Functionalism in the philosophy of mind is here criticized from the perspective of a more naturalistic and less compromising form of materialism. Parallels are explored between the problem of cognitive activity and the somewhat more settled problem of vital activity. The lessons drawn suggest that functionalism in the philosophy of mind may be both counterproductive as a research strategy, and false as a substantive position.

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 article, we will attempt to understand Sellars’ puzzling notion of ‘adequate picturing’ and its relation to the Sellarsian ‘conceptual order’ through Spinoza’s intuitive knowledge. First, it will be suggested that there are important structural similarities between Sellarsian ‘adequate picturing’ and Spinoza’s intuitive knowledge which can illuminate some ‘dark’ and not so well understood features of Sellarsian picturing. However, there remain some deep differences between Sellars’ and Spinoza’s philosophy, especially with regard to their notion of ‘adequacy’ and the sense (...) in which an idea can be said to ‘correspond’ with its object. As a consequence of those differences it turns out that, from a Sellarsian viewpoint, Spinoza’s notion of intuitive knowledge is a version of the myth of the Given. However, Sellars’ own proposed way out of the Myth has problematic consequences by Sellars’ own lights: His sharp distinction between the ‘space of reasons’ level and the level of picturing makes the Sellarsian vision of the ‘stereoscopic fusion’ of those levels virtually unintelligible. Finally, it will be argued that a non-standard interpretation of Spinoza’s intuitive knowledge -proposed in Baltas -, combined with a Sellars-inspired bifurcated understanding of Dreyfusian expert knowledge, can provide the means 1) for constructing a notion of intuitive knowledge that evades the myth of the Given, and, 2) for making full sense of the claim that the ‘space of reasons’ dimension of understanding the world can in principle be fused with the ‘picturing’ dimension and provide us with a single complex coherent experience of reality and our place in it. (shrink)

In a recent article Sachs suggests that the concept of somatic intentionality is the key to understanding how the conceptual order is externally constrained by something outside itself which is nonetheless fully intentional in nature. Sachs claims that his proposal fares better than Sellars’ view on the issue of how our experience can so much as be about objective reality. In this paper, I shall argue that this is not the case because Sellars’ view is in crucial respects misdescribed. Sachs (...) suggests that Sellars’ view is problematic because 1) conceptual intentionality cannot objectively constrain the conceptual order due to its essential discursive form, and 2) a non-intentional consciousness cannot provide an objective worldly constraint on conceptual intentionality because it is not world-directed. However neither of these points succeeds in capturing Sellars’ actual position. Further I will suggest the deepest problem which phenomenological views of a Merleau-Pontyan stripe face in the.. (shrink)

In his new book, Brandom offers a new argument against the viability of Sellars’ scientific naturalism. Brandom attempts to show that if the Sellarsian it scientia mensura principle is understood as implying that manifest-image objects exist only if they are identical to scientific-image objects, it is undermined by the ‘Kant–Sellars’ thesis about identity which implies that manifest-image objects cannot be identical to scientific-image objects. This conclusion can be evaded by construing the relation between manifest and scientific objects as weaker than (...) that of identity, namely as a relation between manifest-image functional roles and scientific-image realizers. But Brandom again argues that even this weaker construal of the scientia mensura thesis is in conflict with another Sellarsian argument, this time against phenomenalism. It will be argued that this is not so. I will, moreover, suggest that the ‘function-realizer’ construal of the manifest-scientific image distinction is indeed tenable—especially if the process of determining the scientific-image realizers of functional roles specified in manifest-image is understood as the culmination of a self-correcting dynamic and diachronic process of conceptual change. Finally, I will argue that while Brandom is right to point out that Sellars’ adherence to the scientia mensura principle is based on a ‘unity-of-science’ view, he is wrong to think that his argument for the contrary conclusion is successful, because Brandom’s argument does not automatically tell against a weaker ‘unity-of-science’ view according to which incommensurability of explanatory levels in science is a pragmatically indispensable yet in principle dispensable feature of empirical inquiry. (shrink)

