This paper defends a novel view of ‘what it is like’-sentences, according to which they attribute certain sorts of relations—I call them ‘affective relations’—that hold between events and individuals. The paper argues in detail for the superiority of this proposal over other views that are prevalent in the literature. The paper further argues that the proposal makes better sense than the alternatives of the widespread use of Nagel’s definition of conscious states and that it also shows the mistakes in two (...) prominent suggestions about the definition when properly understood: first, that it is empty and uninformative, and second, that it leads directly to a substantial claim in the theory of consciousness, namely that an individual is in a conscious state only if the individual is aware of their being in that state. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with the existence of objective uncertainties. What would it take for objective uncertainties to exist, and what would be the consequences for our understanding of the world we live in? We approach these questions by considering two common theories on how we are to understand the being of propensities and how it pertains to possible outcomes that remain unmanifested. It is argued that both or these theories should be rejected, and be replaced with a theory we (...) call unrestricted actualism according to which the possible outcomes of propensities are denizens of the actual world. (shrink)

One of the most experimentally studied scales in the literature on scalar implicatures is the quantifier scale. While the truth of some is entailed by the truth of all, some is felicitous only when all is false. This opens the possibility that some would be felicitous if, e.g., 99% of the objects in the domain of quantification fall under it, a conclusion that clashes with native speakers’ intuitions. In Experiment 1 we report a questionnaire study on the perception of quantifier (...) meanings in English, French, Slovenian and German which points to a cross-linguistic variation with respect to the perception of numerical bounds of the existential quantifier. In Experiment 2, using a picture choice task, we further examine whether the numerical bound differences correlate with differences in pragmatic interpretations of the quantifier some in English and quelques in French and interpret the results as supporting our hypothesis that some and its cross-linguistic counterparts are subjected to different processes of pragmatic enrichment. (shrink)

This article presents a novel challenge to epistemic internalism. The challenge rests on a set of cases which feature subjects forming beliefs under conditions of “bad ideology”—that is, conditions in which pervasively false beliefs have the function of sustaining, and are sustained by, systems of social oppression. In such cases, the article suggests, the externalistic view that justification is in part a matter of worldly relations, rather than the internalistic view that justification is solely a matter of how things stand (...) from the agent’s individual perspective, becomes the more intuitively attractive theory. But these “bad ideology” cases do not merely yield intuitive verdicts that favor externalism over internalism. These cases are, moreover, analogous to precisely those canonical cases widely taken to be counterexamples to externalism: cases featuring brains-in-vats, clairvoyants, and dogmatists. That is, such “bad ideology” cases are, in all relevant respects, just like cases that are thought to count against externalism—except that they intuitively favor externalism. This, the author argues, is a serious worry for internalism. What is more, it bears on the debate over whether externalism is a genuinely “normative” epistemology. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson has argued for the radical conclusion that everything necessarily exists. In this paper, I assume that the conclusion of Williamson’s argument is more incredible than the denial of his premises. Under the assumption that Williamson is mistaken, I argue for the claim that there are some structured propositions which have constituents that might not have existed. If those constituents had not existed, then the propositions would have had an unfilled role; they would have been gappy. This gappy propositions (...) view allows for a plausible response to Williamson’s argument. Additionally, a slight variant of the gappy propositions view allows for plausible defense of Linguistic Ersatzism from the problem of contingent non-existents (also known as the problem of aliens). (shrink)

‘Ahab is a whaler’ and ‘Holmes is a whaler’ express different propositions, even though neither ‘Ahab’ nor ‘Holmes’ has a referent. This seems to constitute a theoretical puzzle for the Russellian view of propositions. In this paper, I develop a variant of the Russellian view, Plenitudinous Russellianism. I claim that ‘Ahab is a whaler’ and ‘Holmes is a whaler’ express distinct gappy propositions. I discuss key metaphysical and semantic differences between Plenitudinous Russellianism and Traditional Russellianism and respond to objections that (...) stem from those differences. (shrink)

