This paper reviews a brief portion of the literature on code switching in sociology, linguistic anthropology, and sociolinguistics, and suggests a definition of the term for sociocultural analysis. Code switching is defined as the practice of selecting or altering linguistic elements so as to contextualize talk in interaction. This contextualization may relate to local discourse practices, such as turn selection or various forms of bracketing, or it may make relevant information beyond the current exchange, including knowledge of society and diverse (...) identities. (shrink)

Within the family, siblings work to create separate, stable social identities. One of the jobs of language socialization is the acquisition and appreciation of appropriate forms with which to perform the acts and stances which create social role. Children learn which roles are expected of them, and which forms are appropriate for the enactment of these roles in part through "trying on" various roles which may then be ratified or rejected by other members of the family. In addition to ratifying (...) sibling roles, however, older siblings may be involved in a struggle to maintain their own local position. This paper is particularly interested in how older siblings guide younger siblings' socialization through ratification of social stance, while working to maintain their own role within the family hierarchy. (shrink)

Older siblings play a role in their younger siblings’ language socialization by ratifying or rejecting linguistic behavior. In addition, older siblings may engage in a struggle to maintain their dominant position in the family hierarchy. This struggle is seen through the lens of language and political economy as a struggle for symbolic capital. Bilingual adolescent sibling interactions are analyzed as expressions both of identity and of symbolic power. This paper proposes a theory of political micro-economy, by which analysts may trace (...) connections between broad societal structures and structures of face-to-face interaction. (shrink)

Ethnographic study of Hippo Family Club, a foreign language learning club in Japan with chapters elsewhere, reveals a critique of foreign language teaching in Japanese schools and in the commercial English conversation industry. Club members contrast their own learning methods, which they view as “natural language acquisition”, with the formal study of grammar, which they see as uninteresting and ineffective. Rather than evaluating either the Hippo approach to learning or the teaching methods they criticize, however, this paper considers the ways (...) of thinking about language that club members come to share. Members view the club as a transnational organization that transcends the boundaries of the nation-state. Language learning connects the club members to a cosmopolitan world beyond the club, even before they interact with speakers of the languages they are learning. The analysis of club members’ ideologies of language and language learning illuminates not only the pragmatics of language use, but practices and outcomes of socialization and shared social structures. (shrink)

This chapter argues that political promises do not have to be made by individual politicians. Rather, multiparty discourses may be attributed to political leaders, a process labeled metaphorical promising. It analyzes Yukio Hatoyama's brief (2009-2010) reign as Prime Minister of Japan. Hatoyama was forced to resign amid charges that he had failed to remove a US military base from Futenma, Okinawa. Although Japanese newspapers accused him of breaking promises to move the base, Hatoyama had never explicitly promised to do so. (...) Expectation for change arose through a complex discourse involving the government, opposition, and Japanese media, among others. As political leader, Hatoyama failed to take difficult steps toward military reform. As peace is not merely the absence of war, political accord is more than the absence of divisive speech. Japan's experience reminds us that accord and mutual agreement must be sought through active engagement throughout society. (shrink)

The Japanese particle 'to' serves as a quotative marker, either indicating the content of speech or thought, or serving related functions. The particle 'tte' is frequently identified as an informal variant of 'to', serving identical or nearly identical functions. Scholars have suggested the two forms may have different distribution or function, but to date there has been little empirical work to distinguish the forms using broad-based corpus methods. This study of a corpus 129 informal conversations suggests that both particles are (...) used in informal contexts. The particle 'tte' tends to occur with verbs indicating speech, or with no verb; the particle 'to' tends to occur with verbs indicating thought. Discussion also reveals some difficulties inherent in the use of morphological parsers for large-scale corpus study. Over-specifying the morphological contexts in which a form may occur risks only finding instances that support current models of grammar. (shrink)

