Mark Textor

Lexical Pragmatic Adjustment and the Nature of Ad hoc Concepts

According to truth-conditional pragmatics, a word may contribute an ad hoc concept to the proposition expressed, that is, something that differs from the concept the word encodes (the lexicalized concept). In relevance-theoretic lexical pragmatics, ad hoc concepts are treated like a species of concepts proper. Concepts as well as ad hoc concepts are taken to be atomic. Lexical pragmatic adjustment is conceived as the formation of an ad hoc concept that is narrower or broader in extension (or both) than the lexicalized concept involved. We argue that difference in extension should not be taken as the crucial feature of lexical pragmatics, since ad hoc concepts can have the same extension as the lexicalized concept. In contrast, we propose a positive view of ad hoc concepts as clusters of information poised to be used in inference. (Surprisingly, ad hoc concepts turn out not to be concepts at all.) The cluster account drops the assumption that ad hoc concepts are atomic and can therefore provide a satisfactory explanation of lexical pragmatic adjustment.

A repair of Frege’s theory of thoughts

Frege’s writings contain arguments for the thesis (i) that a thought expressed by a sentence S is a structured object whose composition pictures the composition of S, and for the thesis (ii) that a thought is an unstructured object. I will argue that Frege’s reasons for both (i) and (ii) are strong. Frege’s explanation of the difference in sense between logically equivalent sentences rests on assumption (i), while Frege’s claim that the same thought can be decomposed differently makes (ii) plausible. Thoughts are supposed to do work that requires that they be structured and work that requires that they be unstructured. But this cannot be! While the standard response to this problem is to reject either (i) or (ii), I propose a charitable repair in the spirit of Frege’s theory that accepts both. The key idea can be found in Frege’s Basic Laws of Arithmetic(BL, GGA). Frege argues that the thought expressed by a sentence is determined by the truth-conditions that can be derived from the semantic axioms for the sentence constituents. The fact that the same axiomatic truth-condition can be derived in different ways from different semantic axioms suggests a Fregean solution of the dilemma: A thought is a type that is instantiated by all sequences of senses (decomposed thoughts) that have the same axiomatic truth-conditions. This allows for multiple decomposability of the same thought (for different decomposed thoughts can have the same axiomatic truth-conditions) and for a notion of containment (the decomposed thought contains those senses whose semantic axioms are needed in the derivation of the truth-conditions). My proposal combines the virtues of (i) and (ii) without inheriting their vices.

Bolzano on conceptual and intuitive truth: the point and purpose of the distinction

Bolzano incorporated Kants distinction between intuitions and concepts into the doctrine of propositions by distinguishing between conceptual (Begriffssätze an sich) and intuitive propositions (Anschauungssätze an sich). An intuitive proposition contains at least one objective intuition, that is, a simple idea that represents exactly one object; a conceptual proposition contains no objective intuition. After Bolzano, philosophers dispensed with the distinction between conceptual and intuitive propositions. So why did Bolzano attach philosophical importance to it? I will argue that, ultimately, the value of the distinction lies in the fact that conceptual and intuitive truths have different objective grounds: if a conceptual truth is grounded at all, its ground is a conceptual truth. The difference in grounds between conceptual and intuitive truths motivates Bolzanos criticism of Kants view that intuition plays the fundamental role in mathematics, a conceptual science by Bolzanos lights.

Cambridge Companion to Frege

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) is one of the most successful failures in the history of philosophy. While his grand project to show that all arithmetical truths can be proved from the laws of logic and suitable definitions failed, his philosophical framework forms the basis of much of current philosophy of language, logic and mathematics. In particular, the distinction between sense and reference has been central in the philosophy of language. The Cambridge Companion to Frege is intended to be ‘the most convenient, accessible guide to Frege currently available’. It contains fourteen substantial papers that cover core topics in Frege, put his mathematical and philosophical into context and trace his influence onRussell andWittgenstein. In this review essay, I cannot do justice to each paper. I will therefore focus on a selection of topics and papers. I will begin with an overview of the papers I won’t discuss in detail.

