The Brains Blog

I’m working on the semantics of so called ’empty names’ (names without a referent).  I’d like to know your semantic intuitions about the following:(1) Santa Claus brings presents to children.(2) Santa Claus is fat.(3) Santa Claus is skinny.(4) Mickey Mouse is a mouse.(5) Mickey Mouse is a donkey.(6) Santa Claus …

As I explained, “pragmatic Millians” such as Ken Taylor and Fred Adams et al. explains our semantic intuitions about sentences containing empty names by distinguishing between what is said and what is implicated (in Grice’s sense) by such sentences.  In their view, although what is said is a gappy proposition, which is …

The dominant view about the semantics of proper names is probably Millianism.  According to Millianism, the meaning (i.e., semantic value) of proper names is just their referent.  Most Millians cash out their view in terms of singular Russellian propositions.  (A Russellian proposition is an ordered tuple containing the objects and properties …

The NY Times has an insightful article describing Italians’ current unhappiness with themselves and their country.  They see Italy declining, but they don’t see any way to stop the decline.In the 1990s Italians had an opportunity to go in a different direction.  There were a number of ballot measures (“referendums”) that would have …

On November 29 and 30, I attended the workshop on Modeling, Simulation and Computational Science organized by Anna-Mari Rusanen and Tarja Knuuttila in Helsinki, Finland.  I found it excellent.  There were philosophers, physicists, and cognitive scientists talking to one another about computational models and computational explanations.  I felt people were genuinely …

Here.