This paper illuminates the conversational functions of the combination of creaky voice quality and the response token yeah. Jefferson described yeah as an acknowledgement token that also projects “a preparedness to shift from recipiency to speakership”. This speaker incipiency is not consistent, though. While yeah is sometimes used to indicate a shift from recipient to speaker, it is sometimes used simply as an acknowledgement token. This difference in function of apparently similar items may be related to token shape. This paper (...) examines several telephone interactions and finds the use of yeah with creaky voice to indicate passive recipiency and either a dispreference to continue the current topic, or a disalignment with the primary speaker. This analysis contributes to the study of phonetics in interactional linguistics. In addition, it supports the notion that token-shape distinctions can account for functional differences within token types. It suggests that phonation or other behavior below the word level may be significant in verbal interaction. (shrink)

Plagiarism, which Indiana University’s Writing Tutorial Service defines as "using others' ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information", is often described as a major problem. However, standard definitions such as this one suggest only limited solutions to the problem: acknowledging sources or forbidding reuse. Since all scholarship involves engaging with the ideas of others and academic writing tends to reuse certain expressions, these solutions – though important – are of limited utility. This paper examines a type (...) of plagiarism to which the standard solutions do not apply: the reuse of linguistic models without sufficient attention to the logic or thoughts the texts express. We present two cases of plagiarism, from which we can see that plagiarism shows a gap between the written texts and the thoughts of the author. In order to fill the gap, one needs to know how to integrate not only the texts borrowed from others into one’s writing but also the thoughts expressed by the texts. Thus a satisfactory solution to the plagiarism problem requires not only writing skills but also logical thinking skills. (shrink)

Since the mid-twentieth century, treatments of code switching and associated practices have converged toward understanding linguistic hybridity and diverse sociality amid accelerating globalization of peoples, social groups, and commodified languages. This chapter reviews four traditions of code switching research that suggest divergent theoretical perspectives on language and identity. The first, established in the 1960s within the ethnography of communication, situates code switching as a product of local speech community identities. Research on language and political economy in the 1980s initiated a (...) second tradition, which analyzes language alternation with reference to the contrastive nation-state identities constituted through processes of nationalism. A third tradition, influenced by the discursive turn in the 1990s, views code switching as a resource in urban minority communities for the performance of multicultural and interethnic identities. A fourth tradition, developed since the millennium, focuses on hybrid identities as the social corollary to the language mixing brought about through accelerated globalization. (shrink)

Japanese media coverage since March 11th 2011 suggests that people from Fukushima Prefecture have faced discrimination based on people's fears of radiation, despite the fact that they pose no genuine threat. This discrimination is compared to that faced by survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima during World War II. Survivors from Hiroshima express hopes that people from Tohoku will not face the same fear and discrimination they did. 2011年3月以降に伝達されたメディアでは、福島県の人々が放射能に対する人々の恐怖から、実際にはその恐れが確認されていないにもかかわらず、差別を受けていることが分かる。この差別は、第二次世界大戦中に広 島に落とされた原子爆弾の生存者に対するものと類似する。広島の生存者は、東北の人々が同じような差別を受けてほしくないと希望している。.

Review of the book Negotiation of Identity in Multilingual Contexts, Aneta Pavlenko and Adrian Blackledge (eds.) 2004.

In this chapter, I make the case for platonic realism, the thesis that there are properties that lack spatial locations. After criticizing the one-over-many argument for realism and Lewis's argument for realism, I endorse a modal argument that derives the existence of platonic properties from considerations involving necessary truth. I then defend this argument from various objections. Finally, I argue that epistemic considerations and considerations of parsimony favor a weak form of platonic realism on which there are platonic properties, but (...) each property could have had an instance, and would have been located in its instances if it had any. (shrink)

