Fodor and katz criticize cavell's position on the relation between ordinary language philosophy and empirical investigations of ordinary language, In "must we mean what we say?," _inquiry, Volume 1, Pages 172-212, And "the availability of wittgenstein's later philosophy," "philosophical review", Volume 71, Pages 67-93. Cavell holds that disagreements between ordinary language philosophers over grammar and semantics are in no sense empirical. Fodor and katz show that ordinary language philosophers are engaged in empirical investigation. (staff).

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Katz offers such a grammatical account, in which makes it possible for the first time to explain the illocutionary potential of sentences within grammar.

THIS PAPER PRESENTS THE INTERPRETATION OF DESCARTES'S "COGITO" IN MY BOOK "COGITATIONS" IN A CONCISE AND SLIGHTLY EXTENDED FORM. THE EMPHASIS IS ON CONVEYING THE ESSENTIALS OF THE ARGUMENT THAT "COGITO ERGO SUM" IS AN ANALYTIC ENTAILMENT, BUT I HAVE TAKEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO IMPROVE MY ARGUMENT IN A FEW SMALL WAYS AND TO RELATE THE EXPLICIT FORM OF THE "COGITO" TO SIMILAR REASONING IN DESCARTES'S "SECOND MEDITATION". MY PRIMARY AIM IS TO EXPLAIN HOW THE "COGITO" CAN BOTH BE THE (...) SIMPLE INFERENCE WE FIND IN DESCARTES'S OWN PRESENTATIONS AND YET BE FORMALLY VALID AS IT STANDS. (shrink)

The cogito ergo sum of Descartes is one of the best-known--and simplest--of all philosophical formulations, but ever since it was first propounded it has defied any formal accounting of its validity. How is it that so simple and important an argument has caused such difficulty and such philosophical controversy? In this pioneering work, Jerrold Katz argues that the problem with the cogito lies where it is least suspected--in a deficiency in the theory of language and logic that Cartesian (...) scholars have brought to the study of the cogito. Katz contends that the laws of traditional logic have distorted Descartes's reasoning so that it no longer fits either Descartes's own account of the cogito in his writings or the role he assigns it in his project. Katz proposes that the cogito can be understood as an example of "analytic entailment," a concept in the philosophy of language whereby a statement can be a formally valid inference without depending on a law of logic. Developing and defending his thesis, he shows us that by grappling with an historical philosophical problem it is possible to make an original contribution to the advance of contemporary philosopy. (shrink)

Chomsky's criticism of Bloomfieldian structuralism's conception of linguistic reality applies equally to his own conception of linguistic reality. There are too many sentences in a natural language for them to have either concrete acoustic reality or concrete psychological or neural reality. Sentences have to be types, which, by Peirce's generally accepted definition, means that they are abstract objects. Given that sentences are abstract objects, Chomsky's generativism as well as his psychologism have to be given up. Langendoen and Postal's argument in (...) The Vastness of Natural Languages to show that there are more than denumerably many sentences is flawed. But, with the view that sentences are abstract objects, the flaws can be corrected. Once psychologism and generativism are abandoned, the revolution against Bloomfieldian structuralism can be brought to completion and linguistics can be put on a sound philosophical basis. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophy standardly accepts Frege's conceptions of sense as the determiner of reference and of analyticity as (necessary) truth in virtue of meaning. This paper argues that those conceptions are mistaken. It develops referentially autonomous notions of sense and analyticity and applies them to the semantics of natural kind terms. The arguments of Donnellan, Putnam, and Kripke concerning natural kind terms are widely taken to refute internalist and rationalist theories of meaning. This paper shows that the counter-intuitive consequences about the (...) reference of natural kind terms depend as much on Frege's conceptions of sense and analyticity as on what such theories of meaning say about the senses of natural kind terms. Rather than refuting the internalist and rationalist theories of meaning, the arguments of Donnellan, Putnam, and Kripke are best recast as refutations of their own Fregean assumptions. The paper also shows how autonomous notions of sense and analyticity enable us to reconstruct such theories, formulate an internalist/ rationalist account of semantic knowledge, and preserve Donnellan's, Putnam's, and Kripke's insights about reference. (shrink)

This is a reply by J.J. Katz to criticism of his views on Quine's indeterminacy thesis.

The author, Nefdt (hereafter N), identifies as his target audience “advanced students of either philosophy or linguistics and experienced practitioners at the intersection between these fields” (p. x). N’s “goal is to provide not only a songbird’s-eye view of the interconnections between different subdisciplines and frameworks of linguistic theory but to showcase common problems and present novel analyses of the study of language that only a contemporary philosophical overview can offer” (p. ix). The book has xi + 231 pages, beginning (...) with a short preface, and has an index. It is divided into eight main chapters, each addressing a different subfield or area, and a two-page concluding chapter. N says that “Each chapter can be considered a sustained, self-contained argument based on the subfield at hand” (p. ix). Each includes a helpful ‘Further Reading’ section with plentiful annotation. (shrink)

Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz, Cogitations: A Study of the Cogito in Relation to the Philosophy of Language and a Study of It in Relation to the Cogito;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz, Cogitations: A Study of the Cogito in Relation to the Philosophy of Language and a Study of It in Relation to the Cogito;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz, Cogitations: A Study of the Cogito in Relation to the Philosophy of Language and a Study of It in (...) Relation to the Cogito;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz, Cogitations: A Study of the Cogito in Relation to the Philosophy of Language and a Study of It in Relation to the Cogito;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz, Cogitations: A Study of the Cogito in Relation to the Philosophy of Language and a Study of It in Relation to the Cogito;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz, Cogitations: A Study of the Cogito in Relation to the Philosophy of Language and a Study of It in Relation to the Cogito;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz, Cogitations: A Study of the Cogito in Relation to the Philosophy of Language and a Study of It in Relation to the Cogito;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz, Cogitations: A Study of the Cogito in Relation to the Philosophy of Language and a Study of It in Relation to the Cogito;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz, Cogitations: A Study of the Cogito in Relation to the Philosophy of Language and a Study of It in Relation to the Cogito;Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz, Cogitations: A Study of the Cogito in Relation to the Philosophy of Language and a Study of It in Relation to the Cogito. (shrink)

In _Realistic Rationalism_, Jerrold J. Katz develops a new philosophical position integrating realism and rationalism. Realism here means that the objects of study in mathematics and other formal sciences are abstract; rationalism means that our knowledge of them is not empirical. Katz uses this position to meet the principal challenges to realism. In exposing the flaws in criticisms of the antirealists, he shows that realists can explain knowledge of abstract objects without supposing we have causal contact with (...) them, that numbers are determinate objects, and that the standard counterexamples to the abstract/concrete distinction have no force. Generalizing the account of knowledge used to meet the challenges to realism, he develops a rationalist and non-naturalist account of philosophical knowledge and argues that it is preferable to contemporary naturalist and empiricist accounts. The book illuminates a wide range of philosophical issues, including the nature of necessity, the distinction between the formal and natural sciences, empiricist holism, the structure of ontology, and philosophical skepticism. Philosophers will use this fresh treatment of realism and rationalism as a starting point for new directions in their own research. (shrink)