Front Cover; Impressum; Contents; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; 2. Semantics: aims, explanations and theories; 2.1 The aims of semantic theorising; 2.2 Methods and explanations in semantics; 2.3 Four kinds of semantic theories; 3. The case for Semantic Pluralism; 3.1 The argument from unspecific contexts; 3.2 The argument from explanatory value; 3.3 Objections and replies; 4. Semantic Pluralism; 4.1 Flexible Pluralism; 4.2 Strong Pluralism; 4.3 Pluralist semantics; 4.4 Pluralism from a Gricean model of (...) communication; 4.5 Pluralism and what is said;. (shrink)

What is the content of a sentence in context? A proposition, says the standard propositional view accepted in much of semantics. A set of propositions, says the hitherto little-explored view of Semantic Pluralism. The aim of this book is to motivate, develop and defend Semantic Pluralism. To achieve this aim, the book puts forward two arguments against Contextualism, the most popular propositional theory. It spells out two versions of Semantic Pluralism: Flexible Pluralism, which (...) takes many expressions to be context-sensitive, and Strong Pluralism, which denies that context-sensitivity is widespread. And it shows how Pluralists can reply to several objections that have been lodged against non-propositional semantic theories. (shrink)

Disagreeing with most authors on vagueness, the author proposes a solution that he calls ‘three-valued semantic pluralism’ to the age-old sorites paradox. In essence, it is a three-valued semantics for a first-order vague language with identity with the additional suggestion that a vague language has more than one correct interpretation. Unlike the traditional three-valued approach to a vague language, three-valued semantic pluralism can accommodate the phenomenon of higher-order vagueness and the phenomenon of penumbral connection when equipped (...) with ‘suitable conditionals’. The author also shows that three-valued semantic pluralism is a natural consequence of a restricted form of the Tolerance principle ) and a few related ideas, and argues that ) is well-motivated by considerations about how we learn, teach, and use vague predicates. (shrink)

We pose two arguments for the view that sentences containing definite descriptions semantically express multiple propositions: a general proposition as Russell suggested, and a singular proposition featuring the individual who uniquely satisfies the description at the world-time of utterance. One argument mirrors David Kaplan's arguments that indexicals express singular propositions through a context-sensitive character. The second argument mirrors Kent Bach's and Stephen Neale's arguments for pluralist views about terms putatively triggering conventional implicatures, appositive, and nonrestrictive relative clauses. After presenting these (...) arguments, we show that rival explanations (appeals to implicature, referential use, presupposition, etc.) do not offer equally compelling explanations of the data, and defend the methodology employed in the arguments against some criticisms. (shrink)

_Insensitive Semantics_ is an overview of and contribution to the debates about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one. Provides detailed and wide-ranging overviews of the central positions and arguments surrounding contextualism Addresses broad and varied aspects of the distinction between the semantic and non-semantic content of language Defends (...) a distinctive and explanatorily powerful combination of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism Confronts core problems which not only run to the heart of philosophy of language and linguistics, but which arise in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy as well. (shrink)

Up to now theories of semantic information have implicitly relied on logical monism, or the view that there is one true logic. The latter position has been explicitly challenged by logical pluralists. Adopting an unbiased attitude in the philosophy of information, we take a suggestion from Beall and Restall at heart and exploit logical pluralism to recognise another kind of pluralism. The latter is called informational pluralism, a thesis whose implications for a theory of semantic (...) information we explore. (shrink)

The work explains a unifying pluralist account of truth that combines representative truth-concern approaches in Chinese philosophy to posit one foundation of the various movements of thought in Chinese philosophy that pursue “how things are.” Mou contributes a unique, Eastern view to contemporary exploration of the philosophical issue of truth.

