This paper takes up an important epistemological challenge to the naturalistic moral realist: that her metaphysical commitments are difficult to square with a plausible rationalist view about the epistemology of morality. The paper begins by clarifying and generalizing this challenge. It then illustrates how the generalized challenge can be answered by a form of naturalistic moral realism that I dub joint-carving moral realism. Both my framing of this challenge and my answer advertise the methodological significance of non-fundamental epistemological theorizing, which (...) defends and deploys epistemological claims without adverting to the most fundamental epistemological facts. (shrink)

`Quantum theory' is not a single physical theory but a framework in which many different concrete theories fit. As such, a solution to the quantum measurement problem ought to provide a recipe to interpret each such concrete theory, in a mutually consistent way. But with the exception of the Everett interpretation, the mainextant solutions either try to make sense of the abstract framework as if it were concrete, or else interpret one particular quantum theory under the fiction that it is (...) fundamental and exact. In either case, these approaches are unable to help themselves to the very theory-laden, level-relative ways in which quantum theory makes contact with experiment in mainstream physics, and so are committed to major revisionary projects which have not been carried out even in outline. As such, only the Everett interpretation is currently suited to make sense of quantum physics as we find it. (shrink)

As analytic philosophy is becoming increasingly aware of and interested in its own history, the study of that field is broadening to include, not just its earliest beginnings, but also the mid-twentieth century. One of the towering figures of this epoch is W.V. Quine (1908-2000), champion of naturalism in philosophy of science, pioneer of mathematical logic, trying to unite an austerely physicalist theory of the world with the truths of mathematics, psychology, and linguistics. Quine's posthumous papers, notes, and drafts revealing (...) the development of his views in the forties have recently begun to be published, as well as careful philosophical studies of, for instance, the evolution of his key doctrine that mathematical and logical truth are continuous with, not divorced from, the truths of natural science. But one central text has remained unexplored: Quine's Portuguese-language book on logic, his 'farewell for now' to the discipline as he embarked on an assignment in the Navy in WWII. Anglophone philosophers have neglected this book because they could not read it. Jointly with colleagues, I have completed the first full English translation of this book. In this accompanying paper I draw out the main philosophical contributions Quine made in the book, placing them in their historical context and relating them to Quine's overall philosophical development during the period. Besides significant developments in the evolution of Quine's views on meaning and analyticity, I argue, this book is also driven by Quine's indebtedness to Russell and Whitehead, Tarski, and Frege, and contains crucial developments in his thinking on philosophy of logic and ontology. This includes early versions of some arguments from 'On What There Is', four-dimensionalism, and virtual set theory. (shrink)

This paper provides an externalist account of talk and thought that clearly distinguishes the two. It is argued that linguistic meanings and concepts track different phenomena and have different explanatory roles. The distinction, understood along the lines proposed, brings theoretical gains in a cluster of related areas. It provides an account of meaning change which accommodates the phenomenon of contested meanings and the possibility of substantive disagreement across theoretical divides, and it explains the nature and value of conceptual engineering in (...) a way that addresses recent prominent concerns. (shrink)

In this Introduction, we aim to introduce the reader to the basic topic of this book. As part of this, we explain why we are using two different expressions (‘conceptual engineering’ and ‘conceptual ethics’) to describe the topics in the book. We then turn to some of the central foundational issues that arise for conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics, and finally we outline various views one might have about their role in philosophy and inquiry more generally.

Throughout its history, analytic philosophy has established a decidedly anti-rhetoric self-understanding. Yet the historical development of analytic philosophy, leading from Russell to Quine and Davidson, successively puts this anti-rhetorical ideals in question. Even though the rhetorics of clarity and objectivity remain, the discussions of post-analytic philosophy focus more and more an an understanding of language which is forced to acknowledge its irreducible practical and situational aspects. Analytical philosophy, then, should be seen as a decidedly anti-rhetoric tradition which tries to keep (...) up the spirit of scientific enlightenment in times of growing skepticism -- and which is driven, by the very force of clarity and a better understanding, to develop a picture of language which undermines this ideal at least in some aspects. (shrink)

