Russell claims that ordinary proper names are eccentric, i.e. that the semantic referent of a name is determined by the descriptive condition that the individual utterer of the name associates with the name. This is deeply puzzling, for the evidence that names are subject to interpersonal coordination seems irrefutable. One way of making sense of Russell’s view would be to claim that he has been systematically misinterpreted and did not, in fact, offer a semantic theory at all. Such a view (...) is put forward in Sainsbury Departing from Frege, Routledge, London, 2002). Sainsbury claims that Russellian descriptivism is not the theory that the thought in the mind of the speaker determines the semantic reference of a name, but simply a theory about the thought in the mind of the speaker using a name. I argue that the truth is subtly different, and points the way towards an intuitive explanation of Russell’s eccentricity. (shrink)

Hagiographical studies have seen significant advances in Franciscan scholarship over the last half a century with new critical editions of central texts being prepared. The fruits of this research have been made available in English translations, from the Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St Francis to the publication of Francis of Assisi: Early Documents in three volumes with an excellent index at the turn of the new millennium. The examination of the life of Francis of Assisi is (...) now gravitating towards liturgical texts in order to gauge the image of the saint projected during the sacred liturgy in the Mass and the Divine Office. There is a growing realization that these liturgical texts did much to condition... (shrink)

In this article I offer a taxonomy of the major issues and options about qualities, quality-instances, and exemplification. So far as I know, this has not been done for some time and the task of offering such a taxonomy is a worthy one in its own right. But such a classification will also show that arguments such as the one above by Grossmann fail to make their case because of the tremendous vari? ety of positions about quality-instances. The mere fact (...) that a philosopher does not accept the identity of the referent of "the F of A" and "the F of B" does not entail that the philosopher is a nominalist. (shrink)

This volume focuses on the modeling of cognition, and brings together contributions from psychologists and researchers in the field of cognitive science.

Health Savings Accounts have been marginalized in the West. In Singapore, however, they are foundational to the financing of health care. In this brief essay, I shall begin to sketch a justification for Health Savings Accounts. The family has always been thought of as a mere prolegomena to the polis and to be primarily about securing the goods of material life: food, shelter, intimacy. I shall first explore the recent scientific literature on the communal nature of human thriving and follow (...) it with a phenomenological account of human dependency. I shall claim that in securing the material means to sustain life, the family is also involved in the creation of the life-world of the child. That means that the bare necessities of life met in families are not merely about sustaining bodily life but are also part of the meaning-making aspects of life. The family then should have recourse to the material means of life-and-death decisions, because it is in these life-and-death decisions that the families’ life-world of values is to be deployed. (shrink)