Metaphysics and Epistemology Group (Tuesday - Week 3, MT25)
Tuesday 28 October, 2:00pm - 3:30pm
Seminar Room, L1 (10.019), Schwarzman Centre
Ofra Magidor (Magdalen College): 'Words apart: the problem of word fission'
Abstract: In this talk (which is based on joint work with David Liebesman), I’ll discuss the puzzle of word fission: cases in which, intuitively, a single word seems to evolve into two distinct words.
The puzzle is obviously similar to other familiar cases of fission, including those involving people. However, the puzzle of word fission raises some different considerations than the puzzle of person fission: superficially similar solutions to the puzzles have different virtues and vices.
After some preliminaries, we consider and reject three prominent responses to the puzzle, before defending our favoured one: the overpopulation view, which is which is somewhat (but not entirely) analogous to Lewis’ (1976) view about person fission. More generally, we hope to show that word fission is an intriguing topic in the metaphysics of natural languages.
Metaphysics and Epistemology Group Convenors: Nick Jones, Bernhard Salow and Alex Kaiserman