Ernie Lepore and Herman Cappelen (2005) argue that contextual influences on semantic content are much more restricted than most theorists assume, by presenting three tests for semantic context-sensitivity and concluding that only a very restricted class of expressions pass them. They combine this extreme semantic minimalism with an even more extreme speech-act pluralism, according to which a speaker has said anything that she can be reported as having said. I argue that because Lepore and Cappelen refuse (...) to distinguish what is said from what is claimed, their tests wrongly classify metaphor as semantically context-sensitive. I then argue that our ordinary linguistic practices support a distinction between what is said and what is claimed, and that underwrites a much more moderate form of speech act pluralism. (shrink)

Ernie Lepore and Herman Cappelen (2005) argue that contextual influences on semantic content are much more restricted than most theorists assume, by presenting three tests for semantic context-sensitivity and concluding that only a very restricted class of expressions pass them. They combine this extreme semantic minimalism with an even more extreme speech-act pluralism, according to which a speaker has said anything that she can be reported as having said. I argue that because Lepore and Cappelen refuse (...) to distinguish what is said from what is claimed, their tests wrongly classify metaphor as semantically context-sensitive. I then argue that our ordinary linguistic practices support a distinction between what is said and what is claimed, and that underwrites a much more moderate form of speech act pluralism. (shrink)

A semantic theory is committed to semantic monism just in case every particular semantic property posited by the theory is a member of the same kind. The commitment to semantic monism appears to draw some support from the need to provide a compositional semantics, since taking a single kind of semantic property as key to a semantic theory affords a uniform pattern on the basis of which the meaning of any given sentence can be (...) compositionally determined. This line of support highlights a tension between the principle of compositionality and taking a more pluralistic approach to semantic theorizing. In this essay, that tension is relieved, leaving open the prospect of a pluralistic semantic theory that observes the principle of compositionality. (shrink)

In Insensitive Semantics (2004), we argue for two theses – Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism. In this paper, we outline our defense against two objections often raised against Semantic Minimalism. To get to that defense, we first need some stage setting. To that end, we begin with five stage setting sections. These lead to the first objection, viz., that it might follow from our view that comparative adjectives are context insensitive. We defend our view against that (...) objection (not, as you might expect, by denying that implication, but by endorsing it). Having done so, we address a second objection, viz., that Semantic Minimalism makes it difficult to see what role semantic content plays in communicative exchanges. We respond and end with a reversal, i.e., we argue that even though the second objection fails against us, it works against those who raise the objection. In particular, we show that Recanati ends up with a notion of communicated content that fails various tests for psychological reality. (shrink)

In Insensitive Semantics (2004), we argue for two theses – Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism. In this paper, we outline our defense against two objections often raised against Semantic Minimalism. To get to that defense, we first need some stage setting. To that end, we begin with five stage setting sections. These lead to the first objection, viz., that it might follow from our view that comparative adjectives are context insensitive. We defend our view against that (...) objection (not, as you might expect, by denying that implication, but by endorsing it). Having done so, we address a second objection, viz., that Semantic Minimalism makes it difficult to see what role semantic content plays in communicative exchanges. We respond and end with a reversal, i.e., we argue that even though the second objection fails against us, it works against those who raise the objection. In particular, we show that Recanati ends up with a notion of communicated content that fails various tests for psychological reality. (shrink)

This article defends the thesis that Putnam's theory of the use of empirical concepts constitutes a continuous backbone of his philosophy early and late. Thus, Putnam's theory of empirical concepts should be at least compatible with the most distinctive features of both, his realism (viz., semantic externalism) and his pragmatism (viz., conceptual pluralism). The article suggests the even stronger thesis that Putnam's theory of concepts is essential for the explanatory purposes of both. In doing so, the article proposes (...) reading Putnam's theory as a theory displaying contextual features of language use rather than as one describing metaphysical, epistemic, or cognitional 'underpinnings'. The theory's continuity is thus taken to show that Putnam's realism and pragmatism are and always have been inseparable. (shrink)

