This volume brings together new research on fiction from the fields of philosophy and linguistics. Fiction has long been a topic of interest in philosophy, but recent years have also seen a surge in work on fictional discourse at the intersection between linguistics and philosophy of language. In particular, there has been a growing interest in examining long-standing issues concerning fiction from a perspective that is informed both by philosophy and linguistic theory. -/- Following a detailed introduction by the editors, (...) The Language of Fiction contains 14 chapters by leading scholars in linguistics and philosophy, organized into three parts. Part I, 'Truth, Reference, and Imagination', offers new, interdisciplinary perspectives on some of the central themes from the philosophy of fiction: What is fictional truth? How do fictional names refer? What kind of speech act is involved in telling a fictional story? What is the relation between fiction and imagination? Part II, 'Storytelling', deals with themes originating from the study of narrative: How do we infer a coherent story from a sequence of event descriptions? And how do we interpret the words of impersonal or unreliable narrators? Part III, 'Perspective Shift', focuses on an alleged key characteristic of fictional narratives, namely how we get access to the fictional characters' inner lives, through a variety of literary techniques for representing what they say, think, or see. The volume will be of interest to scholars from graduate level upwards in the fields of discourse analysis, semantics and pragmatics, philosophy of language, psychology, cognitive science, and literary studies. -/- Table of Contents 1:Introduction, Emar Maier and Andreas Stokke Part I: Truth, Reference, and Imagination 2:Fictional reference as simulation, François Recanati 3:Sharing real and fictional reference, Hans Kamp 4:Fictional truth: In defense of the reality principle, Nils Franzén 5:On the generation of content, Sandro Zucchi 6:Do the imaginings that fictions invite have a direction of fit?, Manuel García-Carpintero Part II: Storytelling 7:In search of the narrator, Regine Eckardt 8:Extracting fictional truth from unreliable sources, Emar Maier and Merel Semeijn 9:Narrative and point-of-view, Samuel Cumming 10:A puzzle about narrative progression and causal reasoning, Daniel Altshuler 11:Isomorphic mapping in fictional interpretation, Matthias Bauer and Sigrid Beck Part III: Perspective Shift 12:Metalinguistic acts in fiction, Nellie Wieland 13:Computing perspective shift in narratives, Márta Abrusán 14:Derogatory terms in free indirect discourse, Isidora Stojanovic 15:Protagonist projection, character-focus, and mixed quotation, Andreas Stokke. (shrink)

In our lives, we aim to achieve welfare for ourselves, that is, to live good lives. But we also have another, more impartial perspective, where we aim to balance our concern for our own welfare against a concern for the welfare of others. This is a perspective of justice. Nils Holtug examines these two perspectives and the relations between them.

In this richly detailed analysis, Barbara Von Eckardt lays the foundations for understanding what it means to be a cognitive scientist.

The contributors to the volume are: Richard Arneson, Linda Barclay, Thomas Christiano, Nils Holtug, Susan Hurley, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Dennis McKerlie, ...

If a work of literary fiction prescribes us to imagine that the Devil made a bet with God and transformed into a poodle, then that claim is true in the fiction and we imagine accordingly. Generally, we cooperate imaginatively with literary fictions, however bizarre, and the things authors write into their stories become true in the fiction. But for some claims, such as moral falsehoods, this seems not to be straightforwardly the case, which raises the question: Why not? The puzzles (...) such cases raise are sometimes grouped under the heading “imaginative resistance”. In this paper, I argue against what I take to be the best attempts to dismiss the puzzles and solve them. I also tease out subtleties not sufficiently addressed in the existing literature and end by defending a unified solution of my own. According to this solution, the puzzling phenomena occur when literary works offer inadequate and exhaustive grounds for claims. The solution’s novelty lies in its giving a normative rather than psychological or alethic explanation for the puzzling phenomena, the relevant norms being those of proper artistic appreciation. (shrink)

Die um 1800 aufgeworfenen anthropologisch-psychologischen Fragestellungen sind Gegenstand dieses Buches. Sie bildeten einen wichtigen Bestandteil der damaligen Wissenschaftskultur und wurden unter Namen wie "Empirische Psychologie", "Erfahrungsseelenkunde", "Experimentalseelenlehre" oder auch "Seelenphysik" abgehandelt. Das Spannungsverhältnis zwischen einem empirisch-erfahrungswissenschaftlichen und einem apriorisch-fundamentalphilosophischen Zugang zur Anthropologie bzw. Psychologie, wie es sich besonders im Ereignisraum Weimar-Jena verdichtete, steht im Mittelpunkt der Betrachtung. Das Buch vermittelt ein differenziertes Bild des anthropologisch-psychologischen Diskurses in jener Phase der Kultur- und Wissenschaftsentwicklung, in der sich Aufklärung, Klassizismus, Klassik, Idealismus und (...) Romantik überlagerten. (shrink)

