I spent yesterday at the MIT/UMass/UConn/Brown Semantics Workshop. It was lots of fun, even if it has a slightly unwieldy name. In the future the conference will be the Southern New England Workshop in Semantics (SNEWS), and we’ll try to present long drawly papers at the end to live down to the name. Next year the conference will be at Brown for the first time, and I encourage everyone in the area who’s interested in semantics to attend.

It was lots of fun seeing all these semantics papers. Despite all the presentations being by graduate students (at least I think they were all grad students, apologies if I’m misclassifying anyone) the quality was as high as I’m used to from philosophy conferences. It was also really nice to see people presenting theories with testable consequences, and then watching them get tested during discussion. Whatever their other virtues, it’s rare to see that at metaphysics or epistemology presentations.

The best presentation was by Pranav Anand of work he’s doing with Andrew Nevins. They make a convincing case that Zazaki, a language spoken in Turkish Kurdistan, contains monsters. (An early version of this paper, attributed just to Nevins, is online here.)

In Zazaki the translation of (1) can mean either (2) or (3).

(1) Melanie said that I’m an idiot.
(2) Melanie said that Brian is an idiot.
(3) Melanie said that Melanie is an idiot.

There were two surprising qualifications of this. Apparently the monstrous readings are not available for all propositional attitude verbs. So (4) must mean (5).

(4) Melanie believes that I’m an idiot.
(5) Melanie believes that Brian is an idiot.

And there is a coordination constraint on the readings of the indexicals. They must either all behave monstrously, or all behave ‘normally’. So if I’m reporting to Ted an utterance of Melanie’s to Charlotte, then (6) can mean (7) or (8), but not (9) or (10).

(6) Melanie said that I owe you money.
(7) Melanie said that Brian owes Ted money.
(8) Melanie said that Melanie owes Charlotte money.
(9) Melanie said that Brian owes Charlotte money.
(10) Melanie said that Melanie owes Ted money.

Given those results you might think that we have a confusion of direct with indirect speech reports here, but they test for that hypothesis and make some convincing arguments that no such confusion is happening. They then have some very complicated examples involving embedded reports to test various hypotheses about how to understand these monsters.

There’s been a few other papers arguing for the existence of monsters in various languages, but these results seem much more convincing than any others previously presented. The paper is just an excellent combination of theoretical and applied work, and hopefully it will be in print somewhere prominent soon.

I also learned about one other surprising result that I’d never heard before. Present a five year old with the following scenario: there are four horses, three of them are ridden by boys and the fourth is not, and there is nothing else in the picture. Then ask the child whether the following sentence is true or false: Every boy is riding a horse. A large percentage of the children will say this is not true. There’s various hypotheses about what is driving this, and a few results about what modifications of the experimental setting will improve children’s results.

The writers in this field commonly distinguish between child-like and adult-like answers to the questions, but it seemed to me that’s being too generous to adults. After all, adults make a very similar mistake in the Wason Selection Task. It would be interesting to know whether the same things that improve performance in the Wason Selection Task improve performance among children.

I meant to post a whole bunch of things about the Carleton Semantics Conference, but it looks like that won’t happen. At the risk of sounding perfunctory, let me note at the start that it was an excellent conference. The organisers, lead by Rob Stainton and Stephen Davis, did an excellent job. The conference was in honour of Ernie Lepore, and I think it must have been pretty cool for Ernie to have that many good people turn up, and that many good papers presented, at a conference in his honour.

For the first time I wished I had a laptop with a wireless network connection so I could blog papers as they were being done. Of course, that would have meant publishing before checking what was for attribution or not. At a conference you’d think everything was on the record, but some participants were clearly off-the-record at all times. (And now that I’ve reached the stage where I pay attention to what’s on the record and not, I think I’ve clearly been paying too much attention to this blogging thing.) But that didn’t happen, so now I have to try writing some things up after the event.

Michael Glanzberg presented the paper he and Susanna Siegel wrote on complex demonstratives. The full paper is available online, and it’s well worth reading.

Presupposition and Policing in Complex Demonstratives

They defend the following theory. Any sentence containing a complex demonstrative that F fails to express a proposition if the object “appropriated” by the speaker’s demonstrative is not F. Call such complex demonstratives, and the sentences containing them unfulfilled. The primary argument for this thesis involves the following two tests. If the two tests are failed, they say an utterance fails to express a proposition.

