Reference

Two-Dimensional Semantics and Sameness of Meaning

by Laura Schroeter

In this survey article, I focus on whether 2D semantics can fully capture the epistemic and semantic phenomena that... more In this survey article, I focus on whether 2D semantics can fully capture the epistemic and semantic phenomena that seem central to individuating meanings. After outlining the motivations for 2D semantics as a response to externalist thought experiments, I argue that the approach faces an internal tension in fully vindicating the traditional role of meaning. I contrast the 2D theory's broadly descriptivist approach to meaning individuation with a relational approach.

On an Argument of Segal's Against Single Object Dependent Thoughts

by Teresa Marques

This paper discusses and criticizes Segal’s 1989 argument
against singular object-dependent thoughts. His... more This paper discusses and criticizes Segal’s 1989 argument
against singular object-dependent thoughts. His argument aims at showing that object-dependent thoughts are explanatorily redundant. My criticism of Segal’s argument has two parts. First, I appeal to common anti-individualist arguments to the effect that Segal’s type of argument only succeeds in establishing that object-dependent thoughts are explanatorily redundant for those aspects of subjects’ behaviour that do not require reference to external objects. Secondly, Segal’s view on singular thoughts is at odds with his view on the semantics of proper names, which favours the singularity and object-dependency of the truth-conditions of sentences in which they occur. In particular, his views are at odds with a position he holds, that truth-conditional semantics
can adequately account for all aspects of speakers’ linguistic competence in the use of proper names.

Docear: An Academic Literature Suite for Searching, Organizing and Creating Academic Literature

by Joeran Beel

Joeran Beel, Bela Gipp, Stefan Langer, and Marcel Genzmehr. Docear: An Academic Literature Suite for Searching, Organizing and Creating Academic Literature. In Proceedings of the 11th annual international ACM/IEEE joint conference on Digital libraries, JCDL ’11, pages 465–466, New York, NY, USA, 2011.

In this demonstration-paper we introduce Docear, an ‘academic literature suite’. Docear offers to scientists what an... more In this demonstration-paper we introduce Docear, an ‘academic literature suite’. Docear offers to scientists what an office suite like Microsoft Office offers to office workers. While an office suite bundles various applications for office workers (word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software, etc.), Docear bundles several applications for scientists: academic search engine, PDF reader, reference manager, word processor, mind mapping module, and recommender system. Besides Docear’s general concept, its special features are presented in this paper, namely a modular composition, free full-text access to literature, information management as mind map, automatic metadata extraction of PDFs and recommendations.

Characteristics of Education Doctoral Dissertation References: An Inter-Institutional Analysis of Review of Literature Citations

by Penny Beile

Beile, Penny M.; Boote, David N.; Killingsworth, Elizabeth K.
Characteristics of Education Doctoral Dissertation References:  Results of an Analysis of Dissertation Citations from Three Institutions, delivered at the American Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, April 2003. 

This study had two purposes: to examine the expertise of doctoral students in their use of the scholarly literature... more This study had two purposes: to examine the expertise of doctoral students in their use of the scholarly literature and to investigate the use of citation analysis as a tool for collection development. Analysis of 1,842 coded citations gleaned from 30 education dissertations awarded in 2000 from 3 institutions in the United States revealed that journal articles, at 45%, were cited most frequently, followed by monographs (33.9%) and "other" (18.3%), with magazines and Web sites contributing less than 2% each of the total material types cited. The study examined 858 journal and magazine citations, which were found in 239 unique titles. A relatively small number of journals contained a high percentage of the references found in the dissertations analyzed. Based on a design by D. Kohl and L. Wilson (1986), dissertation citations were also scored for scholarliness, currency, and appropriateness of format, and scores on the three criteria were averaged to arrive at a quality rating. Results of interinstitutional comparisons revealed a significant amount of variation and were considered in conjunction with institutional characteristics and published criteria for quality bibliographies. The data suggest that the assumption of doctoral student expertise in their use of the scholarly literature may be overstated and should be examined in relation to their preparation for professional status. For purposes of developing a library's research collection, a core list of titles, generated on the basis of multiple, rather than single, institutional analysis is indicated. (Contains 8 figures, 11 tables, and 28 references.)

