According to its quietist readings, skepticism can be dissolved by demonstrating that the notion of ‘absolute objectivity’ is confused. The dissolution of this confusion is supposed to lead us to acquiesce in our finite and plain everyday life without being bothered anymore about the supposed need for objective knowledge. In contrast, I want to propose a transformative reading of skepticism according to which the philosophical practice of skepticism can be ‘epistemically transformative’. To this end, I will transpose L.A. Paul's notion (...) of ‘epistemically transformative experience’ from decision theory to the realm of philosophical practice and argue that the modern skeptical problem of an external standpoint can evoke transformative experiences that lead to a new, albeit non-propositional, insight into the finitude of the human condition. (shrink)

The distinction between true belief and knowledge is one of the most fundamental in philosophy, and a remarkable effort has been dedicated to formulating the conditions on which true belief constitutes knowledge. For decades, much of this epistemological undertaking has been dominated by a single strategy, referred to here as the modal approach. Shared by many of the most widely influential constraints on knowledge, including the sensitivity, safety, and anti-luck/risk conditions, this approach rests on a key underlying assumption — the (...) modal profiles available to known and unknown beliefs are in some way asymmetrical. The first aim of this paper is to deconstruct this assumption, identifying its plausibility with the way in which epistemologists frequently conceptualize human perceptual systems as excluding certain varieties of close error under conditions conducive to knowledge acquisition. The second aim of this paper is to then argue that a neural phase phenomenon indicates that this conceptualization is quite likely mistaken. This argument builds on the previous introduction of this neural phase to the context of epistemology, expanding the use of neural phase cases beyond relatively narrow questions about epistemic luck to a much more expansive critique of the modal approach as a whole. (shrink)

This paper situates Wittgenstein in what is known as the causalism/anti-causalism debate in the philosophy of mind and action and reconstructs his arguments to the effect that reasons are not a species of causes. On the one hand, the paper aims to reinvigorate the question of what these arguments are by offering a historical sketch of the debate showing that Wittgenstein's arguments were overshadowed by those of the people he influenced, and that he came to be seen as an anti-causalist (...) for reasons that are in large part extraneous to his thought. On the other hand, the paper aims to recover the arguments scattered in Wittgenstein's own writings by detailing and defending three lines of argument distinguishing reasons from causes. The paper concludes that Wittgenstein's arguments differ from those of his immediate successors; that he anticipates current anti-psychologistic trends; and that he is perhaps closer to Davidson than historical dialectics suggest. (shrink)

RésuméPaul Boghossian soutient contre Wittgenstein que le normativisme au sujet de la logique et des mathématiques est incompatible avec le fait de tenir les énoncés logiques et mathématiques pour vrais et que le normativisme entraîne une régression indue. Je soutiens, pour ma part, que le normativisme n'entraîne pas une telle régression, parce que les normes peuvent être implicites et que le normativisme peut bien être «factualiste» si l'on rejette ce que Rockney Jacobsen appelle le «cognitivisme sémantique». Je tiens en outre (...) que la position de Boghossian repose sur la façon trompeuse dont il découpe le terrain conceptuel. (shrink)

This essay re-examines Kierkegaard's view of Socrates. I consider the problem that arises from Kierkegaard's appeal to Socrates as an exemplar for irony. The problem is that he also appears to think that, as an exemplar for irony, Socrates cannot be represented. And part of the problem is the paradox of self-reference that immediately arises from trying to represent x as unrepresentable. On the solution I propose, Kierkegaard does not hold that, as an exemplar for irony, Socrates is in no (...) way representable. Rather, he holds that, as an exemplar for irony, Socrates cannot be represented in a purely disinterested way. I show how, in The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard makes use of 'limiting cases' of representation in order to bring Socrates into view as one who defies purely disinterested representation. I also show how this approach to Socrates connects up with Kierkegaard's more general interest in the problem of ethical exemplarity, where the problem is how ethical exemplars can be given as such, that is, in such a way that purely disinterested contemplation is not the appropriate response to them. (shrink)