Echo Assessment

An echo-assessment of a sentence S that has already been spoken in a context is a repetition of S (perhaps correcting for occurrences of indexicals like I and you), preceded by either yes or no. In responding to an utterance of [an utterance of an unfulfilled sentence], speakers (who do not have any misapprehension that there is a demonstrated object) are strongly unwilling to make echo-assessments. (pg. 18)

Indirect Speech Reports
If a sentence does not express a proposition, say Glanzberg and Siegel, speakers will not report it homophonically. So by this test, if A’s utterance does not express a proposition because ‘Sidd Finch’ is non-referring, then B’s report should be inappropriate.

A: Sidd Finch signed for the Mets
B: A said that Sidd Finch signed for the Mets.

The hypothesis then is that utterances containing unfulfilled complex demonstratives pass these tests, and so fail to express propositions. Let’s test this with a particular example. (Not, I should add, Glanzberg and Siegel’s – they keep a slightly higher class of example.) Kramer is snacking on some things in a small bowl on the bar. Sadly for Kramer, the bowl is an ashtray, and he’s snacking on cigarette butts. He thinks, somehow, that he’s eating pretzels. Naturally, he’s not feeling too good after a while, so he utters (1).

(1) These pretzels are making me thirsty.

We can accept that the things Kramer is eating are making him thirsty. And he intends to denote the things he’s eating by ‘these pretzels’. But could we say either (2) or (3)?

(2) Yes, those pretzels are making him thirsty.
(3) No, those pretzels are not making him thirsty.

Glanzberg and Siegel say no, and this sounds reasonable. The indirect speech report test asks whether (4) would be a decent report of Kramer’s utterance.

(4) Kramer said those pretzels are making him thirsty.

I think (4)’s a little bad, so it looks like (1) passes that test as well. Does that mean that (1) fails to express a proposition? No, because the tests return too many false positives to be comfortable with such a conclusion. Jeff King and Mike Fara came up with nice examples of false positives, but I won’t repeat their examples. Here’s one example to add to what they said. Consider Kripke’s example of the person who misidentifies Jones (who he can see in the distance) as Smith, and says

(5) Smith is hunting squirrels.

Assume Jones really is hunting squirrels. Would we happily echo-assess (5)? I think not. Would we happily report this by saying He said that Smith is hunting squirrels? Again, I think not. Such a report sounds exactly as bad as (4) to me. But (5) clearly expresses a proposition, so I think we have a false positive here.

I do think Glanzberg and Siegel’s tests test for something though, just not what they say it is. What’s important in Kripke’s example is that speaker meaning comes apart from semantic meaning. I conjecture that whenever that happens Glanzberg and Siegel’s tests will be passed. So what their information shows is that the semantic meaning of (1) is not the same as its speaker meaning. You might think this is a boring conclusion, since the speaker is obviously confused about something. But it might not have been obvious that the fact the speaker was confused about was semantically relevant, and I think this is some evidence that it is.

Here’s another test for whether a sentence expresses a proposition.

T-schema test
An utterance of S does not express a proposition in a context if an utterance of “S” is true iff S would have been defective in that context. (Assume I have corner quotes here if that’s the kind of thing you worry about.)

This returns the nice results that lexically defective utterances (those containing non-words) do not express propositions, and that utterances containing racist epithets do not either. (You might not think the latter result is nice, but I think the analysis of racist epithets as embodying false presuppositions is attractive, and it suggests sentences containing these terms fail to express propositions.) It also does not say that (5) does not express a proposition, which is nice. But what does it say about complex demonstratives. Well, that’s hard to tell, because as far as I can (6), said by Kramer in the relevant context, is clearly marginal.

(6) “These pretzels are making me thirsty” is true iff these pretzels are making me thirsty.

If my judgment is out here, and (6) is just bad, then I’m inclined to think Glanzberg and Siegel are correct.

Here’s a final question. Glanzberg and Siegel only discuss singular complex demonstratives. But the issue they are interested in arises for plural complex demonstratives as well. How does their thesis apply in those cases? If none of the things Kramer intends to denote are pretzels, then his complex demonstrative is clearly unfulfilled. But what if we change the case so there are no cigarette butts in the bowl, but a mix of pretzels and other snacks, but Kramer still clearly intends to denote all the things he’s eating? What if there are a majority of pretzels? A large majority? This isn’t, perhaps, a question about complex demonstratives as such as about generics, but I think it’s an interesting issue.