Research: What, Why and How?: A Treatise from Researchers to Researchers

by Farhad Shokraneh

Evidential Constraints on Singular Thought

by James Genone

Under review

In this essay, I argue in favor of evidential constraints on singular thoughts and thoughts with singular purport. In... more In this essay, I argue in favor of evidential constraints on singular thoughts and thoughts with singular purport. In typical cases of singular thought, I claim, a thinker stands in an evidential relation to the object of thought suitable for providing knowledge of the object’s existence. Furthermore, a thinker may generate representations that purport to refer to particular objects in response to appropriate, though defeasible, evidence of the existence of such an object. I motivate these constraints by considering a number of examples introduced in a recent paper by Robin Jeshion in support of a view she calls “cognitivism”. Although I agree with Jeshion that acquaintance is not required for all cases of singular thought, I argue that her account doesn’t go far enough in rejecting semantic instrumentalism, the view that we can generate singular thoughts arbitrarily, by manipulating the mechanisms of direct reference.

Words Without Objects (BOOK)

by henry laycock

Clarendon Press, Oxford (this is not the complete book, unfortunately)

CLICK ON THE 'DOWNLOAD' - NOT THE 'QUICK VIEW' [ERROR!]

The book seeks to resolve the so-called ‘problem of mass nouns’ — a problem which cannot be resolved on the basis of a... more The book seeks to resolve the so-called ‘problem of mass nouns’ — a problem which cannot be resolved on the basis of a conventional system of logic. It is not, for instance, possible to explicate assertions of the existence of air, oil, or water through the use of quantifiers and variables which take objectual values. The difficulty is attributable to the semantically distinctive status of non-count nouns — nouns which, although not plural, are nonetheless akin to plural nouns in being semantically non-singular. Such are the semantics of a non-singular noun, that there can be no such single thing or object as the thing of which the noun is true. However, standard approaches to understanding non-singular nouns tend to be reductive, construing them as singular expressions — expressions which, in the case of non-count nouns, are true of ‘parcels’ or ‘quantities’ of stuff, and in the case of plural nouns, are true of ‘plural entities’ or ‘sets’. It is argued that both approaches are equally misguided, that there are no distinctive objects in the extensions of non-singular nouns. With plural nouns, their extensions are identical with those of the corresponding singular expressions. With non-count nouns, because they are not plural, there can be no corresponding singular expressions. In consequence, there are no objects in the extensions of non-count nouns at all. In short, there are no such things as instances of stuff: the world of space and time contains not merely large numbers of discrete concrete things or individuals of diverse kinds, but also large amounts of sheer undifferentiated concrete stuff. Metaphysically, non-singular reference in general is an arbitrary modality of reference, ungrounded in the realities to which it is non-ideally or intransparently correlated.

Wikipedia Article on BBQ - Bookmark

by Wayne Schafer

Wittgenstein on the Substance of the World

by Ian Proops

Published in The European Journal of Philosophy, 12: 1, 106–126.

The *Tractatus* contains an argument that there are simple, necessarily existent objects, which, being simple, are... more The *Tractatus* contains an argument that there are simple, necessarily existent objects, which, being simple, are suited to be the referents of the names occuring in the final analysis of propositions. The argument is perplexing in its own right, but also for its invocation of the notion of "substance". I argue that if one locates Wittgenstein's conception of substance in the Kantian tradition to which his talk of "substance" alludes, what emerges is an argument that is very nearly--but not quite--cogent.

Wittgenstein's Logical Atomism

by Ian Proops

Published in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

An article explicating Wittgenstein's logical atomism and surveying the relevant secondary literature. An article explicating Wittgenstein's logical atomism and surveying the relevant secondary literature.

Soames on the metaphysics and epistemology of Moore and Russell

by Ian Proops

Draft only. Published in Philosophical Studies (2006): 129 (3):627–635.

