CJP 2013 14

Croatian Journal of Philosophy
Vol. XIII, No. 37, 2013
Anti-Exceptionalism about Philosophy

TIMOTHY WILLIAMSON
Faculty of Philosophy,
University of Oxford
I briefly rehearse the positive conception of philosophy in my book The

Philosophy of Philosophy, as an introduction to the symposium on it that
follows.
Keywords: Metaphilosophy, metalinguistic, abduction, axiom, thought
experiment, counterfactual, imagination, a priori
Philosophers tend to regard philosophy as exceptional amongst disciplines, just as the practitioners of most other disciplines tend to regard
their own as exceptional. No two disciplines are exactly alike, but we
should not exaggerate the differences. Philosophy resembles other disciplines much more closely than many philosophers like to suppose.
It is not the case that philosophical questions differ in kind from
questions in all other disciplines. They are not to be interpreted in some
special way. Rather, they are normally to be taken at face value. For
example, the question What is justice? is primarily a question about
the nature of justice itself, not about the word justice or about our concept of justice. Although there are philosophical questions about words
and concepts too, they have no special privilege. Philosophers tend to
ask about very general and non-contingent matters, but are not alone
in doing so. The main aim of philosophy is to know the answers to its
questions.
Like mathematics, philosophy is an armchair discipline. The reason
is not that observation and experiment are in principle irrelevant to
answering philosophical questions. They are always at least indirectly
relevant in principle, and sometimes in practice, just as they are in
mathematics. However, as the case of mathematics shows, that does
not mean that reforming the discipline to concentrate on making observations and carrying out experiments would be an improvement,
even if we outsourced that work to the natural sciences. We have ample
experience that some problems are most effectively tackled by more
theoretical methods.
1

Vol. XIII, No. 37, 2013
An Uncomfortable Armchair:
Tim Williamson Against Apriorism
NENAD MIEVI
Department of Philosophy,
Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor
The paper addresses Williamsons original and challenging proposal for

understanding of thought experiments (TEs). First, it puts it on the map
of positions, describing it as ordinarism, the view that sees thinkers
reaction to the thought-experimental question as nothing extraordinary,
let alone mysterious. Then, it passes to Williamsons proposal to use
counterfactuals in order to understand TEs, agrees with the main idea,
but proposes a more structured view of capacities or competences active
in the understanding and answering. Intuitions are important, and they
are voice of competencies, at least in the good case. Finally, on the normative level, it argues for the view of justification as being structured,
containing both a priori and a posteriori elements.
Keywords: intuition, of thought experiments, counterfactuals,
ordinarism, competence
I) Introduction: Putting Ordinarism on the Map

Williamsons The Philosophy of Philosophy is certainly the most important book on meta-philosophy published since the turn of the millennium. The present paper is an attempt to trace some deep agreements but
also discuss some disagreements with it. It has a long history. I remember Tim Williamson giving his lecture in Geneva out of which came his
Dialectica 2004 paper on intuitions, and I vividly remember discussing
the lecture with him at length a day later at the airport. Then in 2009
and 2010, together with my colleagues, I had the opportunity to discuss
the book with Tim at two Dubrovnik IUC conferences; the paper is the
result of these discussions, and of teaching his book at seminars and discussion groups in Rijeka and Budapest. So, with a lot of thanks to Tim
and to my colleagues, let me turn to the work, concentrating upon the
kernel of the book, its program for the methodology of philosophy.1
1
Thanks go to Majda Trobok, Nenad Smokrovi, Istvan Bodnar, Mike Griffin,
Gabor Betegh, Edi Pavlovi, Tom Stoneham, John Hawthorne and Carry Jenkins.

Vol. XIII, No. 37, 2013
Defending Analyticity:
Remarks on Williamsons
The Philosophy of Philosophy
MAJDA TROBOK
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Rijeka
In this paper I concentrate on three issues concerning Williamsons book

The Philosophy of Philosophy: the problem of analytic statements being
first-order propositions, the issue concerning aposteriority and the concerns related to the semantic vs. metasemantic distinction.
Keywords: analyticity, semantic vs. metasemantic distinction
1. Are analytic truths ordinary first-order propositions?

The Philosophy of Philosophy is probably the most thought-provoking
book on meta-philosophy on the contemporary scene. Personally I found
Williamsons treatment of analyticity, aposteriority and the semantic
vs. metasemantic distinction most inspiring and motivating so I shall
concentrate in this paper on these issues.1
One of the main themes of The Philosophy of Philosophy is the view
that, even though philosophy is an armchair activity, it would be wrong
to conclude that philosophical questions are basically conceptual (analogy with mathematics).
Philosophy is supposed to be analogous to mathematics in the sense
that mathematics is a science, it is an armchair activity and does not
in any useful sense deal with conceptual questions. So, why should not
philosophy be the same?
1
I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Williamson for his kind criticisms
and inspiring discussion at the two sessions of the IUC meetings in Dubrovnik,
dedicated to his book. (I am happy to add that the tradition of discussing Williamsons
work at the IUC Dubrovnik is still continuing and shows no sign of relenting.)
29

Vol. XIII, No. 37, 2013
Are Dispositions to Believe

Constitutive for Understanding?
NENAD SMOKROVI
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Rijeka
T. Williamson argues against the thesis he recognizes as one of the inferentialist basic idea that he formulates as understanding/assent link,
the claim that the assent to a sentence (believing a thought, at conceptual
level) is constitutive for understanding it. This paper aims to show that
appropriately articulated dispositional theory, could plausibly account
for a weak version of inferentialism.
Keywords: Inferentialism, dispositionalism, massive modularity
Introduction
Among many topics Timothy Williamson challenges in his book Philosophy of Philosophy,1 the issue of the conditions needed for understanding words or grasping concepts has one of the central places. The question concerning this issue is: Are there constraints that as necessary
(or even as necessary and sufficient) conditions determine the understanding of words, as constitutive parts of sentences, and of concepts,
as parts of thoughts? The prevailing and rather commonsensical view
is that there are such conditions.2 The clearest cases in which understanding and its (putative) conditions are tightly connected are those
concerning analytic sentences. Let us take simple examples:
Can one understand the word (or grasp the concept) bachelor, or the
word (or the concept) vixen without assenting to the sentence
Every bachelor is an unmarried adult male, or
Every vixen is a female fox?
1
2
Williamson, 2007.
Jackson, 1998, Boghossian, 2003, and Peacocke, 1992.
37

Vol. XIII, No. 37, 2013
Replies to Trobok, Smokrovi,

and Mievi on the Philosophy
of Philosophy
TIMOTHY WILLIAMSON
Faculty of Philosophy,
University of Oxford
I reply to critical discussions by Majda Trobok, Nenad Smokrovi, and

Nenad Mievi on theses and arguments from my book The Philosophy
of Philosophy. I take issue with them on matters such as the following.
Should philosophical questions apparently about the world be taken
at face value, or are they implicitly metalinguistic or metaconceptual?
Are there epistemologically analytic sentences that one can understand
only if one has a (possibly unmanifested) disposition to accept them?
Can philosophical intuitions be explained as the products of separable
domain-specific competencies?
Keywords: analytic, a priori, competence, understanding, logic,
metaphilosophy, intuition
My exchanges with Majda Trobok, Nenad Smokrovi, and Nenad

Mievi on themes from The Philosophy of Philosophy, at the University of Rijeka, the Inter-University Centre in Dubrovnik, and elsewhere,
before and after its publication, have been a source of both intellectual
pleasure and intellectual profit, at least for me and I hope for them
too. In replying here to their thoughtful and sophisticated comments,
I follow the usual and fruitful practice of focussing on points of disagreement. Nevertheless, the possibility of such focus on sharp points
rather than blurred regions of disagreement indicates how much background agreement there is between us, on matters both philosophical
and metaphilosophical.
Reply to Majda Trobok

One theme of The Philosophy of Philosophy is that philosophical questions are normally to be taken at face value. For example, when meta49

Vol. XIII, No. 37, 2013
The Aposteriori
Response-Dependence of the Colors
DAN LPEZ DE SA
Departament de Lgica, Histria i Filosofia de la Cincia & LOGOS

Universitat de Barcelona
The paper proposes and defends the following characterization of response dependent property: a property is response-dependent iff there is
a response-dependence biconditional for a concept signifying it which
holds in virtue of the nature of the property. Finding out whether a property is such is to a large extent a posteriori matter. Finally, colors are
response dependent: they are essentially tied to issuing the relevant experiences, so that having those experiences does give access to their, dispositional, nature. Finally, some important contrary views are critically
discussed in the paper.
Keywords: color, response-dependence
What is it for colors themselvesas opposed to terms or concepts for

themto be response-dependent? Can their response-dependenceif
there is suchbe established on apriori grounds?
These are the two questions of this paper. In the first part ( 14), I
present a general characterization of a response-dependent property; in
the second part ( 58), I defend the view that it is aposteriori whether
colors are response-dependent, in this sense.
1. The Original Purpose of Response-Dependence

The phrase response-dependence occurred in the literature for the
first time fifteen years ago in Mark Johnstons Dispositional Theories
of Value (1989).
Some philosophers, including McDowell and Wiggins, had attempted to defend realism about value against those who claimed that value
is not a genuine feature of certain things by analogy with secondary
qualities, and color in particular.
Consider a view according to which (say) redness is (say) the disposition to produce in perceptually normal humans an experience as of
65