Epistemic expressivism is the application of a nexus of ideas, which is prominent in ethical theory (more specifically, metaethics), to parallel issues in epistemological theory (more specifically, metaepistemology). Here, in order to help those new to the debate come to grips with epistemic expressivism and recent discussions of it, I first briefly present this nexus of ideas as it occurs in ethical expressivism. Then, I explain why and how some philosophers have sought to extend it to a version of epistemic (...) expressivism. Finally, I consider a number of objections and replies with the aim of giving the reader the tools needed to begin to evaluate the promise and prospects of epistemic expressivism. (shrink)

In this paper, first, I will focus on the divergent interpretations of two leading Sellars’ scholars, Willem deVries and James O’Shea, as regards Sellars’ view on the being of the normative. It will be suggested that this conflict between deVries’ and O’Shea’s viewpoints can be resolved by the provision of an account of what I shall call ‘ready-tohand’ normativity, which incorporates the insights of both deVries’ and O’Shea’s interpretive perspectives, while at the same time going beyond them. It shall be (...) further argued that the resulting ‘phenomenologically’ informed view of normativity, pointing as it does towards its ideal integration not only with practical action but also with perceptual experience, in the form of what I shall call ‘kinaesthetic’ normativity, can potentially pose problems to Sellars’ own view on the matter, and, in particular, to the way normativity can allegedly be ‘stereoscopically fused’ with the ultimate ontology of the ideal scientific image. However, I shall argue that these problems are not unsurpassable: although the possibility of a specifically ‘kinaesthetic’ form of normativity seems to have eluded Sellars’ grasp, his views about the way in which the productive imagination is implicated in perceptual experience, do indeed provide the conceptual resources that make possible the stereoscopic fusion of this kind of normativity with the ontology of the ideal scientific image. (shrink)

In the contemporary metaethical debate, expressivist (Blackburn, Gibbard) and constructivist (Korsgaard, Street) views can be viewed as inspired by irrealist ideas from Hume and Kant respectively. One realist response to these contemporary irrealist views is to argue that they are inconsistent with obvious surface-level appearances of ordinary ethical thought and discourse, especially the fact that we talk and act as if there is ethical knowledge . In this paper, I explore some constructivist and expressivist options for responding to this objection. (...) My conclusion is that, although both constructivists and expressivists can capture other surface-level features of ethical thought and discourse, the possibility of ethical knowledge causes special problems for these versions of irrealism. I end with some comments about where I think irrealists should begin to look for a response to these special problems, which points, somewhat surprisingly, towards an alternative inferentialist form of irrealism about epistemic and ethical thought and discourse, which is inspired by Sellars. (shrink)

In this article, it is argued that Sellars’ view of normativity is the key for a proper resolution of the debate between normativism and anti-normativism, as the latter is described in Turner’s recent book Explaining the Normative. Drawing on an early Sellarsian article , I suggest that both normativism and anti-normativism are ultimately unsatisfactory positions and for the same reason: due to their failure to draw a distinction between causal or explanatory reducibility and logical or conceptual reducibility of the normative (...) to the non-normative. (shrink)

This article examines Wilfrid Sellars's views on the epistemic status of philosophical propositions. It suggests that according to Sellars philosophical propositions are normative and practically oriented. They do not form a theory for the description of reality; their function is, rather, that of motivating actions which aim at changing reality. The article argues that the role of philosophical propositions can be illuminated if they are understood as a special kind of (proposed) “material” rules of inference, provided that the latter are (...) construed as being firmly entrenched in practice. To this end, a distinction between “theoretical” and “practical” anomalies is drawn to better elucidate—and in some cases criticize and further expand—Sellars's position on the relation between the theoretical and practical dimensions of philosophical activity. In this connection, the Weberian notion of the “disenchantment of the world” is used to throw light on the relation between these two dimensions. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of inter-normative engagement, of constructing dialogical interaction across substantive normative difference. Focusing on how this affects democratic and pluralistic contexts, it argues that a social-practice-based approach to normativity and reasoning offers unique resources to understand and frame such encounters. It specifically draws on pragmatism and the work of Richard Rorty to reframe normativity, authority, identity, and reason, linking these understandings to recent trends to deliberative political inclusivism in democratic theory. The upshot is that framing inter-normative (...) engagement as calls to responsive engagement between diverse systems of normative authority offers real insights for constructing and maintaining ongoing democratic engagements in a non-hierarchical manner. This, the article argues, extends emerging methodological trends in the broader literature while overcoming the morass between conflict- and consensus-oriented approaches in democratic th... (shrink)

