Justin D''Ambrosio
Biographic Data
| ID | 1208080 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Justin D''Ambrosio |
| GIVEN NAMES | Justin |
| FAMILY NAME | D''Ambrosio |
| SIGNATURE | AMBROSIO J D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Australian National University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8020-2283 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Two notions of resemblance and the semantics of ‘what it's like’
According to the resemblance account of ‘what it's like’ and similar constructions, a sentence such as ‘there is something it's like to have a toothache’ means ‘there is something having a toothache resembles’. This account has proved controversial in the literature; some writers endorse it, many reject it. We show that this conflict is illusory. Drawing on the semantics of intensional transitive verbs, we show that there are two versions of the …
Manipulative Underspecification
In conversation, speakers often felicitously underspecify the content of their speech acts, leaving audiences uncertain about what they mean. This article discusses how such underspecification and the resulting uncertainty can be used deliberately, and manipulatively, to achieve a range of noncommunicative conversational goals—including minimizing conversational conflict, manufacturing acceptance or perceived agreement, and gaining or bolstering …
Multidimensional Adjectives
Multidimensional adjectives are ubiquitous in natural language.An adjective F is multidimensional just in case whether F applies to an object or pair of objects depends on how those objects stand with respect to multiple underlying dimensions of F-ness.Developing a semantics for multidimensional adjectives requires us to address the problem of dimensional aggregation: how do the application conditions of an adjective F in its positive and compara…
Perceptual consciousness and intensional transitive verbs
There is good reason to think that, in every case of perceptual consciousness, there is something of which we are conscious; but there is also good reason to think that, in some cases of perceptual consciousness—for instance, hallucinations—there is nothing of which we are conscious. This paper resolves this inconsistency—which we call the presentation problem—by (a) arguing that ‘conscious of’ and related expressions function as intensional tran…
An Empirical Solution to the Puzzle of Macbeth’s Dagger
The many-property problem is your problem, too
Ramsification and the ramifications of Prior's puzzle
Ramsification is a well‐known method of defining theoretical terms that figures centrally in a wide range of debates in metaphysics. Prior's puzzle is the puzzle of why, given the assumption that that ‐clauses denote propositions, substitution of “the proposition that ” for “that ” within the complements of many propositional attitude verbs sometimes fails to preserve truth, and at other times fails to preserve grammaticality. On the surface, Ram…
Vendler’s puzzle about imagination
Prior's puzzle generalized
Prior's puzzle is standardly taken to be the puzzle of why, given the assumption that that ‐clauses denote propositions, substitution of the proposition that for that within the complements of many propositional attitude verbs is invalid. I show that Prior's puzzle is much more general than is ordinarily supposed. There are two variants on the substitutional form of the puzzle—a quantificational variant and a pronominal variant—and all three form…
The many-property problem is your problem, too
Ramsification and the ramifications of Prior's puzzle
Ramsification is a well‐known method of defining theoretical terms that figures centrally in a wide range of debates in metaphysics. Prior's puzzle is the puzzle of why, given the assumption that that ‐clauses denote propositions, substitution of “the proposition that ” for “that ” within the complements of many propositional attitude verbs sometimes fails to preserve truth, and at other times fails to preserve grammaticality. On the surface, Ram…
Vendler’s puzzle about imagination
Prior's puzzle generalized
Prior's puzzle is standardly taken to be the puzzle of why, given the assumption that that ‐clauses denote propositions, substitution of the proposition that for that within the complements of many propositional attitude verbs is invalid. I show that Prior's puzzle is much more general than is ordinarily supposed. There are two variants on the substitutional form of the puzzle—a quantificational variant and a pronominal variant—and all three form…
An Empirical Solution to the Puzzle of Macbeth’s Dagger
Perceptual consciousness and intensional transitive verbs
There is good reason to think that, in every case of perceptual consciousness, there is something of which we are conscious; but there is also good reason to think that, in some cases of perceptual consciousness—for instance, hallucinations—there is nothing of which we are conscious. This paper resolves this inconsistency—which we call the presentation problem—by (a) arguing that ‘conscious of’ and related expressions function as intensional tran…
Multidimensional Adjectives
Multidimensional adjectives are ubiquitous in natural language.An adjective F is multidimensional just in case whether F applies to an object or pair of objects depends on how those objects stand with respect to multiple underlying dimensions of F-ness.Developing a semantics for multidimensional adjectives requires us to address the problem of dimensional aggregation: how do the application conditions of an adjective F in its positive and compara…
Two notions of resemblance and the semantics of ‘what it's like’
According to the resemblance account of ‘what it's like’ and similar constructions, a sentence such as ‘there is something it's like to have a toothache’ means ‘there is something having a toothache resembles’. This account has proved controversial in the literature; some writers endorse it, many reject it. We show that this conflict is illusory. Drawing on the semantics of intensional transitive verbs, we show that there are two versions of the …
Manipulative Underspecification
In conversation, speakers often felicitously underspecify the content of their speech acts, leaving audiences uncertain about what they mean. This article discusses how such underspecification and the resulting uncertainty can be used deliberately, and manipulatively, to achieve a range of noncommunicative conversational goals—including minimizing conversational conflict, manufacturing acceptance or perceived agreement, and gaining or bolstering …
Linguistics (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (7 works) · Mathematics (6 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (5 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (4 works) · Metaphysics (4 works) · Philosophy of language (4 works)