What is W. V. O. Quine’s relationship to classical pragmatism? Although he resists the comparison to William James in particular, commentators have seen an affinity between his “web of belief” model of theory confirmation and James’s claim that our beliefs form a “stock” that faces new experience as a corporate body. I argue that the similarity is only superficial. James thinks our web of beliefs should be responsive not just to perceptual but also to emotional experiences in some cases; Quine (...) denies this. I motivate James’s controversial view by appealing to an episode in the history of medicine when a researcher self-experimented by swallowing a vial of bacteria that at the time had not been studied in much detail. The researcher’s commitment to his own as-yet untested hypothesis was based in part on emotional considerations. Finally, I argue that Quine’s insistence that emotions can never be relevant to adjusting our web of belief reflects a tacit holdover of one of logical positivism’s crucially anti-pragmatist commitments—that philosophy of science should focus exclusively on the context of justification, not the context of discovery. James’s emphasis on discovery as a (perhaps the) crucial locus for epistemological inquiry is characteristic of pragmatism in general. Since Quinean epistemology is always an epistemology of justification, he is not happily viewed as a member of the pragmatist tradition. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that theories of perception that appeal to Helmholtz’s idea of unconscious inference (“Helmholtzian” theories) should be taken literally, i.e. that the inferences appealed to in such theories are inferences in the full sense of the term, as employed elsewhere in philosophy and in ordinary discourse. -/- In the course of the argument, I consider constraints on inference based on the idea that inference is a deliberate acton, and on the idea that inferences depend on the (...) syntactic structure of representations. I argue that inference is a personal-level but sometimes unconscious process that cannot in general be distinguished from association on the basis of the structures of the representations over which it’s defined. I also critique arguments against representationalist interpretations of Helmholtzian theories, and argue against the view that perceptual inference is encapsulated in a module. (shrink)

William James was one of the most controversial philosophers of the early part of the 20 century, and his apparent skepticism about logic and any robust conception of truth was often simply attributed to his endorsing mysticism and irrationality out of an overwhelming desire to make room for religion in his world-view. However, it will be argued here that James’s pessimism about logic and even truth (or at least ‘absolute’ truth), while most prominent in his later views, stem from the (...) naturalistic conception of concepts developed much earlier in The Principles of Psychology (1890), and it is his commitment to naturalism about our conceptual powers, rather than to any sort of mysticism or irrationalism, that motivates his skepticism about the scope and power of logic, and ultimately about the objectivity of truth itself. (shrink)

I discuss the structure of genealogical debunking arguments. I argue that they undermine our mathematical beliefs if they undermine our moral beliefs. The contrary appearance stems from a confusion of arithmetic truths with (first-order) logical truths, or from a confusion of reliability with justification. I conclude with a discussion of the cogency of debunking arguments, in light of the above. Their cogency depends on whether information can undermine all of our beliefs of a kind, F, without giving us direct reason (...) to doubt that our F-beliefs are modally secure. (shrink)

In this paper I challenge the pernicious aspects of Milton Friedman's methodological outlook that continues to hold sway over mainstream neoclassical economists. I do this by showing how Friedman's own methodological dicta could have been used against him when he famously advanced the expectations critique of the Phillips curve at his presidential address to the American Economic Association. I use this case study to further suggest that psychological and neurophysiological data should not be deemed irrelevant to economic science.

