Our meta-argumentative vocabulary supplies the conceptual tools used to reflectively analyse, regulate, and evaluate our argumentative performances. Yet, this vocabulary is susceptible to misunderstanding and abuse in ways that make possible new discursive mistakes and pathologies. Thus, our efforts to self-regulate our reason-transacting practices by articulating their norms makes possible new ways to violate and flout those very norms. Scott Aikin identifies the structural possibility of this vicious feedback loop as the Owl of Minerva Problem. In the spirit of a (...) shared concern for the flourishing or our rational, argumentative practices, this paper approaches the Owl of Minerva Problem from a vantage point that, by comparison with Aikin’s, affords perspectives that are more pessimistic in some aspects and more optimistic in others. Pessimistically, the problem at the root of the weaponization of our meta-argumentative vocabulary is motivational, not structural. Its motivational nature explains its resistance to the normal repertoire of reparative argumentative maneuvers, as well as revealing a profound and deeply entrenched misunderstanding of the connection between our reasons-transacting practices and the goods achievable within them. Optimistically, in the absence of this motivational problem, the misunderstandings and errors made possible by our meta-argumentative vocabularies are amenable to remedy by familiar techniques of discursive instruction and repair. More optimistically, even though our meta-argumentative vocabularies are generated only retrospectively, they can be used prospectively, thereby making possible an aspirational motivation resulting in a virtuous cycle of increasingly autonomous normative self-regulation. Properly harnessed, the Owl of Minerva releases the Lark of Arete. (shrink)

This article addresses the ongoing debate between transcendental pragmatics and philosophical hermeneutics. I argue that Apel's version of linguistic transcendentalism is to be refuted, if one succeeds in demonstrating that the normative conditions of intersubjective validity of the argumentative discourse are `derivable' from the fore-structure of the discursive-practical medium of communication. Loci for specifically hermeneutical investigations of this fore-structure include the proto-normativity of the discursive practices, the effective-historical openness of the medium of communication, and the interplay between argumentative discourse and (...) medium. (shrink)

Kripke’s thesis that meaning is normative is typically interpreted, following Boghossian, as the thesis that meaningful expressions allow of true or warranted use. I argue for an alternative interpretation centered on Wittgenstein’s conception of the normativity involved in “knowing how to go on” in one’s use of an expression. Meaning is normative for Kripke because it justifies claims, not to be saying something true, but to be going on as one ought from prevous uses of the expression. I argue that (...) this represents a distortion of Wittgenstein’s conception of the normativity of meaning, and that Wittgenstein’s conception is preferable. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to propose that both Hegel and Peirce are committed to two arguments against the notion that metaphysics is impossible, where not only do they claim metaphysics is possible, but that they also insist on theindispensabilityof this philosophical discipline. In the first argument, both Hegel and Peirce argue that it is impossible to eliminate metaphysical concepts from ordinary language and our scientific practices. In the second argument, both Hegel and Peirce argue that metaphysics is a (...) necessary part of intellectual enquiry on the grounds that metaphysics is indispensable for human development. Such is the philosophical significance of both their views on the indispensability of metaphysics that there is every reason to regard Hegel and Peirce as representing powerful challenges to eliminativist attitudes to metaphysical enquiry. The purpose of my paper is to justify the exercise of metaphysics as a “humanistic discipline”, to use an expression from Bernard Williams. Using perfectionist approaches to ethics as a framework in which to contextualise the question of whether it could ever be desirable to eliminate metaphysics is under-explored and potentially a major avenue through which to explore the way we do metaphysics today. (shrink)

This article has two aims: to bring Judith Butler and Wilfrid Sellars into conversation; and to argue that Butler's poststructuralist critique of feminist identity politics has metaphilosophical potential, given her pragmatic parallel with Sellars's critique of conceptual analyses of knowledge. With regard to, I argue that Butler's objections to the definitional practice constitutive of certain ways of construing feminism is comparable to Sellars's critique of the analytical project geared toward providing definitions of knowledge. Specifically, I propose that moving away from (...) a definition of woman to what one may call poststructuralist sites of woman parallels moving away from a definition of knowledge to a pragmatic account of knowledge as a recognizable standing in the normative space of reasons. With regard to, I argue that the important parallels between Butler's poststructuralist feminism and Sellars's antirepresentationalist normative pragmatism about knowledge enable one to think of her poststructuralist feminism as mapping out pragmatic cognitive strategies and visions for doing philosophy. This article starts a conversation between two philosophers whom the literature has yet to fully introduce to each other. (shrink)

