Infelicitous Cancellation: The Explicit Cancellability Test for Conversational Implicature Revisited

This paper questions the adequacy of the explicit cancellability test for conversational implicature as it is commonly understood. The standard way of understanding this test relies on two assumptions: first, that that one can test whether a certain content is conversationally implicated, by checking whether that content is cancellable, and second, that a cancellation is successful only if it results in a felicitous utterance. While I accept the first of these assumptions, I reject the second one. I argue that a cancellation can succeed even if it results in an infelicitous utterance, and that unless we take this possibility into account we run the risk of misdiagnosing philosophically significant cases

Forced‐March Sorites Arguments and Linguistic Competence

Agent relativists about vagueness (henceforth ‘agent relativists’) hold that whether or not an object x falls in the extension of a vague predicate ‘P’ at a time t depends on the judgemental dispositions of a particular competent agent at t. My aim in this paper is to critically examine arguments that purport to support agent relativism by appealing to data from forced-march Sorites experiments. The most simple and direct versions of such forced-march Sorites argu- ments rest on the following (implicit) premise: If competent speakers’ judgements vary in a certain way, then the extensions of ‘P’ as used by these speakers must vary in the same way. This premise is in need of independent support, since otherwise opponents of agent relativism can simply reject it. In this paper, I focus on the idea that one cannot plausibly reject this premise, as that would commit one to implausible claims about linguistic competence. Against this, I argue that one can accommodate the data from forced-march Sorites experiments in a way that is compatible with a plausible picture of linguistic competence, without going agent relativist. Thus, there is reason to be sceptical of the idea that such data paired with considerations about linguistic competence can be invoked in order to lend any solid support to agent relativism. Forced-march Sorites arguments of this kind can, and should be, resisted.Mentala tillstånd och yttrandeinnehållMental States and Utterance Conten

Contextualist Theories of Vagueness

During the last couple of decades, several attempts have been made to come up with a theory that can handle the various semantic, logical and philosophical problems raised by the vagueness of natural languages. One of the most influential ideas that have come into fashion in recent years is the idea that vagueness should be analysed as a form of context sensitivity. Such contextualist theories of vagueness have gained some popularity, but many philosophers have remained sceptical of the prospects of finding a tenable contextualist solution to the problems of vagueness. This paper provides an introduction to the most popular contextualist accounts, and a discussion of some of the most important arguments for and against them

Vagueness, semantics and psychology

According to extension-shifting theories of vagueness, the extensions of vague predicates have sharp boundaries, which shift as a function of certain psychological factors. Such theories have been claimed to provide an attractive explanation of the appeal of soritical reasoning. I challenge this claim: the demand for such an explanation need not constrain the semantics of vague predicates at all

Communication and indexical reference

In the debate over what determines the reference of an indexical expression on a given occasion of use, we can distinguish between two generic positions. According to the first, the reference is determined by internal factors, such as the speaker’s intentions. According to the second, the reference is determined by external factors, like conventions or what a competent and attentive audience would take the reference to be. It has recently been argued that the first position is untenable, since there are cases of mismatch where the intuitively correct reference differs from the one that would be determined by the relevant internal factors. The aim of this paper is to show that, contrary to this line of argument, it is the proponent of the second position that should be worried, since this position yields counterintuitive consequences regarding communicative success in cases of mismatch

A plea for pragmatics

Let intentionalism be the view that what proposition is expressed in context by a sentence containing indexicals depends on the speaker’s intentions. It has recently been argued that intentionalism makes communicative success mysterious and that there are counterexamples to the intentionalist view in the form of cases of mismatch between the intended interpretation and the intuitively correct interpretation. In this paper, I argue that these objections can be met, once we acknowledge that we may distinguish what determines the correct interpretation from the evidence that is available to the audience, as well as from the standards by which we judge whether or not a given interpretation is reasonable. With these distinctions in place, we see that intentionalism does not render communicative success mysterious, and that cases of mismatch between the intended interpretation and the intuitively correct one can easily be accommodated. The distinction is also useful in treating the Humpty Dumpty problem for intentionalism, since it turns out that this can be treated as an extreme special case of mismatch

Annual climate impact and primary energy use of Swedish transport infrastructure

By 2045, Sweden is to have zero net emissions of greenhouse gases. To reach this goal, stakeholders involved in planning and construction of Swedish transport infrastructure aim to half their climate impact by 2030. Planning for emission reduction measures require network level studies showing environmental impacts of the infrastructure network. Previous studies do not allow assessment of current hotspots in the infrastructure network, which limits their relevance for decision-support in this question. The aim of this paper is to assess the current annual climate impact and primary energy use of Swedish transport infrastructure by using a methodological approach based on life cycle assessment. The scope includes new construction and management (operation, maintenance, and reinvestment) of existing roads, railways, airports, ports, and fairway channels. The annual climate impact was estimated to 2.8 million tonnes carbon dioxide equivalents and the annual primary energy use was estimated to 27 terawatt hours. Mainly road and rail infrastructure contributed to these impacts. Environmental hotspots of the infrastructure network were management of the infrastructure stock (particularly reinvestment of road and rail infrastructure) and material production (particularly production of asphalt, steel, and concrete). If climate targets are to be met, these areas are particularly important to address. Additional research on impacts of small construction measures, the size of biogenic carbon emissions (in standing biomass as well as soil carbon), and the use and impacts of asphalt for road construction and management would further increase the understanding of impacts related to Swedish transport infrastructure at the network level. (Note: an Erratum has been published to this paper in volume 20(2)

Erratum to: Annual climate impact and primary energy use of Swedish transport infrastructure

In the original version of this paper, some figures and units in Table 5 (in the main text) and Table A1, A2, A6, and A7 (in the Appendix) were found to be incorrect. The corrected tables are presented below. These changes only concern the presentation of data. They do not concern any of the calculations made; hence, they do not affect any of the results or conclusions in the paper. (the original paper was published in volume 19(2)) &nbsp