Surprisingly, the fact that the speaker is lying is sometimes common knowledge between everyone involved. Strangely, we condemn these bald-faced lies more severely than disguised lies. The wrongness of lying springs from the intent to deceive – just the feature missing in the case of bald-faced lies. These puzzling lies arise systematically when assertions are forced. Intellectual duress helps to explain another type of non-deceptive false assertion : lying to yourself. In the end, I conclude that the apparent intensity of (...) our disapproval of non-deceptive lies is a rhetorical illusion. (shrink)

If we think, as Ramsey did, that a degree of belief that P is a stronger or weaker tendency to act as if P, then it is clear that not only uncertainty, but also vagueness, gives rise to degrees of belief. If I like hot coffee and do not know whether the coffee is hot or cold, I will have some tendency to reach for a cup; if I like hot coffee and know that the coffee is borderline hot, I (...) will have some tendency to reach for a cup. Suppose that we take degrees of belief arising from uncertainty to obey the laws of probability and that we model vagueness using degrees of truth. We then encounter a problem: it does not look as though degrees of belief arising from vagueness should obey the laws of probability. One response would be to countenance two different sorts of degrees of belief: degrees of belief arising from uncertainty, which obey the laws of probability; and degrees of belief arising from vagueness, which obey a different set of laws. I argue, however, that if a degree of belief that P is a stronger or weaker tendency to act as if P, then this option is not open. Instead, I propose an account of the behaviour of degrees of belief that integrates subjective probabilities and degrees of truth. On this account, degrees of belief are expectations of degrees of truth. The account explains why degrees of belief behave in accordance with the laws of probability in cases involving only uncertainty, while also allowing degrees of belief to behave differently in cases involving only vagueness, and in mixed cases involving both uncertainty and vagueness. Justifications of the account are given both via Dutch books and in terms of epistemic accuracy. (shrink)

This paper presents a new theory of vagueness, which is designed to retain the virtues of the fuzzy theory, while avoiding the problem of higher-order vagueness. The theory presented here accommodates the idea that for any statement S₁ to the effect that 'Bob is bald' is x true, for x in [0, 1], there should be a further statement S₂ which tells us how true S₁ is, and so on - that is, it accommodates higher-order vagueness without resorting to the (...) claim that the metalanguage in which the semantics of vagueness is presented is itself vague, and without requiring us to abandon the idea that the logic - as opposed to the semantics - of vague discourse is classical. I model the extension of a vague predicate P as a blurry set, this being a function which assigns a degree of membership or degree function to each object o, where a degree function in turn assigns an element of [0, 1] to each finite sequence of elements of [0, 1]. The idea is that the assignment to the sequence (0.3, 0.2), for example, represents the degree to which it is true to say that it is 0.2 true that o is P to degree 0.3. The philosophical merits of my theory are discussed in detail, and the theory is compared with other extensions and generalisations of fuzzy logic in the literature. (shrink)

This paper presents and defends a definition of vagueness, compares it favourably with alternative definitions, and draws out some consequences of accepting this definition for the project of offering a substantive theory of vagueness. The definition is roughly this: a predicate 'F' is vague just in case for any objects a and b, if a and b are very close in respects relevant to the possession of F, then 'Fa' and 'Fb' are very close in respect of truth. The definition (...) is extended to cover vagueness of many-place predicates, of properties and relations, and of objects. Some of the most important advantages of the definition are that it captures the intuitions which motivate the thought that vague predicates are tolerant, without leading to contradiction, and that it yields a clear understanding of the relationships between higher-order vagueness, sorites susceptibility, blurred boundaries, and borderline cases. The most notable consequence of the definition is that the correct theory of vagueness must countenance degrees of truth. (shrink)

From Fine and Kamp in the 70’s—through Osherson and Smith in the 80’s, Williamson, Kamp and Partee in the 90’s and Keefe in the 00’s—up to Sauerland in the present decade, the objection continues to be run that fuzzy logic based theories of vagueness are incompatible with ordinary usage of compound propositions in the presence of borderline cases. These arguments against fuzzy theories have been rebutted several times but evidently not put to rest. I attempt to do so in this (...) paper. (shrink)