Vol. XIII, No. 37, 2013
The Conundrum of Time Travel

ANGUEL STEFANOV
Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge

Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Time travel is a theme that provokes scientific curiosity, as well as philosophical speculation. The problems it raises, however, are being tackled
by science fiction only, and are still not resolved by science either theoretically, or practically. My aim here is, firstly, to present some curious facts
about time travel and to have a look at the nature of different ontological
constraints confronting time travel; secondly, to outline three cases for
which time travel might be meaningfully contended; and thirdly, to defend the unexpected claim that human conscious presence in the world
is the genuine-and-natural time travel.
Keywords: time travel, paradoxes, consciousness
1. Introductory Words
The subject about time travel displays both unfathomed theoretical
depth, as well as unfaked human curiosity. This peculiarity seems to
suppose successful decisions of all the problems the subject provokes.
Needless to say, however, the problems concerning time travel are being still tackled by science fiction only, but resolved by science proper
neither theoretically, nor practically. It is worth mentioning, nevertheless, that the philosophical interest towards time travel is constantly
growing. Special issues of philosophical journals and chapters of enthralling books are being dedicated on the topic.1
The reason for this interest is not exhausted solely by the exotic
character of the topic itself. As it has been noted, the answer about
the possibility of time travel depends on ones view concerning a wide
range of other matters, and such views are themselves the subject of
major philosophical controversy.2 The controversy spreads over diverse
1
The Monist, Vol. 88 (July 2005), N 3; Davies, P. (1995), ch.11; Dainton, B.
(2001), ch.8; Hawking, S. and L. Mlodinov (2005), ch.10.
2
Varzi, A. (2005), 325.
81

Vol. XIII, No. 37, 2013
Naming and Necessity

From a Functional Point of View
OSAMU KIRITANI
Department of Research Promotion,

Tokyo Women's Medical University
The aim of this paper is to develop a new connection between naming and
necessity. I argue that Kripkes historical account of naming presupposes
the functional necessity of naming. My argument appeals to the etiological notion of function, which can be thought to capture the necessity of
functionality in historical terms. It is shown that the historical account of
naming entails all conditions in an etiological definition of function.
Keywords: naming, necessity, function, history
Saul Kripke began his influential lectures, Naming and Necessity

(1980), remarking that some connection would be developed between
naming and necessity. However, it has been argued that Kripkes theses about naming do not presuppose any theses about metaphysical
necessity (Almog 1986; Stalnaker 1997). The aim of this paper is to
develop another connection between naming and necessity. I will argue
that Kripkes historical account of naming presupposes the non-metaphysical necessity of naming. My argument will appeal to the etiological notion of function (Millikan 1984; Neander 1991a, 1991b; Griffiths
1993; Godfrey-Smith 1994), according to which the function of an entity is fixed by its history. On the etiological view, the human heart
has the function to pump blood, since its pumping blood contributed
to the survival of our ancestors. I have elsewhere suggested that the
etiological notion of function captures the modality of functionality in
non-metaphysical terms (Kiritani 2011a, 2011b; see also Nanay 2011).
Function attributions have normative force (see Millikan 1989, 2002;
Neander 1991a, 1991b; Davies 2001, 2009; Hardcastle 2002; McLaughlin 2009): an entity has the function to do F if and only if it ought to do
F. This ought can be regarded as expressing the necessity of F. The
function of the heart is to pump blood, while it is necessary for the
93

Vol. XIII, No. 37, 2013
Parsons Mathematical Intuition:

a Brief Introduction
IRIS MERKA
Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor
The paper offers one of Parsons main themes in his book Mathematical Thought and Its Objects of 2008 (Cambridge University Press, New
York): the role of intuition in our understanding of arithmetic. Our discussion does not cover all of the issues that have relevance for Parsons
account of mathematical intuition, but we focus on the question: whether
our knowledge that there is a model for arithmetic can reasonably be
called intuitive. We focus on this question because we have some concerns about that.
Keywords: mathematical intuition, non-eliminative structuralism,
stroke string inscription, Dedekind-Peano axioms.
1. Introduction: Parsons Conception

of Mathematical Intuition
This paper gives a brief overview of Parsons conception of mathematical intuition and an answer to the question: whether our knowledge
that there is a model for arithmetic is intuitive.
The chapters of Parsons book Mathematical Thought and Its Objects (2008) roughly correspond to his articles from 1980 to 2004. It is
important for its new defences and amendments, which are added in
this book. It is not easy to read it, since Parsons complicated thoughts
are very often interrupted, readopted at later points, interrupted again,
and so on. In the following critical discussion we shall be mainly occupied with the precise role of intuition1 within his specific version of
structuralism.
Firstly, we explain that Parsons discusses about two different versions of structuralism, i.e., eliminative structuralism and non-elimina1
The role of intuition is seen in Parsons understanding of arithmetic.
99

Vol. XIII, No. 37, 2013
Moral Applicability
of Agrippas Trilemma
NORIAKI IWASA
Center for General Education,
University of Tokushima
According to Agrippas trilemma, an attempt to justify something leads

to either infinite regress, circularity, or dogmatism. This essay examines
whether and to what extent the trilemma applies to ethics. There are
various responses to the trilemma, such as foundationalism, coherentism, contextualism, infinitism, and German idealism. Examining those
responses, the essay shows that the trilemma applies at least to rational
justification of contentful moral beliefs. This means that rationalist ethics based on any contentful moral belief are rationally unjustifiable.
Keywords: Agrippas trilemma, regress argument, ethics, foundationalism, coherentism, contextualism, infinitism, German idealism
1. Introduction
According to Agrippas trilemma, an attempt to justify something leads
to either infinite regress, circularity, or dogmatism. This essay examines whether and to what extent the trilemma applies to ethics. There
are various responses to the trilemma, such as foundationalism, coherentism, contextualism, infinitism, and German idealism. Examining
those responses, I show that the trilemma applies at least to rational justification of contentful moral beliefs.1 Finally, I point out that
rationalist ethics based on any contentful moral belief are rationally
unjustifiable.
1
Contentful moral beliefs are moral beliefs which have content. In contrast,
empty moral beliefs are moral beliefs which have no content. For example, the belief
it is always moral to act morally is an empty moral belief.
109

Vol. XIII, No. 38, 2013
Challenges to Bachs Pragmatics1

ESTHER ROMERO and BELN SORIA
Department of Philosophy I and Department of English and German Philology

University of Granada
In this paper, we will revise Bachs classification of contents in what is

directly meant. That catalogue was introduced to reach an exhaustive
characterization of the contents that may appear in what the speaker
means; something that cannot be done just with Grices division between
what is said and what is implied. However, Bachs distinction among
different types of direct inexplicit contents (explicit, implicit, and figurative) presents some theoretical problems which we think can be avoided
if at least the following is considered. First, within what he calls local
completion, a more fine grained distinction between lexical specialization and local completion proper should be established. We suggest that
this can be done by resorting to different senses in which a mandatory
demand of pragmatic information may be triggered. Cases of lexical specialization will depend on context-sensitive expressions and will require
a new notion for explicit contents: expliciture. Second, we argue that metonymy should be considered as an impliciture rather than as a case
of figurative content, taking into account that supplementation rather
than transfer is the pragmatic strategy involved in the interpretation of
metonymic utterances. Third, we defend that in metonymic utterances,
the impliciture is based on completion rather than expansion and this
entails a refinement of the notion of propositional radical. In this way,
our reform leads to a more exhaustive classification, and provides the
criteria underlying this catalogue of the ways in which what is directly
communicated in an utterance can go beyond sentence meaning.
Key words: pragmatics, speakers meaning, propositional radical,
implicitures, explicitures.
This paper is part of the project FFI201126418, funded by the Spanish Ministry
of Economy and Competitiveness. The proposals presented here have benefited from
comments and discussions in the Mental Phenomena course (Dubrovnik, 2011).
We are most grateful to the audience and especially to Kent Bach for their useful
questions and suggestions.
1
135

Vol. XIII, No. 38, 2013
Kent Bach on Speaker Intentions

and Context
JEFFREY C. KING
Rutgers University
It is generally believed that natural languages have lots of contextually

sensitive expressions. In addition to familiar examples like I, here, today, he, that and so on that everyone takes to be contextually sensitive, examples of expressions that many would take to be contextually
sensitive include tense, modals, gradable adjectives, relational terms
(local; enemy), possessives (Annies book) and quantifiers (via quantifier domains). With the exception of contextually sensitive expressions
discussed by Kaplan [1977], there has not been a lot of discussion as
to the mechanism whereby contextually sensitive expressions get their
values in context, aside from vague references to speakers intentions.
In a recent paper, I proposed a candidate for being this mechanism and
defended the claim that it is such. Because, as I suggested, these issues
have been most extensively discussed in the case of demonstratives, I
focused on these expressions by way of contrasting the mechanism I proposed with others in the literature. In the present work, I simply state
what I claim is the mechanism by means of which demonstratives secure
semantic values in contexts without defending the claim that it is so. I
then consider some claims made by Kent Bach, and arguments for those
claims, which would undermine the account I propose of how demonstratives secure semantic values in context.
Key words: speaker intentions, context, pragmatics, demonstra-
tives, demonstrations.
It is generally believed that natural languages have lots of contextually

sensitive expressions. In addition to familiar examples like I, here,
today, he, that and so on that everyone takes to be contextually sensitive, examples of expressions that many would take to be contextually sensitive include tense, modals, gradable adjectives, relational terms
(local; enemy), possessives (Annies book) and quantifiers (via quantifier domains). With the exception of contextually sensitive expressions
discussed by Kaplan [1977], there has not been a lot of discussion as
161