Speech Acts, Criteria and Intentions What makes a speech act a speech act? Which are its necessary and sufficient conditions? I claim in this paper that we cannot find an answer to those questions in Austin's doctrine of the infelicities, since some infelicities take place in fully committing speech acts, whereas others prevent the utterance from being considered as a speech act at all. With this qualification in mind, I argue against the idea that intentions—considered as mental states accomplishing a (...) causal role in the performance of the act—should be considered among the necessary conditions of speech acts. I would thus like to deny a merely ‘symptomatic’ account of intentions, according to which we could never make anything but fallible hypotheses about the effective occurrence of any speech act. I propose an alternative ‘criterial’ account of the role of intentions in speech acts theory, and analyse Austin's and Searle's approaches in the light of this Wittgensteinian concept. Whether we consider, with Austin, that speech acts ‘imply’ mental states or, with Searle, that they ‘express’ them, we could only make sense of this idea if we considered utterances as criteria for intentions, and not as alleged behavioural effects of hidden mental causes. (shrink)

Alice Crary has recently developed a radical reading of J. L. Austin's philosophy of language. The central contention of Crary's reading is that Austin gives convincing reasons to reject the idea that sentences have context-invariant literal meaning. While I am in sympathy with Crary about the continuing importance of Austin's work, and I think Crary's reading is deep and interesting, I do not think literal sentence meaning is one of Austin's targets, and the arguments that Crary attributes to Austin or (...) finds Austinian in spirit do not provide convincing reasons to reject literal sentence meaning. In this paper, I challenge Crary's reading of Austin and defend the idea of literal sentence meaning. (shrink)

This essay clarifies quantifier variance and uses it to provide a theory of indefinite extensibility that I call the variance theory of indefinite extensibility. The indefinite extensibility response to the set-theoretic paradoxes sees each argument for paradox as a demonstration that we have come to a different and more expansive understanding of ‘all sets’. But indefinite extensibility is philosophically puzzling: extant accounts are either metasemantically suspect in requiring mysterious mechanisms of domain expansion, or metaphysically suspect in requiring nonstandard assumptions about (...) mathematical objects. Happily, the view of quantifier meanings that underwrites quantifier variance can be used to provide an account of indefinite extensibility that is both metasemantically and metaphysically satisfying. Section 1 introduces the puzzle of indefinite extensibility; section 2 develops and clarifies the metasemantics of quantifier variance; section 3 solves section 1's puzzle of indefinite extensibility by applying section 2's account of quantifier meanings; and section 4 compares the theory developed in section 3 to several other theories in the literature. (shrink)

In a previous paper, I argued that the later Wittgenstein did not endorse a realist account of ethics, where a realist account is understood to involve a claim to truth as well as objectivity. In this paper, I respond to a number of critical questions that Benjamin De Mesel raises about that interpretation. I agree with him that just as there are uses for expressions such as “truth”, “fact” and “reality” in ethics, there are uses for expressions such as “objectivity” (...) that do not involve a deeper realist commitment. But I uphold and reinforce my claim that objectivity in ethics as the realist conceives it is ruled out by Wittgenstein, who describes the correspondence between ethical expressions and reality in an entirely different way. (shrink)

In “Correspondence to Reality in Ethics”, Mario Brandhorst examines the view of ethics that Wittgenstein took in his later years. According to Brandhorst, Wittgenstein leaves room for truth and falsity, facts, correspondence and reality in ethics. Wittgenstein's target, argues Brandhorst, is objectivity. I argue that Brandhorst's arguments in favour of truth, facts, reality and correspondence in ethics invite similar arguments in favour of objectivity, that Brandhorst does not recognise this because his conception of objectivity is distorted by a Platonist picture (...) and that he misinterprets the passage which he takes to support a Wittgensteinian case against objectivity. (shrink)

