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This book concerns the foundations of epistemic modality and hyperintensionality and their applications to the philosophy of mathematics. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. The book demonstrates how epistemic modality and hyperintensionality relate to the computational theory of mind; metaphysical modality and hyperintensionality; the types of mathematical modality and hyperintensionality; to the epistemic status of large cardinal axioms, undecidable propositions, (...) |
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La philosophie analytique est ici considérée à son point de départ. Les conditions de l’expression sont vues comme synonymes de celles de la pensée. Une entreprise d’explicitation est à cette suite appliquée en retour à la méthode scientifique qui était auparavant le modèle. La distinction de la syntaxe et de la sémantique, commandée par l’analyse logique, est alors appliquée à l’ensemble des systèmes de représentation: oeuvre d’art, action humaine, esprit. Cette évolution montre un souci essentiel: l’instrument technique de la connaissance. |
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The aim of the paper is to sketch an idea—seen from the point of view of a cognitive scientist—of cognitive semiotics as a discipline. Consequently, the article presents aspects of the relationship between the two disciplines: semiotics and cognitive science. The main assumption of the argumentation is that at least some semiotic processes are also cognitive processes. At the methodological level, this claim allows for application of cognitive models as explanations of selected semiotic processes. In particular, the processes of embedded (...) |
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A standing challenge for the science of mind is to account for the datum that every mind faces in the most immediate – that is, unmediated – fashion: its phenomenal experience. The complementary tasks of explaining what it means for a system to give rise to experience and what constitutes the content of experience (qualia) in computational terms are particularly challenging, given the multiple realizability of computation. In this paper, we identify a set of conditions that a computational theory must (...) |
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This essay is an examination of the relationship between phenomenology and analytic method in the philosophy of law. It proceeds by way of a case study, the requirement of compliance in Raz’s theory of mandatory norms. Proceeding in this way provides a degree of specificity that is otherwise neglected in the relevant literature on method. Drawing on insights from the philosophy of art and cognitive neuroscience, it is argued that the requirement of compliance is beset by a range of epistemological (...) |
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A new proof style adequate for modal logics is defined from the polynomial ring calculus. The new semantics not only expresses truth conditions of modal formulas by means of polynomials, but also permits to perform deductions through polynomial handling. This paper also investigates relationships among the PRC here defined, the algebraic semantics for modal logics, equational logics, the Dijkstra???Scholten equational-proof style, and rewriting systems. The method proposed is throughly exemplified for S 5, and can be easily extended to other modal (...) |
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In contemporary philosophy, various attempts have been made in relation to placing our minds or mental states in the natural world or nature. In this context, there is a clear divide between naturalism and anti-naturalism, materialism and immaterialism, etc. Driven by the influence of naturalistic turn in philosophy and scientism, many philosophers have tried to put forth various naturalistic accounts of the relationship between mind and natural world. However, many of these accounts are naturalistic based on the modern scientific conception (...) |
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I examine the (mediated) correspondence between Spinoza and Robert Boyle concerning the latter’s account of fluidity and his experiments on reconstitution of niter in the light of the epistemology and doctrine of method contained in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. I argue that both the Treatise and the correspondence reveal that for Spinoza, the proper method of science is not experimental, and that he accepted a powerful under-determination thesis. I argue that, in contrast to modern versions, Spinoza’s (...) |
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This article provides a critical overview of competing theories of conceptual structure (definitional structure, probabilistic structure, theory structure), including the view that concepts have no structure (atomism). We argue that the explanatory demands that these different theories answer to are best accommodated by an organization in which concepts are taken to have atomic cores that are linked to differing types of conceptual structure. |
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The present essay addresses the epistemic difficulties involved in achieving consensus with respect to the Hayek–Keynes debate. It is argued that the empirical implications of the relevant theories are such that, regardless of what is observed, both theories can be interpreted as true, or at least, as not falsified. The essay explicates the respects in which the empirical evidence underdetermines the choice between the relevant theories. In particular, it is argued both that there are convenient responses that protect each theory (...) |