Linguistic research has revealed several pathways of language change that may guide our understanding of the evolution of mental‐state attribution. In particular, it turns out that, in many languages, quotative verbs have been exapted for attributing a variety of mental states, including beliefs and intentions. In such languages, the literal translation of, “Betty said: ‘There will be war’”, may be used not only to quote Betty's words, but also to convey that she thought or intended there to be war. This (...) paper presents a model of the pragmatic shifts underlying this pathway, and proposes an evolutionary trajectory from quotation to the public practice of attributing beliefs and intentions, and thence to implicit belief/intention attribution. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider how a general epistemic norm of action that I have proposed in earlier work should be specified in order to govern certain types of acts: assertive speech acts. More specifically, I argue that the epistemic norm of assertion is structurally similar to the epistemic norm of action. First, I argue that the notion of warrant operative in the epistemic norm of a central type of assertion is an internalist one that I call ‘discursive justification.’ This (...) type of warrant is internalist insofar as it requires that the agent is capable of articulating reasons for her belief. The idea, roughly, is that when one asserts that p, one is supposed to be in a position to give reasons for believing that p. Bonjour’s reliable clairvoyant Norman, for example, is not in an epistemic position to make assertions regarding the president’s whereabouts—even if Norman knows the president’s whereabouts. In conclusion, I briefly consider whether a type of skeptical argument—often labeled Agrippa’s Trilemma—is motivated, at least in part, by the fact that responses to it violate the relevant epistemic norm of assertion. (shrink)

What capacities for discrimination must a subject possess in order to entertain singular thoughts? Evans has suggested that a subject must be able to discriminate his referent from all other entities in order to be able to do so; what he calls Russell's Principle. Evans' view has few followers, and he has been repeatedly accused of presenting no argument in its favour. In this paper I present what I take to be Evans' argument. I suggest that he has been misinterpreted (...) as introducing Russell's Principle for the purpose of fixing reference. Rather, he introduces it in order to ensure that our conceptual capacities have the functional complexity to allow for objective thought. I suggest that the logical types of our thought are constituted by their inferential potential and argue that, even though singular thought may be possible without the satisfaction of Russell's Principle, singular thought that forms part of an objective world view is not. (shrink)

Various possibilities, that one is dreaming, that one is being deceived by a deceitful demon, that one is a brain in the vat being stimulated to think one has a body and is in a regular world, have been invoked to show that all one's experience-based beliefs might be false. Descartes in Meditation I advises that in order not to lapse into his careless everyday view of things he, or at least his meditator, should pretend that all his experience-based beliefs, (...) indeed all his …. (shrink)

Robert Brandom’s notion of historical rationality seeks to supplement his inferentialism thesis by providing an account for the validity of conceptual contents. This account, in the shape of a historical process, involves the same self-integration of Brandom’s earlier inferentialism and is similarly restricted by reciprocal recognition of others. This article argues that in applying the synchronic social model of normative discourse to the diachronic axis of engaging the past, Brandom premises a false analogy between present community and past tradition, which (...) obscures the important differences between the two axes. This is explored by looking closely at how Brandom’s own engagements with the past exemplify his historical rationality. Taking its cue from Brandom’s critics, the article shows that Brandom’s own discourse with tradition is not, and cannot be, dialogical and, in accordance, that historical rationality is not, and cannot be, governed by the same social structure of inferentialism. The article concludes with the implications of such a claim on Brandom’s thesis as a whole and on the role of tradition in the process of normative change, in light of it. (shrink)

According to John McDowell, in its central uses, ‘I’ is immune to error through misidentification and thus to be accounted strongly identification‐free (I–II). Neither doctrine is obviously well founded (III); indeed, given that deixis is a proper part of ‘I’ (IV–VIII), it appears that uses of ‘I’ are identification‐dependent (IX–X).

Analytic Philosophy, Volume 62, Issue 3, Page 295-311, September 2021.

