Intensionality

Аннотация. В этой статье я хочу изложить аргументы в пользу гипотезы, согласно которой отношение именования между употребляемыми агентом de re выражениями и объектами в текущей или иной ситуации произнесения являются содержанием специфических пропозициональных установок агентов. В этом качестве они становятся индексами контекста и имеют черты, отличающие их от установок, содержанием которых являются положения вещей, не описывающие явления сигнификации. Рассматриваемая гипотеза связана с проблемой пере-дачи наблюдателем содержания установки агента, а также её аскрипции агенту. Я постараюсь показать также, что установки, относительно отношения именования, выявляются при анализе прагматики. Сначала обсуждается вопрос о параметризации интенсионала, в частности предложений, находящихся в области действия оператора установки, затем я перейду к вопросу о выявлении контекстных параметров, связанных с отношением именования и их специфике, после чего обсужу вопрос о моделировании кросс-идентификации с помощью абстракции отношения именования. Последним сюжетом станет взаимовлияние двух de re термов во фразе и во фрагменте дискурса, что выводит на вопрос о соотносительном характере дифференциации de re / de dicto и о роли в ней отношения именования. Ключевые слова: отношение именования, пропозициональные установки, интенсионал, контекст, de re, дескрипция.

Abstract. In this article I will try to demonstrate how naming relation functions as a specific kind of the propositional attitudes of agents that help to carry out cross-identification as well as attitude reports, within which the subject's de re expressions are substituted with some expressions of the agent transmitting that attitude. I regard the naming relation as an aspect of contextual dependence of intentional and interpret the intension as a procedure. The abstraction of the naming relation of a de re term becomes an instrument to render this term to be used de dicto. As this operation is being carried out, the circumstances connected with the act of naming come to light, and they become indices of the context. The naming relation itself appears to be a function of the situations of uttering in the orderly structured collection of situations in which some deictic element is retained. This provides cross-identification of objects. I also discuss what happens when
two de re expressions collide in a sentence or in any given fragment of discourse. It turns out that the expressions that retain their de re character to the utmost degree require some data for their interpretation, which also suffices to establish meanings of all other expressions. It is for the agent that pursues some specific communicational goals, to make the choice of the expression that would require the conditions of its truth to be delineated. As regards the cases of double acquaintance, “third readings” and non-specific de re readings, I believe that the “intrusion” of a signifying attitude de re of a speaker into that of an agent for its description requires the properties of a specific relation to be taken into consideration; the relation that is formed between the order of
naming and the cross-identification of a speaker, and the worlds of situations that are associated with the interpretations of the agent’s attitude.

A Gödel sentence is often described as a sentence saying about itself that it is not provable, and a Henkin sentence as a sentence stating its own provability. We discuss what it could mean for a sentence of arithmetic to ascribe to itself a property such as provability or unprovability. The starting point will be the answer Kreisel gave to Henkin’s problem. We describe how the properties of the supposedly self-referential sentences depend on the chosen coding, the formulae expressing the properties and the way a fixed points for the formulae are obtained. This paper is the first of two papers. In the present paper we focus on provability. In part II, we will consider other properties like Rosser provability and partial truth predicates.

There are three main positions on animalthought: lingualism denies that non-linguistic animalshave any thoughts; mentalism maintains that theirthoughts differ from ours only in degree, due totheir different perceptual inputs; an intermediateposition, occupied by common sense and Wittgenstein,maintains that animals can have thoughts of a simplekind. This paper argues in favor of an intermediateposition. It considers the most important arguments infavor

On one meaning of the term “historicism” to be a historicist is to be committed to the claim that the human sciences have a methodology of their own that is distinct in kind and not only in degree from that of the natural sciences. In this sense of the term Collingwood certainly was a historicist, for he defended the view that history is an autonomous discipline with a distinctive method and subject matter against the claim for methodological unity in the sciences. On another interpretation historicism is a relativist way of thinking which denies the possibility of universal and fundamental interpretations of historical or cultural phenomena.  In the following I argue that at least in this second sense of “historicism” Collingwood was everything but a historicist. Quine, on the contrary, was nothing but a historicist. The goal of the comparison, however, is not to establish just who, on this definition, was or was not a historicist, but to draw a few conclusions about what a commitment to or rejection of historicism in this sense, tells us about the nature of understanding.

