Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. How to Misspell 'Paris'.James Miller - forthcoming - Philosophy.
    One feature of language is that we are able to make mistakes in our use of language. Amongst other sorts of mistakes, we can misspeak, misspell, missign, or misunderstand. Given this, it seems that our metaphysics of words should be flexible enough to accommodate such mistakes. It has been argued that a nominalist account of words cannot accommodate the phenomenon of misspelling. I sketch a nominalist trope-bundle view of words that can.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Metaphysics of Puns.James Miller - 2024 - Synthese (5):1-17.
    In this paper, I aim to discuss what puns, metaphysically, are. I argue that the type-token view of words leads to an indeterminacy problem when we consider puns. I then outline an alternative account of puns, based on recent nominalist views of words, that does not suffer from this indeterminacy.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • What’s So Special About Reasoning? Rationality, Belief Updating, and Internalism.Wade Munroe - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10.
    In updating our beliefs on the basis of our background attitudes and evidence we frequently employ objects in our environment to represent pertinent information. For example, we may write our premises and lemmas on a whiteboard to aid in a proof or move the beads of an abacus to assist in a calculation. In both cases, we generate extramental (that is, occurring outside of the mind) representational states, and, at least in the case of the abacus, we operate over these (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Internalist priorities in a philosophy of words.John Collins - 2023 - Synthese 201 (3):1-33.
    Words appear to be denizens of the external world or, at any rate, not wholly mental, unlike our pains. It is the norm for philosophical accounts of words to reflect this appearance by offering various socio-cultural conditions to which an adequate account of wordhood must cleave. The paper argues, to the contrary, that an adequate account of word phenomena need avert to nothing other than individual psychology along with potential external factors that in-themselves do not count as linguistic. My principal (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • The unreality of words.Roy W. Perrett - 2023 - Synthese 201 (1):1-18.
    Philosophers of language and linguists need to be wary of generalizing from too small a sample of natural languages. They also need to be wary of neglecting possible insights from philosophical traditions that have focused on natural languages other than the most familiar Western ones. Take, for example, classical Indian philosophy, where philosophical concerns with language were very much involved with the early development of Sanskrit linguistics. Indian philosophers and linguists frequently discussed more general issues about semantics, often in ways (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (1 other version)Sameness of Word.James Miller - 2022 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 18 (2):2-26.
    Although the metaphysics of words remains a relatively understudied domain, one of the more discussed topics has been the question of how to account for the apparent sameness of words. Put one way, the question concerns what it is that makes two word- instances (or tokens) instances of the same word. In this paper, I argue that the existing solutions to the problems all fail as they take the problem of sameness of word to be a problem about how one (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • The metaphysical burden of Millianism.Nikhil Mahant - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-19.
    The Millian semantic view of names relies on a metaphysical view of names—often given the label ‘common currency conception’ —on which the names of distinct individuals count as distinct names. While even defenders of the Millian view admit that the CCC ‘does not agree with the most common usage’, I will argue further that the CCC makes names exceptional amongst the class of linguistic expressions: if the CCC is correct, then names must have a sui-generis metaphysical nature, distinct from the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Words on Kripke’s Puzzle.Maciej Tarnowski & Maciej Głowacki - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-21.
    In this paper we present a solution to Saul Kripke’s Puzzle About Belief Meaning and use, Dordrecht, 1979) based on Kaplan’s metaphysical picture of words. Although it is widely accepted that providing such a solution was one of the main incentives for the development of Kaplan’s theory, it was never presented by Kaplan in a systematic manner and was regarded by many as unsatisfactory. We agree with these critiques, and develop an extension of Kaplan’s theory by introducing the notion of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • What it takes to make a word.Wade Munroe - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-30.
    Consider the following object, where, depending on how you are viewing this paper, the object may be a series of ink markings, a portion of a matrix of pixels through or from which light is emitted, etc.,augeLet’s call the object ‘Shape’. Is Shape a word token? If so, what word type is it a token of? Given how words are traditionally individuated, the Spanish, “auge”—meaning, apogee or peak—the French, “auge”—meaning, basin or bowl—and the German, “auge”—meaning, eye, are different words. So, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Words, Species, and Kinds.J. T. M. Miller - 2021 - Metaphysics 4 (1):18–31.