The papers blog is finally up. The delay, and the shortage of posting, is because I’ve been reworking an old paper that I’m taking on the road shortly. It’s an argument that anti-scepticism, a certain weak version of internalism and a certain weak version of empiricism (that there are no deeply contingent a priori knowable propositions) are incompatible. It’s all very drafty, indeed it even contains a ‘Note to Self’ on a point that probably needs correction. But just in case you want to see what my papers look like before they hit the ‘big time’, here it is…

Scepticism, Rationalism and Externalism

On a different topic, Brian Leiter seems to have overtaken me for the title of hit count leader among American analytic philosophy blogs. If he was General Boykin I’m sure he’d be dancing around his office now singing out “My God is bigger than Weatherson’s”, but I suspect that’s not Prof Leiter’s style.

The papers blog is finally up. The delay, and the shortage of posting, is because I’ve been reworking an old paper that I’m taking on the road shortly. It’s an argument that anti-scepticism, a certain weak version of internalism and a certain weak version of empiricism (that there are no deeply contingent a priori knowable propositions) are incompatible. It’s all very drafty, indeed it even contains a ‘Note to Self’ on a point that probably needs correction. But just in case you want to see what my papers look like before they hit the ‘big time’, here it is…

Scepticism, Rationalism and Externalism

On a different topic, Brian Leiter seems to have overtaken me for the title of hit count leader among American analytic philosophy blogs. If he was General Boykin I’m sure he’d be dancing around his office now singing out “My God is bigger than Weatherson’s”, but I suspect that’s not Prof Leiter’s style.

The good thing about getting to work this early is that you can, in principle, get two hours work done before the crowds arrive. The bad thing is you have to deal with less than optimal weather. I don’t know if it was strictly speaking snowing this morning, but it was precipitating, and the precipitation was at least on the borderline between snow and rain. Not a good sign in October.

First, the Northwest Student Philosophy Conference is an annual event held at Western Washington University which gives Philosophy undergraduates a chance to present papers they have written and attend presentations by fellow students. This conference is open to all who wish to attend, and there will not be any fees. If you are interested in presenting, commenting or attending, follow the above link for details.

Second, there’s this lucrative offering.

The Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Younger Scholar Prize

Sponsored by the A. M. Monius Institute and administered by the editorial board of Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, the annual essay competition is open to scholars who are within 10 years of receiving a Ph.D. or students who are currently enrolled in a graduate program. (Independent scholars should inquire with the editor to determine eligibility.) The award is $2500. Essays may be on any topic in metaphysics; they should not be primarily historical in nature. Winning essays shall appear in Oxford Studies in Metaphysics. The first volume will appear later this year, with new essays by David Lewis, David Armstrong, Peter Unger, Peter van Inwagen, and John Heil, among others.

Essays should generally be no longer than 10,000 words; longer essays may be considered, but authors must seek prior approval by providing the editor with an abstract and word count by November 1, 2003. Submissions must be postmarked by November 30, 2003, to be assured of consideration for this year’s prize. Refereeing will be blind; authors should omit remarks and references that might disclose their identities. The winner will be determined by a committee of members of the editorial board of Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, and announced in February, 2004.

Inquiries and submissions should be addressed to:

Dean Zimmerman, Editor
Oxford Studies in Metaphysics
Philosophy Department
Rutgers University
Davison Hall, Douglass Campus
New Brunswick, NJ 08903

$2500. Wow. Maybe I shouldn’t have posted this! If blog posting is slight the next six weeks, you’ll know where I am – slaving away over hot metaphysics galleys.

PS: If you haven’t voted yet on the poll below, don’t forget to do so. I will write up the debate it is relevant to shortly, perhaps after I dash off a quick paper on modal parts.

Antecedent to writing something about the Ottawa Semantics Conference, I wanted to get some opinions about a case that became relevant.

I have three coins, A, B and C in front of me. They are each fair, unbiased, coins. I am thinking about flipping some of them. Before I do, I utter each of the following sentences.

(1) No coin will land heads if I flip it.
(2) Coin A will land heads if I flip it.
(3) Coin B will land heads if I flip it.
(4) Coin C will land heads if I flip it.

