There is a strong intuition that we can listen to works of music, yet musical ontologies on which works of music are abstract objects, perhaps most notably, type theories of music, seem to imply that this is impossible. This problem has received relatively little attention in the literature. I here explore and develop a solution suggested by Julian Dodd and argue that it has at least two problematic consequences, namely (i) that some works of music cannot be listened to unless (...) one has already studied the relevant score or through a similar process learned roughly what the work requires of its performances and (ii) that it is possible for two people to listen to different musical works while listening to the same performance. (shrink)

In many cases of variation in color vision, there is no non-arbitrary way of choosing between variants. Byrne and Hilbert insist that there is an unknown standard for choosing, while eliminativists claim that all the variants are erroneous. A better response relativizes colors to perceivers, thereby providing a color realism that avoids the need to choose between variants.

: The relationship between facts and values—in particular, naturalism and normativity—poses an ongoing challenge for feminist science studies. Some have argued that the fact/value holism of W.V. Quine's naturalized epistemology holds promise. I argue that Quinean epistemology, while appropriately naturalized, might weaken the normative force of feminist claims. I then show that Quinean epistemic themes are unnecessary for feminist science studies. The empirical nature of our work provides us with all the naturalized normativity we need.

This monograph proposes a new way of implementing interaction in logic. It also provides an elementary introduction to Constructive Type Theory. The authors equally emphasize basic ideas and finer technical details. In addition, many worked out exercises and examples will help readers to better understand the concepts under discussion. One of the chief ideas animating this study is that the dialogical understanding of definitional equality and its execution provide both a simple and a direct way of implementing the CTT approach (...) within a game-theoretical conception of meaning. In addition, the importance of the play level over the strategy level is stressed, binding together the matter of execution with that of equality and the finitary perspective on games constituting meaning. According to this perspective the emergence of concepts are not only games of giving and asking for reasons, they are also games that include moves establishing how it is that the reasons brought forward accomplish their explicative task. Thus, immanent reasoning games are dialogical games of Why and How. (shrink)

Increasingly, connections are being made between neuroscience and education. At their interface is the attempt to ‘bridge the gap between conscious minds and living brains’. All too often, the two sides pursue a reductionist strategy of excluding the other. A middle way, promoted by Sankey in the context of values education, is emergentism: our conscious mental states are the product of brain processes but are not reducible to them. This paper outlines Sankey’s emergentist position and raises two objections: What are (...) emergent properties and What is the process of emergence? Sankey accepts neuroscience but rejects an eliminative materialist version on three grounds: materialism, reduction and determinism. All three are rebutted. His account of the neuronal, synaptic self is considered and found wanting. Finally, some positive remarks are made about the contribution eliminativism might make to values education. The conclusion reached is this: attempts to bridge the gap between mind and brain have not been successful and Sankey’s emergentism is no exception. This is one divide in education which will not be crossed. (shrink)

Gideon Rosen, Brian Leiter, and Catarina Dutilh Novaes raise deep questions about the arguments in Morality and Mathematics (M&M). Their objections bear on practical deliberation, the formulation of mathematical pluralism, the problem of universals, the argument from moral disagreement, moral ‘perception’, the contingency of our mathematical practices, and the purpose of proof. In this response, I address their objections, and the broader issues that they raise.

Paul Benacerraf's argument from multiple reductions consists of a general argument against realism about the natural numbers (the view that numbers are objects), and a limited argument against reductionism about them (the view that numbers are identical with prima facie distinct entities). There is a widely recognized and severe difficulty with the former argument, but no comparably recognized such difficulty with the latter. Even so, reductionism in mathematics continues to thrive. In this paper I develop a difficulty for Benacerraf's argument (...) against reductionism that is of comparable severity to the now widely recognized difficulty with his general argument against realism. Thanks to Kit Fine, Hartry Field, Jeff Sebo, Ted Sider, Stephen Schiffer, and anonymous referees at Philosophia Mathematica for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks to Aron Edidin for many helpful discussions of the problems that inspired it. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Postmodernism has established a significant hold in educational thought and some of the most important ideas are to be found in the writings of Michael Peters. This paper examines his postmodern stance and use of Lyotard's account of knowledge, and from a naturalist point of view raises a number of objections centred on science as a metanarrative, the unity of the empirical and the evaluative, and reason, truth and the growth of knowledge. It is concluded that postmodern epistemology, unlike naturalism, (...) does not serve education well. (shrink)

