Much contemporary ontological inquiry takes place within the so-called ‘Quinean tradition’ but, given that some aspects of Quine’s project have been widely abandoned even by those who consider themselves Quineans, it is unclear what this amounts to. Fortunately recent work in metaontology has produced two relevant results here: a clearer characterisation of the metaontology uniting the aforementioned Quineans, most notably undertaken by Peter van Inwagen, and a raft of criticisms of that metaontology. In this paper I critique van Inwagen’s Quinean (...) metaontology, finding that certain challenges, supplemented by pressure to reflect more closely Quine’s work, should drive Quineans to adopt a stronger metaontology incorporating more of Quine’s radical views. I conclude that while van Inwagen’s Quineanism is problematic there are prospects for a viable, more wholeheartedly Quinean, metaontology. (shrink)

Reid's principle of credulity may be interpreted as equivalent to a principle of charity, due to the nature of three beliefs it implies concerning the interlocutors, which are held by the person who attempts to acquire their language: They are telling truth in the sense that they are saying what they really think, perceive, feel, believe; they are veracious in the sense that what they say is objectively true; they use language consistently. This interpretation relies on Reid's straightforward remarks on (...) his principle of credulity and on his view of two related correspondences: One correspondence is between the principle of credulity and the principle of veracity. The other is between these two principles and the principles that create the ‘language of nature’ and guide us in our efforts to unravel it. (shrink)

Othering is the construction and identification of the self or in-group and the other or out-group in mutual, unequal opposition by attributing relative inferiority and/or radical alienness to the other/out-group. The notion of othering spread from feminist theory and post-colonial studies to other areas of the humanities and social sciences, but is originally rooted in Hegel’s dialectic of identification and distantiation in the encounter of the self with some other in his “Master-Slave dialectic”. In this paper, after reviewing the philosophical (...) and psychological background of othering, I distinguish two kinds of othering, “crude” and “sophisticated”, that differ in the logical form of their underlying arguments. The essential difference is that the former is merely self-other distantiating, while the latter – as in Hegel’s dialectic – partially depends on self-other identification. While crude othering is closer to the paradigmatic notion of othering, sophisticated othering is closer to Hegel’s, but so is quasi-othering, which is nearly identical in form to sophisticated othering, but which misses the defining feature of othering – attributing relative inferiority and/or radical alienness. Because Hegel’s dialectic applies to any encounter of an interpreting self with some other, sophisticated or quasi-othering is at least potentially a very common occurrence in the interpretation of others, especially of those who do not belong to the in-group. However, although othering is usually undesirable, the Hegelian varieties can provide a “mirror”, which can be used as a tool to improve understanding of both the other and the interpreting self, and the malignant aspects of othering can be avoided through charity. (shrink)

The principle of charity is used in philosophy of language and argumentation theory as an important principle of interpretation which credits speakers with “the best” plausible interpretation of their discourse. I contend that the argumentation account, while broadly advocated, misses the basic point of a dialectical conception which approaches argumentation as discussion between two parties who disagree over the issue discussed. Therefore, paradoxically, an analyst who is charitable to one discussion party easily becomes uncharitable to the other. To overcome this (...) paradox, I suggest to significantly limit the application of the principle of charity depending on contextual factors. (shrink)

The current dominant approach on the assessment of critical thinking takes as a starting point a conception of criticality that does not commit to any substantive view or context of meaning concerning what issues are relevant to be critical about in society or in life. Nevertheless, as a detailed examination of the identification of assumptions shows, when going from the theory of critical thinking to the praxis of producing and evaluating arguments, the critical person will inevitably make such commitments from (...) particular perspectives, using particular contexts of meaning. But then she may fail to take notice of relevant ones and may end up using her critical powers in a mercenary way. It is then proposed, in the context of assessment of critical thinking, to choose and use some privileged contexts of meaning, while making them available for critical scrutiny and allowing for the possibility that new ones be brought up by those being assessed. (shrink)