I decide to flip all three coins, and A lands heads, while B and C land tails. I then look back on my four utterances. I quickly decide that (3) and (4) were not true, since if they were true by modus ponens I’d conclude B and C landed heads. But what about (1) and (2)? Some people have hazy intuitions here, so I thought I’d ask the experts, i.e. my readers. And thanks to blogpoll, I can.

The papers blog is up, with one new site – Monash graduate Toby Handfield has a site with some papers on laws and laws – and a review by Karen Bennett of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale. Karen’s main complaint was that there wasn’t much philosophy in BtVS and Philosophy, but I thought she went a little overboard in arguing for that here:

Philosophers are simply not in the business of studying the fictional content of fictions.

fn: That is not to say that they are not interested in fiction qua fiction. The prospects for ’fictionalism’ about various problematic entities—numbers, possible worlds, moral truths—partly turn on working out how to understand the notion of truth according to a fiction. And both philosophers of language and metaphysicians are interested in metaphor. Etc.

That’s a bit metaphysics-centred I think. Even if fictionalism were obviously false, and even if we had settled all problems about metaphor, there would still be an interesting philosophical question about the nature of fictional representation. Representation as such is a philosophically interesting topic, probably the most philosophically interesting. And fictional representation is an intriguing special case of that topic, independent of its connection to anything else.

This is not to say that the content of any given fiction is philosophically interesting. Concluding that would be like inferring from the fact that mental representation is philosophically interesting (and since it’s the central philosophical question of the last 350 years I guess it is) to the claim that what Joe Bloggs is thinking right now is philosophically interesting. So I agree (I think) with what Karen is concluding here, but I think her arguments for it are too sweeping.

The papers blog is finally up. Sorry for the delay, and for the lack of abstracts recently. Some days the abstracts are by far the slowest part of putting the entry together, so if I’m rushed and it’s a choice between not doing the day’s entry and doing it without abstracts, the abstracts go. They will be returning when business returns to something like normal.

The highlights of the day’s entries are three to-be-published papers by Tom Kelly on epistemology. If you are interested in this kind of thing (i.e. torture) there’s also a link on his page to a Notre Dame fansite. I don’t want to even think about sports of any kind until at least, well perhaps until Australia is in the World Cup final.

The semantics conference at the weekend was lots of fun, and I hope to have lots to report over the next week. It was odd having to constantly check whether things being said were for attribution or not. I felt like a weird kind of journalist. Some senior philosophers of language were permanently off the record, or at least I thought it was best to assume they were.

I’ve spent most of the last few weeks working with Andy Egan and John Hawthorne on a long paper on epistemic modals. Despite this paper’s length, there are many topics related to the behaviour of epistemic modals that we haven’t had a chance to discuss. The paper spends some time on the relation between epistemic modals and propositional attitude verbs, and a little on their interaction with temporal modifiers, but that’s about it, and there’s plenty more to discuss. Just getting the issues about tense right would be a paper in itself, and we don’t touch the interesting questions about the relationship between epistemic modals and quantifiers that Kai von Fintel and Sabine Iatridou have said so much about.

The usual thing to do when you’ve got too many ideas for a paper is to write a book. The ‘idea overflow’ probably isn’t enough for us to write a book, but Andy and I thought there might be enough interest here to put together an edited collection of original papers on epistemic modals.

Epistemic modals have been the focus of recent work by semanticists (such as von Fintel and Iatridou), epistemologists (such as Keith DeRose) and logicians (such as Frank Veltman). But there have not been many connections between the work produced in these various fields, despite the fact that everyone is working on the same phenomena. One thing a book could do is encourage some interaction between these hitherto disparate groups.

Further, epistemic modals are an interesting testing ground for some big picture questions in philosophy of language. DeRose has suggested that a contextualist account of epistemic modals is plausible. In our paper Egan, Hawthorne and I look a little more favorably on a ‘relative truth’ approach of the kind pioneered by John MacFarlane. Some of the data suggests we’re all wrong and ‘might’ has no semantic role at all, but is rather a speech-act modifier. So debates about epistemic modals feed into much larger debate about the nature of language.

The upshot of all this was that we thought an edited collection would be a good idea. But such a book needs three classes of people to make it work. We would need

• People who would be interested in reading such a book
• People who would be interested in writing for such a book
• People who would be interested in publishing such a book

If you fall into any of these categories (especially the third!) let me know either by email (brian_weatherson at brown.edu) or through the comments board.