This new monograph _Philosophy of Neuroscience_ is a novel contribution to the relevant literatures. In this book review, I first summarise its contents, and then provide several critical points for the authors to consider. Even with these critical suggestions, the book is still highly recommended to those who work in philosophy of neuroscience, philosophy in neuroscience, neurophilosophy, philosophy of psychology, and cognitive sciences.

I develop the relatively familiar idea of a variety of forms of knowledge —not just propositional knowledge but also knowledge -how and experiential knowledge —and show how this variety can be used to make interesting sense of Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophy, and in particular their ethics. I then add to this threefold analysis of knowledge a less familiar fourth variety, objectual knowledge, and suggest that this is also interesting and important in the understanding of Plato and Aristotle.

Most inferentialists hope to bypass givenness by tracking the conditionals claimants are implicitly committed to. I argue that this approach is underdetermined because one can always construct parallel trees of conditionals. I illustrate this using the Müller-Lyer illusion and touching a table. In the former case, the lines are either even or uneven; in the latter case, a moving hand will either sweep through or be halted. For each possibility, we can rationally foresee consequents. However, I argue that, until and (...) unless we benefit from what is given in experience, we cannot know whether to affirm the antecedents of those conditionals. (shrink)

In Section 5 of his interesting article, Goldman suggests that the consideration of imaginary cases can be valuable in the analysis of our psychological concepts. In particular, he argues that we can imagine a system that is isomorphic to us under any functional description, but which lacks qualitative mental states, such as pains and color sensations. Whether or not such a being is empirically possible, it certainly seems to be logically possible, or conceptually coherent. Goldman argues from this possibility to (...) the conclusion that our concepts of qualitative mental states cannot be analyzed entirely in functional terms. (shrink)

Some strongly empiricist views of scientific knowledge advocate a rejection of metaphysics. On such views, scientific knowledge is described strictly in terms of knowledge of the observable world, demarcated by human sensory abilities, and no metaphysical considerations need arise. This paper argues that even these views require some recourse to metaphysics in order to derive knowledge from experience. Central here is the notion of metaphysical inference, which admits of different “magnitudes”, thus generating a spectrum of putative knowledge with more substantially (...) empirical beliefs at one end, and more metaphysically imbued beliefs at the other. Given that metaphysical inference is required even concerning knowledge of the observable, the empiricist hope of avoiding metaphysics altogether is futile: knowledge of the observable simply involves metaphysical inferences that are of smaller magnitudes than others. Metaphysical inferences are required not only to distinguish veridical from non-veridical experience and to determine the quality of empirical information, but also in order to explain how we construct experience (through categorizations and classifications of objects, events, processes, and properties), how we extrapolate from empirical evidence to generalize about observable phenomena, and how we use this evidence to test and confirm hypotheses and theories. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a conflict between two theses held by John McDowell, namely i) the claim that we are under a standing obligation to revise our beliefs if reflection demands it; and ii) the view that veridical experience is a mode of direct access to the world. Since puts no bounds on what would constitute reasonable doubt, it invites skeptical concerns which overthrow. Conversely, since says that there are some experiences which we are entitled to trust, it (...) undermines the prescriptive scope of. Drawing on C. S. Peirce's distinction between genuine and contrived doubt, I maintain that critical revisions of beliefs should be triggered only by unwanted disruptions of habits, thereby restoring unity between McDowell's two theses. (shrink)

Robert Brandom holds that what we mean is best understood in terms of what inferences we are prepared to defend, and that such a defence is best understood in terms of rule-governed social interactions. This manages to explain quite a lot. However, for those who think that there is more to making correct/incorrect inferences than obeying/breaking accepted rules, Brandom’s account fails to adequately capture what it means to reason properly. Thus, in an effort to sketch an alternative that does not (...) rely primarily on peer pressure, I draw on the work of C. S. Peirce. Peirce argued that, when we reason, we manipulate abstract diagrams in order to observe what results. Since some manipulations are barred by the self-same nature of the diagrams, I try to show that this qualitative incompatibility, which I dub “contrapiction,” is a good reason to regard some reasoning as bad. (shrink)

