Nagase

Of course they have to be contextualized, but so what? Davidson's truth-theoretical semantics has the resources to deal with context-sensitivity (cf. ...

I've read a lot of Soames, yes, and I don't think he's right on this issue---see Ludwig & Lepore's reply in their book on Davidson. (That is not to sa...

Well, if a given model has cardinality n, then it has no members of cardinality n+1... unless you're just saying that we can always replace one of the...

Well, one can hope to bypass the need for propositions by adopting (for instance) a Davidsonian truth-theoretical semantics. In that case, the "meanin...

This is to miss the point. You can pick two non-standard models of the same cardinality and which satisfy the same sentences, but which are neverthele...

Well, it is true that if a first-order theory has a model of a given infinite cardinality, then it has models of every infinite cardinality. But a the...

I joined when the other forum went down, but I haven't been much active. I generally post only when I have some spare time from university work...

I don't see why. One can either take an abstract notion of sentence as one's paradigm (for instance, a sentence is just a set-theoretical object), whi...

Again, a couple of observations: (1) If the objective was to just express the finite arithmetical sets, and not interpret ZF-Inf, I don't understand w...

You say: First, it's not clear what is for languages to be isomorphic. A model M is isomorphic to a model N iff there is a bijection between their res...

I think you're losing sight of what it is we're after. We want an interpretation of ZF-Inf, not just any way to code random finite sets. I mention thi...

A couple of observations: (1) I think the notion of a theory interpreting another can be made more intuitive by considering the relations between alge...

That depends on what you mean by "rigid designator", . If by "rigid designator" you mean a term whose extension is the same in all possible worlds, th...

I'm glad we have come to at least a partial agreement, . Since you have granted that descriptions are not sufficient for an account of the semantics o...

There are a couple of things, here. Let's tackle each issue separately, in turns. (1) On the merits of extending formal semantics from declaratives to...

I'd say that (following Kripke's "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference"), in this case, we must separate the speaker's reference from the semant...

As I said earlier, it seems to me that your problem is less with the direct theory of reference per se, and more with the picture that is looming in t...

First, the references you asked for: for my general approach to semantic matters, I think the essays by Lewis are invaluable (even if you end up disag...

Yes, of course there are tricky cases (yours reminded me of Gettier cases), which may defeat the simple scheme I sketched. In the case of Artabanus, t...

First, note that the fact that semantics is primarily concerned with truth conditions does not mean that it cannot account for speech acts other than ...

I'm not entirely sure what you are calling "behavioral regimes", but I think it's entirely clear that they are contingently associated to the referent...

A couple of points: one important distinction that some direct reference theorists make is between the semantic value of a word (its contributions to ...

It's been a while since I read Naming and Necessity (I need to go back to that book!), but, if I recall correctly, he never uses the expression "causa...

If you wish to do so, I have no qualms about it. I may not be able to engage it fully, however, since I'm rather busy at the moment (posting here is b...

I definitely agree with this, in that I'd hold that most properties that appear simple aren't really simple (I was just agreeing that, even if redness...

So if you didn't assert it, it wouldn't be so? And what is a fact? That may be so (though note that we have an appeal to types of rules here...), yet ...

I'd say that yes, those are examples of natural kinds. As Frege would say, they have all passed the "acid test" of concepts, namely their fruitfulness...

I'm not sure what you want me to say about the ontology of abstract objects. I don't hold any systematic views on the topic (e.g. I don't know if they...

I don't know how you got that out of what I said. There are a number of approaches to explaining the type-token relationship. You can do it the way yo...

That's not the difficulty I'm highlighting. Yes, we can use "tricks" to introduce atomic predicates to stand for logically complex one---but that has ...

I strongly disagree with this statement. I actually think the opposite is true: by paying attention to the history of mathematical concepts, we see th...

I think you're misreading the problem here. The point is not that the type itself explains the relationship between its tokens. Rather, it is that in ...

The subject of the property in question ("being continuous at point a") is a (real valued) function, say f. Continuity at a point is a property of fun...

It'd be nice if you provided the specific rules that you are working with. This may sound surprising, but there are a lot of natural deduction systems...

And this is where we disagree. As I said, Jumbelese can (perhaps) handle simple translations for atomic properties, but what about logically complex p...

Exactly, that was part of my point. It is because language is this messy that reference to types is unavoidable. A typical nominalist strategy to do a...

No, that's not what I had in mind at all. But let me rephrase the whole argument in order to make it clearer. The first thing to notice is that the ex...

I see. But then we have another problem. In the passages, Sellars talks about inscriptions of the X above Y variety. How are we to interpret such insc...

I don't understand this argument. We can also devise languages (see Quine's predicate functor logic) which dispense entirely with individual variables...

I'd say more than that: current research in mathematical logic is for the most part intimately connected with abstract algebra, algebraic geometry, an...

You forgot to add that: T is consistent and G is a sentence in the vocabulary of T.

I don't agree with the premises here, but even granting them that's irrelevant: you originally claimed that the op's argument was not formalizable, si...

There is no need to use higher-order logic. Let T be a first-order theory containing enough arithmetic to capture the primitive recursive functions (y...

I'm not sure I understand. What do you mean by "can't speak about all statements in a definition of a statement"? In any case, it seems to me false; i...

You are right that we can't define a truth predicate for the language in question in the language itself---that's Tarski's theorem (though you can def...

As I mentioned in a private message, I'm not entirely sure this step holds. What is the reference of "this" above? If it is "this statement is false" ...

That's incorrect. Assuming a modicum amount of arithmetic, it's possible to formalize the syntax of first-order logic inside a given mathematical theo...

I don't think the two issues are separate. For one may hold that Kubrick is not depicting (directly or indirectly) how members of the elite class cond...

Exactly. The op assumes that the events depicted in the movie (e.g. the orgy scene) are depicted as real, but I don't think this is obvious. For insta...

First, the disjunction is defined as being inclusive. So any formula with it as its main connective will be inclusive, by definition. So, e.g., p v (q...