There are some objects of perception that are either too far from us to touch or that cannot be t... more There are some objects of perception that are either too far from us to touch or that cannot be touched at all. Typical examples are the sky and the various phenomena that appear in the sky such as rainbows and sunsets. This paper is concerned with the ontological status of the rainbow. Does it exist when it is not actually perceived? Does it exist even when it is not possibly perceived? My conclusion is that a rainbow is a physical event, and that, although it is recognized as a rainbow by its characteristic visual appearance, it should not be identied with that appearance. I suggest that the case of the rainbow might give us useful hints for the analysis of secondary qualities like colors and sounds.
Several years ago, a book titled The Time When the Japanese Language Becomes Extinct made a stir ... more Several years ago, a book titled The Time When the Japanese Language Becomes Extinct made a stir among Japanese intellectuals. Its author, Mizumura Minae, is a female novelist who grew up in the United States. She is concerned about the future of Japanese literature in a world in which English is increasingly becoming the only language that is commonly used by the people from different countries, as the subtitle of her book In the Century of English indicates. She is particularly worried that literary works written in Japanese will find only a negligible number of readers internationally and, as a result, have little significance for world literature. This worry is not groundless, because it is already a reality in almost all branches of natural science. It is generally admitted that, if you do not publish your results in English, then nobody will know them. In other words, a paper written in a language other than English does not count at all in the world of natural science. Accord...
The recent development of plural logic has been a good news for a student of the semantics of a l... more The recent development of plural logic has been a good news for a student of the semantics of a language like Japanese which has no systematic distinction between singular and plural. But plural logic is applicable only to countable predicates; it is not applicable to non-countable predicates. Thus, the first question that must be settled before we may apply plural logic to Japanese is to make sure that it has countable predicates. I argue that Japanese has indeed countable predicates and that they can be recognized by a kind of numeral suffixes which can modify them. Japanese numeral suffixes are divided into three classes, namely, (1) sortal suffixes, or classifiers, (2) unit-forming suffixes, and (3) measure suffixes; they can be distinguished from each other by a certain simple test. I argue that a sortal suffix’s contribution to the meaning of a sentence in which it occurs is not to its truth-conditional content but to its conventional implicature only, and hence that a noun wh...
It is generally acknowledged that Japanese has two kinds of passives, direct passives and indirec... more It is generally acknowledged that Japanese has two kinds of passives, direct passives and indirect passives. We have argued in another paper that direct passives involve an existential quantification and decrease the number of the arguments by one. In the present paper, we claim that a new argument is added to the predicate in indirect passives. Though the indirect passive of an intransitive verb is simply an operation of adding a new argument, in the case of the indirect passive of a transitive verb, this operation is usually coupled with the existential quantification which is found in direct passives, and hence there is no change in the number of the arguments. We also claim that the indirectness of indirect passives consists in that the newly added argument expresses the indirect theme of the reported event, which has some close relation with an element of the same event denoted by the old argument.
Politics and Society (Central China Normal University) 1.1, pp. 59-84., 2013
There are some objects of perception that are either too far from us to touch or that cannot be t... more There are some objects of perception that are either too far from us to touch or that cannot be touched at all. Typical examples are the sky and the various phenomena that appear in the sky such as rainbows and sunsets. This paper is concerned with the ontological status of the rainbow. Does it exist when it is not actually perceived? Does it exist even when it is not possibly perceived? My conclusion is that a rainbow is a physical event, and that, although it is recognized as a rainbow by its characteristic visual appearance, it should not be identi ed with that appearance. I suggest that the case of the rainbow might give us useful hints for the analysis of secondary qualities like colors and sounds.
Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 21, pp. 37-55., 2013
There is a widely shared account of the distinction between types and tokens, which might be term... more There is a widely shared account of the distinction between types and tokens, which might be termed the standard account. However, it has some surprising consequences that are not always realized. According to the standard account, a type is a contingent abstract object that can be created by us, but it does not allow any change and can never be destroyed once it is created, because it is an abstract object. I would like to present an alternative account of types and tokens, according to which types are concrete objects that are located in space and time. This new account is based on a concept that I call a "token generator", which is something that specifies in detail how to produce the tokens.
