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JAMES HIGGINBOTHAM

ON LINGUISTICS IN PHILOSOPHY,
AND PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS

ABSTRACT. After reviewing some major features of the interactions between Linguistics
and Philosophy in recent years, I suggest that the depth and breadth of current inquiry
into semantics has brought this subject into contact both with questions of the nature of
linguistic competence and with modern and traditional philosophical study of the nature
of our thoughts, and the problems of metaphysics. I see this development as promising for
the future of both subjects.

First, a clarification. Philosophy is a large, many-limbed creature, whose


variety of interests and methods, even if loosely gathered under the name
of inquiry through reason (rather than through faith or revelation), may
touch upon any special subject in a number of ways. Likewise Linguistics,
comprising as it does the study of human language and languages across
a manifold of social and historical concerns, only some of which are rel-
evant to my discussion here. By speaking of Linguistics in Philosophy,
or of Philosophy in Linguistics, I refer only to the typical subjects of this
Journal from its inception, subjects that grew from the interaction between
elements of the philosophy of language and the study of generative or
formal linguistics, and chiefly of semantics. My question, with reference
to the work carried out during this distinguished history, is what these
interactions have led to, and where we might see things developing.
Writing, now, as a member of a generation of academic philosophers for
whom the material of linguistics was an exciting new arena of inquiry, it
may be appropriate first to explain why, at least in my own and I hope not
unrepresentative respect, this arena was one that had promise for philo-
sophical inquiry, conceived in a certain purity, and was also continuous
with the development of philosophy. Subsequently, I shall turn to what I
see coming about in these latter days.
Philosophy asks big questions. Among them: what is thought? what is
the place of mind and rationality in a natural world? what is truth? what is
there in the world? As Michael Dummett has remarked, philosophy aims
at these questions even in its apparently removed, local, and most arcane
discussions; must so aim, to be in keeping with the traditions of the subject.

Linguistics and Philosophy 25: 573–584, 2002.


© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
574 JAMES HIGGINBOTHAM

Philosophy has its methods, different ones at different times. How-


ever, the methods of philosophy (themselves supported or questioned upon
philosophical grounds) are typically not just methods, but also formats,
within which the whole of philosophy, or at least the whole of what in-
terests their proponents, may be transacted. It is in this sense, as the format
within which exposition, discussion, and argument took place, that the
philosophy of language of the first period of this Journal may be under-
stood (and it is in this sense also that Zeno Vendler published Linguistics
in Philosophy, from which I have borrowed part of my title). This format
is not, now, as favored as it was. But it continues to hold a place in the
subject, one that stems from the oldest traditions.
If there is any single topic that can be said not only to deploy methods
and to aim at results of inquiry typical of linguistics on the one hand and
philosophy on the other, but even to constitute a domain that is, at the
same time, a part of linguistics and a part of philosophy, it is the details
of meaning and the conveyance of meaning in language. It is a measure of
the continuity of this subject that the great work of the past, from Plato and
Aristotle through medieval figures such as William of Sherwood and Jean
Buridan, and down to Antoine Arnauld and Otto Jespersen, is readable
today, and that they are concerned with what is recognizably the same
subject. David Lewis wrote in 1980 (reprinted in Lewis 1998):
We have made it part of the business of philosophy to set down, in an explicit and
systematic fashion, the broad outlines of our common knowledge about the practice of
language.1

Our making it so was not a novelty. But our making so much of it was a
novelty, made possible by achievements especially in logic and the theory
of formal languages, by the concentrated effort of part of the represent-
atives of “the linguistic turn” in philosophy, and by the work of Rudolf
Carnap, W.V. Quine, and others.
It was exciting. There were things to be discovered. Only in the late
1970s, for example, did a coherent even if still partial theory of the
conditions on taking anaphoric pronouns as bound variables begin to
emerge, along with full accounts of restricted quantification, steps toward
a reasonable story about the logic of conditionals, and much else.
Latterly, the philosophy of mind (an appropriate label for a rather
loosely connected family of inquiries, more or less involved with the
cognitive sciences, or their interpretation) has become the center of specu-
lative philosophy, and the philosophy of language is no longer the general,
preferred format for philosophical exposition. I do not rehearse here the
1 Reprinted in Lewis 1998, 22.
ON LINGUISTICS IN PHILOSOPHY, AND PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS 575

