Poppy Mankowitz
Biographic Data
| ID | 1294858 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Poppy Mankowitz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Poppy |
| FAMILY NAME | Mankowitz |
| SIGNATURE | MANKOWITZ P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bristol |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1308-1041 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Gradability of ‘Conscious’
Are some creatures “more conscious” than others? A number of consciousness researchers have aimed to answer this question. Yet some have claimed that this question does not even make sense. They claim that “conscious” (in the phenomenal sense) never occurs as a gradable adjective , meaning an adjective that permits degree expressions (“more f than,” “slightly f ,” etc.) and that is associated with a degreed property. Both sides face an explanator…
The form of good
Some philosophers hold that sentences with the word good have a uniform form. On this view, many of the apparent syntactic and semantic differences between (say) That is a good knife , Xavier is good with children and It is good to have pets are illusory. A difficulty in evaluating uniformity theses is that they are often not formulated in a linguistically precise way. I provide an interpretation where uniformity theses treat good as taking the s…
Is higher-order quantification ubiquitous in natural language
A common objection to Künne's definition of truth is that it is formulated with a higher-order quantifier over propositions. Künne has claimed that this objection can be alleviated by showing that higher-order quantification is present in natural language. The aim of this paper is to argue that there is no clear way to show this. First, it is not obvious what criteria would make a natural language count as ‘higher-order’. I consider four potentia…
One “True” Meaning
Some words express different meanings in different contexts, such as “bank” and “I.” Linguistic alethic pluralists claim that “true” is another such word. This is a surprising thesis that holds implications for debates about the nature of truth. Yet it is in need of careful elaboration and evaluation. I describe several versions of linguistic alethic pluralism, alongside tests that natural language theorists use to identify different types of mea…
Category Mistakes Electrified
Occurrences of sentences that are traditionally considered category mistakes, such as ‘The red number is divisible by three’, tend to elicit a sense of oddness in assessors. In attempting to explain this oddness, existing accounts in the philosophical literature commonly claim that occurrences of such sentences are associated with a defect or phenomenology unique to the class of category mistakes. It might be thought that recent work in experimen…
Good people are not like good knives
Is anything good simpliciter? And can things count as ‘good’ independent of the context in which ‘good’ is used? Traditionally, a number of meta‐ethicists have given positive answers. But more recently, some philosophers have used observations based on natural language to argue that things can only count as ‘good’ relative to ends and contextual thresholds. I will use work from contemporary linguistics to argue that ‘good’ is ambiguous, and that …
Focus on slurs
Slurring expressions display puzzling behaviour when embedded, such as under negation and in attitude and speech reports. They frequently appear to retain their characteristic qualities, like offensiveness and propensity to derogate. Yet it is sometimes possible to understand them as lacking these qualities. A theory of slurring expressions should explain this variability . We develop an explanation that deploys the linguistic notion of focus. Ou…
The Liar Without Relativism
Some in the recent literature have claimed that a connection exists between the Liar paradox and semantic relativism : the view that the truth values of certain occurrences of sentences depend on the contexts at which they are assessed. Sagi (Erkenntnis 82(4):913–928, 2017) argues that contextualist accounts of the Liar paradox are committed to relativism, and Rudnicki and Łukowski (Synthese 1–20, 2019) propose a new account that they classify as…
Paradox and context shift
The Liar sentence L , which reads ‘ L is not true’, can be used to produce an apparently valid argument proving that L is not true and that L is true. There has been increasing recognition of the appeal of contextualist solutions to the Liar paradox. Contextualist accounts hold that some step in the reasoning induces a context shift that causes the apparently contradictory claims to occur at different contexts. Attempts at identifying the most pr…
Experimenting with every American king
The standard contemporary semantics for 'every' predict the truth of occurrences of sentences with restrictors that denote the empty set, such as 'Every American king lives in New York'. The literature on empty restrictors has been concerned with explaining a particular violation of this prediction: many assessors consider empty-restrictor sentences to be odd rather than valued, and they are apparently more likely to do so when such sentences inc…
‘Quantifier Variance’ Is Not Quantifier Variance
There has been recent interest in the idea that, when metaphysicians disagree over the truth of (say) ‘There are numbers’ or ‘Chairs exist’, their dispute is merely verbal. This idea has been taken to motivate quantifier variance, the view that the meanings of quantifier expressions vary across different ontological languages, and that each of these meanings is of equal metaphysical merit. I argue that quantifier variance cannot be upheld in ligh…
How to have a metalinguistic dispute
There has been recent interest in the idea that speakers who appear to be having a verbal dispute may in fact be engaged in a metalinguistic negotiation : they are communicating information about how they believe an expression should be used. For example, individuals involved in a dispute about whether a racehorse is an athlete might be communicating their diverging views about how ‘athlete’ should be used. While many have argued that metalinguis…
Expressions in focus
It is commonly claimed that, when a constituent is the focus of an occurrence of a sentence, certain alternatives to that constituent are relevant to our understanding of the sentence. Normally these are alternatives to the denotation of the focused constituent. However, Krifka (2007) briefly discusses the notion of expression focus, where the alternatives are linguistic items. Yet an adequate account of expression focus has not been given within…
How to have a metalinguistic dispute