Purpose. The paper is aimed at studying the specificity of anthropological problematics in pragmatism from the perspective of its ability to be the source of analytic philosophy evolution in the socio-humanitarian direction. Theoretical basis of the research is determined by the works of the representatives of classical pragmatism, neopragmatism, post-pragmatism and analytic pragmatism. Their works give a clear understanding of the important place of anthropological searches in the theory of pragmatism. Originality. On the basis of the analysis of logical, epistemological (...) and metaphysical ideas formulated by representatives of pragmatism, it is proved that pragmatic methodology is anthropocentric. It is established that the ideological and social foundations of pragmatism can be determined as pluralistic ones due to the attention to the human person. It is revealed that theoretical and methodological searches of pragmatism can be effective in the formation of the socio-humanitarian concepts in analytic philosophy through the specification of strategies for the cognition of human existence in such terms as experience or self and the development of practical ways to justify the truth of knowledge. Conclusions. Pragmatists criticized impersonal, formal thinking, which cannot be an effective means of cognition. Thinking has a social basis and is entirely personal. Justifying its dependence on the socio-cultural sphere and the internal intentions of the subject, it is possible to develop an effective logical theory that operates symbols not only at the syntactic or semantic level but also takes into account the pragmatic aspect of language. Anthropological problematics is also important in the theory of knowledge, the core of which is the notion of pragmatic belief, which enables truth and religious beliefs, since the foundation of the theory of truth is determined by the principle of humanism, and the truth is interpreted as a value orientation. Knowing the external world, we find in it the similarity with us – that’s why the metaphysical foundations of being, according to pragmatism, are personified, and the methodology is defined in anthropomorphic terms. Applying it, the study of human existence is specified in the analysis of psychological and socio-cultural dimensions of such concepts as experience or self. Attempts to comprehend the nature of human existence in pragmatism are empirically grounded. Appealing to science, methodological pluralism, the search for socio-cultural background for thinking and suitable linguistic forms of expression of human experience are the achievements of pragmatism, which are the basis for the socio-humanitarian redescription of analytic methodology. (shrink)

I argue that we can achieve certainty about some empirical propositions. When someone is having a migraine and attending to it, she can be certain that she is in pain. I show that examples intended to undermine claims of certainty or to raise doubts about the reliability of introspection do not touch such cases. Traditional foundationalists have held that epistemically certain beliefs can serve as the basis for all one’s other justified beliefs. This is not so, because those beliefs that (...) are certain are spread too thinly to serve as broad justificatory foundations. Certainty has a different role. The best explanation for the existence of epistemically certain empirical beliefs is experientialism, the view that nondoxastic sensory experiences can justify beliefs. Experientialism then offers a framework for showing how the stream of sensory experiences can provide an adequate basis for the justification of our ordinary beliefs about the external world. (shrink)

In this paper, I distinguish between two possible versions of Amie Thomasson’s easy ontology project that differ in virtue of positing atomic or holistic application conditions, and evaluate the strengths of a holistic version over a non-holistic version. In particular, I argue that neither of the recently identified regress or circularity problems are troublesome for the supporter of easy ontology if they adopt a holistic account of application conditions. This is not intended to be a defence of easy ontology from (...) all possible objections, but rather to compare holistic and non-holistic versions of the view. This discussion is also significant in that it serves to highlight two distinct forms of easy ontology, which, I argue, need to be distinguished when assessing the merits of the easy approach in future work. (shrink)

Different approaches analyze the strength of a natural language argument in different ways. This paper contrasts the dialectical, structural, probabilistic (or Bayesian), computational, and empirical approaches by exemplarily applying them to a single argumentative text (Epicureans on Squandering Life; Aikin & Talisse, 2019). Rather than pitching these approaches against one another, our main goal is to show the room for fruitful interaction. Our focus is on a dialectical analysis of the squandering argument as an argumentative response that voids an interlocutor’s (...) right to assertion. This analysis addresses the pragmatic dimensions of arguing and implies an argument structure that is consistent with empirical evidence of perceived argument strength. Results show that the squandering argument can be evaluated as a (non-fallacious) ad hominem argument, which however is not necessarily stronger than possible arguments attacking it. (shrink)