Relative to an ordinary context, an utterance of the sentence ‘Everything is in the car’ communicates a proposition about a restricted domain. But how does this work? One possibility is that quantifier expressions like 'everything' are context sensitive and range over different domains in different contexts. Another possibility is that quantifier expressions are not context sensitive, but have a fixed, absolutely general meaning, and ordinary utterances communicate a restricted content via Gricean mechanisms. I argue that, contrary to received opinion, the (...) latter view has both a number of methodological and also intuitive advantages over the former. I then reply to three objections to the latter view: the binding argument (due to Stanley and Szabo), the availability-based attack (due to Recanati), and an argument based on Recanati’s scope principle. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a theory on which each of a thing’s abundant properties is immanent in that thing. On the version of the theory I will propose, universals are abundant, each instantiated universal is immanent, and each uninstantiated universal is such that it could have been instantiated, in which case it would have been immanent. After setting out the theory, I will defend it from David Lewis’s argument that such a combination of immanence and abundance is absurd. I (...) will then advocate the theory on the grounds that it accomplishes all of Lewis’s “new work” while providing a gain in parsimony and a new account of fine-grained content. I will close with a discussion of how the theory also affords a new reply to two objections to uninstantiated universals: Armstrong’s charge that they are inconsistent with naturalism, and a Benacerraf-Field-style objection about epistemic access. (shrink)

Two principles in epistemology are apparent examples of the close connection between rationality and truth. First, adding a disjunct to what it is rational to believe yields a proposition that’s also rational to believe. Second, what’s likely if believed is rational to believe. While these principles are accepted by many, it turns out that they clash. In light of this clash, we must relinquish the second principle. Reflecting on its rationale, though, reveals that there are two distinct ways to understand (...) the connection between rationality and truth. Rationality is fundamentally a guide to the belief-independent truth, rather than a guide to acquiring true beliefs. And this in turn has important implications for current discussions of permissivism, epistemic reasons, and epistemic consequentialism. (shrink)

It is becoming more common that the decision-makers in private and public institutions are predictive algorithmic systems, not humans. This article argues that relying on algorithmic systems is procedurally unjust in contexts involving background conditions of structural injustice. Under such nonideal conditions, algorithmic systems, if left to their own devices, cannot meet a necessary condition of procedural justice, because they fail to provide a sufficiently nuanced model of which cases count as relevantly similar. Resolving this problem requires deliberative capacities uniquely (...) available to human agents. After exploring the limitations of existing formal algorithmic fairness strategies, the article argues that procedural justice requires that human agents relying wholly or in part on algorithmic systems proceed with caution: by avoiding doxastic negligence about algorithmic outputs, by exercising deliberative capacities when making similarity judgments, and by suspending belief and gathering additional information in light of higher-order uncertainty. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the claim recently defended by Josh Weisberg that a certain version of the self-representational approach to phenomenal consciousness cannot avoid a set of problems that have plagued higher-order approaches. These problems arise specifically for theories that allow for higher-order misrepresentation or—in the domain of self-representational theories—self-misrepresentation. In response to Weisberg, I articulate a self-representational theory of phenomenal consciousness according to which it is contingently impossible for self-representations tokened in the context of a conscious mental (...) state to misrepresent their objects. This contingent infallibility allows the theory to both acknowledge the (logical) possibility of self-misrepresentation and avoid the problems of self-misrepresentation. Expanding further on Weisberg’s work, I consider and reveal the shortcomings of three other self-representational models—put forward by Kreigel, Van Gulick, and Gennaro—in order to show that each indicates the need for this sort of infallibility. I then argue that contingent infallibility is in principle acceptable on naturalistic grounds only if we attribute (1) a neo-Fregean kind of directly referring, indexical content to self-representational mental states and (2) a certain ontological structure to the complex conscious mental states of which these indexical self-representations are a part. In these sections I draw on ideas from the work of Perry and Kaplan to articulate the context-dependent semantic structure of inner-representational states. (shrink)