Per Aage Brandt, commenting on a passage from Merlin Donald, suggests that there is ‘a narrative aesthetics built into our mind.’ In Donald, one can find an evolutionary account of this narrative aesthetics. If there is something like an innate narrative disposition, it is also surely the case that there is a process of development involved in narrative practice. In this paper I will assume something closer to the developmental account provided by Jerome Bruner in various works, and Dan Hutto's (...) account of how we learn narrative practices, and I'll refer to this narrative aesthetics as a narrative competency that we come to have through a developmental process. I will take narrative in a wide sense, to include oral and written communications and self-reports on experience. In this regard narrative is more basic than story, and not necessarily characterized by the formal plot structure of a story. A story may be told in many different ways, but always via narrative discourse. Also, having narrative competency includes not just abilities for understanding narratives, but also for narrative understanding, which allows us to form narratives about things, events and other people. To be capable of narrative understanding means to be capable of seeing events in a narrative framework. (shrink)

Abstract This paper sketches a Levinasian theory of action. It has often been pointed out that Levinas' ethics are incapable of providing principles of adjudication for guiding actions. However, a much more profound problem affects Levinas' metaphysical ethics and negates the possibility of adjudication and that is a patent lack of freedom from the yoke of the ethical. If ?ethics is primordial? indeed, then no act can be unethical in that there is no alternative possibility to the acceptance and performance (...) of the law. In this paper, I will argue that it is from the totalization of the acceptance and performance of law ?implicit in the subject's action? that alternative possibilities become visible. This is to say, it is through totalization that the subject demarcates the locus for the emergence of principles, which can permit adjudication among different acts without negating the radical primacy of ethics, which is probably Levinas? greatest contribution to the field. (shrink)

Richard Rorty's recent death has unleashed a strikingly mixed judgment of his philosophical legacy, ranging from claims to originality to charges of charlatanry. What is clear, however, is Rorty's role in articulating a distinctive American voice in the history of philosophy. He achieved this not only through his own wide-ranging contributions but also by repositioning the pragmatists, especially William James and John Dewey, in the philosophical mainstream. Rorty did for the United States what Hegel and Heidegger had done for Germany—to (...) portray his nation as philosophy's final resting place. He was helped by postwar German philosophers like Jürgen Habermas who were happy to defer to their American conquerors. Rorty's philosophical method can be understood as a sublimation of America's world-historic self-understanding: a place suspicious of foreigners unless they are willing to blend into the "melting pot." In retrospect, the breadth and confidence of Rorty's writing will come to symbolize the moment when the United States, for better or worse, came to be the world's dominant philosophical power. Key Words: Rorty • pragmatism • logical positivism • analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Richard Rorty is easily cast as the intellectual godfather of our post-truth condition. But unlike Nicholas Gaskill, whose article in Common Knowledge 28, no. 3, has engendered a continuing symposium in the journal, Professor Fuller sees Rorty's role as being to his credit rather than detriment. Rorty extended W. B. Gallie's idea of “essentially contested concepts” from the moral and political spheres to the epistemic, thereby rendering such terms as truth, reason, and evidence inherently vague, which means that they are (...) defined not a priori but only in the context of exemplary concrete cases. Doing so invariably results in a “redescription” of what is observed that explains the “meta” level of understanding that philosophy brings to whatever it discusses. In this sense, all that the post-truth condition does is turn everyone into a philosopher. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first we outline a version of non-descriptivism, ‘minimal expressivism’, leaving aside certain long-standing problems associated with conventional expressivist views. Second, we examine the way in which familiar expressivist results can be accommodated within this framework, through a particular interpretation that the expressive realm lends to a theory of meaning. Expressivist theories of meaning address only a portion of the classical problems attributed to this position when they seek to explain why the expressions they (...) deal with have a given meaning. A position can nevertheless be termed ‘expressivist’ – in the minimal sense that we favor – based simply on the following key features of the meaning of these expressions: they can be used as functions of propositions, and they are not used to describe the way the world is. (shrink)