Vol. XIII, No. 38, 2013
Good and Bad Bach

MICHAEL DEVITT
The Graduate Center, the City University of New York
This paper is concerned with Bachs stand on the semantics-pragmatics issue. A bit of Good Bach is his skepticism about the evidential role
of intuitions. Another bit is his firm stand against the widespread confusion of what constitutes the meanings of utterances with how hearers
interpret utterances. The paper argues at length against two bits of Bad
Bach. (1) There is no sound theoretical motivation for his excluding the
reference fixing of demonstratives, pronouns and names from what-issaid. (2) His methodology for deciding what is semantic is flawed in
three respects: first, in its commitment to the mistaken Modified Occams
Razor; second, in its placing inappropriate syntactic constraints on conventional meanings; and, third, in explaining many regularities in usage as standardizations rather than conventionalizations. This flawed
methodology has the conservative effect of ruling out new meanings.
Key words: semantics, pragmatics, meaning, communication, in-
tuitions, methodology, what is said, Modified Occams Razor, dead

metaphors, definite descriptions, conventions, standardization.
1. Introduction
Paul Grice (1989) made it clear, if it was not already so, that we need
to distinguish between two sorts of properties that a particular utterance may have. Grice himself distinguished what is said from what is
implied, suggested, meant (1989: 24), giving many interesting examples. A famous one concerns a philosopher who writes a reference for
a student. The philosopher says that the students English is excellent
and his attendance regular but what the philosopher means, his conversational implicature, is that the student is no good at philosophy
(33). It is common to distinguish the two sorts of properties using the
vexed terms semantic and pragmatic.1 Thus the problem of drawing
1
These terms have distressingly many uses in the literature, as Kent Bach
nicely demonstrates (1999). I shall explain my usage in sec. 2.2; see also 2013b, secs.
3 and 4.
169

Vol. XIII, No. 38, 2013
Bachs Constraint
on Extending Acquaintance: Some
Questions and a Modest Proposal
MIRELA FU
Central European University
My aim in this paper is to examine how Kent Bachs theory of singu-
lar thought about material objects meets the requirements of transmitting de re thought. I identify a certain possible paradox haunting Bachs
move of extending acquaintance in order to widen the scope of singular
thought and I attempt to answer this possible paradox. First, I briefly
present the manner in which Bach motivates extended acquaintance and
which constraints he puts on it. I then address the problem of the sorites
paradox which might lead not only to Bachs communication-based de re
thoughts, but perception-based de re thoughts in general, thus defined.
Finally, I offer my tentative solution to the problem of extended acquaintance which consists in introducing two constraints on singular thought,
namely (i) the (external) acquaintance constraint and (ii) the (internal)
cognitive significance constraint, and two types of representations,
namely indexical-iconic representations and indexical-discursive representations which are together crucial for having a singular thought.
Key words: singular thought, acquaintance constraint, cognitive

significance constraint, indexical-iconic representation, indexicaldiscursive representation.
1. Introduction
Kent Bach is one of the prominent advocates of singular thought, in
particular, the Acquaintance Theory of singular (or de re) thought.1 In
There are three dominant theories of singular thought, namely Acquaintance
Theory of singular thought (see Burge 1977, Donnellan 1979, Lewis 1979, Evans
1982, Boer and Lycan 1986, Bach 1987/94, Salmon 1988, Brewer 1999, Recanati
1993, Soames 2003, Pryor 2007), Semantic Instrumentalism (see Harman 1977,
Kaplan 1989) and Cognitive Authority or Cognitivism (see Jeshion 2002, 2009, 2010).
1
201

Vol. XIII, No. 38, 2013
Replies to My Critics
KENT BACH
San Francisco State University
I thank my critics for time, thought, and effort put into their commentaries. Since obviously I cant respond to everything, I will try to address
what strike me as the most important questions they ask and objections
they raise. I think I have decent answers to some questions and decent
responses to some objections, in other cases it seems enough to clarify the
relevant view, and in still others I need to modify the view in question.
One complication, which I wont elaborate on, is that the views under
consideration have evolved, or at least changed, over the years, so that
my critics are aiming at a moving target, albeit a slowly moving one.
Before responding, I will sketch some of the main ideas behind my view,
including their unifying motivation, and mention a few key distinctions
that are particularly relevant to topics addressed by my critics.
Key words: pragmatics, semantic-pragmatic distinction, linguistic
meaning, speaker meaning, expliciture, standardization.
In philosophizing about language and about its use, first and foremost
we need to distinguish information that is linguistically encoded (or
at least partly determined by such information) and information associated with acts of using language. This roughly corresponds to the
semantic-pragmatic distinction.
I take semantics to be concerned with certain properties of linguistic expressions, that is, sentences and their constituents. These properties are linguistic meanings and what these meanings determine as
a function of context.1 Semantic properties are roughly on a par with
syntactic and phonological properties, that is, properties of linguistic
types. Also, as is widely held, the semantic properties of complex linguistic expressions depend on their syntactic structure and the semantic properties of their constituents within this structure. In contrast,
1
The prototypical example is the pronoun I. As used in a given context, semantic
content (reference) relative to that context is the speaker.
217

Vol. XIII, No. 38, 2013
Vagueness and Mechanistic

Explanation in Neuroscience
PHILIPP HAUEIS
Institute of Philosophy
Humboldt University of Berlin
The problem of fuzzy boundaries when delineating cortical areas is

widely known in human brain mapping and its adjacent subdisciplines
(anatomy, physiology and functional neuroimaging). Yet, a conceptual
framework for understanding indeterminacy in neuroscience is missing, and there has been no discussion in the philosophy of neuroscience
whether indeterminacy poses an issue for good neuroscientific explanations. My paper addresses both these issues by applying philosophical
theories of vagueness to three levels of neuroscientific research, namely
to (i) cytoarchitectonic studies at the neuron level (ii) intra-areal neuronal interaction measured by the BOLD-signal of functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI) and (iii) inter-areal connectivity between different cortical areas. The rest of the paper explores how this framework
can be extended to mechanistic explanations in neuroscience. I discuss
a semantic and an ontic interpretation of vagueness in mechanistic explanations and argue how both become scientifically interesting from the
perspective of a philosophy of scientific practice.
Key words: Vagueness, mechanisms, neuroscience, explanation,
fuzzy boundaries.
Introduction
In a variety of studies concerning the anatomy of the cerebral cortex,
neuroscientific researchers report different forms of indeterminacy
when describing the boundaries between different cortical areas. In a
study that investigated how the folding of the cortical surface predicts
structural features of different brain areas, Fischl et. al (2007) notice
that the changes that define the borders between adjacent association
cortices (such as 44/45) are considerably more subtle than in primary
areas, [], making the precise and repeatable localization of higher
251

Vol. XIII, No. 38, 2013
Structural Representations and the

Explanatory Constraint
MARIA SERBAN
School of Philosophy
University of East Anglia
My aim in this paper is to investigate what epistemic role, if any, do

appeals to representations play in cognitive neuroscience. I suggest that
while at present they seem to play something in between a minimal and
a substantive explanatory role, there is reason to believe that representations have a substantial contribution to the construction of neuroscientic
explanations of cognitive phenomena.
Key words: mental representation, explanatory constraint, neuroscientific explanations, structural representations.
1. Introduction
The concept of mental representation is common currency within contemporary theories of cognition. One central idea that all these theories share is that cognizing is processing mental representations. This
status quo in cognitive science has attracted an increasing interest
within philosophy of mind for explaining the relevant notion of mental
representation. In brief, the problem is to say what it is for something
in the mind to represent something. Two substantive constraints on a
philosophical theory of mental representation have been advanced in
the literature: the explanatory constraint and the so-called implementation constraint. The former constraint amounts to the task of justifying ones theoretical appeal to notions of representation in explaining
cognitive phenomena. The latter constraint claims that the theory of
mental representation should be compatible with our best scientific
stories about what sorts of things actually do the representing in the
mind/brain.
My aim in this paper is to explore a specific way of cashing out
the explanatory constraint for a theory of mental representation which
takes seriously the idea that a philosophical theory of representational
277

Vol. XIII, No. 38, 2013
Ever the Twain shall Meet?

