explain this relation. They address such questions as: Can we specify necessary or sufficient conditions for a use of an expression to single out some particular referent? What makes it the case that a sequence of marks or noises refers to what it does? What grounds the conventional word-referent relations that we take for granted in the unreflective course of linguistic communication?
Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics
Philosophia
I plot accounts of slurs on a [semanticist-non-semanticist] spectrum, and then I give some origin... more I plot accounts of slurs on a [semanticist-non-semanticist] spectrum, and then I give some original arguments in favor of semanticist approaches. Two core, related prosemanticist considerations which animate this work are: first, that the pejorative dimension of a slur is non-cancellable; and, second, that ignorance of the pejorative dimension should be counted as ignorance of literal, linguistic meaning, as opposed to (say) a mistake about conditions for appropriate usage. I bolster these considerations via cases in which slurs are embedded within complex constructions, in which cases the pejorative dimension of a slur gets ensnared within the compositional semantic machinery.
Forthcoming in " Philosophers' Imprint " Comments to: arthurs@mun.ca 1. the issue &... more Forthcoming in " Philosophers' Imprint " Comments to: arthurs@mun.ca 1. the issue 'Rigid designation' is Kripke's name for a concept that has been in the air at least since the development of quantified modal logics: (a token of 1) a designator is rigid if and only if it designates the same individual in every possible world in which the individual exists. Two seminal conclusions for which Kripke (1971, 1972) argues are that proper names are rigid designators, and that there are some deep semantic affinities between proper names and various sorts of general terms. However, even though he does, at places, explicitly attribute rigidity to certain general terms, 2 Kripke nowhere gives a definition of rigidity that applies to general terms. This presents a challenge: Precisely which general terms ought to be classified as rigid designators? More fundamentally: What should we take the criterion for rigidity to be, for general terms? There exists a considerable s...
Rigid designation' is Kripke's name for a concept that has been in the air at least since the dev... more Rigid designation' is Kripke's name for a concept that has been in the air at least since the development of quantified modal logics: (a token of) a designator is rigid if and only if it designates the same individual in every possible world in which the individual exists. Two seminal conclusions for which Kripke (, ) argues are that proper names are rigid designators, and that there are some deep semantic anities between proper names and various sorts of general terms. However, even though he does, at places, explicitly attribute rigidity to certain general terms, Kripke nowhere gives a definition of rigidity that applies to general terms. This presents a challenge: Precisely which general terms ought to be classified as rigid designators? More fundamentally: What should we take the criterion for rigidity to be for general terms? There is a considerable sub-literature, stretching back
Acta Analytica
What I will call "the deviant logician objection" [DLO] is one line of attack against the common ... more What I will call "the deviant logician objection" [DLO] is one line of attack against the common and compelling tenet that our justification for logical truths is grounded in our understanding of their constituent concepts. This objection seeks to undermine the possibility of any deep constitutive connection, in the epistemology of logic (and also beyond), between understanding and justification. I will consider varieties of the deviant logician objection developed by Horwich (2000, 2006) and by Williamson (2006, 2008). My thesis is that while the deviant logician objection falls short of proving that this traditional tenet must be rejected, nonetheless it serves to bolster some important refinements. Keywords Epistemology. Logic. A priori. Williamson 1 The Target of the Deviant Logician Objection: Justification via Understanding Our primary focal issues here fall within the epistemology of logic: What is our justification for our knowledge of logical truths? I will use conjunction eliminationthe inference from a conjunction to one of its conjuncts-as my stock example of a pattern of inference which is safely known to be valid: &E ½ Φ & Ψ ∴Φ Hence, any specific instance of [&E] counts as a safely known logical truth. Some of the perennial questions within the epistemology of logic are due to the sense that such knowledge exhibits a remarkable immunity to counterexample: i.e., it is not just that I have yet to encounter a situation in which a conjunction failed to entail one of its conjuncts (which would be remarkable enough, to be sure), but, further, there is the atavistic intuition that such a scenario would be both epistemically inconceivable and metaphysically
Part A: Framing the Project 1. Two distinctions within the category of designators 2. Further def... more Part A: Framing the Project 1. Two distinctions within the category of designators 2. Further defining the central theses Part B: Rigid Designation, Proper Names, and Structure 3. Structure and rigidity 4. Structure and naming Part C: The prima facie counterexamples Interlude: Interim review and a look ahead 5. Referential uses of denoting expressions 6. Complex referring expressions Part D: Conclusions 7. Summary, Overview, and General Morals
Language & Communication
Abstract A primary aim of this research is to show that the foundational term ‘proposition’ tends... more Abstract A primary aim of this research is to show that the foundational term ‘proposition’ tends to be used in different ways by different factions, in recent debates surrounding the semantics/pragmatics interface. First, I give a brief sketch of some relevant background terrain. Next, I investigate the extent to which different senses of the term 'proposition' are associated with differing theoretical orientations toward the S/P interface. I close by bringing these lessons to bear toward the end of disentangling terminological from substantive differences, in the case of certain ongoing disputes.
Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic
The core of the debate between Fregeans and Russellians in the philosophy of language concerns th... more The core of the debate between Fregeans and Russellians in the philosophy of language concerns the content of object-dependent propositions, or how we ought to individuate and semantically represent the content of propositions that are about specific individuals. This essay is an investigation of the contemporary status of this debate. My aim is to show how the causal theorists' picture of reference determination entails the need for both Fregean and Russellian conceptions of propositional content in the study of mind and language, and to investigate some of the consequences of this position.
Philosophy in Review, 2005
Philosophy in Review, 2005
Dialogos, 1997
Etude de la relation entre Rorty et Davidson, l'un reconnaissant en l'autre la quintessen... more Etude de la relation entre Rorty et Davidson, l'un reconnaissant en l'autre la quintessence du pragmatisme, l'autre rejetant le pragmatisme comme forme inintelligible du relativisme. Mesurant l'influence commune de l'anti-essentialisme et de l'anti-fondationnalisme semantique de Quine sur les deux philosophes, a partir de la rupture que realise le holisme epistemologique avec l'empirisme traditionnel, l'A. montre que Rorty et Davidson partagent la meme perspective methodologique d'un depassement du representationnalisme dans le domaine de la philosophie du langage, en general, et dans le cadre de la theorie de la verite heritee de Tarski, en particulier. Examinant les notions de coherence et correspondance chez Davidson, et leur rejet par Rorty, l'A. montre que celui-ci repere dans la veracite des croyances et de leur rapport aux objets du monde les limites meme de sa position pragmatiste
Philosophy in Review, Oct 31, 2012
Given that many contemporary philosophers consider Saul Kripke to be among the small handful of m... more Given that many contemporary philosophers consider Saul Kripke to be among the small handful of most important philosophers in the past century, it is remarkable that there do not already exist more edited volumes exclusively dedicated to the critical analysis of Kripke's work. This gap is exactly what Alan Berger has begun to fill by putting together a volume containing 14 essays whose authors include some leading figures in the philosophy of language, logic, and mind.
Semantics and Beyond, 2014
Disputatio
This brief introduction to a special issue of Disputatio succinctly summarizes John Perry’s pluri... more This brief introduction to a special issue of Disputatio succinctly summarizes John Perry’s pluri-propositionalist reflexive framework and notes some potential applications to varieties of context-sensitivity.
Philosophical and Formal Approaches to Linguistic Analysis, 2012
Lingua, 2019
This paper has two interconnected goals-one defensive and fairly conservative, the other more nov... more This paper has two interconnected goals-one defensive and fairly conservative, the other more novel and enterprising. The first goal is to defend a broadly Gricean approach to verbal irony from the post-Gricean criticisms which have emerged in the intervening literature-i.e., all things considered, verbal irony is best viewed as one among many species of particularized conversational implicature. The subsequent goal is to work toward developing a significantly original theory of verbal irony, within this Gricean orientation, which aims to take into account and rectify some omissions in and shortcomings of Grice's very brief published remarks on the topic. In section one I take up the two related tasks of giving an overview of some pertinent background history, and honing a working target when it comes to the question: What exactly is verbal irony? Section two then engages with what I take to be the most significant criticisms of Grice's approach, from the post-Gricean literature. Finally, section three develops the contours of a positive account, charting an original neo-Gricean taxonomy of the varieties of verbal irony.
