On Quantifier Domain Restriction

Stanley, Jason; Szabó, Z. G.

doi:10.1111/1468-0017.00130

Cited by 709 publications

(345 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…See, e.g., Perry [1998], Stanley [2000], Stanley and Szabo [2000]. It is also endorsed by theorists who take it to be constitutive of the subject matter of semantics that we explain why very often, we are happy to endorse the claim that if S means that p, then S is true iff p [as, e.g., Borg, 2004, Larson andSegal, 1995].…”

Section: Semantics and Language Usementioning

confidence: 97%

Dynamics, Brandom-style

Nickel

2011

Philos Stud

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This paper discusses the semantic theory presented in Robert Brandom's Making It Explicit. I argue that it is best understood as a special version of dynamic semantics, so that these semantics by themselves offer an interesting theoretical alternative to more standard truth-conditional theories. This reorientation also has implications for more foundational issues. I argue that it gives us the resources for a renewed argument for the normativity of meaning. The paper ends by critically assessing the view in both its development and motivations.Keywords static semantics · dynamic semantics · incompatibility semantics · brandom · norms · anaphora * The material for this paper grew out of a seminar I taught at Harvard University in the Spring of 2008. I want to thank the participants in that seminar for lots of helpful discussion, especially

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Section: Semantics and Language Usementioning

confidence: 97%

Dynamics, Brandom-style

Nickel

2011

Philos Stud

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“…Here I'm interested in a notion that can be used to distinguish good and bad arguments as they are made by speakers of natural Stalnaker (1999), Stanley and Szabo (2000). 45 Kaplan (1989a After all, these presuppositions would seem to be the ones speakers would recognize as implicitly built into a conditional's antecedent.…”

Section: Validitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Contextualist Solutions to Three Puzzles about Practical Conditionals1

Dowell¹

2012

Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 7

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Here I discuss three puzzles about practical conditionals and inferences and show how the contextualist semantic framework for "ought" I develop elsewhere (Dowell (ms 1 )) resolves all three puzzles more satisfactorily than any of three prominent rivals, the relativist account of Niko Kolodny and John MacFarlane (2010), the wide-scoping account of John Broome (2004), and the 'trying on' account of James Dreier (2009).The puzzle cases center around the issue of how best to understand indicative conditionals that contain a bare evaluative or normative modal (BNM) in its consequent. A 'bare' modal is one that doesn't contain a clause that makes the relativization of the modal explicit (as in "given the circumstances, the Doctor morally ought to prescribe nothing"). On the semantics for modals canonical among linguists, bare modals get the values for their relativizations as a function of the context of utterance. This makes room for the hypothesis that the puzzles arise as a result of some form of equivocation. This is just what I'll argue below.The plan of action is as follows: First I'll introduce the puzzle cases and six desiderata for their solutions, briefly sketch the semantic accounts of 'ought' and 'if' I favor, and then show how only the contextualist semantics for modals defended here and elsewhere 2 is able to resolve each while satisfying all six desiderata. The Puzzles First Puzzle: Odious Inferences1 A special thanks to Aaron Bronfman, for exceptionally careful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and to Jamie Dreier, for extensive discussion. Thanks also to Fabrizio Cariani for comments on an earlier draft and to John Broome, Matthew Chrisman, Patricia Greenspan, Alex Silk, David Sobel, and participants in the 7 th Annual Madison Metaethics Workshop for discussion. 2 See Dowell (ms 1 ), (ms 2 ), and (forthcoming). 2Consider two cases involving practical inferences, the first, unusual and the subject of much philosophical discussion and controversy, the second, completely mundane. MURDER:M1. You want to murder messily.M2. If you want to murder messily, you ought to use a chainsaw. 3 M3. Therefore, you ought to murder with a chainsaw.MURDER is puzzling. Many report their inclination to regard both premises as true, but the conclusion false. But, how can that be? The sentences appear to have the structure of ordinary, modus ponens reasoning, so the truth of the premises should suffice for the truth of the conclusion. John Broome has suggested that we explain our acceptance of the premises, but rejection the conclusion in inferences like MURDER by giving the modal in its second premise wide-scope and interpreting the conditional as a material conditional. 4 (Here I'll use "widescoping" to describe this strategy of giving the modal wide-scope and treating the conditional as the material conditional.) If we do that, the conclusion won't follow from the truth of the premises, since, despite appearances, the argument doesn't in fact have a modus ponens structure. If Broome's proposal is right, the poi...

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“…The problem of context dependence is the problem of explaining how context contributes to interpretation … write Stanley and Szabó (2000), who discuss a variety of special cases of the general problem of meaning variation with context. The purpose of this paper is to provide a proof-theoretic semantics (PTS) 1 (see below) for a special case of the general context dependence problem, namely quantifier domain restriction (QDR).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A proof-theoretic semantics for contextual domain restriction

Francez

2015

JLM

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The paper presents a proof-theoretic semantics account of contextual domain restriction for quantified sentences in a fragment of English. First, the technique is exemplified in the more familiar firstorder logic, and in its restricted quantification variant. Then, a prooftheoretic semantics for the NL fragment is reviewed, and extended to handling contextual domain restriction. The paper addresses both the descriptive facet of the problem, deriving meaning relative to a context, as well as the fundamental aspect, defining explicitly a context (suitable for quantifier domain restriction), and specifying what it is about such a context that brings about the variation of meaning due to it.The paper argues for the following principle (the context incorporation principle, CIP): for every quantified sentence S depending on a context c, there exists a sentence S ′ , the meaning of which is independent of c, s.t. the contextually restricted meaning of S is equal to the meaning of S ′ . Thus, the effect of a context can always be internalized. The current model-theoretic accounts of contextual domain restriction do not satisfy CIP, in that they imply intersection of some extension with an arbitrary subset of the domain, that need not be the denotation of any NL-expression.

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On Quantifier Domain Restriction

Cited by 709 publications

References 55 publications

Dynamics, Brandom-style

Dynamics, Brandom-style

Contextualist Solutions to Three Puzzles about Practical Conditionals1

A proof-theoretic semantics for contextual domain restriction

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