In ‘Aesthetics Problems of Modern Philosophy’ Stanley Cavell proposes, first, that Kant's characterization of judgments of beauty may be read as a Wittgensteinian grammatical characterization, and, second, that the philosophical appeal to ‘what we say and mean’ partakes of the grammar of judgment of beauty. I argue first that the expression of the dawning of an aspect partakes of the grammar of judgments of beauty as characterized by Kant, and may also be seen—on a prevailing way of thinking about concepts (...) and how they relate to their instances—to have the same kind of significance that judgments of beauty have according to Kant. And then I argue that there are good reasons for being suspicious of the prevailing conception of concepts, and therefore good reasons for being suspicious of the proposed understanding of the significance of aspect perception—an understanding that has attracted many readers of Wittgenstein's remarks on aspects. This leads me to suggest that it is actually the philosophical appeal to ordinary language that has the kind of significance that the Kantian picture attributes to judgments of beauty and to the seeing of aspects. In this way, I offer a way to vindicate Cavell's second proposal. (shrink)

Although popular music is increasingly recognized as an important area of inquiry in philosophy of art, many organizing principles have been taken over from other fields without scrutiny. This article selects heavy metal as an example of the value of applying philosophy of criticism to discourse about popular music. Metal is now in its fifth decade, and its combination of longevity and diversity have made it an attractive topic in popular music studies. In accounts of metal by musicologists and social (...) science researches, metal is almost always referred to as a genre of music, and the genre is said to unify diverse metal subcultures, which are associated with diverse styles of metal. An examination of the concepts of genre and subculture as they are typically understood in popular music studies generally, and in metal studies in particular, suggests that they do not function to delineate metal as a unitary category. However, contemporary philosophy of art provides several theoretical principles that provide criteria for identifying a unified genre. The relevant theories are historical definitions of art and Kendall Walton's account of style. Viewed in terms of these philosophical developments, metal should be seen as an evolving assemblage of related styles, only some of which are associated with fans who constitute a subculture. However, it is not a "category" in Walton's sense of that term. Video abstract. (shrink)

John Searle and Roger Penrose are two staunch critics of computationalism who nonetheIess believe that with the right framework the mind can be naturalized. while they may be successful in showing the shortcomings of computationalism, I argue that their alternative noncomputational frameworks equally fail to carry out the project to naturalize the mind. The main reason is their failure to resolve some fundamental incompatibilities between mind and science. Searle tries to resolve the incompatibility between the subjectivity of consciousness and the (...) objectivity of silence by means of conceptual clarification. He, howeve4 fails to deal with the concepts crucial to this incompatibility, namely, the publicness of scientific knowledge and the privacy of psychological knowledge. Penrose tries to resolve the incompatibility between the non-computationality of psychological process and the computationality of scientific process by expanding the scope of science through some radical changes in quantum physics. His strategy, howeve4 has the danger of trivializing the distinction between science and non-science thereby putting into question the very value of the project to naturalize the mind. In addition, the feasibility of this strategy remains dubious in light of the mysteries that still surround quantum physics. (shrink)

Individuals can do a broad variety of things with their words and enjoy different degrees of this capacity. What moderates this capacity? And in cases in which this capacity is unjustly disrupted, what is a good explanation for it? These are the questions I address here. I propose that speech capacity, understood as the capacity to do things with your words, is a structural property importantly dependent on individuals' position in a social structure. My account facilitates a non-individualistic explanation of (...) cases in which speech capacity is undermined due to speaker's perceived social identity, e.g. episodes of silencing. Instead of appealing to interlocutors' implicit bias against speaker's identity, a structural approach refers to the positions interlocutors occupy in the social structure and the discursive conventions operating upon those positions. I articulate my proposal drawing on the notion of affordances. Each position within a social structure is associated with its own range of speech affordances. Thus, speech capacity is a function of the probability distribution of speech affordances across positions in the structure. (shrink)

Identity metaphysics finds identity or unity where other metaphysical theories find difference or diversity. It denies the fundamentality of ontological distinctions that other theories treat as fundamental. It’s opposed to separatism, which mistakes natural conceptual distinctions for ground-floor ontological differences. It proposes that the distinctions between the concepts substance, object, quality, property, process, state, and event are metaphysically superficial; so too the distinctions between the concepts energy, lawsofnature, force, causation, power, and naturalnecessity. So too the distinction between these two sets (...) of concepts. “Thinking takes apart what is really one”. (shrink)