To integrate social robots in real-life contexts, it is crucial that they are accepted by the users. Acceptance is not only related to the functionality of the robot but also strongly depends on how the user experiences the interaction. Established design principles from usability and user experience research can be applied to the realm of human–robot interaction, to design robot behavior for the comfort and well-being of the user. Focusing the design on these aspects alone, however, comes with certain ethical (...) challenges, especially regarding the user’s privacy and autonomy. Based on an example scenario of human–robot interaction in elder care, this paper discusses how established design principles can be used in social robotic design. It then juxtaposes these with ethical considerations such as privacy and user autonomy. Combining user experience and ethical perspectives, we propose adjustments to the original design principles and canvass our own design recommendations for a positive and ethically acceptable social human–robot interaction design. In doing so, we show that positive user experience and ethical design may be sometimes at odds, but can be reconciled in many cases, if designers are willing to adjust and amend time-tested design principles. (shrink)

Koopman’s book revolves around the notion of transition, which he proposes is one of the central ideas of the pragmatist tradition but one which had not previously been fully articulated yet nevertheless shapes the pragmatist attitude in philosophy. Transition, according to Koopman, denotes “those temporal structures and historical shapes in virtue of which we get from here to there”. One of the consequences of transitionalism is the understanding of critique and inquiry as historical pro...

This paper tackles with the issue of the place of comprehensive beliefs within the public space. It tries to strike a middle path between the liberal ban on comprehensive beliefs and the anti-liberal claim that comprehensive beliefs should be given full pride of place in public deliberations. The article relies on arguments that are inspired by the pragmatist tradition. It starts locating the main cause of failures at articulating comprehensive beliefs and public reason in a central feature of liberal epistemology, (...) namely the way it conceives public reason via a preliminary distinction between public and non public beliefs. After criticizing this distinction, the article introduces a distinction between the normative practice of justification and the normative practice of adjudication as a more perspicuous way to establish the place that comprehensive beliefs should play within political forums. It then concludes showing that this approach provides a satisfying answer to the issue of the public role of comprehensive beliefs in a liberal democratic regime that is respectful of citizens’ thick identities while at the same time complying with the requirements of respect set by the liberal tradition. Keywords: public reason and religion - pragmatism - liberalism - communitarianism - normative practices. (shrink)

This paper wrestles with the issue of the place of comprehensive beliefs within the public space. It tries to strike a middle path between the liberal ban on comprehensive beliefs and the anti-liberal claim that comprehensive beliefs should be given full pride of place in public deliberations. The article relies on arguments that are inspired by the pragmatist tradition. It starts locating the main cause of failures at articulating comprehensive beliefs and public reason in a central feature of liberal epistemology, (...) namely the way it conceives public reason via a preliminary distinction between public and non-public beliefs. After criticizing this distinction, the article introduces a distinction between the normative practice of justification and the normative practice of adjudication as a more perspicuous way to establish the place that comprehensive beliefs should play within political forums. It then concludes showing that this approach provides a satisfying answer to the issue of the public role of comprehensive beliefs in a liberal democratic regime that is respectful of citizens’ thick identities while at the same time complying with the requirements of respect set by the liberal tradition. (shrink)

This essay examines the theory of ritual propriety presented in the Xúnzǐ and criticisms of Xunzi-like views found in the classical Daoist anthology Zhuāngzǐ. To highlight the respects in which the Zhuāngzǐ can be read as posing a critical response to a Xunzian view of ritual propriety, the essay juxtaposes the two texts' views of language, since Xunzi's theory of ritual propriety is intertwined with his theory of language. I argue that a Zhuangist critique of the presuppositions of Xunzi's stance (...) on language also undermines his stance on ritual propriety. Xunzi contends that state promulgation of anelaborate code of ritual propriety is a key to good social order (zhi) and that state regulation of language is a key to smooth communication and thus also good order. The Zhuāngzǐ provides grounds for doubting both contentions. Claiming that ritual propriety causally produces social order is analogous to claiming that grammar causally produces smooth linguistic communication, when in fact it is more likely our ability to communicate that allows us to develop shared rules of grammar. Humans have fundamental social and communicative capacities that undergird our abilities to speak a language or engage in shared ritual performances. It is these more fundamental capacities, not their manifestation in a particular system of grammar or ritual norms, that provide the root explanation of our ability to communicate or to live together harmoniously. The Xunzi-Zhuangzi dialectic suggests that ritual is indispensable, but normatively justified rituals will be less rigid, less comprehensive, less fastidious, and more spontaneous than a Xunzian theorist would allow. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that truth is neutral with respect to metaphysics and epistemology. In other words, the paper states that in order to make an analysis about our daily use of truth discourse, it is not necessary to refer to neither the nature of the world nor the nature of our epistemic capacities. The text is composed by three sections. In the first one, it makes explicit the common-sense intuitions which seem to bring truth to either metaphysics or (...) epistemology. In the second one, the text analyzes the role of the predicate «is true» in our natural languages. In the third section, the intuitions aforementioned are considered with the purpose of examining its intuitive status and its alleged relationship with both metaphysics and epistemology. (shrink)