Questions about the transparency of evidence are central to debates between factive and non-factive versions of mentalism about evidence. If all evidence is transparent, then factive mentalism is false, since no factive mental states are transparent. However, Timothy Williamson has argued that transparency is a myth and that no conditions are transparent except trivial ones. This paper responds by drawing a distinction between doxastic and epistemic notions of transparency. Williamson's argument may show that no conditions are doxastically transparent, but it (...) fails to show that no conditions are epistemically transparent. Moreover, this reinstates the argument from the transparency of evidence against factive mentalism. (shrink)

Given a few assumptions, the probability of a conjunction is raised, and the probability of its negation is lowered, by conditionalising upon one of the conjuncts. This simple result appears to bring Bayesian confirmation theory into tension with the prominent dogmatist view of perceptual justification – a tension often portrayed as a kind of ‘Bayesian objection’ to dogmatism. In a recent paper, David Jehle and Brian Weatherson observe that, while this crucial result holds within classical probability theory, it fails within (...) intuitionistic probability theory. They conclude that the dogmatist who is willing to take intuitionistic logic seriously can make a convincing reply to the Bayesian objection. In this paper, I argue that this conclusion is premature – the Bayesian objection can survive the transition from classical to intuitionistic probability, albeit in a slightly altered form. I shall conclude with some general thoughts about what the Bayesian objection to dogmatism does and doesn’t show. (shrink)

According to the JUSTIFIED FAIR COINS principle, if I know that a coin is fair, and I lack justification for believing that it won’t be flipped, then I lack justification for believing that it won’t land tails. What this principle says, in effect, is that the only way to have justification for believing that a fair coin won’t land tails, is by having justification for believing that it won’t be flipped at all. Although this seems a plausible and innocuous principle, (...) in a recent paper Dorr, Goodman and Hawthorne use it in devising an intriguing puzzle which places all justified beliefs about the future in jeopardy. They point out, further, that one very widespread theory of justification predicts that JUSTIFIED FAIR COINS is false, giving us additional reason to reject it. In this paper, I will attempt to turn this dialectic around. I will argue that JUSTIFIED FAIR COINS does not inevitably lead to scepticism about the future, and the fact that it is incompatible with a widespread theory of justifi... (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of knowledge how typically focus on the question whether or not knowing how to do ϕ consists in propositional knowledge, and divide the field between intellectualists and anti-intellectualists. This way of framing the issue is said to derive from Gilbert Ryle. I argue that this is a misreading of Ryle, whose primary interest in discussing knowledge how was not epistemological but rather action-theoretical, whose argument against intellectualism has for this reason been misunderstood and underestimated, and whose positive view (...) aims to chart a middle course between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. (shrink)

I argue that there can be no such thing as a borderline case of the predicate ‘phenomenally conscious’: for any given creature at any given time, it cannot be vague whether that creature is phenomenally conscious at that time. I first defend the Positive Characterization Thesis, which says that for any borderline case of any predicate there is a positive characterization of that case that can show any sufficiently competent speaker what makes it a borderline case. I then appeal to (...) the familiar claim that zombies are conceivable, and I argue that this claim entails that there can be no positive characterizations of borderline cases of ‘phenomenally conscious’. By the Positive Characterization Thesis, it follows that ‘phenomenally conscious’ can not have any borderline cases. (shrink)

The question of the origin of polyadic expressivity is explored and the results are brought to bear on Bertrand Russell's 1903 theory of denoting concepts, which is the main object of criticism in his 1905 "On Denoting". It is shown that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, the background ontology of the earlier theory of denoting enables the full-blown expressive power of first-order polyadic quantification theory without any syntactic accommodation of scopal differences among denoting phrases such as 'all φ', 'every φ', (...) and 'any φ' on the one hand, and 'some φ' and 'a φ' on the other. The case provides an especially vivid illustration of the general point that structural (or ideological) austerity can be paid for in the coin of ontological extravagance. (shrink)

According to many, to have epistemic justification to believe P is just for it to be epistemically permissible to believe P. Others think it is for believing P to be epistemically good. Yet others think it has to do with being epistemically blameless in believing P. All such views of justification encounter problems. Here, a new view of justification is proposed according to which justification is a kind of composite normative status. The result is a view of justification that offers (...) hope of solving some longstanding epistemological problems. (shrink)

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.