Postmodernism has established a significant hold in educational thought and some of the most important ideas are to be found in the writings of Michael Peters. This paper examines his postmodern stance and use of Lyotard's account of knowledge, and from a naturalist point of view raises a number of objections centred on science as a metanarrative, the unity of the empirical and the evaluative, and reason, truth and the growth of knowledge. It is concluded that postmodern epistemology, unlike naturalism, (...) does not serve education well. (shrink)

Recent debates concerning the nature of epistemic justification primarily turn on two distinctions: the objective-subjective distinction and the internal-external distinction. John Pollock has defended a view that is both internalist and subjectivist. He has provided a novel, naturalized account of epistemic justification. In this paper, I argue that data from cognitive psychology and biology is radically at odds with Pollock's project.

This paper seeks to explain learning by examining five theories of learning—conceptual analysis, behavioural, constructivist, computational and connectionist. The first two are found wanting and rejected. Piaget's constructivist theory offers a general explanatory framework but fails to provide an adequate account of the empirical mechanisms of learning. Two theories from cognitive science offering rival explanations of learning are finally considered; it is argued that the brain is not like a computer so the computational model is rejected in favour of a (...) neurally‐based connectionist model of learning. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explain learning by examining five theories of learning—conceptual analysis, behavioural, constructivist, computational and connectionist. The first two are found wanting and rejected. Piaget's constructivist theory offers a general explanatory framework (assimilation and accommodation) but fails to provide an adequate account of the empirical mechanisms of learning. Two theories from cognitive science offering rival explanations of learning are finally considered; it is argued that the brain is not like a computer so the computational model is rejected in (...) favour of a neurally‐based connectionist model of learning. (shrink)

We argue that any theory of color physicalism must include consideration of ecological interactions. Ecological and sensorimotor contingencies resulting from relative surface motion and observer motion give rise to measurable effects on the spectrum of light reflecting from surfaces. These contingencies define invariant manifolds in a sensory-spatial space, which is the physical underpinning of all subjective color experiences.

Conventionalism in sport philosophy has been rejected as unable to provide a theory of normativity and as collapsing in ethical relativism, but this criticism is rather imprecise about its target, which invites doubt about the legitimacy of the concept of conventionalism described by its critics. Instead, a more charitable and legitimate account of conventionalism is proposed, one that draws inspiration from conventionalism in axiomatic geometry and is able to avoid the counterarguments directed against conventionalism. This new model allows for a (...) number of non-conventional elements of sport, namely the definition of sport and certain central moral norms, while at the same time arguing that normativity in sport is not exhausted by them, which leaves athletic communities with authority over a broad range of norms. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is threefold: First, I provide a framework – based on Sellars' distinction between the manifest and the scientific image – for illuminating the distinction between liberal and ‘orthodox’ scientific naturalism. Second, I level a series of objections against expanded liberal naturalism and its core commitment to the autonomy of manifest-image explanations. Further, I present a view which combines liberal and scientific naturalism, albeit construed in resolutely non-representationalist terms. Finally, I attempt to distinguish my own (Sellars- (...) and Peirce-inspired) position from the very similar pragmatic liberal naturalist view, that of Huw Price. I do this by suggesting that a ‘monistic’ Peircian evolutionary naturalism which accepts the Sellarsian scientia mensura principle not only is consistent with ungrudging recognition of the irreducibility of normative facts and the plurality of our discursive practices, but also shows how this irreducibility, by being understood in terms of an evolution-by-selection of a population of perceptual-practical-inferential habits, can be at the same time considered as naturalistically explicable – without any appeal to an expanded manifest-image conception of nature. (shrink)