Identity metaphysics finds identity or unity where other metaphysical theories find difference or diversity. It denies the fundamentality of ontological distinctions that other theories treat as fundamental. It’s opposed to separatism, which mistakes natural conceptual distinctions for ground-floor ontological differences. It proposes that the distinctions between the concepts SUBSTANCE, OBJECT, QUALITY, PROPERTY, PROCESS, STATE, and EVENT are metaphysically superficial; so too the distinctions between the concepts ENERGY, LAWSOFNATURE, FORCE, CAUSATION, POWER, and NATURALNECESSITY. So too the distinction between these two sets (...) of concepts. “Thinking takes apart what is really one” (Nietzsche 1885). (shrink)

This article compares situated cognition to contemporary Neo-Aristotelian approaches to the mind. The article distinguishes two components in this paradigm: an Aristotelian essentialism which is alien to situated cognition and a Wittgensteinian “capacity approach” to the mind which is not just congenial to it but provides important conceptual and argumentative resources in defending social cognition against orthodox cognitive science. It focuses on a central tenet of that orthodoxy. According to what I call “encephalocentrism,” cognition is primarily or even exclusively a (...) computational process occurring inside the brain. Neo-Aristotelians accuse this claim of committing a “homuncular” or “mereological fallacy”. The article explains why the label “fallacy” is misleading, reconstructs the argument to the effect that encephalocentric applications of psychological predicates to the brain and its parts amount to a category mistake, and defends this argument against objections by Dennett, Searle, and Figdor. At the same time it criticizes the Neo-Aristotelian denial that the brain is the organ of cognition. It ends by suggesting ways in which the capacity approach and situated cognition might be combined to provide a realistic and ecologically sound picture of cognition as a suite of powers that flesh-and-blood animals exercise within their physical and social environments. (shrink)

Starting with Wittgenstein’s remark about his allegedly frequent visits to the performance of Wagner’s _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg,_ the paper presents Wagner’s opera – being explicitly an opera about rules and rule-following – as a possible stimulus for the later Wittgenstein’s thinking about language. Besides Wittgenstein’s systematic interests in parallels between music and language, the paper draws on the choice of terminology (such as the comparison of rules to rails) and on Wittgenstein’s own examples of rule-following. More speculatively, the phrasing (...) as well as the solution to what Kripke called Wittgenstein’s sceptical paradox is used as a point of comparison that brings Wittgenstein’s aesthetic innuendos closer not only to mainstream philosophy of language, but due to the antithetical structure of Kripke’s argument also to the broader philosophical and aesthetical tradition, with a particular focus on the great philosophical systems of German idealism. (shrink)

While the topic of assertion has recently received a fresh wave of interest from Peirce scholars, to this point no systematic account of Peirce’s view of assertion has been attempted. We think that this is a lacuna that ought to be filled. Doing so will help make better sense of Peirce’s pragmatism; further, what is hidden amongst various fragments is a robust pragmatist theory of assertion with unique characteristics that may have significant contemporary value. Here we aim to uncover this (...) theory, and to show that assertion for Peirce is not a mere corollary of pragmatic conceptions of truth, judgement, and belief, but is rather a central aspect of his philosophy. (shrink)

Museums establish specific contexts, framings, which distinguish them from viewing the world face-to-face. One striking aspect of exhibition in so-calledparticipatorymuseums is that it echoes and transforms the limits of its own frame as a public space. I argue that it is a mistake to think of the meaning of an exhibit aseitherdetermined by the individual viewer's narrativeoras determined by the conception as presented in the museum's ‘authoritative’ narrative. Instead I deploy the concept of amodel of comparisonto illuminate the philosophical significance (...) of perspective in understanding the idea of objectivity in museum narratives. (shrink)

