Published: Does Davidson Argue For Compositionality?

Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 16 (2026), no. 3, pp. 1-24.

Get it here: https://jhaponline.org/article/view/6884

ABSTRACT

Donald Davidson is generally supposed to have offered an argument for the principle of compositionality in “Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages”. Peter Pagin, however, has argued that Davidson offers no such argument. Indeed, Pagin claims that Davidson explicitly rejects any demand that compositionality should be justified and, moreover, claims that the argument in question is unsound. I argue here that the first claim is mistaken and that the latter, though it offers a helpful corrective to the usual interpretation, does not apply to the argument Davidson actually gives. But there is a deep tension in Davidson’s work here, to which Pagin may well be responding, and it is a tension that Davidson himself cannot resolve. 

I now wish I had said something in the abstract about what happens toward the end of the paper: I make some suggestions about the intellectual climate in which Davidson was writing; more precisely, who his opponents were. Quine, it turns out, had made some suggestions of his own about how our 'infinite aptitude' for language arises. Davidson must have known of these, although he does not mention Quine by name.

Edge Banding Technique

When using plywood to build things, one problem you (almost) always have is: What to do about the edges? Unlike with solid wood, when the edges look like, uh, wood, with plywood the edges look like, uh, plies of wood stacked on top of each other. Not usually the look you want. So the usual thing to do is apply 'edge banding'. The easiest way to do this is to buy iron-on edge banding, for example, from Veneer Supplies (which is where I get all my cool veneers). This works great, but it comes in a limited variety of woods, and you do still end up with the edge of the edge banding being visible, which isn't too bad, in most cases, but isn't ideal. 

John Coltrane, Jazz Piano Solos v. 24

Yet another book of solo piano arrangements, this time of tunes either written by or recorded by John Coltrane. The ones he wrote (most of them, at least) cannot be 'played', as of this writing, presumably due to the need to pay royalties for such 'playing'.

The arrangements in this book are by Brent Edstrom.

Are "Facials" Misogynistic?

This paper has been on my website for a while (here). It has now been accepted for publication at Porn Studies, which is a peer-reviewed journal published by Taylor & Francis. I've been wanting for some time now to publish something in a non-philosophy, gender-and-sexuality-studies sort of journal, so it looks like that will finally happen.

UPDATE: Now published online, but not yet in the journal. 

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/23268743.2026.2620635 

Abstract:

So-called ‘facial’ cumshots, when a man ejaculates onto a woman’s face, are very common in pornography. While they are frequently said to be degrading and misogynistic, the fact that women are usually shown as enjoying this act should make us think again. Facials may instead be rooted in male insecurity: of a fear that an aspect of how men orgasm—semen—is disgusting to women. By contrast, the fantasy, which pornography makes vivid, is that women might not just tolerate but celebrate and eroticize both ejaculation and its product. The way mainstream pornography presents facials may often be misogynistic, but it does not have to be, and it is not always.

 

Melanie Spanswick: Women Composers, Book 2

A collection of works by women composers, from baroque to modern, for intermediate to early advanced, edited by Melanie Spanswick. See here for more information.

Complete YouTube Playlist here. 

New Paper: Does Davidson Argue For Compositionality?

 Abstract

Donald Davidson is generally supposed to have offered an argument for the principle of compositionality in “Theories of Meaning and Learnable Languages”. Peter Pagin, however, has argued that Davidson offers no such argument. Indeed, Pagin claims that Davidson explicitly rejects any demand that compositionality should be justified and, moreover, that the argument in question is invalid. I argue here that the first claim is mistaken and that the latter, though it offers a helpful corrective, does not undermine the interest of the argument Davidson gives. But there is a deep tension in Davidson's work here, to which Pagin may well be responding, and that tension is not resolvable.

Get it here. 

This paper has now been accepted for publication at the Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy. 

Truth, Reflection, and Implicit Commitment

 New paper, forthcoming in a volume on the foundations of mathematics. Abstract:

The 'Implicit Commitment Thesis' (ICT) states that, if you accept a mathematical theory, then you are 'implicitly committed' to its consistency, and perhaps also to various sorts of reflection principles. This is meant to have various consequences, such as that consistency proofs can never be cogent: give us reason to believe that a theory is consisetent. I here consider a sampling of arguments for ICT and argue that they are all wanting. At the end, I suggest that we should, anyway, think of soundness proofs, in particular, not as attempts to justify reflection principles but as attempts to explain why they are true. 

