Semantics etc.

Ever since I pointed to Max Tegmark’s article in Scientific American on the many worlds version of quantum mechanics, which mentioned David Lewis’ plurality of worlds, I have been wanting to learn more.

In high school, I was very good at chemistry but avoided physics at all costs, for no apparent reason, so I have a large deficit in that area. A good plan might be to read the online textbook Physics for Future Presidents by Richard Muller at UC Berkeley. But that will have to wait for some vacation in the future.

Instead, when I saw Colin Bruce’s new book on “the many worlds of quantum”, I decided to make it my bedtime reading for this week.

There is in fact a brief mention in the book of David Lewis, occasioned by his paper “How many Lives Has Schrödinger’s Cat?”. So, I actually decided to first read Lewis’ paper and the commentary by David Papineau later in the same issue of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

The basic issue seems to be that if there truly are many worlds branching off from each other all the time (something also called the “no-collapse” theory), this has great impact on our thinking about decisions, ethics, and our philosophy of life in general. Have you ever thought “I could kill myself” when you realize you made a carelessly wrong decision a while back? Well, even if you make the right decision “here in this world”, there will be another world (in fact many such worlds) where you made the other — wrong — decision and suffer the consequences. So, what difference does it really make if you make the right decision “here”? As long as the plurality of worlds is a harmless abstraction introduced to make it easier to think about the semantics of modal expressions in natural language, for example, such considerations may not be very disturbing. But if all those worlds are really real, we have a lot of thinking to do. Of course, some philosophers and some physicists have been thinking about this for a while, but it’s all new stuff to me.

Lewis points out a truly disturbing thought: in many worlds, we eventually die of course and maybe that’s fine since we don’t have any further experiences in those worlds (we may of course worry about the people and the world we leave behind in those worlds). But there is always a (however small) chance that we do not die but barely continue to live, albeit maimed and disabled. Since those are the only worlds where we continue to have experiences, we all can expect to live horrible lives at some point. Lewis writes:

“What you should predominantly expect, if the no-collapse hypothesis is true, is cumulative deterioration that stops just short of death. … How many lives has Schrödinger’s cat? If there are no collapses, life everlasting. But soon, life is not at all worth living, That, and not the risk of sudden death, is the real reason to pity Schrödinger’s cat.”

David Papineau’s commentary in the AJP tries to soothe these worries, but clearly there is much to figure out. Colin Bruce reports that “although [Lewis’] words are light, I am told by those who worked with him that he was terrified by this hypothesis [Fn: Sebastian Sequoia-Jones, pc to Bruce, March 2004]. By a cruel coincidence, he died suddenly and unexpectedly from diabetes within weeks of giving that lecture — at least in our version of reality. His paper is about to be published posthumously as I write. he must have died a badly frightened man, and the psychological impact on his colleagues was considerable.”

I am now halfway through Bruce’s book and somewhat overmatched by the strangeness of the quantum world, but I’ll continue working through it and cannot see how one can’t be fascinated by this area of inquiry. I wish I had paid more attention in high school. The fact that I did in some other worlds doesn’t help me much “here”.

Some other pointers: the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on “Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics”, and the Everett FAQ.

Saturday’s Harvard-MIT-UConn Workshop on Indexicals, Speech Acts, and Logophors was a very good conference. For the benefit of those who couldn’t attend or those who failed to get a copy of some of the handouts, the organizers will link to the handouts from the workshop homepage. Check back there in a while to retrieve the handouts.

I already put my handout online: “How Multi-Dimensional is Quotation?”, comments on Chris Potts’ “The Dimensions of Quotation”.

The 2004-2006 edition of the Philosophy Gourmet Report is now out.