We often think of works of art as possessors of meaning, and we think of museums as places where that meaning can be exhibited and encountered. But it is precisely at this first step of thinking about artistic meaning that we too easily import a conceptually entrenched model or picture of linguistic meaning that then constrains our appreciation of artistic meaning and what museum exhibitions actually do. That model of linguistic meaning is atomism: the notion that the single, self-contained word (...) is the ultimate building block of meaning. This picture was excavated with exacting precision in Wittgenstein's sustained reflections on the nature of meaning, and the new way of seeing linguistic meaning that those reflections usher in holds direct significance for our understanding of artistic meaning, as we see here in examples from Rembrandt, Rietveld, and others. A more complete understanding of a dynamic, interactive, contextual, and use-based conception of language better reveals what actually happens in museums and the nature of the meaning we find there. (shrink)

Recently, several theorists have proposed that we can perceive a range of high-level features, including natural kind features (e.g., being a lemur), artifactual features (e.g., being a mandolin), and the emotional features of others (e.g., being surprised). I clarify the claim that we perceive high-level features and suggest one overlooked reason this claim matters: it would dramatically expand the range of actions perception-based theories of action might explain. I then describe the influential phenomenal contrast method of arguing for high-level perception (...) and discuss some of the objections that have been raised against this strategy. Finally, I describe two emerging defenses of high-level perception, one of which appeals to a certain class of perceptual deficits and one of which appeals to adaptation effects. I sketch a challenge for the latter approach. (shrink)

In this article, I reconsider bio-essentialism in the study of kinship, centering on David Schneider’s influential critique that concluded that kinship was “a non-subject” (1972:51). Schneider’s critique is often taken to have shown the limitations of and problems with past views of kinship based on biology, genealogy, and reproduction, a critique that subsequently led those reworking kinship as relatedness in the new kinship studies to view their enterprise as divorced from such bio-essentialist studies. Beginning with an alternative narrative connecting kinship (...) past and present and concluding by introducing a novel way of thinking about kinship, I have three constituent aims in this research article: (1) to reconceptualize the relationship between kinship past and kinship present; (2) to reevaluate Schneider’s critique of bio-essentialism and what this implies for the contemporary study of kinship; and (3) subsequently to redirect theoretical discussion of what kinship is. This concluding discussion introduces a general view, the homeostatic property cluster (HPC) view of kinds, into anthropology, providing a theoretical framework that facilitates realization of the often-touted desideratum of the integration of biological and social features of kinship. [bio-essentialism, kinship studies, homeostatic property cluster kinds, Schneider, genealogy]. (shrink)

In the present article, working from within the framework of critical rationalism and focusing mostly on the views developed by some Iranian writers, I argue that the programmes of producing ‘Islamic Science’ and ‘Islamisation of Science/Knowledge’ are doomed to failure. I develop my arguments in three parts. I start by explaining that the advocates of the programmes of producing cIS or IoK subscribe to mistaken images of science that are shaped by either a positivist or outmoded culturalist/interpretivist theories of science. (...) I shall then focus on the similarities and differences of ‘science’ and ‘technology’, arguing that despite close interconnection between the two it is of utmost importance, for analytical purposes, to keep these two socially constructed entities apart. Drawing on the above distinction, I argue that while creating ‘Islamic’ or ‘indigenous’ sciences is impossible, constructing ‘Islamic’ or ‘indigenous’ technologies is, in principle, feasible. Lastly, I turn to some of the... (shrink)

Most agree that believing a proposition normally or ideally results in believing that one believes it, at least if one considers the question of whether one believes it. I defend a much stronger thesis. It is impossible to believe without knowledge of one's belief. I argue, roughly, as follows. Believing that p entails that one is able to honestly assert that p. But anyone who is able to honestly assert that p is also able to just say – i.e., authoritatively, (...) yet not on the basis of evidence – that she believes that p. And anyone who is able to just say that she believes that p is able to act in light of the fact that she holds that belief. This ability to act, in turn, constitutes knowledge of the psychological fact. However, without a broader theory of belief to help us make sense of this result, this conclusion will be hard to accept. Why should being in a particular mental state by itself necessitate an awareness of being in that state? I sketch a theory that helps to answer this question: believing is a matter of viewing a proposition as what one ought to believe. I show how this theory explains the thesis that to believe is to know that you believe. (shrink)

