<Rant>Why do so many arguments for contextualism about this that and the other only ever consider simple sentences containing the allegedly context-sensitive term? A thorough study of the data should include, at a minimum, a glance at how the term behaves in the presence of temporal operators (as in (2) above), in conditionals, in the scope of quantifiers and, though this is often going to be hard work, speech reports. My new methodological principle is to not accept any contextualist argument that doesn’t include discussion of at least two of these categories, preferably all four.</Rant>

To be fair, Keith’s arguments for contextualism don’t just look at simple sentences, because he makes a point of looking at embeddings under negation, and in fact contextualists often have a simpler story to tell than their invariantist rivals about the behaviour of the term in question under negation. That’s a good start, but we BloodY-Minded Bull-headed Invariantists (BYMBIs) might well hold out for more. Of course, if we insist contextualists produce a full theory of speech reports along with a theory of how contextually variable terms behave in them, we may be accused of setting the bar a wee bit high. Maybe the name BYMBI will be earned then.

<Rant>Why do so many arguments for contextualism about this that and the other only ever consider simple sentences containing the allegedly context-sensitive term? A thorough study of the data should include, at a minimum, a glance at how the term behaves in the presence of temporal operators (as in (2) above), in conditionals, in the scope of quantifiers and, though this is often going to be hard work, speech reports. My new methodological principle is to not accept any contextualist argument that doesn’t include discussion of at least two of these categories, preferably all four.</Rant>

To be fair, Keith’s arguments for contextualism don’t just look at simple sentences, because he makes a point of looking at embeddings under negation, and in fact contextualists often have a simpler story to tell than their invariantist rivals about the behaviour of the term in question under negation. That’s a good start, but we BloodY-Minded Bull-headed Invariantists (BYMBIs) might well hold out for more. Of course, if we insist contextualists produce a full theory of speech reports along with a theory of how contextually variable terms behave in them, we may be accused of setting the bar a wee bit high. Maybe the name BYMBI will be earned then.

Actually getting on to Keith’s paper, he makes a lot of use of the knowledge rule for assertion – say only what you know. I think this is a rule, but I don’t think it’s the only rule of its type. It certainly isn’t the only conversational rule, but some people, including Tim Williamson, and I think Keith, think it’s a special rule. I think it’s not even a rule as such, it’s rather a consequence of the following general principle.

KEITH’S MOOREAN PRINCIPLE: When S says that p, S represents herself as knowing that p. (Also known as TIM’S PRINCIPLE.)

BRIAN’S PRINCIPLE (Stolen, and possibly distorted, from Frank Jackson): When S says that p, she represents herself as having all things considered reasons to accept that p, and that at least some of these reasons were not previously available to at least some of her audience.

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Actually getting on to Keith’s paper, he makes a lot of use of the knowledge rule for assertion – say only what you know. I think this is a rule, but I don’t think it’s the only rule of its type. It certainly isn’t the only conversational rule, but some people, including Tim Williamson, and I think Keith, think it’s a special rule. I think it’s not even a rule as such, it’s rather a consequence of the following general principle.

KEITH’S MOOREAN PRINCIPLE: When S says that p, S represents herself as knowing that p. (Also known as TIM’S PRINCIPLE.)

BRIAN’S PRINCIPLE (Stolen, and possibly distorted, from Frank Jackson): When S says that p, she represents herself as having all things considered reasons to accept that p, and that at least some of these reasons were not previously available to at least some of her audience.

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The following I sentence should be odd I think on most theories of how epistemic modals work.

(5) ?I might know that Clinton was president.

And it does sound pretty bad to me. The problem is that it’s very hard to really know something if you’re in a position to represent yourself as being uncertain about whether you know it, and in saying "It might be that p", you represent yourself as having some uncertainty about whether p. The representation here is an implicature, I think, not a saying. If I say I might be in Providence, that’s true, even though there’s no doubting the matter. But it’s an odd thing to say for just that reason.

OK, no problems so far. But the theoretical argument here shouldn’t be affected by whether we use a that clause or an embedded question. But it is! (6) is not problematic, in the right contexts.