[crossposted at Geek Notes]

The big scholar geek news of the day is the unveiling of the beta of Google Scholar, a new service that lets you google the academic universe, with citation rankings and cross references. Like any self-respecting academic, my inaugural use of the site was to do some ego-surfing:

So, it lists a bunch of my works, ranked by citation. You can click on the “Cited by” link and it will obviously give you all the works that cite that work. What I couldn’t figure out how to do is to create a kind of web of inter-related papers, which you can do on some other sites (ISI Web of of Science in particular). Clicking on the title of a work will sometimes take you to the publisher’s webpage for the work (which then might require a fee to actually let you see the work) or to a preprint somewhere. Additional versions are sometimes listed as well.

Further down, there are hits that are not papers of mine, but other papers that mention me in some form, either by citing work of mine or by acknowledging comments or help.

There are some glitches: (i) for some works, the site correctly lists the preprint I have on my website, for others it doesn’t, (ii) as you see in the picture, my dissertation is listed twice (actually, there are some further occurrences further on down). But it’s just a beta after all.

This is certainly a good start. Searching for academically relevant material on the main Google site often gives many false positives, this site is much more targeted (it doesn’t seem to index scholarly blogs, however).

You can also search for topics of interest to you, not just for authors. Since I was asked about evidentiality a couple of times in the last few days, I tried that out. The results look very appropriate:

In all, this is a very cool addition to the research toolbox.

Jason Stanley, guest-blogging at Leiter Reports, reveals the new ranking of Philosophy of Language programs in the upcoming new edition of the Philosophy Gourmet Report. The top five programs are:

Group 1 (1-5) (mean of 4.5)
Massachussetts Institute of Technology (4.5)
New York University (4.5)
Rutgers University, New Brunswick (5.0)
University of California, Los Angeles (4.5)
University of Southern California (5.0)

Jason adds this commentary:

I can’t really imagine how it would be possible for anyone with any knowledge of this area to give USC less than a 5.0. I mean really folks, that’s absurd. USC has Jim Higginbotham, Jeff King, and Scott Soames on their faculty (not to mention a great linguistics department). Even if one of these folks stole your lunch money in grad school, at least you’ve got to like two of the others. For those of you who inexplicably gave USC less than a 5, I repeat for you the words of my colleague Ted Sider: Don’t be a hater, be a participator!

MIT has excellent people in philosophy of language. But I suspect the very high ranking of MIT in this area was also due to the fact that (as I’ve heard) they listed their superstar linguists as affiliate members of the philosophy department. It’s hard for people like me not to rank a department very highly in philosophy of language that lists Irene Heim, Kai von Fintel, and Danny Fox as affiliate faculty. But other departments didn’t exploit their linguists as cleverly. If people ranking a department continue to take into account affiliated faculty in linguistics, then this a strategy to exploit for other departments seeking to move up in this area that are in universities with excellent linguistics departments.

Finally, sage words of advice — it’s fun to talk about all of this, but in fact it’s actually very difficult in practice to rank philosophers.

Do I feel cleverly exploited? No. More comments on request.

Update: Jason has edited his post somewhat.

Polarity From Different Perspectives, March 11-13, 2005
Workshop sponsored by the Department of Linguistics, New York University.

This workshop will bring together representatives of several fields to explore questions such as, What is the relation between positive polarity, negative polarity, and negative concord? What family of syntactic relations does polarity licensing belong to, and how does it interact with grammatical architecture? Does polarity sensitivity derive from scalar semantics/pragmatics? Given that polarity items and their licensors come in many flavors, is there a unified theory for polarity? What insights do monotonicity properties offer into inferencing in logical, computational, and psychological terms? How are polarity properties acquired?

Invited speakers:

• Luis Alonso-Ovalle
• Raffaella Bernardi
• Marcel den Dikken
• Anastasia Giannakidou
• Elena Guerzoni
• William Ladusaw
• Oystein Nilsen
• Paul Postal
• Anna Szabolcsi

All those planning to attend are kindly asked to preregister.

Call for electronic posters:

If you wish to attend the workshop and participate in the discussion, you are welcome to submit an electronic poster to the workshop web site. Electronic posters will be reviewed only for pertinence to the topic. They should summarize recent work that is unpublished or otherwise not widely known.