In this paper I address G. C. Rota’s account of mathematical identity and I attempt to relate it with aspects of Frege as well as Husserl’s views on the issue. After a brief presentation of Rota’s distinction among mathematical facts and mathematical proofs, I highlight the phenomenological background of Rota’s claim that mathematical objects retain their identity through different kinds of axiomatization. In particular, I deal with Rota’s interpretation of the ontological status of mathematical objects in terms of ideality. Then (...) I detect certain similarities among Rota’s views and Frege’s account of the constitution of arithmetical identity on the grounds of 1–1 correspondence. I point out an epistemic as well as an ontological aspect of this issue. In the sequel, I attempt to deal with the problem of “mixed identities” in mathematics stated by Benacerraf by taking in account Rota’s use of the phenomenological notion “Fundierung”. (shrink)

Expressivism is a blossoming meta-semantic framework sometimes relying on what Carter and Chrisman call “the core expressivist maneuver.” That is, instead of asking about the nature of a certain kind of value, we should be asking about the nature of the value judgment in question. According to expressivists, this question substitution opens theoretical space for the elegant, economical, and explanatorily powerful expressivist treatment of the relevant domain. I argue, however, that experimental work in cognitive psychology can shed light on how (...) the core expressivist maneuver operates at the cognitive level and that this: raises worries about the aptness of the expressivist question substitution and supports an evolutionary debunking argument against expressivism. Since evolutionary debunking arguments are usually run in favor of expressivism, this creates an obvious puzzle for expressivists. I wrap up by briefly responding to the objection that the debunking argument against expressivism overgeneralizes and, therefore, should be rejected. (shrink)

It is held by some philosophers that it is possible that x has a disposition D but, if the stimulus condition obtains, it won’t manifest D because of an intrinsic interference. I will criticize this position on the ground that it has a deeply sceptical consequence, for instance, that, assuming that I am not well informed of the micro-properties of a metal coin, I do not know that it is not water-soluble. But I urge that this is beyond the pale, (...) especially in light of the weight of the practical considerations we take when we use dispositional concepts in everyday life or science. In doing so, further, I will formulate a type of belief-forming inference and claim that it confers justification on commonsensical dispositional beliefs like the one that a metal coin isn’t water-soluble. (shrink)

Is there a plausible middle position in the debate between realists and constructivists about categories or kinds? Such a position may seem to be contained in the account of triangulation that Donald Davidson develops in recent writings. On this account, the kinds we pick out are determined by an interaction between our shared similarity responses and causal relations between us and things in our environment. So kinds and categories are neither imposed on us by the nature of the world, nor (...) imposed by us on an intrinsically unstructured reality. But the picture derivable from Davidson's account of triangulation can be interpreted in either of two ways. On one interpretation, it collapses into constructivism. On the other, it turns out to be very close to the most plausible versions of realism. It is argued that Davidson's attempts to distinguish his view from Putnam's realism about natural kinds are unsuccessful. So Davidson's account of triangulation does indeed suggest a plausible view of kinds. But that view is a version of traditional realist views, not an alternative to them. (shrink)

The mass/count distinction attracts a lot of attention among cognitive scientists, possibly because it involves in fundamental ways the relation between language (i.e. grammar), thought (i.e. extralinguistic conceptual systems) and reality (i.e. the physical world). In the present paper, I explore the view that the mass/count distinction is a matter of vagueness. While every noun/concept may in a sense be vague, mass nouns/concepts are vague in a way that systematically impairs their use in counting. This idea has never been systematically (...) pursued, to the best of my knowledge. I make it precise relying on supervaluations (more specifically, ‘data semantics’) to model it. I identify a number of universals pertaining to how the mass/count contrast is encoded in the languages of the world, along with some of the major dimensions along which languages may vary on this score. I argue that the vagueness based model developed here provides a useful perspective on both. The outcome (besides shedding light on semantic variation) seems to suggest that vagueness is not just an interface phenomenon that arises in the interaction of Universal Grammar (UG) with the Conceptual/Intentional System (to adopt Chomsky’s terminology), but it is actually part of the architecture of UG. (shrink)

