This paper argues for the thesis that, roughly put, it is impossible to talk about absolutely everything. To put the thesis more precisely, there is a particular sense in which, as a matter of semantics, quantifiers always range over domains that are in principle extensible, and so cannot count as really being ‘absolutely everything’. The paper presents an argument for this thesis, and considers some important objections to the argument and to the formulation of the thesis. The paper also offers (...) an assessment of just how implausible the thesis really is. It argues that the intuitions against the thesis come down to a few special cases, which can be given special treatment. Finally, the paper considers some metaphysical ideas that might surround the thesis. Particularly, it might be maintained that an important variety of realism is incompatible with the thesis. The paper argues that this is not the case. (shrink)

Cette étude se propose de mettre en relief plusieurs analogies structurelles entre la conception spinoziste et la conception fonctionnaliste, développée par Hilary Putnam, de l'activité mentale. Ces conceptions, l'une classique, l'autre contemporaine, en marge de leurs divergences manifestes, paraissent toutes deux récuser aussi bien le dualisme substantiel qu'une lecture physicaliste de l'activité mentale, représentée en particulier par la théorie de l'identité entre états mentaux et états cérébraux. La confrontation entre la philosophie de Spinoza et celle de Putnam, dans l'ordre de (...) la théorie de l'esprit, s'établit en trois points. Est d'abord examiné le postulat de l'autonomie explicative du mental. Le second point concerne la résolution du problème de l'union du corps et de l'esprit, par le recours aux notions d'organisation et d'isomorphisme fonctionnel, au principe de la thèse d'une identité psychophysique non substantielle. L'étude s'achève sur l'évocation du modèle mécanique de l'esprit, et de son identification à un dispositif automatique abstrait, automate spirituel selon Spinoza, machine de Turing selon Putnam. (shrink)

I argue that fidelity to the context principle requires us to construe reference as a theoretical relation. This point helps us understand the bearing of Putnam's permutation argument on the idea of a systematic theory of meaning. Notwithstanding objections that have been made against Putnam's deployment of that argument, it shows the reference relation to be indeterminate. But since the indeterminacy of reference arises from a metalinguistic perspective, our ability, as object‐language speakers, to talk about the ordinary features of our (...) lives is unaffected. (shrink)

This article presents a qualitative study, descriptive-interpretive in profile, of the effectiveness in learning about the nature of science of an activity relating to the historical controversy between Pasteur and Liebig on fermentation. The activity was implemented during a course for pre-service secondary science teachers specializing in physics and chemistry. The approach was explicit and reflective. Three research questions were posed: What conceptions of NOS do the PSSTs show after a first reflective reading of the historical controversy?, What role is (...) played by the PSSTs’ whole class critical discussion of their first reflections on the aspects of NOS dealt with in the controversy?, and What changes are there in the PSSTs’ conceptions of NOS after concluding the activity? The data for analysis was extracted from the PSSTs’ group reports submitted at the end of the activity and the audio-recorded information from the whole class discussion. A rubric was prepared to assess this data by a process of inter-rater analysis. The results showed overall improvement in understanding the aspects of NOS involved, with there being a significant evolution in some cases and moderate in others. This reveals that the activity has an educational utility for the education of PSSTs in NOS issues. The article concludes with an indication of some educational implications of the experience. (shrink)

The methodology implicit in empirically grounded social scientific studies of religion naturally allies with forms of semantic holism. However, a well known argument which questions whether holism in general is consistent with the fact that languages are learnable can be extended into an epistemological one which questions whether holism is consistent with an empirical methodology. In other words, there is question whether holism, in fact, makes social science possible. I diagnose the assumptions on which that objection rests, pointing out that (...) they are not necessary for semantic holism per se. I argue that a form of semantic holism along the lines advocated by W. V. O. Quine and Donald Davidson can avoid the objection. Moreover, when seen in this light, it has the resources to withstand an even deeper methodological problem. In so doing, though, several important but overlooked implications for the study of religion emerge. (shrink)

This article explores the proposition that the brain, normally seen as an organ of the human body, should be understood as a biologically based form of artificial intelligence, in the course of which the case is made for a new kind of ‘brain exceptionalism’. After noting that such a view was generally assumed by the founders of AI in the 1950s, the argument proceeds by drawing on the distinction between science—in this case neuroscience—adopting a ‘telescopic’ or a ‘microscopic’ orientation to (...) reality, depending on how it regards its characteristic investigative technologies. The paper concludes by recommending a ‘microscopic’ yet non-reductionist research agenda for neuroscience, in which the brain is seen as an underutilised organ whose energy efficiency is likely to outstrip that of the most powerful supercomputers for the foreseeable future. (shrink)

According to Minkoswki, Einstein's special theory of relativity reveals that ‘space by itself, and time by itself are doomed to fade away into mere shadows’. But perceptual experience represents objects as instantiating shapes like squareness — properties of ‘space by itself’. Thus, STR seems to threaten the veridicality of shape experience. In response to this worry, some have argued that we should analyze the contents of our spatial experiences on the model of traditional secondary qualities. On this picture—defended in recent (...) work by Chalmers —an experience of squareness just represents whatever property usually causes such experiences. This view salvages the veridicality of shape experience, but leaves the nature of the properties we perceive outside our ken. I argue that such a move is unwarranted: STR is compatible with the idea that shape experience acquaints us with the spatial character of our world. In defending this claim, I propose a view on which shape experience presents familiar Euclidean spatial properties veridically, while implicitly representing those properties as instantiated in a particular manner — namely, relative to our own frame of reference. (shrink)

