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A. J. Ayer's empiricist criterion of meaning was supposed to have sorted all statements into nonsense on the one hand, and tautologies or genuinely factual statements on the other. Unfortunately for Ayer, it follows from classical logic that his criterion is trivial—it classifies all statements as either tautologies or genuinely factual, but none as nonsense. However, in this paper, I argue that Ayer's criterion of meaning can be defended from classical proofs of its triviality by the adoption of a relevant logic—an idea which is motivated because, according to Ayer, the genuinely factual statements are those which observation is relevant to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are at least two traditional conceptions of numerical degree of similarity. According to the first, the degree of dissimilarity between two particulars is their distance apart in a metric space. According to the second, the degree of similarity between two particulars is a function of the number of (sparse) properties they have in common and not in common. This paper argues that these two conceptions are logically independent, but philosophically inconsonant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on Fact, Fiction and Fantasy. It states that analysis of fiction in terms of imagination supports that knowledge from fiction is from imagination but it does not involve that all knowledge from fiction is from imagination. It mentions that counterfactual conditional is true if in most similar possibilities to actuality in which its predecessor is true and knowledge from fiction is modal knowledge as it surround knowledge of what is metaphysically necessary and possible.

It's often hypothesized that the structure of mental representation is map-like rather than language-like. The possibility arises as a counterexample to the argument from the best explanation of productivity and systematicity to the language of thought hypothesis-the hypothesis that mental structure is compositional and recursive. In this paper, I argue that the analogy with maps does not undermine the argument, because maps and language have the same kind of compositional and recursive structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a possible worlds theory of the content of pictures, with three complications: depictive content is centred, two-dimensional and structured. The paper argues that this theory supports a strong analogy between depictive and other kinds of representation and the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It's possible to understand an infinite number of novel maps. I argue that Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi's compositional semantics of maps cannot explain this possibility, because it requires an infinite number of semantic primitives. So the semantics of maps is puzzlingly different from the semantics of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The possibilities of depicting non-existents, depicting non-particulars and depictive misrepresentation are frequently cited as grounds for denying the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance. I first argue that these problems are really a manifestation of the more general problem of intentionality. I then show how there is a plausible solution to the general problem of intentionality which is consonant with the platitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a platitude that whereas language is mediated by convention, depiction is mediated by resemblance. But this platitude may be attacked on the grounds that resemblance is either insufficient for or incidental to depictive representation. I defend common sense from this attack by using Grice's analysis of meaning to specify the non-incidental role of resemblance in depictive representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]