This paper develops a moodless theory of modality, intended to be as closely analogous to the tenseless theory of time as possible. It is argued that the new theory is distinct from David Lewis' modal realism and that it solves certain problems better than modal realism does, namely, the problem of advanced modalizing, the problem of necessitism, and the problem of conflict with common opinion.

On the traditional approach to metaethics, theories are expected to be faithful to ordinary normative discourse – or at worst (if we think the ordinary discourse is metaphysically unsound) to deviate from it as little as possible. -/- This paper develops an alternative, “conceptual engineering” approach to metaethical enquiry, which is not in this way restricted by our present discourse. On this approach, we will seek to understand the psychology, semantics, metaphysics and epistemology, not just of our present concepts, but (...) also of other possible normative concepts. The ultimate point of the enquiry is to choose between the available alternatives: to decide what kinds of normative concepts to use, going forward. -/- The paper aims to make this suggestion precise, in a way that a) answers worries about circularity, b) answers worries about “changing the subject”, c) retains metaethics as a truth-seeking enquiry, and d) leads to an independently plausible methodology. (shrink)

Using Carnap’s concept explication, we propose a theory of concept formation in mathematics. This theory is then applied to the problem of how to understand the relation between the concepts formal proof and informal, mathematical proof.

In his highly influential book (The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, first published in 1958), Peter Winch introduces an alternative concept of interpretive social science, in which the focus is shifted from the actors’ subjective motives to the common elements found in every understandable action: language-games and rule-following. This Wittgensteinian, linguistic version of interpretive social science has had its vast array of critics throughout the years: according to some of them, it neglects the practical side (...) of sociology; while others claim that it fails properly to answer the questions raised by the translation from one language-game to another, or that it renders critical social theory impossible. In my article, I try to reflect critically upon these critiques themselves, showing that the Winchian theory does not overlook the practice in understanding the different forms of life; that with slight modifications it is able to cope with the problem of translation, and that it does not aspire to be the critical theory that many of its critics would like it to be. (shrink)

Externalists about epistemic justification have long emphasized the connection between truth and justification, with this coupling finding explicit expression in process reliabilism. Process reliabilism, however, faces a number of severe difficulties, leading disenchanted process reliabilists to find a new theoretical home. The conceptual flag under which such epistemologists have preferred to gather is that of dispositions. Just as reliabilism is determined by the frequency of a particular outcome, making it possible to characterize justification in terms of a particular relationship to (...) truth, dispositions are accompanied by concrete, worldly manifestations. By taking true beliefs as the result, not of certain processes but of particular dispositions, these epistemologists have attempted to respond to the numerous obstacles to reliabilism. Yet all this work has proceeded without regard to the wealth of contemporary work on the metaphysics of dispositions, making the new hope premature at best, ill-founded at worst. Combining contemporary dispositional accounts of justification with extant analyses of dispositions reveals that the latter is the case. The structural differences between epistemic justification and dispositions make it clear that not only should process reliabilism be abandoned, but the subsequent appeal to dispositions along with it. (shrink)

In his 1982 Presidential Address to the PSA Ernan McMullin proposed that the Kuhnian “revolution” in the philosophy of science amounts, in part, to the growing awareness that theory-appraisal is to be modelled on decisions and value judgments rather than rule-governed inferences (McMullin 1983). This viewpoint has its attractions but needs developing before it can satisfy skeptics, such as Larry Laudan. For Laudan complains that Kuhn has provided no general model to back up his value-geared account, and that the view (...) leads to untenable subjectivism which Kuhn has tried to avoid.I shall try to show that neither complaint stands to criticism, by joining two ideas. The first – that of modelling theory decisions along decision theory – is not a novel one, but even its supporters have failed to see that it makes Kuhn’s subjectivity a live but respectable possibility. (shrink)

This essay reconsiders Davidson's critical attribution of the scheme‐content distinction to Quine's naturalized epistemology. It focuses on Davidson's complaint that the presence of this distinction leads Quine to mistakenly construe neural input as evidence. While committed to this distinction, Quine's epistemology does not attempt to locate a justificatory foundation in sensory experience and does not then equate neural intake with evidence. Quine's central epistemological task is an explanatory one that attempts to scientifically clarify the route from stimulus to science. Davidson's (...) critical remarks wrongly assign concerns to Quine's view that it does not have and further obscures the status of his naturalized conception of epistemology. (shrink)

The study of the temporal structure of events in natural language is of prime importance in linguistics. Though there has been recent progress on formal theories of events, these theories do not address certain syntactic and semantic properties peculiar to languages such as Hindi. This paper concentrates on properties related to perfectivity. It motivates a small number of semantic features for events and their objects, such as whether an object exists independently of an event, whether it is totally affected by (...) the event, and so on. It then formalizes these features. It also shows how they can be formalized in an algebraic framework and applied in a categorial grammar to derive the properties of verbal and nominal predicates. The result is an integration of descriptive semantics with algebraic theories of objects and events. (shrink)