What is it to know more? By what metric should the quantity of one's knowledge be measured? I start by examining and arguing against a very natural approach to the measure of knowledge, one on which how much is a matter of how many. I then turn to the quasi-spatial notion of counterfactual distance and show how a model that appeals to distance avoids the problems that plague appeals to cardinality. But such a model faces fatal problems of its own. (...) Reflection on what the distance model gets right and where it goes wrong motivates a third approach, which appeals not to cardinality, nor to counterfactual distance, but to similarity. I close the paper by advocating this model and briefly discussing some of its significance for epistemic normativity. In particular, I argue that the 'trivial truths' objection to the view that truth is the goal of inquiry rests on an unstated, but false, assumption about the measure of knowledge, and suggest that a similarity model preserves truth as the aim of belief in an intuitively satisfying way. (shrink)

The title is an allusion to the fact that, traditionally, propositions have served at least two distinct functions in philosophy, even though these functions have not usually been distinguished. Propositions have been invoked as the ‘meanings’ or ‘intensions’ of sentences and as the objects of propositional attitudes. Thus the proposition that Socrates is wise is the meaning of the English sentence, ‘Socrates is wise,’ and is what Charles believes when he believes that Socrates is wise. ‘Means that’ and ‘believes that’ (...) take the same kind of object. I shall argue, first, that there are two quite different functions here and it takes two quite different kinds of proposition to serve these distinct functions. The second thing I want to do is examine the suggestion that we can treat propositions as sets of possible worlds. There is a serious difficulty here, and so I shall want to turn that idea on its side: I shall define possible worlds as sets of G-propositions and then define E-propositions as sets of possible worlds. (shrink)

There is a fairly general consensus that names are Millian (or Russellian) genuine terms, that is, are singular terms whose sole semantic function is to introduce a referent into the propositions expressed by sentences containing the term. This answers the question as to what sort of proposition is expressed by use of sentences containing names. But there is a second serious semantic problem about proper names, that of how the referents of proper names are determined. This is the question that (...) I will discuss in this paper. Various views consistent with Millianism have been proposed as to how the semantic referents of proper names are determined. These views can be classified into (1) description theories and (2) causal theories, but they can also be classified into (3) social practice theories, on which a name’s referent is determined by a social practice involving the referent, and (4) individualistic theories, on which the referent of the use of a name is determined by the speaker’s state of mind. Here I argue against social practice theories of the sorts proposed by Kripke and Evans and in favor of an individualistic approach to name reference. I argue that social practice is irrelevant to determining name reference and that, as a consequence, names have no meanings in natural languages. In the second part of the paper I motivate and propose a new form of individualistic theory which incorporates features of both description theories and Evans’s social practice theory. (shrink)

Enthymemes are traditionally defined as arguments in which some elements are left unstated. It is an empirical fact that enthymemes are both enormously frequent and appropriately understood in everyday argumentation. Why is it so? We outline an answer that dispenses with the so called "principle of charity", which is the standard notion underlying most works on enthymemes. In contrast, we suggest that a different force drives enthymematic argumentation—namely, parsimony, i.e. the tendency to optimize resource consumption, in light of the agent's (...) goals. On this view, the frequent use of enthymemes does not indicate sub-optimal performance of arguers, requiring appeals to charity for their redemption. On the contrary, it is seen as a highly adaptive argumentation strategy, given the need of everyday reasoners to optimize their cognitive resources. Considerations of parsimony also affect enthymeme reconstruction, i.e. the process by which the interpreter makes sense of the speaker's enthymemes. Far from being driven by any pro-social cooperative instinct, interpretative efforts are aimed at extracting valuable information at reasonable costs from available sources. Thus, there is a tension between parsimony and charity, insofar as the former is a non-social constraint for self-regulation of one's behaviour, whereas the latter implies a pro-social attitude. We will argue that some versions of charity are untenable for enthymeme interpretation, while others are compatible with the view defended here, but still require parsimony to expose the ultimate reasons upon which a presumption of fair treatment in enthymeme reconstruction is founded. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to motivate and defend a recognizable version of N. L. Wilson's "Principle of Charity" Doing so will involve: (1) distinguishing it fromthe significantly different versions of the Principle familiar through the work of Quine and Davidson; (2) showing that it is compatible with, among other things, both semantic externalism and "simulation" accounts of interpretation; and (3) explaining how it follows from plausible constraints relating to the connection between interpretation and self-interpretation. Finally, it will be (...) argued that Charity represents a type of "minimal individualism" that is closely tied to first person authority, and that endorsing Charity in our interpretations of others reflects a commitment to capturing, from the third-person starting point, their first-personal point of view. (shrink)