El siguiente artículo intenta defender la tesis de que la distinción aristotélica entre enérgeia y kínesis debe ser comprendida de modo intensional (en contraposición a una lectura extensional), tomando como punto de partida su célebre aparición en Met IX 6. Sobre la base de la identificación del problema acerca del cual trata dicho pasaje, se toma en consideración otras apariciones de la distinción en Met IX 8, en la EE, en la EN y en otros textos, en orden a documentar, en primer lugar, la vinculación de la distinción con la noción de érgon y, en segundo lugar, de qué modo dicha vinculación permite una lectura intensional de la distinción. Por último, se ofrece un argumento adicional para dicha lectura considerando la estructura teleológica de la acciones presentada por Aristóteles en EN I 1.

An exposition of Ruth Millikan's chapter 7, "Intensionality" of her 2002 Nicod Lectures. Adds an outline, background material on Frege and Quine and brings in concepts from Millikan's other lectures on such concepts as semantic mapping functions, purposes and embedding.

We give a type logical categorial grammar for the syntax and semantics of Montague’s seminal fragment, which includes ambiguities of quantification and intensionality and their interactions, and we present the analyses assigned by a parser/theorem prover CatLog to the examples of the first half of Chapter 7 of the classic text Introduction to Montague Semantics

A hyperintensional concept draws a distinction between necessarily equivalent contents. If the concept is expressed by an operator, , then is hyperintensional insofar as and can differ in truth value in spite of and 's being necessarily equivalent. Necessary equivalence of claims is standardly understood in terms of possible worlds (ways things could have been): and are necessarily equivalent when they are true at the same worlds. This is sometimes put in terms of sentences sharing an intension. An extensional operator (e.g., Boolean negation) allows substitution salva veritate of sentences with the same extension, that is, truth value: if has the same truth value as , then also has the same truth value as. An intensional operator (e.g., the box of necessity) allows substitution salva veritate of sentences that express necessary equivalents: if is necessarily equivalent to , then has the same truth value as. The expression "hyperintensional" is thus for an that defies substitution salva veritate even of expressions with the same intension. Cresswell (1975) introduced the expression "hyperintensional" to pick out a position in a sentence where substitution fails for logical equivalents. Nowadays the term is used more broadly, with unrestrictedly necessary equivalence replacing logical equivalence. Candidates for unrestricted necessity often include, besides the logical, mathematical and metaphysical necessity. We don't discuss whether one of these is reducible to the others-e.g., the mathematical to the logical, as claimed by logicists.

This is the reply to the commentaries on 'Truthmaker Semantics for Natural Language: Attitude Verbs, Modals, and Intensional Transitive Verbs' (Theoretical Linguistics 46, 3-4, 159-200). In this (self-contained) reply I outline the views of my paper 'Truthmaker Semantics for Natural Language' and respond to the various points of critique the commentators raised. I outline an explicit syntactic analysis of attitude reports with clausal complements acting as predicates of attitudinal objets and propose a novel, compositional way of dealing with opacity within object-based truthmaker semantics.

This paper is concerned with three methodologies to construct a congruence in a language (L, O) among which Frege's specific solution stands. The first construction is derived from Leibniz's principle that indiscernible objects should be identified. The second construction is apparented to Frege's solution by its use of a referential model. The third approach is our own solution to the problem in the framework of rewriting systems.

NPs with intensional relative clauses such as 'the book John needs to write' pose a significant challenge for semantic theory. Such NPs act like referential terms, yet they do not stand for a particular actual object. This paper will develop a semantic analysis of such NPs on the basis of the notion of a variable object. The analysis avoids a range of difficulties that a more standard analysis based on the notion of an individual concept would face. Most importantly, unlike the latter, the proposed analysis can be carried over NPs such as 'the number of people that fit into the bus', which describe tropes (particularized properties).

The paper investigates whether it is reasonable to construe proper names as scope-taking expressions. It gives a survey of selected approaches within logic and natural language semantics that do so and attempts to provide one more argument in favour of such a solution.

Resumen: Following Romero (2003), this paper develops a unified analysis of two types of N (oun) P (hrase) s: concealed question NPs with know and NP subjects of specificational sentences with be. It is argued that both epistemic know and specificational be are ...

These lectures present a development of truthmaker semantics according to which the truthmaking relation holds not just between situations or actions and sentences, but also between situations or actions and modal and attitudinal objects, such as obligations, permissions, needs, claims, judgments, requests, décisions, and promises. The first handout presents new motivations for object-based truthmaker semantics, from differences among predicates of truth, correctness, and satisfaction, and proposes  new, normative account of the notion of direction of fit. The second handout develops an object-based truthmaker semantics of attitude reports and modal sentences. The third handout discusses some new and some very old arguments for the involvement of truthmaking in the semantics of intensional transitive verbs.