Some propositions are not likely to be true overall, but are likely to be true if you believe them. Appealing to the platitude that belief aims at truth, it has become increasingly popular to defend the view that such propositions are epistemically rational to believe. However, I argue that this view runs into trouble when we consider the connection between what’s epistemically rational to believe and what’s practically rational to do. I conclude by discussing how rejecting the view bears on (...) three other epistemological issues. First, we’re able to uncover a flaw in a common argument for permissivism. Second, we can generate a problem for prominent versions of epistemic consequentialism. Finally, we can better understand the connection between epistemic rationality and truth: epistemic rationality is a guide to true propositions rather than true beliefs. (shrink)

The special composition question is the question, ‘When do some things compose something?’ The answers to this question in the literature have largely been at odds with common sense, either by allowing that any two things compose something, or by denying the existence of most ordinary composite objects. I propose a new ‘series-style’ answer to the special composition question that accords much more closely with common sense, and I defend this answer from van Inwagen's objections. Specifically, I will argue that (...) the proposed answer entails the transitivity of parthood, that it is non-circular, and that it casts some light on the ancient puzzle about the Ship of Theseus. (shrink)

According to epistemic utility theory, epistemic rationality is teleological: epistemic norms are instrumental norms that have the aim of acquiring accuracy. What’s definitive of these norms is that they can be expected to lead to the acquisition of accuracy when followed. While there’s much to be said in favor of this approach, it turns out that it faces a couple of worrisome extensional problems involving the future. The first problem involves credences about the future, and the second problem involves future (...) credences. Examining prominent solutions to a different extensional problem for this approach reinforces the severity of the two problems involving the future. Reflecting on these problems reveals the source: the teleological assumption that epistemic rationality aims at acquiring accuracy. (shrink)

The ancient puzzle of Dion and Theon has given rise to a surprising array of apparently implausible views. For example, in order to solve the puzzle, several philosophers have been led to deny the existence of their own feet, others have denied that objects can gain and lose parts, and large numbers of philosophers have embraced the thesis that distinct objects can occupy the same space, having all their material parts in common. In this paper, I argue for an alternative (...) approach: I claim that human beings have ordinary parts—hands, heads, feet, and so on—but no extraordinary parts, such as ‘foot-complements’, the existence of which is essential to the puzzle. I rebut three objections to this approach: an objection that it is unacceptably metaphysically arbitrary, an objection that the view is incompatible with versions of the puzzle involving decapitation, and an objection concerning masses of matter. If we can believe that there are such things as hands and feet without involving ourselves in paradox, and without accepting large numbers of co-located material objects that share all their material parts, then that is what we should do. My view is the only known alternative which allows this. (shrink)

According to the traditional bundle theory, particulars are bundles of compresent universals. I think we should reject the bundle theory for a variety of reasons. But I will argue for the thesis at the core of the bundle theory: that all the facts about particulars are grounded in facts about universals. I begin by showing how to meet the main objection to this thesis (which is also the main objection to the bundle theory): that it is inconsistent with the possibility (...) of distinct qualitative indiscernibles. Here, the key idea appeals to a non-standard theory of haecceities as non-well-founded properties of a certain sort. I will then defend this theory from a number of objections, and finally argue that we should accept it on the basis of considerations of parsimony about the fundamental. (shrink)

Some argue that procreation is immoral due to its negative environmental impact. Since living an “eco-gluttonous” lifestyle of excessive resource consumption is wrong in virtue of the fact that it increases greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact, then bringing another human being into existence must also be wrong, for exactly this same reason. I support this position. It has recently been the subject of criticism, however, primarily on the grounds that such a position (1) is guilty of “double-counting” environmental impacts, (...) and (2) that it over-generalizes to condemn other clearly permissible behaviors, such as saving lives, or certain instances of adoption and immigration. Here, I will defend the environmental argument against procreation from these criticisms. I will do this, first, under the assumption that our individual consumption and emissions cause significant harm. I will then address the problem of causal impotence, and argue that, even if our individual contributions to environmental problems ultimately make no difference to the amount of harm that occurs, procreation is still immoral for many, if not most, of those living in the developed world. (shrink)

