ABSTRACTThis essay argues that in spite of the powerful arguments by Kolodny and Broome there is a reason to be rational. The suggested reason to be rational is that if an agent complies with ratio...

Traditionally, philosophical inquiry into pedagogical issues has occurred far from the classrooms in which pedagogy materialises. However, an organised form of inquiry into issues of a normative nature and of an analytic nature, making use of ideas obtained in an empirical way in classroom and classroom-related situations, is both feasible and desirable. About desirability, this form of inquiry depends on the particularities of the local situations, and that helps to take them into account when deciding on how to improve pedagogical (...) practice. That is, it contextualises pedagogical decisions. About feasibility for normative issues, an analysis based on Donald Davidson’s philosophy of language shows that there is nothing that compels empirical observations to be descriptive and to not be normative. And normative occasional beliefs acquired empirically can serve as a general confrontation or testing field for ideas about the justification of pedagogical actions or strategies. About feasibility for analytic issues, as a consequence of giving up the analytic–synthetic distinction it is argued that they can also be explored by means of occasional beliefs acquired empirically, when confronted with the implications of the definition of any pedagogical concept. (shrink)

Having a satisfactory definition of behavioural deception is important for understanding several types of evolutionary questions. No definition offered in the literature so far is adequate on all fronts. After identifying characteristics that are important for a definition, a new definition of behavioural deception is offered. The new definition, like some other proposed attempts, relies on formal game-theoretic models of signalling. Unlike others, it incorporates explicit consideration of the population in which the potentially deceptive interactions occur. The general structure of (...) the definition satisfies many of the characteristics that were problematic for other definitions, and others are satisfied by explicitly incorporating information about the population in which interactions occur. Examples are given for chick begging in the Sir Philip Sidney game and other situations. 1 Introduction2 Deception in Formal Models2.1 Formal models of signalling2.2 Deception as dishonesty2.3 Deception as negative value of information2.4 Deception as misinformation with payoff conditions3 A Revised Definition3.1 Technical definitions3.2 Begging behaviour and the Sir Philip Sidney game3.3 ‘Universal’ deception and a possible objection3.4 One-on-one interactions3.5 Lucky errors4 Discussion and Conclusions. (shrink)

G. E. Moore famously argued against skepticism and idealism by appealing to their inconsistency with alleged certainties, like the existence of his own hands. Recently, some philosophers have offered analogous arguments against revisionary views about ethics such as metaethical error theory. These arguments appeal to the inconsistency of error theory with seemingly obvious moral claims like “it is wrong to torture an innocent child just for fun.” It might seem that such ‘Moorean’ arguments in ethics will stand or fall with (...) Moore’s own arguments in metaphysics and epistemology, in virtue of their shared structure. I argue that this is not so. I suggest that the epistemic force of the canonical Moorean arguments can best be understood to rest on asymmetries in indirect evidence. I then argue that this explanation suggests that Moorean arguments are less promising in ethics than they are against Moore’s own targets. I conclude by examining the competing attempt to vindicate Moorean arguments by appealing to Rawls’s method of reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

Philosophers have wanted to work with conceptions of word-competence, or concept-possession, on which being a competent practitioner with a word amounts to being a competent judge of its uses by others. I argue that our implicit conception of competence with a word does not have this presupposition built into it. One implication of this is what I call "modesty" in interpretation: we allow for others, uses of words that we would not allow for ourselves. I develop this point by looking (...) at Saul Kripke's discussion of some famous examples given by Benson Mates, concerning beliefs about beliefs. I defend Mates's point against Kripke's claim that an interpreter who is modest in my sense must be "conceptually confused." . (shrink)

