The main question that I address in my thesis is how we can best conceive the contrast between a priori and empirical truths. My response is realist and naturalist in character: I suggest that the... Show moreThe main question that I address in my thesis is how we can best conceive the contrast between a priori and empirical truths. My response is realist and naturalist in character: I suggest that the essential feature of a priori truths is that they consist in the obtaining of some realistically understood conditions in the domain of representations within human heads, rather than in the obtaining of those conditions that they typically purport to be about. This representationist constual cannot be reconciled with the received referentialist understanding of truth. Accordingly, my thesis can be seen as a case against standard referentialism about truth. After a detailed exposition and appropriate generalisation of Benacerraf__s dilemma about mathematical truth, I argue for two major claims. First, I demonstrate that among the most striking characteristics of our paradigm a priori beliefs about causally inert entities there are some, which cannot be suitably explained from a referentialist perspective, so that perspective must be wrong. Second, I argue that if we adopt an alternative, use-theoretic notion of truth, then the suggested representationist construal of apriority can meet all major explanatory adequacy conditions, and thus qualifies as a viable characterisation of the subject. Show less
The main topic of the book is the nature of inner aspect of the Verb Phrase, and the relation between the decompositional and the quantificational approaches to this problem. Decompositional... Show moreThe main topic of the book is the nature of inner aspect of the Verb Phrase, and the relation between the decompositional and the quantificational approaches to this problem. Decompositional approaches analyze eventualities into simpler components, organized by some kind of structure. In this view, an eventuality is telic if, in decomposition, it can be shown to involve a result component (also referred to as the culmination or termination component, or as the telos). Quantificational approaches see telicity as a property of the predicate of an eventuality, usually described as boundedness, lack of the subinterval property, or a specified quantity. The major advantage of the decompositional approaches is that they directly match the syntax-semantics interface of the VP with the conceptual image of an eventuality. Quantificational approaches blur the picture in this respect, because they involve effects like distributive readings, which are not a typical interpretational component of the VP domain. On the other hand, the major advantage of the quantificational approaches is that they assign similar or identical properties to (the predicates of) eventualities and nominal expressions. This enables them to capture the phenomenon of incremental themes (participants that appear to measure out the eventuality in which they take part), by relating the predicates of eventualities and those of their arguments. The dissertation presents a new approach, which not only combines the two approaches above, but also shows how they are directly mutually related, and how some quantificational properties can be derived from the domain of decomposition. Show less
