Brian Rabern
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 1294921 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Brian Rabern |
| PRENOMES | Brian |
| SOBRENOME | Rabern |
| ASSINATURA | RABERN B |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3987-1853 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 11 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 20 |
| OBRAS COMO AUTOR | 10 |
| OBRAS COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2012 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 2 |
A compositional semantics for Venn diagrams
This paper examines Venn diagrams as a case study of visual representation. Venn diagrams have a clear formal structure and clearly defined correctness conditions. The question for this paper is whether these diagrams have a recursive syntax and corresponding compositional semantics by analogy with those developed for formal or natural languages. Existing research pointedly fails to offer a compositional semantics for Venn diagrams. This might su…
Against Fregean Quantification
There are two dominant approaches to quantification: the Fregean and the Tarskian. While the Tarskian approach is standard and familiar, deep conceptual objections have been pressed against its employment of variables as genuine syntactic and semantic units. Because they do not explicitly rely on variables, Fregean approaches are held to avoid these worries. The apparent result is that the Fregean can deliver something that the Tarskian is unable…
Resisting the epistemic argument for compatibilism
Scorekeeping in a chess game
There is an important analogy between languages and games. Just as a scoresheet records features of the evolution of a game to determine the effect of a move in that game, a conversational score records features of the evolution of a conversation to determine the effect of the linguistic moves that speakers make. Chess is particularly interesting for the study of conversational dynamics because it has language-like notations, and so serves as a s…
The myth of occurrence-based semantics
The principle of compositionality requires that the meaning of a complex expression remains the same after substitution of synonymous expressions. Alleged counterexamples to compositionality seem to force a theoretical choice: either apparent synonyms are not synonyms or synonyms do not syntactically occur where they appear to occur. Some theorists have instead looked to Frege’s doctrine of “reference shift” according to which the meaning of an e…
Frege and saving substitution
Goodman and Lederman (Philos Stud 177(4):947–952, 2020) argue that the traditional Fregean strategy for preserving the validity of Leibniz’s Law of substitution fails when confronted with apparent counterexamples involving proper names embedded under propositional attitude verbs. We argue, on the contrary, that the Fregean strategy succeeds and that Goodman and Lederman’s argument misfires
The Science of Meaning
Semantics is the systematic study of linguistic meaning. The past fifty years have seen an explosion of research into the semantics of natural languages. There are now sophisticated theories of phenomena that were not even known to exist mere decades ago. Much of the early work in natural language semantics was accompanied by extensive reflection on the aims of semantic theory, and the form a theory must take to meet those aims. But this meta-the…
Science of Meaning
With language we command, assert, query, emote, insult, and inspire. Language has meaning, and semantics is the science of linguistic meaning. But what exactly is "meaning"? What is the exact target of semantic theory? This volume explores these questions, in the light of the current state of the art in natural language semantics
The history of the use of ⟦.⟧-notation in natural language semantics
In contemporary natural languages semantics one will often see the use of special brackets to enclose a linguistic expression, e.g. ⟦carrot⟧. These brackets---so-called denotation brackets or semantic evaluation brackets---stand for a function that maps a linguistic expression to its "denotation" or semantic value (perhaps relative to a model or other parameters). Even though this notation has been used in one form or another since the early deve…
Monsters and the Theoretical Role of Context
Kaplan (1989) famously claimed that monsters—operators that shift the context—do not exist in English and “could not be added to it”. Several re- cent theorists have pointed out a range of data that seem to refute Kaplan’s claim, but others (most explicitly Stalnaker 2014) have offered a principled argument that monsters are impossible. This paper interprets and resolves the dispute. Contra appearances, this is no dry, technical matter: it cuts t…
Against the identification of assertoric content with compositional value
Against the identification of assertoric content with compositional value
Monsters and the Theoretical Role of Context