Does the fact that other people believe something give me a reason to believe it, too? Yes, and this epistemic fact is explained by the principle of common consent. PCC says that if S knows that others believe that P, then this fact gives S a reason to believe that P. Despite the fact that most logic texts file the appeal to the majority under the category of a fallacy, the principle of common consent is true. The principle can be (...) defended by an appeal to the interpretive dilemma, a lesson from the epistemology of disagreement, an analogy to epistemic self-trust, and an inference to the best explanation for a wide range of epistemic data. Typical objections to the principle are unpersuasive and rest on either an infallibilist epistemology or an interpretive mistake. (shrink)

In recent years, Cesar Chavez’s life and legacy have been subjected to increased scrutiny. The ensuing reevaluations of Chavez, wittingly or not, are matters of ethical, as well as historical and biographical, concern. This article has two aims. First, it reconstructs Chavez’s account of exemplarity and uses it to assess his legacy. Second, it provides an account of exemplarity situated within social practices. As I argue, exemplarity operates through social practices, rather than mystically as posited by a contagion model. The (...) end result is an ethically nuanced reassessment of Chavez and an account of exemplarity that includes its social dimension. (shrink)

Dewey’s concept of “experience” has baffled many a reader. It is, however, assuredly the key to Dewey’s distinctive philosophical contribution. Notoriously, Rorty urges that Dewey would have been well-advised to abandon “experience: in favor of “discourse” (that is, the “linguistic method of philosophy”), which he draws largely from Davidson and Sellars. For various reasons, Rorty betrays his deep misunderstanding of Dewey’s pragmatism, the lack of any close relationship between Sellars’s notion of the “given” (as a philosophical target) and Dewey’s notion (...) of the saving discovery of what is “denoted” (in inquiry) as the “given”; and the extremely problematic (possibly even incoherent) treatment of linguistic meaning in Davidson’s most pertinent papers (which Rorty seems to regard as pragmatist in an important sense and is guided by). In any event, neither Davidson nor Rorty can be rightly supposed to extend or improve Deweyan pragmatism: Rorty, in fact, explicitly and unconditionally repudiates the “linguistic turn”; and Davidson finally subverts the very theory of language on which any reading of Rorty’s “pragmatist” account of Davidson’s theory of meaning would be at all feasible. The exposé of these disorders may contributes to a more careful formulation of the pragmatist undertaking, which lies elsewhere and depends on a measure of convergence between Dewey and Peirce. (shrink)

1. The issue - The reflection I am proposing was stimulated by some recent research on the mental processing of proper names. However, the issue I am raising is independent of both the particular nature of such results and the fact that they are accepted as well established. The question I would like to ask is whether (neuro)psychological results on the mental processing of language can falsify (or confirm) semantic theses about natural language. By a semantic thesis I mean something (...) like any of the following. (shrink)

The contemporary view of the relationship between conscious and unconscious intentionality consists in two claims: unconscious propositional attitudes represent the world the same way conscious ones do, and both sets of attitudes represent by having determinate propositional content. Crane has challenged both claims, proposing instead that unconscious propositional attitudes differ from conscious ones in being less determinate in nature. This paper aims to evaluate Crane's proposal. In particular, I make explicit and critique certain assumptions Crane makes in support of his (...) asymmetry, and argue for a conditional claim: if Crane is right that unconscious intentional states are indeterminate, this suggests that conscious intentional states are indeterminate in a similar fashion as well. (shrink)

The idea that science aspires to and routinely achieves truths about the world has been challenged in recent writings. Rather than beginning with a theory of scientific development, or of scientific explanation, we begin with a consideration of truth claims in ordinary discourse, particularly with Davidson's truth-functional semantics. Next we consider the way in which some framework features of ordinary language discourse are extended to and modified in scientific discourse. Two areas are treated in more detail: quantum theory, and the (...) peculiar problem of semantic entailment it involves; and quantum field theory. These supply a basis for criticizing some historicist and logicist treatments of the truth of scientific claims. (shrink)