Electronic posters should be up to 1000 words, ideally in .html format, or else in .pdf. Please create a text that is easy to read off the screen, in terms of wording, organization, and typography. Examples and analyses should be presented in their logical order, not on separate pages as in some conference abstracts.

Each poster should start with the name, affiliation, email address, and possibly home page link of the author(s), followed by the title. We will not post submissions that do not contain the author information. Please email the file to the address specified at the workshop web site by February 10, 2005.

For further information, please see updates at

Andy Egan has posted a new draft of his paper on “Epistemic Modals, Relativism and Assertion”, first noted here in September. I re-read it over the weekend, especially since Thony Gillies and I are working on a response to the various relativistic analyses of epistemic modals. Our paper is still nascent, although I appear to have committed myself to presenting it in Germany in a month from now, so it better coalesce until then. I thought I would expedite some of my thinking on the topic by posting a couple of questions about it.

Question #1:

Andy presents the following scenario:

James Bond has just returned to London after a long day of infiltrating SPECTRE’s secret base in the Swiss alps, planting a bug in the main conference room, and slipping out by night after leaving persuasive but misleading evidence of his presence in Zürich. Sipping martinis in MI6 headquarters while monitoring the newly placed bug, Bond and his CIA colleague Felix Leiter overhear a conversation between Blofeld and his second in command, Number 2.

In the course of a discussion of the pros and cons of various nefarious plans, Number 2 says to Blofeld, Bond might be in Zürich.

[BTW. In my quotes, I have corrected the inexplicable absence of the umlaut in “Zürich” in Andy’s paper.]

Andy’s discussion proceeds to report the following intuitions: (i) Number 2’s utterance is appropriate given his state of evidence, (ii) Blofeld is in the same basic state of evidence and so can easily agree with Number 2 by saying You’re right or the like, (iii) Leiter on the other hand (sipping martinis next to Bond in London) couldn’t really say That’s right or the like.

In the first draft of the paper, Andy had also claimed that it is clear that Leiter could and in fact should say That’s false!. One deduces from the changes in the new draft that there was some pushback on this issue. In a footnote (Fn. 5 on p. 5f), Andy says that some people seem to resist having Leiter say That’s false! and proposes an explanation along these lines: saying That’s false! could be taken as an accusation of Number 2, that Number 2 made some mistake, and people don’t want that. [I assume that it is to be assumed that Number 2 and Blofeld are blamelessly misled by Bond’s planted evidence — otherwise it should be OK to accuse them of an error.]

In the same footnote, Andy claims that when we consciously avoid an interpretation in terms of blaming Number 2 for an error and “when we think of Felix’s attribution as indicating a firm refusal to agree, we have no such hesitation”.

I actually don’t at all share that intuition. To my ear, Leiter couldn’t really say to Bond I don’t agree when they hear Number 2 say Bond might be in Zürich. That sounds, if possible, even weirder to me than That’s false!.

My quick intuition is that if Leiter were to say I don’t agree, he would thereby be inserting himself into the conversation between Number 2 and Blofeld, something that he can’t really do.

Do people agree with my assessment?

Question #2:

Andy wants to defend a relativistic semantics for epistemic modals. Basically, might p is said to be true for i in w at t iff p is compatible with the evidence within i’s reach in w at t.

From this, it is predicted that Bond might be in Zürich is true for Number 2 but false for Leiter.

Andy then goes on to worry about the general picture of communication and what role relativistic propositions could possibly play in conversation. He proposes that one can assert a relativistic proposition only if there is a presupposition that the proposition has the same value for all the participants in the conversation.

Here’s my point: given that proposal, it would seem that Leiter cannot properly insert himself into the conversation between Number 2 and Blofeld. After all, it is clearly not presupposed by anyone that Leiter and Number 2/Blofeld have the same evidence in their reach.

So, it would seem that Andy’s proposal actually predicts that Leiter should not be able to say I don’t agree. As I indicated, I think that’s the right prediction to make. But it is of course in conflict with the way that the data are presented, especially since the data are supposed to give prima facie reasons to explore a relativistic semantics.

