Iv.—‘ought’ and ‘Better’

Sloman, Aaron

doi:10.1093/mind/lxxix.315.385

Cited by 42 publications

(32 citation statements)

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“…Lewis 1986). Sloman (1970) in fact already proposes an analysis equivalent to the one presented here for sentences containing the predicate ought. 9 In order to capture their various possible interpretations (modal can, must and directive interpretation), he develops an analysis in which alternatives are compared with respect to a contextually determined ordering relation.…”

mentioning

confidence: 92%

Mood and gradability: an investigation of the subjunctive mood in Spanish

Villalta

2008

Linguist and Philos

120

110

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mentioning

confidence: 92%

Mood and gradability: an investigation of the subjunctive mood in Spanish

Villalta

2008

Linguist and Philos

120

110

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“…It is flexible enough to generate an indefinitely large number of distinct surface senses for 25 Philosophers generally use 'epistemic' for the 'ought' of belief, while linguists use it for this nonnormative 'ought'. 26 The seminal texts here are Sloman (1970); Kratzer (1977Kratzer ( , 1981. 27 'Ought' is commonly held to have a relational sense ('ought to do', versus 'ought to be') expressing a relation between an agent and an action; e.g.…”

Section: The Standard Semantics For 'Ought'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(2) The normative distinctiveness of the supposedly relational ought-sentences might be explained by an implicit agency operator; e.g. 'Jorja ought to feign illness' could be elliptical for 'It ought to be that Jorja sees to it that she feigns illness' (Belnap and Horty 1996-although Horty gives up the reductive claim in his 2001, for reasons peculiar to his own semantics; see also Sloman 1970;Williams 1981;Broome 1999; for objections see Schroeder ms). 'ought', by varying the implicit arguments supplied to the common modal operator.…”

Section: The Standard Semantics For 'Ought'mentioning

confidence: 99%

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What ought probably means, and why you can’t detach it

Finlay

2009

Synthese

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Some intuitive normative principles raise vexing 'detaching problems' by their failure to license modus ponens. I examine three such principles (a self-reliance principle and two different instrumental principles) and recent stategies employed to resolve their detaching problems. I show that solving these problems necessitates postulating an indefinitely large number of senses for 'ought'. The semantics for 'ought' that is standard in linguistics offers a unifying strategy for solving these problems, but I argue that an alternative approach combining an end-relational theory of normativity with a comparative probabilistic semantics for 'ought' provides a more satisfactory solution.

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“…The comparative works across classes, but not the "base" adjective. (The comparatives seem to be semantically and epistemologically more fundamental, as explained in (Sloman, 1969(Sloman, , 1970.) "Efficient" is an example where there is usually an explicit argument though sometimes a context is also referred to, implicitly.…”

Section: Confusions Caused By Polymorphic Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phenomenal and Access Consciousness and the "Hard" Problem: A View From the Designer Stance

Sloman¹

2010

Int. J. Mach. Conscious.

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aThis paper is an attempt to summarise and justify critical comments I have been making over several decades about research on consciousness by philosophers, scientists and engineers. This includes (a) explaining why the concept of "phenomenal consciousness" (P-C), in the sense defined by Ned Block, is semantically flawed and unsuitable as a target for scientific research or machine modelling, whereas something like the concept of "access consciousness" (A-C) with which it is often contrasted refers to phenomena that can be described and explained within a future scientific theory, and (b) explaining why the "hard problem" is a bogus problem, because of its dependence on the P-C concept. It is compared with another bogus problem, "the 'hard' problem of spatial identity" introduced as part of a tutorial on semantically flawed concepts. Different types of semantic flaw and conceptual confusion not normally studied outside analytical philosophy are distinguished. The semantic flaws of the "zombie" argument, closely allied with the P-C concept are also explained. These topics are related both to the evolution of human and animal minds and brains and to requirements for human-like robots. The diversity of the phenomena related to the concept "consciousness" as ordinarily used makes it a polymorphic concept, partly analogous to concepts like "efficient", "sensitive", and "impediment" all of which need extra information to be provided before they can be applied to anything, and then the criteria of applicability differ. As a result there cannot be one explanation of consciousness, one set of neural associates of consciousness, one explanation for the evolution of consciousness, nor one machine model of consciousness. We need many of each. I present a way of making progress based on what McCarthy called "the designer stance", using facts about running virtual machines, without which current computers obviously could not work. I suggest the same is true of biological minds, because biological evolution long ago "discovered" a need for something like virtual machinery for selfmonitoring and self-extending information processing systems, and produced far more sophisticated versions than human engineers have so far achieved.a Available in two formats, PDF and HTML at

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Iv.—‘ought’ and ‘Better’

Cited by 42 publications

References 0 publications

Mood and gradability: an investigation of the subjunctive mood in Spanish

Mood and gradability: an investigation of the subjunctive mood in Spanish

What ought probably means, and why you can’t detach it

Phenomenal and Access Consciousness and the "Hard" Problem: A View From the Designer Stance

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