Dialogue, 2006
Copyright © 2005 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 Willia... more Copyright © 2005 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY All Rights Reserved Third ...
Disputatio
This is a study of an under-developed topic in philosophy of language, namely first-person plural... more This is a study of an under-developed topic in philosophy of language, namely first-person plural pronouns (‘we’, ‘us’, etc.) Richard Vallée has made very important progress by identifying crucial desiderata and putting forward an ingenious proposal about ‘we’ which addresses them. We contend that, despite this impressive progress, he makes some missteps, both omissions and errors; furthermore, his proposal appears implausible as a personal-level psychological story. We thus sketch an alternative approach to the semantics of the first-person plural indexical which, though it builds on Vallée’s important work, departs substantially from it.
§1 gives a preliminary explanation of the concept of reference. §2 is an analysis of descriptivis... more §1 gives a preliminary explanation of the concept of reference. §2 is an analysis of descriptivism, the first systematic theory of reference. §3 begins with criticisms of descriptivism, and then details the development of the causal-historical theory of reference, which has been the orthodox view of reference since the 1970s. §4 is an exposition of three concepts that play major roles in recent debates-skepticism, naturalism, and minimalism about reference. §5 gives a brief summary of the article (including a short list of the theories surveyed and acronyms employed). Main text §1: What is reference? Reference is the relation that obtains between a use of a linguistic expression and what it stands for or denotes. Philosophical theories of reference aim to explain this relation. They address such questions as: Can we specify necessary or sufficient conditions for a use of an expression to single out some particular referent? What makes it the case that a sequence of marks or noises refers to what it does? What grounds the conventional word-referent relations that we take for granted in the unreflective course of linguistic communication?
Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics
Philosophia
I plot accounts of slurs on a [semanticist-non-semanticist] spectrum, and then I give some origin... more I plot accounts of slurs on a [semanticist-non-semanticist] spectrum, and then I give some original arguments in favor of semanticist approaches. Two core, related prosemanticist considerations which animate this work are: first, that the pejorative dimension of a slur is non-cancellable; and, second, that ignorance of the pejorative dimension should be counted as ignorance of literal, linguistic meaning, as opposed to (say) a mistake about conditions for appropriate usage. I bolster these considerations via cases in which slurs are embedded within complex constructions, in which cases the pejorative dimension of a slur gets ensnared within the compositional semantic machinery.
Forthcoming in " Philosophers' Imprint " Comments to: arthurs@mun.ca 1. the issue &... more Forthcoming in " Philosophers' Imprint " Comments to: arthurs@mun.ca 1. the issue 'Rigid designation' is Kripke's name for a concept that has been in the air at least since the development of quantified modal logics: (a token of 1) a designator is rigid if and only if it designates the same individual in every possible world in which the individual exists. Two seminal conclusions for which Kripke (1971, 1972) argues are that proper names are rigid designators, and that there are some deep semantic affinities between proper names and various sorts of general terms. However, even though he does, at places, explicitly attribute rigidity to certain general terms, 2 Kripke nowhere gives a definition of rigidity that applies to general terms. This presents a challenge: Precisely which general terms ought to be classified as rigid designators? More fundamentally: What should we take the criterion for rigidity to be, for general terms? There exists a considerable s...
