Here are readings for our final unit of the semester. I’m not sure how much we’ll get through each week, but start reading through the list at whatever pace you can manage:
- King, “Designating Propositions” (2002)
- King, selection from The Nature and Structure of Content (2007) on logicism — this closely follows his 2002 paper, haven’t reminded myself yet whether there are substantial additions, or substantial parts omitted
- Optional: King, selection from The Nature and Structure of Content (2007) on Schiffer
- Pryor, “Reasons and That-Clauses” (2007)
- Rieppel, “Being Something” (2016)
- Rieppel, “Denoting and Disquoting” (2018)
Reminder that this coming week (Thu Oct 20) the University is on break so we don’t meet. We’ll continue (and conclude) our discussion of the Groenendijk Stokhof and Veltman paper on dynamic semantics for anaphoric pronouns and epistemic modals on Thu Oct 27.
Those of you writing papers for the seminar should get the first papers (aim for 10-12 pages) to me by the end of October. Am glad to discuss your plans/work with you at any stage. The second paper, which will be due Nov 30, can either be a new paper of the same size/scope, or a substantial revision/extension of the first paper, in response to my feedback.
Our reading for our next meeting (and we will spend multiple weeks with it) is:
- Groenendijk, Stokhof, and Veltman, “Coreference and modality” (2006)
You should also read again the programming language introduction we talked through in class (up to and including formula 43). We’ll begin next class by continuing that reading up to and including formula 49. Read those additional pages before class and see how much you can understand, or what questions you have, before we go through it together.
Here is some optional further reading introducing, and summarizing the main approaches to, the problem of donkey anaphora:
- Evans, “Pronouns” (1980)
- Moltmann, “Unbound anaphoric pronouns: e-type, dynamic, and structured-propositions approaches” (2006) — sections 1-3 are a summary of the main approaches, section 4 is her own favored solution
I posted the handout of donkey-related sentences we discussed today, including the tweak we suggested in class to formula 11.
Some final comments on Hob/Nob:
We discussed examples of polysemy and anaphora, where some kind of “meaning shift” occurs, such as He drank three bottles of beer [contents], and smashed them on the floor [containers]. I wanted also to point out that this kind of “meaning shift” can also be seen without explicit anaphora, but other ways where the structure of a sentence can make an expression be “re-used”:
Three bottles! Three bottles of beer he drank, then smashed on the floor! Can you believe it?I meant also to provide some examples of what also look like “meaning shift” with talk about fictional characters: Sherlock Holmes is a very clever detective [fiction-participating or "conniving" use]; he was created by Arthur Conan Doyle [metafictional use]. Also without explicit anaphora:
Sherlock Holmes, a very clever detective, was created by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Our initial reading for next meeting is the SEP article on Anaphora. But as I said, I may also post some additional reading here (as assigned or optional) in the next few days.
In later classes, we will look in more detail at the “dynamic semantics” approach to handling donkey anaphora that is mentioned in the SEP article.
In addition to the Edelberg 1986 and Sandgren 2018 I asked you to look at for this week, here is another reading I suggest. It touches on a number of the issues we’ll be discussing. If you don’t have time to read all of these, focus on the Edelberg.
- Everett, “Referentialism and Empty Names” (2000).
Here are the notes on Geach that we discussed today.
Readings for next week posted below. As I said in class, I may add another reading to the two already posted — at least as optional reading.
As I said in class, here are some initial reading assignments for next two weeks, but I may add some extra things to look at for one or both weeks.
For next meeting, Sept 15, read:
Geach, “Intentional Identity” (1967)
Geach annoyingly alludes to this poem at the start of the paper without explicitly saying so.
Another bit of noise in the article are his references to Quine. You don’t need to know the details of Quine’s views to follow the basic dialectic; so just ignore this if it’s confusing.
Finally, the sentence Geach discusses has the form (a)
Hob thinks … and Nob wonders whether …The main issues would also arise if the sentence instead had the form (b)Hob thinks … and Nob thinks …, and many later authors do discuss version (b) instead. There are special complications that come in when we talk about what Nob wonders (or what he wants) instead of what he thinks. Geach discusses these special complications on p. 631 of his article, and we’ll talk about them when we meet. But it may help you to focus your main attention on the simpler sentence (b).Edelberg, “Intrasubjective Intentional Identity” (2006)
For our meeting after that, Sept 22, read:
Edelberg, “A New Puzzle about Intentional Identity” (1986) — you can skip the discussion of Montague from mid p. 5 to mid p. 7.
Sandgren, “Which witch is which? Exotic objects and intentional identity” (2018)
If you want to read other work pursuing analogies between de se attitude reports and patterns in our de re attitude reports, here are two articles: Ninan 2012, Ninan 2013, that share some ideas with Richard 1983. But the machinery Ninan uses is different. If you want to read more about how Richard developed his views, or how others reacted to his proposals, talk to me for references.
I prepared some handouts supplying some background for the parts of the Richard article we haven’t discussed yet, and then an annotated walk through those parts. Have a look at these before our next meeting, and work towards understanding as much of it as you can before we meet. You are welcome to get in touch with me for help. Also, our next meeting will mainly go through the annotated handout and sorting out your questions about the technical specifics. So you should already be prepared with questions when we meet. We’ll also try to evaluate how well-motivated is Richard’s decision to make reports sensitive to just those additional features of reports.