In recent years, several systematic theories of linguistic meaning have been offered that give pride of place to linguistic practice, or the process of linguistic communication. Often these theories are referred to as neo-pragmatist or new pragmatist; I call them 'practice-based'. According to practice-based theories of meaning, the process of linguistic communication is somehow constitutive of, or otherwise essential for the existence of, propositional linguistic meaning. Moreover, these theories disavow, or downplay, the semantic importance of inflationary notions of representation. I (...) introduce the basic ideas and motives behind some practice-based theories of meaning, and offer some reasons why an eliminativist, non-quietist, epistemic practice-based approach to meaning that 1) disavows any explanatory role for the linguistic community as such, 2) prioritizes sentence meaning over word meaning, and 3) may , in the end, be naturalistic, should be favored over its practice-based competitors. (shrink)

I argue that there are good reasons to assume that Quine’s theory of reference and ontology is incompatible with reductive statements – such as ‘Heat is molecular motion’ or ‘Rabbits are conglomerations of cells’. Apparently, reductive statements imply certain intertheoretical identities, yet Quine’s theory of reference and ontology seems incompatible with intertheoretical identities. I argued that treating, for the sake of reconciliation, reductive statements along the lines of Quine’s theory of an ontological reduction (which does not imply intertheoretical identity) fails. (...) Then I discussed two alternative strategies on behalf of Quine to handle reductive statements: the Holistic Strategy (which appeals to Quine’s notion of an all-encompassing background theory) and the Individuative Strategy (which draws on Quine’s notion of an apparatus of individuation). I argue that the Individuative Strategy promises to succeed. However, the Individuative Strategy obliges to revising Quine’s theory of an ontological reduction – a revision that, as I argue, can and should be implemented. (shrink)

A standard problem in empirical inquiry is how to adjudicate between contending theories when they work from different fundamental assumptions. In the field of political sociology, several strategies are adopted, from metatheoretical and comparative historical approaches to the recent formal models of scientific growth proposed by Imre Lakatos and Larry Laudan. After considering the limitations of these approaches, I develop an alternative strategy—"second—order empiricism"—based on the idea that successor theories have an onus to explain the apparent success of their rivals, (...) not only their own and their rivals' anomalies. Such a strategy, I argue, underscores some of the most effective analysis and argument in political sociology, yet is obscured by the appeal to other methodologies. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to demonstrate the structure of Sellars' critical direct realism in the philosophy of perception. This position is original because it attempts to balance two claims that many have thought to be incompatible: (1) that perceptual knowledge is direct, i.e., not inferential, and (2) that perceptual knowledge is irreducibly conceptual. Even though perceptual episodes are not the result of inferences, they must still stand within the space of reasons if they are to be counted not only (...) as knowledge, but also as thoughts directed at the world. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how Sellars elaborates and defends this position. (shrink)

In this paper I take up the question of whether Wilfrid Sellars has a notion of non-conceptual perceptual content. The question is controversial, being one of the fault lines along which so-called left and right Sellarsians diverge. In the paper I try to make clear what it is in Sellars' thought that leads interpreters to such disparate conclusions. My account depends on highlighting the importance of Sellars' little discussed thesis that perception involves a systematic form of mis-categorization, one where perceivers (...) mistake their sensory states to be properties of physical objects. I argue that the counterpart color and shape attributes of these states, which become ‘point of viewish’ when organized by the productive imagination, provides perceptual experience with its non-conceptual representational content. I then argue that this content is not a form of the mythical Given because one can only have a non-conceptual point of view on an object when an object is introduced into one's perceptual experience through the conceptual mis-taking of one's sensory states. So, while Sellars has a notion of non-conceptual representational content, it can only be salient in the context of a perceptual act that is conceptual overall. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against Brandom's two-ply theory of action. For Brandom, action is the result of an agent acknowledging a practical commitment and then causally responding to that commitment by acting. Action is social because the content of the commitment upon which one acts is socially conferred in the game of giving and asking for reasons. On my proposal, instead of seeing action as the coupling of a rational capacity to acknowledge commitments and a non-rational capacity to reliably (...) respond to these commitments, we should see action as the coupling, or potential coupling, of a capacity to reason practically and a capacity to act on habits and bodily skills. In putting forward this alternative model of action, I aim to replace Brandom's rationalist brand of Pragmatism with a more classical kind, one that will let us see action as social not only at the level of reasons but also at the level of bodily habits and skills. (shrink)