steps taken in this direction. Instead, or so I shall argue, we can see the
beginnings of new problems and questions, within the philosophy of lan-
guage conceived as a specialty, not just within philosophy, but also within
linguistics.
Linguistics and philosophy, like steak and barbecue sauce, have much
to give each other. Philosophy has acted for many years as a kind of
logic delivery system to linguistics, a role that will doubtless continue;
and formal linguistics, by opening up investigations in philosophical logic
to the question of the details of particular sentences, their precise syntax
and combinatorics of meaning, has enriched and deepened these investig-
ations. What I wish to dwell upon, however, is the prospect of a common
enterprise, wherein elements typical of philosophy and those typical of
linguistics interact.
This common enterprise, I suggest, is the clarification of the nature of
our thoughts, what we actually express when we understand one another.
Assume, what is common enough although open to question, that this
clarification calls first of all for the exposition of the truth conditions of
sentences, as they occur as parts of total languages, and within the con-
texts of their potential utterance; and assume also that any correct account
of what we are inclined to assert must, over a wide domain, make us
pretty much right about the way things are.2 Then the truth conditions of
much of what we believe must be such as to be actually met; and this
implies that what turns up in the metaphysics of semantic investigation
cannot be passed off as a mere manner of speaking, but constitutes our
best conception of the way the world is.
Examples of metaphysical features that have been deployed in contem-
porary investigation are many: Davidson 1967 and subsequent work on
individual events; Montague 1960 on what he called “philosophical entit-
ies”; and elements such as propositions and individual concepts, advanced
in Carnap 1947, but now understood in terms of possible-worlds semantics
or counterpart theory, and others. If the proffered semantics employing
these elements is correct, then they must form, not merely part of our
conception of the world, but part of the world itself.
To say this much is not to commit semantics to an all-out realism with
respect to the elements invoked. It does, however, imply that the question
of realism must be taken seriously, including familiar questions of pos-
sible reduction or relativization of the objects involved, as for instance
whether individual events can be reduced to regions of space and time, or
whether possible worlds can be modeled as maximally consistent sets of
propositions.
2 This view is identified especially with Davidson 1984.
576 JAMES HIGGINBOTHAM

Alternatives are perhaps possible, and have certainly been advanced;


but it is not, in my view, easy to see that they are alternatives. Thus
Jackendoff 1998 writes in this Journal in defense of the view that, at least
for that conception of linguistics that takes a “mentalist stance”, and is
interested in language as a chapter of the study of the “properties of the
mind”, there is to be a contrast between the view that there is reference in
language to “entities in the world”, and the view that there is reference to
“entities in the world as conceptualized by the language user”.3
First of all, it is hard to see how the “mentalist stance” is at odds with
any conception of reference to ordinary things; reference to the salt cellar
on the table, for example, which will come across the table to me if I say
to my neighbor, “Please pass the salt”. Presumably, ‘x sees the salt on
the table’, with its unabashed reference to salt and to tables, expresses a
“property of the mind” of x if anything does. Furthermore, what is to drive
a wedge between “entities in the world as conceptualized”, and “entities in
the world”? Jackendoff mentions examples of fictions (broadly speaking,
thus including Santa Claus): this gives him a semantics (Jackendoff 1998,
215) where Santa Claus is imaginary is, if true, true of a “conceptualized
entity” that is not “real”. Many alternatives have been explored, in criticism
of the thesis, which appears to be Jackendoff’s, that not only the evident
grammatical form, but even the logical form, of Santa Claus is imaginary
is the same as that of My shirt is red. But even if this thesis is correct, it
would show only that there are fictional or imaginary entities, not that they
are merely “conceptualized”, and not “in the world”.4
Semantics, I have suggested, aims to get at, or to get as close as possible
to, the nature of our thoughts, by examining the nature of our language,
the product of our thoughts. It does not follow that semantics is some sort
of self-contained discipline, although in practice the familiar methods of
linguistic analysis, proposal, refutation, and revision dominate the field.
Furthermore, there are points that researchers typically take for granted
– the phenomenon of reference itself, for example – seeking to determ-
ine, not what it is or how it comes about, but rather how it works itself
out through the knowledge of the competent speaker of a whole human
language. In the view I am suggesting, there is a respectable notion of
competence in Chomsky’s sense that applies to semantics and takes its

