published papers
by Isidora Stojanovic
Below is a selection of papers published in the past few years. You can download a complete list of my publications here. You can download the papers by clicking on >; I also regularly upload papers (published or unpublished, as well as drafts of papers on which I'm currently) at the Jean Nicod Archives.
Domain-Sensitivity >
Synthese (published online 2010) .
In this paper, I argue that there are good motivations for a relativist account of domain-sensitivity of quantifier phrases. I will frame the problem as a puzzle involving what looks like a logically valid inference, yet whose premises are true while the conclusion is false. After discussing some existing accounts, literalist and contextualist, I will present and argue for an account that may be said to be relativist in the following sense: (i) a domain of quantification is required for determining truth value, but is idle in determining semantic content, and (ii) the same sentence, as used on one and the same occasion, may receive different truth values relative to different domains.
De Se Assertion >
The first, "negative" half of this paper is coming out under the title "The Problem of De Se Assertion" in Erkenntnis. The paper is thus unlikely to be ever published in the present version, and the second, "positive" half is, to a large extent, still work in progress.
Abstract: It has been long known (Perry (1977, 1979), Lewis (1981)) that de se attitudes, such as beliefs and desires that one has about oneself, call for a special treatment in theories of attitudinal content. The aim of this paper is to raise similar concerns for theories of asserted content. The received view, inherited from Kaplan (1989), has it that if Alma says “I am hungry,” the asserted content, or what is said, is the proposition that Alma is hungry (at a given time). I argue that the received view has difficulties handing de se assertion, i.e. contents that one expresses using the first person pronoun, to assert something about oneself. I start from the observation that when two speakers say “I am hungry,” one may truly report them as having said the same thing. It has often been held that the possibility of such reports comes from the fact that the two speakers are, after all, uttering the same words, and are in this sense “saying the same thing”. I argue that this approach fails, and that it is neither necessary nor sufficient to use the same words, or words endowed with the same meaning, in order to be truly reported as same-saying. I also argue that reports of samesaying in the case of de se assertion differ significantly from such reports in the case of two speakers merely implicating the same thing. Finally, I outline a new account of the content of assertion, similar to Lewis's account of de se attitudes. The proposal is, roughly, when Alma says “I am hungry”, the asserted content just the property of being hungry, and it is a property that Alma asserts of herself. I then propose to generalize the account to the other cases in a way that departs from Lewis's account, and I close by showing how my proposal handles the cases discussed in the first part of the paper.
Talking about Taste: Disagreement, Implicit Arguments and Relative Truth >
Linguistics and Philosophy 30 (2007): 691-706.
Abstract: In this paper, I take issue with an idea that has emerged from recent relativist proposals, and, in particular, from Lasersohn (2005), according to which the correct semantics for taste predicates must use contents that are functions of a judge parameter (in addition to a possible world parameter) rather than implicit arguments lexically associated with such predicates. I argue that the relativist account and the contextualist implicit argument-account are, from the viewpoint of semantics, not much more than notational variants of one another. In other words, given any sentence containing a taste predicate, and given any assignment of values to the relevant parameters, the two accounts predict the same truth value and are, in that sense, equivalent. I also look at possible reasons for preferring one account over the other. The phenomenon of “faultless disagreement” (cf. Kölbel (2002)) is often believed to be one such reason. I argue, against Kölbel and Lasersohn, that disagreement is never faultless: either the two parties genuinely disagree, hence if the one is right then the other is wrong, or the two parties are both right, but their apparent disagreement boils down to a misunderstanding. What is more, even if there were faultless disagreement, I argue that relativism would fail to account for it. The upshot of the paper, then, is to show that there is not much disagreement between a contextualist account that models the judge parameter as an implicit argument to the taste predicate, and a relativist account that models it as a parameter of the circumstances of evaluation. The choice between the two accounts, at least when talking about taste, is thus, to a large extent, a matter of taste.
Semantic Content >
Manuscrito 32 (2009): 123-152.