Hyperintensionality – the failure of substitutivity salva veritate of intensionally equivalent expressions – is one of the most debated topics in recent philosophy of language. Being a phenomenon that affects a wide variety of different sentential contexts, a question concerning its source arises: is hyperintensionality something that can originate from actual features of the world, or it is simply some kind of representational phenomenon, which entirely depends on our conceptual faculties and preferred semantics? After a brief general introduction to the (...) topic from the semantic standpoint, in the present work I defend a view developed by Daniel Nolan, according to which hyperintensionality can be a worldly, non-representational phenomenon. I first reconstruct Nolan’s view and argument for worldly hyperintensionality, understood through the comparison with de re intensional modality. Then, I address the main criticism that has been raised against it, developing three objections. Evidence for worldly hyperintensionality is thereby presented, by focusing on a paradigmatic trigger: counterpossible conditionals. I provide two jointly sufficient criteria for a counterpossible to be a genuine instance of worldly hyperintensionality, then illustrate three case studies from scientific practices that all rely on counterpossible reasoning: reducibility in relative computability theory; scientific explanation of certain substances’ essential properties; and emergent molecular structure in chemistry. Each of them is evaluated by checking if it satisfies the criteria for worldly hyperintensionality, leading to the detection of patterns of counterpossible dependence occurring in at least some specific instances of the case studies discussed. Finally, I suggest a possible realist reading of such dependence relation, locating its relata in the world, independently from our representations. (shrink)

I discuss some problems related to extreme mathematical realism, focusing on a recently proposed “shut-up-and-calculate” approach to physics. I offer arguments for a moderate alternative, the essence of which lies in the acceptance that mathematics is a human construction, and discuss concrete consequences of this—at first sight purely philosophical—difference in point of view.

It is common for contemporary metaphysical realists to adopt Quine's criterion of ontological commitment while at the same time repudiating his ontological pragmatism. 2 Drawing heavily from the work of others—especially Joseph Melia and Stephen Yablo—I will argue that the resulting approach to meta-ontology is unstable. In particular, if we are metaphysical realists, we need not accept ontological commitment to whatever is quantified over by our best first-order theories.

Empiricist philosophers like Carnap invoked analyticity in order to explain a priori knowledge and necessary truth. Analyticity was “truth purely in virtue of meaning”. The view had a deflationary motivation: in Carnap’s proposal, linguistic conventions alone determine the truth of analytic sentences, and thus there is no mystery in our knowing their truth a priori, or in their necessary truth; for they are, as it were, truths of our own making. Let us call this “Carnapian conventionalism”, conventionalismC and cognates for (...) short. This conventionalistC explication of the a priori has been the target of sound criticisms. Arguments like Quine’s in “Truth by Convention” are in our view decisive: the truth of conventionalismC requires that the class of logical truths and logical validities be reductively accounted for as conventionally established; however, no such reduction is forthcoming, because logic is needed to generate the entire class from any given set of conventions properly so-called. Granted that conventionalismC is untenable, we want to take issue with a different, usually made criticism. Although the argument uncovers some difficulties for the way conventionalist claims are defended by some of its advocates, we will try to show that it fails. The criticism thus stands in the way of a proper appreciation of why the Carnapian account of the a priori is not correct. We will try to illustrate this by showing that the criticism we will dispute would dispose of conventionalist claims not only regarding philosophically problematic cases – logical and mathematical truths –, but also regarding cases for which they have some prima facie plausibility. One such case is that of truths that follow from mere abbreviations, “nominal” definitions; ‘someone is a bachelor if and only if he is an unmarried adult male’ can serve at this point for illustration. We will try to articulate a clear sense in which the contents of assertion such as this can be truths by convention. We do not need to prove that a conventionalist claim is true in those cases; it is enough for us to show that it is intelligible, for the arguments we will confront question even this. (shrink)

This book addresses how our revisionary practices account for relations between texts and how they are read. It offers an overarching philosophy of revision concerning works of fiction, fact, and faith, revealing unexpected insights about the philosophy of language, the metaphysics of fact and fiction, and the history and philosophy of science and religion. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophy of literature, literary theory and criticism, (...) and history and philosophy of science and religion. (shrink)