Disjoint imperative sentences like ( Nimm die ) Hände hoch, oder ich schiesse! , literally ( take your ) hands up, or I’ll shoot! intuitively present the addressee with all her alternatives for action. The speaker informs that all future worlds, as far as the speaker can forsee, are such that the addressee raises her hands or gets killed. I propose a semantic/pragmatic analysis for sentences in the imperative mood that adopts this exhausitve description of future alternatives as a semantic (...) backbone. Different contextual instantiations of alternatives capture a wide range of uses of sentences in imperative mood, as well as coordinations of imperative and declarative sentences, in a uniform way. (shrink)

People often make trait judgments about themselves and others. Social perception researchers have attempted to study the accuracy of such judgments. Such studies raise the philosophical/conceptual question of what it means to say that a person's judgment is accurate. Two attempts have recently been made to taxonomize current research in terms of the notion of accuracy which has been adopted. My aim in this paper is twofold: first, to argue that the proposed philosophical taxonomies are problematic and, hence, should be (...) abandoned, and second, to recommend adoption of an alternative "minimalist" notion of accuracy. (shrink)

According to several recent studies, a big chunk of college students in North America and Europe uses so called ‘smart drugs' to enhance their cognitive capacities aiming at improving their academic performance. With these practices, there comes a certain moral unease. This unease is shared by many, yet it is difficult to pinpoint and in need of justification. Other than simply pointing to the medical risks coming along with using non-prescribed medication, the salient moral question is whether these practices are (...) troubling in and of themselves. In due consideration of empirical insights into the concrete effects of smart drugs on brain and behavior, our attempt is to articulate wherein this moral unease consists and to argue for why the authors believe cognitive enhancement to be morally objectionable. The authors will contend that the moral problem with these practices lies less in the end it seeks, than in the underlying human disposition it expresses and promotes. Some might ask, what is wrong with molding our cognitive capacities to achieve excellence, get a competitive edge, or, as the whim takes us? In all of these occasions, the usage of smart drugs serves a certain goal, a telos. The goal is, broadly speaking, this: outsmarting opponents in an arms race for limited resources and thereby yielding a competitive edge. In plain words: competition is valued higher than cooperation or solidarity. What is wrong with striving for this goal? The authors submit that the question whether people really want to live in a society that promotes the mentality ‘individual competition over societal cooperation' deserves serious consideration. In developing their answer, the authors draw on an ‘Ethics of Constraint' framework, arguing that widespread off-label use of smart drugs bears the risk of negative neural/behavioral consequences for the individual that might, in the long run, be accompanied by changing social value orientations for the worse. (shrink)

F. P. Ramsey was a remarkably creative and subtle philosopher who in the briefest of academic careers made significant contributions to logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language and decision theory. His few published papers reveal him to be a figure or comparable importance to Russell, Carnap and Wittgenstein in the history of analytical philosophy. This book was the first critical study of Ramsey's work, offering a thorough exposition and interpretation of his ideas, setting the ideas in their historical context, (...) and assessing their significance for contemporary research. The study is intended to complement the reissue of Ramsey's papers edited by Professor Hugh Mellor. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive introduction to the history of Western Philosophy from the Pre-Socratics to Twentieth Century thought. In addition to all the key figures, the book covers figures whose contributions have so far been overlooked, such as Vico, Montesquieu, Durkheim and Weber. Along with in-depth discussion of the philosophical movements, Skirbekk and Gilje also discuss the natural sciences, the establishment of the Humanities, Socialism and Fascism, Psychoanalysis, and the rise of the social sciences. _History of Western Thought_ is an (...) ideal introduction to philosophy and the sociological and scientific structures that have shaped modern day philosophy. (shrink)