The goal of this paper is to explain the nature of philosophy as a distinct science with its own subject-matter. This is achieved through a comparative analysis of mathematical and philosophical knowledge that reveals a profound similarity between mathematics and philosophy as mutually complementary sciences exploring the field of abstract entities that can be comprehended only by purely a priori theoretical inquiry. By considering this complementarity, a general definition of philosophy can be obtained by dualizing the traditional Aristotelian definition of (...) mathematics as the “science of quantity”. Philosophy should thus be interpreted as an a priori science of the pure qualitative attributes of being. (shrink)

The paper highlights how a popular version of epistemological disjunctivism labors under a kind of 'internalist challenge'—a challenge that seems to have gone largely unacknowledged by disjunctivists. This is the challenge to vindicate the supposed 'internalist insight' that disjunctivists claim their view does well to protect. The paper argues that if we advance disjunctivism within a context that recognizes a distinction between merely functional and judgmental belief, we get a view that easily overcomes the internalist challenge.

There is a standard objection against purported explanations of how a language L can express the notion of being a true sentence of L. According to this objection, such explanations avoid one paradox (the Liar) only to succumb to another of the same kind. Even if L can contain its own truth predicate, we can identify another notion it cannot express, on pain of contradiction via Liar-like reasoning. This paper seeks to undermine such ‘revenge’ by arguing that it presupposes a (...) dubious assumption about the linguistic expression of concepts. Successful revenge would require that there be a notion other than truth that plays the same role with respect to concept-expression that truth is naturally thought to play before we are confronted with the Liar paradox. (shrink)

This paper aims for a more robust epistemological disjunctivism (ED) by offering on its behalf a new and better response to the ‘new evil genius’ problem. The first section articulates the ‘new evil genius challenge’ (NEG challenge) to ED, specifying its two components: the ‘first-order’ and ‘diagnostic’ problems for ED. The first-order problem challenges proponents of ED to offer some explanation of the intuition behind the thought that your radically deceived duplicate is no less justified than you are for adopting (...) her perceptual beliefs. In the second section, I argue that 'blamelessness' explanations are inadequate to the task and offer better explanations in their place—that of ‘trait-level virtue’ and ‘reasonability’. The diagnostic problem challenges proponents of ED to explain why it is that classical internalists disagree with them about how to interpret 'new evil genius' considerations. The proponent of ED owes some error theory. I tackle this problem in the third section, arguing that classical internalists overlook disjunctivist interpretations of new evil genius intuitions owing to a mistaken commitment to a ‘vindicatory’ explanation of perceptual knowledge. (shrink)

Przedmiotem prezentowanego artykułu jest spor o wartości logiczne kontrfaktycznych okresów warunkowych z niemożliwym poprzednikiem. Zgodnie z rozpowszechnionymi analizami każdy taki okres warunkowy jest prawdziwy. Pogląd ten określany jest mianem ortodoksyjnego i przeciwstawiany jest mu pogląd nieortodoksyjny, który uznaje, że tylko niektóre spośród kontrmożliwych okresów warunkowych są prawdziwe, a inne są fałszywe. W jednym ze swoich ostatnich tekstów Timothy Williamson argumentował na rzecz tezy, że konsekwencje poglądu nieortodoksyjnego są niespójne z motywacjami leżącymi u podstaw tego poglądu. Celem artykułu jest polemika z (...) krytyką Williamsona oraz wskazanie na możliwość spójnego odczytania postulatów zwolenników stanowiska nieortodoksyjnego. (shrink)

According to the most popular theories, counterfactuals with impossible antecedents are vacuously true. Critiques of this view argue that contrary to this, we tend to consider only some of them true and others to be false. In his recent paper Timothy Williamson has ingeniously explained the motivations for the orthodox view and argued that although there are some heuristic reasons that may suggest the plausibility of the unorthodox view, they are fallible. The most important of Williamson’s arguments is that the (...) unorthodox interpretation is inconsistent with the heuristic assumption that supposedly motivates this very view. The aim of this paper is to consider Williamson’s critique and to support the unorthodox approach towards counterpossibles. In order to do so, we argue in favor of the modified version of the heuristic assumption. (shrink)