The immanent approach adopted by most contemporary representatives of the Critical Theory tradition has generally the purpose of offering a foundation for social criticism that, without relying exclusively on explicit or factually accepted principles, avoids both the potential arbitrariness of subjective judgment and the appeal to transcendent criteria. However, this project has not yet paid much attention to the socio-epistemic elements related to the intersubjective praxis of criticism. Based on this concern, I intend to explore the possibility of immanent criticism (...) by using the epistemic category of dissonance. I will begin by showing how Davidson’s notion of irrationality can overcome the problematic separation between healthy and pathological behavior found in Festinger’s classical theory of cognitive dissonance and serve as an indicator of epistemic contradictions that can lead to social change. Thereafter, I will explain the link between these approaches and both Brandom’s inferential semantics and Honneth’s normative reconstruction. At the end of the first part, I expect to show an articulated picture of how dissonance can serve as a key for the analysis of inconsistencies present both in the belief systems and in the institutions and practices that constitute forms of life. In the second part, I will reconstruct three possible objections to this comprehensive approach in relation to the role of the individual in processes of social criticism and to the notions of progress and rationality that the approach adopts. I will analyze here what kind of meta-criterion is necessary to overcome the discomfort generated by the experience of dissonance so that it leads to social change. Taking up the Hegelian-Pragmatist idea of accumulation of experiences, I will argue that such a meta-criterion refers to the possibility of gathering and using available and non-endogenous socio-epistemic resources that allow reconfiguring the foundations of the questioned form of life. (shrink)

The immanent approach adopted by most contemporary representatives of the Critical Theory tradition has generally the purpose of offering a foundation for social criticism that, without relying exclusively on explicit or factually accepted principles, avoids both the potential arbitrariness of subjective judgment and the appeal to transcendent criteria. However, this project has not yet paid much attention to the socio-epistemic elements related to the intersubjective praxis of criticism. Based on this concern, I intend to explore the possibility of immanent criticism (...) by using the epistemic category of dissonance. I will begin by showing how Davidson’s notion of irrationality can overcome the problematic separation between healthy and pathological behavior found in Festinger’s classical theory of cognitive dissonance and serve as an indicator of epistemic contradictions that can lead to social change. Thereafter, I will explain the link between these approaches and both Brandom’s inferential semantics and Honneth’s normative reconstruction. At the end of the first part, I expect to show an articulated picture of how dissonance can serve as a key for the analysis of inconsistencies present both in the belief systems and in the institutions and practices that constitute forms of life. In the second part, I will reconstruct three possible objections to this comprehensive approach in relation to the role of the individual in processes of social criticism and to the notions of progress and rationality that the approach adopts. I will analyze here what kind of meta-criterion is necessary to overcome the discomfort generated by the experience of dissonance so that it leads to social change. Taking up the Hegelian-Pragmatist idea of accumulation of experiences, I will argue that such a meta-criterion refers to the possibility of gathering and using available and non-endogenous socio-epistemic resources that allow reconfiguring the foundations of the questioned form of life. (shrink)

In “Study of Concepts”, Peacocke puts forward an argument for non-conceptualism derived from the possession conditions of observational concepts. In this paper, I raise two objections to this argument. First, I argue that if non-conceptual perceptual contents are scenario contents, then perceptual experiences cannot present perceivers with the circumstances specified by the application conditions of observational concepts and, therefore, they cannot play the semantic and epistemic roles Peacocke wants them to play in the possession conditions of these concepts. Second, I (...) argue that if non-conceptual perceptual contents are protopropositions, then Peacocke’s account of the possession conditions of observational concepts falls into the Myth of the Given. (shrink)