The Preface Paradox has led many philosophers to believe that, if it isassumed that high probability is necessary for rational acceptability, the principleaccording to which rational acceptability is closed under conjunction (CP)must be abandoned. In this paper we argue that the paradox is far less damaging to CP than is generally believed. We describe how, given certain plausibleassumptions, in a large class of cases in which CP seems to lead tocontradiction, it does not do so after all. A restricted version (...) of CP canthus be maintained. (shrink)

The dogma that the propositional logic of metaphysical modality is S5 is rebutted. The author exposes fallacies in standard arguments supporting S5, arguing that propositional metaphysical modal logic is weaker even than both S4 and B, and is instead the minimal and weak metaphysical-modal logic T.

Possible-worlds talk obscures, rather than clarifies, the debate about haecceitism. In this paper I distinguish haecceitism and anti-haecceitism from other doctrines that sometimes go under those names. Then I defend the claim that there are no non-tendentious definitions of ‘haecceitism’ and ‘anti-haecceitism’ using possible-worlds talk. That is, any definition of ‘haecceitism’ using possible-worlds talk depends, for its correctness, on a substantive theory of the nature of possible worlds. This explains why using possible-worlds talk when discussing haecceitism causes confusion: if the (...) parties to the discussion presuppose different theories of the nature of possible worlds, then they will mean different things by ‘haecceitism’. (shrink)

This paper discusses an "expressive constraint" on accounts of thought and language which requires that when a speaker expresses a belief by sincerely uttering a sentence, the utterance and the belief have the same content. It will be argued that this constraint should be viewed as expressing a conceptual connection between thought and language rather than a mere empirical generalization about the two. However, the most obvious accounts of the relation between thought and language compatible with the constraint (giving an (...) independent account of one of either linguistic meaning or thought content and understanding the other in terms of it) both face serious difficulties. Because of this, the following will suggest an alternative picture of the relation between thought and language that remains compatible with the constraint. (shrink)

It has frequently been suggested that meaning is, in some important sense, normative. However, precisely what is particularly normative about it is often left without any satisfactory explanation, and the ‘normativity thesis’ has thus, justly, been called into question. That said, it will be argued here that the intuition that meaning is ‘normative’ is on the right track, even if many of the purported explanations for meaning’s normativity are not. In particular, rather that being particularly social, the normativity of meaning (...) may follow from the more logical/epistemic relations between use and meaning. Because of this, some use-based theories we still be able to accommodate the normativity of meaning by allowing that while meaning supervenes upon use, the function from use to meaning is a normative one. (shrink)

This paper argues that popular criticisms of semantic holism (such as that it leaves the ideas of translation, disagreement and change of mind problematic) are more properly directed at an "instability assumption" which, while often associated with holism, can be separated from it. The versions of holism that follow from 'interpretational' account of meaning are not committed to the instability assumption and can thus avoid many of the problems traditionally associated with holism.

Davidson has claimed that to conclude that reference is inscrutable, one must assume that "If some theory of truth... is satisfactory in the light of all relevant evidence... then any theory that is generated from the first theory by a permutation will also be satisfactory in the light of all relevant evidence." However, given that theories of truth are not directly read off the world, but rather serve as parts of larger theories of behavior, this assumption is far from self-evident. (...) A proper understanding of the role truth theories play in theories of interpretation makes the inscrutability of reference much less wide-spread than Davidson suggests, and, as a result, the radical interpretation methodology is much less likely to saddle its defenders with counterintuitive cases of indeterminacy than is commonly supposed. (shrink)