3 Jackendoff 1998, 211–213.


4 Jackendoff (1998, 214) further holds that we cannot refer to entities that we do not
“conceptualize”. The relevant notion of conceptualization is his, but may be intended to
contrast with “non-conceptual content”, such as in some views may accrue to non-linguistic
elements. But the thesis, even if true, still fails to set up a “conceptualized” world as
opposed to: the world.
ON LINGUISTICS IN PHILOSOPHY, AND PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS 577

place within the general subject of linguistics.5 Given the premise that the
sentences we use express our thoughts, the study of semantic competence
– a “property of the mind”, to use Jackendoff’s terms – is a study at the
intersection of philosophical and linguistic interests and concerns.
To be sure, abstention is possible. On the philosophical side, one may
refrain on principled grounds from entering the area where the alleged
knowledge of meaning is inexplicit. A difficulty with this stance is that
explicit and inexplicit knowledge interact in producing rationalizing ex-
planations of behavior and understanding. Thus when one of my students
said to me that she had “hard-drived the diskette”, I grasped that she had
put the contents of the diskette onto the hard drive of her computer, the full
explanation of this ordinary event involving not only my explicit know-
ledge of diskettes and hard drives, but also the inexplicit knowledge of
denominal verb formation in English. The latter gives rise to a class of
verbs that involve placing the reference of the direct object within an object
of the sort classified by the noun from which the verb was derived. These
are the location verbs, including stable (the horse), shelve (the book), and
many, many others. The process is productive, as my student’s remark
shows; but her, and my, knowledge of the process was inexplicit. Insofar as
we offer a rational account of my coming to form the (correct) belief that
she said that she placed the contents of the diskette on the hard drive, the
premise expressing the productivity of the formation of denominal location
verbs must enter.6
As for abstention on the linguistic side, semantics can be pursued in
abstraction from metaphysical questions, or from issues of psychological
interpretation (of the sort that I am considering; that is, interpretations in
terms of competence), or from both. Such a self-imposed limitation would
seem to have little to recommend it.7

5 This view is not Chomsky’s. For discussion, see inter alia Larson and Segal 1995,
Chomsky 2001.
6 Of course, explanations in terms of inexplicit or tacit knowledge have long been
controversial. I elaborate further upon examples like those in the text in Higginbotham
1998.
7 As I understand his work, Montague, although he did not engage in the psychological
issues, was deeply interested in the metaphysics associated with his semantic theory, de-
fending as he did both higher-order logic and intensional logic upon philosophical grounds.
His expositions were generally in model-theoretic terms; but there was a recognized need
for absolute semantics as well. One sometimes hears it said that the passage from one to
the other is straightforward, as one simply stipulates an “intended model”. But matters
are trickier than that: what is wanted, on the truth-conditional conception anyway, is a
theory of truth simpliciter, not a theory of truth relative to a model or models M. A method
that overcomes some difficulties especially with unpacking the contribution of the modal
578 JAMES HIGGINBOTHAM

In recent years, questions of logical form and therefore of the structures


of human thoughts, have been enriched through the incorporation of the
discoveries of syntactic and semantic theory within linguistics. Syntactic
theory in particular has expanded so as to bring in a variety of human
languages, giving rise to what is often called a “comparative syntax”. Still
more recently, this material has been accompanied by what may perhaps
be called comparative semantics, an area that, at least if some working as-
sumptions are made, promises still further to enrich theories of semantics,
by providing both evidence for them and constraints upon solutions to
problems.
In this domain, I would propose, the overarching problem is how to for-
mulate a restrictive theory of semantics, restrictive in the sense that it limits
the semantic options available for human language, while at the same time
being adequate to the semantic phenomena. As Chomsky has emphasized
with respect to syntax and phonology, there is a tension between the urge to
expand one’s descriptive apparatus, prompted by the demands, or apparent
demands, of the data on the one hand, and needs imposed by the aims of
explanation on the other, and particularly of the explanation of the basis on
which human first languages are acquired. The same considerations apply
to semantics, in that the principles on the basis of which the learner ac-
quires knowledge of the meanings of words, phrases, and whole sentential
structures must be powerful enough that they can yield what is observed
over this unbounded domain, and sufficiently variable so as to allow for
differences amongst languages, but not so powerful or variable that they
can yield arbitrary correlations between sound and meaning; for the learner
must be able to converge on the proper correlation with little or no explicit
evidence and instruction.
In formulating a restrictive semantic theory, we face a problem not in
one or two unknowns, but three. There is, first of all, the problem of saying
precisely what the meaning of a sentence or other expression actually is,
or more exactly what must be known by the native speaker who is said
to know the meaning. Second, there is the question what the inputs to
semantic interpretation are: single structures at some level of description?
complexes consisting of these structures and others? whole derivations?
and so forth. And third, there is the question what the nature of the map-
ping from the inputs, whatever they are, to the interpretation, whatever
it may turn out to be. In the inquiry, therefore, we must be prepared for
implications for any one of these questions deriving from answers to the
others.

operators is given in Gupta 1980. For absolute theories, see Larson and Segal 1995, Heim
and Kratzer 1998.
ON LINGUISTICS IN PHILOSOPHY, AND PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS 579

It is widely assumed that human languages have a compositional se-


mantics. Recent discussion in this Journal has mostly concentrated on the
cases where the question is whether a language is compositional. Here,
however, following in part Larson and Segal (1995, 79), I will assume that
compositionality is defined for a grammar (that is, an uninterpreted syn-
tax). Suppose, to reduce clutter, that the inputs to semantic interpretation
according to the grammar G are one and all single syntactic trees T of the
familiar sort, each point X of which carries a label λ(X); that all branching
is binary; and that linear order is irrelevant.
Then local compositionality, as I shall understand it, is the thesis about
G that there is a function f such that, for every input tree T generated
by G, and every point X with label λ(X) in T, the set of meanings
µ((X, λ(X)), T) that (X, λ(X)) has within T is given by: either X is a
leaf and µ((X, λ(X)), T) = µ((X, λ(X)), X) (that is, (X, λ(X)) has in T
the set of meanings that it has in the trivial subtree consisting of X alone)
or X is not a leaf, X immediately dominates some pair of distinct points Y
and Z carrying the respective labels λ(Y ) and λ(Z), whose meanings are
µ((Y, λ(Y )), T) and µ((Z, λ(Z)), T) respectively, and:

µ((X, λ(X)), T) = f (µ((Y, λ(Y )), T), µ((Z, λ(Z)), T))

Assume, as is usual, that every subtree of a tree generated by G is generated


by G, and that each label is either a label only of leaves or a label only of
non-leaves (in other words, that each label is either lexical or syntactic).
Then if local compositionality obtains, we can drop the qualifier T from
the set of associated meanings, because for leaves it is given by (X, λ(X)),
and for the rest by induction on the height of trees T generated by G.
The definition just given is only partial, in that it will not apply to cases
where syntactic trees are embellished with linguistic relations, as well as
with labels.8 However, it will be enough for the purposes I wish to illustrate
here.
Is English (say) locally compositional? In Fregean theories it is not,
because of examples where an expression must, in Frege’s view, be taken
twice over, once for sense and once for reference, thus acquiring in larger
8 That is, it will not apply where the relations are not symmetric. If, however, relations
such as that of anaphor to antecedent are expressed symmetrically, as by coindexation,
they can be brought in as well: “has index i”, for example, will be part of the intrinsic
label of both anaphor and antecedent. In this case, the notion of compositionality should
be strengthened, so as to eliminate any hypothetical effects of alphabetic variance. I have
defined compositionality allowing elements to have families of meanings, rather than
unique meanings, so as to allow application of local compositionality to accounts where
a single syntactic structure gives rise to ambiguity, as in the account of quantifier scope
suggested in Cooper 1983.
580 JAMES HIGGINBOTHAM