My question in a nutshell then: if we actually take Andy’s analysis of communication with relativistic propositions and apply it to the Number 2/Leiter scenario, don’t we predict different judgments than the ones Andy reports?

In the end, Thony and I are working towards a demonstration that the apparently relativistic data presented by Egan et.al. and MacFarlane can be treated within a rather standard non-relativistic semantics for epistemic modals. It seems to me that with Andy’s analysis of communication, the relativistic story becomes virtually indistinguishable from a non-relativistic story. But arguing for that will have to wait for another occasion. For now, I just wanted to raise the two points above.

Alexander Grosu & Manfred Krifka. “The accomplished mathematician he claims to be: The semantics of Modal Compatibility Relatives”, handout of a talk given at Sinn und Bedeutung IX, Nijmegen, November 1-3, 2004.

A Sketch of Grosu & Krifka’s Analysis

Example of a Modal Compatibility Relative:

(1) The accomplished mathematician Bill claims to be should be able to solve this simple problem without difficulties.

The worlds of the modal operator of the relative clause are the ones with respect to which the main clause are evaluated.

Paraphrase: The worlds that are compatible with what Bill claims to be (in which Bill is an acclaimed mathematician), are worlds in which Bill is able to solve this simple problem.

This precludes that the main clause is interpreted w.r.t. the actual world (external modality reqirement). And it requires that the worlds at which the main clause is evaluated are included in those at which the relative clause is evaluated (compatibility between the modalities).

Task: Arrive at this in a compositional way!

Next week’s readings:

• Manfred Krifka. “Semantics below and above speech acts”. Handout, Stanford University, April 9, 2004.

• Chris Potts. “Conventional implicatures, a distinguished class of meanings”. To appear in Gillian Ramchand and Charles Reiss, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kent Bach. “The Top 10 Misconceptions about Implicature”. ms, for a festschrift for Larry Horn, edited by Betty Birner and Gregory Ward (John Benjamins 2005).

I’ve known about conversational implicature a lot longer than I’ve known Larry. In 1967 I read Grice’s “Logical and Conversation” in mimeograph, shortly after his William James lectures, and I read its precursor “(Implication),” section III of “The Causal Theory of Perception”, well before that. And I’ve thought, read, and written about implicature off and on ever since. Nevertheless, I know a lot less about it than Larry does, and that’s not even taking into account everything he has uncovered about what was said on the subject long before Grice, even centuries before. So, now that I’ve betrayed my ignorance, I’ll display my insolence. I’m going to identify the most pervasive and pernicious misconceptions about implicature that I’ve noticed over the years.
1. Sentences have implicatures. 2. Implicatures are inferences. 3. Implicatures can’t be entailments. 4. Gricean maxims apply only to implicatures. 5. For what is implicated to be figured out, what is said must be determined first. 6. All pragmatic implications are implicatures. 7. Implicatures are not part of the truth-conditional contents of utterances. 8. If something is meant but unsaid, it must be implicated. 9. Scalar “implicatures” are implicatures. 10. Conventional “implicatures”? are implicatures.

Janneke Huitink. “Analyzing Anankastic Conditionals”. Talk given at Sinn und Bedeutung 9. Abstract, Slides.

KvF: I will post some comments on Janneke’s points in a few days.

From: Sabine Iatridou, MIT
Subject: 2005 LSA Registration

I am happy to announce that it is now possible for students to register on-line for the 2005 LSA Institute. To do so, please go to ‘participant registration’ on:

A paper application is available but we encourage you to choose the on-line route whenever possible.
Individuals who are not students (’affiliates’) should visit:

From there it is possible to print out the affiliate registration form which should be mailed to the LSA directly (specific directions are on the form). Once you are registered, you will receive an e-mail confirmation with instructions on how to update your course selections and to register for special lectures/events via the Institute’s on-line registration system. Fees for special events must be sent to MIT.