Although the concept of ‘true infinity’ is undoubtedly central to Hegel's philosophy, the Anglophone rehabilitation of Hegel as a post-Kantian critical philosopher has avoided any sustained interpretive confrontation with the concept. In this paper, I provide a revisionary reconstruction of Hegelian true infinity by engaging with Martin Hägglund's argument in This Life (2019) for the centrality of finitude to Hegel's philosophy. For Hägglund, Hegel's philosophy effects a ‘secular reconciliation’ with finitude by demonstrating that our mortality is not a negative condition (...) to be overcome; rather, mortality is constitutive of rational social agency or ‘spiritual life’. While Hägglund's interpretive emphasis on finitude prima facie occludes a consideration of the concept of true infinity, I show that Hägglund's understanding of spiritual life in terms of the dynamic of self-maintenance implicitly articulates a revisionary understanding of true infinity as instantiated in and through the activity of finite living rational beings. More specifically, I show that Hägglund's understanding of finitude as constitutive of spiritual life is grounded in three closely interrelated Hegelian meta-concepts, all of which Hegel derives in the second chapter of the Logic (‘Existence’): (a) the distinction between abstract and determinate negation; (b) the form of individuality as constituted through determinate negation; and (c) true infinity as the form of individuality understood in explicitly processual terms. I thus ground a deflationary interpretation of true infinity in Hegel's logical account of determinate individuality, and at the same time, contribute to This Life's ongoing critical reception by articulating its Hegelian logical infrastructure. (shrink)

I argue that intending and acting belong to the same genus: intending is a kind of doing continuous in structure with intentional acting. Future-directed intending is not a truly separate phenomenon from either the intending in action or the acting itself. Ultimately, all intentions are in action, or better still, in extended courses of action. I show how the intuitive distinction between intending and acting is based on modeling the two phenomena on the extreme and limiting cases of an otherwise (...) continuous spectrum of the ways in which agents exercise rational active intelligent guidance in the pursuit of goals. I argue that diachronic intentional agency is better understood in terms of continuity and unity of courses of active and intelligent guidance, and that the distinction between intending to do something and doing it is only a derivative and context-dependent segmentation of these continuous courses of rational active intelligent guidance. (shrink)

Can someone who suspends judgement about a certain proposition <p> be in a relational state of disagreement with someone who believes <p> as well as with some- one who disbelieves <p>? This paper argues for an af- firmative answer. It develops an account of the notions of suspended judgement and disagreement that explains how and why the suspender is in a relational state of disagreement with both the believer and the disbeliever about the very same proposition <p>. More specifically, the (...) paper first provides a characterisation of the norma- tive profile associated with the state of suspended judge- ment in terms of the set of normative commitments that it engenders in the context of inquiry. It then provides a characterisation of the notion of disagreement in terms the incompatibility between the sets of normative com- mitments characteristic of the three states in question— belief, disbelief, and suspension. (shrink)

This paper defends the thesis that meaning is intrinsically normative. Recent anti‐normativist objectors have distinguished two versions of the thesis – correctness and prescriptivity – and have attacked both. In the first two sections, I defend the thesis against each of these attacks; in the third section, I address two further, closely related, anti‐normativist arguments against the normativity thesis and, in the process, clarify its sense by distinguishing a universalist and a contextualist reading of it. I argue that the anti‐normativist (...) position is successful only against the universalist reading but point out that normativists do not require this reading of the thesis; the contextualist one is both possible and desirable for them. Furthermore, I argue that anti‐normativists require the contextualist reading of the normativity thesis to make their case, as well as to avoid meaning relativism. In the final two sections of the paper, I explain how a contextualist understanding of the normativity thesis is compatible with Quine's elimination of analyticity, thus undermining a key underlying reason for anti‐normativism, and I respond to the objection that a contextualist reading of the normativity thesis is either self‐contradictory or else trivial. (shrink)