Virtue perspectivism is a bi-level epistemology according to which there are two grades of knowledge: animal and reflective. The exercise of reliable competences suffices to give us animal knowledge; but we can then use these same competences to gain a second-order assuring perspective, one through which we may appreciate those faculties as reliable and in doing so place our first-order knowledge in a competent second-order perspective. Virtue perspectivism has considerable theoretical power, especially when it comes to vindicating our external world (...) knowledge against threats of scepticism and regress. Prominent critics, however, doubt whether the view ultimately hangs together without succumbing to vicious circularity. In this paper, I am going to focus on circularity-based criticisms of virtue perspectivism raised in various places by Barry Stroud, Baron Reed and Richard Fumerton, and I will argue that virtue perspectivism can ultimately withstand each of them. (shrink)

A novel solution is offered for how emotional experiences can function as sources of immediate prima facie justification for evaluative beliefs, and in such a way that suffices to halt a justificatory regress. Key to this solution is the recognition of two distinct kinds of emotional skill (what I call generative emotional skill and doxastic emotional skill) and how these must be working in tandem when emotional experience plays such a justificatory role. The paper has two main parts, the first (...) negative and the second positive. The negative part criticises the epistemic credentials of Epistemic Perceptualism (e.g., Tappolet 2012, 2016; Doring 2003, 2007; Elgin 2008; Roberts 2003), the view that emotional experience alone suffices to prima facie justify evaluative beliefs in a way that is analogous to how perceptual experience justifies our beliefs about the external world. The second part of the paper develops an account of emotional skill and uses this account to frame a revisionary form of Epistemic Perceptualism that succeeds where the traditional views could not. I conclude by considering some objections and replies. (shrink)

A novel solution is offered for how emotional experiences can function as sources of immediate prima facie justification for evaluative beliefs, and in such a way that suffices to halt a justificatory regress. Key to this solution is the recognition of two distinct kinds of emotional skill and how these must be working in tandem when emotional experience plays such a justificatory role. The paper has two main parts, the first negative and the second positive. The negative part criticises the (...) epistemic credentials of Epistemic Perceptualism Perceptual illusions. Philosophical and psychological essays, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2012; Tappolet in Emotions, value, and agency. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016; Döring in The Philos Quart 53: 214–230, 2003; Döring in Dialectica 61: 363–394, 2007; Elgin, in: Georg, Kunzle Epistemology and emotions, Ashgate Alderchot, Farnham, 2008; Roberts in Emotions: an essay in aid of moral psychology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003), the view that emotional experience alone suffices to prima facie justify evaluative beliefs in a way that is analogous to how perceptual experience justifies our beliefs about the external world. The second part of the paper develops an account of emotional skill and uses this account to frame a revisionary form of Epistemic Perceptualism that succeeds where the traditional views could not. I conclude by considering some objections and replies. (shrink)

Anti-exceptionalism about logic is the thesis that logic is not special. In this paper, I consider, and reject, a challenge to this thesis. According to this challenge, there are basic logical principles, and part of what makes such principles basic is that they are epistemically exceptional. Thus, according to this challenge, the existence of basic logical principles provides reason to reject anti-exceptionalism about logic. I argue that this challenge fails, and that the exceptionalist positions motivated by it are thus unfounded. (...) I make this case by disambiguating two senses of ‘basic’ and showing that, once this disambiguation is taken into account, the best reason we have for thinking that there are basic principles actually implies that those principles do not require a special epistemology. Consequently, the existence of basic logical principles provides reason to accept, rather than reject, anti-exceptionalism concerning the epistemology of logic. I conclude by explaining how an abductivist, anti-exceptionalist approach to the epistemology of logic can accommodate the notion of basic logical principles. (shrink)

