Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Mind Research Interest Group Talk (Aidan Gray, Illinois Chicago)

The Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Mind Research Group welcomes Aidan Gray, an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois Chicago and that department’s director of graduate studies. Dr. Gray’s research interests are in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, linguistics, and the history of analytic philosophy. Most of his work focuses on proper names, reference, and issues surrounding Frege’s Puzzle.

This is an in-person event that will also be live-streamed. 

Join the Zoom meeting: https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/2352538814

Talk Title

Some Models of Intransitive Coordination

Talk Abstract

Frege’s Puzzle teaches us that it must be possible for coreference to be encoded in a body of information without being explicitly represented. Call this encoding ‘coordination’. When representations of the same object are coordinated, this makes a difference to the rational relations—e.g. entailment, incompatibility—in which those representations stand. Traditionally, coordination has been understood as a kind of recurrence—recurrence either of a symbol or of an element of content (e.g. a sense). I follow Fine (2007) in giving a more abstract characterization of coordination in terms of a representational requirement of coreference. I use this characterization to explore whether we can make sense of the possibility that coordination is an intransitive relation (something that is inconsistent with the coordination-as-recurrence picture). I develop different possible intransitive accounts of coordination, noting their strengths, weaknesses, and potential applications.

About the Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics and Mind Research Group

One of six departmental research interest groups, the Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics and Mind Group undertakes research in philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognitive science, traditional and formal epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.