A critical discussion of selected chapters of the first volume of Scott Soames’s Philosophical Analysis in the... more A critical discussion of selected chapters of the first volume of Scott Soames’s Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century. It is argued that this volume falls short of the minimal standards of scholarship appropriate to a work that advertises itself as a history, and, further, that Soames’s frequent heuristic simplifications and distortions, since they are only sporadically identified as such, are more likely confuse than to enlighten the student. These points are illustrated by reference to Soames’s discussions of Russell’s logical system and the place of the theory of descriptions in his ontological development. It is then argued that Soames’s interpretation of the point of G.E. Moore’s famous “proof” of an external world, while not straightforwardly undermined by the textual evidence, is nonetheless questionable, and plausibly overlooks what is novel in Moore’s discussion. This, it is argued, in his attempt to offer a common sense “refutation of idealism”, rather than (as is more commonly supposed) an anti-skeptical argument “from differential certainty”.

Загадка рефлексива: избыточность или функциональность?

by Alexander Kravchenko

Reference and indexicality

by Erich Rast

Rast, Erich: Reference and Indexicality. Serie Logische Philosophie, Vol. 17. Logos, Berlin 2007.

Reference and indexicality are two central topics in the Philosophy of Language that are closely tied together. In the... more Reference and indexicality are two central topics in the Philosophy of Language that are closely tied together. In the first part of this book, a description theory of reference is developed and contrasted with the prevailing direct reference view with the goal of laying out their advantages and disadvantages. The author defends his version of indirect reference against well-known objections raised by Kripke in Naming and Necessity and his successors, and also addresses linguistic aspects like compositionality. In the second part, a detailed survey on indexical expressions is given based on a variety of typological data. Topics addressed are, among others: Kaplan's logic of demonstratives, conversational versus utterance context, context-shifting indexicals, the deictic center, token-reflexivity, vagueness of spatial and temporal indexicals, reference rules, and the epistemic and cognitive role of indexicals. From a descriptivist perspective on reference, various examples of simple and complex indexicals are analyzed in first-order predicate logic with reified contexts. A critical discussion of essential indexicality, de se readings of attitudes and accompanying puzzles rounds up the investigation.

The phenomenology of particularity

by michelle montague

The Access Problem

by michelle montague

Gruesome Diagonals

by Laura Schroeter

Philosophers' Imprint 2003

Argues that 2D semantics cannot simultaneously fulfill two different roles: determining reference and capturing... more Argues that 2D semantics cannot simultaneously fulfill two different roles: determining reference and capturing plausible conditions of linguistic or conceptual competence.

Il vero lavoro del bibliotecario: il servizio di reference visto da S. R. Ranganathan

by Carlo Bianchini

In: Una mente colorata. Studî in onore di Attilio Mauro Caproni per i suoi 65 anni. Vecchiarelli, 2007, pp.429-444.

The paper deals with the theory and practice of reference service in Ranganathan's vision of library science. It... more The paper deals with the theory and practice of reference service in Ranganathan's vision of library science. It examines Ranganathan's masterpiece "Reference service" and it suggests many paths of reading

Should Chat Reference Be Staffed by Librarians? An Assessment of Chat Reference at an Academic Library Using LibStats

by Colleen Lyon

This study analyzes 1,557 chat reference questions received at Grand Valley State University Libraries over four... more This study analyzes 1,557 chat reference questions received at Grand Valley State University Libraries over four semesters to determine the quantity and nature of the questions. Results indicated that use of chat reference was low and that less than a quarter of chat questions required a librarian to answer. The cost of a librarian answering a chat question ranged from $37 to $439 per question. The findings suggest that assigning chat reference to trained reference assistants will not affect patron service and that it is not cost effective to use reference librarians to answer chat questions.

Clark, D.T. (2007) “Practical Assessment at Texas A&M: Using LibQual+ Comments to Enhance Reference Services” in Proceedings of the Library Assessment Conference. Washington: Association of Research Libraries.

by Dennis Clark

Wan, G., D.T. Clark, et al. (2009) “Key Issues Surrounding Virtual Chat Reference Model, a Case Study.” Reference Services Review, 37 (1).

by Dennis Clark