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In this paper, we reconsider the context of Barbara Carper'salternative ways of knowing,a prominent discourse in modern nursing theory in North America. We explore this relative to the concepts ofrealism, non‐realismandnominalism, and investigate the philosophical divisions behind the original typology, particularly in relationship to modern scientific enquiry. We examine forms of knowledge relative to realist and nominalist positions and make an argument ad absurdum against relativistic interpretations of knowledge using the example of Borge's Chinese Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. We propose (...) |
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Religious discourse is in some way about the world, but its relation to other kinds of discourse – scientific historical, and moral – is a matter of dispute. Suggestions to avoid conflict with other kinds of discourse – the suggestion that religion invokes a distinct ‘language game’ and the suggestion that it should be taken as ‘basic’ for instance – have not, I argue, been successful. Essentially religion is involved in orienting us to the world and our goals, and orientation (...) |
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This text presents some of the central features of the philosophical and juridical thought of Ramon Martí d'Eixalà while also offering keys for interpreting his role in the establishment of the Catalan School of Philosophy and the Catalan Legal School in the nineteenth century. It draws attention to some unjustified interpretive clichés regarding his work, for example the attempt to link his theses with romantic postulates. |
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Philosophers of biology have developed an extensive literature on biological functions. Here I propose a treatment of the topic based in social studies of science. I posit that the chief philosophical accounts of biological functions all rest upon a realist ontology of biological functions, one that conceives functions as human-independent qualities of things. Rather than being conceptualised as a property of traits or structures, function should be understood as a status granted by communities acting in accordance with specific domains of (...) |
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This essay presents a long, detailed, in many ways critical but also appreciative account, of David Bloor’s recent book The Enigma of the Aerofoil. I take that work as the crowning statement of ideas and principles developed over the past four decades by Bloor and other exponents of the ‘strong programme’ in the sociology of scientific knowledge. It therefore offers both a test-case of that approach and a welcome opportunity to review, clarify and extend some of the arguments brought against (...) |
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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. |
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Following Wesley Hohfeld's pioneering analyses, which demonstrated that the concept of ownership conflated a variety of distinct legal relations, a deflationary regarding those relations as essentially unconnected held sway for much of the subsequent century. In recent decades, this theory has been thought too diffuse; it seems counterintuitive to insist, for instance, that rights of possession and alienation over a property are associated only contingently. Accordingly, scholars such as James Penner and James Harris have advanced theories that revive the concept (...) |
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There are various conceptions of objectivity, a characteristic of the scientific enterprise, the most fundamental being objectivity as faithfulness to facts. A brute fact, which happens independently from us, becomes a scientific fact once we take cognisance of it through the means made available to us by science. Because of the complex, reciprocal relationship between scientific facts and scientific theory, the concept of objectivity as faithfulness to facts does not hold in the strict sense of an aperspectival faithfulness to brute (...) |
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Although there has been a recent swell of interest in theories of truth that attempt solutions to the liar paradox and the other paradoxes affecting our concept of truth, many of these theories have been criticized for generating new paradoxes, called revenge paradoxes. The criticism is that the theories of truth in question are inadequate because they only work for languages lacking in the resources to generate revenge paradoxes. Theorists facing these objections offer a range of replies, and the matter (...) |
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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, (...) |
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Philosophers often aim to demonstrate that the things we ordinarily think and say can be reconciled with our considered beliefs about the world. To this end, many philosophers try to paraphrase ordinary language claims by finding equivalent sentences that are less misleading. For instance, though we know that there is no British family that is the average one, we want to say that the average British family has 1.8 children, and we might do that by paraphrasing this claim as: there (...) |
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The present piece is a reply to G. Hoffmann on my infallibilist view of self-knowledge. Contra Hoffmann, it is argued that the view does not preclude a Quinean epistemology, wherein every belief is subject to empirical revision. |
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This paper develops and critiques the two-dimensionalist account of mental content developed by David Chalmers. I first explain Chalmers's account and show that it resists some popular criticisms. I then argue that the main interest of two-dimensionalism lies in its accounts of cognitive significance and of the connection between conceivability and possibility. These accounts hinge on the claim that some thoughts have a primary intension that is necessarily true. In this respect, they are Carnapian, and subject to broadly Quinean attack. (...) |
