In my final post, I want to consider a very compelling objection. The objection can be pitched abstractly enough to undermine – seemingly – what I have claimed so far this week. The response to the objection is contained in the final Chapter of Talking About, called ‘Good Cases, Bad …
Ignacy Jan Paderewski was famous both as pianist and the Prime Minister of Poland. Thus, it is easy to imagine that someone is familiar with him in both roles but mistakenly thinks that there are two people involved, not one. It is easy because being both a famous pianist and …
Is it really possible to believe something while lacking the capacity to represent that belief? Intuitively, one could only believe that colonialism is the product of white supremacism if one can somehow represent this very belief in language or thought. But this intuitive idea is highly misleading. Or so I …
What does reference consist in? In virtue of what does a speaker refer to one object rather than another by uttering something on a given occasion? Well, I think the answer to this question is both more complicated and more straightforward than many theorists appear to assume. Straightforward because it …
This is the first post in a series of five about my recent book, Talking About: An Intentionalist Theory of Reference (OUP, 2022). I will start things off by trying to convey the most basic motivation behind the book in terms that should be broadly accessible to theorists and philosophers …
