Are burritos a kind of sandwich? Could bitcoin count as money? Would it be fair to say that action figures are dolls? And should a racehorse count as an athlete? We can generate many more such quandaries by putting a variety of predicates to the test of objects that fall outside their standard domains of application (comprised of their extension, anti-extension, and accepted borderline cases). It appears that in such cases, there is no fact of the matter as to whether it is correct to apply the predicates. This peculiar linguistic phenomenon, which has garnered renewed interest in the philosophy of language in recent years and serves as project B05’s main research interest, is commonly termed open texture.

Under the banner of our workshop, we will further explore open texture through a series of talks and subsequent discussions alongside both internal and external contributors and collaborators.

The workshop is organized by Project B05 of CRC 1646: Linguistic Creativity in Communication.

Talks will be given by PI Prof. Dr. Christian Nimtz (B05) and Dr. Mark Bowker (both Department of Philosophy, Bielefeld University), as well as the following invited speakers:

Dr. Céline Henne, Università di Bologna

Dr. Derek Ball, University of St. Andrews

Dr. Daniel Lassiter, University of Edinburgh

Prof. Dr. Daniel Gutzmann, Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Dr. Justin D’Ambrosio, University of St. Andrews