Underdetermination, domain restriction, and theory choice

Bowker, Mark

doi:10.1111/mila.12207

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Firstly, by highlighting the problems for these approaches I will lay the groundwork for my positive proposal. Secondly, unlike the approaches of Bowker (2019) and MacFarlane (2020b) they do not presuppose the Stalnakerian conception of assertion to which I am unsympathetic. For a powerful challenge to the Stalnakerian approach see Harris (2020).…”

Section: Buchanan's Challengementioning

confidence: 77%

“…12. This observation is central to Bowker's (2019) response to Buchanan's puzzle. Some of the critical points I make in what follows carry over to Bowker's approach.…”

Section: Buchanan's Responsementioning

confidence: 88%

“…There are a number of responses to this challenge, all of which entail radical revision of the Gricean picture (Buchanan 2010;Bowker 2019;MacFarlane 2020a;2020b;and Abreu Zavaleta 2021). In this paper I extend Buchanan's challenge to collective assertion: when collectives produce assertions their intentions will often underdetermine the values assigned to any context sensitive terms in the uttered sentence.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…1 I will then present a new response to Buchanan's challenge: I will argue that we should model the indifference and indecision characteristic of communicative intentions with clusters of partial intentions. This response carries over straightforwardly to collective assertions, and it is conservative in the sense that it retains core elements of of the traditional Gricean picture that are discarded by rival solutions (i.e., those of Buchanan 2010;Bowker 2019;MacFarlane 2020a;2020b;and Abreu Zavaleta 2021). 2…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Collective Communicative Intentions in Context

Peet

2023

Ergo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy

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What are the objects of speaker meaning? The traditional answer is: propositions. The traditional answer faces an important challenge: if propositions are the objects of speaker meaning then there must be specific propositions that speakers intend their audiences to recover. Yet, speakers typically exhibit a degree of indifference regarding how they are interpreted, and cannot rationally intend for their audiences to recover specific propositions. Therefore, propositions are not the objects of speaker meaning (Buchanan 2010; MacFarlane 2020a; 2020b; and Abreu Zavaleta 2021). In this paper I do two things. Firstly, I outline a collective analogue of this challenge that undermines the most prominent responses to the original challenge. Secondly, I provide a new solution: typical utterances are backed by a cluster of partial communicative intentions. This response resolves both individual and collective variants of the problem and allows us to retain the traditional propositional view of speaker meaning.

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Section: Buchanan's Challengementioning

confidence: 77%

“…12. This observation is central to Bowker's (2019) response to Buchanan's puzzle. Some of the critical points I make in what follows carry over to Bowker's approach.…”

Section: Buchanan's Responsementioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Collective Communicative Intentions in Context

Peet

2023

Ergo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy

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“…As I have argued in other work, however, a plurality of interpretations poses no threat to communication when all available interpretations have the same communicative effect in the conversational context. 30 Koch was responding to questions about the Swiss decision to allow hugging between grandparents and grandchildren. There was therefore a very clear question under discussion (QUD) in the context: Should grandparents be allowed to hug their grandchildren?…”

Section: A New Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Problem for Generic Generalisations in Scientific Communication

Bowker

2022

J Applied Philosophy

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Generic generalisations like 'Opioids are highly addictive' are very useful in scientific communication, but they can often be interpreted in many different ways. Although this is not a problem when all interpretations provide the same answer to the question under discussion, a problem arises when a generic generalisation is used to answer a question other than that originally intended. In such cases, some interpretations of the generalisation might answer the question in a way that the original speaker would not endorse. Rather than excising generic generalisations from scientific communication, I recommend that scientific communicators carefully consider the kinds of questions their words might be taken to answer and try to avoid phrasing that might be taken to provide unintended answers. Generic GeneralisationsChildren are not infectious (Daniel Koch, Swiss Federal Office for Public Health Delegate for COVID-19, 27 April 2020.) 1 Koch uttered this sentence during a Swiss COVID-19 press conference, where he was explaining the decision to allow grandparents to hug their grandchildren. The utterance is what is known as a generic generalisation (or simply a generic). Generics can be expressed as bare plurals ('Intensive care patients are vulnerable to infections'), indefinites ('A broken leg is treated with a cast'), definites ('The bacteria salmonella is transmitted through ingestion of contaminated food'), and habituals ('SARS-CoV-2 causes Covid-19'). 2 As I use the term, generics are characterised by two key properties: generics are generalisations that do not answer questions like 'How many/much?' or 'How often?' Generics are generalisations. They tell us about regularities. 3 The generic 'Intensive care patients are vulnerable to infections', for example, might be accepted based on experience of a particular group of patients but tells us about intensive care patients in general, not only about those specific instances. In contrast, nongeneric bare plurals are not generalisations and talk only about a particular thing or collection of things. From 'Birds chased me down the street', you know that some particular collection of birds chased me down the street, but you cannot generalise the property of having chased me down the street to birds in general. Likewise for nongeneric indefinites ('A patient is waiting in Room 302') and definites ('The doctor will see you now').Generics do not answer questions like 'How many?' or 'How often?' 4 For example, the question, 'How often is the bacteria salmonella transmitted through ingestion of contaminated food?' cannot be answered with the generic 'The bacteria salmonella is

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