Sackris and Beebe (2014) report the results of a series of studies that seem to show that there are cases in which many people are willing to attribute knowledge to a protagonist even when her belief is unjustified. These results provide some reason to conclude that the folk concept of knowledge does not treat justification as necessary for its deployment. In this paper, we report a series of results that can be seen as supporting this conclusion by going some way (...) towards ruling out an alternative account of Sackris and Beebe’s results—the possibility that the knowledge attributions that they witnessed largely stem from protagonist projection, a phenomenon in language use and interpretation in which the speaker uses words that the relevant protagonist might use to describe her own situation and the listener interprets the speaker accordingly. With that said, we do caution the reader against drawing the conclusion too strongly, on the basis of results like those reported here and by Sackris and Beebe. There are alternative possibilities regarding what drives the observed knowledge attributions in cases of unjustified true belief that must be ruled out before, on the basis of such results, we can conclude with much confidence that the folk concept of knowledge does not treat justification as necessary for its deployment. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there are universals. I begin (Sect. 1) by proposing a sufficient condition for a thing’s being a universal. I then argue (Sect. 2) that some truths exist necessarily. Finally, I argue (Sects. 3 and 4) that these truths are structured entities having constituents that meet the proposed sufficient condition for being universals.

I join the growing ranks of theorists who reject the terms of traditional debates about the nature of emotion, debates that have long focused on the question of whether emotions should be understood as either cognitive or somatic kinds of states. Here, I propose and defend a way of incorporating both into a single theory, which I label the “Integrated Representational Theory” of emotion. In Section 2 I begin to construct the theory, defining and explaining emotions in terms of three (...) pieces of content: representations of the emoter’s body, something in the world, and a relevance relation between the objects of these first two pieces of content. I describe four general advantages I think the IRT offers. Finally, in Section 3, I elucidate and defend my account by contrasting it with another, similar proposal: Barlassina and Newen’s Impure Somatic Theory. In so doing, I explain two additional advantages of my view: first, it supports a unified explanation of all types of emotional response; and second, it offers the best framework for explaining how the representational contents of an emotion are integrated. (shrink)

David Lewis (1986) criticizes moderate views of composition on the grounds that a restriction on composition must be vague, and vague composition leads, via a precisificational theory of vagueness, to an absurd vagueness of existence. I show how to resist this argument. Unlike the usual resistance, however, I do not jettison precisificational views of vagueness. Instead, I blur the connection between composition and existence that Lewis assumes. On the resulting view, in troublesome cases of vague composition, there is an object, (...) which definitely exists, about which it is vague whether the relevant borderline parts compose it. (shrink)

This article will offer an alternative understanding of managerial decision-making drawing from Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason rather than simply Being and Nothingness. I will begin with a brief explanation of Sartre’s account of freedom in Being and Nothingness. I will then show in the second section how Andrew West uses Sartre’s conception of radical freedom from Being and Nothingness for a managerial decision-making model. In the third section, I will explore a more robust account of freedom from Sartre’s Critique (...) of Dialectical Reason. I will attempt to show that freedom is not simply a matter of choosing (or not choosing) to perform an action, but entails external constraints—including other people. Finally, I will provide the implications of this account of freedom for managerial decision-making. I will show that it’s unreasonable to place full responsibility and/or blame on managers given their constraints. This does not absolve them from responsibility, but better accounts for the way in which we ought to hold them responsible. (shrink)