La teleosemántica es una teoría teleológica de las representaciones mentales, propugnada por David Papineau, que tiene como propósito ofrecer una explicación naturalista y evolucionista de dichas representaciones, en particular de las creencias. Mi objetivo será analizar las creencias y su relación con la verdad en la obra de Papineau. Según Papineau, los contenidos y las representaciones mentales, específicamente las creencias, cumplen funciones derivadas de la evolución biológica de la especie, y correlativamente, la finalidad de las creencias y los contenidos proviene (...) de las funciones biológicas que cada una de ellas tiene. De acuerdo a Papineau, para que las creencias cumplan sus funciones biológicas deben ser verdaderas, es decir, corresponder con la realidad. Defenderé la idea de que, a diferencia de lo que plantea la teleosemántica, la verdad y la falsedad, o más específicamente, los enunciados verdaderos y falsos son doxásticos, es decir, son enunciados que expresan creencias. Las creencias no tienen que ser verdaderas, sino más bien útiles, de manera que el que sean verdaderas o no es un producto secundario de la creencia. (shrink)

The thesis investigates the implications for moral philosophy of research in psychology. In addition to an introduction and concluding remarks, the thesis consists of four chapters, each exploring various more specific challenges or inputs to moral philosophy from cognitive, social, personality, developmental, and evolutionary psychology. Chapter 1 explores and clarifies the issue of whether or not morality is innate. The chapter’s general conclusion is that evolution has equipped us with a basic suite of emotions that shape our moral judgments in (...) important ways. Chapter 2 presents and investigates the challenge presented to deontological ethics by Joshua Greene’s so-called dual process theory. The chapter partly agrees with his conclusion that the dual process view neutralizes some common criticisms against utilitarianism founded on deontological intuitions, but also points to avenues left to explore for deontologists. Chapter 3 focuses on Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer’s suggestion that utilitarianism is less vulnerable to so-called evolutionary debunking than other moral theories. The chapter is by and large critical of their attempt. In the final chapter 4, attention is directed at the issue of whether or not social psychology has shown that people lack stable character traits, and hence that the virtue ethical view is premised on false or tenuous assumptions. Though this so-called situationist challenge at one time seemed like a serious threat to virtue ethics, the chapter argues for a moderate position, pointing to the fragility of much of the empirical research invoked to substantiate this challenge while also suggesting revisions to the virtue-ethical view as such. (shrink)

A Série Investigação Filosófica é uma série de livros de traduções de verbetes da Enciclopédia de Filosofia da Stanford (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) e de outras plataformas internacionalmente reconhecidas, que intenciona servir tanto como material didático para os professores das diferentes sub-áreas e níveis da Filosofia quanto como material de estudo para a pesquisa e para concursos da área. Nós, professores, sabemos o quão difícil é encontrar bom material em português para indicarmos. E há uma certa deficiência na graduação brasileira (...) de filosofia, principalmente em localizações menos favorecidas, com relação ao conhecimento de outras línguas, como o inglês e o francês. Tentamos, então, suprir essa deficiência, ao introduzirmos essas traduções ao público de língua portuguesa, sem nenhuma finalidade comercial e meramente pela glória da filosofia. (shrink)

A reply to Gérald Bronner, Véronique Campion-Vincent, Sylvain Delouvée, Sebastian Dieguez, Nicolas Gauvrit, Anthony Lantian, and Pascal Wagner-Egger's piece, '“They” Respond: Comments on Basham et al.’s “Social Science’s Conspiracy-Theory Panic: Now They Want to Cure Everyone”.

Language research is currently in a state of flux. The phenomenon of language is not merely the topic of investigation in linguistics, it is examined by a multitude of scholars with different scientific backgrounds. In order to examine how these various disciplines approach language, a think-tank was founded in 2002, called DITO, Dynamisch Inter(-en trans)disciplinair onderzoek, or Dynamic Inter- (and trans)disciplinary Research. The think-tank is located at the Belgian Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Free University of Brussels). This book provides short introductory (...) articles to the language research conducted by some of the think-tank’s most important members, from within the point of view of the following 5 disciplines: philosophy of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, neuroscience, sign language research and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