Kaplan (1989) famously claimed that monsters—operators that shift the context—do not exist in English and “could not be added to it”. Several re- cent theorists have pointed out a range of data that seem to refute Kaplan’s claim, but others (most explicitly Stalnaker 2014) have offered a principled argument that monsters are impossible. This paper interprets and resolves the dispute. Contra appearances, this is no dry, technical matter: it cuts t…
Against the identification of assertoric content with compositional value
The history of the use of ⟦.⟧-notation in natural language semantics
In contemporary natural languages semantics one will often see the use of special brackets to enclose a linguistic expression, e.g. ⟦carrot⟧. These brackets---so-called denotation brackets or semantic evaluation brackets---stand for a function that maps a linguistic expression to its "denotation" or semantic value (perhaps relative to a model or other parameters). Even though this notation has been used in one form or another since the early deve…
Monsters and the Theoretical Role of Context
Kaplan (1989) famously claimed that monsters—operators that shift the context—do not exist in English and “could not be added to it”. Several re- cent theorists have pointed out a range of data that seem to refute Kaplan’s claim, but others (most explicitly Stalnaker 2014) have offered a principled argument that monsters are impossible. This paper interprets and resolves the dispute. Contra appearances, this is no dry, technical matter: it cuts t…
The Science of Meaning
Semantics is the systematic study of linguistic meaning. The past fifty years have seen an explosion of research into the semantics of natural languages. There are now sophisticated theories of phenomena that were not even known to exist mere decades ago. Much of the early work in natural language semantics was accompanied by extensive reflection on the aims of semantic theory, and the form a theory must take to meet those aims. But this meta-the…
Science of Meaning
With language we command, assert, query, emote, insult, and inspire. Language has meaning, and semantics is the science of linguistic meaning. But what exactly is "meaning"? What is the exact target of semantic theory? This volume explores these questions, in the light of the current state of the art in natural language semantics
The myth of occurrence-based semantics
The principle of compositionality requires that the meaning of a complex expression remains the same after substitution of synonymous expressions. Alleged counterexamples to compositionality seem to force a theoretical choice: either apparent synonyms are not synonyms or synonyms do not syntactically occur where they appear to occur. Some theorists have instead looked to Frege’s doctrine of “reference shift” according to which the meaning of an e…
Frege and saving substitution
Goodman and Lederman (Philos Stud 177(4):947–952, 2020) argue that the traditional Fregean strategy for preserving the validity of Leibniz’s Law of substitution fails when confronted with apparent counterexamples involving proper names embedded under propositional attitude verbs. We argue, on the contrary, that the Fregean strategy succeeds and that Goodman and Lederman’s argument misfires
Scorekeeping in a chess game
There is an important analogy between languages and games. Just as a scoresheet records features of the evolution of a game to determine the effect of a move in that game, a conversational score records features of the evolution of a conversation to determine the effect of the linguistic moves that speakers make. Chess is particularly interesting for the study of conversational dynamics because it has language-like notations, and so serves as a s…
Against Fregean Quantification
There are two dominant approaches to quantification: the Fregean and the Tarskian. While the Tarskian approach is standard and familiar, deep conceptual objections have been pressed against its employment of variables as genuine syntactic and semantic units. Because they do not explicitly rely on variables, Fregean approaches are held to avoid these worries. The apparent result is that the Fregean can deliver something that the Tarskian is unable…
Resisting the epistemic argument for compatibilism
A compositional semantics for Venn diagrams
This paper examines Venn diagrams as a case study of visual representation. Venn diagrams have a clear formal structure and clearly defined correctness conditions. The question for this paper is whether these diagrams have a recursive syntax and corresponding compositional semantics by analogy with those developed for formal or natural languages. Existing research pointedly fails to offer a compositional semantics for Venn diagrams. This might su…
Computer Science (9 obras) · Epistemology (7 obras) · Philosophy (7 obras) · Linguistics (6 obras) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (6 obras) · Metaphysics (4 obras) · Philosophy of language (4 obras) · Principle of compositionality (4 obras) · Programming language (4 obras) · Artificial Intelligence (3 obras)