'Thereby we have broken with the old logical dualism' - Reinach on Negative Judgement and Negation

Does (affirmative) judgement have a logical dual, negative judgement? Whether there is such a logical dualism was hotly debated at the beginning of the twentieth century. Frege argued in ‘Negation’ (1918/9) that logic can dispense with negative judgement. Freges arguments shaped the views of later generations of analytic philosophers, but they will not have convinced such opponents as Brentano or Windelband. These philosophers believed in negative judgement for psychological, not logical, reasons. Reinachs ‘On the Theory of Negative Judgement’ (1911) spoke to the concerns of these philosophers. While Frege took the distinction between affirmative and negative judgement to be logically redundant, Reinach argued that it is the result of confusing judgement with a different mental act. In this article, I present Reinachs arguments against the ‘old logical dualism’ in context, analyse them and discuss Reinachs innovative use of the notion of focus in the theory of judgement. Recently, there has been a revival of the view that sentential negation is grounded in a prior mental act of rejection. In the final section, I argue that Reinachs analysis of rejection poses a challenge for the revivalists.

Frege’s recognition criterion for thoughts and its problems

According to Frege, we need a criterion for recognising when different sentences express the same thought to make progress in logic. He himself hedged his own equipollence criterion with a number of provisos. In the literature on Frege, little attention has been paid to the problems these provisos raise. In this paper, I will argue that Fregeans have ignored these provisos at their peril. For without these provisos, Frege’s criterion yields wrong results; but with the provisos in place, it is of no use for Frege’s purposes. This is connected to what Frege took to be the ‘greatest difficulty for philosophy’: natural language sentences don’t just express thoughts; they convey evaluations and communicative hints. Because of this, Frege’s recognition criterion for thoughts cannot be applied to them and we cannot make logical progress by ‘recognising a thought in different linguistic guises’.

Lexical Modulation without Concepts

We argue against the dominant view in the literature that concepts (understood as the standing meanings of general terms) are modulated in lexical modulation. We also argue against the alternative view that ‘grab bags’ of information that don’t determine extensions are the starting point for lexical modulation. In response to the problems with these views we outline a new model for lexical modulation that dispenses with the assumption that there is a standing meaning of a general term that is modified in the cases under consideration. In applying general terms we intend to conform with our linguistic ancestors and in doing so we take facts about the referents of these terms for granted. In cases of lexical modulation we become aware of facts we took for granted and we need to change the facts we take for granted in order to see ourselves as continuing in a practice. These changes result in utterances of the general term referring to different properties. In general, concepts are neither the starting point for lexical modulation nor the standing meanings of words.

Bolzano on the Source of Necessity: A Reply to Rusnock

According to Bolzano, an object has necessary being if, and only if, there is a conceptual truth that ascribes being to it. I (Textor, 1996, chapter 5) proposed that the notion of conceptual truth bears the explanatory weight in Bolzanos theory of necessity because, ultimately, the truth of such a proposition depends only on the nature of the concepts it contains. Rusnock (2012) argues against this interpretation and proposes, in turn, that for Bolzano necessity and contingency are tied to free choice. In this article I will provide conceptual and historical background for Bolzanos view of necessity and use it to motivate my interpretation as well as to rebut Rusnocks criticism.

FREGE ON CONCEPTUAL AND PROPOSITIONAL ANALYSIS

In his Foundations of Arithmetic, Frege aims to extend our a priori arithmetical knowledge by answering the question what a natural number is. He rejects conceptual analysis as a method to acquire a priori knowledge (see section 1). Later he unsuccessfully tried to solve the problems that beset conceptual analysis (see section 2). If these problems remain unsolved, which rational method can he use to extend our a priori knowledge about numbers? I will argue that his fundamental arithmetical insight that numbers belong to concepts is based on the recognition that diff erent sentences express the same thought. In Frege’s philosophy of arithmetic, propositional analysis does the main work. How it can do this work will be discussed in sections 3, 4 and 5. Sections 6 and 7 explore this approach further.

Perspectives on Perception

A Bit of Autobiography A Puzzle About How Things Look the problem of Consciousness and the Innerness of the Mind Seeing an Individual Seeing Something and Believing IN it Phenomenal Concepts of Perceptual Experience Self-Awareness Perceiving that We See and Hear: Aristotle on Plato on Judgement and Reflection.