Chomsky and Wittgenstein
on Linguistic Competence
TAMARA DOBLER
School of Philosophy
It is a dominant view in the philosophical literature on the later Wittgenstein that Chomskys approach to the investigation of natural language
stands in stark contrast to Wittgensteins, and that their respective conceptions of language and linguistic understanding are irreconcilable.
The aim in this paper is to show that this view is largely incorrect and
that the two approaches to language and its use are indeed compatible,
notwithstanding their distinctive foci of interest. The author argues that
there is a significant correspondence in at least five different areas of
their work, and that once we pay attention to these there will be less
temptation to see Wittgenstein and Chomsky as enemies.
Key words: Wittgenstein, Chomsky, referentialist semantics, use
theory of meaning, analytic-synthetic distinction.
1. Chomsky and Wittgenstein: the received view

There is a general consensus among interpreters of the later Wittgenstein that Chomskys views regarding language, meaning, and use,
stand in stark opposition to Wittgensteins own views regarding such
matters. This is perhaps most explicit in Baker and Hackers Language, Sense, and Nonsense (1984). Baker and Hacker (B&H) deploy
what is clearly an idiosyncratic interpretation of Wittgensteins later
conception of grammar, rules, and linguistic understanding against a
range of philosophical and scientific theories of language and meaning,
including Chomskys generative linguistics. The key strategy is to show
that such theories reiterate the very mistakes the later Wittgenstein
identifies in his own earlier works,1 to adapt some of the methods and
1
See also Malcolm (1993: 50).
293

Vol. XIII, No. 38, 2013
A Guide to Binding Economy

ANDREI NASTA
This is an introduction to the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of binding, with a special focus on the so-called principles of linguistic economy.
I shall first look at the (syntactic) Binding Principles, and stress some
of their limitations. Consequently, additional constraints are needed to
complement the robust syntactic generalisations already ensured by the
Binding Principles and thus to overcome their limitations. Subsequently, we shall explore the basic mechanisms underlying the reconstruction
of Binding Theory under the new set of constraints introduced by the
economy principles. It is this variety of principles of economy that is
the main theme of the present paper. I spell out the idea of linguistic
economy, its ramifications as well as its explanatory uses.
Key words: binding, principles of linguistic economy, syntax, semantics, pragmatics
1. Introduction
The present paper is a basic introduction to a way of thinking about
binding constructions shaped by the idea(s) of economy. Theorists
working in different areas of linguistics have proposed various principles of economy. We shall look at several such proposals.1
My primary aim here is to make clear the behaviour of economygoverned binding constructions, in syntax, semantics and pragmatics.
These approaches are all intended to complete, correct and eventually supersede the standard Government and Binding (GB) approach
to binding phenomena, also known as Binding Theory, with its three
binding principles or conditions (A, B, and C). Although I present the at
least apparent challenges to the Binding Theory, no comprehensive solution to these challenges will be offered here. I only sketch the differ1
Since the literature is vast, I was obliged to make a somewhat arbitrary
selection. There are numerous other linguistic theories of binding that appeal to
economy, as the notion is presented here (see references). However, the kinds of
framework I selected are not at all arbitrary as I shall suggest below.
313

Vol. XIII, No. 39, 2013
The Viability of Social Constructivism

as a Philosophy of Mathematics
JRGEN SJGREN
University of Skvde
CHRISTIAN BENNET
University of Gothenburg
Attempts have been made to analyse features in mathematics within a

social constructivist context. In this paper we critically examine some of
those attempts recently made with focus on problems of the objectivity,
ontology, necessity, and atemporality of mathematics. Our conclusion is
that these attempts fare no better than traditional alternatives, and that
they, furthermore, create new problems of their own.
Keywords: Social constructivism, mathematics, ontology, objectivity, necessity, atemporality.
1. Introduction
Recently, efforts have been made to analyse some problems in the philosophy of mathematics within a social constructivist context, notably
by Paul Ernest (Ernest 1998, Ernest 2004), and, somewhat later and in
more detail, by Julian C. Cole (Cole 2008, Cole 2009, Cole 2013).1 Different versions of (social) constructivism flourish in the social sciences,
including philosophy of mathematics education, but are rare in the philosophy of mathematics. A number of philosophers, e.g. John Searle
(Searle 1995), Ian Hacking (Hacking 1999), and Andr Kukla (Kukla
2000), discuss issues of social constructivism, but none of them raise
questions concerning philosophy of mathematics, even if Kukla touches
upon the field when arguing that logic cannot be a social construction
(op. cit., ch. 14). The most elaborated recent conception of social con1
Reuben Hersh has conceptions of mathematics that are close to the positions
of Cole and Ernest in, e.g., (Hersh 1997), but he calls his position cultural-historical,
and we pay no attention to his ideas in this paper.
341

Vol. XIII, No. 39, 2013
On Practical Reasoning
under Ignorance
GEORG SPIELTHENNER
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies

University of Dar es Salaam
The purpose of this paper is to present an account of practical reasoning under ignorancei.e., reasoning under conditions where the available information is so uninformative that we cannot assign probabilities
to the outcomes of our options. The account shows that such reasoning
need not rely on implausible principles (e.g. the maximin principle), but
can nevertheless be logically valid. Put differently, I attempt to show
that we can reason in a logically correct manner even if we do not know
what the outcomes of our options are or how likely these outcomes are.
The proposed approach is applicable to unidimensional and multidimensional practical reasoning, and it is therefore useful for analysing
real-life decision problems found in a wide variety of choice situations.
Its application requires only that an agent has some basic knowledge of
propositional logic. To achieve the aim of the article, I first outline when
practical reasoning can be said to be logically valid. Section 2 applies
the approach to unidimensional reasoning and Section 3 shows how an
agent can build up n-dimensional reasoning under ignorance in a logically correct way.
Keywords: Ignorance, nonprobabilistic decision-making, practical
reasoning, reasoning under ignorance, uncertainty, valid practical
reasoning.
In this article I am concerned with practical reasoning under ignorance.

Some authors dismiss this type of reasoning because they think of it as
marginal only. They hold that there are occasions when we can reason
under conditions of certainty (i.e. we know, at least for practical purposes, of each of our options what the outcomes of our taking it would
be), ormore commonlythat we are facing decision problems under
risk. That is to say, these writers appear to believe that in most situations we can say of each of the outcomes of our options how probable
they are. The probabilities may be objective (e.g. inferred from existing
357

Vol. XIII, No. 39, 2013
Experiencer Phrases, Predicates

of Personal Taste and Relativism:
On Cappelen and Hawthornes
Critique of the Operator Argument
DAN ZEMAN
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
In the debate between relativism and contextualism about various expressions, the Operator Argument, initially proposed by Kaplan (1989),
has been taken to support relativism. However, one widespread reaction against the argument has taken the form of arguing against one
assumption made by Kaplan: namely, that certain natural language
expressions are best treated as sentential operators. Focusing on the
only extant version of the Operator Argument proposed in connection to
predicates of personal taste such as tasty and experiencer phrases such
as for Anna (that of Klbel (2009)), in this paper I investigate whether
the reasons offered by Cappelen and Hawthorne (2009) against various
assumptions of the argument failing in the case of modal, temporal, locational and precisional expressions transfer to the case of experiencer
phrases to undercut support for relativism about predicates of personal
taste. My aim is to show that they dont. Thus, I first show that their
considerations against experiencer phrases such as for Anna being sentential operators are not decisive. Second, I show that even if granting
that such experiencer phrases are not sentential operators, a suitably
modified version of the Operator Argument can be defended from the
objections they raise.
Keywords: The Operator Argument, predicates of personal taste,
experiencer phrases, contextualism, relativism.
In Demonstratives, David Kaplan offers the following argument for

the introduction of unorthodox parameters in the circumstances of
evaluation (with particular focus on time):
If we built the time of evaluation into the contents (thus removing time
from the circumstances leaving only, say, a possible world history, and mak-
375

Vol. XIII, No. 39, 2013
The Structure of Propositions and

Cross-linguistic Syntactic Variability1
VASILIS TSOMPANIDIS
Institut Jean Nicod &

Instituto de Investigaciones Filosficas U.N.A.M.
In Jeffrey Kings theory of structured propositions, propositional structure

mirrors the syntactic structure of natural language sentences that express
it. I provide cases where this claim individuates propositions too finely
across languages. Crucially, Kings paradigmatic proposition-fact ^that
Dara swims^ cannot be believed by a monolingual Greek speaker, due
to Greek syntax requiring an obligatory article in front of proper names.
Kings two possible replies are: (i) to try to streamline the syntax of Greek
and English; or (ii) to insist that English speakers can believe propositions inexpressible in Greek. I argue that the former option entails giving
up a neo-Russelian framework, and the latter makes Kings account arbitrary or trivial. I conclude that the mirroring claim is untenable.
Keywords: Propositional structure, DP hypothesis, philosophy of
language, Modern Greek, direct reference, proper names.
Jeffrey King identifies propositions with certain facts about items in

the world and our linguistic representations of them (King 2007; King
2009; King 2013a; King 2013b). One of his main claims is that a propositions structure mirrors the syntactic structure of natural language
sentences that express it. I argue that when we use this claim to individuate propositions cross-linguistically, we end up with a theory that
individuates propositions too finely, with very important negative consequences for the theorys explanatory aims.
1
I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Ben Caplan who contributed
significantly to the creation of this paper, and the following colleagues for their
comments: Eliot Michaelson, Dan Zeman, Carolyn OMeara, Sara Garcia Pelaez,
Giannis Kostopoulos, Brian Joseph, and two anonymous reviewers. Axel Barcelo,
Mario Gomez-Torrente, and other participants in UNAMs Insituto de Investigacines
Filosoficas Philosophy of Language Seminar also gave me quite helpful feedback. Parts
of this research were supported by a postdoctoral grant from the Becas Posdoctorales
programme of the Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico (UNAM).
399