Facts about justification are not brute facts. They are epistemic facts that depend upon more fundamental non-epistemic facts. Internalists about justification often argue for mentalism, which claims that facts about justification supervene upon one’s non-factive mental states, using Lehrer and Cohen’s :191–207, 1983) New Evil Demon Problem. The New Evil Demon Problem tells you to imagine yourself the victim of a Cartesian demon who deceives you about what the external world is like, and then asks whether you nevertheless have justification (...) for your beliefs about the external world. Internalists and externalists agree that there is something that is epistemically good or valuable about both your actual beliefs and your beliefs in the demon scenario. Internalists claim that the epistemic property which these sets of beliefs share most intuitively should be thought of as sameness of justification. Externalists, on the other hand, reject this claim, usually either by challenging the internalist intuition directly, or by arguing that there is a more plausible way to think about the epistemic property in question. Recently, both kinds of externalist objection have been raised against the argument from the New Evil Demon Problem for mentalism. The goal of this paper is to defend the argument against three prominent objections—a pair of which is offered by Littlejohn :399–434, 2009) and one by Williamson Rationality and the good: critical essays on the ethics and epistemology of Robert Audi, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007; in: Dutant J, Dohrn D The new evil demon, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016). (shrink)

What is truth? What precisely is it that truths have that falsehoods lack? Pluralists about truth (or “alethic pluralists”) tend to answer these questions by saying that there is more than one way for a proposition, sentence, belief—or any chosen truth-bearer—to be true. In this paper, I argue that two of the most influential formations of alethic pluralism, those of Wright (1992, 2003a) and Lynch (2009), are subject to serious problems. I outline a new formulation, which I call “simple determination (...) pluralism,” that I claim offers better prospects for alethic pluralism, with the potential to have applications for pluralist theories beyond truth. (shrink)

The issue of realism about the physical world is distinct from the semantic issue of correspondence truth. So it is an aberration to identify the two issues (Dummett), to dismiss the realism issue out of hostility to correspondence truth (Rorty, Fine), to think that that issue is one of interpretation, or to argue against realism by criticizing various claims about truth and reference (Putnam, Laudan). It is also an aberration to identify realism with nonskepticism, truth-as-the-aim-of-science, or scientific convergence. Realism is (...) an overarching metaphysical issue which should be settled before any of these epistemic and semantic issues. (shrink)

The argument that has inspired much of the recent discussion of the logical relationship between these views is found in Putnam : If externalism is true, then if S were a brain in a vat, S’s utterances of the sentence “I am a brain in a vat” would not express the proposition that S is a brain in a vat. S’s use of the words “brain” and “vat” would not refer to a real brain or vat, just as, in a (...) Twin Earth-style thought experiment, the Twin Earthling cannot refer to water with his use of the term “water.” If we accept that generally we have knowledge of the contents of our utterances, then, if S knows that her utterances of “brain” and “vat” mean brain and vat, it will be possible for S to know that she is not a brain in a vat. For if S has authority with respect to the contents of her utterances, then she can know that her utterance, “I am not a brain in a vat,” refers to brains and vats. On externalism, since S would not refer to brains and vats if she were a brain in a vat, she could know by mere introspection that she is not a brain in a vat. In fact, S can come to know many arbitrary propositions about the external world simply by attending to the contents of her thoughts. For if externalism is true, she can argue, then certain empirical conditions must be satisfied if she is even to have the thoughts about the external world that she does; since she knows what she is thinking, she knows these empirical conditions are satisfied. Thus, if S knows that she is thinking about brains and vats, then she can know that she is not a brain in a vat ; for if she was a BIV, then she would not be thinking about brains and vats, but instead about electrical impulses or some such thing. The standard BIV argument against scepticism, therefore, cannot be correct. This line of argument can then be used to conclude more generally that scepticism is false; for the argument can be run with virtually any utterance or thought with empirical content. If S knows that she is thinking about trees, for example, then she can know that there are trees. (shrink)

An orthodox sceptical hypothesis claims that one’s belief that “I am not a brain-in-a-vat (BIV)” (or any other ordinary anti-sceptical belief) is insensitive. A form of sensitivity-based scepticism, can thus be constructed by combining this orthodox hypothesis with the sensitivity principle and the closure principle. Unlike traditional solutions to the sensitivity-based sceptical problem, this paper will propose a new solution—one which does not reject either closure or sensitivity. Instead, I argue that sceptics’ assumption that one’s ordinary anti-sceptical beliefs are insensitive (...) will give rise to self-contradiction. The orthodox sceptical hypothesis is thus revealed to be incoherent and arbitrary. Given that there is no coherent reason to presuppose our ordinary anti-sceptical beliefs to be insensitive, the argument for sensitivity-based scepticism can thus be blocked at a lower epistemological cost. (shrink)

A significant and interesting part of the post-Gettier literature regarding the analysis of propositional knowledge is the attempt to supplement the traditional tripartite analysis by employing a fourth condition regarding the defeasibility of evidence and thus to preclude the counterexamples displayed in Gettier’s original article. My aim in this paper is to critically examine the sort of externalism that accompanies the most promising of the proposed fourth conditions, due to Pollock, in order to offer some fresh insights on this old (...) epistemological issue. I argue that Pollock’s paradigmatic treatment of the matter gives rise to a critical problem with regard to the exact role of the fourth condition and its relation with the onto-semantic or alethic condition of propositional knowledge, to wit, truth. In the light of this discussion, I draw certain conclusions about epistemic externalism and point out some of its theoretical shortcomings. (shrink)