There are well-known quasi-formal arguments that identity is a "strict" relation in at least the following three senses: (1) There is a single identity relation and a single distinctness relation; (2) There are no contingent cases of identity or distinctness; and (3) There are no vague or indeterminate cases of identity or distinctness. However, the situation is less clear cut than it at first may appear. There is a natural formal theory of identity that is very close to the standard (...) classical theory but which does not validate the formal analogues of (1)-(3). The core idea is simple: We weaken the Principle of the Indiscernibility of Identicals from a conditional to an entailment and we adopt a weakly classical logic. This paper investigates this weakly classical theory of identity (and related theories) and discusses its philosophical ramifications. It argues that we can accept a reasonable theory of identity without committing ourselves to the uniqueness, necessity, or determinacy of identity. (shrink)

Physicists have suggested what I call symmetry fundamentalism: the view that symmetries are fundamental aspects of physical reality and that these aspects are more fundamental than what one might ordinarily think of as the fundamental building blocks of the world, such as elementary particles. The goal of this paper is to develop an ontology for classical particle mechanics that provides a precise instance of symmetry fundamentalism.

The tracking theory treats knowledge as counterfactual covariation of belief and truth through a sphere of possibilities. I argue that the tracking theory cannot respect perceptual knowledge, because perceptual belief covaries with truth through a discontinuous scatter of possibilities.

Truthmaker theory has been used to argue for substantial conclusions about the categorial structure of the world, in particular that states of affairs are needed to play the role of truthmakers. In this paper, I argue that closely considering the role of aboutness in truthmaking, that is considering what truthbearers are about, yields the result that there is no good truthmaker-based reason to think that truthmakers must be states of affairs understood as existing entities, whether complex or simple. First, I (...) introduce an aboutness-based account of truthmaking as a metaphysically modest alternative to the orthodox necessitarian account of truthmaking. Second, I discuss the distinction between states and events that has been made on the basis of linguistic evidence regarding aspectual markers and nominalisation. I argue that the modest approach to truthmaking allows us to accept that there is a real distinction between states and events without requiring that the distinction is ontologically substantial. Specifically, what we are talking about with state-truthbearers really differs from what we are talking about with event-truthbearers, but this difference need not be understood as a difference in kinds of entities. Because of its overall modesty, this is a theoretically virtuous result. (shrink)

The paper argues that no second order theory is ontologically commited to anything beyond what its individual variables range over.

Title in English: "Being a certain way without being definitely that way: a problem for supervaluationism". I argue that the supervaluationist theory of vagueness, in its most common version, is committed to a thesis – viz., the incompatibility between being-F and not-being-definitely-F – which is doubtful, unjustified and in conflict with the definition of super-truth as truth in all admissible precisifications of a vague language.

Know-how and expressivism are usually regarded as disjoint topics, belonging to distant areas of philosophy. This paper argues that, despite obvious differences, the two debates have important similarities. In particular, semantic and conceptual tools developed by expressivists can be exported to the know-how debate. On the one hand, some of the expressivists' semantic resources can be used to deflect Stanley and Williamson's influential argument for factualism about know-how: the claim that knowing how to do something consists in knowing a fact. (...) On the other, expressivism provides the resources to formulate a nonfactualist account of know-how. On this account, know-how has a kind of nonpropositional content and plays the role of guiding performance of action, rather than recording information from the environment. (shrink)

Medical practice is practiced morality, and clinical research belongs to normative ethics. The present book elucidates and advances this thesis by: 1. analyzing the structure of medical language, knowledge, and theories; 2. inquiring into the foundations of the clinical encounter; 3. introducing the logic and methodology of clinical decision-making, including artificial intelligence in medicine; 4. suggesting comprehensive theories of organism, life, and psyche; of health, illness, and disease; of etiology, diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, and therapy; and 5. investigating the moral and (...) metaphysical issues central to medical practice and research. Many systems of (classical, modal, non-classical, probability, and fuzzy) logic are introduced and applied. Fuzzy medical deontics, fuzzy medical ontology, fuzzy medical concept formation, fuzzy medical decision-making and biomedicine and many other techniques of fuzzification in medicine are introduced for the first time. -/- . (shrink)

