Philosophy of Language

Advanced

Graduate level. Metatheory, technical variants, and disputes that are still open, with the primary literature named rather than gestured at.

Kaplan: Character and ContentPlanned
The logic of demonstratives, direct reference, and the two levels of indexical meaning
22 min
Monsters and Shifting IndexicalsPlanned
Kaplan's ban on operators that shift context, and the languages that seem to break it
22 min
Two-Dimensional SemanticsPlanned
Primary and secondary intensions, Stalnaker's diagonal, and Chalmers's bid to restore the link between meaning and apriority
25 min
Kripke's Puzzle About BeliefPlanned
Pierre, London, and Londres, and why the puzzle is not Frege's puzzle in disguise
20 min
Reference After KripkePlanned
Evans's Madagascar case, descriptive names, the qua problem, and causal descriptivism
22 min
Structured Propositions and Their UnityPlanned
Russellian propositions, what holds their parts together, and the act-type theories of Soames and Hanks
24 min
Hyperintensionality and Truthmaker SemanticsPlanned
Distinctions finer than necessary equivalence, Fine's exact verification, and Yablo on subject matter
25 min
Montague Grammar and Type-Driven InterpretationPlanned
Treating English as a formal language with the typed lambda calculus doing the composition
26 min
Generalized QuantifiersPlanned
'Most', conservativity, and why determiners denote relations between sets
22 min
Event SemanticsPlanned
Davidson's hidden event argument, adverb dropping, and the neo-Davidsonian thematic roles
22 min
Dynamic Semantics and Donkey AnaphoraPlanned
'Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it', E-type pronouns, Kamp's DRT, and meaning as context change
26 min
Questions, Focus, and Inquisitive SemanticsPlanned
Hamblin sets, partitions of logical space, Rooth on focus, and propositions that raise issues as well as settle them
25 min
Common Ground and AccommodationPlanned
Stalnaker's model of assertion as shrinking a context set, and Lewis's rule of accommodation
22 min
Presupposition ProjectionPlanned
Why presuppositions survive negation and questions, Karttunen's filters, Heim's satisfaction theory, and Schlenker's local contexts
26 min
Minimalism, Contextualism, and Hidden IndexicalsPlanned
Cappelen and Lepore against Recanati and Travis, and Stanley's binding argument for covert variables
25 min
Kratzer on Modals and ConditionalsPlanned
Modal bases, ordering sources, and the restrictor analysis of 'if'
24 min
Epistemic Modals and Assessment SensitivityPlanned
'Might' claims, retraction, Yalcin's domain semantics, and MacFarlane's relativism about truth
26 min
Predicates of Taste and Faultless DisagreementPlanned
Whether two people can disagree about what is tasty without either being wrong, and metalinguistic negotiation
22 min
Relevance Theory and Neo-Gricean PragmaticsPlanned
Sperber and Wilson's single principle, explicature, and Horn's two-principle reduction of the maxims
22 min
The Grammatical Theory of Scalar ImplicaturePlanned
Chierchia, Fox, and Spector's covert exhaustification operator, embedded implicatures, and free choice
26 min
Conventional Implicature and ExpressivesPlanned
Potts's multidimensional semantics, appositives, 'damn', and content that is not at issue
23 min
SlursPlanned
Where a slur's derogation lives: content, presupposition, expressive meaning, or a social prohibition
24 min
Silencing and Subordinating SpeechPlanned
Langton and Hornsby on illocutionary disablement and McGowan on covert exercitives
23 min
GenericsPlanned
'Ducks lay eggs', 'mosquitoes carry malaria', Leslie's default generalisations, and generic essentialism
23 min
Dog Whistles and PropagandaPlanned
Coded speech, Saul's figleaves, Khoo on code words, and Stanley on undermining propaganda
23 min
Derrida, Iterability, and the Searle ExchangePlanned
Derrida's reading of Austin, the claim that every sign can be cited out of context, and the quarrel collected in Limited Inc
26 min
What Metaphors MeanPlanned
Davidson's denial of metaphorical meaning against Stern's context-dependent content and Camp's perspectives
22 min
A Nice Derangement of EpitaphsPlanned
Malapropisms, prior and passing theories, and Davidson's claim that there is no such thing as a language
20 min
MetasemanticsPlanned
The difference between saying what an expression means and saying what makes it mean that
22 min
KripkensteinPlanned
Plus, quus, the sceptical paradox about meaning, and why dispositions do not answer it
26 min
Putnam's Model-Theoretic ArgumentPlanned
Using Löwenheim-Skolem to argue that reference is radically indeterminate, and the 'just more theory' reply
26 min
Interpretationism and EligibilityPlanned
Lewis's answer to Putnam: meaning fixed by the best interpretation, where natural properties are easier to mean
24 min
Dummett and Semantic Anti-RealismPlanned
The manifestation and acquisition arguments against truth-conditional meaning, and the case against bivalence
26 min
Inferentialism and Normative PragmaticsPlanned
Brandom's account of meaning as inferential role, deontic scorekeeping, and logic as making inference explicit
26 min
Bilateralism and Expressivist SemanticsPlanned
Rejection as a primitive speech act, Schroeder's Being For, Gibbard's hyperplans, and the negation problem
26 min
Use Theories and Deflationary MetasemanticsPlanned
Horwich's acceptance properties and whether a deflationist about truth can say what fixes meaning
22 min
I-Language and Semantic InternalismPlanned
Chomsky's case against public languages and reference, and Pietroski's conjunctivist semantics
25 min
Conceptual EngineeringPlanned
Revising what our words mean on purpose: ameliorative analysis, topic continuity, and the implementation problem
24 min