Under semantic monism I understand the thesis “The Good is said in one way” and under semantic pluralism the antithesis “The Good is said in many ways”. Plato’s Socrates seems to defend a “semantic monism”. As only one sun exists, so the “Good” has for Socrates and Plato only one reference. Nevertheless, Socrates defends in the Philebus a semantic pluralism, more exactly trialism, of “beauty, symmetry and truth” . Therefore, metaphorically speaking, there seem to (...) exist not only one sun, but three suns. If the platonic Socrates defends a semantic monism on the one hand and pluralism on the other, how can we unite his pluralism with his monism? My thesis is that the three references are “qualities” of the one single reference, or again, speaking metaphorically, “side suns” of the single sun. In the following, I propose first an exegesis of Plato’s last written word on the Good in Phil. 65 A 1-5 by dividing it into five sentences. Second, I ask a philosophical question on this monism and the corresponding hierarchy of values. (shrink)

In Insensitive Semantics (2004), we argue for two theses – Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism. In this paper, we outline our defense against two objections often raised against Semantic Minimalism. We begin with five stage-setting sections. These lead to the first objection, viz., that it might follow from our view that comparative adjectives are context insensitive. We defend our view against that objection (not, as you might expect, by denying that implication, but by endorsing it). Having (...) done so, we address a second objection, viz., that Semantic Minimalism makes it difficult to see what role semantic content plays in communicative exchanges. We respond and end with a reversal, i.e., we argue that even though the second objection fails against us, it works against those who raise the objection. In particular, we show that our critics, especially, Carston (2002) and Recanati (2004), end up with a notion of communicated content that fails various tests for psychological reality. (shrink)

According to alethic pluralism, there is more than one way of being true: truth is not unique, in that there is a plurality of truth properties, each of which pertains to a specific domain of discourse. This paper shows how such a plurality can be represented in a coherent formal framework by means of a Kripke-style construction that yields intuitively correct extensions for distinct truth predicates. The theory of truth we develop can handle at least three crucial problems that (...) have been raised in connection with alethic pluralism: mixed compounds, mixed inferences, and semantic paradoxes. (shrink)

This dissertation argues for Semantic Variance, the thesis that nearly every utterance is such that there is no proposition that more than one languge user takes to be that utterance's truth-conditional content. I argue that Semantic Variance is problematic for standard theories concerning the nature of communication, the epistemic significance of ordinary disputes, the semantics of speech reports, and the nature of linguistic competence. In response to the problems arising from the truth of Semantic Variance, I develop (...) new accounts of the transmission of relevant information, ordinary disputes, and the semantics of speech reports. Towards the end of the dissertation I outline a pluralistic account about the nature of communication and linguistic competence. (shrink)

In this paper, I make the case for the view that there are many different kinds of dispositions, a view I call dispositional pluralism. The reason I think that this case needs to be made is to temper the tendency to make sweeping generalization about the nature of dispositions that go beyond conceptual truths. Examples of such generalizations include claims that all dispositions are intrinsic, essential, fundamental, or natural.! In order to counter this tendency, I will start by noting (...) the extent to which it is at odds with the semantics of dispositions, according to which there are many kinds of disposition ascriptions. From there, I will try to support a metaphysical claim that there are different kinds of dispositions. To bridge the gap between semantics and metaphysics, I appeal to epistemology. I'll consider the question "when do we have good reason to believe that a disposition ascription is true?" If our disposition ascriptions are true, then we are right about what kinds of dispositions things have, and what kinds of dispositions there are. I claim that our evidence for different kinds of dispositions is on a par; we have reason to believe that various kinds of dispositions are instantiated. (shrink)

Within the heterodox economic literature on pluralism, attention has predominately focussed on epistemic and methodological levels. The response to the question of what ontological pluralism could mean, and its contribution to the debate, remains limited. This paper argues for greater attention to be given to ontological pluralism, not only because it enriches the existing discussions around pluralism in the heterodox literature but it also provides support for a plurality of epistemological standards and methodological approaches. The paper (...) proposes an alternative definition of ontological pluralism based on the work of McDaniel and Turner. Both argue that ontological pluralism should be understood as saying that there are different ways to exist and that acceptance of the semantic characteristics of ontological questions and statements within different ontological discourses are essential in a proper definition. This paper details their definition and explores its consequences with an analysis of the Searle–Lawson dispute on social objects. (shrink)