Vol. XIII, No. 39, 2013
Kripkes Semantic Argument

against Descriptivism Reconsidered
CHEN BO
Department of Philosophy
Peking University
There are two problematic assumptions in Kripkes semantic argument

against descriptivism. Assumption 1 is that the referential relation of a
name to an object is only an objective or metaphysical relation between
language and the world; it has nothing to do with the understanding
of the name by our linguistic community. Assumption 2 is that descriptivism has to hold that, if name has its meaning and the meaning is
given by one description or a cluster of descriptions, the description(s)
should supply a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for determining what designates; and that it is possible for us to find out such a set
of conditions. Emphasizing the sociality, intentionality, conventionality
and historicity of language and meaning, this paper rejects Assumption
1, and argues that Assumption 2 is an unfair interpretation of descriptivism, and it is not necessary for descriptivists to hold Assumption 2.
This paper finally concludes that Kripkes semantic argument against
descriptivism fails.
Keywords: Kripke, the semantic argument, Assumption 1, Assump-
tion 2, the sociality, intentionality, conventionality and historicity

of language and meaning.
1. Opening
To refute descriptivism, Kripke reformulates its cluster version (CVD
for short) refined by Wittgenstein and Searle. For him, CVD consists of
six theses as follows.
(1) To every name or designating expression X, there corresponds a
cluster of properties, namely the family of those properties such
that [the speaker] A believes X.
(2) One of the properties, or some conjointly, are believed by A to pick
out some individual uniquely.
421

Vol. XIII, No. 39, 2013
An Argument for a Quasi-Dretskian

Approach to Causal Explanation
MARCO MAESTRELLO
McMaster University
In this paper I will present Jaegwon Kims causal explanatory exclusion principle as described in Explanatory Exclusion and the Problem
of Mental Causation (1995) and Fred Dretskes version of the two explananda strategy as depicted in Mental Events as Structuring Causes
of Behaviour (1993). I will attempt to demonstrate that Dretskes theory
is not flawless in its assumptions but that it nevertheless demands a
close look in so far as it provides us with a valuable theory for explaining
certain events.
Keywords: Dretske, Kim, Davidson, mental causation, causal ex-
planation, anomalous monism.
In this paper I will discuss Jaegwon Kims causal explanatory exclusion principle as described in Explanatory Exclusion and the Problem
of Mental Causation (1995) and Fred Dretskes version of the two explananda strategy as depicted in Mental Events as Structuring Causes
of Behaviour (1993). This paper is broadly divided into two sections.
The first portion describes Dretskes assumptions and theory, along
with Kims response to this theory. The second portion includes my
response to Kim and a partial re-construal of how much we can salvage
from Dretskes version of this strategy. I will argue that Dretskes theory is not flawless in its assumptions but that it nevertheless demands
a serious look in so far as it provides us with a practical theory for
explaining specific events. As a terminological side note, I will be using
the terms explanandum and explanans when discussing explanations.
To clarify: an explanandum is a proposition or fact which is in need of
explanation. An explanans is the set of propositions that attempt to
explain the explanandum in question.1
As described by Samir Okasha (2002: 4243).
447

Vol. XIII, No. 39, 2013
The Logical Structure of Hope

TIAN-QUN PAN
Nanjing University
When a person hopes something, this means that he or she hopes some
proposition will be true. Thus, hope is a type of modality on propositions.
Hope logic is the study of the logical structure among propositions with
hope modalities. Rational hope is deductively enclosed, consistent, selfaffirmed, etc. These properties can be regarded as axioms of hope logic.
An important property of hope is that hope is not necessarily true, but it
is hoped that that hope is true. This is a property particular to hope, and
it can be regarded as the hope axiom. Using possible world semantics,
different hope logic systems, which are sound and complete with respect
to their frames, can be obtained by selecting different hope axioms.
Keywords: Hope logic, hope axiom, mental logic.
1. Introduction
We live with hope. Different people may have different hopes, and the
same person may have different hopes at different stages of life. Hope
makes life meaningful. Thus, hope is one of the most important issues
contemplated by philosophers.
Hope should be also a topic of interest to logicians and metaphysicians. Spinoza gave the following definition of hope: Hope is an inconstant pleasure, arising from the idea of something past or future,
whereof we to a certain extent doubt the issue.(Spinoza 1951: III, Def.
XII). Such a definition is not correct. People with a hope do have pleasure, but we could not say that hope is a kind of pleasure. Hope is a desired possibility, and the most important point is that hoping is a state
of mind. When people hope something, this means that they would prefer that some proposition or state of affairs be true, even though it may
not necessarily be true. Just as for believe, know, doubt, and so on,
the object of hope is a proposition (or state of affairs). So, hope is a kind
of attitude on propositions (or on states of affairs). Through the addition
of the operator of hope, modal hope propositions are formed. However,
457

Vol. XIII, No. 39, 2013
Unresponsive Bach
MICHAEL DEVITT
The Graduate Center, the City University of New York
My paper, Good and Bad Bach, describes Bachs position on the semantics-pragmatics issue and then makes four objections. The first objection
is to Bachs austere notion of what-is-said. The other three are to Bachs
conservative methodology for deciding what is semantic. I object to his
Modified Occams Razor; to his correspondence principle that I describe as the tyranny of syntax; and to his application of his notion of
standardization. Bachs Reply to Michael Devitt on Meaning and Reference is very disappointing. He fails even to mention my objections to his
positions on what-is-said and standardization. And he makes hardly
any serious attempt to address my objections to his Modified Occams
Razor and the tyranny of syntax. All my objections still stand.
Keywords: Semantics, pragmatics, meaning, methodology, what
is said, Modified Occams Razor, dead metaphors, definite descriptions, conventions, standardization, tyranny of syntax, pragmatic
derivations.
1. Introduction
My paper, Good and Bad Bach (GBB: 2013c),1 describes Kent Bachs
interesting and distinctive position on the vexed semantics versus
pragmatics issue and then makes four objections. The first objection is
to Bachs austere notion of what-is-said. The other three are to Bachs
conservative methodology for deciding what is semantic. I object to
his Modified Occams Razor; to his correspondence principle that I
describe as the tyranny of syntax; and to his application of his notion
of standardization.
Bachs Replies to My Critics (2013)2 is prompted by several papers
including GBB. He begins Replies as follows:
1
2
All unspecific citations to my work are to this paper.

All unspecific citations to Bachs work are to this paper.
463

Vol. XIV, No. 40, 2014
Empty Thoughts and Vicarious

Thoughts in the Mental File Framework
FRANOIS RECANATI
Institut Jean-Nicod
Mental files have a referential rolethey serve to think about objects

in the worldbut they also have a meta-representational role: when
indexed, they serve to represent how other subjects think about objects
in the world. This additional, meta-representational function of files is
invoked to shed light on the uses of empty singular terms in negative
existentials and pseudo-singular attitude ascriptions.
Keywords: Mental files, acquaintance, empty names, singular
thought, attitude ascriptions, negative existentials.
1. The mental file framework

An increasing number of philosophers use the mental file metaphor to
illuminate singular thinking. Different people elaborate the metaphor
differently, however.
On my own picture (Recanati 1993, 2006, 2010a, 2011, 2012), mental files are based on certain relations to objects in the environment;
different types of file correspond to different types of relation. The relations in questionacquaintance relationsare epistemically rewarding in that they enable the subject to gain information from the object.1
The role of the files is to store information about the objects we are
acquainted withinformation which our being acquainted with them
makes available. So mental files are about objects: like singular terms
in the language, they refer, or are supposed to refer. What they refer to
is not determined by properties which the subject takes the referent to
have (i.e. by informationor misinformationin the file), but through
The paradigm is, of course, perceptual acquaintance, but the notion of
acquaintance can be generalized in virtue of the analogy between relations of
perceptual acquaintance and other, more tenuous, relations of epistemic rapport
(Lewis 1999: 38081). The generalized notion of acquaintance covers communitymediated testimonial relations to objects mentioned to us in conversation, etc.
1

Vol. XIV, No. 40, 2014
The Metaphilosophical
Significance of Scepticism
NEIL GASCOIGNE
Department of Politics and International Relations and Philosophy

Royal Holloway, University of London
The aim of this paper is to contribute to an appreciation of the metaphilosophical significance of scepticism. It proceeds by investigating what the
differing characterisations of the sceptical threat reveal about the kind
of understanding that is being sought; and specifically, what this envisaged understanding connotes concerning how epistemological inquiry
is itself conceived. An investigation, that is to say, into how these characterisations support or help constitute that conception of inquiry by
attempting to keep a relationship with the sceptic going on their own
terms.
Keywords: Metaphilosophy, epistemological scepticism, Stroud,
Sosa, ancient scepticism.
scepticism is a resting place for reason, in which it
may reflect on its dogmatical wanderings, and gain some
knowledge of the region in which it happens to be, that
it may pursue its way with greater certainty; but it cannot be its permanent dwelling-place. It must take up its
abode only in the region of complete certitude, whether
this relates to the knowledge of objects themselves, or to
the limits which bound all our knowledge.
Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason (A760/B788)
I
When the Hellenistic empiricists averred that all knowledge was derived from experience, it seemed natural to their ancient Sceptical opponents to wonder how they knew that to be the case. Since this was an
assertion made by groups who had otherwise wildly divergent theories
about the nature of existence and the form of the good life, it seemed
equally natural to those Sceptics to ask how, on any particular occa13

