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Comments on Stephen Yablo’s aboutness


Felka, Katharina (2018). Comments on Stephen Yablo’s aboutness. Erkenntnis, 83(6):1181-1194.

Abstract

This paper concerns Yablo’s theory of asserted content as it is developed in his new book Aboutness. Yablo’s central idea is that in order to specify the asserted content of a sentence, we have to subtract those parts of its full semantic content that concern irrelevant subject matters. The paper argues that it is doubtful whether Yablo’s account successfully deals with its most basic envisaged application: to account for a difference of apparent truth value in cases of ordinary presupposition failure. In addition, some doubts are raised concerning the success of the extension of Yablo’s account to fictional talk, the informativeness of identity statements, and ontological commitments of number talk.

Abstract

This paper concerns Yablo’s theory of asserted content as it is developed in his new book Aboutness. Yablo’s central idea is that in order to specify the asserted content of a sentence, we have to subtract those parts of its full semantic content that concern irrelevant subject matters. The paper argues that it is doubtful whether Yablo’s account successfully deals with its most basic envisaged application: to account for a difference of apparent truth value in cases of ordinary presupposition failure. In addition, some doubts are raised concerning the success of the extension of Yablo’s account to fictional talk, the informativeness of identity statements, and ontological commitments of number talk.

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Additional indexing

Item Type:Journal Article, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:06 Faculty of Arts > Institute of Philosophy
Dewey Decimal Classification:100 Philosophy
Scopus Subject Areas:Social Sciences & Humanities > Philosophy
Physical Sciences > Logic
Language:English
Date:1 December 2018
Deposited On:19 Jan 2018 11:39
Last Modified:24 Nov 2023 08:11
Publisher:Springer
ISSN:0165-0106
OA Status:Closed
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-017-9935-x
Official URL:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10670-017-9935-x/fulltext.html