This book explores the semantic and pragmatic mechanisms underlying grammaticalization. Regine Eckardt argues that language change frequently involves a structural reorganization at the phonological, morphological, and syntactic levels. Speakers not only master the structural aspect of such reanalyses, they also-as the author argues-keep a detailed mental record of what has happened to meaning. The author develops semantic reanalysis as the semantic correlate and tracks its effects in meaning change. Several case studies offer new insights in the architecture of conceptual (...) thinking that is part of the human language faculty. Professor Eckardt develops her approach in terms of formal semantic theory. She shows how neatly tailored analyses in truth-conditional compositional semantics can elucidate the structural mechanisms of meaning change. Her exposition is advanced in the context of several in-depth case studies containing data new to historical linguistics. This book will be of central interest to scholars and advanced students of historical and comparative linguistics and of formal semantics in departments of linguistics and philosophy. (shrink)

Psychiatry as a discipline oscillates between the language of emotions and that of biology; ranging from the immersion into the subjective experience of another person to the objective approach of biomedical science. The tension between these different approaches may seem irreconcilable and confusing to some. This was not the case for Karl Jaspers who pioneered a systematic reflection on the concepts underlying psychiatric theory and practice. In this essay, we engage with Jaspers' thinking and create a dialogue with contemporary psychiatric (...) research and philosophy of mind. Jaspers' conception of erklären and verstehen and his position on research in the neuroscience of mental disorders is brought together with the thought of Thomas Nagel and John Searle. We argue for the compatibility of Jaspers' ideas with Nagel's and Searle's views on the mind/body problem. Furthermore, we look at current trends in biological research in psychiatry through the lens of Jaspers' General Psychopathology, from there we derive suggestions and insights for psychiatric theory and practice. (shrink)

Ph.D. thesis submitted for Philosophy (KCL) on 24 July 2007. Supervisors: Keith Hossack, Mark Sainsbury and Wilfried Meyer-Viol.

What beliefs are, what they do for us, how we come to hold them, and how to evaluate them. Our beliefs constitute a large part of our knowledge of the world. We have beliefs about objects, about culture, about the past, and about the future. We have beliefs about other people, and we believe that they have beliefs as well. We use beliefs to predict, to explain, to create, to console, to entertain. Some of our beliefs we call theories, and (...) we are extraordinarily creative at constructing them. Theories of quantum mechanics, evolution, and relativity are examples. But so are theories about astrology, alien abduction, guardian angels, and reincarnation. All are products (with varying degrees of credibility) of fertile minds trying to find explanations for observed phenomena. In this book, Nils Nilsson examines beliefs: what they do for us, how we come to hold them, and how to evaluate them. We should evaluate our beliefs carefully, Nilsson points out, because they influence so many of our actions and decisions. Some of our beliefs are more strongly held than others, but all should be considered tentative and changeable. Nilsson shows that beliefs can be quantified by probability, and he describes networks of beliefs in which the probabilities of some beliefs affect the probabilities of others. He argues that we can evaluate our beliefs by adapting some of the practices of the scientific method and by consulting expert opinion. And he warns us about “belief traps”—holding onto beliefs that wouldn't survive critical evaluation. The best way to escape belief traps, he writes, is to expose our beliefs to the reasoned criticism of others. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEvaluative aesthetic discourse communicates that the speaker has had first-hand experience of what is talked about. If you call a book bewitching, it will be assumed that you have read the book. If you say that a building is beautiful, it will be assumed that you have had some visual experience with it. According to an influential view, this is because knowledge is a norm for assertion, and aesthetic knowledge requires first-hand experience. This paper criticizes this view and argues for (...) an alternative view, according to which aesthetic discourse expresses affective states of mind, analogously to how assertions express beliefs. It is because these affective states require first-hand experience that aesthetic discourse communicates that such acquaintance is at hand. The paper furthermore argues that the lack of an experience requirement for aesthetic belief ascriptions constitutes a problem for the kind of expressivist who claims that evaluative belief states are covert non-cognitive states. (shrink)

Kendall Walton argues that photographs are transparent; we literally see the things depicted in them, not just the depictions. This intriguing claim has endured numerous criticisms from those I call the ‘egocentrists’, according to whom seeing—literal seeing—requires the conveyance of egocentric information; to count as seeing something, a visual experience of that thing must impart some information, however spare, about its position relative to the viewer. Since photographs fail to convey such information, the egocentrists claim, Walton’s transparency thesis fails. This (...) paper considers several ways this egocentric condition on seeing has been developed and shows that none of them is persuasive. Seeing, I argue, does not require the conveyance of egocentric information. As such, and barring other problems, Walton’s transparency thesis stands. The paper closes with a speculative discussion of the kinds of empirical and action-guiding considerations that motivate egocentrism. (shrink)