Since the 1960s the bio/technosciences have occupied a central place in philosophical thinking. The paper sets out three theoretical configurations embodying major challenges for today’s gender studies in philosophy, since they raise an obstacle, each in its own way, to the discussion on implications of the bio/technosciences in the political field and the area of gender theory: firstly naturalism in the field of the philosophy of science; secondly the paradigm of applied ethics; and thirdly the discourse of philosophical anthropology that (...) has been reactivated in philosophical debates about the bio/technosciences. To conclude, some of the future tasks will be mentioned which fall to gender studies in philosophy. (shrink)

Increasingly prominent in the recent literature on the philosophy of perception, Intentionalism holds that sensory experience is inherently intentional, where to be intentional is to be about, or directed on, something. This article explores Intentionalism's prospects as a viable ontological and epistemological alternative to the traditional trinity of theories of sensory experience: the Sense-Datum Theory, the Adverbial Theory, and the Theory of Appearing.

On Brandom’s view, we can understand objectivity in terms of the view that what is objectively correct potentially transcends any given attitude. But Levine challenges this view. He distinguishes between two questions of objectivity: ‘How do we grasp the concept of objectivity?’ and ‘What determines the difference between what is correct and what is merely taken to be correct?’ And he argues that Brandom’s account of objectivity fails to address the second question of objectivity. Furthermore, based on classical pragmatist views, (...) he defends an alternative account, which he calls ‘an experiential-theoretical account of objectivity’. I agree with Levine that Brandom’s structural account of objectivity can hardly answer the second question of objectivity. In this paper, however, I argue that we can answer the second question of objectivity without accepting Levine’s claim that experience has a rational bearing on the contents of empirical thoughts. (shrink)

According to Lehrer’s defeasibility account of knowledge, we can understand knowledge as undefeated justified true belief. But this account faces many serious problems. One important problem is that from one’s subjective point of view, one can hardly bridge the gap between one’s personal justification and objective truth. Another important problem is that this account can hardly accommodate the externalist intuition that the epistemic status of a belief is not entirely determined by factors that are internal to the subject’s perspective. The (...) goal of this paper is to offer an alternative account of knowledge which can successfully deal with these problems. On the basis of a Sellarsian social practice theory of justification, I argue that we can understand knowledge as objectively justified belief. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to present and defend an inferentialist account of the meaning of fictional names on the basis of Sellars-Brandom’s inferentialist semantics and a Brandomian anaphoric theory of reference. On this inferentialist account, the meaning of a fictional name is constituted by the relevant language norms which provide the correctness conditions for its use. In addition, the Brandomian anaphoric theory of reference allows us to understand reference in terms of anaphoric word-word relations, rather than substantial word-world (...) relations. In this paper I argue that this inferentialist account has many important merits over its rival theories. One important merit is that it explains why we can use fictional names to make true statements, even if they lack bearers. As a consequence, this theory allows us to use fictional names without committing ourselves to an implausible ontology of fictional entities. Another important merit is that it provides a uniform semantic account of fictional names across different types of statements in which fictional names are involved. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a coherentist justification of induction along the lines of a Sellarsian coherence theory. On this coherence theory, a proposition is justified if we can answer all objections raised against it in our social practice of demanding justification and responding to such demands. On the basis of this theory of justification, I argue that we are justified in accepting the uniformity of nature partly because we have no alternative but to accept it for rationally pursuing our (...) epistemic goal. In addition, my coherentist view explains which inductive inferences it is rational to accept. Furthermore, my coherentist view also explains why we can hardly determine a particular numerical value x such that we can draw the conclusion ‘it is rational to accept that p’ from the premise ‘the numerical probability of p is greater than or equal to x’. (shrink)

The problem of epistemic circularity involved in justifying fundamental epistemic principles is one of the fundamental problems of epistemology. One important way out of this problem is a Sellarsian social practice theory of justification, according to which we are justified in accepting an epistemic principle if we can answer all objections raised against it in our social practice of demanding justification and responding to such demands. The main goal of this paper is to show that this social practice theory can (...) accomplish better than its rival theories, such as Alston’s doxastic practice approach, Sosa’s reliabilist virtue epistemology, and Wright’s entitlement theory, by making comparisons with these influential theories. (shrink)

I here discuss Hegel's rule-following considerations as they are found in the first four chapters of his Phenomenology of Spirit. I begin by outlining a number of key premises in Hegel's argument that he adopts fairly straightforwardly from Kant's Transcendental Deduction. The most important of these is that the correctness or incorrectness of one's application of a rule must be recognizable as such to the rule-follower. Supplementing Hegel's text as needed, I then argue that it is possible for an experiencing (...) subject to follow a rule only where there is a community of individuals whose agreement can provide a standard for the correctness and incorrectness of his use. I further argue that a community must consist of members that are compresent, and thus that a collection of time-slices of an individual will not serve this purpose. I conclude by raising a potential problem for Hegel's account of rule-following concerning the correctness and incorrectness of the judgments of a community, and pointing to a possible line of response to this problem. (shrink)