Abstract:: The goal of this paper is to propose an account of the notion of semantic content. I will try to show that my account has some advantages over the existing accounts, and that, at the same time, it captures the most valuable insights behind both parties involved in the contextualism-minimalism debate. The proposed account of semantic content differs from the more traditional ones in that it puts more burden on the parameters of the point of evaluation, leaving very little in the content itself. In particular, even in the case of indexical and demonstrative pronouns, the semantic content is, I suggest, stable across contexts, and does not include the reference of the pronoun. In a nutshell, the semantic content associated with (an utterance of) a sentence that contains one or more pronouns is a function that asks not only for a world and a time of evaluation, but also one or more individuals, before it can return a truth value.
The Scope and the Subtleties of the Contextualism-Literalism-Relativism Debate >
Language and Linguistics Compass 2 (2008): 1171-1188.
Summary: In recent years, a number of new trends have seen light at the intersection of semantics and philosophy of language. They are meant to address puzzles raised by the context-sensitivity of a variety of natural language constructions, such as knowledge ascriptions, belief reports, epistemic modals, indicative conditionals, quantifier phrases, gradable adjectives, temporal constructions, vague predicates, moral predicates, predicates of personal taste, etc. A diversity of labels have consequently emerged, such as 'contextualism', 'indexicalism', 'invariantism', 'literalism', 'minimalism', 'relativism', variously qualified. The goal of this essay is to pinpoint the issues that lie at the heart of the recent debates, clarify what is at stake, and provide a snapshot of the current theoretical landscape.
Referring with Proper Names: towards a pragmatic account >
in Baptista, L. and E. Rast (Eds.), Meaning and Context. Peter Lang (2010): 139-160
Abstract:: In this paper, I explore several ways of incorporating proper names into the sort of account that I have defended elsewhere, according to which indexicals and demonstratives do not contribute reference to semantic content (nor, for that matter, anything else). I showthat some of the dominant accounts of names, including the Kripkean-Kaplanian referentialist account, are compatible with my account. However, my sympathy goes to what I call the pragmatic account, on which names contribute neither reference nor anything else to semantic content - rather, they are just pragmatic devices that used by the speaker to help her interlocutors figure out what she is talking about.
When (true) Disagreement Gives out >
Croatian Journal of Philosophy 32 (2011): 181-193
Abstract:: In this paper, I criticize the proposal put forward by Mark Richard in When Truth Gives Out (2008) concerning disputes over issues such as who is rich, what is cool, and other issues of similar ilk. Richard holds that the parties in the dispute can truly disagree on whether a given person is rich, but can be both right, if we assume that they have different standards of wealth. Disputes over what is cool are, according to Richard, trickier, since they can give rise to cases of faultless disagreement in which the two parties disagree, and neither party is wrong, but neither party is right either! My first goal is to show that the distinction between the two types of disagreement, as drawn by Richard, is not well motivated. I also argue that if he were right about the stronger case (disagreement in which both parties are right), his own account would fail to capture it. My second goal is to bring to the foreground some constructive aspects of Richard's proposal, and in particular the idea that such disagreements involve concepts whose application is not fully determined. If we accept that on some occasions, whether a concept applies to a given instance or doesn't is not yet settled, then arguably there are cases in which neither party is wrong - at least at the time of the dispute. I argue that their disagreement can be genuine only to the extent that it will eventually be settled whether the concept is to apply to a given instance or not, hence the way in which the concept gets shaped up and extended through its future uses makes it possible to determine, retrospectively, which of the two parties got it right. If this is correct, then the putative cases of faultless disagreement really turn upon the openness of the future: what makes them "faultless" is, simply, that there isn't any matter of fact yet whether the one or the other party is right.
The Vicious Triangle of A Priori Truth, Contingent Truth and Logical Truth >
in Kompa, N., Ch. Nimtz and Ch. Suhm (Eds.), The A Priori and its Role in Philosophy. Mentis Verlag (2009): 69-82
Abstract:: I argue against the view there are contingent a priori truths, and against the related view that there are contingent logical truths. I suggest that in general, predicates 'a priori' and 'contingent' are implicitly relativized to circumstances, and argue that apriority entails necessity, whenever the two are relativized to the same circumstance. I then criticize the idea, inspired by David Kaplan's framework, of contingent contents "knowable under a priori characters." I also argue, against Kaplan, that sentences of the form "The actual F is F" do not deserve the status of logical truths, since what they express is neither necessary nor a priori (pace Kaplan).