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Call the epistemological grounds on which we rationally should determine our ontological (or alethiological) commitments regarding an entity its arbiter of existence (or arbiter of truth). It is commonly thought that arbiters of existence and truth can be provided by our practices. This paper argues that such views have several implications: (1) the relation of arbiters to our metaphysical commitments consists in indispensability, (2) realist views about a kind of entity should take the kinds of practices providing that entity’s arbiters (...) |
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The aim of this paper is to argue for a revised and precisified version of the infamous Verifiability Criterion for the meaningfulness of declarative sentences. The argument is based on independently plausible premises concerning probabilistic confirmation and meaning as context-change potential, it is shown to be logically valid, and its ramifications for potential applications of the criterion are being discussed. Although the paper is not historical but systematic, the criterion thus vindicated will resemble the original one(s) in some important ways. (...) |
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In this articleIconsider what it would take to combine a certain kind of mathematicalPlatonism with serious presentism.Iargue that a Platonist moved to accept the existence of mathematical objects on the basis of an indispensability argument faces a significant challenge if she wishes to accept presentism. This is because, on the one hand, the indispensability argument can be reformulated as a new argument for the existence of past entities and, on the other hand, if one accepts the indispensability argument for mathematical (...) |
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Inference versus consequence , an invited lecture at the LOGICA 1997 conference at Castle Liblice, was part of a series of articles for which I did research during a Stockholm sabbatical in the autumn of 1995. The article seems to have been fairly effective in getting its point across and addresses a topic highly germane to the Uppsala workshop. Owing to its appearance in the LOGICA Yearbook 1997 , Filosofia Publishers, Prague, 1998, it has been rather inaccessible. Accordingly it is (...) |
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Some philosophers argue that the principles of human reasoning are impeccable, and that mistakes are no more than momentary lapses in “information processing”. This article makes a case to the contrary. It shows that human reasoners commit systematic fallacies. The theory of mental models predicts these errors. It postulates that individuals construct mental models of the possibilities to which the premises of an inference refer. But, their models usually represent what is true in a possibility, not what is false. This (...) |
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One debate that metaphysicians of race have been consumed with since the 1990s is what we can call the US race debate, which is the debate about what the nature and reality of race is according to the dominant ways that ‘race’ and race terms are used to classify people in contemporary American English. In 2014, I contributed a defence of biological racial realism in the US race debate that utilized new results about human genetic clustering from population genetics. In (...) |
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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 (...) |
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A priori reflection, common sense and intuition have proved unreliable sources of information about the world outside of us. So the justification for a theory of the categories must derive from the empirical support of the scientific theories whose descriptions it unifies and clarifies. We don’t have reliable information about the de re modal profiles of external things either because the overwhelming proportion of our knowledge of the external world is theoretical—knowledge by description rather than knowledge by acquaintance. This undermines (...) |
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The paper presents a dilemma for both epistemic and non-epistemic versions of conceivability-based accounts of modal knowledge. On the one horn, non-epistemic accounts do not elucidate the essentialist knowledge they would be committed to. On the other, epistemic accounts do not elucidate everyday life de re modal knowledge. In neither case, therefore, do conceivability accounts elucidate de re modal knowledge. |
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Both Carnap and Quine made significant contributions to the philosophy of mathematics despite their diversed views. Carnap endorsed the dichotomy between analytic and synthetic knowledge and classified certain mathematical questions as internal questions appealing to logic and convention. On the contrary, Quine was opposed to the analytic-synthetic distinction and promoted a holistic view of scientific inquiry. The purpose of this paper is to argue that in light of the recent advancement of experimental mathematics such as Monte Carlo simulations, limiting mathematical (...) |
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Douglas Edwards is arguably the most prominent contemporary advocate of moderate alethic pluralism. Significantly influenced by Crispin Wright and Michael Lynch, his work on the nature of truth has become widely discussed in the topical literature. Edwards labels his version of moderate alethic pluralism determination pluralism. At first blush, determination pluralism appears philosophically promising. The position deserves thoughtful consideration, particularly because of its capacity to accommodate the scope problem. I argue, however, that upon analysis the view is better understood as (...) |