Advocates of political liberalism hold it as a superior alternative to perfectionism on the grounds that it avoids superfluous and/or controversial claims in favor of a maximally-inclusive approach undergirded by a "free-standing" justification for the ideology. These assertions prove difficult to defend: political interpretations of liberalism tend to be implicitly ethnocentric; they often rely upon a number of controversial, and even empirically falsified, assumptions about rationality--and in many ways prove more parochial than their perfectionist cousins. It is possible to reform (...) political liberalism to address these challenges, but generally at the expense of the supposed normative force and universality of the liberal project. However, this para-liberal approach is much better in keeping with contemporary findings in sociology, psychology and cognitive science--and can much more effectively accommodate the illiberal challenge. (shrink)

This thesis is intended to analyze a mental phenomenon widely neglected in current philosophical discussions: personal memories. The first part presents a general framework to better understand what personal memories are, how we access our personal past and what we access about our personal past. Chapter 1 introduces traditional theories of memory: direct realism and representationalism in their different versions, as well as some objections. I defend here a particular form of representationalism that is based on the distinction between content, (...) intentional object and ontological object. Chapter 2 explores the possible contents of our personal memories, which prove to be heterogeneous, whereas chapter 3 analyses their possible intentional objects, with a special focus on past events. The second part of the thesis explores an aspect of our personal memories that was omitted in the first part: the senses in which our personal past is apprehended as personal. Chapter 4 examines the way in which the “self” intervenes in the construction of our personal memories. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the analysis of what seems to be the most subjective aspect of our memories, that is, the emotions and feelings of our past experiences. In these last two chapters, I analyze the different interactions that can take place between memories and emotions and defend the idea that there can be emotional memories that are reducible neither to a propositional memory nor an occurrent and present emotion. The overall intention of this thesis is twofold. First, I aim to show to the philosophical community that there is still a lot to be said and discussed about memory as a mental phenomenon. And second, I intend to emphasize the importance of bringing into the philosophical discussions about the mind ideas coming from different philosophical traditions as well as ideas and empirical data coming from scientific research. (shrink)

Some philosophers have argued that putative logical disagreements aren't really disagreements at all since when you change your logic you thereby change the meanings of your logical constants. According to this picture classical logicians and intuitionists don't really disagree, they just mean different things by terms like “not” and “or”. Quine gave an infamous “translation argument” for this view. Here I clarify the change of logic, change of meaning (CLCM) thesis, examine and find fault with Quine's translation argument for the (...) thesis, offer a modified translation argument in its stead, defend my modified argument from a crucial objection, discuss where the CLCM thesis leaves logical disputes, and discuss if and how the thesis coheres with Quine's influential view of logic. (shrink)

John Broome’s Rationality Through Reasoning is a trail-blazing study of the nature of rationality, the nature of reasoning and the connection between the two. But it may be somewhat misleading in two respects. First, his theory of reasoning is consistent with the meta-propositional view that he rejects; it develops a broadly similar theory but in much greater detail. And while his discussion of rule-following helps to explain the role of rules in reasoning, it does not constitute a response to the (...) classic problem associated with Wittgenstein and Kripke. (shrink)

Radical enactive and embodied approaches to cognitive science oppose the received view in the sciences of the mind in denying that cognition fundamentally involves contentful mental representation. This paper argues that the fate of representationalism in cognitive science matters significantly to how best to understand the extent of cognition. It seeks to establish that any move away from representationalism toward pure, empirical functionalism fails to provide a substantive “mark of the cognitive” and is bereft of other adequate means for individuating (...) cognitive activity. It also argues that giving proper attention to the way the folk use their psychological concepts requires questioning the legitimacy of commonsense functionalism. In place of extended functionalism—empirical or commonsensical—we promote the fortunes of extensive enactivism, clarifying in which ways it is distinct from notions of extended mind and distributed cognition. (shrink)