Rigid designation' is Kripke's name for a concept that has been in the air at least since the dev... more Rigid designation' is Kripke's name for a concept that has been in the air at least since the development of quantified modal logics: (a token of) a designator is rigid if and only if it designates the same individual in every possible world in which the individual exists. Two seminal conclusions for which Kripke (, ) argues are that proper names are rigid designators, and that there are some deep semantic anities between proper names and various sorts of general terms. However, even though he does, at places, explicitly attribute rigidity to certain general terms, Kripke nowhere gives a definition of rigidity that applies to general terms. This presents a challenge: Precisely which general terms ought to be classified as rigid designators? More fundamentally: What should we take the criterion for rigidity to be for general terms? There is a considerable sub-literature, stretching back
Acta Analytica
What I will call "the deviant logician objection" [DLO] is one line of attack against the common ... more What I will call "the deviant logician objection" [DLO] is one line of attack against the common and compelling tenet that our justification for logical truths is grounded in our understanding of their constituent concepts. This objection seeks to undermine the possibility of any deep constitutive connection, in the epistemology of logic (and also beyond), between understanding and justification. I will consider varieties of the deviant logician objection developed by Horwich (2000, 2006) and by Williamson (2006, 2008). My thesis is that while the deviant logician objection falls short of proving that this traditional tenet must be rejected, nonetheless it serves to bolster some important refinements. Keywords Epistemology. Logic. A priori. Williamson 1 The Target of the Deviant Logician Objection: Justification via Understanding Our primary focal issues here fall within the epistemology of logic: What is our justification for our knowledge of logical truths? I will use conjunction eliminationthe inference from a conjunction to one of its conjuncts-as my stock example of a pattern of inference which is safely known to be valid: &E ½ Φ & Ψ ∴Φ Hence, any specific instance of [&E] counts as a safely known logical truth. Some of the perennial questions within the epistemology of logic are due to the sense that such knowledge exhibits a remarkable immunity to counterexample: i.e., it is not just that I have yet to encounter a situation in which a conjunction failed to entail one of its conjuncts (which would be remarkable enough, to be sure), but, further, there is the atavistic intuition that such a scenario would be both epistemically inconceivable and metaphysically
Part A: Framing the Project 1. Two distinctions within the category of designators 2. Further def... more Part A: Framing the Project 1. Two distinctions within the category of designators 2. Further defining the central theses Part B: Rigid Designation, Proper Names, and Structure 3. Structure and rigidity 4. Structure and naming Part C: The prima facie counterexamples Interlude: Interim review and a look ahead 5. Referential uses of denoting expressions 6. Complex referring expressions Part D: Conclusions 7. Summary, Overview, and General Morals
Language & Communication
Abstract A primary aim of this research is to show that the foundational term ‘proposition’ tends... more Abstract A primary aim of this research is to show that the foundational term ‘proposition’ tends to be used in different ways by different factions, in recent debates surrounding the semantics/pragmatics interface. First, I give a brief sketch of some relevant background terrain. Next, I investigate the extent to which different senses of the term 'proposition' are associated with differing theoretical orientations toward the S/P interface. I close by bringing these lessons to bear toward the end of disentangling terminological from substantive differences, in the case of certain ongoing disputes.
Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic
The core of the debate between Fregeans and Russellians in the philosophy of language concerns th... more The core of the debate between Fregeans and Russellians in the philosophy of language concerns the content of object-dependent propositions, or how we ought to individuate and semantically represent the content of propositions that are about specific individuals. This essay is an investigation of the contemporary status of this debate. My aim is to show how the causal theorists' picture of reference determination entails the need for both Fregean and Russellian conceptions of propositional content in the study of mind and language, and to investigate some of the consequences of this position.
Philosophy in Review, 2005
Philosophy in Review, 2005
Dialogos, 1997
Etude de la relation entre Rorty et Davidson, l'un reconnaissant en l'autre la quintessen... more Etude de la relation entre Rorty et Davidson, l'un reconnaissant en l'autre la quintessence du pragmatisme, l'autre rejetant le pragmatisme comme forme inintelligible du relativisme. Mesurant l'influence commune de l'anti-essentialisme et de l'anti-fondationnalisme semantique de Quine sur les deux philosophes, a partir de la rupture que realise le holisme epistemologique avec l'empirisme traditionnel, l'A. montre que Rorty et Davidson partagent la meme perspective methodologique d'un depassement du representationnalisme dans le domaine de la philosophie du langage, en general, et dans le cadre de la theorie de la verite heritee de Tarski, en particulier. Examinant les notions de coherence et correspondance chez Davidson, et leur rejet par Rorty, l'A. montre que celui-ci repere dans la veracite des croyances et de leur rapport aux objets du monde les limites meme de sa position pragmatiste
Philosophy in Review, Oct 31, 2012
Given that many contemporary philosophers consider Saul Kripke to be among the small handful of m... more Given that many contemporary philosophers consider Saul Kripke to be among the small handful of most important philosophers in the past century, it is remarkable that there do not already exist more edited volumes exclusively dedicated to the critical analysis of Kripke's work. This gap is exactly what Alan Berger has begun to fill by putting together a volume containing 14 essays whose authors include some leading figures in the philosophy of language, logic, and mind.
Semantics and Beyond, 2014