יום ב' 6.11.2006, 18:00 - 20:00
חדר 449 בנין גילמן

במסגרת קולוקוויום בר הילל

Professor Ruth G. Millikan,
Department of Philosophy, University of Connecticut

Let me Count the Ways to Tell a Weasel;
Extensional Terms and Nature’s Clumps

Commentator: Dr. Ohad Nachtomy, Bar-Ilan University

Conceptual analysis fails as a tool for examining meanings of typical extensional terms because their meanings are not rooted in individual idiolects. The way these words are learned does not pass on to the learner any particular way of thinking of or identifying their extensions. What passes from person to person is attainment, just, of some kind of grip or other, perhaps completely idiosyncratic, on what I will call the "referential tie" for the word, referential ties being neither in the head (compare intensions) nor just in the natural world outside (compare extensions). They are ties in nature that bind the various parts of the extension of a word together in a way that synchronizes usage, supporting agreement in judgments, hence communication, hence proliferation of the word's tokens, despite variety in methods of recognition. The nature of these ties may be unknown or gravely misunderstood by the users of the term but subject to empirical inquiry.

פרופ'' ליאו קורי, יו"ר