Many writers have held that in his later work, David Lewis adopted a theory of predicate meaning such that the meaning of a predicate is the most natural property that is (mostly) consistent with the way the predicate is used. That orthodox interpretation is shared by both supporters and critics of Lewis's theory of meaning , but it has recently been strongly criticised by Wolfgang Schwarz. In ...

Happy accidents happen even in philosophy. Sometimes our arguments yield insights despite missing their target, though when they do others can often spot it more easily. Consider the work of Donald Davidson. Few did more to explore connections among mind, language, and world. Now that we have critical distance from his views, however, we can see that Davidson’s accomplishments are not quite wha...

There are many different kinds of philosophy. For example, there is Indian philosophy (which has its roots in the ancient body of oral tradition known as the Veda), Islamic philosophy, Japanese philosophy and Chinese philosophy. However, none of these have had any real influence on the scientific tradition in which cognitive science has grown up. That scientific tradition is Western science and...