One of the major historical effects of Quine’s attacks upon the analytic-synthetic distinction has been to popularise the belief that philosophy is continuous with science. Currently, most philosophers believe that such continuity is an inevitable consequence of naturalism. This article argues that though Quine’s semantic holism does imply that there is no sharp distinction between truths discoverable by scientific investigation and truths discoverable by philosophical investigation, it also implies that there is a perfectly sharp and natural distinction between natural science (...) and naturalistic philosophy. (shrink)

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different fundamental ways of being. Recent defenders of this view—such as Kris McDaniel and Jason Turner—have taken these ways of being to be best captured by semantically primitive quantifier expressions ranging over different domains. They have thus endorsed, what I shall call, quantificational pluralism. I argue that this focus on quantification is a mistake. For, on this view, a quantificational structure—or a quantifier for short—will be whatever part or aspect of reality’s structure (...) that a quantifier expression carves out and reflects. But if quantificational pluralism is true, then a quantifier should be more natural than its corresponding domain; and since it does not appear to be the case that a quantifier is more natural than its corresponding domain, quantificational pluralism does not appear to be true. Thus, I claim, an ontological pluralist should not be a quantificational pluralist. (shrink)

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different fundamental ways of being. Trenton Merricks has recently raised three objections to combining pluralism with a generic way of being enjoyed by absolutely everything there is: first, that the resulting view contradicts the pluralist’s core intuition; second, that it is especially vulnerable to the charge—due to Peter van Inwagen—that it posits a difference in being where there is simply a difference in kind; and, third, that it is in tension with various (...) historically influential motivations for pluralism. I reply to each of these objections in turn. My replies will help to bring out the true nature of the pluralist’s basic commitments. (shrink)

That expressions should have their contents can seem paradigmatically contingent. But it can also seem a priori that expressions in one's own language should have their contents to the extent that instances of disquotation, such as "Socrates" refers to Socrates' and "cat" refers to cats', are trivially true. I attempt to reconcile these conflicting intuitions about meaningfulness by examining semantic and metasemantic details of linguistic reflexivity. I argue that instances of disquotation are contingent analytic in Kaplan's sense, and bring this (...) lesson to bear on semantic strategies for responding to skepticism, such as Putnam's Brains-in-a-Vat argument. (shrink)

We take ourselves to be able to omit to perform certain actions and to be at times responsible for these omissions. Moreover, omissions seem to have effects and to be manifestations of our agency. So, it is natural to think that omissions must be events. However, very few people writing on this topic have been willing to argue that omissions are events. Such a view is taken to face three significant challenges: (i) omissions are thought to be somehow problematically negative, (...) (ii) it is unclear where the event of an omission would be located, and (iii) if we accept any omissions as events, it seems like there would be far too much causation involving them. In this paper, I develop a novel view of omissions as events and as actions that provides answers to these challenges. (shrink)

Reichenbach's well-known distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification has recently come under attack from several quarters. In this paper I attempt to reconsider the distinction and evaluate various recent criticisms of it. These criticisms fall into two main groups: those which directly challenge Reichenbach's distinction; and those which (I argue) indirectly but no less seriously challenge that distinction by rejecting the related distinction between psychology and epistemology, and defending the "naturalizing" of epistemology. I argue that (...) these recent criticisms fail, and that the distinction remains an important conceptual tool necessary for an adequate understanding of the way in which scientific claims purport to appropriately portray our natural environment. (shrink)

Central to argumentation theory is a concern with normativity. Argumentation theorists are concerned, among other things, with explaining why some arguments are good (or at least better than others) in the sense that a given argument provides reasons for embracing its conclusion which are such that a fair- minded appraisal of the argument yields the judgment that the conclusion ought to be accepted -- is worthy of acceptance -- by all who so appraise it.

Eternalists say that non-present entities (for instance dinosaurs) exist; presentists say that they do not. But some sceptics deny that this debate is genuine, claiming that presentists simply represent eternalists' quantifiers over non-present entities in different notation. This scepticism may be refuted on purely logical grounds: one of the leading candidate ‘presentist quantifiers’ over non-present things has the inferential role of a quantifier. The dispute over whether non-present objects exist is as genuine and non-verbal as the dispute over whether there (...) is life on other planets. (shrink)

According to Timothy Williamson, we should accept the simplest and most powerful second-order modal logic, and as a result accept an ontology of "bare possibilia". This general method for extracting ontology from logic is salutary, but its application in this case depends on a questionable assumption: that modality is a fundamental feature of the world.