An inverse akratic act is one who believes X, all things considered, is the correct act, and yet performs ~X, where ~X is the correct act. A famous example of such a person is Huck Finn. He believes that he is wrong in helping Jim, and yet continues to do so. In this paper I investigate Huck’s nature to see why he performs such acts contrary to his beliefs. In doing so, I explore the nature of empathy and show how (...) powerful Huck’s empathic feelings are. Drawing from Martin L. Hoffman, I show the relationship between empathy and a principle of justice. This relationship leads to Huck acting virtuously, as Rosalind Hursthouse maintains. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates Amie Thomasson’s (2003; 2005; 2006) view of the conscious mind and the interpretation of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction that it adopts. In Thomasson’s view, the phenomenological method is not an introspectionist method, but rather a “transparent” or “extrospectionist” method for acquiring epistemically privileged self-knowledge. I argue that Thomasson’s reading of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction is correct. But the view of consciousness that she pairs with it—a view of consciousness as “transparent” in the sense that first-order, world-oriented experience is (...) in no way given to itself—is not compatible with it. Rather, Thomasson’s view is, from a Husserlian vantage point, self-undermining in the same way that any genuinely skeptical view is self-undermining: it undermines the conditions of its own possibility. This is one of the motives Husserl has for developing a same-order view of self-consciousness as the complement to his transparent method for self-knowledge acquisition. (shrink)

A recent trend in Husserl scholarship takes the Logische Untersuchungen (LU) as advancing an inconsistent and confused view of the non-conceptual content of perceptual experience. Against this, I argue that there is no inconsistency about non-conceptualism in LU. Rather, LU presents a hybrid view of the conceptual nature of perceptual experience, which can easily be misread as inconsistent, since it combines a conceptualist view of perceptual content (or matter) with a non-conceptualist view of perceptual acts. I show how this hybrid (...) view is operative in Husserl’s analyses of essentially occasional expressions and categorial intuition. And I argue that it can also be deployed in relation to Husserl’s analysis of the constitution of perceptual fullness, which allows it to avoid a objection raised by Walter Hopp—that the combination of Husserl’s analysis of perceptual fullness with conceptualism about perceptual content generates a vicious regress. (shrink)

With respect to climate change, what is wanted is an account that morally condemns the production of ‘luxury’ greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., joyriding in an SUV), but not ‘subsistence’ emissions (e.g., cooking meals). Now, our individual greenhouse gas emissions either cause harm, or they do not—and those who condemn the production of luxury emissions generally stake their position on the grounds that they do cause harm. Meanwhile, those seeking to defend the moral permissibility of luxury emissions generally do so by (...) arguing that our individual emissions do not cause harm. Here, I argue that, if our individual emissions do cause harm, then this entails too much. For, it entails not only that our luxury emissions are morally impermissible, but that our subsistence emissions are too. This is an undesirable result. Therefore, I propose that we embrace our other option. Namely, I propose that we accept that our individual emissions do not cause harm; or at least, that they make no perceptible difference with respect to the harms associated with climate change. The result of this admission is not as bad as you might think. For, I argue, even if we are individually causally impotent with respect to the harms of climate change, there remains a plausible route toward the moral condemnation of our individual luxury emissions—contrary to what others have argued. What is more, only by accepting our individual causal impotence can we successfully ground the permissibility of our individual subsistence emissions. (shrink)

Many philosophers hold one of two extreme views about our capacity to have phenomenally conscious experience : either that inner-sense enables us to know our experience and its properties infallibly or the contrary conviction that inner-sense is utterly fallible and the evidence it provides completely defeasible. Both of these are in error. This paper presents an alternative conception of inner-sense, modeled on disjunctive conceptions of perceptual awareness, that avoids both erroneous extremes, but that builds on the commonsense intuitions that motivate (...) them. (shrink)

This paper provides a qualified defense of Martin Heidegger’s controversial assertion that humans and animals differ in kind, not just degree. He has good reasons to defend the human difference, and his thesis is compatible with the evolution of humans from other animals. He argues that the human environment is the world of meaning and truth, an environment which peculiarly makes possible truthful activities such as biology. But the ability to be open to truth cannot be a feature of human (...) biology, without making such pursuits as biology, mathematics, and philosophy a biological function of a certain species, homo sapiens. To deny the human difference amounts to species relativism which leaves the normativity of truth unexplained. To reconcile the human evolutionary heritage and the uniquely human openness to meaning and truth, the paper amplifies a distinction occasionally made by Heidegger between condition and cause. (shrink)

