Compositionality Josh Dever

Supervaluations Debugged

We must begin by stating an erroneous view. Modality may be supposed to affect the assertion in its formal character, and without regard to that which is asserted. We may take for instance a content S – P, not yet asserted, and may claim for modality the power of affirming this content S – P, unaltered and unqualified, in several ways. S – P, it is supposed, may be asserted, for instance, eithe...

Living the Life Aquatic Does Presupposition Accommodation Mandate Dynamic Semantics?

What should a semantic theory for a language tell us? A traditional answer goes back at least to Frege and Russell: • The Static Conception of Semantics (Preliminary Version): A semantic theory should assign a proposition, conceived of as some carrier of meaning that can play the role of truth condition determination, to each (or at least each declarative) sentence. A competing answer has emerg...

Using Variables Within the Expectation Formula

This paper introduces two constraints on the use of variables inside the expectation formula. The constraints are, roughly, (1) that the variable takes the same conditional expectation in each event in the partition and (2) that the total expected value be a linear function of the variable for each event in the partition. We argue that the reasoning in one version of the “two envelope paradox” ...

Slingshots and Boomerangs

A “slingshot” proof suggested by Kurt Gödel (1944) has been recast by Stephen Neale (1995) as a deductive argument showing that no non-truthfunctional sentence connective can permit the combined use, within its scope, of two truth-functionally valid inference principles involving definite descriptions. According to Neale, this result provides indirect support for Russell’s Theory of Description...

The Role of BRCA1 in DNA Double-strand Break Repair