Crispin Wright argues that John McDowell’s use of disjunctivism to respond to the sceptic misses the point of the sceptic’s argument, for disjunctivism is a thesis about the differing metaphysical natures of veridical and nonveridical experiences, whereas the sceptic’s point is that our beliefs are unjustified because veridical and nonveridical experiences can be phenomenally indistinguishable. In this paper, I argue that McDowell is responsive to the sceptic’s focus on phenomenology, for the point of McDowell’s response is that it is the (...) phenomenal character of experience that makes the belief in disjunctivism rational, and thereby also makes rational the anti-sceptical belief that, other things being equal, the world is the way it appears. (shrink)

Qualia, Sensa and absolute Processes. In this paper, the development of Sellars' thoughts concerning the mind-body-problem is reconstructed. Starting from an elaborate critique of the identity theory, Sellars claims that the ultimate 'Scientific Image' must contain a concept of sensa as the bearers of certain properties of manifest sense impressions. In his later work Sellars' notion of absolute processes leads him to a new monism and thus to an extended critique of rival theories. It is argued that these Sellarsian thoughts (...) can be helpful in the actual discussion of the mind-body-problem. (shrink)

In his recent paper "Indeterminacy, empiricism, and the first person" John R. Searle tries to refute Willard V. O. Quine's famous "indeterminacy of translation thesis" by arguing that this thesis is in fact a reductio ad absurdum of Quine's own "linguistic behaviorism". Searle accuses Quine of being "antimentalistic" and suggests that the "absurdity" of Quine's thesis might be avoided if a full-fledged "intentionality" were tolerated in the debate on meaning. - This anti-Quinean approach in some respects reminds of the "improbable (...) debate" between Searle and Jacques Derrida ten years ago, when Derrida had split and "deferred" intentionality by showing that the essential "iterability" of signs inevitably infects every intentional act with an unremovable "non-presence". In this paper it is argued that Searle's attacks on Quine and Derrida have both failed - and that there are structural similarities between these two failures which reveal some interesting parallels between Quine's and Derrida's philosophy. (shrink)

There is not agreement among moral intuitionists on the nature of moral intuitions: some favor a doxastic interpretation, others a non-doxastic interpretation. This paper argues that although both interpretations have legitimacy, the doxastic interpretation is preferable. The paper discusses three salient roles for moral intuitions:Role 1: To serve as a test for moral theories.Role 2: To provide a particularist grounding for moral judgment.Role 3: To stop a vicious infinite regress of justified moral belief.The doxastic interpretation better serves Role 1, given (...) the greater justificatory weight rationally accorded intuitive moral beliefs over intuitive moral “seemings,” upon which we may place little if any justificatory weight: intuitive beliefs provide firmer ground for judging moral theories to be correct or incorrect, adequate or inadequate, etc., than mere seemings. The doxastic interpretation better serves Role 2, in that particularist intuitional belief warrants greater confidence in apparent moral truth than intuitive seemings; and given that moral particularists commonly allot great epistemic authority to intuitions about particular cases, this counts heavily in favor of intuitional belief. The doxastic interpretation better serves Role 3 because (i) the greater agential justificatory burdens attendant to believing that p as opposed to merely being appeared to (or its seeming) that p, warrants that a higher degree of epistemic weight be given doxastic intuitions; and (ii) they are less vulnerable to doxastic ascent-type arguments, which would undermine their basicality as justification providers. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with a quality space model as an account of the intelligibility of explanation. I argue that descriptions of causal or functional roles (Chalmers Levine, 2001) are not the only basis for intelligible explanations. If we accept that phenomenal concepts refer directly, not via descriptions of causal or functional roles, then it is difficult to find role fillers for the described causal roles. This constitutes a vagueness constraint on the intelligibility of explanation. Thus, I propose to use (...) quality space models to develop a systematic way of studying different modalities of perception and feelings, e.g., visual and auditory perception, pain, and emotion, that can reveal some structural relations among these modalities. It might turn out that topological explanation can be more intelligible than causal explanation in this case. I discuss two accounts of a quality space for color vision (Clark, 2000; Rosenthal, 2010) and propose how to construct a quality space for pain. Daniel Kostic is Associated Researcher at Berlin School of Mind and Brain. (shrink)

My concern in what follows is to give a comparative report on some important lectures held at the Hegel-Kongreß 1981 in Stuttgart. In discussing the views of Quine, Hacking, Davidson, Putnam and Habermas I want to confront them with some details of Rorty's recent critique of our philosophical tradition. At last I try to give a tentative answer whether there is an end or a turning-point for current analytical philosophy.