Extreme variation in the meaning of the term “species” throughout the history of biology has often frustrated attempts of historians, philosophers and biologists to communicate with one another about the transition in biological thinking from the static species concept to the modern notion of evolving species. The most important change which has underlain all the other fluctuations in the meaning of the word “species” is the change from it denoting such metaphysical entities as essences, Forms or Natures to denoting classes (...) of individual organisms. Several authors have taken notice of the role of metaphysics in the work of particular biologists. An attempt will be made in this paper to present a systematic investigation of the role which metaphysics has played in the work of representative biologists throughout the history of biology, especially as it relates to their species concepts. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's conception of the general form of a truth function given in thesis 6 can be presented as a sort of a trade-off: the author of the Tractatus is unable to reconcile the simplicity of his original idea of a series of forms with the simplicity of his generalisation of Sheffer's stroke; therefore, he is forced to sacrifice one of them. As we argue in this paper, the choice he makes – to weaken the logical constraints put on the concept (...) of a series of forms, thus effectively metaphorising that concept for the sake of upholding the N-operation's role of generating the series – is unfortunate. An actual expansion of a series of truth functions as defined in 6 would require either making decisions at each step (Anscombe) or outwardly rejecting the concept of a series (Sundholm). However, neither is faithful to Wittgenstein's own fundamental intuitions regarding the nature of logic. For this reason, a different trade-off that prioritises upholding the basic features of a series of forms over the simplicity of the operation that generates that series seems to be much more reasonable. We offer such a trade-off by developing the schema already present in the Tractatus (5.101). The key element of our alternative solution is the construction of an operation that can perform the task of producing all consecutive truth functions of a given collection of atomic propositions as an invariant difference between any base and its successor throughout the series. We define it as a composition of three functions (in an algebraic sense): the first turns a symbol of a given truth function into a binary number, the second increments that number, the third turns the result back into a symbol of another truth function. We also show how the operation can be defined by means of a different notation without invoking binary arithmetic. (shrink)

In his late fragment, ‘Sources of Knowledge of Mathematics and Natural Sciences’ Frege laments the tendency to confuse functions with objects and says, ‘It is here that the tendency of language by its use of the definite article to stamp as an object what is a function and hence a non-object, proves itself to be the source of inaccurate and misleading expressions and also of errors of thought. Probably most of the impurities that contaminate the logical source of knowledge have (...) their origins in this.’ This paper applies Frege’s logical insights to a series of influential modal arguments for the existence of souls or minds, in order to demonstrate that they hinge on the error of treating functions as objects. Related arguments have also resulted in the claim that identity statements are necessary, and that apparent identities ‘really’ involve relations of constitution. Here it is argued that once we recognise that all these arguments involve the assimilation of objects and concepts (which Frege identifies with functions) they can be seen to be defective. (shrink)

This paper is about the meaning and function of identity statements involving proper names. There are two prominent views on this topic, according to which identity statements ascribe a relation: the object-view, on which identity statements ascribe a relation borne by all objects to themselves, and the name-view, on which an identity statement 'a is b' says that the names 'a' and 'b' codesignate. The object- and name-views may seem to exhaust the field. I make a case for treating identity (...) statements as sui generis instead of attempting to explain them by means of the idea that they ascribe a relation. My contention is that once we do this, no analysis is required. -/- I do not wish to insist that we stop saying that identity statements ascribe a relation. The point is that there is a fundamental disanalogy between identity statements and other two-termed statements which we overlook to our peril. This will be seen to parallel the more recognized disanalogy between existence statements and other one-termed statements. One way of registering the fundamental disanalogy is to say that identity statements are not relational, but this is not essential. Following my negative arguments in section 2, I employ some simple diagrammatical models in section 3 to exhibit the fundamental disanalogy. In a final section I respond to some possible objections which may be raised against this kind of approach. (shrink)