Most of us create and use a panoply of non-sentential representations throughout our ordinary lives: we regularly use maps to navigate, charts to keep track of complex patterns of data, and diagrams to visualize logical and causal relations among states of affairs. But philosophers typically pay little attention to such representations, focusing almost exclusively on language instead. In particular, when theorizing about the mind, many philosophers assume that there is a very tight mapping between language and thought. Some analyze utterances (...) as the outer vocalizations of inner thoughts (e.g. Grice 1957, Devitt 2005), while others treat thought as a form of inner speech (e.g. Sellars 1956/1997, Carruthers 2002). But even philosophers who take no stand on the relative priority of language and thought still tend to individuate mental states in terms of the sentences we use to ascribe them. Indeed, Dummett (1993) claims that it is constitutive of analytic philosophy that it approaches the mind by way of language. In many ways, this linguistic model is salutary. Our thoughts are often intimately intertwined with their linguistic expression, and public language does provide a comparatively tractable proxy for, and a window into, the messier realm of thought. However, an exclusive focus on thought as it is expressed in language threatens to leave other sorts of thought unexplained, or even to blind us to their possibility. In particular, many cognitive ethologists and psychologists find it useful to talk about humans, chimpanzees, birds, rats, and even bees as employing cognitive maps. We need to make sense of this way of talking about minds as well as more familiar sentential descriptions. In what follows, I investigate the theoretical and practical possibility of non-sentential thought. Ultimately, I am most interested in the contours of distinctively human thought: what forms does human thought take, and how do those different forms interact? How does human thought compare with that of other animals? In this essay, however, I focus on a narrower and more basic theoretical question: could thought occur in maps? Many philosophers are convinced that in some important sense, thought per se must be language-like.. (shrink)

Many work on flushing out what our consciousness means in cognitive and phenomenological terms, but no one has yet connected the dots on how consciousness and truth intersect, much less how our phenomenal consciousness can form the ground for most of our models of truth. Here, I connect those dots and argue that the basic structure of our phenomenal consciousness grounds the nature of truth as concordance, to harmonize in agreement, and that most extant theories on truth are well explained (...) in that grounding. Said another way, the unifying and bifurcating intentional structure of phenomenal consciousness is the non-epistemic ground of truth, such that most theories of truth can be explained as particular expressions of concordance based upon the differing aspects of that ground. (shrink)

Argues that truth, moral right, political right, and aesthetic value may be understood as arising out of a naturalist account of humanity, if naturalism is rightly conceived.

The article shows how in Outline of a Theory of Practice Pierre Bourdieu relies on a kind of philosophical myth in his attempt to dispel structuralist accounts of action. Section 2 is a summary of Bourdieu’s use of the concept of habitus against intellectualism and structuralism. Schatzki’s criticism of Bourdieu from a purportedly Wittgensteinian perspective is also examined. Section 3 relates Bourdieu’s use of habitus to a debate between Hubert Dreyfus and John McDowell about the role of concepts in action. (...) Section 4 shows how McDowell’s rejection of foundationalist elements in Dreyfus’s account of action also raises problems for Bourdieu’s account of action. Diamond’s recent criticism of Winch is shown to have an interesting connection to this debate. (shrink)

Traditionally, perceptual experiences—for example, the experience of seeing a cat—were thought to have two quite distinct components. When one sees a cat, one’s experience is “about” the cat: this is the representational or intentional component of the experience. One’s experience also has phenomenal character: this is the sensational component of the experience. Although the intentional and sensational components at least typically go together, in principle they might come apart: the intentional component could be present without the sensational component or vice (...) versa. (shrink)

Traditionally, perceptual experiences—for example, the experience of seeing a cat—were thought to have two quite distinct components. When one sees a cat, one’s experience is “about” the cat: this is the representational or intentional component of the experience. One’s experience also has phenomenal character: this is the sensational component of the experience. Although the intentional and sensational components at least typically go together, in principle they might come apart: the intentional component could be present without the sensational component or vice (...) versa. (shrink)

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)

Elsewhere I have tried to provide the justification of both the irreducible distinction of science and philosophy and their inevitable complementarity. Unlike empirical science, philosophy has no limit whatever as far as its possible objects are concerned. To say that there is no limit whatever to the possible objects of philosophy is to say that, strictly speaking, it has no object at all and must find its object outside itself, that is, in common sense knowledge and the natural and human (...) sciences. Against the background of this conception, the paper argues that philosophy of science, as a critical reflection on common sense knowledge and the natural or human sciences, inherits from philosophy in general this two-faced Janus nature, which in the philosophy of science shapes the epistemological status of the discipline in an even more prominent way. To show this in detail, the paper enunciates eleven theses that derive from the intimate connection of unity and distinction that exists between philosophy of science on the one hand and the particular and specialized scientific knowledge on the other. (shrink)