Vol. XIV, No. 40, 2014
A Generality Problem
for Bootstrapping and Sensitivity
GUIDO MELCHIOR
University of Graz
Vogel argues that sensitivity accounts of knowledge are implausible because they entail that we cannot have any higher-level knowledge that
our beliefs are true, not false. Becker and Salerno object that Vogel is
mistaken because he does not formalize higher-level beliefs adequately.
They claim that if formalized correctly, higher-level beliefs are sensitive,
and can therefore constitute knowledge. However, these accounts do not
consider the belief-forming method as sensitivity accounts require. If we
take bootstrapping as the belief-forming method, as the discussed cases
suggest, then we face a generality problem. Our higher-level beliefs as
formalized by Becker and Salerno turn out to be sensitive according to
a wide reading of bootstrapping, but insensitive according to a narrow
reading. This particular generality problem does not arise for the alternative accounts of process reliabilism and basis-relative safety. Hence,
sensitivity accounts not only deliver opposite results given different formalizations of higher-level beliefs, but also for the same formalization,
depending on how we interpret bootstrapping. Therefore, sensitivity accounts do not fail because they make higher-level knowledge impossible,
as Vogel argues, and they do not succeed in allowing higher-level knowledge, as Becker and Salerno suggest. Rather, their problem is that they
deliver far too heterogeneous results.
Keywords: Sensitivity, bootstrapping, generality problem, higherlevel knowledge.
1. Overview
I will proceed as follows: In section 2, I present Vogels argument for
his claim that sensitivity accounts of knowledge entail that we cannot have higher-level knowledge that our beliefs are true, not false.
In section 3, I analyze Beckers and Salernos objection to this claim.
In section 4, I introduce method-relative sensitivity and bootstrapping

Vol. XIV, No. 40, 2014
Hubert Dreyfus
and the Last Myth of the Mental
TIMOTHY J. NULTY
University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth
This paper critically evaluates the arguments advanced by Hubert Dreyfus in his debate with John McDowell regarding the nature of skilled
coping. The paper argues that there are significant methodological shortcomings in Dreyfus position. The paper examines these methodological
limitations and attempts to clarify the problems by re-framing the issues
in terms of intentionality, and the specific intentional structures that
may or may not be present in skilled coping. The paper attempts to show
that the difficulties facing Dreyfus arise from his implicit adherence to
a final myth of the mental. The last myth of the mental is the belief that
mental coping is fundamentally different than embodied coping because
the former is characterized by mindedness while the latter is not. Dreyfus characterizes the mental as constituted by a kind of interiority while
everyday expertise or embodied coping is characterized by exteriority to
the exclusion of any type of interiority. I undermine this Cartesian assumption in Dreyfus position by showing that the criteria and phenomenological descriptions he uses to characterize embodied coping apply
equally to mental coping.
Keywords: Dreyfus, McDowell, intentionality, embodiment, Carte-
sian.
1. Introduction
Hubert Dreyfus argues that John McDowells account of our perceptual
openness to the world exemplifies what Dreyfus calls the myth of the
mental. Contrary to McDowells view, Dreyfus maintains that our everyday expert coping with the world is not permeated with conceptual
mindedness (Dreyfus 2007a: 361). The strength of Dreyfus arguments
against the ubiquity of conceptual mindedness depends on the accurate
characterization of both minds and the nature of conceptualization.
49

Vol. XIV, No. 40, 2014
Essentialism:
Metaphysical or Psychological?
MOTI MIZRAHI
Philosophy Department,
St. Johns University
In this paper, I argue that Psychological Essentialism (PE), the view

that essences are a heuristic or mental shortcut, is a better explanation
for modal intuitions than Metaphysical Essentialism (ME), the view
that objects have essences, or more precisely, that (at least some) objects
have (at least some) essential properties. If this is correct, then the mere
fact that we have modal intuitions is not a strong reason to believe that
objects have essential properties.
Keywords: Essence, essential properties, heuristic, inference to the
best explanation, metaphysical essentialism, modal intuition, psychological essentialism.
1. Introduction
Metaphysical Essentialism (ME) is the doctrine that (at least some)
objects have (at least some) essential properties (Robertson 2008).
More precisely (Paul 2004: 170):
an object O has property P essentially when O must have P in order to be
the object that it is. If O has P essentially, then, necessarily, in any world in
which O exists, O must have P. (See also Mackie 2006: 1.)
ME, then, is a theory of the objective, context-independent de re nature of objects (Paul 2004: 170). But why think that objects have an
objective, context-independent de re nature? In this paper, I am not
concerned with how to characterize the distinction between essential
properties and accidental properties (see, e.g., Gorman 2005). Rather,
I am concerned with whether or not there are strong reasons to believe
that objects even have objective, context-independent de re natures.
In other words, why think that objects have essences? 1 I discuss em1
As Robertson (2008) writes, Accounts of the first sort [i.e., those that suggest
that claims of origin essentialism are grounded in a branching conception of
65

Vol. XIV, No. 40, 2014
A Defence of the Radical Version

of the Asymmetry Objection
to Political Liberalism
MATT SLEAT
Department of Politics,
University of Sheffield
This article seeks to make two significant contributions to the debate surrounding the asymmetry objection to political liberalism. The first is to
distinguish between and explicate moderate and radical versions of the
asymmetry objection as two discrete forms that this criticism can take.
The second contribution is to defend the radical version of the asymmetry objection as a serious challenge to political liberalism. It does this by
arguing that the commitment to reciprocity that underpins the principle
of legitimacy can be the subject of reasonable disagreement, which therefore undermines the asymmetry central to political liberalism between
the legitimacy of being able to coerce compliance with principles of right
but not principles of the good on the grounds that the latter can be the
subject of reasonable disagreement whereas the former cannot.
Keywords: Asymmetry objection, legitimacy, political liberalism,
Rawls.
The asymmetry objection has proven to be one of the most serious challenges to the political liberalism of John Rawls and his followers, and
remains the subject of much controversy and debate. The objection essentially questions the asymmetry between justice and the good that
is a fundamental and distinct characteristic of political conceptions of
liberalism; specifically that it is legitimate to use state power to enforce
compliance with principles of the right, such as constitutional essentials
or a conception of justice, but not with principles of the good because
the latter can be the subject of reasonable disagreement whereas the
former cannot. The aim of this paper is twofold: Firstly I want to distinguish between two different forms of the asymmetry objection, what I
call the moderate and the radical versions, which are differentiated by
where they understand the source of the asymmetry to be located. The
73

Vol. XIV, No. 40, 2014
Moral Twin Earth,

Intuitions, and Kind Terms
HEIMIR GEIRSSON
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies,

Iowa State University
Horgan and Timmons, with their Moral Twin Earth arguments, argue
that the new moral realism falls prey to either objectionable relativism
or referential indeterminacy. The Moral Twin Earth thought experiment
on which the arguments are based relies in crucial ways on the use of
intuitions. First, it builds on Putnams well-known Twin Earth example
and the conclusions drawn from that about the meaning of kind names.
Further, it relies on the intuition that were Earthers and Twin Earthers
to meet, they would be able to have genuine moral disagreements. I will
argue that the similarities with Putnams thought experiment are questionable and so the reliance on Putnam-like intuitions is questionable. I
will then further argue that even if we accept the intuitions that Horgan
and Timmons rely on, the anti-realist conclusion is not warranted due
to there being more to the meaning of kind terms than the argument
assumes. Once we develop the meaning of kind terms further we can
acknowledge both that Earthers and Twin Earthers refer to different
properties with their moral terms, and that in spite of that they can have
a substantive disagreement due to a shared meaning component.
Keywords: Moral twin-earth, intuitions, disagreements, kind
names, moral realism.
Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons have written a number of articles

where they use their Moral Twin Earth thought experiment to attack the
new moral realism (Horgan & Timmons 1990).1 The new moral realism
is based on advances made in the philosophy of language. Suppose, the
argument goes, that a causal theory of reference of the kind advanced
by Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam, to name two of the usual suspects,
is true. Suppose further that moral terms, such as good, right, kind,
and just are kind terms which reference is determined causally and
1
Later articles include (Horgan & Timmons, 1992a, 1992b, 2000, 2009).
91

Vol. XIV, No. 40, 2014
A Never-Ending Story
BEN BLUMSON
National University of Singapore
Take a strip of paper with once upon a time there written on one side
and was a story that began on the other. Twisting the paper and joining
the ends produces John Barths story Frame-Tale, which prefixes once
upon a time there was a story that began to itself. In this paper, I argue
that the possibility of understanding Frame-Tale cannot be explained by
tacit knowledge of a recursive theory of truth in English.
Keywords: Understanding, recursion, metafiction.
Take a strip of paper with once upon a time there written on one side
and was a story that began on the other. Twisting the paper and fastening the ends produces John Barths (1968: 12) Frame-Tale, which
prefixes a token of once upon a time there was a story that began to
itself. Frame-Tale is understood: its because I understand it that Im
able to judge, for example, that Frame-Tale is true if its a story which
began. But explaining this raises a puzzle.
Traditionally, the ability to understand an infinite number of English sentences is explained via tacit knowledge of a recursive theory of
truth, with base clauses which state the truth-conditions of atomic sentences directly, and recursive clauses which state the truth-conditions
of complex sentences in terms of the truth-conditions of their simpler
constituents. (In a complete theory, these clauses would themselves be
theorems derived from further base and recursive axioms.)
There are two problems with extending this strategy to explaining
the ability to understand Frame-Tale. The first problem is that a statement of Frame-Tales truth-conditions cannot be derived from a recursive theory of truth in a finite number of steps, so tacit knowledge of
such a theory cannot explain the ability of someone with finite intellectual capacities to understand it. I will argue that this problem cannot
be solved, even by adopting a non-recursive theory of truth.
The second problem is that neither once upon a time nor there
was a story that began is associated with an appropriate base clause
111