Building on Wittgenstein’s ideas, I defend a brand of pluralism that associates words with conceptual families and appeals to this notion in the course of philosophical problem solving. I argue that certain problems that the received view of conceptual engineering (‘improvement by replacement’) faces can be more easily overcome if we adopt a pluralist perspective. I show that the proposed approach can circumvent the problem of topic discontinuity, whilst also avoiding the threat of trivialisation, since it can easily accommodate (...) both coarse-grained and fine-grained topics. Finally, I argue that my variant of pluralism is compatible with de novo conceptual engineering insofar as it allows that the paradigm associated with a word may shift overtime thus creating an opportunity for new candidate members to join a conceptual family. (shrink)

Informational semantics were first developed as an interpretation of the model-theory of substructural (and especially relevant) logics. In this paper we argue that such a semantics is of independent value and that it should be considered as a genuine alternative explication of the notion of logical consequence alongside the traditional model-theoretical and the proof-theoretical accounts. Our starting point is the content-nonexpansion platitude which stipulates that an argument is valid iff the content of the conclusion does not exceed the combined content (...) of the premises. We show that this basic platitude can be used to characterise the extension of classical as well as non-classical consequence relations. The distinctive trait of an informational semantics is that truth-conditions are replaced by information-conditions. The latter leads to an inversion of the usual order of explanation: Considerations about logical discrimination (how finely propositions are individuated) are conceptually prior to considerations about deductive strength. Because this allows us to bypass considerations about truth, an informational semantics provides an attractive and metaphysically unencumbered account of logical consequence, non-classical logics, logical rivalry and pluralism about logical consequence. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that contemporary truth pluralists have undersold the connection between their views and the semantic realism/anti-realism debate. I argue that pluralist theories of truth are essentially a combination of accepting both realist and anti-realist intuitions, and that we should take this lesson to heart. I show how we can categorize pluralist views by how realist or anti-realist they are, and introduce two notions to do so: methodological fundamentality and theoretical fundamentality. I show how viewing the (...) pluralist literature in this way reveals the core principles behind rival pluralist accounts and cuts across another influential way to divide up the truth pluralist literature. I conclude by introducing a new version of truth pluralism: methodological pluralism about truth. Methodological pluralism about truth stays methodologically neutral between its realist and anti-realist poles, and thus better accounts for both of its key theoretical motivations. (shrink)

This paper explores some of the assumptions orienting the debate about logical pluralism. I argue that these assumptions are grounded in the truth-conditional character of the semantic metavocabularies in which the debate is conducted. Then, I suggest an expressivist strategy to reinterpret the pluralist claim that there are different logics and I show how the expressive role of logical vocabularies can be equally well characterized by means of different expressive resources not involving the notion of truth.

Kripke finds in Wittgenstein an argument for the view that there is no such thing as meaning. A key premise in that argument is that there are semantic norms—norms governing the uses of expressions that hold in virtue of what those expressions mean. Standardly, those norms are understood to be norms of truth—roughly, they permit truly applying expressions and prohibit falsely applying them. An increasing number of philosophers reject the standard interpretation. In this paper, I explore alternative construals due (...) to Alan Millar and Indrek Reiland and argue that they are either unmotivated or not competitors with the standard account. In doing so, I defend a kind of pluralism about semantic normativity. If there are norms of truth that hold in virtue of what expressions mean, there will be further norms that make reference to the doxastic, epistemic, and motivational states of language-users, norms that are explanatory posterior to the norms of truth. (shrink)

This book introduces an account of cognitive architecture, Cognitive Pluralism, on which the basic units of understanding are models of particular content domains. Having many mental models is a good adaptive strategy for cognition, but models can be incompatible with one another, leading to paradoxes and inconsistencies of belief, and it may not be possible to integrate the understanding supplied by multiple models into a comprehensive and self-consistent "super model". The book applies the theory to explaining intuitive reasoning and (...) cognitive illusions and explores implications for epistemology, semantics, and disunity of science. (shrink)