structures an ambiguity that they would not possess on their own. There
are many other examples, as noted for instance in Szabo 2000. However
this may be, note that, over the substantial area where we expect compos-
itionality to be observed, there is a further question, namely that of the
universality of the functions f themselves. The lexica of human languages
differ; do their combinatorics differ as well?
I said above that we had to balance three unknowns: syntactic structure
(or whatever representations are submitted to interpretation); interpreta-
tion itself; and the nature of the mapping between these. Now, there are
a number of phenomena showing divergences amongst human languages
of the following sorts: either (a) they have apparently identical structures
(up to the choice of formatives) but different interpretations; or (b) they
have apparently divergent forms with the same interpretations (whereas
the similar forms either are confined to one language or the other, or have
different interpretations). In these cases, we have to ask whether, in case
(a), the identity of structure is only apparent, and in case (b) whether the
divergence of form is just a matter of syntax, or of usage, or a matter of
lexical semantics, or a matter of combinatorics.
I illustrate. The phenomenon (b) was widely appreciated in structuralist
linguistics. In Manhattan, some years ago, one said only I got a haircut as
reporting a normal trip to the barber shop, whereas in Brooklyn many said
I took a haircut, meaning just the same thing. But in Manhattan to say I
took a haircut would be either strange simpliciter, or else mean that for
some peculiar reason I cut my own hair (compare I took a bath to I got
a bath). This divergence could be put down to difference in interpretation
or usage in the two communities, and not a difference in the principles of
semantic projection. Likewise for English I have a headache versus French
La tete me fait mal: an English speaker would hardly say, “The (or: My)
head makes me ill”, and there is, I am told, nothing in French that would
convey the plain meaning in English-like syntax. Thus the phenomenon
(a) is implicated as well. The presumptive conclusion is that either simple
usage, or something in the basic lexicon or syntax, has the consequences
in question.
Even these simple examples, however, show that semantics cannot rest
with enumerations of meanings in various languages. Chierchia 1996, for
example (reviving a proposal in passing, and of course with different in-
tent, in Quine 1968, 35–36) has suggested that in classifier languages,
such as Chinese, common nouns enter the syntax unspecified for mass
or count; it is the classifier, when present, that creates the count term. If
correct, this account has located a semantic divergence amongst languages,
a “semantic parameter”, to adapt a term of Chomsky’s. But if there are
ON LINGUISTICS IN PHILOSOPHY, AND PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS 581

semantic parameters; that is, differences in the mapping relations between


representations and their meanings, then semantic theory is charged with
classifying and explaining their basis.
I take a second illustration from my own work (Higginbotham 1995,
2000). The resultative construction, as in John called the number up, com-
mon for instance in English and Chinese, is absent, or very nearly so, from
languages such as Italian. Linguistic theory is therefore called upon to
explain not only why English and Chinese admit the construction, with
its particular semantic properties, but also why it is not present in Italian;
and this means showing that the construction could not be added to Italian
without contradiction. I have argued in the work cited that a language
admits resultatives just to the extent that it allows the productive forma-
tion of “telic pairs” e, e  of event positions in the syntax (which will be
interpreted as what are called accomplishments in the semantics). Thus in
John called the number up the calling is an event e whose end or telos is an
event e of the number’s being “up”, in a metaphorical sense, the relation
between e and e being (roughly) that e goes on until e comes about, a
special case of the causal relation. To generate the meaning of the English,
then, requires combining the interpretations of the verb and the resultative
preposition in a special way. But whereas English, or Chinese, can do
this, Italian cannot. So we have a primitive semantic difference between
language types. If it exists, this difference would also be responsible for
the absence of prepositions in Italian that signify both process and telos,
prepositions such as the to of walk to the store, the sense of through in
John walked through the tunnel in which it implies that he entered the
tunnel and came out the other side, and several others. The implication, if
this is correct, is that these lexical items do not exist because they cannot,
consistently with the combinatorial design of the language in question.
The account I suggest has consequences for the thesis of the universal-
ity of combinatorial rules of semantics. Suppose that the ultimate lexical
properties of the Italian a and English to are the same. It follows that
the unacceptability of Italian camminare al negozio (which would mean
to walk to the store) is not a purely semantic phenomenon; for nothing
prevents, and universality even demands, the PP’s being combined with the
V in just the way they combine in English. Rather, the phenomenon arises
because the syntax-to-semantics mappings are different. But suppose the
lexical properties are different; that is, that English to expresses (despite
its lowly prepositional status) motion along a path, where the Italian a
does not. Then we must ask why Italian cannot contain a preposition
582 JAMES HIGGINBOTHAM