There has frequently been taken to be a tension, if not an incompatibility, between "externalist" theories of content (which allow the make-up of one's physical environment and the linguistic usage of one's community to contribute to the contents of one's thoughts and utterances) and the "methodologically individualist" intuition that whatever contributes to the content of one's thoughts and utterances must ultimately be grounded in facts about one's own attitudes and behavior. In this dissertation I argue that one can underwrite such (...) externalist theories within a methodologically individualistic framework by understanding semantic norms in terms of the need to reach, for each of one's terms, a type of "equilibrium." Each speaker's commitment to making her _own_ beliefs and applications consistent allows one to incorporate these 'external' factors into the contents of their thoughts and utterances in a way that remains methodologically individualistic. Methodologically individualistic accounts are typically taken to be unable to incorporate 'external' factors such as the world's physical make-up or communal usage because of arguments suggesting that the individual's own beliefs and usage underdetermine or even misidentify what, according to externalist accounts, they mean by their terms. These arguments, however, only seem plausible if one presupposes a comparatively impoverished conception of the individual's beliefs. The beliefs a speaker associates with a given term extend far beyond the handful of sentences they would produce if asked to list such beliefs. In particular, speakers have an implicit, but rich, understanding of their language, their world, and the relation between them. Speakers typically understand languages as shared temporally extended practices about which they can be, both individually and collectively, mistaken. Once this conception of language is taken into account, the ascriptions which purportedly forced 'non-individualistic' conceptions of content upon us (particularly ascriptions which seemed to tie what we meant to social use rather than our own beliefs) turn out to be ultimately grounded in the individual's own beliefs. Indeed, our self-conception does much more than merely underwrite 'non-individualistic' ascriptions.. (shrink)

According to a classical view in the philosophy of language, the reference of a term is determined by a property of the term which supervenes on the history of its use. A contrasting view is that a term's reference is determined by how it is properly interpreted, in accordance with certain constraints or conditions of adequacy on interpretations. Causal theories of reference of the sort associated with Hilary Putnam, Saul Kripke and Michael Devitt are versions of the first view, while (...) defenders of determination by interpretation theories include Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett and John Haugeland. I use a variant of Putnam's Twin Earth thought experiment to argue against the first view generally, and causal theories of reference in particular, then go on to argue that properly-formulated version of the principle of charity can account for the intuitions that seem to support causal theories. Finally, I apply my version of interpretationism to the problem of reference to abstract objects and compare it with some of Wittgenstein's and Quine's views about language. (shrink)

If someone disagrees with my moral views, or more generally if I’m in a group of n people who all disagree with each other, but I don’t have any special evidence or basis for my epistemic superiority, then it’s at best a 1-in-n chance that my views are correct. The skeptical threat from disagreement is thus a kind of moral lottery, to adapt a similar metaphor from Sharon Street. Her own genealogical debunking argument, as I discuss, relies on a premise (...) of such disagreement among evolutionary counterparts. -/- In this paper, I resist the threat from disagreement by showing that, on some of the most influential and most attractive theories of content determination, the premise of moral disagreement cannot serve any skeptical or revisionary purposes. I examine and criticize attempts, made by Gilbert Harman and Sharon Street, to argue from disagreement to relativism by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that, within certain constraints, maximizes the attribution to us of true beliefs. And I examine and criticize Robert Williams’s attempt to show there is moral disagreement by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that instead maximizes the attribution to us of rationality. My overall aim is to defend commonsense moral realism via a careful look at the theory of content and concepts. (shrink)

The dogma that the propositional logic of metaphysical modality is S5 is rebutted in related installments (previously published and unpublished essays).

The Holy Scriptures can be considered a specific kind of normative texts, whose use to assess practical moral cases requires interpretation. In the field of ethics, this interpretative problem results in the necessity of bridging the gap between the normative source – moral precepts – and the specific cases. In the history of the Church, this problem was the core of the so-called casuistry, namely the decision-making practice consisting in applying the Commandments and other principles of the Holy Scriptures to (...) specific cases or moral problems. By taking into account the sin of lying, this paper argues that casuistic texts reveal an extremely sophisticated interpretative method, grounded on “pragmatic” contextual and communicative considerations and argumentative structures that resemble the ones used in legal interpretation. These works show how the underspecified biblical text expressing an abstract norm was enriched pragmatically by completing it and modulating its meaning so that it could be used to draw a conclusion in a specific context on a specific case. The mutual interdependence between biblical interpretation, pragmatics, and argumentation sheds light on a much broader phenomenon, namely the pragmatic nature of argumentation. (shrink)