Pluralism is relevant to conceptual engineering in many ways. First of all, we face the issue of pluralism when trying to characterise the very object(s) of conceptual engineering. Is it just concepts? Could concepts be pluralistically conceived for the purposes of conceptual engineering? Or rather, is it concepts and other representational devices as well? Second, one may wonder whether concepts have only one function in our mental life (representation) or, rather, a plurality of functions (including non-representational ones). Third, (...) it is a contended question whether conceptual engineering projects should pursue only one set of values and goals (epistemic ones) or, rather, a variety of values and goals, including non-epistemic ones. Finally, the engineering of a concept may result in a form of “local” conceptual pluralism, which gives rise to its own ontological and semantic challenges. Having explored the various ways in which pluralism becomes important for conceptual engineers, this contribution presents and summarizes the articles published in this special issue. (shrink)

In the semantic debate about plurals, pluralism is the view that a plural term denotes some things in the domain of quantification and a plural predicate denotes a plural property, i.e. a property that can be instantiated by many things jointly. According to a particular version of this view, untyped pluralism, there is no type distinction between objects and properties. In this article, I argue against untyped pluralism by showing that it is subject to a variant (...) of a Russell-style argument put forth by Timothy Williamson and that it clashes with a plural version of Cantor’s theorem. I conclude that pluralists should postulate a type distinction between objects and properties. (shrink)

In this paper, I outline and defend a novel approach to alethic pluralism, the thesis that truth has more than one metaphysical nature: where truth is, in part, explained by reference, it is relational in character and can be regarded as consisting in correspondence; but where instead truth does not depend upon reference it is not relational and involves only coherence. In the process, I articulate a clear sense in which truth may or may not depend upon reference: this (...) involves distinguishing semantic denotation from pragmatic speaker reference and claiming that there may or may not exist a metasemantic connection between these two notions. Finally, I argue that reference is not in general inscrutable—that this metasemantic connection does exist in the case of our ordinary discourse about present macroscopic concrete objects—but that it is in pure mathematics, where reference cannot be secured, and which therefore plays no role in accounting for truth. In this manner, alethic pluralism is upheld. (shrink)

In philosophy of science, several views have been espoused on the meaning of the term 'theory'; among these are the syntactic view and the semantic view. But even after decades of debate, no consensus has been reached on an all-encompassing positively defined view on theories. Here we take that to mean that the outcome of the debate is that such an all-encompassing view is nonexisting. Correspondingly, the purpose of this paper is to present a pluralist view on theories: it (...) is negatively defined, yet it may break the deadlock in the ongoing debate on the meaning of 'theory'. (shrink)

Computers today are not only the calculation tools - they are directly (inter)acting in the physical world which itself may be conceived of as the universal computer (Zuse, Fredkin, Wolfram, Chaitin, Lloyd). In expanding its domains from abstract logical symbol manipulation to physical embedded and networked devices, computing goes beyond Church-Turing limit (Copeland, Siegelman, Burgin, Schachter). Computational processes are distributed, reactive, interactive, agent-based and concurrent. The main criterion of success of computation is not its termination, but the adequacy of its (...) response, its speed, generality and flexibility; adaptability, and tolerance to noise, error,faults, and damage. Interactive computing is a generalization of Turing computing, and it calls for new conceptualizations (Goldin, Wegner). In the info-computationalist framework, with computation seen as information processing, natural computation appears as the most suitable paradigm of computation and information semantics requires logical pluralism. (shrink)

A difficulty for alethic pluralism has been the idea that semantic evaluation of conjunctions whose conjuncts come from discourses with distinct truth properties requires a third notion of truth which applies to both of the original discourses. But this line of reasoning does not entail that there exists a single generic truth property that applies to all statements and all discourses, unless it is supplemented with additional, controversial, premises. So the problem of mixed conjunctions, while highlighting other aspects (...) of alethic pluralism worth investigating further, does not constitute an effective objection to it. (shrink)