A number of academic disciplines are seeking to rearticulate the distinction between the natural and the normative by rethinking the position humans occupy within nature. This article surveys this interdisciplinary debate in which the possibility of understanding humans as normative beings is often called into question. The aim of this survey is to identify the stakes involved in such debates and to reveal the underlying policy dimension of current discussions about human nature. This article concludes by arguing that the main (...) target of the current battles for recognition between disciplines is the `public', which is becoming the ultimate epistemic authority in a game with high political stakes. Key Words: humanity • normativity • performativity • political theory • public understanding of science. (shrink)

The aim of the present article is twofold. Firstly, it aims to study the problems arising from the notion of rule proposed by Peter Winch in The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy to account for all meaningful behavior. On the one hand, it will analyze the problems in the argument posed by Winch in order to state that all meaningful behavior is governed by rules. On the other hand, it will focus on the problems concerning (...) his conception of rules and rule-following, with specific emphasis on pointing out the issues that arise from the criterion posed by Winch in order to determine when a rule is being followed. Secondly, it aims to reassess Winch’s proposal and reformulate, accommodate and define his notion of rule in an intentional account of meaningful behavior, thus solving the problems presented. In addition, it will provide a criterion that allows to determine when a rule is being followed. (shrink)

Sociologists, economists, historians, anthropologists, political theorists, and literary critics have all turned their attention to the study of capitalism. But philosophers remain much less engaged. Why is this? And what could philosophy bring to the study of capitalism? Could it help in the development of a general theory? My main argument here is that philosophy does have an important role to play in the study of capitalism, particularly if we want to develop a general theory. Philosophers must describe something that (...) is peculiar to capitalism, in philosophical terms, which has not been explained by sociological, economic, or psychological means. This subject matter does exist: it is the nature of rationality within capitalism. I suggest that this can best be explained by using the theory of the space of reasons, which helps to show how rational human practices shape social and economic institutions, and how our form of rationality is in turn shaped by those practices and institutions. (shrink)

Sociologists, economists, historians, anthropologists, political theorists, and literary critics have all turned their attention to the study of capitalism. But philosophers remain much less engaged. Why is this? And what could philosophy bring to the study of capitalism? Could it help in the development of a general theory? My main argument here is that philosophy does have an important role to play in the study of capitalism, particularly if we want to develop a general theory. Philosophers must describe something that (...) is peculiar to capitalism, in philosophical terms, which has not been explained by sociological, economic, or psychological means. This subject matter does exist: it is the nature of rationality within capitalism. I suggest that this can best be explained by using the theory of the space of reasons, which helps to show how rational human practices shape social and economic institutions, and how our form of rationality is in turn shaped by those practices and institutions. (shrink)

Sociologists, economists, historians, anthropologists, political theorists, and literary critics have all turned their attention to the study of capitalism. But philosophers remain much less engaged. Why is this? And what could philosophy bring to the study of capitalism? Could it help in the development of a general theory? My main argument here is that philosophy does have an important role to play in the study of capitalism, particularly if we want to develop a general theory. Philosophers must describe something that (...) is peculiar to capitalism, in philosophical terms, which has not been explained by sociological, economic, or psychological means. This subject matter does exist: it is the nature of rationality within capitalism. I suggest that this can best be explained by using the theory of the space of reasons, which helps to show how rational human practices shape social and economic institutions, and how our form of rationality is in turn shaped by those practices and institutions. (shrink)

I suggest that we can read Marx in the light of recent analytic, neo-Hegelian thought. I summarize the Pittsburgh School philosophers’ claims about the myth of the given, the claim that human experience is conceptual all the way out, and that we live in a space of reasons. I show how Hegel has been read in those terms, and then apply that reading of Hegel to Marx’s argument that capital is akin to what Hegel called Geist, or spirit. We can (...) understand capitalism as a space of reasons that is contradictory: while the space of reasons is supposed to make human freedom possible, our space of reasons makes freedom impossible. Reading Marx in this way is helpful, because it avoids the flaws of analytical Marxism, existentialism and structuralism. However, it raises a large problem of its own: Can the theory of the space of reasons be applied to a society that is not free of alienation? I argue that it can, but only in ways that would not satisfy the analytic neo-Hegelians themselves. (shrink)