(6) I might know where we can get some beer.

(Imagine saying this in a conversation about where to get late-night beer in a strange city without obvious beer supplies.)

Google reveals that this kind of locution is in fact quite common. What’s even more bizarre is that it’s common to qualify even more, as in (7).

(7) I think I might know where we can get some beer.

No theory here, just an observation.

Here’s an odd fact that about philosophy and linguistics, one that I probably should have noticed a while ago.

In linguistics, or at least in semantics which is the only area I’m particularly familiar with, it is quite common to see PhD dissertations cited in research articles. This is true even when the dissertations have been turned into books. (Which they often are, and which are often widely cited.) To take one prominent example, I think the canonical work on negative polarity items is still William Ladusaw’s 1980 PhD dissertation, which is (or at least should be) cited in every paper on negative polarity.

In philosophy this kind of thing is very rare, at least in the areas in which I work. I can’t remember the last time I saw a dissertation cited that wasn’t written by one of the authors of the citing paper. (Perhaps there were some were the dissertation was by a student of the citer, but I can’t even remember one of those.) And this isn’t because dissertations are published so the books that come out of them are cited. In the areas I work in, many if not most people do not publish their dissertation as a book, and those that do are often much less widely cited than the journal articles by the same authors. (There’s one prominent exception.)

(UPDATE: Gil Harman pointed out several counterexamples to my claim that philosophy dissertations don’t get cited. Historically, there have been lots of dissertations turned into important books – Lewis’s Convention, Nagel’s The Possibility of Altruism, and Katz’s The Problem of Induction and Its Solution are particular prominent examples. I had forgotten a couple of those, but these weren’t the cases I was really worried about, because I suspected that things had changed significantly in the last three decades. But he also quickly noted examples of citations of recent dissertations by Maria Merritt, Peter Turney, John Doris and Sarah McGrath, which really do constitute counterexamples to the thesis I was advancing here. One may well conclude this undermines my argument for some of the conclusions below.)

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I’ve long been interested in whether my truer apparatus can help us make progress with the semantic paradoxes. Here’s the kind of thing I have in mind. I’ll do this all with concrete truth values, but ideally it would be possible to replace them all with comparatives. (I don’t know if that really will be possible in this case, but it would be ideal.)

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I’ve long been interested in whether my truer apparatus can help us make progress with the semantic paradoxes. Here’s the kind of thing I have in mind. I’ll do this all with concrete truth values, but ideally it would be possible to replace them all with comparatives. (I don’t know if that really will be possible in this case, but it would be ideal.)

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Jonathan Schaffer pointed out to me that some odd features about speech reports of elliptical, or at least incomplete, utterances. I don’t really know what I think about all the cases, so I thought I’d put one (relatively silly) case here and see if anyone had any reactions to it.

A believes that gentlemen have the following preference ranking: Redheads, Blondes, Brunettes. The following charming conversations ensue.

B: So A, do you prefer blondes or brunettes?
A: Gentlemen prefer blondes, and I am a gentleman.
(Later that day)
C: I’m trying to decide which of my mistresses to take to the gala ball. I want to look like I’m a very stylish gentleman. Should I take the redhead or the blonde?
B: A said that gentlemen prefer blondes.

I’m inclined to think that B’s last comment here is defective. Is that right? If so, are any there cases where intuitively it’s OK to report something of the form "A said that X prefers Y" where A uttered those very words, but A implicitly meant ‘prefers Y to Z’ and in the context of the report it’s natural to take it as meaning ‘prefers Y to W’. (If I’m wrong, then this is just such a case.) If so, some of my arguments against contextualism about knowledge claims are in need of some revision.

How much…

to turn up to a PhD defence with a big cutout letter D and a cutout picket fence, and hold them up at the start of the talk?

to wave them around furiously and cheer loudly after every good response to a question?

How much…

to name your philosophy papers as you might name children? (Today Brian Weatherson from Brown is presenting a talk called "Christopher".)

to name your children as you might name philosophy papers?