Verbal disputes and topic continuity

Knoll, Viktoria

doi:10.1080/0020174x.2020.1850340

Cited by 17 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 25 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The issue of topic continuity, going back to Strawson (1963), has been widely discussed in the literature on conceptual engineering (see Haslanger, 2012, ch. 7;Cappelen, 2018;Prinzing, 2018;Sawyer, 2020;Knoll, 2020;Nado, 2021;Flocke, 2021;, so let me briefly elaborate on this advantage. The question of which topic speakers are concerned with in a dispute is a matter of pragmatics -or so proponents of the metalinguistic picture could argue (see also Jenkins, 2014, pp.…”

Section: The Metalinguistic Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiating “women”: metalinguistic negotiations across languages

Knoll

2022

Synthese

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The metalinguistic approach to conceptual engineering construes disputes between (what I shall call) linguistic reformers and linguistic conservatives as metalinguistic disagreements on how best to use particular expressions. As the present paper argues, this approach has various merits. However, it was recently criticised in Cappelen’s seminal Fixing Language (2018). Cappelen raises an important objection against the metalinguistic picture. According to this objection – the Babel objection, as I shall call it – the metalinguistic account cannot accommodate the intuition of disagreement between linguistic conservatives and reformers who are speaking different languages. The objection generalises to metalinguistic approaches to e.g. moral disagreements. This paper discusses the Babel objection and shows how to dispel it.

show abstract

Section: The Metalinguistic Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiating “women”: metalinguistic negotiations across languages

Knoll

2022

Synthese

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One natural response to these problems is to reject premises 3 and 3'. On some views, conceptual engineering involves changing the topic to a better one (Knoll, 2020). In many cases, changing topics can be a good thing as it can help us realize our goals (Knoll, 2020;Simion and Kelp, 2020;Koch, 2021;Nado, 2021).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On some views, conceptual engineering involves changing the topic to a better one (Knoll, 2020). In many cases, changing topics can be a good thing as it can help us realize our goals (Knoll, 2020;Simion and Kelp, 2020;Koch, 2021;Nado, 2021). And even when it isn't, it may only be one among many factors that should be considered (Pinder, 2021).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

What topic continuity problem?

Kocurek

2022

Inquiry

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A common objection to the very idea of conceptual engineering is the topic continuity problem: whenever one tries to "reengineer" a concept, one only shifts attention away from one concept to another. Put differently, there is no such thing as conceptual revision: there's only conceptual replacement. Here, I show that topic continuity is compatible with conceptual replacement. Whether the topic is preserved in an act of conceptual replacement simply depends on what is being replaced (a conceptual tool or a conceptual role) and what the topic under discussion is. Thus, the topic continuity problem only arises from a failure to specify these two things.Also known as the "changing the subject objection" or "Strawson's challenge".

show abstract

“…Herman Cappelen proposes an account of topic-continuity (seeCappelen, 2018, p. 112ff). For criticism of Cappelen's account see e.g Knoll (2020)…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Irreducibly collective existence and bottomless nihilism

Werner

2022

Synthese

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper develops the metaphysical hypothesis that there are irreducibly collective pluralities, pluralities of objects that do not have a singular object among them. A way to formulate this hypothesis using plural quantification will be proposed and the coherence of irreducibly collective existence will be defended. Furthermore, irreducibly collective existence will be shown to allow for bottomless scenarios that do not involve things standing in relations of parthood. This will create logical space for an anti-atomistic form of mereological nihilism.

show abstract

Verbal disputes and topic continuity

Cited by 17 publications

References 25 publications

Negotiating “women”: metalinguistic negotiations across languages

Negotiating “women”: metalinguistic negotiations across languages

What topic continuity problem?

Irreducibly collective existence and bottomless nihilism

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About