Kampf, Gewalt und Subjekt sind in der modernen Philosophie seit langem verbunden. Dies zeigt sich auch in anderen kulturellen Reflexionsräumen wie dem Boxkampf. Wenn Menschen kämpfen, lenken sie Aggression und Gewalt in regelgeleitete, gesellschaftskonforme Bahnen. Die Kontrahenten müssen sich gegenseitig anerkennen und machen sich selbst als eigenständige Subjekte anerkennbar. Das Buch diskutiert, inwiefern der Boxkampf als exemplarische Aufführung des Entstehens von Subjektivität in und durch einen Kampf in Bezug auf Hegel und Nietzsche verstanden werden kann. Bei beiden Denkern findet sich (...) eine agonale Essenz. Im Gegeneinander sollen Subjekte eigenständige Individuen werden. Zugleich gilt die Agonalität sozialen Lebens beiden als Grundlage sozialer Entwicklung. Die Idee der fundamentalen Bedeutung von Kämpfen entwickelt sich in der Philosophie des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts zu einem Leitgedanken, der auch über die Philosophie hinaus bedeutsam wird und im Boxkampf eine besondere Aufführungsform findet. (shrink)

The present paper unravels ontological and normative conditions of personhood for the purpose of critiquing ‘Cognitivist Views’. Such views have attracted much attention and affirmation by presenting the ontology of personhood in terms of higher-order cognition on the basis of which normative practices are explained and justified. However, these normative conditions are invoked to establish the alleged ontology in the first place. When we want to know what kind of entity has full moral status, it is tempting to establish an (...) ontology that fits our moral intuitions about who should qualify for such unique normative standing. But this approach conflates personhood’s ontology and normativity insofar as it stresses the primacy of the former while implicitly presupposing the latter; it thereby suffers from a ‘Normative Fallacy’ by inferring from ‘ought’ to ‘is’. Following my critique of Cognitivism, I sketch an alternative conception, contending that, whereas the Cognitivist ontology of personhood presupposes the normative, a social ontology is constituted by it. In due consideration of evidence from developmental psychology, the social embeddedness of persons—manifested in the ability of taking a ‘second-person stance’—is identified as a key feature of personhood that precedes higher-order cognition, and is directly linked to basic normative concerns. (shrink)

It is widely held within contemporary metaethics that there is a lack of linguistic support for evaluative expressivism. On the contrary, it seems that the predictions that expressivists make about evaluative discourse are not borne out. An instance of this is the so-called problem of missing Moorean infelicity. Expressivists maintain that evaluative statements express non-cognitive states of mind in a similar manner to how ordinary descriptive language expresses beliefs. Conjoining an ordinary assertion that p with the denial of being in (...) the corresponding belief state famously gives rise to Moorean infelicity:?? It’s raining but I don’t believe that it’s raining. If expressivists are right, then conjoining evaluative statements with the denial of being in the relevant non-cognitive state of mind should give rise to similar infelicity. However, as several theorists have pointed out, this does not seem to be the case. Statements like the following are not infelicitous: Murder is wrong but I don’t disapprove of it. In this paper, I argue that evaluative statements express the kind of states that are attributed by ‘find’-constructions in English and that these states are non-cognitive in nature. This addresses the problem of missing Moorean infelicity and, more generally, goes to show that there are linguistic facts which support expressivism about evaluative discourse. (shrink)

Phenomenology has primarily been concerned with conceptual questions about knowledge and ontology. However, in recent years the rise of interest and research in applied phenomenology has seen the study of political phenomenology move to a central place in the study of phenomenology generally. The Routledge Handbook of Political Phenomenology is the first major collection on this important topic. Comprising 35 chapters by an international team of expert contributors, the Handbook is organised into six clear parts, each with its own Introduction (...) by the editors: Founders of Phenomenology Existentialist Phenomenology Phenomenology of the Social and Political World Phenomenology of Alterity Phenomenology in Debate Contemporary Developments. Full attention is given to central figures in the phenomenological movement, including Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas as well as those whose contribution to political phenomenology is more distinctive, such as Arendt, De Beauvoir and Fanon. Also included are chapters on gender, race and intersectionality, disability, and technology. Ideal for those studying phenomenology, continental philosophy and political theory, The Routledge Handbook of Political Phenomenology bridges an important gap between a major philosophical movement and contemporary political issues and concepts. (shrink)