Whether or not deflationism is compatible with truth-conditional theories of meaning has often been discussed in very broad terms. This paper only focuses on Davidsonian semantics and Brandom's anaphoric deflationism and defends the claim that these are perfectly compatible. Critics of this view have voiced several objections, the most prominent of which claims that it involves an unacceptable form of circularity. The paper discusses how this general objection applies to the case of anaphoric deflationism and Davidsonian semantics and evaluates different (...) ways of responding to it (Williams 1999, Horisk 2008 and Lance 1997). Then, three further objections to the compatibility of these theories are assessed and eventually dismissed (Horisk 2007, Patterson 2005 and Collins 2002). It is shown how these considerations shed light on core issues of the debate. (shrink)

Critical review of Scott Soames's What is Meaning?

This is a review of Scott Soames's Philosophy of Language, Princeton, 2010.

This article outlines a program of ethnoontology that brings together empirical research in the ethnosciences with ontological debates in philosophy. First, we survey empirical evidence from heterogeneous cultural contexts and disciplines. Second, we propose a model of cross‐cultural relations between ontologies beyond a simple divide between universalist and relativist models. Third, we argue for an integrative model of ontology building that synthesizes insights from different fields such as biological taxonomy, cognitive science, cultural anthropology, and political ecology. We conclude by arguing (...) that a program of ethnoontology provides philosophers both with insights about traditional issues such as debates about natural kinds and with novel strategies for connecting philosophy with pressing global issues such as the conservation of local environments and the self‐determination of Indigenous communities. (shrink)

Behaviourism is the view that preferences, beliefs, and other mental states in social-scientific theories are nothing but constructs re-describing people's behaviour. Mentalism is the view that they capture real phenomena, on a par with the unobservables in science, such as electrons and electromagnetic fields. While behaviourism has gone out of fashion in psychology, it remains influential in economics, especially in ‘revealed preference’ theory. We defend mentalism in economics, construed as a positive science, and show that it fits best scientific practice. (...) We distinguish mentalism from, and reject, the radical neuroeconomic view that behaviour should be explained in terms of brain processes, as distinct from mental states. (shrink)

In this article I address the following question: When are reformulations in argumentative criticisms reasonable and when do they become fallacious straw men? Following ideas developed in the integrated version of pragma-dialectics, I approach argumentation as an element of agonistic exchanges permeated by arguers’ strategic manoeuvring aimed at effectively defeating the opponent with reasonable means. I propose two basic context-sensitive criteria for deciding on the reasonableness of reformulations: precision of the rules for interpretation (precise vs. loose) and general expectation of (...) cooperativeness (critical vs. constructive). On the basis of analysis of examples taken from online political discussions, I argue that in some contexts, especially those that are critical and loose, what might easily be classified as a straw man following conventional treatment should be taken as a harsh, yet reasonable, strategic argumentative criticism. (shrink)

I challenge two key assumptions of speech act theory, as applied to argumentation: illocutionary monism, grounded in the idea each utterance has only one (primary) illocutionary force, and the dyadic reduction, which models interaction as a dyadic affair between only two agents (speaker-hearer, proponentopponent). I show how major contributions to speech act inspired study of argumentation adhere to these assumptions even as illocutionary pluralism in argumentative polylogues is a significant empirical fact in need of theoretical attention. I demonstrate this with (...) two examples where arguers interacting with multiple persons convey plural, argumentatively relevant illocutionary forces. Understanding illocutionary pluralism in argumentative polylogues also affords a better account of fallacious and manipulative discourse. (shrink)