Neo-Fregeanism is a family of positions in the philosophy of mathematics that combines a certain type of platonism about mathematical abstracta with a certain type of logicism about the foundations and epistemology of mathematics. This paper addresses the following question: what sort of theory of reference can/should NF be committed to? The theory of reference I propose for NF comes in two parts. First, an alethic account of referential success: the fact that a term ‘a’ succeeds in referring to something (...) depends on facts about truth. Second, a deflationary account of referential specification: given that ‘a’ refers to something, the fact that ‘a’ refers to b specifically follows from the disquotational schema for reference together with the fact that b = a. In the first section of the paper I argue that NF should be committed to the first part of this theory. This a point on which there is already agreement. The bulk of the paper is therefore devoted to arguing that NF should be committed to the second part, given that it is committed to the first part. I close the paper by indicating some significant implications and a possible problem for this theory of reference. (shrink)

This essay argues that deflationism is incompatible with the phenomenon of referential indeterminacy. This puts the deflationist in the difficult position of having to deny the possibility of what otherwise seems like a manifest and theoretically important phenomenon. Section 1 provides background on deflationism. Section 2 considers an intuitive argument by Stephen Leeds to the effect that deflationism precludes RI; the essay argues that this argument does not succeed. The rest of the essay presents its own, distinct argument for the (...) incompatibility of deflationism and RI. Section 3 argues that direct RI—RI that is not simply a derivative of some other, nonreferential instance of indeterminacy—is strictly incompatible with deflationism. Section 4 considers a couple of different ways the deflationist might try to achieve indirect RI—via indeterminate identity and indeterminate synonymy—and argues that each is unsatisfactory. (shrink)

Heidegger's Being and Time sets out a view of ourselves that shows in positive terms how a reification of ourselves as minded beings can be avoided. Heidegger thereby provides a view of ourselves that fits into one of the main strands of today's philosophy of mind: the intentional vocabulary in which we describe ourselves is indispensable and in principle irreducible to a naturalistic vocabulary. However, as far as ontology is concerned, there is no commitment to the position that being minded (...) is something beyond the physical. In particular, this paper shows how Heidegger's claim that being minded is tied to being-in-the-world links up with (a) externalism and (b) a social theory of intentionality. (shrink)

This paper compares the four principles of Gonseth’s epistemology with Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”. It is shown how Gonseth’s epistemology avoids the main objections to Quine’s holism. On this basis, the relevance of Gonseth’s epistemology for today’s discussion is assessed.

This paper argues against the proposal to draw from current research into a physical theory of quantum gravity the ontological conclusion that spacetime or spatiotemporal relations are not fundamental. As things stand, the status of this proposal is like the one of all the other claims about radical changes in ontology that were made during the development of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. However, none of these claims held up to scrutiny as a consequence of the physics once the (...) theory was established and a serious discussion about its ontology had begun. Furthermore, the paper argues that if spacetime is to be recovered through a functionalist procedure in a theory that admits no fundamental spacetime, standard functionalism cannot serve as a model: all the known functional definitions are definitions in terms of a causal role for the motion of physical objects and hence presuppose spatiotemporal relations. (shrink)

In 1950 Alan Turing asked whether machines could think. This question has been vigorously debated since, and its relevance for machine intelligence, or even agency, continues to provoke interdisciplinary debate. In fact, Turing’s next step in his paper is to ask a far more nuanced question about imitation, which, we suggest, assumes a number of connections between intelligence, agency and the possibility of imitation. This paper will offer three key arguments against these assumptions, and in so doing make the following (...) claims: (1) that intelligence is not a guarantee of personhood or agency, (2) that Turing’s claims for imitation neither resolve the issue of intelligence, nor of agency, and that (3) recognition between agents (or recognition of agency) centres on the interpersonal relationship between agents, which in turn centres on the possibility for communication with a shared language. Our paper does not seek to argue either for or against the possibility of machine thought. Instead we seek to question whether any such processing would be recognized (by other agents) as thought or agency, and what this recognition might involve. (shrink)

