This essay addresses the collapse/incoherence problem for normative frameworks that contain both fundamental values and rules for promoting those values. The problem is that in some cases, we would bring about more of the fundamental value by violating the framework’s rules than by following them. In such cases, if the framework requires us to follow the rules anyway, then it appears to be incoherent; but if it allows us to make exceptions to the rules, then the framework “collapses” into one (...) that doesn’t make use of rules in the first place. The chapter begins with an examination of happiness and truth as fundamental values in Mill’s work, which lead into parallel versions of the collapse/incoherence problem in ethics and epistemology. It then sets out the collapse problem for rule-consequentialist approaches in ethics, truth-directed accounts of justification in epistemology, and epistemological approaches to argument cogency. The chapter closes with discussion of two potential solutions to the problem. (shrink)

This thesis is on the history and philosophy of logic and semantics. Logic can be described as the ‘science of reasoning’, as it deals primarily with correct patterns of reasoning. However, logic as a discipline has undergone dramatic changes in the last two centuries: while for ancient and medieval philosophers it belonged essentially to the realm of language studies, it has currently become a sub-branch of mathematics. This thesis attempts to establish a dialogue between the modern and the medieval traditions (...) in logic, by means of ‘translations’ of the medieval logical theories into the modern framework of symbolic logic, i.e. formalizations. One of its conclusions is that, when properly understood within their own framework, the interest of medieval logical theories for modern investigations go beyond mere historical interest, but that a thorough conceptual analysis of such theories must be undertaken in order to avoid conceptual misprojections. While such translations of medieval into modern logic have been attempted before, the approach presented here is innovative in that attention is paid to the similarities as well as to the dissimilarities between the two traditions, and to what can be learned from the medieval masters for modern investigations in logic and semantics. (shrink)

I characterize the deductivist ideal of justification and, following to a great extent Toulmin’s work The Uses of Argument, I try to explain why this ideal is erroneous. Then I offer an alternative model of justification capable of making our claims to knowledge about substantial matters sound and reasonable. This model of justification will be based on a conception of justification as the result of good argumentation, and on a model of argumentation which is a pragmatic linguistic reconstruction of Toulmin’s (...) model of argument. (shrink)

En este artículo, analizo las principales respuestas que se han dado al argumento finitista de Etchemendy, y muestro que ninguna de ellas es exitosa. Primero, describo y critico las propuestas que intentan resolverlo apelando a consideraciones modales. Estas soluciones fallan porque presuponen un finitismo demasiado débil, donde se acepta la existencia de infinitos conjuntos o de mundos posibles con infinitos objetos. Pero hay versiones más fuertes del finitismo que reintroducen el problema. Luego considero las soluciones que apelan a categorías semánticas. (...) Una de ellas categoriza incorrectamente este problema como un desacuerdo sobre el significado de los cuantificadores. La otra solución falla porque, si fuera tomada en serio, tendría efectos muy nocivos para la lógica en general. Finalmente argumento que la mejor solución es morder la bala y aceptar que la lógica no debería ser fuertemente independiente de algunos asuntos que tradicionalmente fueron considerados como 'extralógicos'. In this paper, I analyze the main replies that have been given to Etchemendy's finitist argument, and I show that none of them is successful. First, I describe and criticize the proposals that try to solve the problem by appealing to modal considerations. These solutions fail because they presuppose a very weak finitism, where the existence of infinitely many sets, or possible words with infinitely many objects, is accepted. But there are stronger versions of finitism that reintroduce the problem. Then I consider the solutions which appeal to semantical categories. One of them incorrectly categorizes the problem as a disagreement in the meaning of the quantifiers. The other fails because, if taken seriously, it would have harmful effects on logic in general. Finally I argue that the best solution is to bite the bullet and accept that logic shouldn't be strongly independent from some issues which were traditionally considered as 'extra-logical'. (shrink)