This paper aims to discuss a well-known concept from argumentation theory, namely the principle of charity. It will show that this principle, especially in its contemporary version as formulated by Donald Davidson, meets with some serious problems. Since we need the principle of charity in any kind of critical discussion, we propose the way of modifying it according to the presupponendum—the rule written in the sixteenth century by Ignatius Loyola. While also corresponding with pragma-dialectical rules, it also provides additional content. (...) This will be termed the dialectical principle of charity, and it offers a few steps to be performed during an argument in order to make sure that the participants understand each other well and are not deceived by any cognitive bias. The meaning of these results could be of great significance for argumentation theory, pragma-dialectics and the practice of public discourse as it enhances the principle of charity and makes it easier to apply in argumentation. (shrink)

In this article, I explore some harms that emerge from the call for charity in academic philosophy. A charitability gap, I suggest, exists both between who we tend to read charitably and who we tend to expect charitability from. This gap shores up the disciplinary status quo and (re)produces epistemic oppression, which helps preserve philosophy's status as a discipline that is, to use Charles Mills's language, conceptually and demographically dominated by whiteness and maleness (Mills 1998, 2). I am particularly interested (...) in calls for charity made in response to critiques of racist or sexist authors/texts. I suggest that in these cases, interpretive charity perpetuates epistemic violence by creating conditions for testimonial smothering (Dotson 2011); that it functions as an orientation device (Ahmed 2006) designed to bring “unruly” philosophers back in line with disciplinary practices and traditions; and that it requires resistant philosophers to remain in oppressive worlds (Lugones 2003a; Pohlhaus 2011). Although charitability is risky—and charity is disproportionately demanded from already marginalized philosophers—I am hesitant to abandon charity entirely. The outright rejection of charitable orientations toward texts or others commits philosophers to a purity politics that, following Alexis Shotwell, I suggest we resist (Shotwell 2016). (shrink)

In the last 35 years many philosophers have appealed to reference magnetism to explain how it is that we mean what we mean. The idea is that it is a constitutive principle of metasemantics that the interpretation that assigns the more natural meanings is correct, _ceteris paribus_. Among other things, magnetism has been used to answer the challenges of grue and quus, Quine’s indeterminacy of translation argument, and Putnam’s model-theoretic argument against realism. Critics of magnetism have usually objected to the (...) base notion of naturalness. Here I assume naturalness for the sake of argument, but argue that even still, reference magnetism should be rejected. The supposed force of reference magnetism is arbitrarily weak, and the best explanation of this is that it simply does not exist. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The paper undertakes a critical analysis of the so-called Presupposition of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, which prescribes the benevolent interpretation of the other’s words. We aim to identify the anthropological and epistemological background of the pedagogical guidelines contained therein and to explicate the intellectual and moral virtues needed to put them into practice. We argue that practising the Presupposition is both virtuous and mutually beneficial in pedagogical practice.

In this paper I argue that textualism is far less attractive as a theory of written law than some of its modern proponents think. For it is not usually sensible to expect the grammatical meaning of a provision to determine its appropriate legal meaning. Factors that are unrelated to grammar in the identification of law (e.g., legal theory, context) do too much of the work. **Draft -- acknowledgments welcome, but please do not cite.**.

ABSTRACT Our ascriptions of content to past utterances assign to them a level of conceptual continuity and determinacy that extends beyond what could be grounded in the usage up to their time of utterance. If one accepts such ascriptions, one can argue either that future use must be added to the grounding base, or that such cases show that meaning is not, ultimately, grounded in use. The following will defend the first option as the more promising of the two, though (...) this ultimately requires understanding the relation between use and meaning as ‘normative’ in two important ways. The first way is that the function from use to meaning must be of a sort that allows us to maintain a robust distinction between actual and correct use. The second sort of normativity is unique to theories that extend the grounding base into the future. In particular, if meaning is partially a function of future use, we can see our commitment to the ‘determinacy’ of meaning as a practical commitment that structures our linguistic practices rather than a theoretical commitment that merely describes them. (shrink)

Handbook article about Radical interpretation and the principle of charity in Donald Davidson's philosophy.