Many of the benefits and burdens we might experience in our lives — from bank loans to bail terms — are increasingly decided by institutions relying on algorithms. In a sense, this is nothing new: algorithms — instructions whose steps can, in principle, be mechanically executed to solve a decision problem — are at least as old as allocative social institutions themselves. Algorithms, after all, help decision-makers to navigate the complexity and variation of whatever domains they are designed for. In (...) another sense, however, this development is startlingly new: not only are algorithms being deployed in ever more social contexts, they are being mechanically executed not merely in principle, but pervasively in practice. Due to recent advances in computing technology, the benefits and burdens we experience in our lives are now increasingly decided by automata, rather than each other. How are we to morally assess these technologies? In this chapter, I propose a preliminary conceptual schema for identifying and locating the various injustices of automated, algorithmic social decision systems, from a broadly liberal perspective. (shrink)

Jennifer Nagel (2010) has recently proposed a fascinating account of the decreased tendency to attribute knowledge in conversational contexts in which unrealized possibilities of error have been mentioned. Her account appeals to epistemic egocentrism, or what is sometimes called the curse of knowledge, an egocentric bias to attribute our own mental states to other people (and sometimes our own future and past selves). Our aim in this paper is to investigate the empirical merits of Nagel’s hypothesis about the psychology involved (...) in knowledge attribution. (shrink)

Rose and Schaffer (forthcoming) argue that teleological thinking has a substantial influence on folk intuitions about composition. They take this to show (i) that we should not rely on folk intuitions about composition and (ii) that we therefore should not reject theories of composition on the basis of intuitions about composition. We cast doubt on the teleological interpretation of folk judgments about composition; we show how their debunking argument can be resisted, even on the assumption that folk intuitions have a (...) teleological source; and we argue that, even if folk intuitions about composition carry no weight, theories of composition can still be rejected on the basis of the intuitions of metaphysicians. (shrink)

This document contains the appendices, which provides the stimulus materials, for the four studies reported in: Gonnerman, Mortensen, & Robbins (forthcoming). KNOWING HOW as a philosophical hybrid. Synthese. -/- .

Kripke raises the question concerning how the reference to God might be fixed, and Augustine makes it the leading question of the Confessions: How can I call upon God and not someone else instead? In this paper, I argue that this question is the central concern of Anselm’s Proslogion, which explicitly adopts the dialogical form of Augustine’s Confessions. Anselm does not define God but instead fixes the reference to God through an ostension or indexical description. The same linguistic formulation, “God (...) is that than which nothing greater can be thought,” has three functions: as an ostension, it points out God as that being and not another; as a criterion for selection, it ostensibly picks out a referent that exists rather than not; finally, as a rule for analysis, it provides a principle to clarify the necessary properties of the God that has been so ostended. (shrink)

This paper addresses two problems concerning the deferred ostension of extinct and fictive kinds. First, the sampled item, the fossil or the depiction, is not a sample of the referent. Nonetheless, the retained characteristic shape, understood via analogy with living creatures, enables the reference to be fixed. Second, though both extinct and fictive kinds are targets of deferred ostension, there is an important difference in the sample. Fossilization is a natural causal process that makes fossils to be reflections of their (...) originals. As reflections, fossils embed their referents in the primary existential world of perceived things. Images of artificial kinds, by contrast, leave their referents in the secondary existential world of mere appearance. In this way, the paper widens the scope of the Kripke-Putnam account of ostension for naming kinds by drawing on Quine’s concept of deferred ostension for absent referents. (shrink)

