[SydPhil] Sydney philosophy postgraduate colloquium: Monday April 7

[Elena Walsh]

Dear all,

The first philosophy postgraduate colloquium will be held on Monday April 7
@ 2pm in the Muniment room.

Talk details:

Speaker: Simon Varey

Title: Directly Referential Definite Descriptions

Kaplan (1980) argues that indexical expressions are (in his terminology)
directly referential. In other words, he argues that the propositional
content (but not the reference-fixing character) of uses of such
expressions are identical to their referents. In this talk, I will argue
that definite descriptions should also be seen as directly referential. I
will present a semantic analysis of definite descriptions with this
consequence, in the process combining Kaplan's framework with Lewis' (1979)
theory of comparative salience and its relation to definite description
denotation. I will then discuss some of the advantages of such an approach,
as well as examining how it could handle some problem cases.

Time: 2pm, April 7
Location: Muniment room, quadrangle building, University of Sydney

All most welcome!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.sydney.edu.au/pipermail/sydphil/attachments/20140330/83656524/attachment-0002.html>