Are humans rational? Various experiments performed over the last several decades have been interpreted as showing that humans are irrational we make significant and consistent errors in logical reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, similarity judgements, and risk-assessment, to name a few areas. But can these experiments establish human irrationality, or is it a conceptual truth that humans must be rational, as various philosophers have argued? In this book, Edward Stein offers a clear critical account of this debate about rationality in philosophy and (...) cognitive science. He discusses concepts of rationality - the pictures of rationality that the debate centres on - and assesses the empirical evidence used to argue that humans are irrational. He concludes that the question of human rationality must be answered not conceptually but empirically, using the full resources of an advanced cognitive science. Furthermore, he extends this conclusion to argue that empirical considerations are also relevant to the theory of knowedge - in other words, that epistemology should be naturalized. from the reviews: 'Stein has done a great service in bringing together all of the important arguments in the human rationality debate and providing a measured critical assessment of them.... This will be an important book and is essential reading for epistemologists, philosophers of mind, and cognitive and evolutionary psychologists.' Choice 'very considerable value... for professionals' Times Higher Education Supplement. (shrink)

Esta enciclopédia abrange, de uma forma introdutória mas desejavelmente rigorosa, uma diversidade de conceitos, temas, problemas, argumentos e teorias localizados numa área relativamente recente de estudos, os quais tem sido habitual qualificar como «estudos lógico-filosóficos». De uma forma apropriadamente genérica, e apesar de o território teórico abrangido ser extenso e de contornos por vezes difusos, podemos dizer que na área se investiga um conjunto de questões fundamentais acerca da natureza da linguagem, da mente, da cognição e do raciocínio humanos, bem (...) como questões acerca das conexões destes com a realidade não mental e extralinguística. A razão daquela qualificação é a seguinte: por um lado, a investigação em questão é qualificada como filosófica em virtude do elevado grau de generalidade e abstracção das questões examinadas (entre outras coisas); por outro, a investigação é qualificada como lógica em virtude de ser uma investigação logicamente disciplinada, no sentido de nela se fazer um uso intenso de conceitos, técnicas e métodos provenientes da disciplina de lógica. O agregado de tópicos que constitui a área de estudos lógico-filosóficos é já visível, pelo menos em parte, no Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus de Ludwig Wittgenstein, uma obra publicada em 1921. E uma boa maneira de ter uma ideia sinóptica do território disciplinar abrangido por esta enciclopédia, ou pelo menos de uma porção substancial dele, é extrair do Tractatus uma lista dos tópicos mais salientes aí discutidos; a lista incluirá certamente tópicos do seguinte género, muitos dos quais se podem encontrar ao longo desta enciclopédia: factos e estados de coisas; objectos; representação; crenças e estados mentais; pensamentos; a proposição; nomes próprios; valores de verdade e bivalência; quantificação; funções de verdade; verdade lógica; identidade; tautologia; o raciocínio matemático; a natureza da inferência; o cepticismo e o solipsismo; a indução; as constantes lógicas; a negação; a forma lógica; as leis da ciência; o número. (shrink)

Approaching Infinity addresses seventeen paradoxes of the infinite, most of which have no generally accepted solutions. The book addresses these paradoxes using a new theory of infinity, which entails that an infinite series is uncompletable when it requires something to possess an infinite intensive magnitude. Along the way, the author addresses the nature of numbers, sets, geometric points, and related matters. The book addresses the need for a theory of infinity, and reviews both old and new theories of infinity. It (...) discussing the purposes of studying infinity and the troubles with traditional approaches to the problem, and concludes by offering a solution to some existing paradoxes. (shrink)

In this work, it is shown that given a correct understanding of the nature of reference and of linguistic meaning generally, it is possible to produce non-revisionist analyses of the nature of -/- *Perceptual content, *Mental content generally, *Logical equivalence, *Logical dependence generally, *Counterfactual truth, *The causal efficacy of mental states, and *Our knowledge of ourselves and of the external world. -/- In addition, set-theoretic interpretations of several semantic concepts are put forth. These concepts include truth, falsehood, negation, and conjunction.