There are some objects of perception that are either too far from us to touch or that cannot be t... more There are some objects of perception that are either too far from us to touch or that cannot be touched at all. Typical examples are the sky and the various phenomena that appear in the sky such as rainbows and sunsets. This paper is concerned with the ontological status of the rainbow. Does it exist when it is not actually perceived? Does it exist even when it is not possibly perceived? My conclusion is that a rainbow is a physical event, and that, although it is recognized as a rainbow by its characteristic visual appearance, it should not be identied with that appearance. I suggest that the case of the rainbow might give us useful hints for the analysis of secondary qualities like colors and sounds.
Several years ago, a book titled The Time When the Japanese Language Becomes Extinct made a stir ... more Several years ago, a book titled The Time When the Japanese Language Becomes Extinct made a stir among Japanese intellectuals. Its author, Mizumura Minae, is a female novelist who grew up in the United States. She is concerned about the future of Japanese literature in a world in which English is increasingly becoming the only language that is commonly used by the people from different countries, as the subtitle of her book In the Century of English indicates. She is particularly worried that literary works written in Japanese will find only a negligible number of readers internationally and, as a result, have little significance for world literature. This worry is not groundless, because it is already a reality in almost all branches of natural science. It is generally admitted that, if you do not publish your results in English, then nobody will know them. In other words, a paper written in a language other than English does not count at all in the world of natural science. Accord...
The recent development of plural logic has been a good news for a student of the semantics of a l... more The recent development of plural logic has been a good news for a student of the semantics of a language like Japanese which has no systematic distinction between singular and plural. But plural logic is applicable only to countable predicates; it is not applicable to non-countable predicates. Thus, the first question that must be settled before we may apply plural logic to Japanese is to make sure that it has countable predicates. I argue that Japanese has indeed countable predicates and that they can be recognized by a kind of numeral suffixes which can modify them. Japanese numeral suffixes are divided into three classes, namely, (1) sortal suffixes, or classifiers, (2) unit-forming suffixes, and (3) measure suffixes; they can be distinguished from each other by a certain simple test. I argue that a sortal suffix’s contribution to the meaning of a sentence in which it occurs is not to its truth-conditional content but to its conventional implicature only, and hence that a noun wh...
It is generally acknowledged that Japanese has two kinds of passives, direct passives and indirec... more It is generally acknowledged that Japanese has two kinds of passives, direct passives and indirect passives. We have argued in another paper that direct passives involve an existential quantification and decrease the number of the arguments by one. In the present paper, we claim that a new argument is added to the predicate in indirect passives. Though the indirect passive of an intransitive verb is simply an operation of adding a new argument, in the case of the indirect passive of a transitive verb, this operation is usually coupled with the existential quantification which is found in direct passives, and hence there is no change in the number of the arguments. We also claim that the indirectness of indirect passives consists in that the newly added argument expresses the indirect theme of the reported event, which has some close relation with an element of the same event denoted by the old argument.
Politics and Society (Central China Normal University) 1.1, pp. 59-84., 2013
There are some objects of perception that are either too far from us to touch or that cannot be t... more There are some objects of perception that are either too far from us to touch or that cannot be touched at all. Typical examples are the sky and the various phenomena that appear in the sky such as rainbows and sunsets. This paper is concerned with the ontological status of the rainbow. Does it exist when it is not actually perceived? Does it exist even when it is not possibly perceived? My conclusion is that a rainbow is a physical event, and that, although it is recognized as a rainbow by its characteristic visual appearance, it should not be identi ed with that appearance. I suggest that the case of the rainbow might give us useful hints for the analysis of secondary qualities like colors and sounds.
Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 21, pp. 37-55., 2013
There is a widely shared account of the distinction between types and tokens, which might be term... more There is a widely shared account of the distinction between types and tokens, which might be termed the standard account. However, it has some surprising consequences that are not always realized. According to the standard account, a type is a contingent abstract object that can be created by us, but it does not allow any change and can never be destroyed once it is created, because it is an abstract object. I would like to present an alternative account of types and tokens, according to which types are concrete objects that are located in space and time. This new account is based on a concept that I call a "token generator", which is something that specifies in detail how to produce the tokens.
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Papers by Takashi Iida