Get it here. 

This is the paper for which the two short notes posted earlier, "A Note on the Strength of Disentangled Truth-Theories" and "Some Remarks on 'Logical' Reflection", are essentially appendices. 

Frege Arithmetic and the Epistemology of 'Everyday' Arithmetic

For the conference in honor of Crispin Wright held in St Andrews recently, I gave a talk that continued a discussion several of us had been having at the UConn conference a couple years ago, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Frege's Conception of Numbers as Objects. The subject of that discussion was whether there's any plausibility to the claim that Frege's Theorem might throw light on the epistemology of ordinary arithmetical knowledge, that is, the arithmetical knowledge of the legendary queer on the Clapham omnibus. I argued in the talk that there might well be such a case to be made. 

I don't know if I'll ever write up this material, so I'm making the slides available on my website.

A Note on the Strength of Disentangled Truth-Theories

Abstract

So-called `disentangled' truth-theories are supposed to prevent assumptions about the truth of statements in the object-language from inadvertently strengthening the background syntax. In earlier work, I proved some limitative results in an attempt to show that the strategy works, but those results leave several questions unanswered. We address some of them here. We also discuss a subtlety that has so far been overlooked in discussions of these theories.

Find it here: https://philpapers.org/rec/HECANO-6

This is another short paper that is a kind of appendix to an in-progress paper on the question whether there are or could be epistemically potent proofs of consistency. It may be submitted to a journal like Thought or Analysis at some point.

Some Remarks on 'Logical' Reflection

 Abstract:

Cezary Cieśliński has proved a result shows that highlights `logical reflection': The principle that every logically provable sentence is true. He suggests further that this result has a good deal of philosophical significance, specifically for the so-called `conservativeness argument' against deflationism. This note discusses the question to what extent Cieśliński's result generalizes, and just how strong `logical reflection' is, and suggests that the answers to these questions call the philosophical (though not the technical) significance of Cieśliński's result into doubt.  

On my website: http://rkheck.frege.org/pdf/unpublished/CieslinskiNote.pdf

On PhilPapers: https://philpapers.org/rec/HECSRO

This is a short paper, under 4000 words, which I will probably submit to Thought or Analysis. But mostly it's a kind of appendix to an in-progress paper on the question whether there can be a 'cogent' consistency proof. That one will be posted before long.

Pat Metheny (Jazz Piano Solos, v. 57)

Another volume of solo piano arrangements, this time of tunes by Pat Metheny (and in some cases Lyle Mays).

Quite a few people of my generation seem to know of Metheny only from the Pat Metheny Group recordings. I happen to think those are amazing, but I know they do not always appeal to jazz purists. But it would be a huge mistake to think Metheny is defined by those recordings. Check out albums like 80/81, Question and Answer, Day Trip, and the recent solo acoustic recordings, such as Moon Dial. Metheny does straight jazz, too. And he writes incredible ballads!

Duke Ellington (Jazz Piano Solos, v. 9)

I am a HUGE Duke Ellington fan. He wrote so much great music, and his band, at its peak, was just incredibly powerful. The great classic is Ellington at Newport, from 1956, which relaunched his career and contains one of the greatest sax solos ever. And there are Jazz Party in Stereo and the great suite Black, Brown and Beige. Not to mention the Concert of Sacred Music, which still blows me away.

I was reading a book about jazz music theory a little while ago. Repeatedly, it would say things like: Jazz musicians didn't relaly start using suspended chords until the 1960s. Except Duke, who was using them in the 30s. He was so far ahead of everyone else that it is ridiculous. 

And if you don't know albums like Money Jungle (with Charles Mingus and Max Roach), then you are in for a real treat: Duke could play 'outside', too. And don't forget the amazing album he made with Coltrane in the early 60s.

This book contains arrangements of some of Duke's music. The links below are to 'official' scores on Musescore, meaning you can't download them without paying, but the complete sheet music is there, and you could play them off a tablet or something. Most helpfully, you can listen to at least some of them (played via MIDI), which is great for getting the rhythms right.