Amie Thomasson and Eli Hirsch have both attempted to deflate metaphysics, by combining Carnapian ideas with an appeal to ordinary language. My main aim in this paper is to critique such deflationary appeals to ordinary language. Focussing on Thomasson, I draw two very general conclusions. First: ordinary language is a wildly complicated phenomenon. Its implicit ontological commitments can only be tackled by invoking a context principle; but this will mean that ordinary language ontology is not a trivial enterprise. Second: ordinary (...) language often points in different directions simultaneously, so that a wide variety of existence questions cannot be deflated merely by appealing to ordinary language. (shrink)

William Alston has been a long-time critic of the arguments of Wilfrid Sellars, and he has recently revisited the arguments made by Sellars in “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.” Alston’s work attempts to show how Sellarsian views fail to account for our understanding of perception by making a two-part attack on Sellars’s account: part one of the attack takes up the Sellarsian approach to ‘looks’-talk, and part two concerns Sellars’s thoroughgoing conceptualism with regard to perception. In this article, I (...) argue that there is much in Alston’s view that does violence to our understanding of theoretical and practical reason by removing concepts (and thereby constraint by norms) from perception, and I show that Alston’s two-pronged attack fails due to its inadequate reading of “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” and its problematic underlying epistemology. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that recent developments in higher education presuppose a conceptual framework that fails plausibly to account for indispensable aspects of educational experience—in particular that a university education is fundamentally a project of personal transformation within a particular social order. It fails, I suggest, primarily because it consists of mutually supporting but erroneous conceptualisations of knowledge and the human subject. In pursuit of transparency and codification we have seemingly forgotten education's existential dimension: that education is closely tied (...) to questions of personal identity and the formation of character and that this is an embodied project. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that recent developments in higher education presuppose a conceptual framework that fails plausibly to account for indispensable aspects of educational experience—in particular that a university education is fundamentally a project of personal transformation within a particular social order. It fails, I suggest, primarily because it consists of mutually supporting but erroneous conceptualisations of knowledge and the human subject. In pursuit of transparency and codification we have seemingly forgotten education's existential dimension: that education is closely tied (...) to questions of personal identity and the formation of character and that this is an embodied project. (shrink)

Debates about nonconceptual content impact many philosophical disciplines, including philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language. However, arguments made by many philosophers from within the pragmatist tradition, including Quine, Sellars, Davidson, Rorty, and Putnam, undercut the very role such content purportedly plays. I explore how specifically Sellarsian arguments against the Given and Rortian defenses of “epistemological behaviorism” undermine standard conceptions of nonconceptual content. Subsequently, I show that the standard objections to epistemological behaviorism inadequately attend to the essentially social and (...) practical nature of justification. (shrink)

There is a diffuse sentiment that to anthropomorphize is a mild vice that people tend to do easily and pleasingly, but that an adult well educated person should avoid. In this paper it will be provided an elucidation of ``anthropomorphism'' in the field of common sense knowledge, the issue of animal rights, and about the use of humans as a model in the scientific explanation. It will be argued for a ``constructive anthropomorphism'', i.e., the idea that anthropomorphism is a natural (...) attutude to attribute human psychological features to other individuals, no matter they are actually rational agents, or not. If we know the ``grammar'' of this attutude, we can avoid the risks in overestimating the environmental inputs towards anthropomor­phism and, at the same time, take the heuristic advantages of anthropomor­phism in the use of human mind as a model for both everyday circumstances and scientific enterprise. (shrink)

Ratio, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 16-24, March 2022.

In _The Philosophy of Logical Atomism_, Russell defends a version of semantic empiricism according to which direct acquaintance with logical atoms is the source of our semantic capacities. Previous commentators have construed Russellian acquaintance in one of two ways: either as an act of _de re_ designation involving neither conceptualization nor propositional content, or as a species of belief _de re_, which does involve conceptualization or classification. I argue that two further, interim possibilities have been overlooked: that direct acquaintance involves (...) purely phenomenal content or that direct acquaintance involves protoconceptual content. I conclude, however, that on none of the four interpretations considered, can direct acquaintance with logical atoms be the source of our semantic capacities. (shrink)