Edgington, Dorothy

Philosopher British Born 1941 (age 85)

Developed probabilistic approach to conditionals.

384 quotes

"The paradoxes of self-reference teach us about the limits of language."
Knowledge
"Vagueness is not a defect of language but a feature of cognition."
Philosophy
"Reference is established through chains of communication, not isolated acts."
Philosophy
"Pragmatics reveals what logic alone cannot capture about meaning."
Philosophy
"The semantics of tense shows how language constructs temporal reality."
Time
"Metaphor is not decorative but foundational to how we think."
"Negation in natural language is far more complex than logical negation."
Education
"The scope of quantifiers determines the structure of our thoughts."
Philosophy
"Context is not peripheral to meaning; it is constitutive of it."
Wisdom
"Presupposition is what language assumes rather than what it asserts."
Philosophy
"The problem of other minds is fundamentally a problem of language."
Philosophy
"Indexicals anchor language to the world in ways non-indexicals cannot."
Philosophy
"Anaphora reveals the deeply relational nature of linguistic meaning."
Education
"The verb phrase contains more information than its surface form suggests."
Philosophy
"Modality is woven into the fabric of how we express possibility."
Philosophy
"Assertion is an act laden with normative force and commitment."
Wisdom
"The future tense does not describe the future; it orients us toward it."
Time
"Implicature carries meaning that explicit statement cannot convey."
Philosophy
"Proper names are not miniature descriptions but anchors of reference."
Philosophy
"The semantics of 'or' in English is fundamentally ambiguous for good reason."
Knowledge
"Understanding requires grasping not just what is said but what is meant."
Wisdom
"The present tense is not temporally neutral; it expresses a particular stance."
Time
"Modal language allows us to carve out logical space for reasoning."
Philosophy
"Bare plurals pose challenges to standard semantic theory."
Education
"The conditional reveals that language can express what is not the case."
Philosophy
"Deixis binds language to the speaker and the moment of utterance."
Philosophy
"Every assertion carries implicit agreement with conversational norms."
Wisdom
"The semantics of aspect shows how we granulate temporal flow."
Philosophy
"Reference failure is possible, yet reference remains intelligible to us."
Philosophy
"Nominalization allows language to transform events into objects of thought."
Education