IntroductionScientific pluralism is generally understood in the backdrop of scientific monism. So is mathematical pluralism. Though there are many culture-dependent mathematical practices, mathematical concepts and theories are generally taken to be culture invariant. We would like to explore in this paper whether mathematical pluralism is admissible or not.Materials and methodsMathematical pluralism may be approached at least from five different perspectives. 1. Foundational: The view would claim that different issues within mathematics need support of different foundations, apparently (...) incompatible with one another. 2. Ontological: The world itself is dappled—the mathematical counterpart of which can be traced to the admission of non-Euclidean spaces and also in simultaneous acceptance of set-theoretic and category theoretic entities in the ontology of mathematics. 3. The third route is epistemological. It follows from the view that the nature of reality is so complex that different aspects of it require alternative modes of representation and explanation sometimes severally, sometimes simultaneously, e.g., classical, constructivist, computer-aided and different finitist mathematics can be used depending on the knowledge situation. 4. The fourth route is semantic. Fuzzy mathematics, we know, gives up bivalence in theory of truth, and ascribes truth to mathematical propositions in degrees. 5. The last one is Programmatic: for some, mathematical pluralism is a stance, a programme. It provides a framework which strikes at the root of cultural hegemony and nourishes a climate of intellectual humility and tolerance. It is not my intention to hold the brief of any of these versions. I just want to present to the readers a more or less complete picture of the scenario, though not an exhaustive one. ConclusionUnlike monism, mathematical pluralism does not rule out any possibility—even the possibility of having a unitary over-arching framework of interpretation remains as an open option. This paper highlights the fact that motivations for upholding pluralism in mathematics have been many and one can be a pluralist just by subscribing to any of the views listed above. (shrink)

This thesis is an attempt to provide an account of gender. In particular, it is an attempt to develop an ameliorative approach to gender that satisfies a number of transfeminist political goals. That is, following Sally Haslanger, I ask what do we want gender to be? In order to answer the question, I develop a novel Neurathian methodology for conceptual engineering, and a distinctively ‘activist’ take on that project. From there I criticise a number of theories of gender and suggest (...) that we should instead adopt a position I call Ameliorative Semantic Pluralism. That is, a position that endorses multiple meanings for gender terms. I develop this position in conversation with those traditions that arose from the anti-essentialism debates of the 1990s – family resemblance theories, Butlerian performativity, deflationism, scepticism, and nihilism about gender. I provide novel critiques of each position but take seriously the concerns that each position had. I end the thesis by drawing on Audre Lorde to engineer one of the senses of the term ‘agender’ that speaks to my phenomenology, before using that account to critique some further recent attempts to theorise nonbinary gender identities. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a surge of attention to the problem of logical pluralism; most of which has been a reaction to Beall and Restall’s account of logical pluralism as the existence of more than one equally correct semantic relation of logical consequence. The underlying thesis is that the indeterminacy of the notion of validity goes beyond what the inductive-deductive distinction can precisify. The notion of deductive validity itself is indeterminate as well and this indeterminacy has its (...) roots in the indeterminacy of the more fundamental notion of case. Cases are what make the premisses and the conclusion of an argument true; the most notable example being Tarskian models for classical logic. Deductive validity is the preservation of truth across all cases. This paper argues that unless this account of logical pluralism is supplemented with an argument in favor of the equal legitimacy of the purported cases it becomes merely a semi-controversial exposition of how different logics can be generated. (shrink)

