Philosophy of Mind Seminar

Abstract: Lexical ambiguity comes in two types: polysemy, where the multiple meanings are closely related, and homonymy, where they aren’t. Over the last few decades, a wide range of experimental work utilizing a range of different methods has purportedly shown that the representation, processing, and linguistic behaviour of polysemy and homonymy differ in important ways. Furthermore, these empirical results often provide the support for some dramatic theoretical claims.

It is hardly surprising that the move from the empirical results to their theoretical imports can require some substantive and controversial philosophical theorizing. In this paper, however, we argue for the converse: appealing to a certain philosophical perspective brings into question the validity of the empirical results themselves.

We argue that many of the relevant experiments unwittingly rely on controversial assumptions about the theoretical treatment of the phenomenon of copredication. In particular, we maintain that if one assumes our own Property Versatility approach to copredication (Liebesman & Magidor 2025), it follows that there are some key flaws in the design of several influential experiments on the polysemy/homonymy distinction. This is a surprising claim, as none of the relevant empirical studies purport to take a stance on how one should account for copredication, and indeed most of them are not even concerned with copredication at all. And it is important claim, because it entails that the dramatic theoretical conclusions drawn from these purported empirical results rest on far shakier grounds than has been assumed.

Registration: If you do not hold a university card, please contact the seminar convenor or admin@philosophy.ox.ac.uk at least two working days before a seminar to register your attendance.

Philosophy of Mind Seminar convenors: Mike Martin and Matthew Parrott