Vol. XIV, No. 40, 2014
Consequentializing
Moral Responsibility
FRIDERIK KLAMPFER
Faculty of Arts,
University of Maribor
In the paper, I try to cast some doubt on traditional attempts to define,

or explicate, moral responsibility in terms of deserved praise and blame.
Desert-based accounts of moral responsibility, though no doubt more
faithful to our ordinary notion of moral responsibility, tend to run into
trouble in the face of challenges posed by a deterministic picture of the
world on the one hand and the impact of moral luck on human action on
the other. Besides, grounding responsibility in desert seems to support ascriptions of pathological blame to agents trapped in moral dilemmas as
well as of excess blame in cases of joint action. Desert is also notoriously
difficult, if not impossible, to determine (at least with sufficient precision). And finally, though not least important, recent empirical research
on peoples responsibility judgments reveals our common-sense notion of
responsibility to be hopelessly confused and easily manipulated.
So it may be time to rethink our inherited theory and practice of moral
responsibility. Our theoretical and practical needs may be better served
by a less intractable, more forward-looking notion of responsibility. The
aim of the paper is to contrast the predominant, desert-based accounts of
moral responsibility with their rather unpopular rival, the consequencebased accounts, and then show that the latter deserve more consideration
than usually granted by their opponents. In the course of doing so, I assess, and ultimately reject, a number of objections that have been raised
against consequentialist accounts of moral responsibility: that it (i) doesnt
do justice to our common-sense theory and practice of responsibility; (ii)
ties responsibility too closely to influenceability, thereby exposing itself
to the charge of counter-intuitivity; (iii) assigns undeserved responsibility (praise, blame) to agents; (iv) confuses being responsible with holding responsible and (v) provides the wrong-kind-of-reason for praise and
blame. My negative and positive case may not add up to a knockdown argument in favour of revising our ordinary notion of responsibility. As long
as the considerations adduced succeed in presenting the consequentialist
alternative as a serious contender to a pre-arranged marriage between
moral responsibility and desert, however, Im happy to rest my case.
Keywords: Moral responsibility, desert, blame, (reasons for) reactive-attitudes, consequentialism.
121

Vol. XIV, No. 41, 2014
A Semantic Theory of Word Classes

PETER GRDENFORS
Cognitive Science, Lund University

Sydney Technical University
Within linguistics a word class is defined in grammatical terms as a set

of words that exhibit the same syntactic properties. In this paper the aim
is to argue that the meanings of different word classes can be given a
cognitive grounding. It is shown that with the aid of conceptual spaces,
a geometric analysis can be provided for the major word classes. A universal single-domain thesis is proposed, saying that words in all content
word classes, except for nouns, refer to a single domain.
Keywords: Conceptual spaces, cognitive semantics, word class-
es, single domain, convexity, noun, adjective, verb, preposition,

adverb.
1. Cognitively grounded semantics1

What is it that you know when you know a language? Certainly you
know many words of the languageits lexicon; and you know how to
put the words together in an appropriate wayits syntax. More importantly, you know the meaning of the words and what they mean when
put together into sentences. In other words, you know the semantics of
the language. If you do not master the meaning of the words you are
using, there is no point in knowing the syntax. Therefore, as regards
communication, semantic knowledge is more fundamental than syntactic. (I am not saying the syntax does not contribute to the meaning
of a sentence, only that without knowledge of the meanings of the basic
words there is no need for syntax.)
In Grdenfors (2014), I connect the semantics of various forms of
communication to other cognitive processes, in particular concept formation, perception, attention, and memory. As Jackendoff (1983: 3)
puts it: [T]o study semantics of natural language is to study cognitive
1
This article is, to a large extent, a summary of material in Part 2 of Grdenfors
(2014).
179

Vol. XIV, No. 41, 2014
The Geometry of Offense

Pejoratives and Conceptual Spaces
NENAD MIEVI
University of Maribor, Slovenia

Central European University, Hungary
The meaning of pejoratives can be analyzed along several dimensions in

the relevant conceptual space, of the kind put forward by Grdenfors in
his groundbreaking work. The first dimension has to do with neutral,
non-evaluative sense: for a given class (group, social kind) K it delineates the basic causal-cum-descriptive components that determine the
intended reference of the pejorative (say, the social kind gays for faggot). The second comprises the evaluative components ascribed to K,
together with their associated descriptive bases. The third is a prescriptive one, suggesting how badly the target is to be treated. The fourth is
expressive of speakers negative attitude towards members of K. The last
three dimensions suggest that the concept associated with a pejorative
is a thick concept, whose non-empty extension, is, however, determined
by the first, neutral dimension. It also helps understand the dynamics
of pejoratives, including the figurative origin and change of valence. The
whole account treats pejoratives as negative social kind terms with a hybrid bases for reference (causal history plus a neutral description). The
last section raises the general issue of realism in regard to conceptual
spaces, and argues in favor of it, in a dialogue with Grdenfors.
Keywords: Pejoratives, conceptual spaces, hate speech, Grden-
fors.
1. Introduction
I have known Peter Grdenfors for several decades; he has been helping
us at philosophy department in Zadar in the late eighties, way before
the beginning of the Yugoslav war, and he continued with this interaction, after most of the analytic people from Zadar moved to Rijeka and
Maribor in mid-nineties. The publication of his new (2014) book The
Geometry of Meaning, Semantics Based on Conceptual Spaces is a wel195

Vol. XIV, No. 41, 2014
Are Meanings in the Head?

The Explanation of Lexical Attrition
DUNJA JUTRONI
University of Split, Croatia
The main question I consider in this paper is: What is the (explanatory) place of the social in cognitive linguistics? More specifically I am
mainly occupied with the relationship of mind-internal (individual) and
mind-external (social) in cognitive linguistics, particularly in lexical semantics that Grdenfors talks about in the second part of his book The
Geometry of Meaning.
I argue in this paper that the idea of meaning being basically in the
head/mind is fine but not really controversial. What is controversial is
whether the mental states that are responsible for meaning are at least
partly constituted by their relations to the external (social) world. If communicative acts as part of the process of building meanings in any way
constitute meanings, then meanings in the head by themselves cannot
play the explanatory role it is given to them by cognitivists.
I try to prove my point on the example of sociolinguistic analysis of lexical loss in Split dialect arguing that the mechanism of lexical attrition
is nicely explained by Grdenfors idea of semantic transformations in
the conceptual space but the final explanation of the lexical loss is mindexternal and social. It is not only the communicative acts, as a result of
the context of use, but more broadly different social factors that are most
crucial for the explanation of lexical loss.
Keywords: Individual, social, meanings as conceptual spaces, semantic transformations, explanation of lexical loss.
1. Introduction
The belief that meanings are in the head has been one of the tenets
of Cognitive Linguistics (CL). Peter Harder says: Adopting a mindinternal source of explanation has been a pervasive trend during what
may be called the cognitive era from 1960 onwards (2010: 59).
215

Vol. XIV, No. 41, 2014
Articles as a Lexical Pointing System.

Is Unique Identifiability a Linguistic
and Cognitive Universal?
MAJA BRALA-VUKANOVI
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Croatia

Faculty for Translators and Interpreters, University of Trieste, Italy
Departing from the observation that traditional philosophical, lexical

and foreign language approaches to the article system seem to fail in
providing a satisfactory outline of article meaning, this paper aims at
proposing an alternative, cognitively based account of the semantics of
articles. The proposal is to view these closed-class elements as markers
of communicative intention; while being more elliptic than open-class
lexical items, articles appear to be also more cognitively constrained in
the meaning that they lexicalize. In other words, articles are likely to
express content that is more cognitively real, and shared by subfields of
human cognition other than language. The system of articles (in various
languages) is perhaps best understood not as a peculiar phenomenon
that exhausts itself in the description of a list of usage rules, as is currently the trend, but rather as a range of possible codings of the status of nominal reference, whereby different languages choose to express
different coding patterns, which can all, crucially, be reconciled with
the semantic but also cognitive primitive of pointing (as explored by
Grdenfors, 2014: ch. 4). In final analysis it is suggested that pointing
on the one hand, and referential (unique) identification on the other,
are one and the same communicative universal, with only one distinction: the former is essentially physical and the latter primarily linguistic (lexical), but the two actually overlap. Accessing this (overlapping)
conceptual content of the formal linguistic element known as article
means accessing article meaning, and understanding this link provides
new hopes for theoretical and methodological representation of article
systems (crosslinguistically).
Keywords: Articles, cognitive semantics, determinacy, identifiability, specificity.
231

Vol. XIV, No. 41, 2014
Whats in a Path? On Path Verbs:

From Thought to Language
ANITA MEMIEVI
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, Croatia
The main requirement for Grdenforss meeting of the minds is that

speakers mental spaces are sufficiently similar. If this requirement is
not met, communication cannot take place. This meeting of the minds is
not always easy to achieve even among interlocutors who share a mother
tongue, and it becomes even more complicated when an interlocutor is
speaking in his/her second language. The reason for this is that the
geometries of meaning of different languages frequently do not match.
In this paper the focus is on what happens when two languages, i.e.
Croatian and English, conceptualize space in different ways, that is,
when they have different geometries of space. We first look at the findings of neuroscience, psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics. Next,
we compare Croatian and English and analyze what consequences these
differences in the conceptualization of space have for Croatians as L2
speakers of English when it comes to English path verbs. Finally, we
look at what crosslinguistic differences between Croatian and English
can reveal about the English path verbs.
Keywords: Meeting of the minds, geometry of meaning, Croatian,
English, Path, path verbs.
1. Introduction
Path is a constituent element of any motion event. Grdenfors defines
it as continuous series of changes of states (2014: 160). Talmy offers a
somewhat different definition and states that it is the path along which
the Figure moves in relation to the Ground (Talmy 2001). Regardless
of how the definition is worded, Path could be imagined as the trail
that someones footsteps (or tires, in the case of a vehicle) leave on the
ground.1
1
Or, in the case of an airplane, as the white line that remains in the sky as the
consequence of the exhaust fumes.
251