This paper investigates the complicated relations between various versions of naturalism, behaviorism, and mentalism within the framework of W. V. O. Quine's thinking. It begins with Roger Gibson's reconstruction of Quine's behaviorisms and argues that it lacks a crucial ontological element and misconstrues the relation between philosophy and science. After getting clear of Quine's naturalism, the paper distinguishes between evidential, methodological, and ontological behaviorisms. The evidential and methodological versions are often conflated, but they need to be clearly distinguished in order (...) to see whether Quine's argument against mentalism is cogent. The paper argues that Quine's naturalism supports only the weakest version of behaviorism, that is, the evidential one, but this version is compatible with mentalistic semantics. Quine's opposition to mentalism is an overreaction from the behaviorist camp. By contrast, Jerry Fodor's objection to Jose Luis Bermudez is an overreaction from the opposite direction. (shrink)

William C. Frederick proposes a naturalistic business ethics. Many commentators focus on the issues of naturalistic fallacy, deprivation of freedom of the will, and possibility of important and universal moral values in business ethics. I argue that an ethics being naturalistic is not a worry. The issue of deprivation of free will is irrelevant. Yet there are urgent questions regarding the possibility of important and universal moral values, which may prevent Frederick’s view from getting off the ground.

In this special issue, we put together papers that explore the theme “objectivity, space, and mind” from various angles. In the introduction we minimally discuss what are involved in this theme.

This paper attempts to provide a defence for a narrative theory of the self in the face of criticisms from the anti‐narrative camp. It begins by addressing certain uncontroversial premises that both pro‐ and the anti‐narrative camps might be thought to agree on: the status of humans as homo significans or meaning‐makers, the natural form‐finding tendency and certain desiderata for significance and value that we possess, and the raw material of life and its constituents that we proceed from. Whereas the (...) pro‐narrative camp seeks to provide the narrative theory of the self as a valid argument for how we proceed from the raw material of life and undifferentiated experience and these desiderata and tendencies (i.e.: the premises) to a conception of both selfhood and moral responsibility (i.e.: the conclusion), the anti‐narrative camp holds the conclusion to be false and the narrative theory of the self to be invalid. The Parfitian view holds the conception of the self to be ultimately false, whereas the Strawsonian view holds both the conception of the self and the conception of moral responsibility to be ultimately false. The grounds they provide, however, tend to be metaphysical in nature, demonstrating that they have fundamentally misunderstood how the narrative theory of the self functions as a semantic thesis. I will demonstrate certain defects in the metaphysical arguments that anti‐narrativists like Parfit and Strawson have made against what is essentially a semantic thesis about how we make sense of our lives. I will also attempt to shore up the semantic thesis in other relevant aspects. (shrink)

In this article, I analyze Quine’s conception of science, which is a radical defence of extensionalism on the grounds that first‐order logic is the most adequate logic for science. I examine some criticisms addressed to it, which show the role of modalities and probabilities in science and argue that Quine’s treatment of probability minimizes the intensional character of scientific language and methods by considering that probability is extensionalizable. But this extensionalizing leads to untenable results in some cases and is not (...) consistent with the fact that Quine himself admits confirmation which includes probability. Quine’s extensionalism does not account for this fact and then seems unrealistic, even if science ought to be extensional in so far as it is descriptive and mathematically expressible. (shrink)