Recent work by Matthew Bedke and Max Hayward develops a new attack on metaethical non-naturalists: that they are committed to an immoral state of mind, because they must be willing to change their mind about the moral importance of certain actions given possible evidence about the layout of the non-natural realm. For example, they must be willing to decrease their credence that torturing babies is bad, if they ever get evidence that torturing babies is not in the extension of a (...) non-natural property. The present paper aims to both develop the strongest version of this argument and propose a response to it. The first section argues that the strongest version of this attack does not depend on whether accepting non-naturalism commits one to believing a certain kind of conditional proposition. Rather, it depends on whether accepting non-naturalism commits one to having a certain kind of conditional credences. Moreover, the moral criticism at hand does not hinge on the causal inertness of non-natural properties. And in so far as the argument does not depend on causal inertness, the people threatened by immorality are not just non-naturalists, but metaethicists in general (Sect. 2). This is because the worry hinges instead on particular relationships of epistemic dependence between our metaethical and some of our ethical views. But it is not clear that those relationships obtain; we could adopt metaethical methodologies that preclude morally problematic dependence of relevant first order views on evidence about our metaethical theories (Sect. 3). (shrink)

Meta-ethics without normative ethics is empty. In the current climate this hardly needs emphasis: since 1960 or so philosophers in the English-speaking world have put away their earlier reluctance to think about substantive moral issues. For a while, in fact, it seemed that normative ethics would completely dominate the scene in the way metaethics once did, but, happily, this situation has begun to change with the appearance of a stimulating and illuminating body of work on the rational basis of morality. (...) Even those philosophers most intent on solving first-order moral problems have begun to realize that, in the last analysis, normative ethics without meta-ethics is blind. (shrink)

Critical realism, championed by its proponents as the most promising post-positivist social science paradigm, has gained significant influence in the last few decades. This paper provides a critical evaluation of the critical realism movement in the hope of facilitating more fruitful dialogues between its proponents and rivalling schools of sociologists. Two concerns are raised about contemporary critical realism. First, critical realism is not the only philosophical school against positivism and not necessarily the best. Second, critical realists exaggerate the importance of (...) critical realism to social science and conflate philosophy of science with sociological theories. (shrink)

Parmenides as Secret Hero. Gregor Betz’s Theorie Dialektischer Strukturen (Theory of Dialectical Structures) Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-13 DOI 10.1007/s10503-011-9213-z Authors Frank Zenker, Department of Philosophy and Cognitive Science, Lund University, Kungshuset, Lundagård, 222 22 Lund, Sweden Journal Argumentation Online ISSN 1572-8374 Print ISSN 0920-427X.

Wright claims that “the epistemology of good abstraction principles should be assimilated to that of basic principles of logical inference”. In this paper I follow Wright’s recommendation, but I consider a different epistemology of logic, namely anti-exceptionalism. Anti-exceptionalism’s main contention is that logic is not a priori, and that the choice between rival logics should be based on abductive criteria such as simplicity, adequacy to the data, strength, fruitfulness, and consistency. This paper’s goal is to lay down the foundations for (...) an application of the anti-exceptionalist methodology to abstraction principles. In Sect. 1 I outline my strategy. I show that anti-exceptionalism has a bearing on the so-called Bad Company problem, and explore some versions of anti-exceptionalism about abstraction. I then consider new criteria for choosing between rival abstraction principles, and, in particular, between consistent revisions of Frege’s Basic Law V. I finally consider how the abstractionist can compare between competing criteria, and argue that anti-exceptionalists should be pluralists about abstraction. (shrink)

Has the emergence of post-positivism in philosophy of science changed the terms of the “is/ought” dichotomy? If it has demonstrated convincingly that there are no “facts” apart from the theoretical frames and evaluative standards constructing them, can such a cordon sanitaire really be upheld between “facts” and values? The point I wish to stress is that philosophy of science has had a central role in constituting and imposing the fact/value dichotomy and a revolution in the philosophy of science should not (...) leave the dichotomy unaffected. The connection between post-positivism and naturalism will be my guiding thread in considering this “last dogma of positivism.” First this essay will specify the sense of naturalism that it will take to be essential to the post-positivist philosophy of science: the deflation of the notion of the “purity” of scientific knowledge. Then it will turn to the question of the implications that follow for the “autonomy” of ethics, including the danger posed by a new form of scientistic reductionism. (shrink)