Vol. XIV, No. 41, 2014
Comments: The Role of Attention

in Lexical Semantics
PETER GRDENFORS
Cognitive Science, Lund University

Sydney Technical University
This article contains comments on the other papers in this volume. I

take up the roles of the world, the mind and the society in my semantic theory. I show how semantic differences between languages can be
seen as attending to different parts of event structures. The role of the
emotion domain in relation to the meaning of pejoratives is discussed.
Finally, the idea that articles in language should be seen as an extension
of pointing is shown to be congenial with my theory of semantics based
on conceptual spaces.
Keywords: Lexical semantics, conceptual spaces, meeting of minds,
attention, pointing, cognitive linguistics, verb-framed language,
satellite-framed language, pejorative, emotion, definite article, indefinite article.
I am very grateful for the contributions that my co-symposiasts publish

in this volume. Their articles are valuable in themselves, but they also
made me think further about my own position concerning what constitutes semantics.
I begin with some general comments on semantics that were prompted by Dunja Jutronis paper. Then Anita Memievis paper made me
consider to what extent meanings differ between languages. After that
I take up the challenge from Nenad Mievis paper concerning the
role of emotions for meaning. Finally, Maja Brala-Vukanovis theory
about the role of articles in language nicely complements my own and I
make some general remarks concerning the connections between pointing, articles, the world and the common ground of the speakers. Interestingly enough, it turns out that a common theme in the papers is the
role of attention in determining the meaning of different expressions.
As I discuss below, language is a tool for reaching joint attention by
pointing to places in our inner worlds.
269

Vol. XIV, No. 42, 2014
Second-Personal Reasons
and Special Obligations
JRG LSCHKE
Philosophisches Institut
University of Berne
The paper discusses the second-personal account of moral obligation as

put forward by Stephen Darwall. It argues that on such an account,
an important part of our moral practice cannot be explained, namely
special obligations that are grounded in special relationships between
persons. After highlighting the problem, the paper discusses several
strategies to accommodate such special obligations that are implicit in
some of Darwalls texts, most importantly a disentanglement strategy
and a reductionist strategy. It argues that neither one of these strategies
is entirely convincing. The last part of the papers sketches a novel account of how to accommodate special obligations in a second-personal
framework: According to this suggestion, special obligations might be
due to the fact that relationships change the normative authority that
persons have over each other.
Keywords: Darwall, second-personal reasons, agent-relative reasons,
special obligations.
1. Introduction
Imagine that a friend of yours needs help moving house and asks you
to come over next Saturday in order to carry some boxes. You might not
feel inclined to do soin fact, you might already have made plans to
spend a nice day in the parkbut you acknowledge a duty of friendship
to cancel those plans and help him. You might even acknowledge what
Stephen Darwall calls a second-personal reason to help your friend: A
reason that is grounded in (de jure) authority relations that an addresser takes to hold between him and his addressee (Darwall 2006:
4) and that depends on the possibility of the reasons being addressed
person-to-person. (Darwall 2006: 8). After all, your friend has special
authority over you insofar as he can demand actions that not every
293

Vol. XIV, No. 42, 2014
From Self-Deception to Self-Control:

Emotional Biases and the Virtues
of Precommitment
VASCO CORREIA
Insituto de Filosofia da Linguagem

Universidade Nova De Lisboa
Intentionalist approaches portray self-deceivers as akratic believers,

subjects who deliberately choose to believe p despite knowing that p is
false. In this paper, I argue that the intentionalist model leads to a
series of paradoxes that seem to undermine it. I show that these paradoxes can nevertheless be overcome if we accept the hypothesis that selfdeception is a non-intentional process that stems from the influence of
emotions on judgment. Furthermore, I propose a motivational interpretation of the phenomenon of hyperbolic discounting bias, highlighting
the role of emotional biases in akratic behavior. Finally, I argue that
we are not the helpless victims of our irrational attitudes, insofar as we
have the abilityand arguably the epistemic obligationto counteract
motivational biases.
Keywords: Akrasia, emotions, epistemic responsibility, hyperbolic
discounting, irrationality, motivational biases, precommitment,

self-deception, self-control.
1. Introduction
Audi suggests that a philosophy of mind that cannot account for [selfdeception] is seriously deficient, and a psychology that says nothing
about it is unwarrantedly narrow (1988: 92). Yet, self-deception poses
both a descriptive and a normative challenge. From a descriptive point
of view, the difficulty concerns the very possibility of self-deception,
particularly if we accept the influential intentionalist model (Davidson 1985a, Pears 1984, Sartre 1969, Scott-Kakures 1996, Gardner
1993, Bermudez 1997), which maintains that self-deceivers typically
get themselves to believe that p is true, knowing all the while that p is
309

Vol. XIV, No. 42, 2014
A Dialectical View of
Freedom and Resentment
DAVID BOTTING
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
In this paper I wish to look at the structure of Strawsons argument

in the classic paper Freedom and Resentment. My purpose is less to
evaluate and criticize Strawsons paper as to give a dialectical perspective on it in which Strawson and those he is arguing against are given
specific dialectical roles and the arguments and counter-arguments are
designed with specific dialectical aims in mind. Specific parallels will
be drawn between some things that Strawson says and certain ideas in
dialectical theory. Despite textual evidence that I will appeal to I do not
claim to be reconstructing Strawsons argument; the understanding of
Strawsons argument that I will be trying to make clear is my own.
Keywords: Compatibilism, incompatibilism, reactive attitudes,
dialectics, P. F. Strawson.
1. Second-order moral practice compatibilism

In this paper I will argue that Strawson is most profitably understood
as arguing for what I would like to call second-order moral practice
compatibilism. What is second-order moral practice compatibilism?
First-order compatibilists argue that determinism is compatible
with free will (in which case I will call them free will compatibilists)
or that determinism is compatible with moral responsibility (in which
case I will call them responsibility compatibilists) or that determinism
is compatible with our moral practices (in which case I will call them
moral practice compatibilists).
One may be a free will compatibilist and a moral practice compatibilist without being a responsibility compatibilist; one who argues that
determinism is compatible with free will in the relevant sense of free
will, that this sense is not (or may not be) sufficient to ground claims of
moral responsibility, but that our practices are justified anyway on the
325

Vol. XIV, No. 42, 2014
Pejorative Nouns in Speech Act

of Insulting as Expression
of Verbal Aggression
ANETA STOJI
University of Rijeka
ANITA PAVI PINTARI
University of Zadar
In this paper we investigate lexical, semantic und pragmatic aspects

of pejorative nouns which play an important role as language means
of verbal aggression. The basis of study are nouns in the German and
Croatian language used in the speech act of insult. The aim of this paper
is to describe relative pejoratives, i.e. nouns which have both a neutral
and pejorative meaning when used to refer to individuals. The following
points will be investigated: semantic fields that the relative pejoratives
belong to, their use in sentences, as well as similarities and differences
between the two languages. The lexical aspect of pejoratives together
with their semantic and pragmatic characteristics will be described.
Keywords: Pejorative nouns, verbal aggression, German language,
Croatian language
1. Introduction
The reliance on language as the medium for fulfilling interpersonal
relationships is deeply rooted in philosophy. That is the reason why
it increasingly puts language in focus of the study. Until late into the
20th century, the relationship between language and violence was regarded as an external relationship, as an opposition: violence begins
there where language becomes silent. But language and violence do
not exclude each other; language use can itself be a form of practicing
violence. This was already recognized in the ancient rhetoric. But it
was only in the last third of the 20th century that authors like Jacques
Derrida and Michel Foucaultstarting out from Friedrich Nietzsche
343

Vol. XIV, No. 42, 2014
The Nature of the Literal/

Non-literal Distinction
MARTINA BLEI
Philosophy Department
University of Rijeka
In this paper I would like to suggest that a cognitive approach to pragmatics does not lead necessarily to the impossibility of a distinction between literal and non-literal contents and interpretations. If my reading
is correct, this approach is focused on the cognitive activities that take
place in the minds of regular language users and not on models applied
to ideal speaker-hearers. If we accept that, then we should also accept
that the distinction between the literal and the non-literal is subjective
since different language users will, in certain cases, consider differently
a linguistic element in regards to its belonging to the literal or non-literal domain. In order to save this dichotomy we need to return partially
to a philosophical approach to pragmatics, that is, we need to establish
the distinction between the literal and the non-literal on the basis of generalized objective inferential strategies. The proposal is the following:
the presence of implicit or explicit inferential communicational processes
(explicit and implicit conversational implicatures, as I refer to them)
connected to the literal meaning of the uttered words will be the criterion
for the non-literal status of a linguistic/communicational element. By
applying objective criteria to the subjective inferential processes of actual
language users we can retain both the subjectivity of cognitive differences between individual speakers and the objectivity of the distinction
between the literal and the non-literal.
Keywords: Literal, non-literal, metaphor, conversational implica-
tures, cognitive approach.
1. Introduction
In this paper I shall present an initial draft of the idea that a cognitive
approach to pragmatics, which is focused on the way in which a communicational act is generated in the mind of the speaker and interpreted in the mind of the hearer, does not necessarily lead to the effacement
357

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