Essays on Aristotle's Sea-Battle, Lazy Argument, Argument Reaper, Diodorus' Master Argument -/- The book is devoted to the ancient logical theories, reconstruction of their semantic proprieties and possibilities of their interpretation by modern logical tools. The Ancient arguments are frequently misunderstood in modern interpretations since authors usually have tendency to ignore their historical proprieties and theoretical background what usually leads to a quite inappropriate picture of the argument’s original form and mission. Author’s primary intention was to draw attention to the (...) complexity of some historical arguments and to the theoretical context in which arguments were created, circulated, developed, and finally tuned. Four well-known ancient arguments – with a common central subject related to the future contingencies problem – are reconstructed from available historical sources: “The Sea Battle”, which is drawn from Aristotle’s treatise De Interpretatione; two arguments, usually ascribed to the Stoics, “The Lazy Argument” and “The Reaper”; “The Master Argument” of the Megarian philosopher Diodorus. Arguments are linguistically and semantically detaily analyzed, formally presented by reflecting some relevant corresponding hypotheses based on physical or logical theories of their ancient authors, and finally covered by appropriate logical tools familiar to a modern reader. Two appendices are added at the closing part of the book. One covering some assumptions relevant for understanding of rival streams in ancient theories of meaning related to the nature of names and naming; the other is devoted to the ancient understanding of logical proposition and attempts to find an adequate Latin translation of the Greek delicate philosophical term “ἀξίωμα”. (shrink)

MEANING POSTULATES REINSTATED If I am right in agreeing with Cresswell that the "logicarrlexicaT distinction is one of degree rather than one of kind, that in turn impugns the distinction between the official truth-rules that define logical ...

(First paragraph.) Different views on the relation between phenomenal reality, the world as we consciously experience it, and noumenal reality, the world as it is independent from an experiencing subject, have different implications for a collection of interrelated issues of meaning and reality including aspects of metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and philosophical methodology. Exploring some of these implications, this paper compares and brings together analytic, continental, and Buddhist approaches, focusing on relevant aspects of the philosophy of Donald Davidson, Jacques (...) Derrida, Dharmakīrti, and Dōgen. Prima facie, these philosophers have little in common, and indeed the differences are vast. Even in case of the two Western thinkers there is a fundamental difference between Davidson’s anti-dualist identification of phenomenal, experienced reality with the noumenal, real, external world on the one hand, and the bracketing or elimination of noumenal reality at the base of Derrida’s thought on the other, which lead to radically different ideas with regards to (the possibility and nature of) objectivity and our linguistic access to the real/external/noumenal world. Nevertheless, there are important similarities between Dharmakīrti’s theory of apoha and Davidson’s and Derrida’s theories of triangulation and différance respectively, and these similarities can be exploited to bridge some of the differences and attempt a constructive engagement. (shrink)

If an argument can be reconstructed in at least two different ways, then which reconstruction is to be preferred? In this paper I address this problem of argument reconstruction in terms of Ryle’s infinite regress argument against the view that knowledge-how requires knowledge-that. First, I demonstrate that Ryle’s initial statement of the argument does not fix its reconstruction as it admits two, structurally different reconstructions. On the basis of this case and infinite regress arguments generally, I defend a revisionary take (...) on argument reconstruction: argument reconstruction is mainly to be ruled by charity (viz. by general criteria which arguments have to fulfil in order to be good arguments) rather than interpretation. (shrink)

In this paper I wish to make some headway on understanding what \emph{kind} of problem the ``problem of time'' is, and offer a possible resolution---or, rather, a new way of understanding an old resolution. The response I give is a variation on a theme of Rovelli's \emph{evolving constants of motion} strategy. I argue that by giving correlation strategies a \emph{structuralist} basis, a number of objections to the standard account can be blunted. Moreover, I show that the account I offer provides (...) a suitable ontology for time in both classical and quantum canonical general relativity. (shrink)

Our ascriptions of content to utterances in the past attribute to them a level of determinacy that extends beyond what could supervene upon the usage up to the time of those utterances. If one accepts the truth of such ascriptions, one can either (1) argue that subsequent use must be added to the supervenience base that determines the meaning of a term at a time, or (2) argue that such cases show that meaning does not supervene upon use at all. (...) The following will argue against authors such as Lance, Hawthorn and Ebbs that first of these options is the more promising of the two. However, maintaining the supervenience thesis ultimately requires understanding the relation between use and meaning as 'normative' in two important ways. The first (more familiar) way is that the function from use to meaning must be of a sort that allows us to maintain a robust distinction between correct usage and actual usage. This first type of normativity is accepted by defenders of many more temporally restricted versions of the supervenience thesis, but the second sort of normativity is unique to theories that extend the supervenience base into the future. In particular, if meaning is partially a function of future use, we can understand other commitments we are often taken to have about meaning, particularly the commitment to meaning being 'determinate', as practical commitments that structure our linguistic practices rather than theoretical commitment that merely describe such practices. (shrink)

