The generality constraint and categorial restrictions

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 54, Issue 215, 2004, Pages 209-231

  Camp, Elisabeth ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 33744750592     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.0031-8094.2004.00348.x     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. G. Evans, The Varieties of Reference (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 100
2. See Evans, 'Semantic Theory and Tacit Knowledge', repr. in his Collected Papers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 322-42
3. Peacocke raises the last two possibilities in A Study of Concepts (MIT Press, 1992), p. 43
4. Cf. 'Only expressions can be affirmed or denied to be absurd. Nature provides no absurdities; nor can we even say that thoughts such as beliefs or suppositions or conceptions are or are not absurd. For what is absurd is unthinkable': Ryle, 'Categories', in A. Flew (ed.), Logic and Language, 2nd series (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953), pp. 65-81, at p. 76
5. P.F. Strawson, Individuals (London: Methuen, 1959), p. 99n
6. Evans, The Varieties of Reference, p. 101; my italics
7. Peacocke, A Study of Concepts, p. 42; my italics
8. Strawson, 'Categories', in O. Wood and G. Pitcher (eds), Ryle (Garden City: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 181-211, at p. 200
9. See, e.g., N. Chomsky, 'Degrees of Grammaticalness', and J. Katz and J. Fodor, 'The Structure of a Semantic Theory', both in J. Fodor and J. Katz (eds), The Structure of Language (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 384-9, 479-518
10. Katz and Fodor, 'The Structure of a Semantic Theory', p. 507
11. The second entry for 'man' is exemplified in 'Every man on board was saved except an elderly couple', the third in 'Man is occasionally rational': 'The Structure of a Semantic Theory', p. 510
12. For instance, Katz and Fodor conclude on the basis of their analysis that 'The man hits the colourful ball' exhibits a four-fold ambiguity. Similarly, Ryle concludes that 'existence' has at least two senses, 'somewhat as "rising" has different senses in "The tide is rising", "Hopes are rising" and "The average age of death is rising"': The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949), p. 23
13. S. Kripke, 'Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference', repr. in P. Ludlow (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Language (MIT Press, 1997), pp. 382-414, at p. 401
14. The slashes indicate line breaks. Both examples are from R. Motherwell (ed.), The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Belknap, 1979)
15. Cf. also J. Stern, Metaphor in Context (MIT Press, 2000), ch. 2
16. M. Reddy, 'A Semantic Approach to Metaphor', in R.I. Binnick et al. (eds), Papers from the Fifth Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society (Dept of Linguistics, Univ. of Chicago, 1969), pp. 240-51
17. T. Cohen, 'Figurative Speech and Figurative Acts', Journal of Philosophy, 71 (1975), pp. 669-84, at p. 679
18. Davidson, 'What Metaphors Mean', repr. in his Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 245-64, at p. 253
19. See, e.g., J. Searle, 'Metaphor', in A. Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought (Cambridge UP, 1979), pp. 92-123
20. M. Bergmann, 'Metaphorical Assertions', in S. Davis (ed.), Pragmatics (Oxford UP, 1991), pp. 485-94
21. Carnap claims that 'a is a prime number' is false iff a is divisible by a natural number different from a and 1: 'The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language', in A.J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism (New York: Free Press, 1959), pp. 60-81, at p. 68
22. See, e.g., Frege, 'Function and Concept', repr. in M. Beaney (ed.), The Frege Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), pp. 130-48, at p. 141
23. see also D. Lewis, 'General Semantics', in D. Davidson and G. Harman (eds), Semantics of Natural Language (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1972); pp. 169-218, at p. 179
24. and W. V. Quine, Word and Object (MIT Press, 1960), p. 229
25. The truth-conditions can be derived from the constituent lexical entries in several ways: see, e.g., U. Weinreich, 'Explorations in Semantic Theory', in T.A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics, Vol. III, Theoretical Foundations (The Hague: Mouton, 1966), pp. 395-477
26. See S. Yablo, 'Is Conceivability a Guide to Possibility?', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 53 (1993), pp. 1-42, for discussion of thoughts whose propositional contents may be believable (and even true) without being conceivable
27. An example might be 'The orbited candle would have been imposing a sharpened carpet's fourteenth copper gesture, but insignificance elects the first folder time'. Some sentences may also fail to express complete thoughts: for example, 'Steel is strong enough' - for what? See K. Bach, 'Speaking Loosely', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 25 (2001), pp. 249-63
28. However, Evans does himself admit that the generality constraint is an unattainable ideal: see The Varieties of Reference, p. 105
29. See, e.g., E. Rosch, 'Principles of Categorization', in E. Rosch and B.B. Lloyd (eds), Cognition and Categorization (Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1978), pp. 27-48
30. S. Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Harvard UP, 1980)
31. H. Putnam, 'The Meaning of "Meaning"', repr. in his Mind, Language, and Reality (Cambridge UP, 1975), pp. 215-71
32. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), §18