In this paper I link two hitherto disconnected sets of results in the philosophy of emotions and explore their implications for the computational theory of mind. The argument of the paper is that, for just the same reasons that some computationalists have thought that cognition may be a natural kind, so the same can plausibly be argued of emotion. The core of the argument is that emotions are a representation-governed phenomenon and that the explanation of how they figure in behaviour (...) must as such be undertaken in those terms. I conclude with some interdisciplinary reflections in defence of the hypothesis that emotions might be more fundamental in the organization of behaviour than cognition; that, in effect, we may be emoters before we are cognizers . The aim of the paper is: (1) to introduce a number of promising results in philosophical and empirical emotion theory to a wider audience; and (2) to begin the task of organizing those results into a computational theoretical framework. (shrink)

Knowledge representation is a central issue in a number of areas, but few attempts are usually made to bridge different approaches accross different fields. As a contribution in this direction, in this paper I focus on one such approach, the theory of conceptual spaces developed within cognitive science, and explore its potential applications in the fields of philosophy of science and formal epistemology. My case-study is provided by the theory of truthlikeness, construed as closeness to “the whole truth” about a (...) given domain, as described in the underlying language. I show how modeling propositions and their relations within a conceptual space has interesting implications for two issues in truthlikeness theory: the so called problem of language dependence, and that of measure sensitivity. I conclude by pointing at some open issues arising from the application of conceptual spaces to the analysis of philosophical problems. (shrink)

As the title – Husserl’s Legacy – and subtitle – Phenomenology, Metaphysics, and Transcendental Philosophy – make clear, Dan Zahavi’s new book is centrally concerned with developing and defending a particular account of Husserl’s legacy. Rather than tracing lines of influence or measuring the impact of various of Husserl’s ideas, Zahavi is interested in Husserl’s legacy in a different and more demanding sense that pertains to what he refers to as ‘the overarching aims and ambitions of Husserlian phenomenology’. He is (...) interested in the continued significance and relevance of Husserl’s philosophy as a comprehensive philosophical system that accordingly stakes out a position on fundamental questions concerning the mind, experience, and the nature of reality; hence the subtitle’s trio of phenomenology, metaphysics, and transcendental philosophy. The legacy that concerns Zahavi lies here, with how the first two notions find their completion in the third: properly understood, Husserl’s transcendental philosophy, which offers a phenomenological form of transcendental idealism, offers a powerful philosophical vision that is directly relevant to contemporary philosophical concerns.1 1 Thus Zahavi is interested in Husserl as a systematic philosopher, whose system is not just of historical interest, a relic from our philosophical past; in keeping with the notion of a legacy, Husserl’s philosophy is something whose inheritance might profit us here and now. (shrink)

Naturalism in twentieth century philosophy is founded on the rejection of ‘first philosophy’, as can be seen in Quine’s rejection of what he calls ‘cosmic exile’. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology falls within the scope of what naturalism rejects, but I argue that the opposition between phenomenology and naturalism is less straightforward than it appears. This is so not because transcendental phenomenology does not involve a problematic form of exile, but because naturalism, in its recoil from transcendental philosophy, creates a new form (...) of exile, what I call in the paper ‘exile from within’. These different forms of exile are the result of shared epistemological aspirations, which, if set aside, leave open the possibility of phenomenology without exile. In the conclusion of the paper, I appeal to Merleau-Ponty as an example of what phenomenology without epistemology might look like. (shrink)

The view that the subject matter of epistemology is the concept of knowledge is faced with the problem that all attempts so far to define that concept are subject to counterexamples. As an alternative, this article argues that the subject matter of epistemology is knowledge itself rather than the concept of knowledge. Moreover, knowledge is not merely a state of mind but rather a certain kind of response to the environment that is essential for survival. In this perspective, the article (...) outlines an answer to four basic questions about knowledge: What is the role of knowledge in human life? What is the relation between knowledge and reality? How is knowledge acquired? Is there any a priori knowledge? (shrink)