I will use the syntactic distribution of intensional contexts in VP to probe the structure of double object constructions and double object alternations in English and French. I conclude that such alternations are indeed underlied by double object structures, but that these are different from surface double object structures. I also conclude that French does display both underlying and surface double object structures.

El siguiente artículo intenta defender la tesis de que la distinción aristotélica entre enérgeia y kínesis debe ser comprendida de modo intensional (en contraposición a una lectura extensional), tomando como punto de partida su célebre aparición en Met IX 6. Sobre la base de la identificación del problema acerca del cual trata dicho pasaje, se toma en consideración otras apariciones de la distinción en Met IX 8, en la EE, en la EN y en otros textos, en orden a documentar, en primer lugar, la vinculación de la distinción con la noción de érgon y, en segundo lugar, de qué modo dicha vinculación permite una lectura intensional de la distinción. Por último, se ofrece un argumento adicional para dicha lectura considerando la estructura teleológica de la acciones presentada por Aristóteles en EN I 1.

'The kind Lion' denotes a kind. Yet many generics are thought to denote kinds also, like the subject-terms in 'The lion has a mane', 'Dinosaurs are extinct', and 'The potato was cultivated in Ireland by the end of the 17th century.' This view may be adequate for the linguist's overall purposes--however, if we limit our attention to the theory of reference, it seems unworkable. The problem is that what is often predicated of kinds is not what is predicated of the lion, dinosaurs, and the potato. Thus, kinds are sometimes said to be abstract objects, immanent universals, nominal essences, etc. But the lion is a predatory cat--it is not an abstract object, nor an immanent universal, nor a nominal essence. I consider several proposals about resolving the dilemma; however, the conclusion is that none of the proposals are adequate. We are thus hard pressed to make sense of allegedly kind-denoting generics, and the lesson is a "Socratic" one about the depths of our ignorance.

I present a problem for Sauerland's account of the restrictions on certain nonstandard de re readings in propositional attitude reports. Sauerland’s idea is to postulate the ontological prominence of the actual world so that no merely possible individual could have an actual counterpart. However, the problem Sauerland aims to solve extends to multiply nested attitude reports, where his prominence considerations are insufficient to explain either attested or non-attested readings. A solution I propose involves switching to tree-like possible world frames, thus creating an infinity of ontological levels. A remedy for Sauerland's problem, the approach is shown to have shortcomings as regards the definability of factivity.

A handout summarising much of the work on de re / de dicto ambiguities in attitude reports, including the scope theory, the world variable theory, the concept generator theory and a little bit more. May be of some interest for learners of the subject but much less so for practitioners of attitude semantics. All the text (except for examples) is in Russian.

According to the standard view, alethic (or modal) statements are intensional in that the Principle of Substitution (PS) fails for them -- e.g. substituting 'nine' in "Necessarily, nine is composite" with the co-referring 'the number of planets' turns this statement from true to false. It is argued in the paper that we could avoid ascribing intensionality to alethic statements altogether by separating between singular and functional uses of definite descriptions: on the singular use the description given above amounts to 'the actual number of planets', which is salva veritate substitutable to 'nine' in all alethic statements; on the functional use, in turn, that description is really a function from possible worlds to numbers, and thus the Principle of Substitution is not violated in this case either, since such a function cannot be held to be co-referential with 'nine'.

The Church-Turing thesis is widely stated in terms of three equivalent models of computation (Turing machines, the lambda calculus, and rewrite systems),  and it says that the intuitive notion of a computable function is what is defined by any one of these models. Despite this well-established equivalence, the philosophical literature concentrates almost exclusively on the Turing machine model.  We argue that this has been to the detriment of the philosophy of computation, and specifically that it ignores two issues: firstly, equivalence in the Church-Turing sense is extensional equivalence, whereas many of the delicate issues in the philosophy of mind, and in theoretical computer science, are to do with fine-grained intensional equivalence of algorithms. Secondly, real computers are not in any meaningful sense Turing machines: they are nondeterministic, their memory may fail to be in a determinate state due to cache coherence issues, and the boundaries between inside and outside are ill-defined and permeable. We explore the philosophical significance of these issues, arguing that many philosophical analyses of computation are far more intensional than is generally realised, and that philosophy would  benefit from an explicitly intensional consideration of appropriate models of computation.

We examine Searle's argument in "The Rediscovery of Mind" that syntax, and a fortiori computation, are not  genuine physical properties of objects such as computers or minds, but are essentially observer-relative properties. He bases this argument on a sharp distinction between brute physical properties and observer-relative properties. We argue that what is at issue in Searle's argument is a certain intensionality of explanatory language: we give examples, and argue, on the basis of those examples, that this intensionality does not warrant the leap to observer-relativity.