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Good Cases, Bad Cases by Elmar Unnsteinsson; Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow Elmar Unnsteinsson is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Good Cases, Bad Cases about?

## Abstract The chapter claims that many philosophers employ a confusion-driven methodology, namely, they describe a case in which a speaker is confused about the identity of something and wonder what they could be referring to by making some utterance or other. The chapter argues that this methodology is suspect and goes through two case studies: Kripke on semantic reference, and Reimer on demonstratives. It shows how their arguments fail precisely in virtue of being based on cases of confusion. The author amplifies this result further by stressing that many well-known examples of near-confusion in the philosophical literature do not in fact support the same conclusion. The author has in mind Putnam on beeches and elms, and Donnellan on the distinction between attributive and referential uses of definite descriptions. The author concludes, thus, that his argument does not count against the so-called method of cases, only its confusion-driven incarnation.

Author

Elmar Unnsteinsson; Assistant Professor and Ad Astra Fellow Elmar Unnsteinsson

Publisher

Oxford University PressOxford

Published

2022

Language

EN

ISBN

9780191955617

Subjects

Linguistics, Philosophy, Psychology