This introduction to the special issue on well-being and health explores the ways that philosophical inquiry into well-being can play a productive role in understanding health and medicine. We offer an explanation of the concept of well-being, central theories of well-being, and how these key topics, along with other cutting-edge issues such as disability and cross-cultural reflections, can contribute to the discourse on the nature of health and medicine. We also provide brief overviews of the essays in this special issue (...) and highlight the significant philosophical implications they have for understanding both well-being and health. (shrink)

The underconsideration argument against inference to the best explanation and scientific realism holds that scientists are not warranted in inferring that the best theory is true, because scientists only ever conceive of a small handful of theories at one time, and as a result, they may not have considered a true theory. However, antirealists have not developed a detailed alternative account of why explanatory inference nevertheless appears so central to scientific practice. In this paper, I provide new defences against some (...) recent objections to the underconsideration argument, while also developing an account of explanatory inference that both survives these criticisms and does not entail realism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide the beginnings of a theory of justification. This theory is an alternative to the two currently available and unsatisfactory options: foundationalism and coherentism. Both of these theories, as well as the decisive sceptical objections to them, are committed to the assumption that there is only one context of justification and only one standard of justification. This assumption is mistaken. There are two contexts of justification, each with a standard peculiar to it. The (...) consequence of this is the need for a radical reorientation in epistemology. (shrink)

After first noting that I seek to broaden the definition of science fiction to a little more loosely defined speculative fiction, this essay explores four different ways in which fiction can work together with both the sciences and the philosophy of perception. This cooperation is needed because there is much about the sensory worlds of humans and non-human animals of which we continue to be ignorant. First, speculative fiction can be a source of hypotheses about the nature of the senses. (...) Second, it can help us understand the inner worlds of beings different from us. Third, speculative fiction often pushes us to investigate the ethical and social dimensions of sensory difference. Finally, speculative fiction can play an important role in reconciling our scientific understanding of the senses with a more commonsense understanding of same. (shrink)

La théorie du choix social qui s'est développée durant les dernières décennies, notamment dans la ligne des travaux d'Arrow et de Sen , ne s'est pas seulement soldée par une série de résultats négatifs exprimés dans les théorèmes d'impossibilité d'Arrow, de Sen et d'autres; ses notions centrales ont aussi été utilisées de manière fort variée au point que cette théorie souffre aujourd'hui d'un déficit important qui se traduit par de multiples indéterminations conceptuelles.

This paper argues that cognitive psychology's practice of explaining mental processes in terms which avoid invoking phenomenology, and the person-level self-conception with which it is associated in common sense psychology, leads to a hybrid Cartesian dualism. Because phenomenology is considered to be fundamentally irrelevant in any scientific explanation of the mind, the person-level is regarded as scientifically invisible: it is a ghost-like housing for sub-personal computational cognition. The problem of explaining how the sub-personal and sub-phenomenological machinery of mind is related (...) to person-level experience is as troublesome for cognitive psychology as the problem Descartes faced in explaining how the ghost (the non-corporeal mind) is related to the machine (the material body).This paper outlines the historical roots of cognitive dualism, showing how it has come to recapitulate a number of puzzling conceptual dichotomies that have hindered scientific and philosophical psychology since Kantian constructivism. It then defends the view that cognitive psychology's commitment to the sub-personal explanatory level leads to exaggerated deflationary claims about the explanatory significance of phenomenology, and the personlevel framework. It is argued that phenomenological description must function as a constraint upon, and guide for, theory formation in cognitive psychology (as illustrated in the work of the cognitive neuro-psychologist A.R. Luria). Phenomenology must be brought into a kind of reflective equilibrium with the cognitive and neuro-sciences. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate how philosophy can speak for children and how children can have a voice in philosophy and speak for philosophy. I argue that we should understand children as responsible rational individuals who are involved in their own philosophical inquiries and who can be involved in our own philosophical investigations—not because of their rational abilities, but because we acknowledge them as conversational partners, acknowledge their reasons as reasons, and speak for them as well as let them speak (...) for us and our rational community. In order to argue this I turn, first, to Gareth Matthews' philosophy of childhood and suggest a reconstruction of some of his concepts in line with the philosophy of Stanley Cavell. Second, in order to examine more closely our conceptions of rationality and our pictures of children, I consider the children's books, The Lorax and Where is My Sister? and Henrik Ibsen's play, The Wild Duck. (shrink)