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I argue that Quinean naturalists’ holism-based arguments against analyticity and apriority are more difficult to resist than is generally supposed, for two reasons. First, although opponents of naturalism sometimes dismiss these arguments on the grounds that the holistic premises on which they depend are unacceptably radical, it turns out that the sort of holism required by these arguments is actually quite minimal. And second, although it’s true, as Grice and Strawson pointed out long ago, that these arguments can succeed only (...) |
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In the 1960s and 1970s, Hilary Putnam articulated a notion of relativized apriority that was motivated to address the problem of scientific change. This paper examines Putnam’s account in its historical context and in relation to contemporary views. I begin by locating Putnam’s analysis in the historical context of Quine’s rejection of apriority, presenting Putnam as a sympathetic commentator on Quine. Subsequently, I explicate Putnam’s positive account of apriority, focusing on his analysis of the history of physics and geometry. In (...) |
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Abstract Impossible fictions have lessons to teach us about linguistic representation, about mental content and concepts, and about uses of conceivability in epistemology. An adequate theory of impossible fictions may require theories of meaning that can distinguish between different impossibilities; a theory of conceptual truth that allows us to make useful sense of a variety of conceptual falsehoods; and a theory of our understanding of necessity and possibility that permits impossibilities to be conceived. After discussing these questions, strategies for resisting (...) |
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Deduction is important to scientific inquiry because it can extend knowledge efficiently, bypassing the need to investigate everything directly. The existence of closure failure—where one knows the premises and that the premises imply the conclusion but nevertheless does not know the conclusion—is a problem because it threatens this usage. It means that we cannot trust deduction for gaining new knowledge unless we can identify such cases ahead of time so as to avoid them. For philosophically engineered examples we have “inner (...) |
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In this paper I examine the prospects for a successful neo–logicist reconstruction of the real numbers, focusing on Bob Hale's use of a cut-abstraction principle. There is a serious problem plaguing Hale's project. Natural generalizations of this principle imply that there are far more objects than one would expect from a position that stresses its epistemological conservativeness. In other words, the sort of abstraction needed to obtain a theory of the reals is rampantly inflationary. I also indicate briefly why this (...) |
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The debate around the notions of a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge has proven crucial for the development of many fields in philosophy, such as metaphysics, epistemology, metametaphysics etc. We advocate that the recent debate on the two notions is also fruitful for man-made distributed computing systems and for the epistemic analysis thereof. Following a recently proposed modal and fallibilistic account of a priori knowledge, we elaborate the corresponding concept of a priori belief: We propose a rich taxonomy of (...) |
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One very popular framework in contemporary epistemology is Bayesian. The central epistemic state is subjective confidence, or credence. Traditional epistemic states like belief and knowledge tend to be sidelined, or even dispensed with entirely. Credences are often introduced as familiar mental states, merely in need of a special label for the purposes of epistemology. But whether they are implicitly recognized by the folk or posits of a sophisticated scientific psychology, they do not appear to fit well with perception, as is (...) |
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How do we determine whether individuals accept the actual consistency of a political argument instead of just its rhetorical good looks? This article answers this question by proposing an interpretation of political argument within the constraints of political liberalism. It utilises modern developments in the philosophy of logic and language to reclaim ‘meaningless nonsense’ from use as a partisan war cry and to build up political argument as something more than a power struggle between competing conceptions of the good. Standard (...) |
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In this paper, I examine Quine's views on the epistemology of logic. According to Quine's influential holistic account, logic is central in the “web of belief” that comprises our overall theory of the world. Because of this, revisions to logic would have devastating systematic consequences, and this explains why we are loath to make such revisions. In section1, I clarify this idea and thereby show that Quine actually takes the web of belief to have asymmetrical internal structure. This raises two (...) |
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Inspired by Bas van Fraassen’s Stance Empiricism, Anjan Chakravartty has developed a pluralistic account of what he calls epistemic stances towards scientific ontology. In this paper, I examine whether Chakravartty’s stance pluralism can exclude epistemic stances that licence pseudo-scientific practices like those found in Scientology. I argue that it cannot. Chakravartty’s stance pluralism is therefore prone to a form of debilitating relativism. I consequently argue that we need (1) some ground or constraint in relation to which epistemic stances can be (...) |
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