When some objects are the parts of another object, they compose that object and that object is composite. This article is intended as an introduction to the central questions about composition and a highly selective overview of various answers to those questions. In §1, we review some formal features of parthood that are important for understanding the nature of composition. In §2, we consider some answers to the question: which pluralities of objects together compose something? As we will see, the (...) dominant answers are all of them and none of them. In §§3-4, we examine one of the main arguments that has driven philosophers to these extreme answers: the argument from vagueness. In §5, we turn to the question of whether composition is unique: is it sometimes the case that some things compose more than one thing? Finally, in §6, we turn from the question of which composites exist to the question of which composites exist fundamentally. (shrink)

There has been a persistent misunderstanding of the nature of cosmopolitanism in Immanuel Kant’s 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace,” viewing it as a qualitative break from the bellicose natural law tradition preceding it. This misunderstanding is in part due to Kant’s explicitly critical comments about colonialism as well as his attempt to rhetorically distance his cosmopolitanism from traditional natural law theory. In this paper, I argue that the necessary foundation for Kant’s cosmopolitan subjectivity and right was forged in the experience of (...) European colonialism and the (pre-Kantian) theory it engendered. It is in this context that we witness the universalization of subjectivity and the subjectivization of right, emerging from the justificatory needs of extra-national jurisdiction and resource appropriation. This form of cosmopolitanism, whose emergence necessarily tracks the rise of global capitalism, continues to exert great and often uncritical influence on theories and practices of peace today. (shrink)

Recapitulating two recent trends in Heidegger-scholarship, this paper argues that the transcendental theme in Heidegger’s thought clarifies and relates the two basic questions of his philosophical itinerary. The preparatory question, which belongs to Being and Time , I.1–2, draws from the transcendental tradition to target the condition for the possibility of our openness to things: How must we be to access entities? The preliminary answer is that we are essentially opened up ecstatically and horizonally by timeliness. The fundamental question, which (...) belongs to the unpublished Being and Time , I.3, and the rest of Heidegger’s path of thinking, is accessed by means of the first. In a turn of perspective, it targets that in terms of which we relate to the givenness of being. Heidegger first attempts to handle this question using the transcendental language of temporal horizon before happening upon the terminologically more fitting “event of appropriation” and thereafter criticizing transcendental terms. By reconstructing the preparatory question and its reversal, we can see that Heidegger’s later criticism of transcendence in fact relies on its initial success. The turn from timeliness to appropriation (initially by means of transcendental temporality) happens within the domain initially disclosed by the preparatory question. (shrink)

By showing how the person appears, this paper calls into question the Cartesian prejudice that restricts appearance to objects. The paper recapitulates the origin of the term “person,” which originally designated the masks and characters donned by actors and only subsequently came to designate each particular human being. By concealing a face, the mask establishes a character who speaks with words of his own. The mask points to the face and to speech as ways the person appears. It belongs to (...) the very nature of the person not only to appear but also to be aware of how one appears, and to have the ability to modulate thatappearance as the situation requires. This ability means one thing in art and another in life, and the paper explores the significance of this contrast. (shrink)

I will argue that internalism about justification entails the apparently absurd conclusion that it is possible to know specific facts about the external world—for example, that there is a tree in the quad—on the basis of introspection and a priori reflection. After a brief characterization of internalism (§1), I will set out the problem (§2). I will then discuss three replies: one that denies the form of doxastic voluntarism involved in the problem (§3), one that denies that knowledge of higher-order (...) facts about justification can justify corresponding first-order beliefs (§4), and, finally, one that involves biting the bullet (§5). I will argue that each reply fails. (shrink)

In an essay recently published in this journal (“Is Safety in Danger?”), Fernando Broncano-Berrocal defends the safety condition on knowledge from a counterexample proposed by Tomas Bogardus (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2012). In this paper, we will define the safety condition, briefly explain the proposed counterexample, and outline Broncano-Berrocal’s defense of the safety condition. We will then raise four objections to Broncano-Berrocal’s defense, four implausible implications of his central claim. In the end, we conclude that Broncano-Berrocal’s defense of the safety (...) condition is unsuccessful, and that the safety condition on knowledge should be rejected. (shrink)