{"id":14434,"date":"2025-09-08T17:41:01","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T16:41:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.st-andrews.ac.uk\/philevents\/event\/metaphysics-and-logic-seminar-justin-dambrosio-tba\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T03:41:00","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T03:41:00","slug":"metaphysics-and-logic-seminar-justin-dambrosio-tba","status":"publish","type":"tribe_events","link":"https:\/\/www.st-andrews.ac.uk\/philevents\/event\/metaphysics-and-logic-seminar-justin-dambrosio-tba\/","title":{"rendered":"Metaphysics and Logic Seminar: Justin D&#8217;Ambrosio, &#8220;The Meaning of &#8216;Means&#8217;&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b data-olk-copy-source=\"MessageBody\">Abstract:\u00a0<\/b>Semantic theories are supposed to be theories of meaning, so ascriptions of meaning should play a role in guiding and constraining our semantic theories. To play this role, however, we need to know the meaning of &#8220;means&#8221; itself. In this paper I develop a semantics for the verb &#8220;means,&#8221; as it is used to specify the meanings of natural language expressions. According to the view I propose\u2014which I call the\u00a0<i>type-polymorphism view<\/i>\u2014the type of &#8220;means&#8221; is flexible, and shifts to accept whatever type of expression occurs in its complement. I formalize this view in a system that extends standard type theory to accommodate polymorphism:\u00a0<i>System F<\/i>. I go on to argue that proponents of higher-order approaches to natural language semantics\u2014who state their semantic theories in a higher-order metalanguage\u2014can and should see themselves as stating their semantic theories using the verb &#8220;means.&#8221; But this approach is not available to proponents of first-order, model-theoretic approaches to semantic theorizing. As a consequence, I argue, only higher-order approaches are genuinely offering theories of meaning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Abstract:\u00a0Semantic theories are supposed to be theories of meaning, so ascriptions of meaning should play a role in guiding and constraining our semantic theories. To play this role, however, we&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_tribe_events_status":"","_tribe_events_status_reason":"","_tribe_events_is_hybrid":"","_tribe_events_is_virtual":"","_tribe_events_virtual_video_source":"","_tribe_events_virtual_embed_video":"","_tribe_events_virtual_linked_button_text":"","_tribe_events_virtual_linked_button":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_embed_at":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_embed_to":[],"_tribe_events_virtual_show_on_event":"","_tribe_events_virtual_show_on_views":"","_tribe_events_virtual_url":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[],"tribe_events_cat":[25],"class_list":["post-14434","tribe_events","type-tribe_events","status-publish","hentry","tribe_events_cat-metaphysics-and-logic-group","cat_metaphysics-and-logic-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.st-andrews.ac.uk\/philevents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/14434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.st-andrews.ac.uk\/philevents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.st-andrews.ac.uk\/philevents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/tribe_events"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.st-andrews.ac.uk\/philevents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.st-andrews.ac.uk\/philevents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/14434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14815,"href":"https:\/\/www.st-andrews.ac.uk\/philevents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/14434\/revisions\/14815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.st-andrews.ac.uk\/philevents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.st-andrews.ac.uk\/philevents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14434"},{"taxonomy":"tribe_events_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.st-andrews.ac.uk\/philevents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events_cat?post=14434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}