A posteriori necessities in one dimension

Arguably, the proposition that Mark Twain is Samuel Clemens and the proposition that water is H2O are both a posteriori. Nevertheless, they both seem to be necessary. Ever since Davies and Humberstone (Philos Stud 38(1):1–31, 1980), it has been known that two-dimensional semantics can account for this fact. But two-dimensionalism isn’t the only theory on the market that purports to do so. In this paper, I will look at two alternatives, one by Scott Soames and one by Kathrin Glüer-Pagin and Peter Pagin, and argue that both of them fail. Regarding the former, I argue that the conceptually possible but metaphysically impossible worlds one is required to postulate are hard to conceive of on closer inspection. As for the latter, the proposal doesn’t work for certain modal sentences, and I show that it cannot be easily amended.

Three accounts of propositional relation reports

Peter Hanks and Scott Soames have developed a theory of propositions as structured cognitive event types, as have I in earlier works. They use the theory to offer similar accounts of transparent propositional relation reports, and very different accounts of opaque reports. For both, the sentences used to report propositional attitudes or speech acts are semantically unambiguous. Hanks invokes context-sensitivity, Soames pragmatics, to account for the different interpretations. I raise problems and offer solutions. Their accounts succumb to the non-compositionality of transparent reports, and wrongly predict that all propositional relation reports have both transparent and opaque interpretations. Soames’s pragmatic enrichment account of the opaque interpretation is unfounded, and forces him to conclude that competent speakers do not know what the sentences they use mean. The notion of an “object-dependent” or “bare” proposition is both problematic and unnecessary. I offer a new account, on which propositional relation reports have the semantic ambiguity characteristic of idioms, with the transparent interpretation being highly but not completely compositional.

Historiography, Philosophy of History and the Historical Turn in Analytic Philosophy

This article has three main interconnected aims. First, I illustrate the historiographical conceptions of three early analytic philosophers: Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein. Second, I consider some of the historiographical debates that have been generated by the recent historical turn in analytic philosophy, looking at the work of Scott Soames and Hans-Johann Glock, in particular. Third, I discuss Arthur Danto’s Analytic Philosophy of History, published 50 years ago, and argue for a reinvigorated analytic philosophy of history.

The metaphysics of content : towards a minimalist account of propositions

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Propositions appear to be needed as the objects of belief and other propositional attitudes, the primary bearers of truth and falsity, and the semantic contents of sentences, but there remains significant debate over their existence and their nature. It is argued that we have good reason to believe in propositions and recent arguments to the contrary are responded to. Recent attempts by Jeffrey C. King, Scott Soames, and Peter Hanks to account for the nature of propositions are then considered. These accounts are claimed to be attractive in making propositions naturalistically acceptable. For King, propositions are facts whose existence depends on language and mind. For Soames and Hanks, propositions are types of predicative acts. Each account is put forth to explain how propositions represent things as being a certain way, and so possess truth-conditions. It is argued, however, that while propositions are the contents of representations, they are not themselves representational. Furthermore, the accounts of King and Soames are rejected on the grounds that they involve notions such as ascription and predication to explain features of propositions, whereas it is argued that these notions are best understood as relations to propositions, and so cannot be used in an account of propositions. A minimalist account of propositions is then argued for. Rather than seeking to explain how propositions perform their roles in terms of their underlying nature, it is argued that we should take their roles as explanatorily fundamental and explain features of propositions in terms of these roles.

Kripke’s sole route to the necessary a posteriori

In ‘Kripke on epistemic and metaphysical possibility: two routes to the necessary a posteriori’, Scott Soames identifies two arguments for the existence of necessary a posteriori truths in Naming and Necessity (NN). He argues that Kripke’s second argument relies on either of two principles, each of which leads to contradiction. He also claims that it has led to ‘two-dimensionalist’ approaches to the necessary a posteriori which are fundamentally at odds with the insights about meaning and modality expressed in NN. I argue that the alleged second argument is not in NN. I identify the mistakes that lead to Soames’ misinterpretation.