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book symposium
1. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Maciej Witek Varieties of Linguistic Conventions: A book symposium on Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone's Imagination and Convention. Distinguishing Grammar and Inference in Language
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2. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Manuel García-Carpintero Indirect Assertions
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Imagination and Convention by Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone is a sustained attack on a standard piece of contemporary philosophical lore, Grice’s (1975) theory of conversational implicatures, and on indirect meanings in general. Although I agree with quite a lot of what they say, and with some important aspects of their theoretical stance, here I will respond to some of their criticism. I’ll assume a characterization of implicatures as theory-neutral as possible, on which implicatures are a sort of indirectly conveyed meanings, illustrated by some traditional examples. Then I will discuss the claim that one can make an assertion indirectly, through a mechanism essentially like the one envisaged by Grice in his account of implicatures. This is something that not just L&S have argued against, but other writers as well, for more or less related reasons. Since it will be clear that assertions, the way I will characterize them, “convey information inthe usual sense” and provide “information in the semantic sense of publicly accessible content that supports inquiry”, I will be thereby arguing for a claim clearly at odds with some of those made by L&S.
3. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska Conventions of Usage vs. Meaning Conventions
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In this paper I criticise some aspects of the view that Ernie Lepore and Mathew Stone propose in their book Imagination and Convention. I concentrate on their analysis of indirect speech acts and contrast it with the view held by Searle. I point out some problems that arise for Lepore and Stone’s ambiguity view and argue that admitting conventions of usage that are not meaning conventions allows one to avoid postulating global ambiguity, which in my opinion threatens the view proposed in Imagination and Convention. In addition, if one admits that there might be such conventions of usage, one is in a position to provide an adequate analysis of sub-sentential speech acts and semantic underdetermination as well as indirect speech acts.
4. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Marcin Matczak Does Legal Interpretation Need Paul Grice?: Reflections on Lepore and Stone’s Imagination and Convention
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By significantly diminishing the role intentions play in communication, in Imagination and Convention (2015) Lepore and Stone attempt to overthrow the Gricean paradigm which prevails in the philosophy of language. The approach they propose is attractive to theorists of legal interpretations for many reasons. Primary among these is that the more general dispute in the philosophy of language between Griceans and non-Griceans mirrors the dispute between intentionalists and non-intentionalists in legal interpretation. The ideas proposed in Imagination and Convention naturally support the non-intentionalist camp, which makes them unique in the contemporary philosophy of language.In this paper I argue that despite an almost universal acceptance for the Gricean paradigm in legal interpretation, a strong, externalist approach to language, one in which interpretation is based on conventions, not intentions, better reflects the nature of legal language. The latter functions in societies as a written, public discourse to which many individuals contribute; the number of contributions renders the identification of individual intentions impossible, making it badly suited to a Gricean, intention-based analysis. Lepore and Stone’s discourse-based, non-Gricean alternative provides a better tool for the theorist of legal interpretation to analyse legal language. In what follows, I first present an overview of the disputes in legal interpretation that may be affected by Imagination and Convention. In the second section, I analyze several of Lepore and Stone’s theses and apply them to issues in legal interpretation, paying particular attention to their concept of “direct intentionalism.” In the last section, I outline some proposals for finishing the anti-Gricean revolution, which involves Ruth Millikan’s idea of conventions as lineages.
5. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
K. M. Jaszczolt On Unimaginative Imagination and Conventional Conventions: Response to Lepore and Stone
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The article is a response to Lepore and Stone 2015 and offers a critical discussion of their claims that various aspects of discourse meaning can be ascribed togrammar and that the concept of semantic ambiguity can be defended in the light of the current debates on the semantics/pragmatics interface. It also addresses the question of the understanding of conventions and inferences and their place in the above interface. It ends with the claim that the role Lepore and Stone ascribe to grammar cannot be defended.
6. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Maciej Witek Accommodation and Convention
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The paper develops a non-Gricean account of accommodation: a contextadjusting process guided by the assumption that the speaker’s utterance constitutes an appropriate conversational move. The paper is organized into three parts. The first one reconstructs the basic tenets of Lepore and Stone's non-Gricean model of meaningmaking, which results from integrating direct intentionalism and extended semantics. The second part discusses the phenomenon of accommodation as it occurs in conversational practice. The third part uses the tenets of the non-Gricean model of meaning-making to account for the discursive mechanisms underlying accommodation; the proposed account relies on a distinction between the rules of appropriateness, which form part of extendedgrammar, and the Maxim of Appropriateness, which functions as a discursive norm guiding our conversational practice.
7. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Ernie Lepore, Matthew Stone Problems and Perspectives on the Limits of Pragmatics: Reply to Critics
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articles
8. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Jiri Benovsky ‘Nothing over and above’ or ‘nothing’?: On Eliminativism, Reductionism, and Composition
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In this article, I am interested in an issue concerning eliminativism about ordinary objects that can be put as the claim that the eliminativist is guilty of postulating the existence of something (atoms arranged tablewise), but not of something that is identical to it (the table). But, as we will see, this turns out to be a problem for everybody except the eliminativist. Indeed, this issue highlights a more general problem about the relationship between an entity and the parts the compose it. Furthermore, I am not interested in this issue only for its own sake and for the sake of understanding and defending eliminativism, but also for the way it allows me to discuss the differences and relations between eliminativism and reductionism. What difference is there between eliminating an entity and reducing it to something else?
9. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Yves Bouchard KK-Thesis and Contextualism
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In this paper, I defend a contextualist reading of the KK-thesis. In the first part, I present the general problem and I contrast three concepts of knowledge with respect to the KK-thesis, (Hintikka, Lemmon, and Williamson) that all rely on a univocal interpretation of the K-predicate. In the second part, I provide a contextualist framework based upon an indexical interpretation of the K-predicate and the notion of epistemic context. I show how this framework can integrate different concepts of knowledge, and how it highlights the crucial significance of the KK-thesis for epistemology.
10. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Kai Michael Büttner Truth Conditions and Behaviourism
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Quine tries to combine truth conditional semantics with linguistic behaviourism. To this end, he identifies the truth conditions of a sentence with the conditions that prompt speakers to assign truth or falsity to the sentence. The first problem with this conception is that truth conditions determine not when truth-value assignments are made, but when they are correct. This fact vitiates Quine’s account of observation sentences (section 2). A second difficulty pertains only to theoretical sentences. The correctness of truth-value assignments to such sentences depends not on current experiences, but on what can be experienced on other occasions. This observation militates against Quine’s general verification holism and against his account of predications (section 3 and 4). Combining truth conditional semantics and linguistic behaviourism is possible, though, if both these lessons are taken into account (section 5).
11. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Salvatore Italia Truth as One, Facts as Many: A Way to Gradual Realism
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12. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Michael J. Shaffer Lakatos’ Quasi-empiricism in the Philosophy of Mathematics
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Imre Lakatos' views on the philosophy of mathematics are important and they have often been underappreciated. The most obvious lacuna in this respect is the lack of detailed discussion and analysis of his 1976a paper and its implications for the methodology of mathematics, particularly its implications with respect to argumentation and the matter of how truths are established in mathematics. The most important themes that run through his work on the philosophy of mathematics and which culminate in the 1976a paper are (1) the (quasi-)empirical character of mathematics and (2) the rejection of axiomatic deductivism as the basis of mathematical knowledge. In this paper Lakatos' later views on the quasi-empirical nature of mathematical theories and methodology are examined and specific attention is paid to what this view implies about the nature of mathematical argumentation and its relation to the empirical sciences.
book reviews
13. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Joseph Ulatowski Defending the Correspondence Theory of Truth
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14. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Leszek Wroński Probability
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articles
15. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Arkadiusz Gut Overcoming Logical Psychologism (Frege’s Influence on Husserl)
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The central and probably most controversial point concerning the psychologism — anti-psychologism debate is the problem of Frege’s alleged influence on the change in Husserl’s views. Contemporary thinkers investigating the early period of Husserl’s philosophy (between 1891—1895) have attempted to show that the opinion that Frege’s doctrine had a traumatic influence on Husserl’s views is not justified. This paper, which tries to maintain a balance between strictly philosophical argumentation and narrowly understood historical argumentation, suggests an alternative solution. By appealing to Frege’s works (known by Husserl) published before 1894, the locus of psychologism will be determined. Afterwards, I will present Husserl’s and Frege’s views on the elucidation procedure and the distinction between calculus and ‘lingua characteristica’. By discussing Husserl’s works from 1894-1897, I will show that his standpoint changed dramatically as he entered into the anti-psychological program, involving a new theory of concepts, judgment, and the so-called ‘pure Fregean flavour’ — a new account of logical content.
16. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Stephen K. McLeod Two Philosophies of Need
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Instrumentalists about need believe that all needs are instrumental, i.e., ontologically dependent upon ends, goals, or purposes. Absolutists view some needs as non-instrumental. The aims of this article are: clearly to characterize the instrumentalism/absolutism debate that is of concern (mainly §1); to establish that both positions have recent and current adherents (mainly §1); to bring what is, in comparison with prior literature, a relatively high level of precision to the debate, employing some hitherto neglected, but important, insights (passim); to show, on grounds not previously to the fore in the literature, that insofar as instrumentalism’s advocates have provided arguments for the position, these are unsound (§2); to argue against instrumentalism using a new dilemma concerning whether ‘end’, ‘goal’, and ‘purpose’ are interpreted in a mentalistic manner (§3); to elucidate the implications of the needs/need-satisfiers and preconditions/means distinctions for the debate (§4).
17. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
John Shand Free Will and Subject
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Traditionally formulated, the problem of free will cannot be solved. We may nevertheless be justifiably confident that we have free will. The traditional formulation makes a solution impossible by juxtaposing contradictory objective and subjective accounts of whether there is free will, between which accounts there is no third way to choose. However, the objective stance inherently denies the conditions under which free will is possible, namely that there are subjects, and is thus question-begging. It gives us no good reason for our not having free will without our also accepting that there are no subjects. As subjects we may not deny that there are subjects, and that as subjects we have good reason, through our experience of free will, to hold that we have free will. The problem of free will is a footnote to how there may be subjects. In order to understand what free will is we need to look at how it is experienced, that is, at the phenomenology of free will.
18. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Gianfranco Soldati Methodological Problems in the Phenomenology of Time
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It is difficult to develop a coherent conception of time on the basis of our experience of time. The philosophical analysis of our experience of time is a central topic in phenomenology. So one might expect phenomenology to deliver a contribution to the solution of the most challenging puzzles of the philosophy of time. This paper deals with some methodological issues related to such an expectation. It opposes two main conceptions of the role of phenomenology in the philosophy of time. On the first conception phenomenology draws conclusions about the nature of time from the description of the qualitative features of our experience of time. On the second conception, phenomenology determines what we are rationally entitled to believe about the nature of time on the basis of the way we experience time. It is argued that if one aims at integrating different approaches in one’s philosophical conception of time, then it is the second conception one ought to choose.
critical discussion
19. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Mats Volberg Implications of Paternalism and Buck-passing: A Reply to Quong
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In his latest book, Liberalism without Perfection (2011), Jonathan Quong argues against liberal perfectionism and defends Rawlsian political liberalism. In the course of his argumentation he presents us with a judgmental account of paternalism and the buck-passing account of truth in political philosophy. The aim of this paper is to critique both of those elements in Quong’s argumentation. I will first present the judgmental account of paternalism and then demonstrate that it will place impossible demands on us, insofar as paternalism is a prima facie wrong and we have a duty to reduce wrongness in the world. I will then turn to the buck-passing account of truth; after introducing it, I show that it will generate uncertain results for political philosophy, making it an unsatisfactory solution for the political liberal making truth claims in political philosophy.
book reviews
20. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 1
Nina Atanasova, Lisa A. Korf, Daniel J. Vecchio Book Reviews
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