Nathan Salmon

The Very Possibility of Language

An English speaker in uttering the words, (0) ‘The earth is round’, says, or asserts, the same thing as a French speaker uttering the words, (0′) ‘La terre est ronde’. 1 The thing asserted is a proposition, the proposition that the earth is round. That there are propositions, as distinct from the sentences that express them, is a commitment of psychology and other human sciences, which ascribe beliefs and other propositional attitudes. The existence of propositions is an integral part of our ordinary conceptions of consciousness and cognition, and therewith of our ordinary conception of what it is to be a person.

Personal Identity: What’s the Problem?

Saul Kripke is a phenomenon, nothing less, and the discipline of Philosophy is much the better for his contribution to it. My own intellectual development has benefited immeasurably from my association with Kripke. I begin with a pair of quotes from another great contemporary philosopher. Woody Allen said, ‘I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve it through not dying’. Like Allen, Kripke will live on through his work long after most of the rest of us are forgotten.

Semantically Empty Gestures

Frege held that the bare demonstrative ‘that’ is incomplete, and that it is the word together with a gesture that serves as the designating expression, and likewise that it is the word ‘yesterday’ together with the time of utterance that designates the relevant day. David Kaplan’s original theory of indexicals holds that Frege’s supplementation thesis is correct about demonstratives but incorrect about ‘yesterday’. Kaplan’s account of demonstratives deviates from Frege’s in treating supplemented demonstratives as directly referential, hence rigid. It is argued here that the gesture or other demonstration that accompanies an utterance of ‘that’ is not part of the designating expression but instead part of the utterance context.

From Time to Time

The apparent verdict of current theoretical physics is that the prospect of time travel does not violate general relativity.