Miles Davis (Jazz Piano Solos, v. 1)

Another post of links to Musescore versions of arrangements of jazz standards. This one is of Miles Davis tunes---mostly ones he wrote, and others he recorded. The difficulty ranges from things I can play (intermediate level) to things it'll be a while until I can play. 

These are 'official' scores, meaning you can't download these 'official' scores without paying (and I've already paid for the books, thank you), but the complete sheet music is there, and you could play them off a tablet or something. Most helpfully, you can listen to them (played via MIDI), which is great for getting the rhythms right.

Jazz Fusion (Jazz Piano Solos, v. 54)

Hal Leonard publishes some really great collections of piano solo arrangements of jazz standards. The difficulty ranges from things I can play (intermediate level) to things it'll be a while until I can play. The tunes in this particular book are definitely on the harder side.

These do not come with recordings, even online. Fortunately, they have started putting them on MuseScore. Not all the songs are there, presumably due to issues around who owns the copyright. You can't download these 'official' scores without paying (and I've already paid for the books, thank you), but the complete sheet music is there, and you could play them off a tablet or something. Most helpfully, you can listen to them (played via MIDI), which is great for getting the rhythms right.

Jazz Ballads (Jazz Piano Solos, v. 10)

Most of these are on MuseScore, as 'official' scores. That means they cannot be printed or downloaded without paying. But the full sheet music is there, so you could play them off a tablet or something. And many of them, at least, can be listened to. It's nice to be able to hear them when trying to learn the arrangement (and before deciding whether to bother).

Burgmüller, 25 Easy and Progressive Studies, Op. 100

These are nice pieces for someone at my level: They get more difficult as they go, and they're not boring. You can download the music from IMSLP. There are lots of YouTube videos about these, too.

Schirmer's Giant Book of Intermediate Classical Piano Music

This book contains 269 pieces by 3 composers, covering early intermediate and, I guess, just 'intermediate'. (There is a separate book of 'upper' intermediate pieces.) Some of these are also in the Early Intermediate book.

The links below are to scores on MuseScore.com, which you can both download and play, in most cases, so you can hear the piece while trying to learn it. The 'official scores' cannot be downloaded or printed, without payment, and cannot always be listened to, at this time, though my sense is that more and more of them can be. I've also included links, in some cases, to IMSLP.org, the Petrucci Music Library.

George Gershwin (Jazz Piano Solos v. 26)

Hal Leonard publishes some really great collections of piano solo arrangements of jazz standards. The difficulty ranges from things I can play (intermediate level) to things it'll be a while until I can play. But these do not come with recordings, even online. Fortunately, they have started putting them on MuseScore. You can't download them without paying (I've already paid for the books!), but you can listen to them (played via MIDI), which can be very helpful, especially for getting the rhythms right. 

New Paper: Are 'Facials' Misogynistic?

Find it here.

Abstract:

So-called ‘facial’ cumshots, when a man ejaculates onto a woman’s face, are very common in pornography.  While they are frequently said to be degrading and misogynistic, the fact that women are usually shown as enjoying this act should make us think again. Facials are instead rooted in male insecurity: of a fear that an aspect of how men orgasm—semen—is disgusting to women. By contrast, the fantasy, which pornography makes vivid, is that women might not just tolerate but celebrate and eroticize both ejaculation and its product. The way mainstream pornography presents facials may often be misogynistic, but it does not have to be, and it is not always. 

NOTE: This may not be a philosophy paper. My intention is to submit it to a sexuality studies journal. 

Published: "Does Pornography Presuppose Rape Myths?"

Abstract:

Rae Langton and Caroline West argue that pornography silences women by presupposing misogynistic attitudes, such as that women enjoy being raped. More precisely, they claim that a somewhat infamous pictorial, ‘Dirty Pool’, makes such presuppositions, and that it is typical in this respect. I argue for four claims. (1) There are empirical reasons to doubt that women are silenced in the way that Langton and West claim they are. (2) There is no evidence that very much pornography makes the sorts of presuppositions that Langton and West's explanation of silencing requires it to make. (3) Even ‘Dirty Pool’, for all its other problems, does not make such presuppositions. (4) Langton and West misread ‘Dirty Pool’ because they do not take proper account of the fact that pornography often traffics in sexual fantasy. The broader lesson is that we need to read pornography more sensitively if we are to understand its capacity to shape socio-sexual norms (for good or for ill).

Find it here.