The answering machine paradox

Abstract

The answering machine paradox has relatively recently sparked some debate regarding Kaplan’s Demonstrative (1977). A popular approach to solve the answering machine paradox has been to reject Kaplan’s proper context thesis whilst largely maintaining his framework for indexicals. In this thesis I will firstly present two new answering machine type cases and argue that the existing solutions to the answering machine paradox cannot deal with these cases. Then, I will propose a near-side pragmatic solution to the answering machine paradox that adequately deals with these new answering machine cases in a way that adheres with our pre-theoretical intuitions.

Date of Award	21 Jun 2012
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Patrick Greenough (Supervisor)