Two related claims have lately garnered currency: dispositional essentialism—the view that some or all properties, or some or all fundamental properties, are essentially dispositional; and the claim that laws of nature (or again, many or the fundamental ones) are metaphysically necessary. I have argued elsewhere (On the metaphysical contingency of laws of nature, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002) that the laws of nature do not have a mind-independent metaphysical necessity, but recent developments on dispositions have given these ideas a new (...) vibrancy and made them the topic of more focused discussion. So I would like to revisit this, arguing that the new work, as interesting and important as it is to our understanding of fundamental properties, powers and dispositions, should not change our minds about metaphysical necessity. One should still think necessity is conceptually or conventionally grounded. I do not argue that laws of nature are not necessary, nor that properties do not have dispositional essences, but only that if these are the case, then, like other de re or empirical necessities, they have no metaphysical weight and are based in our rules or decisions about how to talk about the world. We may have excellent reasons to talk and think in this way—but these reasons do not include, require or provide evidence of mind-independent metaphysical necessity or essences. (shrink)

Early sections of the paper develop a view of the natural numbers and a view of counting which are suggested by the remarks of several modern philosophers. Further investigation of these views leads to one of the main theses of the paper: a special kind of quantifier, the "numerical quantifier" is essential to counting. The remainder of the paper suggests the rudiments of a new view of the natural numbers, a view which maintains that numerical quantifiers are one kind of (...) natural number. (shrink)

This paper offers a noncognitivist characterization of moral attitudes, according to which moral attitudes count as such because of their inclusion of moral concepts. Moral concepts are distinguished by their contribution to the functional roles of some of the attitudes in which they can occur. They have no particular functional role in other attitudes, and should instead be viewed as evolutionary spandrels. In order to make the counter-intuitive implications of the view more palatable, the paper ends with an account of (...) the evolution of normative judgments as exaptations of the cognitive structures that underlie beliefs. (shrink)

Tom Stoppard is justly praised by many for what are perceived as his technical skills as a dramatist—his wit, his seriousness, his mastery of parody and pastiche, his impressive control of dramatic structure. Stoppard earns his place as a giant of modern drama from these qualities. They, however, are not what concern me here. His plays are also in various ways riddled with philosophy. My purpose in this paper is to examine the claim that he is a philosopher's dramatist, rather (...) than a dramatist's dramatist or an ordinary thinking man's dramatist. I am not concerned with how far Stoppard himself as a matter of biographical fact may wish to make this claim, although Stoppard has made no secret of his fascination with Philosophy. I make the claim myself in order both to offer an interpretation of certain dramatic texts and to raise certain questions about philosophical method. I hope to show that to understand certain ways in which Stoppard's plays are philosophical is to appreciate something profound about the way in which philosophy and drama are akin—that is, I hope to make critical and philosophical points, not historical or biographical points. (shrink)

Classical logic yields counterintuitive results for numerous propositional argument forms. The usual alternatives (modal logic, relevance logic, etc.) generate counterintuitive results of their own. The counterintuitive results create problems—especially pedagogical problems—for informal logicians who wish to use formal logic to analyze ordinary argumentation. This paper presents a system, PL– (propositional logic minus the funny business), based on the idea that paradigmatic valid argument forms arise from justificatory or explanatory discourse. PL– avoids the pedagogical difficulties without sacrificing insight into argument.

Three distinct things have been called "referential opacity," causing some confusion. A noun position in a sentence may be opaque in three different ways: (1) substitutivity of identity may fail there, (2) quantifiers prefixed to the sentence may not be able to bind variables in that position, or (3) substitutivity of identity may fail when the singular nouns in question are read as having small scope. Some connections among these three types of opacity are examined.

Extensionalism, as I understand it here, is the view that physical reality consists exclusively of extensional entities. On this view, intensional entitities must either be eliminated in favor of an ontology of extensional entities, or be reduced to such an ontology, or otherwise be admitted as non-physical. In this paper I argue that extensionalism is a misguided philosophical doctrine. First, I argue that intensional phenomena are not confined to the realm of language and thought. Rather, the ontology of such phenomena (...) is intimately entwined with the ontology of properties. After providing some evidence to the popularity of extensionalism in contemporary analytic philosophy, I investigate the motivating reasons behind it. Considering several explanations, I argue that the main motivating reason is rooted in the identification of matter with extension, an identification which is one of the hallmarks of the mechanistic conception of nature inherited from the founding fathers of our modern scientific outlook. I then argue that such a conception is not only at odds with a robust ontology of properties but is also at odds with our best contemporary physics. Rather than vindicating extensionalism contemporary science undermines the position, and the lesson to be drawn from this surprising fact is that extensionalism needs no longer be espoused as a regulative ideal of naturalistic philosophy. I conclude by showing that the ontological approach to intensional phenomena advocated throughout the paper also gains support from an examination of the historical context within which ‘intension’ was first introduced as a semantic notion. (shrink)

The is an old question over whether there is a substantial disagreement between advocates of different logics, as they simply attach different meanings to the crucial logical terminology. The purpose of this article is to revisit this old question in light a pluralism/relativism that regards the various logics as equally legitimate, in their own contexts. We thereby address the vexed notion of translation, as it occurs between mathematical theories. We articulate and defend a thesis that the notion of “same meaning” (...) is itself context-sensitive, depending on the purposes of a given conversation. (shrink)

This paper presents a more clear formulation of the correspondence principle and explores its justification.

In this paper a parallel is drawn between the problem of epistemic access to abstract objects in mathematics and the problem of epistemic access to idealized systems in the physical sciences. On this basis it is argued that some recent and more traditional approaches to solving these problems are problematic.