Sabine Iatridou
2005 LSA Institute Director

Ken Safir. “Person, Context and Perspective”. To appear in Italian Journal of Linguistics in 2005.

In this essay I defend the thesis that the indexicality of first person pronouns is a restriction on the pronouns themselves, as opposed to any operator that binds them. The nature of this restriction is a constant function from individuals to the context of utterance of a sort I will describe (following Kaplan, 1989)). This means that constant functions are essentially asyntactic, so that the pronouns they restrict never require any antecedent, neither an operator nor an argument (although this does not prevent them from participating in bound readings if an appropriate antecedent is introduced). Purported parallels between agents of utterance and propositional attitude agents will be rejected, and as a result, indexical pronouns such as first person ones will be contrasted with logophoric pronouns, which are necessarily operator-bound by perspectival operators (introduced by propositional attitude verbs like think, believe and say). The scopesensitive properties of operator-binding and the perspectival interpretations that are imposed on logophoricity distinguish the latter from constant function phenomena, which are sensitive neither to scope, as it is usually treated, nor perspectival shifts. Finally some evidence is provided to show that third person nominals can be restricted by constant functions, and two such examples are lightly explored: the English generic pronoun one and the proximate/obviative distinction in languages like Fox.

… is now available.

… is now available.

New site collecting online papers in philosophy, run by Richard Heck:

The paper by Bart Geurts on existential import that we’re discussing on Friday is at

(different URL than the one listed on the syllabus)

Wolfram Hinzen. Explaining rigidity.

Abstract: I argue that both the ‘rigid’ and ‘non-rigid’ or ‘descriptive’ interpretations of the reference of nominals have an explanation in the structure or linguistic form of these nominals, hence are conditioned broadly syntactically. This seems desirable under assumptions of a ‘transparent’ and compositional syntax-semantics mapping. Two ways in which nominal reference is conditioned on syntactic complexity are analyzed. The first is based on a traditional DP (and N-to-D movement) analysis and its plausible semantic effects. The second appeals to namehood as a property of atomic (unstructured) lexical concepts as such. It explains rigidity as the trivial effect of syntactic atomicity, in which case rigidity has nothing specifically to do with either names or grammatical categories. I defend the second proposal, on both theoretical and cross-linguistic grounds. I argue specifically that the basis of human reference is the reference of conceptual atoms, which are as such lexically unspecified for name, noun, count or mass properties. The discussion traces out the effects of this proposal for a long tradition of philosophical argument, where name-reference is standardly explained in externalist (causal) or semantic, rather than internalist and syntactic, terms.

Workshop on Indexicals, Speech Reports, and Logophors
Harvard Hall 104, Harvard University
Saturday, November 20th, 2004

A Harvard-MIT-UConn joint effort

8.30-9.00 Breakfast

9.00-10.00 Oluseye Adesola (Rutgers): A-bar Dependencies in Logophoric Contexts [comment: C.-T. James Huang (Harvard)]

10.00-11.00 Peggy Speas (UMass): Person and Indexicality [comment: Irene Heim (MIT)]

11.00-11.30 Coffee break

11.30-12.30 Paul Portner (Georgetown): Instructions for Interpretation as Separate Performatives [comment: Chris Potts (UMass)]

12.30-1.00 General Discussion

1.00 -2.30 Lunch

2.30-3.30 Yael Sharvit (UConn): Pronouns in free indirect discourse [comment: Philippe Schlenker (UCLA/ Jean Nicod)]

3.30-4.00 Coffee Break

4.00-5.00 Chris Potts (UMass): The dimensions of quotation [comment: Kai von Fintel (MIT)]

5.00-6.00 Francois Recanati (Jean Nicod/Harvard): Indexicality and context-shifting [comment: Bob Stalnaker (MIT)]

6.00-6.30 General Discussion

7.00 Dinner (Border Cafe)

Each talk will be 30 minutes, followed by 15 minutes directed comment and 15 minutes general discussion.

Come and join us.

[The workshop website looks out of whack on some systems/browsers. I’m not sure whether it’s going to get fixed.]