The Epistemic Objection says that certain theories of time imply that it is impossible to know which time is absolutely present. Standard presentations of the Epistemic Objection are elliptical—and some of the most natural premises one might fill in to complete the argument end up leading to radical skepticism. But there is a way of filling in the details which avoids this problem, using epistemic safety. The new version has two interesting upshots. First, while Ross Cameron alleges that the Epistemic (...) Objection applies to presentism as much as to theories like the growing block, the safety version does not overgeneralize this way. Second, the Epistemic Objection does generalize in a different, overlooked way. The safety objection is a serious problem for a widely held combination of views: “propositional temporalism” together with “metaphysical eternalism”. (shrink)

Some philosophers respond to Leibniz’s “shift” argument against absolute space by appealing to antihaecceitism about possible worlds, using David Lewis’s counterpart theory. But separated from Lewis’s distinctive system, it is difficult to understand what this doctrine amounts to or how it bears on the Leibnizian argument. In fact, the best way of making sense of the relevant kind of antihaecceitism concedes the main point of the Leibnizian argument, pressing us to consider alternative spatiotemporal metaphysics.

This paper develops a new version of instrumentalism, in light of progress in the realism debate in recent decades, and thereby defends the view that instrumentalism remains a viable philosophical position on science. The key idea is that talk of unobservable objects should be taken literally only when those objects are assigned properties (or described in terms of analogies involving things) with which we are experientially (or otherwise) acquainted. This is derivative from the instrumentalist tradition in so far as the (...) distinction between unobservable and observable is taken to have significance with respect to meaning. (shrink)

The paper deals with cases of counting things that could exist but do not actually exist that resist common strategies for actualist paraphrases and that play an important role in motivating Timothy Williamson's ontology of contingently concrete objects. It is argued that these cases should be understood as cases of quantification not over individual possible objects but rather over kinds of objects, some of which do not actually have instances. This claim is motivated by a comparison with other cases of (...) natural-language quantification with a similar logical form that, in any case, have to be interpreted as involving quantification over kinds of things even if their surface structure seems to suggest otherwise. (shrink)

Why should we avoid incoherence? An influential view tells us that incoherent combinations of attitudes are such that it is impossible for all of those attitudes to be simultaneously vindicated by the evidence. But it is not clear whether this view successfully explains what is wrong with certain akratic doxastic states. In this paper I flesh out an alternative response to that question, one according to which the problem with incoherent combinations of attitudes is that it is impossible for all (...) of those attitudes to be simultaneously knowledgeable. This alternative response explains what is wrong with akratic combinations of attitudes using commonly accepted epistemological theses. The paper still shows how this proposal is able to explain the badness of incoherent combinations involving the absence of attitudes, suspended judgment and credence. These explanations deploy the notions of knowledge and being in a position to know, instead of the notion of responding properly to the evidence. Finally, I suggest that this picture can be generalized to the realm of practical rationality as well. (shrink)

Purists think that changes in our practical interests can’t affect what we know unless those changes are truth-relevant with respect to the propositions in question. Impurists disagree. They think changes in our practical interests can affect what we know even if those changes aren’t truth-relevant with respect to the propositions in question. I argue that impurists are right, but for the wrong reasons, since they haven’t appreciated the best argument for their own view. Together with “Minimalism and the Limits of (...) Warranted Assertability Maneuvers,” “The Pragmatic Encroachment Debate,” and “Anti-Intellectualism” (below), this paper constitutes my attempt to refute the entire pragmatic encroachment debate. As I show in this paper, there is an argument for impurism sitting in plain sight that is considerably more plausible than any extant argument for pragmatism. (shrink)

This paper does two things. First, it defends, against a potential threat to it, the claim that a capacity for essentialist knowledge should not be placed among the core capacities for counterfactual knowledge. Second, it assesses a consequence of that claim—or better: of the discussion by means of which I defend it—in relation to Kment's and Williamson's views on the relation between modality and counterfactuals.