In their extensive overview of various concepts of presumption Godden and Walton recognise “the heterogeneous picture of presumptions that exists in argumentation theory today”. I argue that this heterogeneity results from an epiphenomenal character of the notion of presumption. To this end, I first distinguish between three main classes of presumptions. Framework presumptions define the basic conditions of linguistic understanding and meaningful conversation. The “presumption of veracity” is their paradigm case. I argue that such presumptions are satisfactorily covered by the (...) Principle of Charity, or else Gricean maxims or satisfaction conditions for speech acts. Formal presumptions are general presumptive rules of argument, theorised as topoi or acceptable inference warrants, including institutional warrants. Material presumptions are acceptable outcomes of nested or outsourced arguments, which entitles arguers to use them as acceptable premises or opinions in further arguments without the typical burden of proof. If this is correct, then the study of presumption always collapses into the study of other, likely more fundamental, concepts. Does it render presumptions, by Occam’s Razor, altogether redundant in argumentation theory? I tentatively answer this question from a consistently conversational perspective on argumentation; I argue that the pragmatic grounds for presumptions are to be found in the conditions for speech act performance in the institutional social world, as developed by Searle. (shrink)

This paper challenges some leading views about the conditions under which the ascription of beliefs and desires can make sense of, or provide reasons for, a creature's behavior. I argue that it is unnecessary for behavior to proceed from beliefs and desires according to the principles of logic and decision theory, or even from principles that generally get things right. I also deny that it is necessary for behavior to proceed from principles that, though perhaps subrational, are similar to those (...) that we ourselves use. I then propose some conditions that are considerably weaker, and argue that they fulfill the descriptive and explanatory requirements of intentional ascription. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend Davidson's program in truth-theoretical semantics against recent criticisms by Scott Soames. We argue that Soames has misunderstood Davidson's project, that in consequence his criticisms miss the mark, that appeal to meanings as entities in the alternative approach that Soames favors does no work, and that the approach is no advance over truth-theoretic semantics.

In his early experimental work with Suppes, Davidson adopted rationality assumptions, not as necessary constraints on interpretation, but as practical conceits in addressing methodological problems faced by experimenters studying decision making under uncertainty. Although the content of their theory has since been undermined, their methodological approach—a Galilean form of methodological rationalism—lives on in contemporary psychological research. This article draws on Max Weber’s verstehen to articulate an account of Galilean methodological rationalism; explains how anomalies faced by Davidson’s early experimental work gave (...) rise to his later, canonical claims about rationality and interpretation; and reclaims this Galilean framework for use in contemporary psychological research. (shrink)

is normative in the sense that it aims to make recommendations for improving human judgment; it aims to have a practical impact on morally and politically significant human decisions and actions; and it studies normative, rational judgment qua rational judgment. These nonstandard ways of understanding ACP as normative collectively suggest a new interpretation of the strong replacement thesis that does not call for replacing normative epistemic concepts, relations, and inquiries with descriptive, causal ones. Rather, it calls for recognizing that the (...) aims and normative inquiries of epistemology and normative psychology have become intermutual in nature. Key Words: Heuristics and biases • applied cognitive psychology • normative psychology • rationality • naturalized epistemology • Epistemics • Applied Naturalized Epistemology • strong replacement • strategic reliabilism • ameliorative psychology. (shrink)

Depuis 1967, Donald Davidson defend l'idée qu'une théorie de la signification pour une langue naturelle doit prendre la forme d'une théorie tarskienne de la vérité. Je me propose ici d'exposer les grandes lignes de l a conception davidsonienne de la sémantique des langues naturelles et de chercher à préciser en quel sens une theorie tarskienne de la vérité pour une langue L constitue, selon Davidson, une théorié de la signification pour L. Je ferai pour cela abstraction des obstacles qu'il pourrait (...) y avoir à la réalisation du programme de Davidson. (shrink)

