Volume 27, Issue 1

The monk Gaunilo opens the vigorous disputation with Anselm by describing the infamous proof in the second chapter of the Proslogion. The following paper offers a detailed logical reconstruction of Gaunilo’s account of Anselm’s argument, thus making explicit the reasoning of Anselm in the view of Gaunilo. It will serve two purposes. Firstly it provides an easily understood example for the use of logic to interpret a nontrivial philosophical text. Secondly it reveals the reasons and the concepts involved in the argument, thereby indicating further argumentative and semantic tasks

In this paper, I argue that contrary to the approach widely taken in the literature, it is possible to retain Russell’s theory of definite descriptions and grant some semantic significance to the distinction between the attributive and the referential use. The core of the argumentation is based on recognition of the so-called “roundabout” way in which the use of a definite description may be significant to the semantic features of the sentence: it is a case where the use of a description contributes to the semantics of the sentence by affecting another expression of that sentence. I offer an appropriate example which illustrates the case in question and I demonstrate that the semantic difference between the two uses can be easily captured by Russell’s account

Casati, Di Bona and Dokic have recently argued that sounds are identical to their event sources. In this paper, I review the arguments they have offered in support of this view, show that their claims fail to defend it in a completely persuasive and conclusive fashion, and present some new questions for their thesis