Conceptual atomists argue that most of our concepts are primitive. I take up three arguments that have been thought to support atomism and show that they are inconclusive. The evidence that allegedly backs atomism is equally compatible with a localist position on which concepts are structured representations with complex semantic content. I lay out such a localist position and argue that the appropriate position for a non-atomist to adopt is a pluralist view of conceptual structure. I show several ways (...) in which conceptual pluralism provides an advantage in satisfying the empirical and philosophical demands on a theory of conceptual structure and content. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is commonly described as the view that there is more than one correct logic. It has been claimed that, in order for that view to be interesting, there has to be at least a potential for rivalry between the correct logics. This paper offers a detailed assessment of this suggestion. I argue that an interesting version of logical pluralism is hard, if not impossible, to achieve. I first outline an intuitive understanding of the notions of rivalry (...) and correctness. I then discuss a natural account of rivalry in terms of disagreement about validity claims and the argument from meaning variance that has been raised against it. I explore a more refined picture of the meaning of validity claims that makes use of the character-content distinction of classical two dimensional semantics. There are three ways in which pluralists can use that framework to argue for the view that different logics may be rivals but could nevertheless be equally correct. I argue that none of them is convincing. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that, according to a particular physicalist conception of information, information is both alethically neutral or non-alethic, and is intrinsically semantic. The conception of information presented is physicalist and reductionist, and is contrary to most current pluralist and non-reductionist philosophical opinion about the nature of information. The ontology assumed for this conception of information is based upon physicalist non-eliminative ontic structural realism. However, the argument of primary interest is that information so construed is intrinsically (...) class='Hi'>semantic on a reductionist and non-alethic basis where semantic content is constituted by indication along causal pathways. Similar arguments have been presented by philosophers with respect to representation. I suggest the conception of information that I present is correct by the lights of the best applied mathematical and scientific theories of information. If so, there is no need for any separate theory of semantic information. Thus I present a theory of intrinsically semantic information which also constitutes an informational theory of truth where truth reduces to information. In the last section I discuss weakly and strongly semantic information, and reject them in favour of alethically neutral intrinsically semantic information. (shrink)

An analysis of the role of language in basic and applied science from the semantics of science and the theory of reference requires several steps. First, to specify the field of analysis in the light of several factors: the semantic problems of science; the reference in its triple dimension of relation between language and reality, of referent and of transmission in science; and the link between meaning and reference in science.Second, to consider the central approach to the semantics of (...) science, which forks into two main directions: the semantic line and the pragmatic path. De facto, they lead to different interpretations of the role of language in basic science and in applied science. The semantic line focuses on the content expressed through terms, statements and theories, which has been influential in important philosophical trends and still is prominent in some versions of scientific realism. Meanwhile, the pragmatic path emphasizes the meaning as use, which has influenced philosophers of science of diverse tendencies, such as S. Toulmin, Th. Kuhn, American pragmatists and supporters of the methodological pluralism.Third, to make explicit the leading conceptions regarding the theory of reference, both for the formal sciences and for the empirical sciences. There are a number of options, four of which are analyzed here. The view associated with the semantic role and the semantic value, which connects semantic, epistemological and ontological realms in basic science and in applied science. The causal theory of reference, which has shifted towards internal realism. Anti-realistic semantics, where truth is replaced by proof and the reference is the use made by someone of a term in a context. Kuhn’s approach in his linguistic period, where he rethinks the scientific revolutions taking into account the causal theory of reference.Fourth, to be aware of the consequences of these analyses for basic science and applied science in two ways: on the one hand, for the semantic differences between them, and, on the other, for the perspective of reference. (shrink)

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different fundamental ways of being. Recent defenders of this view—such as Kris McDaniel and Jason Turner—have taken these ways of being to be best captured by semantically primitive quantifier expressions ranging over different domains. They have thus endorsed, what I shall call, quantificational pluralism. I argue that this focus on quantification is a mistake. For, on this view, a quantificational structure—or a quantifier for short—will be whatever part or aspect of (...) reality’s structure that a quantifier expression carves out and reflects. But if quantificational pluralism is true, then a quantifier should be more natural than its corresponding domain; and since it does not appear to be the case that a quantifier is more natural than its corresponding domain, quantificational pluralism does not appear to be true. Thus, I claim, an ontological pluralist should not be a quantificational pluralist. (shrink)