Radical embodied cognitive science (REC) tries to understand as much cognition as it can without positing contentful mental entities. Thus, in one prominent formulation, REC claims that content is involved neither in visual perception nor in any more elementary form of cognition. Arguments for REC tend to rely heavily on considerations of ontological parsimony, with authors frequently pointing to the difficulty of explaining content in naturalistically acceptable terms. However, many classic concerns about the difficulty of naturalizing content likewise threaten the (...) credentials of intentionality, which even advocates of REC take to be a fundamental feature of cognition. In particular, concerns about the explanatory role of content and about indeterminacy can be run on accounts of intentionality as well. Issues about explanation can be avoided, intriguingly if uncomfortably, by dramatically reconceptualizing or even renouncing the idea that intentionality can explain. As for indeterminacy, Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin point the way toward a response, appropriating an idea from Ruth Millikan. I take it a step further, arguing that attention to the ways that beliefs’ effects on behavior are modulated by background beliefs can help illuminate the facts that underlie their intentionality and content. (shrink)

A commonplace in contemporary philosophy is that mental content has normative properties. A number of writers associate this view to the idea that the normativity of content is essentially connected to its social character. I agree with the first thesis, but disagree with the second. The paper examines three kinds of views according to which the norms of thought and content are social: Wittgenstein’s rule following considerations, Davidson’s triangulation argument, and Brandom’s inferential pragmatics, and criticises each. It is argued that (...) there are objective conceptual norms constitutive of mental content, but that these are not essentially social. (shrink)

The thesis that mental content is normative is ambiguous and has many forms. This article deals only with the thesis that normativity is connected to our mental attitudes rather than with the content of the attitudes, and more specifically with the view that it is connected to belief. A number of writers have proposed various versions of a ‘norm of truth’ attached to belief. I examine various versions of this claim, and defend it against recent criticisms according to which this (...) norm lacks normative force, that it violates the principle that ‘ought implies can,’ and that it is viciously circular. I defend the view that we should distinguish the statement of the objective norm and the way it is regulated, and that this distinction can answer most of the criticisms of the norm of truth for belief. (shrink)

This paper evaluates Peter Klein’s objection to foundationalism. According to Klein, foundationalism fails because it allows arbitrariness “at the base.” I first explain that this objection can be interpreted in two ways: either as targeting dialectical foundationalism or as targeting epistemic foundationalism. I then clarify Klein’s concept of arbitrariness. An assertion or belief is assumed to be arbitrary if and only if it lacks a reason that is “objectively and subjectively available.” Drawing on this notion, I evaluate Klein’s objection. I (...) first argue that his objection construed as targeting dialectical foundationalism fails, since nothing prevents dialectical foundationalism from ruling out arbitrary assertions. I then argue that the objection seen as targeting epistemic foundationalism cannot be disqualified in the way some foundationalists believe. However, I show that also the objection so construed does not succeed, since epistemic foundationalism need not countenance arbitrary beliefs. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 740-754, June 2022.

One of the many ways that ‘deflationary’ and ‘inflationary’ theories of truth are said to differ is in their attitude towards truth qua property. This difference used to be very easy to delineate, with deflationists denying, and inflationists asserting, that truth is a property, but more recently the debate has become a lot more complicated, owing primarily to the fact that many contemporary deflationists often do allow for truth to be considered a property. Anxious to avoid inflation, however, these deflationists (...) are at pains to point out that the truth property, on their view, is not a property of any significant interest. Correspondingly, inflationists have seen this as an opportunity to refine what kind of property they think truth is, which—according to them—moves their views beyond deflationism. The upshot of this is that there are number of different accounts in the literature of what distinguishes an inflationary truth property from a deflationary one, or—as it is sometimes put—what distinguishes a ‘substantive’ property from an ‘insubstantive’ one. This has made it hard to pin down exactly what is at issue at the metaphysical level between deflationists and inflationists, which makes it increasingly hard to see how debates between them are properly phrased. Given that these positions represent the two central attitudes towards truth in contemporary debates, this makes for a serious obstacle for the project of discerning the correct theory of truth. The aim of this paper is to discern the best way to distinguish between substantive and insubstantive properties, and thus to restore some focus to these debates. I argue that the three central distinctions in the literature fail, and offer what I take to be a more promising distinction in terms of a graded distinction between abundant and sparse properties. (shrink)