The evidential value of moral intuitions has been challenged by psychological work showing that the intuitions of ordinary people are affected by distorting factors. One reply to this challenge, the expertise defence, claims that training in philosophical thinking confers enhanced reliability on the intuitions of professional philosophers. This defence is often expressed through analogy: since we do not allow doubts about folk judgments in domains like mathematics or physics to undermine the plausibility of judgments by experts in these domains, we (...) also should not do so in philosophy. In this paper I clarify the logic of the analogy strategy, and defend it against recent challenges by Jesper Ryberg. The discussion exposes an interesting divide: while Ryberg’s challenges may weaken analogies between morality and domains like mathematics, they do not affect analogies to other domains, such as physics. I conclude that the expertise defence can be supported by analogical means, though care is required in selecting an appropriate analog. I discuss implications of this conclusion for the expertise defence debate and for study of the moral domain itself. (shrink)

A dispositional theory of skill, such as that defended by Stanley and Williamson, might seem promising. Such a theory looks to provide a unified intellectualist account of skill reflecting insights from cognitive science and philosophy. I argue that any theory of the kind fails given that skill is broadly answerable to the will. A person may be characteristically disposed both against the exercise of her skill and against any associated intentional forming of knowledge. Clearly she does not cease thereby to (...) be skilled. I consider four replies, none of which vindicate this kind of theory. (shrink)

La epistemología de la virtud es una de las posiciones más influyentes en la epistemología contemporánea. Según esta, el agente, con sus virtudes o vicios epistémicos, juega un papel central en la evaluación epistémica. El libro Performance Epistemology: Foundations and Applications, de Miguel Ángel Fernández Vargas, ofrece una entrada al corazón de la “epistemología basada en el desempeño”, una de las corrientes más importantes dentro de la epistemología de la virtud. En esta reseña discuto la noción de agencia epistémica y (...) exploro la posibilidad de iluminarla a partir de la noción de reflexión. En la primera sección, a propósito de la propuesta de Reed incluida en el libro, muestro cómo una noción no específica de agencia epistémica resulta teóricamente inconveniente. En la segunda sección muestro, en contra de las objeciones presentadas por Kornblith y Grimm, cómo una noción específica de agencia epistémica en términos de reflexión prueba ser teóricamente valiosa. Estas reflexiones son tan solo algunas de las múltiples discusiones que pueden tener lugar a partir de los textos incluidos en esta extraordinaria compilación. Además de presentar una visión actualizada de la epistemología de la virtud, este libro constituye una contribución sustancial al avance de este programa de investigación dentro de la epistemología. (shrink)

Given his hostility to intensional locutions, it is not surprising that Quine was suspicious of the subjunctive conditional. Although he admitted its usefulness as a heuristic device, in order to introduce dispositional terms, he held that it had no place in a finished scientific theory. In this paper I argue in support of something like Quine’s position. Many contemporary philosophers are unreflectively realist about subjunctives, regarding them as having objective truth values. I contest this. “Moderate realist” theorists, such as Lewis (...) and Stalnaker, admit that subjunctives are context-relative and often indeterminate; I argue, using some examples from the contemporary literature on conditionals, that these features are deeper and more widespread than they think. “Ultra-realist” theories, which deny any indeterminacy, are not credible. Hence subjunctives are unsuitable for certain purposes, in particular the description of mind-independent reality. (shrink)

Vagueness is one of the most persistent and challenging topics in the intersection of philosophy and logic. At least five other noteworthy books on vagueness have been written by philosophers since 1991 [2, 6, 11, 12, 15]. A (necessarily incomplete) bibliography that has been compiled for the Arché project Vagueness: its Nature and Logic (2004-2006) of the University of St Andrews lists more than 350 articles and books on vagueness until 2005.1 Many new and interesting contributions have appeared since. The (...) book under review is much more than yet another addition to this prolific discourse. Nicholas Smith manages to tackle two different tasks that are potentially in tension. On the one hand, he provides a comprehensive, systematic and well written account of various approaches to vagueness that have been debated so far. On the other hand, Smith carefully explains and defends his own theory of vagueness, called fuzzy plurivaluationism. Given the complex and almost unsurmountably large amount of relevant literature and the fact that theories of vagueness based on fuzzy logic have almost universally been rejected by philosophers so far this is no simple feat. In the comments below, I will largely follow the structure of book. If along the way I cannot resist to make side remarks or even take issue with some of.. (shrink)