In this paper, a challenge is outlined for Walton’s recent analysis of the fallacy of poisoning the well. An example of the fallacy in action during a debate on affirmative action on a South African campus is taken to raise the question of how Walton’s analysis squares with the idea that disadvantaged parties in debates about race may be epistemically privileged . It is asked when the background of a participant is relevant to a debate and it is proposed that (...) a proper analysis of the poisoning the well will outline conditions under which making one participant’s background an issue in a debate would be legitimate and illegitimate. Expanding Walton’s analysis to deal with the challenge, it is concluded that calling into question a participant’s suitability to take part in a debate is never legitimate when it is based simply on a broad fact about their background (like their race or gender). (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss language learning in Wittgenstein and Davidson. Starting from a remark by Bakhurst, I hold that both Wittgenstein and Davidson’s philosophies of language contain responses to the problem of language learning, albeit of a different form. Following Williams, I hold that the concept of language learning can explain Wittgenstein’s approach to the normativity of meaning in the Philosophical Investigations. Turning to Davidson, I hold that language learning can, equally, explain Davidson’s theory of triangulation. I sketch an (...) account of triangulation as Davidson’s response to the problem of the normativity of meaning and explain the role that language learning plays in this account. (shrink)

My concern in what follows is to give a comparative report on some important lectures held at the Hegel-Kongreß 1981 in Stuttgart. In discussing the views of Quine, Hacking, Davidson, Putnam and Habermas I want to confront them with some details of Rorty's recent critique of our philosophical tradition. At last I try to give a tentative answer whether there is an end or a turning-point for current analytical philosophy.

Philosophical Perspectives, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 320-339, December 2021.

Most management researchers pause at the threshold of objective right and wrong. Their hesitation is understandable. Values imply a “subjective,” personal dimension, one that can invite religious and moral interference in research. The dominant epistemological camps of positivism and subjectivism in management stumble over the notion of moral objectivity. Empirical research can study values in human behavior, but hard-headed scientists should not assume that one value can be objectively better than another. In this article, we invite management researchers to rethink (...) this presumption. We show how accepting at least a limited form of moral objectivity, namely, an epistemic orientation that seeks objective moral reasons, can benefit management research by 1. guiding research practice; 2. using patterns of moral objectivity as clues for formulating empirical hypotheses for psychological explanations; and 3. adding prescriptive power to empirical theories. (shrink)

Functions play an important role in neo-pragmatism. This paper advances neo-pragmatism’s prospects by investigating how functions are to be understood on this account. It argues that prominent ways of understanding functions do not suit neo-pragmatists’ meta-semantic commitments or their preferred methodology. It then presents an account that fits both, based on Laura and François Schroeter’s theory of rationalizing self-interpretation. On this account, a term’s function is what it allows us to do that makes our tradition with the term rational.

A core commitment of meta-ethical expressivism is that ordinary descriptive judgements are representational states, while normative judgements are non-representational directive states. Traditionally, this commitment has been understood as a psychological thesis about the nature of normative judgements, as the view that normative judgements consist in certain sorts of conative propositional attitudes. This paper’s aim is to challenge this reading and to show that changing our view on how this commitment is to be understood opens up space for attractive forms of (...) expressivism. The paper argues this by example: by presenting one of the possible expressivist views that can be developed on this reading and by arguing that this view has distinctive advantages over forms of expressivism that endorse the traditional interpretation of expressivism. (shrink)

Davidson has attempted to offer his own solution to the problem of self-knowledge, but there has been no consensus between his commentators on what this solution is. Many have claimed that Davidson’s account stems from his remarks on disquotational specifications of self-ascriptions of meaning and mental content, the account which I will call the “Disquotational Explanation”. It has also been claimed that Davidson’s account rather rests on his version of content externalism, which I will call the “Externalist Explanation”. I will (...) argue that not only are these explanations of self-knowledge implausible, but Davidson himself has already rejected them. Thus, neither can be attributed to Davidson as his suggested account of self-knowledge. I will then introduce and support what I take to be Davidson’s official and independent account of self-knowledge, that is, his “Transcendental Explanation”. I will defend this view against certain potential objections and finally against the objections made by William Child. (shrink)

According to the communication desideratum (CD), a notion of semantic content must be adequately related to communication. In the recent debate on indexical reference, (CD) has been invoked in arguments against the view that intentions determine the semantic content of indexicals and demonstratives (intentionalism). In this paper, I argue that the interpretations of (CD) that these arguments rely on are questionable, and suggest an alternative interpretation, which is compatible with (strong) intentionalism. Moreover, I suggest an approach that combines elements of (...) intentionalism with other subjectivist approaches, and discuss the role of intuitions in developing and evaluating theories of indexical reference. (shrink)

A response to certain parts of Rumfitt : I defend Davidson's project in semantics, suggest that Rumfitt's use of sentential quantification renders his definition of truth needlessly elaborate, and pose a question for Rumfitt's handling of the strengthened Liar.

