Department of Philosophy

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Ashoka University

This paper investigates a certain puzzling argument concerning number expressions and their meanings, the Easy Argument for Numbers. After finding faults with previous views, I offer a new take on what’s ultimately wrong with the Argument: it equivocates. I develop a semantics for number expressions which relates various of their uses, including those relevant to the Easy Argument, via type-shifting. By marrying Romero ’s (Linguist Philos 28(6):687–737, 2005) analysis of specificational clauses with Scontras ’ (The semantics of measurement, 2014) semantics for Degree Nouns, I show how to extend Landman ’s (Indefinites and the type of sets, Blackwell, Oxford, 2004) Adjectival Theory to numerical specificational clauses. The resulting semantics can explain various contrasts observed by Moltmann (Philos Stud 162:499–536, 2013a), but only if Scontras’ contention that degrees and numbers are sortally distinct is correct. At the same time, the Easy Argument can establish its intended conclusion only if numbers and degrees are mistakenly assumed to be identical. © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Linguistics and Philosophy

Numbers and Cardinalities: What’s Really Wrong with the Easy Argument for Numbers?

World University root node

Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung

The Universal Measurer

A number of recent accounts for vague terms postulate a kind of context-sensitivity, one that kicks in after the usual ‘external’ contextual factors like comparison class are established and held fixed. In a recent paper, ‘Vagueness without Context Change’(Mind 116 (2007): 275–92), Rosanna Keefe criticizes all such accounts. The arguments are variations on considerations that have been brought against context-sensitive accounts of knowledge, predicates of personal taste, epistemic modals, and the like. The issues are well known and there are variety of options available in reply. More important, the arguments rely on an overly narrow conception of context-sensitivity, suggesting that one size fits all. If Keefe’s arguments were cogent, they would tell against the context-sensitivity of just about any expression, beyond the typical indexicals, including the variation of vague terms with comparison class. However, the criticisms raised by Keefe do highlight certain questions that must be answered by an advocate of a context-sensitive account of vagueness, essentially the same sorts of questions that must be answered by a contextualist or relativist about knowledge, epistemic modals, predicates of personal taste, etc. The main purpose of this paper is to use replies to the relevant objections raised by Keefe as a springboard for further articulation of the underlying view of vagueness. © 2015 Taylor & Francis.

Inquiry (United Kingdom)

Vagueness and Context

Faith, broadly construed, is central to the political, social and personal life of any rational agent. I argue for two main claims: first, that a typology of faith based on the fine-grained Indic categories of bhakti, {\'{s}}raddhā, prasāda, abhisaṃpratyaya and abhilāṣa (each of which I explain) dissolves many of the philosophical problems associated with the nature of faith and second, that this typology of faith has elements that cannot be encompassed in a belief-desire psychology. The upshot is that the structure of the mind is more complicated than belief-desire psychology admits and that understanding the nature of faith has a role to play in charting the structure of the mind.

Sophia

Faith and the Structure of the Mind

I argue for two major claims in this paper. First, I argue that the linguistic evidence best supports a certain form of contextualism about predicates of personal taste (PPTs) like 'fun' and 'tasty'. In particular, I argue that these adjectives are both individual-level predicates (ILPs) and anaphoric implicit argument taking predicates (IATPs). As ILPs, these naturally form generics. As anaphoric IATPs, PPTs show the same dependencies on context and distributional behavior as more familiar anaphoric IATPs, for example, 'local' and 'apply'. Moreover, they are subject to important binding-related phenomena, for example, various kinds of anaphora, binding arguments, and strict-sloppy ambiguities. The latter are particularly problematic for relativism, contextualism's major competitor. I argue that relativism cannot account for these binding facts in a non-ad hoc manner. Second, I argue that disagreement is a predictable feature of dialogues involving PPTs in conjunction with the contextualist semantics defended. Appealing to 'off the shelf' analyses of genericity, I show how disagreement arises in just the cases we would expect, licensing just the kinds of responses we would expect. They also suggest promising explanations, unavailable to relativists, of various otherwise puzzling features of disagreements involving PPTs. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Binding, Genericity, and Predicates of Personal Taste

The text deals with the question of how to understand Brandom’s strong notion of objectivity. The ﬁrst section outlines Brandom’s views on two important concepts closely linked with the concept of objectivity, namely: truth and reference. Keeping in mind those views, two ways of interpretation suggest themselves, a realist and an idealist reading of the notion of objectivity. The two following sections are devoted to analyses and an assessment of the viability of these readings, respectively. The authors draw the conclusion that only the idealist reading suggested is in line with Brandom’s overall philosophical project. In the last section it is shown that, if one accepts the idealist reading as appropriate, a satisfactory clarification of the concept of causality and of the use of causal vocabulary is a task yet to be accomplished.

Robert Brandom: Analytic Pragmatist

Realist and Idealist Interpretations of Brandom’s account of Objectivity

<h2>In Clancy Martin &amp; Carol Hay (eds.), <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/MARPOL-8">Philosophy of Love and Sex</a>. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press (2023)</h2><h2>This paper provides a brief overview of Iris Murdoch's central notion of love as just attention, introduces the reader to a few contemporary debates around her account, and shows that for Murdoch, love is not opposed to morality, but at its heart.&nbsp;</h2>

Iris Murdoch: Love as Just Attention

We should conceive of illegal covert animal rescue as acts of “subrevolution” rather than as civil disobedience. Subrevolutions are revolutions that aim to overthrow some part of the government rather than the entire government. This framework better captures the relevant values than the opposing suggestion that we treat illegal covert animal rescue as civil disobedience. If animals have rights like the right not to be unjustly imprisoned and mistreated, then it does not make sense that an instance of animal rescue will be justifiable only if it meets criteria for justified civil disobedience, e.g., the requirement that the civil disobedient not rescue more animals than would be necessary to communicate their message. Thus, the framework of subrevolution is a more apt way to analyze animal rescue.