This paper is more explorative than programmatic. It attempts to place empirical flesh on some of Alfred North Whitehead's speculative thoughts on concrete apprehensions. The challenge lies in the fact that Whitehead was vague on the subject. While Whitehead offers numerous thoughts on why we mistake the abstract for the concrete he wrote considerably less on how we can get ourselves to think more concretely. I therefore examine an empirical case and work 'backwards', showing its affinities with process thought. A (...) largely invisible phenomenon within the social/political theory literature is the empirical subject of this paper: the agricultural field day (though the events examined are not of the conventional variety). The paper begins with an overview of Whitehead's critique of abstraction and the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Attention then turns directly to the case study to empirically ground Whitehead's thoughts on doing more concrete abstractions. (shrink)

It is generally thought that Carnap’s principle of tolerance cannot be integrated into a coherent overall conception of rationality. The doubts come from many sides, of which two are singled out. This paper argues that both are wrong, and that Carnapian rationality is a viable and perhaps quite interesting program for further development.

Taking a lead from Eva Picardi’s work and influence, I investigate the significance of Frege’s context principle for the philosophy of language. I argue that there are some interpretive problems with recent meta-semantic interpretations of the principle. Instead, I offer a somewhat weaker alternative: the context principle is a tool to license certain definitions. Moreover, I claim that it merely lays out one of many possible ways of licensing a definition. This means, among other things, that despite Frege’s imperative injunctions, (...) the context principle formulates a permission—not a requirement. (shrink)

It is more than a half-century since Nelson Goodman [1955] applied what we call the Reflective Equilibrium model of justification to the problem of justifying induction, and more than three decades since Rawls [1971] and Daniels [1979] applied celebrated extensions of this model to the problem of justifying principles of social justice. The resulting Wide Reflective Equilibrium model (WRE) is generally thought to capture an acceptable way to reconcile inconsistency between an intuitively plausible general principle and an intuitively plausible judgment (...) about a particular case. Recently a different model for reconciling moral inconsistency has emerged: Moral Consistency Reasoning [Campbell and Kumar 2012, 2013a; Kumar and Campbell 2012; Campbell 2009: 86?7; Campbell and Woodrow 2003; Wong 2002]. MCR applies when two moral judgments give opposing assessments of (what appear to be) relevantly similar particular cases. Though WRE and MCR are strikingly different, each arguably captures a rationally acceptable method for reconciling moral inconsistency. Moreover, as will be shown, they function in complementary ways. Are they parts of a more comprehensive model of moral reasoning in the face of inconsistency that would explain the attractions of each? This essay first spells out the relevant differences between the models and then formulates a more general model of moral reasoning in the face of inconsistency. ?1 reviews the emergence of Goodman's model that he offers in the spirit of epistemology naturalized, almost a decade before Quine coined the term [1969a]. ?2 analyses six salient features of WRE to be compared with six contrasting features of MCR in ?3. ?4 presents the general model. (shrink)

Argues that natural kind terms are token-reflexive, with reference ultimately fixed to the underlying explanatory properties of the surface qualities of local matter.

Barry Barnes and David Bloor of the Strong Programme of the sociology of knowledge advance a naturalized epistemology that reduces all accounts of normativity to social causes. I endorse their program of naturalizing one kind of normativity, but I argue that there is another kind they cannot naturalize. Within the context of sociological explanations of rationality, there are norms of rationality instantiated by scientists that Barnes and Bloor study, and Barnes and Bloor's own normative ascriptions of scientists as rational beings. (...) I argue that Barnes and Bloor successfully justify their naturalization of the norms of rationality of the scientists they describe by a methodological caution and arguments from under-determination and finitism. But they inevitably fail to naturalize their own normative ascriptions of those scientists as rational. (shrink)