It has frequently been lamented that while the human species has made immense progress in science it is nevertheless ethically backward. This ethical backwardness is all the more dangerous because the advanced state of scientific knowledge has made available a technology with which we are able to destroy ourselves—indeed a technology which may have got so much out of hand that we may not even have the capacity to prevent it from destroying us.

While holism and atomism are often treated as mutually exclusive approaches to semantic theory, the apparent tension between the two usually results from running together distinct levels of semantic explanation. In particular, there is no reason why one can’t combine an atomistic conception of what the semantic values of our words are (one’s “descriptive semantics”), with a holistic explanation of why they have those values (one’s “foundational semantics”). Most objections to holism can be shown to apply only to holistic version (...) of descriptive semantics, and do not tell against any sorts of holistic foundational semantics. As Davidson’s work will be used to illustrate, by clearly distinguishing foundational and descriptive semantics, one can capture the most appealing features of both holism and atomism. (shrink)

RésuméOn discute ľapplicabilityé de la convention T de Tarski à une théorie de la signification. A cet effet, deux aspects de la communication sont distingués. ?une part il sembie essentiel de déployer la communication à partir ?un réseau de croyances communes. ?autre part ľessence de la communication est de rendre maximal ľaccord épistémique entre les interlocuteurs. La solution proposé consiste à rappeler qu'avant ?être commune, la croyance a été communiquée dans un contexte privilégié, appelé ici dialogue référentiel. On tire alors (...) les conséquences, ?abord sur la fonction de référence, ensuite sur ľélargissement qu'il faut apporter aux conditions de base ?une théorie de la signification, si ľon veut tenir compte de ce procés de maximisation lui‐même.SummaryIn order to discuss the applicability of Tarski's convention T to a theory of meaning, we have to draw a distinction between two aspects of communication. On the one hand, we have to consider the grounding of communication in a network of common beliefs. On the other hand, and indeed primarily, maximizing the epistemic agreement between locutors is essential to communication. The solution proposed consists in showing that, before becoming common, a belief has to be communicated in a priviledged context, i. e. in a so‐called “referential dialogue”. Consequences are drawn first upon the role of reference, secondly upon the necessary extension of the basic conditions for a theory of meaning, in order to give an account of the maximizing process itself. (shrink)

Notice that each of (1)–(4) is an instance of a more general pattern. For example, we could replace ‘black’ in (1) with any of a wide range of other adjectives such as ‘furry’ or ‘hungry’ or ‘three-legged’, without rendering the entailment invalid or any less obvious. Similarly, there are a number of verbs that occur in entailments parallel to (3): ‘Moe boiled the water; so the water boiled’; ‘Bart blew up the school; so the school blew up’; ‘Homer sank the (...) boat; so the boat sank’ and so on. (shrink)

A natural view is that linguistic understanding is a source of justification or evidence: that beliefs about the meaning of a text or speech act are prima facie justified when based on states of understanding. Neglect of this view is largely due to the widely held assumption that understanding a text or speech act consists in knowledge or belief. It is argued that this assumption rests, in part, on confusing occurrent states of understanding and dispositions to understand. It is then (...) argued that occurrent states of understanding are not states of belief of knowledge since a subject may fail to believe that a text or speech act means what she understands it to mean if she doubts the reliability or truth- fulness of that understanding. States of understanding, it is maintained, belong in the same epistemic category as states of perception and memory. (shrink)