with the meaning of English to, and the answer to this question must be
combinatoric, not a matter of lexical accident.9
I have suggested that compositionality in human languages, and a com-
parative study of the principles that project meaning from parts to wholes,
are a new and important source for a deeper understanding of the expres-
sion of thought in language. In closing, I call attention to another domain,
which presents a manifest and serious challenge to our attempts fully to
understand what thoughts we express.
Socrates, it is said, asked for “definitions”, or anyway for “what it is”
for someone to be virtuous, or just, or to know that p. Generally, his dia-
logues ended in ignorance, though one or another necessary condition for
application of the term would emerge, for instance that virtue is a kind of
knowledge, or that to know that p it had to be true, and one had to believe
it (if these conditions are indeed correct). In concluding this discussion of
how parts of linguistics and parts of philosophy can, and in many respects
do, at present form a common enterprise, I call attention to issues in lexical
semantics, where as it seems to me the Socratic question goes together with
explanations of meaning, and of competence in the sense of Chomsky.
Consider in this regard the interpretation of the English progressive -ing
(sometimes but not always accompanied by verbal support, as we can see
from the difference between I saw John cross the street (he got to the other
side) versus I saw John crossing the street (he may not have made it)). Tak-
ing the syntax of the progressive for granted (it is a functional head, taking
what follows in some way as complement), about this construction we may
ask these questions: what is the logical syntax of the progressive? and,
what does it express? It is important to note that we may answer the first
question without the second; that is, that we may know the semantic role
that the progressive plays, without knowing exactly what its meaning is.
We may also know part of the answer the second question without knowing
the first; that is, as in the case of the notions examined in the Platonic
dialogues, we may know certain conditions that the progressive imposes,
without knowing the semantic type of progressive-plus-complement.
Volume 1, number 1, of this Journal contained an important article
by David Dowty on the English progressive (Dowty 1977). There, Dowty
proposed that the progressive took propositions as arguments, and further
9 The quick description above that I have given of certain differences between English
and Romance has some cross-linguistic support. The central observation is that in English,
but not in general in Romance (or, for instance, Korean) the preposition can take the role,
semantically speaking, normally reserved for the V, which then acts as a mere modifier. So,
to put the point roughly, John walked to the store means: John was to the store by walking.
We might say in this case that the P is the semantic head, although the V is the syntactic
head, of the construction.
ON LINGUISTICS IN PHILOSOPHY, AND PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS 583

that it was a modal notion, admitting definition in terms of the primitive


conception of an “inertia world”, a possible world w that was like the world
@ of evaluation up to some time t, though possibly divergent thereafter.
The progressive of a proposition was to be true just in case the proposition
itself was true in every inertia world.
There were two immediate difficulties with Dowty’s proposal, namely
(i) that the inertia worlds could not in general, but did sometimes, include
the actual world, and (ii) that the proposal allowed that a progressive might
be true at t although nothing going on up to and including t constituted an
appropriate initiation that would allow it; so, for instance, I might be said
to be going to work even when sound asleep, for if everything went on nor-
mally, to work I would indeed go. Possible improvements are considered
in Landman 1992 and Parsons 1990. For Landman, the progressive ex-
presses a relation between an event e and properties of events (understood
in Montague’s sense of “properties”); and Landman too attempts a modal
reduction of the progressive, in terms of continuations of the initiating
event (say, my getting up in the morning) leading not too remotely to full
accomplishment (my arrival at work). There remain difficulties, many of
which are scouted in Bonomi and Zucchi 2001.
But now we have a typically Socratic predicament. We have a concep-
tion, that expressed by the ordinary progressive, which naively we may
not regard it as any great triumph for a native speaker of English to deploy
correctly. But no purely formal theory can tell us just what that conception
is. (My remark applies to Landman’s account in particular, because we
require to explicate what it is for one event to be a continuation of another.)
Rather we have to seek the answer by sifting cases, still knowing as we do
that necessary and sufficient conditions, here as elsewhere, for the concepts
central to our most elementary scheme of things are unlikely to pop up at
us. Well, but the inquiry does after all, as applied to any human language,
make clearer to us what we can humanly think.

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584 JAMES HIGGINBOTHAM

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James Higginbotham
School of Philosophy, USC
3709 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0451
E-mail: higgy@usc.edu

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