A chief aim of this paper is to provide common ground for discussion of outstanding issues between defenders of classical logic and contemporary advocates of intuitionistic logic. In this spirit, I draw upon (and reconstruct) here the relationship between dialogue and evidence as emphasized in German constructivist authors. My approach depends upon developments in the methodology of empirical linguistics. As a preliminary to saying how one might decide between these two versions of logic (this issue is most closely approached in (...) Section V. discussing the constructivist approach), it is well worth the effort to look closely at how logic is (or might be) learned and at questions concerning logic in translation, i.e., the question of how we might detect the variety of logic actually employed in a given speech community. (shrink)

There is a tendency, a bad tendency, to make epistemic agency the central focus of epistemology. In brief, epistemologists have traditionally elevated epistemic agency as the crucial issue to be addressed, and ask all other epistemological questions in light of that issue. This is not surprising given the Cartesian influence on epistemology, but I argue that epistemic agency should not always be the central focus of epistemology. There are times when giving central place to epistemic agency gets in the way (...) of good epistemology. In this paper, I show how one approach to a communitarian epistemology falters precisely because of the primacy given to epistemic agency. Specifically, I take a close look at Lynn Hankinson Nelson?s notion of epistemological communities in terms of epistemic agency and analyze both its merits and its shortcomings. This is an important analysis for general consideration given the trend in non-traditional epistemologies to look towards social complexes as the real seats of knowledge. But this is also important because my analysis pushes one to consider an alternative framing concept for epistemology?that of epistemic practises instead of epistemic agency. (shrink)

This is the first of two articles in which I reflect on “generalized Darwinism” as currently discussed in evolutionary economics. I approach evolutionary economics by the roundabouts of evolutionary epistemology and the philosophy of biology, and contrast evolutionary economists’ cautious generalizations of Darwinism with “imperialistic” proposals to unify the behavioral sciences. I then discuss the continued resistance to biological ideas in the social sciences, focusing on the issues of naturalism and teleology. In the companion article (Callebaut, Biol Theory 6. doi: (...) 10.1007/s13752-013-0087-1, 2011, this issue) I assess generalized Darwinism, concentrating on the roles of theory and model building, generative replication, and the relation between selection and self-organization; and I point to advances in biology that promise to be more fruitful as sources of inspiration for evolutionary economics than the project to generalize Darwinism in its current, “hardened Modern Synthesis” form. (shrink)

Paul Roth claims that “interpretivists” in the philosophy of social sciences like Charles Taylor assume a positivist caricature of natural science to motivate their arguments against naturalism in the social sciences. Roth argues that not only is adopting the view of meaning relied upon by those he sometimes refers to as the “friends of understanding” unmotivated once the critique of positivism has been taken on board, he argues further that Quine has shown why this “meaning realism” is unavailable in principle. (...) Roth bolsters his use of Quine against interpretivists by referring to Kripke’s reading of Wittgenstein on rule-following. But McDowell has shown how Kripke overlooks an alternative reading of those remarks, which provides “interpretivists” with arguments against mainstream naturalism and which makes no use of anything resembling “meaning realism.” This opening for interpretivists is actually already present in Roth’s discussion of the distinction between “thin” and “thick” description. This suggests how mainstream naturalism itself might be rethought to accommodate interpretivism. (shrink)

A discussion of Quine and Davidson, as interpreted and criticized in Scott Soames’ Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume II.

The target article is an attempt to make some progress on the problem of color realism. Are objects colored? And what is the nature of the color properties? We defend the view that physical objects (for instance, tomatoes, radishes, and rubies) are colored, and that colors are physical properties, specifically types of reflectance. This is probably a minority opinion, at least among color scientists. Textbooks frequently claim that physical objects are not colored, and that the colors are "subjective" or "in (...) the mind." The article has two other purposes: first, to introduce an interdisciplinary audience to some distinctively philosophical tools that are useful in tackling the problem of color realism and, second, to clarify the various positions and central arguments in the debate. (shrink)

Our reply is in three parts. The first part concerns some foundational issues in the debate about color realism. The second part addresses the many objections to the version of physicalism about color ("productance physicalism") defended in the target article. The third part discusses the leading alternative approaches and theories endorsed by the commentators.