There has been recent interest in the idea that speakers who appear to be having a verbal dispute may in fact be engaged in a metalinguistic negotiation : they are communicating information about how they believe an expression should be used. For example, individuals involved in a dispute about whether a racehorse is an athlete might be communicating their diverging views about how ‘athlete’ should be used. While many have argued that metalinguis…
Expressions in focus
It is commonly claimed that, when a constituent is the focus of an occurrence of a sentence, certain alternatives to that constituent are relevant to our understanding of the sentence. Normally these are alternatives to the denotation of the focused constituent. However, Krifka (2007) briefly discusses the notion of expression focus, where the alternatives are linguistic items. Yet an adequate account of expression focus has not been given within…
‘Quantifier Variance’ Is Not Quantifier Variance
There has been recent interest in the idea that, when metaphysicians disagree over the truth of (say) ‘There are numbers’ or ‘Chairs exist’, their dispute is merely verbal. This idea has been taken to motivate quantifier variance, the view that the meanings of quantifier expressions vary across different ontological languages, and that each of these meanings is of equal metaphysical merit. I argue that quantifier variance cannot be upheld in ligh…
How to have a metalinguistic dispute
There has been recent interest in the idea that speakers who appear to be having a verbal dispute may in fact be engaged in a metalinguistic negotiation : they are communicating information about how they believe an expression should be used. For example, individuals involved in a dispute about whether a racehorse is an athlete might be communicating their diverging views about how ‘athlete’ should be used. While many have argued that metalinguis…
Focus on slurs
Slurring expressions display puzzling behaviour when embedded, such as under negation and in attitude and speech reports. They frequently appear to retain their characteristic qualities, like offensiveness and propensity to derogate. Yet it is sometimes possible to understand them as lacking these qualities. A theory of slurring expressions should explain this variability . We develop an explanation that deploys the linguistic notion of focus. Ou…
The Liar Without Relativism
Some in the recent literature have claimed that a connection exists between the Liar paradox and semantic relativism : the view that the truth values of certain occurrences of sentences depend on the contexts at which they are assessed. Sagi (Erkenntnis 82(4):913–928, 2017) argues that contextualist accounts of the Liar paradox are committed to relativism, and Rudnicki and Łukowski (Synthese 1–20, 2019) propose a new account that they classify as…
Paradox and context shift
The Liar sentence L , which reads ‘ L is not true’, can be used to produce an apparently valid argument proving that L is not true and that L is true. There has been increasing recognition of the appeal of contextualist solutions to the Liar paradox. Contextualist accounts hold that some step in the reasoning induces a context shift that causes the apparently contradictory claims to occur at different contexts. Attempts at identifying the most pr…
Experimenting with every American king
The standard contemporary semantics for 'every' predict the truth of occurrences of sentences with restrictors that denote the empty set, such as 'Every American king lives in New York'. The literature on empty restrictors has been concerned with explaining a particular violation of this prediction: many assessors consider empty-restrictor sentences to be odd rather than valued, and they are apparently more likely to do so when such sentences inc…
One “True” Meaning
Some words express different meanings in different contexts, such as “bank” and “I.” Linguistic alethic pluralists claim that “true” is another such word. This is a surprising thesis that holds implications for debates about the nature of truth. Yet it is in need of careful elaboration and evaluation. I describe several versions of linguistic alethic pluralism, alongside tests that natural language theorists use to identify different types of mea…
Category Mistakes Electrified
Occurrences of sentences that are traditionally considered category mistakes, such as ‘The red number is divisible by three’, tend to elicit a sense of oddness in assessors. In attempting to explain this oddness, existing accounts in the philosophical literature commonly claim that occurrences of such sentences are associated with a defect or phenomenology unique to the class of category mistakes. It might be thought that recent work in experimen…
Good people are not like good knives
Is anything good simpliciter? And can things count as ‘good’ independent of the context in which ‘good’ is used? Traditionally, a number of meta‐ethicists have given positive answers. But more recently, some philosophers have used observations based on natural language to argue that things can only count as ‘good’ relative to ends and contextual thresholds. I will use work from contemporary linguistics to argue that ‘good’ is ambiguous, and that …
Is higher-order quantification ubiquitous in natural language
A common objection to Künne's definition of truth is that it is formulated with a higher-order quantifier over propositions. Künne has claimed that this objection can be alleviated by showing that higher-order quantification is present in natural language. The aim of this paper is to argue that there is no clear way to show this. First, it is not obvious what criteria would make a natural language count as ‘higher-order’. I consider four potentia…
The Gradability of ‘Conscious’
Are some creatures “more conscious” than others? A number of consciousness researchers have aimed to answer this question. Yet some have claimed that this question does not even make sense. They claim that “conscious” (in the phenomenal sense) never occurs as a gradable adjective , meaning an adjective that permits degree expressions (“more f than,” “slightly f ,” etc.) and that is associated with a degreed property. Both sides face an explanator…
The form of good
Some philosophers hold that sentences with the word good have a uniform form. On this view, many of the apparent syntactic and semantic differences between (say) That is a good knife , Xavier is good with children and It is good to have pets are illusory. A difficulty in evaluating uniformity theses is that they are often not formulated in a linguistically precise way. I provide an interpretation where uniformity theses treat good as taking the s…
Philosophy (10 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Linguistics (8 works) · Metaphysics (7 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (7 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (5 works) · Philosophy of language (5 works) · Philosophy of mind (4 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (4 works)