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This paper discusses the semantics of so-called de re propositional attitudes. According to the standard Kaplanian analysis, the semantics of such dicta contains existential quantifica­tion over functions that map the attitude holder and the object of their de re attitude to an individual concept by which the attitude holder identifies the object. This existential quantifi­cation has a wider scope than the universal quantification over possible worlds that is general­ly associated with the semantics of attitude dicta. We explore examples of disjunctive de re attitudes and show that these dicta have truth conditions that cannot be grasped by the stand­ard analysis. To account for them, we propose a revision of the theory of concept generators and show how the revised theory makes correct predictions.

This article examines the ideas of W. von Humboldt on language and their simi­larities and differences with the fundamental ideas about the nature of natural languages within the generative framework founded by N. Chomsky. Chomsky famously argued that von Humboldt expressed and defended some of the key ideas of the generative approach. This paper relates Chomsky's idea of the innate universal grammar and idea of generative rules as the underlying basis of the lan­guage creativity to the similar ideas of W. von Humboldt. The paper also dis­cusses Humboldt's problematic from the generative perspective view that natural languages can have a primitive or an advance grammar. The paper considers a possible explanation for the fact that this idea seemed consistent to Humboldt with the idea of the innate universal grammar. The contemporary linguistics views all grammars of all languages as equal because a natural language is con­sidered to be a biological feature of our species developed in the process of evo­lution. This idea was not present in Humboldt's philosophy, which made it possi­ble for him to think that some natural languages have not fully developed a potential hidden in its speakers. In this regard, the author considers the ques­tion of the social mission of the linguist; emphasizes that this is a fight against prejudices based on unscientific understanding of languages and dialects.

The paper discusses the phenomenon of bullshit in the academia as an ob­stacle for progress in natural sciences and the humanities and as a problem of episte­mology and philosophy of science. The authors criticize a popular approach according to which bullshit is defined in terms of the goals or motivations of the bullshitter as a subjectivist and inadequate. Focusing on the phenomenon of bullshit in academic practices, the authors define it in terms of the relevance of the content of a corre­sponding discourse to the topical issues of a given academic discipline and the extent to which the justification proposed in the discourse meets the standard justification criteria in the given discipline. An important component of the proposed definition is the contextual parameter of the judge the perspective of which is represented by a relevant research community. The authors show how the proposed account captures the well-known cases of bullshit as well as solves some of the current problems in social epistemology, such as the nature of group bullshit. The authors argue that the problem of group bullshit arises only when bullshit is understood in terms of indi­vidual intentions or motives. In that case, it is challenging to define group bullshit in a case when no representative of a given group individually supports the bullshit argument put forward by the whole group. For an approach that defines bullshit without appeal to such subjective factors as individual intentions, this problem does not arise because bullshit is independent of the goals of the bullshitter. The authors acknowledge the importance of the motivations of the bullshiter and her strategies. However, they argue that this matter is irrelevant for the definition of bullshit.