Ernest Sosa has proposed at least three responses to the dream argument for skepticism in his writings in the past decade. The first and the main purpose of this paper is to critically examine the three Sosaian responses, as well as a Wittgensteinian response Sosa would endorse, by investigating whether they can refute the six different versions of the dream argument found in a passage in the Zhuangzi. The second purpose of this paper is exactly to offer an exposition of (...) the passage in the Zhuangzi so as to show that there were already sophisticated versions of the dream argument in ancient China. The main results of the critical examination are as follows. For four of the six versions of the dream argument found in the Zhuangzi, each of them can be refuted by either the Wittgensteinian response or one of the three Sosaian responses. With respect to the remaining two versions of the dream argument, one of them can be refuted partially by two of Sosa’s responses. First, that version of the dream argument can be refuted by one of Sosa’s responses, provided the imagination model of dreaming is adopted. Second, it can also be refuted by another of Sosa’s responses without assuming the imagination model of dreaming, though both the view that there is unsafe knowledge and a certain externalist reliabilism need to be adopted. However, another of the two remaining versions of the dream argument cannot be refuted by any of the Sosaian responses, nor the Wittgensteinian response. This shows that the three Sosaian responses and the Wittgensteinian response cannot refute significantly many different versions of the dream argument. Sosa’s responses, including the Wittgensteinian response, therefore are not in general successful in the refutation of he dream argument for skepticism. (shrink)

A number of philosophers think that grounding is, in some sense, well-founded. This thesis, however, is not always articulated precisely, nor is there a consensus in the literature as to how it should be characterized. In what follows, I consider several principles that one might have in mind when asserting that grounding is well-founded, and I argue that one of these principles, which I call ‘full foundations’, best captures the relevant claim. My argument is by the process of elimination. For (...) each of the inadequate principles, I illustrate its inadequacy by showing either that it excludes cases that should not be ruled out by a well-foundedness axiom for grounding, or that it admits cases that should be ruled out. (shrink)

Book review of Christian Erbacher's Formen des Klärens, Literarisch-Philosophische Darstellungsmittel in Wittgensteins Schriften, Münster: mentis 2015. *** Christian Erbacher’s Formen des Klärens, Literarisch-Philosophische Darstellungsmittel in Wittgensteins Schriften, which I would translate as Forms of Elucidating, Literary-Philosophical Means of Presentation in Wittgenstein’s Works, comprises and critically analyzes the most important phases of almost a hundred years of both English and German speaking Wittgenstein scholarship on the form of his literary-philosophical presentation. Furthermore, Erbacher demonstrates a thorough first hand knowledge of Wittgenstein’s manuscripts (...) and manner of work, while at the same time offering an interpretation of the Tractatus logico-philosophicus, as well as later works, that is capable of comprehending both Wittgenstein’s serious and intense ethical and aesthetic preoccupations, as well as his significant contributions to logic and philosophy of language. Furthermore, despite its density, Erbacher’s slender book admirably achieves an elegant lucidity. Thus it performatively shows the unity of aesthetic-rhetorical form and philosophical content, as well as the ethical ideal of clarity at the core of Wittgenstein’s concerns. (shrink)

For an academic, there is no greater reward than having one's scholarship taken seriously. The five distinguished scholars who have contributed to this symposium on The Force of Law have done just that, with varying degrees of agreement and disagreement, praise and criticism. But even critical commentary, and perhaps especially critical commentary, is evidence of serious engagement. More importantly, the commentaries contained here have advanced our understanding of law in valuable ways. I respond to each in this reply, but with (...) full acknowledgment that my responses cannot do justice to the full breadth of their contributions and challenges. My hope is not that I will persuade readers that I am correct and my critics mistaken, but rather that the reader who absorbs both the challenges and my response will come away with a greater understanding of the issues that The Force of Law seeks to place on the agenda of contemporary jurisprudence. (shrink)

I object to Markos Valaris’s thesis that reasoning requires a belief that your conclusion follows from your premisses. My counter-examples highlight the important but neglected role of suppositional reasoning in the basis of so much of what we know.