A growing number of philosophers and linguists have argued that many, if not most, terms in our language should be understood as semantically context sensitive. In opposition to this trend, Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore defend a view they call "Semantic Minimalism", which holds that there are virtually no semantically context sensitive expressions in English once you get past the standard list of indexicals and demonstratives such as "I", "you", "this", and "that". While minimalism strikes many as obviously false, it (...) will be argued here that the view is more plausible than commonly assumed if one accepts the 'normative' conception of the relation between meaning and use characteristic of the literature on semantic externalism. That said, it is not clear that Cappelen and Lepore always conceive of their minimal semantic contents in this more normative fashion, and once this framework is place, a version of 'moderate contextualism' that they do not consider comes into view. (shrink)

Cognitivism in psychology and philosophy is roughly the position that intelligent behavior can (only) be explained by appeal to internal that is, rational thought in a very broad sense. Sections 1 to 5 attempt to explicate in detail the nature of the scientific enterprise that this intuition has inspired. That enterprise is distinctive in at least three ways: It relies on a style of explanation which is different from that of mathematical physics, in such a way that it is not (...) basically concerned with quantitative equational laws; the states and processes with which it deals are in the sense that they are regarded as meaningful or representational; and it is not committed to reductionism, but is open to reduction in a form different from that encountered in other sciences. Spelling these points out makes it clear that the Cognitivist study of the mind can be rigorous and empirical, despite its unprecedented theoretical form. The philosophical explication has another advantage as well: It provides a much needed framework for articulating questions about whether the Cognitivist approach is right or wrong. The last three sections take that advantage of the account, and address several such questions, pro and con. (shrink)

Everyday life reasoning and argumentation is defeasible and uncertain. I present a probability logic framework to rationally reconstruct everyday life reasoning and argumentation. Coherence in the sense of de Finetti is used as the basic rationality norm. I discuss two basic classes of approaches to construct measures of argument strength. The first class imposes a probabilistic relation between the premises and the conclusion. The second class imposes a deductive relation. I argue for the second class, as the first class is (...) problematic if the arguments involve conditionals. I present a measure of argument strength that allows for dealing explicitly with uncertain conditionals in the premise set. (shrink)

W. V. Quine borrows the principle of charity from Neil Wilson, but modifies and enriches its content to fit into his naturalistic philosophy and epistemology. While Wilson ties this principle to the notion of truth, Quine’s attempts in finding a ground for it lead him to the concept of common rationality shared by all human beings, which is ultimately what makes communication, as the basis of our social life, possible. According to the paper's argument, three other expressions, that is, the (...) principles of psychological plausibility, empathy, and projection, which Quine uses in the contexts akin to that of the principle of charity, are not but different terms for one basic idea. Given the ties between the principle of charity and rationality, Quine's wide use of the principle and its affiliated notions proves that rationality is a central, often neglected, idea in his philosophy. The paper begins with an introductory account of the brief explanation Wilson gives of the principle of charity. Then it spells out four concepts or principles of charity, psychological plausibility, empathy, and projection showing how these four notions or principles basically express the same thing. Examining the relation of these last three principles with the principle of charity and rationality, the paper's main objective is to highlight the centrality of common rationality in Quine's philosophy, despite the common view that Quine is purely engaged with semantical aspects of Language. (shrink)

This monograph examines truth in fiction by applying the techniques of a naturalized logic of human cognitive practices. The author structures his project around two focal questions. What would it take to write a book about truth in literary discourse with reasonable promise of getting it right? What would it take to write a book about truth in fiction as true to the facts of lived literary experience as objectivity allows? It is argued that the most semantically distinctive feature of (...) the sentences of fiction is that they are unambiguously true and false together. It is true that Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street and also concurrently false that he did. A second distinctive feature of fiction is that the reader at large knows of this inconsistency and isn't in the least cognitively molested by it. Why, it is asked, would this be so? What would explain it? Two answers are developed. According to the no-contradiction thesis, the semantically tangled sentences of fiction are indeed logically inconsistent but not logically contradictory. According to the no-bother thesis, if the inconsistencies of fiction were contradictory, a properly contrived logic for the rational management of inconsistency would explain why readers at large are not thrown off cognitive stride by their embrace of those contradictions. As developed here, the account of fiction suggests the presence of an underlying three - or four-valued dialethic logic. The author shows this to be a mistaken impression. There are only two truth-values in his logic of fiction. The naturalized logic of Truth in Fiction jettisons some of the standard assumptions and analytical tools of contemporary philosophy, chiefly because the neurotypical linguistic and cognitive behaviour of humanity at large is at variance with them. Using the resources of a causal response epistemology in tandem with the naturalized logic, the theory produced here is data-driven, empirically sensitive, and open to a circumspect collaboration with the empirical sciences of language and cognition. (shrink)

This paper argues that evaluation of the truth and rationality of past scientific theories is both possible and profitable. The motivation for this enterprise is traced to recent discussions by I. Lakatos, L. Laudan and others on the import of history for the philosophy of science; several objections to it are considered and T. S. Kuhn is found to advance the most substantive. An argument for establishing judgements of rationality and truth in the face of scientific revolutions is presented; finally (...) evidence is offered for the value of such assessments to historiography and to debates on scientific progress. (shrink)

In this paper we want to examine how the mutual understanding of speakers is reached during a conversation through collaborative processes, and what role is played by abductive inference (in the Peircean sense) in these processes. We do this by bringing together contributions coming from a variety of disciplines, such as logic, philosophy of language and psychology. When speakers are engaged in a conversation, they refer to a supposed common ground: every participant ascribes to the others some knowledge, belief, opinion (...) etc. on which to rely in order to reach mutual understanding. As the conversation unfolds, this common ground is continually corrected and reshaped by the interchanges. An abductive reasoning takes place, in a collaborative setting, in order to build new possible theories about the common ground. In reconstructing this process through the use of a working example, we argue that the integration of a collaborative perspective within the Peircean theory of abduction can help to solve some of the drawbacks that the critics of the latter have outlined, for example its permissivity and non generativity. (shrink)

Discusses the conditions of possibility for intercultural and comparative philosophy, and for crosscultural communication at large. This innovative book explores the preconditions necessary for intercultural and comparative philosophy. Philosophical practices that involve at least two different traditions with no common heritage and whose languages have very different grammatical structure, such as Indo-Germanic languages and classical Chinese, are a particular focus. Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel look at the necessary and not-so-necessary conditions of possibility of interpretation, comparison, and other forms (...) of interaction and how we can speak of similarities and differences in this context. The authors posit that it is necessary to dissolve the question of universalism versus relativism by replacing the ideal language paradigm with a paradigm of family resemblances and that it is not necessary to share a common language to engage in comparison. Numerous case studies are presented, including many comparisons of Western and Chinese concepts. (shrink)

This dissertation is on infinite regress arguments in philosophy. Its main goals are to explain what such arguments from many distinct philosophical debates have in common, and to provide guidelines for using and evaluating them. Two theories are reviewed: the Paradox Theory and the Failure Theory. According to the Paradox Theory, infinite regress arguments can be used to refute an existentially or universally quantified statement (e.g. to refute the statement that at least one discussion is settled, or the statement that (...) discussions are settled only if there is an agreed-upon criterion to settle them). According to the Failure Theory, infinite regress arguments can be used to demonstrate that a certain solution fails to solve an existentially or universally quantified problem (e.g. to demonstrate that a certain solution fails to settle all discussions, or that it fails to settle even one discussion). In the literature, the Paradox Theory is fairly well-developed, and this dissertation provides the Failure Theory with the same tools. (shrink)

The principle of charity says that all agents are rational. The principle of meta‐charity says that all agents believe all agents are rational. My thesis is that the arguments which are used to support charity also support meta‐charity. Meta‐charity implies meta‐meta‐charity. By recursion, the principle of charity implies that it is common knowledge. But there appears to be intelligent, well‐informed disagreement with the principle of charity. So if the entailment thesis holds, opponents of the principle of charity have a new (...) objection to the principle. Defenders of the principle of charity must either refute the entailment thesis or accept much stronger consequences than they expected.“As I am, so I see.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson. (shrink)