Visual Experience: A Semantic Approach

176 Pages·2018·1.19 MB·English

by  Wylie Breckenridge

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Visual Experience
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OXFORD PHILOSOPHICAL MONOGRAPHS
EditorialCommittee
WILLIAMCHILD R.S.CRISP A.W.MOORE
STEPHENMULHALL CHRISTOPHERG.TIMPSON
OTHERTITLESINTHISSERIESINCLUDE
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BarbaraVetter
MoralReason
JuliaMarkovits
CategoryMistakes
OfraMagidor
TheCriticalImagination
JamesGrant
FromMoralitytoMetaphysics:TheTheisticImplicationsofourEthical
Commitments
AngusRitchie
AquinasonFriendship
DanielSchwartz
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HendrikLorenz
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,22/2/2018,SPi
Visual Experience
A Semantic Approach
Wylie Breckenridge
1
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3
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For Tim
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
1. TheProject 1
2. ASimpleCharacter 16
3. WaysofLooking 36
4. TheMechanism 49
5. SyntacticDetails 70
6. ImplicitDomainRestriction 76
7. ConceptsandDiscrimination 86
8. Other‘Look’Sentences 97
9. OtherCharacters 115
10. TheManyPropertyProblem 125
11. ExplainingPhenomena 138
References 157
Index 163
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Acknowledgements
ThisbookistheculminationofworkthatIfirststartedinmyB.Phil.
and D.Phil. theses at Oxford, many years ago. Timothy Williamson
was my supervisor. I wanted a topic that would be difficult but
worthwhile, and Tim suggested the semantics of ‘look’ sentences.
I went with it. It certainly has been difficult; I hope that it has been
worthwhile.IoweagreatdealofthankstoTim.Hehadthewisdom
toletmethinkthingsthroughbymyself,andmakemistakes,butthen
expect and help me to do better. He was confident that I could do
things well, and that kept me going through some tough times. The
bookisdedicatedtohim.
My D.Phil. thesis was also partly supervised by Stephen Pulman,
in the Faculty of Linguistics. Stephen was very patient and generous
with his time, and I learned a lot about formal semantics from him.
I spent countless hours thrashing out ideas with my fellow graduate
students,inparticularwithRichardPrice,SarahMoss,OfraMagidor,
StephenKearns,NicoSilins,AndersNes,andSusannaSchellenberg.
The thesis was examined by John Hawthorne and Bill Brewer. They
encouragedmetodevelopitintoabook;withoutthatencouragement
Ineverwouldhave.
After Oxford I worked on the book during a Mellon Postdoctoral
Fellowship at Cornell. The philosophy department was a great place
to discuss ideas; I benefited, in particular, from discussions with
David Liebesman, Nico Silins, Stephen Kearns, Christy Mag Uidhir,
and Susanna Siegel (when she came to visit). I spent a lot of time
hangingoutwiththelinguistsatCornell,especiallyMatsRooth,Dorit
Abusch, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. They expanded my then very
limitedunderstandingofhowlanguageworks.
ThebulkofthebookwaswrittenafterIleftCornellandtookupa
positionat Charles Sturt University. We have a small but very lively
group of philosophers at CSU, and the university largely leaves us