    It has been widely argued that words are analogous to species such that words, like species, are natural kinds. In this paper, I consider the metaphysics of word-kinds. After arguing against an essentialist approach, I argue that word-kinds are homeostatic property clusters, in line with the dominant approach to other biological and psychological kinds.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Musical Notation.Michael Dickson - 2024 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 11.
    The main goal of this essay is to propose and make plausible a framework for developing a philosophical account of musical notation. The proposed framework countenances four elements of notation: symbols (abstract objects that collectively constitute the backbone of a ‘system’ of notation), their characteristic ‘forms’ (for example, shapes, understood abstractly), the concrete instances, or ‘engravings’, of those forms, and the meanings of the symbols. It is argued that these elements are distinct. Along the way, several preliminary arguments are given (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Unspeakable names.Eliot Michaelson - 2023 - Synthese 201 (2):1-19.
    There are some names which cannot be spoken and others which cannot be written, at least on certain very natural ways of conceiving of them. Interestingly, this observation proves to be in tension with a wide range of views about what names are. Prima facie, this looks like a problem for predicativists. Ultima facie, it turns out to be equally problematic for Millians. For either sort of theorist, resolving this tension requires embracing a revisionary account of the metaphysics of names. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • (1 other version)Istovjetnost riječi.J. T. M. Miller - 2022 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 18 (2):2-26.
    Although the metaphysics of words remains a relatively understudied domain, one of the more discussed topics has been the question of how to account for the apparent sameness of words. Put one way, the question concerns what it is that makes two word- instances (or tokens) instances of the same word. In this paper, I argue that the existing solutions to the problems all fail as they take the problem of sameness of word to be a problem about how one (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Why are you talking to yourself? The epistemic role of inner speech in reasoning.Wade Munroe - 2022 - Noûs 56 (4):841-866.
    People frequently report that, at times, their thought has a vocal character. Thinking commonly appears to be accompanied or constituted by silently ‘talking’ to oneself in inner speech. In this paper, we explore the specifically epistemic role of inner speech in conscious reasoning. A plausible position—but one I argue is ultimately wrong—is that inner speech plays asolelyfacilitative role that is exhausted by (i) serving as the vehicle of representation for conscious reasoning, and/or (ii) allowing one to focus on certain types (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • The laws of modality.Matthew Tugby - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (8):2597-2618.
    Nomic realists have traditionally put laws to work within a theory of natural modality, in order to provide a metaphysical source for causal necessitation, counterfactuals, and dispositions. However, laws are well-suited to perform other work as well. Necessitation is a widespread phenomenon and includes cases of categorial, conceptual, grounding, mathematical and normative necessitation. A permissive theory of universals allows us to extend nomic realism into these other domains. With a particular focus on grounding necessitation, it is argued that the sorts (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Semiotics in the head: Thinking about and thinking through symbols.Wade Munroe - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (2):413-438.
    Our conscious thought, at least at times, seems suffused with language. We may experience thinking as if we were “talking in our head”, thus using inner speech to verbalize, e.g., our premises, lemmas, and conclusions. I take inner speech to be part of a larger phenomenon I call inner semiotics, where inner semiotics involves the subjective experience of expressions in a semiotic (or symbol) system absent the overt articulation of the expressions. In this paper, I argue that inner semiotics allows (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Against the status response to the argument from Vagueness.David Mark Kovacs - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-20.
    The Argument from Vagueness for Universalism contends that any non-arbitrary restriction on composition must be vague, but that vague composition leads to unacceptable count indeterminacy. One common response to the argument is that borderline cases of composition don’t necessarily lead to count indeterminacy because a determinately existing thing may be a borderline case of a presently existing concrete composite object. We can collectively refer to such views as versions of the Status Response. This paper argues that the Status Response cannot (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark