OPP

2003-07-11T10:16:00.000-04:00

I've moved this blog to Movable Type. The philosophy papers blog can now be found here.

2003-07-10T10:01:00.000-04:00

FreE-Publications

Australasian Journal of Logic, Three Schools of Paraconsistency, Koji Tanaka

A logic is said to be paraconsistent if it does not allow everything to follow from contradictory premises. There are several approaches to paraconsistency. This paper is concerned with several philosophical positions on paraconsistency. In particular, it concerns three ‘schools’ of paraconsistency: Australian, Belgian and Brazilian. The Belgian and Brazilian schools have raised some objections to the dialetheism of the Australian school. I argue that the Australian school of paraconsistency need not be closed down on the basis of the Belgian and Brazilian schools’ objections. In the appendix of the paper, I also argue that the Brazilian school’s view of logic is not coherent.

----, Semantic Decision Procedures for Some Relevant Logics, Ross Brady

This paper proves decidability of a range of weak relevant logics using decision procedures based on the Routley-Meyer semantics. Logics are categorized as F-logics, for those proved decidable using a filtration method, and U-logics, for those proved decidable using a direct (unfiltered) method. Both of these methods are set out as reductio methods, in the style of Hughes and Cresswell. We also examine some extensions of the U-logics where the method fails and infinite sequences of worlds can be generated.

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Herman Rapaport - Review of John T. Lysaker's You Must Change Your Life: Poetry, Philosophy, and the Birth of Sense

John T. Lysaker isn’t the first person to imagine a productive interlocution between Martin Heidegger and contemporary Anglo-American poetry, though he is certainly first in terms of mounting a lengthy encounter between Heidegger and Pulitzer Prize winner, Charles Simic. Well known is that Heidegger himself was quite reluctant to interface with just anyone, let alone poets who weren’t part of a very select group: Hölderlin, Rilke, Trakl, George, and Benn. No doubt, Heidegger was after a philosophical poetics that, for a start, disabled the distinction between the two (the philosophical and the poetic), and he saw in Hölderlin a mighty precursor for doing just this. It’s already here that I have some misgivings about Lysaker’s book, because poets like Simic aren’t anywhere close to the kind of philosophical or poetic accomplishment that would be required to deconstruct the relation between poetry and philosophy. For example, I could imagine a study on Dante that began to broach some of these issues, or a study on Goethe, since in these cases one is really dealing with immense genius. But putting such a burden on figures like Simic seems inappropriate, and, in my estimation, the book falls apart rather quickly on account of it.

Subscription Publications

Law and Philosophy, July 2003

Neutrality and Judicial Review, Schauer F.
Designing Judicial Review: A Comment on Schauer, Sherwin E.
Rights-Based Judicial Review: A Democratic Justification, Harel A.
Is Judicial Review Democratic? A Comment on Harel, Alexander L.
Judicial Review, Rights, and Democracy, Spector H.
Moral Rights, Judicial Review, and Democracy: A Response to Horacio Spector, Underkuffler L.S.
Forms of Judicial Review as Expressions of Constitutional Patriotism, Tushnet M.
Weak and Strong Judicial Review, Sinnott-Armstrong W.

Mind, July 2003

Article - Horwich's Schemata Meet Syntactic Structures, Collins J.
Article - The Aesthetics of Photographic Transparency, Lopes D.M.
Discussion - Wright on Vagueness and Agnosticism, Rosenkranz S.
Discussion - Rosenkranz on Quandary, Vagueness and Intuitionism, Wright C.
Article - Naming, Necessity, and Beyond, Salmon N.
Book Review - Mind in Everyday Life and Cognitive Science, Maibom H.L.
Book Review - Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrhonean Scepticism, Barnes J.
Book Review - Democratic Legitimacy: Plural Values and Political Power, D'Agostino F.
Book Review - In Defense of Pure Reason: A Rationalist Account of A Priori Justification, Crane T.
Book Review - The Heart of What Matters: The Role for Literature in Moral Philosophy, Read R.
Book Review - Time and Space, Oaklander L.N.
Book Review - Musical Works and Performances: A Philosophical Exploration, Kania A.
Book Review - Thomas Reid and Scepticism: His Reliabilist Response, Gallie R.
Book Review - The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance Through Small Probabilities, Sobel J.H.
Book Review - Wittgenstein's Copernican Revolution: The Question of Linguistic Idealism, Gert H.J.
Book Review - Physical Causation, Ehring D.
Book Review - Uneasy Virtue, Swanton C.
Book Review - Intellectual Trust In One's Self And Others, Owens D.
Book Review - The Science of Conjecture, Nadler S.
Book Review - Aspects of Reason, Raz J.
Book Review - The Foundations of Causal Decision Theory, Fitelson B.
Book Review - Justifying Emotions: Pride and Jealousy, Goldie P.
Book Review - Natural Law and Practical Rationality, Knowles D.
Book Review - Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World, Hopkins R.
Book Review - Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Ten C.L.
Book Review - The Evolution of Agency and Other Essays, Godfrey-Smith P.
Book Review - Epistemic Justification, Everitt N.
Book Review - Return to Reason, O'Hear A.
Book Review - Kant and the Sciences, Schönfeld M.
Book Review - Aristotle's Theory of Substance: The Categories and Metaphysics Zeta, Gill M.L.
Book Review - The Nature of Intrinsic Value, Lemos N.

2003-07-09T05:09:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Angelika Kratzer, The Event Argument and the Semantics of Verbs (via the Semantics Archive)

The chapters posted here are the first 4 chapters of a book manuscript entitled The Event Argument and the Semantics of Verbs that I have been working on for more than 10 years. The remaining chapters are close to completion as well, and I will post them as they become available. The chapters posted so far deal with the relation between verbs and their arguments (chapters 1 to 3) and with verbal plurality (chapter 4). The remaining chapters address issues related to voice alternations (actives versus passives, middles, reflexives) and certain transitivity alternations, in particular resultatives. An earlier chapter on adjectival passives (“Building Statives”) appeared in the 2000 Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. Another earlier chapter (“Telicity and the Meaning of Objective Case”) will be published separately in a forthcoming book on the Syntax of Tense edited by Jacqueline Guéron and Jacqueline Lecarme (MIT Press) and will not be included in the present book.

I will keep changing the current manuscript. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

References

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Charles Taliaferro - Review of Nancy K. Frankenberry's (ed.) Radical Interpretation in Religion

Nancy Frankenberry has assembled ten original essays which will be of special interest to those committed to a naturalistic and generally pragmatist critique of religion. The word “radical” in the title of this collection seems a little puzzling. The essays are said to be “radical” in the sense that they question the “root assumptions in the study of religion” (p. xiii). The essays “move away from older models of representation and symbolic expression to holistic ways of thinking about the interrelations of language, meaning, beliefs, desires, and action” (p. xiv). The essays are introduced by Frankenberry as built on the assumption that religions should be explained “in entirely naturalist terms, rather than in supernatural or faith-based premises” (p. xiv). This may be “radical,” though it is certainly not new or at odds with “root assumptions” of religious studies today. The naturalistic dismissal of the truth of religious convictions may or may not be legitimate, but it is hard to see it as fresh, bold, and out of step with the contemporary intellectual climate. The current state of play in the philosophical study of religion typically entertains both naturalistic and non-naturalistic points of view. In fact, a failure to take the naturalist critique of religion seriously today would rightly be considered “radical” because it questions the very “root assumptions in the study of religion” as it is firmly established in most university and college institutions. Undertaking inquiry into religion in a “holist” way is also not novel. Aquinas could be described as promoting “holistic ways of thinking about the interrelationships of language, meaning, beliefs, desires and action.” I suggest that the contributors to this collection are not radical “outsiders” challenging an entrenched regime where an abundance of “fideisms and passing gurus have flourished” (p. xvi). Be that as it may, these essays do address philosophically important issues concerning the interpretation and justification of religious beliefs and practices.

2003-07-08T08:42:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Agnes Bende Farkas with Hans Kamp, Specific Indefinites: Anchors and Functional Readings

Alex Byrne and James Pryor, Bad Intensions (final draft posted 7/7/03)

Forthcoming in The Two-Dimensional Framework, ed. by Manuel García-Carpintero and Josep Macià (OUP)

This paper concerns the descriptive stereotypes that we associate with words like "water" and "Bob Dylan," and the epistemic status of those stereotypes. Frank Jackson and David Chalmers advocate a "two-dimensionalist" theory of content, which builds on some of the things Kripke said in Naming and Necessity about how we should "explain away" modal illusions, like the illusion that water might not have been H₂O. Two-dimensionalists claim that our words have two kinds of intensions, a "primary" or "epistemic" intension and a "secondary" or "metaphysical" intension. The "epistemic" intension of a word does the most theoretical work. It can be thought of as a set of properties that all competent speakers associate with the word that fixes the word's reference, and that accounts for the word's cognitive significance. For instance, the epistemic intension of "water" might include the properties of being a clear drinkable liquid predominant in our lakes and rivers. These are properties that we and our counterparts on Twin Earth both associate with "water," even if we're referring to H₂O and they're referring to XYZ. Alex Byrne and I rehearse Kripke's familiar arguments from ignorance and error, which make it prima facie unlikely that speakers associate informative and uniquely identifying properties with their words. We then examine and criticize some of Chalmers' responses to these arguments.

Artemis Alexiadou, Mokia Rathert and Armin von Stechow, The modules of Perfect constructions

Introduction to the book Perfect investigations. To be published by de Gruyter.

Maria Bittner, Word Order and Incremental Update

The central claim of this paper is that surface-faithful word-by-word update is feasible and desirable, even in languages where word order is supposedly free.

2003-07-07T07:23:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Ron Artstein, Quantificational arguments in temporal adjunct clauses (via the Semantics Archive)

Quantificational arguments can take scope outside of temporal adjunct clauses: the sentence few secretaries cried after each executive resigned allows two scope orderings for the quantificational NPs few secretaries and each executive. Following Pratt and Francez (2001), temporal clauses are analyzed as temporal generalized quantifiers, which arise through an implicit temporal determiner meaning in the adjunct clause; a flexible architecture for the semantics permits the application of this determiner before a quantificational argument, giving the argument scope outside its clause. The semantics derives three kinds of readings for temporal clauses: dependent-time, where the evaluation times of the matrix clause depend on a quantifier inside the temporal clause; single-time, where the matrix clause is evaluated at a single time regardless of quantifiers in the temporal clause; and aggregatetime, where the matrix clause is evaluated in an interval which encompasses the individual times quantified over by the temporal clause. The latter kind of reading is necessary for temporal clauses that are modified internally by a temporal adverbial, as in Bill resigned when John disappeared every Friday; it also yields a natural account of sentences with long-distance temporal dependencies, as in I saw Mary in New York before she claimed that she would arrive (Geis 1970).

Carol Tenny with Petty Speas, "Configurational properties of point of view roles" . In Anna Maria Di Sciullo (ed.) Asymmetry in Grammar Volume 1: Syntax and semantics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 315-343.

2003-07-04T20:35:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Brian Weatherson, My Favourite Puzzle

We can write fictions in which the historical facts are different, in which the laws of nature are different, and even some say in which the laws of mathematics and logic are different. But attempts to write fictions in which the laws of morality are different seem to always end in failure. Why might this be? The puzzle is more interesting than any solution I might have to offer, but I suspect it connects up with some fairly interesting facts about how we imagine complex states of affairs.

----, Vagueness Without Toleration: Reply to Greenough

Patrick Greenough has argued that a predicate is vague iff it is epistemically tolerant. I show that there are some counterexamples to this analysis, and that it rests on some fairly contentious theories about the behaviour of vague terms in propositional attitude reports.

Phillippe Schlenker, Towards A Semantic Reinterpretation of Binding Theory

Binding Theory is traditionally considered a part of syntax, in the sense that some derivations that would otherwise be interpretable are ruled out by purely formal principles. Thus 'John_ilikes him_i' would in standard semantic theories yield a perfectly acceptable interpretation; it is only because of Condition B that the sentence is deviant on its coreferential reading. We explore an alternative in which some binding-theoretic principles (esp. Condition C, Condition B, a modified version of the Locality of Variable Binding argued for in Kehler 1993 and Fox 2000, and Weak and Strong Crossover) follow from the interpretive procedure - albeit a somewhat non-standard one. In a nutshell, these principles are taken to reflect the way in which sequences of evaluation are constructed in the course of the interpretation of a sentence. The bulk of the work is done by a principle of Non-Redundancy, which prevents any given object from appearing twice in any given sequence of evaluation.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Graham MacDonald - Review of Andrew Ariew's, Robert Cummins', and Mark Perlman's (eds.) Functions: New Essays in Philosophy of Psychology and Biology

This volume of new essays explores the variety of ways in which functions and functional explanations have been viewed in recent debates in philosophy of mind/psychology and philosophy of biology. The volume is divided into four sections: history of teleology and functional explanation (Ariew, Ruse), functional explanation today (Boorse, Millikan, Hardcastle, Cummins, Wimsatt, Buller, Schwartz), teleosemantics (Perlman, Enc, Walsh), and methodological issues (Matthen, Allen, and Neander). In the space available it is impossible to comment appropriately on all these papers, so I will be selective, the selection perhaps reflecting my interests in differing accounts of functionality and teleosemantics rather than the quality of the papers. I have not had space to discuss the interesting contributions of Wimsatt, Schwartz (both in the section on functional explanation), Matthen (on whether the function of rationality is to lead us to true beliefs), and Allen (on different characterisations of biological traits).

----, Allan Silverman - Review of Gretchen J. Reydams-Schils' (ed.) Plato’s Timaeus as Cultural Icon

Plato’s Timaeus, written in all likelihood towards the end of his career, is his contribution to the Greek tradition of writings on nature, peri phuseôs. Its introduction of a mathematical physics alone would guarantee it a significant place in the western tradition. But it is so much more than a work in cosmology and cosmogony: the Atlantis Myth; the Demiurge; the status of the likely story, eikos muthos; the relation of mind to body. Its influence on subsequent thinkers is enormous. No single volume could possibly cover all the themes broached by Plato in the dialogue, nor canvas the multitude of philosophers and scientists who have been influenced by their reading of the dialogue or translations of it. That said, Reydams-Schils Plato’s Timaeus as Cultural Icon is a paradigm of what a book of essays on the influence of a dialogue should be. First and foremost, the articles are first-rate. Moreover, they cover an extraordinary range of topics, thinkers and time-periods. What follows is an attempt to convey what each of the essays is about, so that scholars with different expertises may pick and choose as they will. But let me add that each essay is worth reading.

2003-07-03T07:08:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

James Pryor, Is There Non-Inferential Justification?

[This paper] articulates a notion of immediate or "non-inferential" justification, cites some apparent examples of it, and then examines at length a familiar coherentist argument against the possibility of such justification. That argument was traditionally employed against "the Given Theory"; but it threatens to have much broader scope. It is driven by a principle I call the "Premise Principle," which says that a belief in P cannot be justified except by other representational states whose contents are premises that inferentially support P. One can accept that Principle and still be a foundationalist, but many foundationalists will want to reject it. I argue that the Premise Principle is unmotivated.

Paul Dekker, The Pragmatic Dimension of Indefinites

This paper sets out to give a natural pragmatic explanation of several aspects of the interpretation of singular indefinite noun phrases. We develop a uniform account of characteristic features of their use which have been dealt with only partly in other semantic paradigms (in particular the dynamic, the E-type and the choice function one). We give an intuitive motivation for the familiar discourse dynamic features of the use of these expressions, and, taking due account of the structuring of information in more involved contexts, account for their behaviour in negated, conditional, quantified, and intensional constructions.

2003-07-02T10:28:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

James F. Sennett , "Hume's Stopper and the Natural Theology Project"

A common response to natural theology arguments is to offer a rebuttal that I call “Hume’s Stopper.” It goes something like this: “Well, even if this argument is sound, it doesn’t prove theism, since the ‘god’ required by [fill in the argument du jour] is a far cry from the elaborate deity envisioned by traditional theism.” That is, one does not need to postulate a full-blown omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect creator and sustainer of the universe in order to satisfy the requirements of the argument (a first cause, a designer, etc.). In short, Hume’s Stopper is the accusation that any natural theology argument, even if sound, simply does not prove enough.

James F. Sennett , Semi-Existentialism: Prolegomenon to a Post-Modern Hermeneutic

Until I was nearly thirty years old, I believed that there were only three kinds of non-Christians in the world: ignorant ones, stupid ones, and dishonest ones. I believed that the truth of the Gospel was so obvious, so inescapably reasonable, that anyone who didn’t believe either was unaware of the facts, or was too dense to apprehend what was as plain as the nose on his face, or (what was probably most common) simply refused to admit the truth because of some hidden agenda.

Laurie Paul, 'The Context of Essence'(PDF) Forthcoming in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

Essentialism is a doctrine about objects and their properties. Roughly, an object O has property P essentially when O must have P in order to be the object that it is.2 If O has P essentially, then, necessarily, in any world in which O exists, O must have P.3 Given that an object has the same essential properties in every possible world in which it exists, we can think of the essential properties as capturing something we might call the nature of the object.

Ralph Wedgwood, Choosing Rationally and Choosing Correctly (PDF), in Weakness of Will and Practical Irrationality, ed. Sarah Stroud and Christine Tappolet (Oxford UP, 2003), 201-229

Suppose that you are faced with several different options (that is, several ways in which you might act in a given situation). Which option should you choose? Let us take an example that Bernard Williams (1981: 102) made famous. Suppose that you want a gin and tonic, and you believe that the stuff in front of you is gin. In fact, however, the stuff is not gin but petrol. So if you drink the stuff (even mixed with tonic), it will be decidedly unpleasant, to say the least. Should you choose to drink the stuff or not? It seems to me that there are at least two ways of interpreting this question. If we interpret the question in one way, “what you should choose” depends on what the available options are really like (not just on what you believe about what these options are like). For

FreE-Publications

The Moral Status of Animals (Lori Gruen), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [NEW: July 1, 2003]

What is distinctive about humanity such that humans are thought to have moral status and non-humans do not? Providing an answer to this question has become increasingly important among philosophers as well as those outside of philosophy who are interested in our treatment of non-human animals. For some, answering this question will enable us to better understand the nature of humans and the proper scope of our moral obligations. Some argue that there is an answer that can distinguish humans from the rest of the natural world. Many of those who accept this answer are interested in justifying certain human practices towards non-humans -- practices that cause pain, discomfort, suffering and death. This latter group expect that in answering the question in a particularly way, humans will be justified in granting moral consideration to other humans that is neither required nor justified when considering non-human animals. In contrast to this view, many philosophers have argued that there is no philosophically defensible way to morally distinguish humans and to deny non-human animals moral consideration, but what the basis of that consideration is and what it amounts to has been the source of much

The Computational Theory of Mind (Steven Horst) , Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [NEW: July 1, 2003]

Over the past thirty years, it is been common to hear the mind likened to a digital computer. This essay is concerned with a particular philosophical view that holds that the mind literally is a digital computer (in a specific sense of "computer" to be developed), and that thought literally is a kind of computation. This view -- which will be called the "Computational Theory of Mind" (CTM) -- is thus to be distinguished from other and broader attempts to connect the mind with computation, including (a) various enterprises at modeling features of the mind using computational modeling techniques, and (b) employing some feature or features of production-model computers (such as the stored program concept, or the distinction between hardware and software) merely as a guiding metaphor for understanding some feature of the mind. This entry is therefore concerned solely with the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM) proposed by Hilary Putnam [1961] and developed most notably for philosophers by Jerry Fodor [1975, 1980, 1987, 1993]. The senses of ‘computer’ and ‘computation’ employed here are technical; the main tasks of this entry will therefore be to elucidate: (a) the technical sense of ‘computation’ that is at issue, (b) the ways in which it is claimed to be applicable to the mind, (c) the philosophical problems this understanding of the mind is claimed to solve, and (d) the major criticisms that have accrued to this view.

2003-07-01T10:37:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Christopher Manning, Accurate Unlexicalized Parsing (pdf) 2003. Dan Klein and Christopher D. Manning. 2003.

We demonstrate that an unlexicalized PCFG can parse much more accurately than previously shown, by making use of simple, linguistically motivated state splits, which break down false independence assumptions latent in a vanilla treebank grammar. Indeed, its performance of 86.36% (LP/LR F1 ) is better than that of early lexicalized PCFG models, and surprisingly close to the current state-of-the-art. This result has potential uses beyond establish-ing a strong lower bound on the maximum possi-ble accuracy of unlexicalized models: an unlexical-ized PCFG is much more compact, easier to repli-cate, and easier to interpret than more complex lex-ical models, and the parsing algorithms are simpler, more widely understood, of lower asymptotic com-plexity, and easier to optimize.

Henry Stapp, Entry in "Cambridge Handbook of Cosciousness"(PDF), CH7: Directions for Future Research

Von Neumann's formulation of quantum theory brings human minds explicitly into brain dynamics via the operators P(e), which specify the neural correlates of a person's conscious experiences. A principal task is now to map out these mind-brain connections, and understand in more detail the principles by which they operate.

FreE-Publications

Plotinus (Lloyd Gerson), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Plotinus (204/5 -- 270 C.E.), is generally regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism. He is one of the most influential philosophers in antiquity after Plato and Aristotle. The term ‘Neoplatonism’ is an invention of early 19th century European scholarship and indicates the penchant of historians for dividing ‘periods’ in history. In this case, the term was intended to indicate that Plotinus initiated a new phase in the development of the Platonic tradition. What this ‘newness’ amounted to, if anything, is controversial, largely because one’s assessment of it depends upon one's assessment of what Platonism is. In fact, Plotinus (like all his successors) regarded himself simply as a Platonist, that is, as an expositor and defender of the philosophical position whose greatest exponent was Plato himself. Originality was thus not held as a premium by Plotinus. Nevertheless, Plotinus realized that Plato needed to be interpreted...

Anthony Ellis - Review of Mary Warnock's Making Babies: Is There a Right to Have Children?, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003.06.12

Despite the subtitle of the book, Baroness Warnock’s question is not whether there is a right to have children. Her question is rather whether those who cannot conceive—the infertile or homosexual couples for example—have a right to assistance in conceiving so long as they can pay for it. (She does not address the further question of whether some at least of them have a right to such assistance without paying.) Her answer, somewhat qualified, is that they do, or—since she professes not to believe in natural rights—at least that they ought to be allowed to obtain it.

2003-06-30T09:53:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Antony Eagle, 17 Arguments Against Propensity Analyses of Probability (PDF)

We shall see that, slippery crea-tures though they are, these analyses fail both internal and external kinds of tests of adequacy of conceptual analysis, and must therefore be rejected.

Gilbert Harman, Inductive Simplicity and the Matrix to appear in the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2003. (PDF), Harman, G., and Kulkarni, S.

In certain statistical learning problems, a pol-icy of choosing simpler rules that account fairly well for data is likely to have less error on new cases than a policy of choosing com-plex rules that have less error on the data. The relevant kind of simplicity is not to be measured in terms of the number of param-eters needed to specify a given member of a class of rules but might be measured in terms of the VC dimension of such a class. The rationale for using simplicity so mea-sured can be extended to allow simplicity to decide among empirically equivalent hy-potheses. The extended rationale provides reasons of simplicity to reject certain sorts of philosophical skepticism.

Greg Restall, Modelling Truthmaking, Logique et Analyse, 169-170 (2000), 211-230. [Published in 2003] {PDF}

In this paper I give a consistency proof, by providing a model for the theses of truthmaking in my earlier paper. This result does two things. Firstly, it shows that the theses of truthmaking are jointly consistent. Secondly, it provides an independently philosophically motivated formal model for relevant logics in the ‘possible worlds’ tradition of Routley and Meyer [8, 16, 17].

Greg Restall, Logic, pages 64-93 in Fundamentals of Philosophy, edited by John Shand, Routledge, 2003. {PDF}

Logic is the study of good reasoning. It’s not the study of reasoning as it actually occurs, because people can often reason badly. Instead, in logic, we study what makes good reasoning good. The logic of good reasoning is the kind of connection between the premises from which we reason and the conclusions at which we arrive. Logic is a normative discipline: it aims to elucidate how we ought to reason. Reasoning is at the heart of philosophy, so logic has always been a central concern for philosophers.

John Perry, Frege on Identity, Cognitive Value and Subject Matter. In Newen, Nortmann, Stuhlmann-Laeisz (eds.): Building on Frege. New Essays about Sense, Content, and Concept. Stanford: CSLI, 2001. (PDF) Pekka V?yrynen, Usable Moral Principles (PDF)

A central adequacy constraint on moral theories is that they be usable in moral reasoning as guides for action. This paper addresses the challenge that moral principles are useless in finding out which are the right actions. I argue that the usability constraint is best seen as grounded in the importance of certain forms of autonomy and justice, and draw on the argument both to provide a reasonable interpretation of the constraint and to characterize the sort of agent by reference to whom the usability of generalist moral theories is appropriately assessed. I propose, in a slogan, that moral principles guide us by structuring our responsiveness to reasons in certain ways. In being responsive to moral reasons, the relevant test agents are guided by the principles they endorse in that they reason in light of their understanding of those principles. To show that it is possible for normal moral agents to be such agents, and so that generalist moral theories satisfy the usability constraint, I respond to objections from the psychology of moral reasoning. I finish by arguing that generalist theories are also no worse off than their particularist rivals with respect to the constraint.

FreE-Publications

Bayes' Theorem (James Joyce) [NEW: June 28, 2003]

Bayes's Theorem is a simple mathematical formula used for calculating conditional probabilities. It figures prominently in subjectivist or Bayesian approaches to epistemology, statistics, and inductive logic. Subjectivists, who maintain that rational belief is governed by the laws of probability, lean heavily on conditional probabilities in their theories of evidence and their models of empirical learning. Bayes's Theorem is central to these enterprises both because it simplifies the calculation of conditional probabilities and because it clarifies significant features of subjectivist position. Indeed, the Theorem's central insight — that a hypothesis is confirmed by any body data that its truth renders probable — is the cornerstone of all subjectivist methodology.

Other Changes of Note

Jonathan Edwards (William Wainwright) [REVISED: June 27, 2003]

2003-06-27T12:03:00.001-04:00

Personal Papers

Huw Price, The thermodynamic arrow: puzzles and pseudo-puzzles. Forthcoming in Proceedings of Time and Matter, Venezia, 2002 (World Scientific). [PDF]

For more than a century, physics has known of a puzzling con ict between the T-asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomena and the T-symmetry of the underlying microphysics on which these phenomena depend. This paper provides a guide to the current status of this puzzle, distinguishing the central issue from various issues with which it may be confused. It is shown that there are two competing concep-tions of what is needed to resolve the puzzle of the thermodynamic asymmetry, which differ with respect to the number of distinct T-asymmetries they take to be manifest in the physical world. On the preferable one-asymmetry conception, the remaining puzzle concerns the ordered distribution of matter in the early universe. The puzzle of the thermodynamic arrow thus becomes a puzzle for cosmology.

J. David Velleman, Motivation by Ideal, Philosophical Explorations, Volume V, Number 2 (2002).

I am going to argue that the motive behind moral actions can become isolated from our other motives, generating behavior that is irrational in some respects though rational in others. In my view, moral action performed from moral motives can be less than fully rational precisely because of the division in its motivation. The reason why moral motivation can become isolated from our other motives, I shall argue, is that it often depends on the force of an ideal; an ideal gains motivational force when we identify with it; and acting out of identification with an ideal is like a game of make-believe, in which we pretend to be that with which we identify. My argument will begin, then, with a consideration of adult make-believe.

J. David Velleman, Willing the Law "in Korsgaard's The Sources of Normativity; to appear in Practical Conflicts: New Philosophical Essays, ed. Monika Betzler and Peter Baumann (Cambridge)"

I am going to argue against Kant's account of contradictions in the will, and in favor of an alternative account, which I shall call "concessive." My arguments will imply that Kant is wrong about one of the ways in which wrongdoing is irrational, and hence about one of the ways in which we are guided by morality.

FreE-Publications

Nick Gier - Review of Bimal Krishna Matilal's Ethics and Epics: Philosophy, Culture, and Religion, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003.06.11

This book is the second volume of The Collected Essays of Bimal Krishna Matilal and both should be on the shelf of any serious student of Indian philosophy and religion. I was especially pleased to review this volume because, in my thirty years of teaching Indian philosophy, I focused far too much on metaphysics and epistemology and not enough on ethics. Working back from Gandhi’s ethics of nonviolence, I have been able to repair this deficiency somewhat, but Matilal has now helped me make a substantial improvement in my knowledge of Hindu ethics.

Analysis Preprints, The simplest Lewis-style triviality proof yet? (PDF), Peter Milne

In his celebrated ‘Probabilities of conditionals and conditional probabili-ties’ David Lewis showed that the identification of the probability of con-ditionals a-->c with the conditional probability of consequent given ante-cedent when that antecedent has non-zero probability...

Subscription Publications

The British Journal of Aesthetics July 2003, Volume 43, Issue 3 Publisher: Oxford University Press

Musical Movement and Aesthetic Metaphors Budd M.
Between Truth and Triviality Gibson J.
Twelve Conceptions of Imagination Stevenson L.
On an Apparent Truism in Aesthetics Livingston P.
Depiction Unexplained: Peacocke and Hopkins on Pictorial Representation McIntosh G.
Entertainment: A Question for Aesthetics Shusterman R.
All the Right Responses: Fiction Films and Warranted Emotions Choi J.
To Relish the Sublime? Culture and Self-realization in Postmodern Times Came D.
Tolstoy on Aesthetics: What Is Art? Diffey T.J.
From Classicism to Modernism: Western Musical Culture and the Metaphysics of Order Hooper G.C.
From an Aesthetic Point of View: Philosophy, Art and the Senses Cazeaux C.
Book Review Philosophy Goes to the Movies: An Introduction to Philosophy Morton A.
Book Review Film Cultures
Book Review Stories of Art Woodfield R.
Book Review Is There a Single Right Interpretation? Lyas C.

2003-06-26T12:13:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Claus Emmeche, Biosemiotics, p. 63-64 in: J. Wentzel Vrede van Huyssteen (ed.): Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. New York: Macmillan Reference.

Biosemiotics is a growing field that studies the production, action and interpretation of signs (such as sounds, objects, smells, movements, but also signs on molecular scales normally not perceived by an organism) in the physical and biologic realm, in an attempt to integrate the findings of biology and semiotics (the study of signs and symbols). One goal of biosemiotics is to form a new view of life and meaning as immanent features of the natural world.

FreE-Publications

Saul Traiger - Review of Louis E. Loeb's Stability and Justification in Hume’s Treatise, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003.06.10

In this carefully crafted study of Book I of . Treatise of Human Nature, 1 Louis Loeb offers a refreshingly new interpretation of Hume’s account of the justification of belief. Loeb marshals substantial support for the view that Hume has a robust normative epistemology, an epistemology that can be understood in light of the sections of the Treatise traditionally taken as arguing for skepticism, and in light of the more genuinely skeptical themes of Part IV of Book I. Loeb’s work is a model of Hume scholarship. Loeb locates genuinely interesting and plausible positions in Hume’s writings, positions that have to be carefully culled from the text and analyzed. Hume’s metaphors are rich and suggestive, but they must always be tested in the vast and rocky terrain of Hume’s texts. If Loeb convinces the reader that for Hume, justified beliefs are those that have the characteristic of stability, he does so by taking the whole of Book I into account. Loeb is guided by interpretive coherence and the independent plausibility of the positions he discovers in Hume. His ultimate aim is to support a theory of justification based on the notion of stability, showing both how far Hume takes us towards such a theory, and where Hume’s account needs supplementation and amendment.

Archytas (Carl Huffman) [NEW: June 26, 2003], Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Archytas of Tarentum was a Greek mathematician, political leader and philosopher, active in the first half of the fourth century BC (i.e., during Plato's lifetime). He was the last prominent figure in the early Pythagorean tradition and the dominant political figure in Tarentum, being elected general seven consecutive times. He sent a ship to rescue Plato from the clutches of the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius II, in 361, but his personal and philosophical connections to Plato are complex, and there are many signs of disagreement between the two philosophers.

Subscription Publications

Constitutional Existence Conditions and Judicial Review, MICHAEL C. DORF (Columbia Law School) and MATTHEW D. ADLER (University of Pennsylvania Law School)

Although critics of judicial review sometimes call for making the entire Constitution nonjusticiable, many familiar norms of constitutional law state what we call "existence conditions" that are necessarily enforced by judicial actors charged with the responsibility of applying, and thus as a preliminary step, identifying, propositions of sub-constitutional law such as statutes. Article I, Section 7, which sets forth the procedures by which a bill becomes a law, is an example: a putative law that did not go through the Article I, Section 7 process and does not satisfy an alternative test for legal validity (such as the treaty-making provision of Article II, Section 2), has no legal existence.

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (INGENTA) June 2003, Volume 6, Issue 2 Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers

More lives, better lives Belshaw C.
Savoring time: desire, pleasure and wholehearted activity Brewer T.
Practical rationality for pluralists about the good Chappell T.
Why Naturalism? Copp D.

2003-06-25T11:56:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Liane Gabora, Amplifying phenomenal information: Toward a fundamental theory of consciousness Journal of Consciousness Studies 9(8): 3-29.

Fundamental approaches bypass the problem of getting consciousness from non-conscious components by positing that consciousness is a universal primitive. For example, the double aspect theory of information holds that information has a phenomenal aspect. How then do you get from phenomenal information to human consciousness? This paper proposes that an entity is conscious to the extent it amplifies information, first by trapping and integrating it through closure, and second by maintaining dynamics at the edge of chaos through simultaneous processes of divergence and convergence. The origin of life through autocatalytic closure, and the origin of an interconnected worldview through conceptual closure, induced phase transitions in the degree to which information, and thus consciousness, is locally amplified. Divergence and convergence of cognitive information may involve phenomena observed in light e.g. focusing, interference, and resonance. By making information flow inward-biased, closure shields us from external consciousness; thus the paucity of consciousness may be an illusion.

Nick Bostrom, Desire, Time, and Ethical Weight (PDF)

Discusses the role of time in desire-satisfactionism. E.g. is it more important that a desire gets satisfied if it has been held longer? Do past desires count? (I think this paper will need some serious revising).

Hugh LaFollette, "World Hunger" In C. Wellman and R. Frey (eds). Blackwell Companion to Applied Ethics. Blackwell, 2003, 238-53.

We are watching television, and an advertisement for UNICEF, OXFAM, or the Christian Children’s Fund interrupts our favorite show. We grab our remotes and quickly flip to another channel. Perhaps we mosey to the kitchen for a snack. Maybe we just sit, trying not to watch. These machinations may banish these haunting images of destitute, starving children from our TVs and our thoughts, but they do not alter the brutal facts: millions of people in the world are undernourished; thousands die each day; most of those who suffer and die are children, and, with collective effort we could end the suffering of millions without too much strain.

Simon Keller, Welfare and the Achievement of Goals (PDF)

An attempt to turn some of the more outrageous claims from my dissertation into coherent arguments. I claim that an individual's welfare is enhanced (in at least one respect) by the achievement of her goals, even if her goals are stupid, immoral or self-destructive.

Wayne Myrvold, Relativistic Quantum Becoming" (PDF) British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53 (2003), pp. 475-500.

In a recent paper, David Albert has suggested that no quantum theory can yield a description of the world unfolding in Minkowski spacetime. This conclusion is premature; a natural extension of Stein’s notion of becoming in Minkowski spacetime to accommodate the demands of quantum nonseparability yields such an account, an account that is in accord with a proposal which was made by Aharonov and Albert but which is dismissed by Albert as a ‘mere trick’. The nature of such an account is clarified by an extension to a relativistic quantum context of David Lewis’ picture of objective chances evolving in time.

Other Changes of Note

18th Century German Philosophy Prior to Kant (Brigitte Sassen) [REVISED: June 24, 2003], Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

2003-06-24T11:54:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Christine Korsgaard, Normativity, Necessity, and the Synthetic a priori: A Response to Derek Parfit. (PDF)

If I understand him correctly,Derek Parfit ’s views place us,philosophically speaking, in a very small box.According to Parfit,normativity is an irreducible non-natural property that is independent of the human mind.That is to say,there are normative truths -truths about what we ought to do and to want,or about reasons for doing and wanting things.The truths in question are synthetic a priori truths,and accessible to us only by some sort of rational intuition.Parfit supposes that if we are to preserve the irreducibility of the normative,this is just about all we can say,at least until we bring in some actual intuitions to supply the story with some content.

Hans Halvorson, No place for particles in relativistic quantum theories? (with R. Clifton) Philosophy of Science 69, 1-28 (2002).

Several recent arguments purport to show that there can be no relativistic, quantum-mechanical theory of localizable particles and, thus, that relativity and quantum mechanics can be reconciled only in the context of quantum field theory. We point out some loopholes in the existing arguments, and we provide two no-go theorems to close these loopholes. However, even with these loopholes closed, it does not yet follow that relativity plus quantum mechanics exclusively requires a field ontology, since relativistic quantum field theory itself might permit an ontology of localizable particles supervenient on the fundamental fields. Thus, we provide another no-go theorem to rule out this possibility. Finally, we allay potential worries about this conclusion by arguing that relativistic quantum field theory can nevertheless explain the possibility of "particle detections," as well as the pragmatic utility of "particle talk."

Henry Stapp, Entry in "Cambridge Handbook of Cosciousness" CH6: The Jibu-Yasue Approach (PDF) (First Draft)

Their theory takes the substrate associated with Umezawa's ideas to be the water that pervades the brain. Excitations of certain states of the water system are called corticons, and they interact with photons in the electromagnetic fields of, for example, the dendritic network. They say: "With the help of quantum field theory, we have found that the creation and annihilation dynamics of corticons and photons in the QBD system in the sub-microscopic world of the brain to be the entity we call consciousness or mind."

Mitchell Green, Grice's Frown: On Meaning and Expression, in G. Meggle and C. Plunze (eds.)

...I argue first that reflexive communicative intentions are not necessary for conversational implicature. Next, the Gricean framework for speaker meaning will be used to throw into relief a pervasive feature of communication that is invoked in a wide variety of philosophical discussions (as well as in the arts, in social psychology, psycholinguistics, and linguistics) but little explicated, namely the notion of expression. That notion is then shown to be important for another area of inquiry than that of implicature, particularly for our account of the phenomenon of Moorean absurdity. Finally, I argue that the notion of expression, construed as intentionally and overtly showing one’s intentional state, is a core concept in terms of which conversational implicature may be understood.

Susanna Siegel, "The Role of Perception in Demonstrative Reference", n Philosophers' Imprint Vol. 2, No. 1

In this paper I defend a view about what fixes the reference of uses of bare demonstratives ("this", "that", and their plurals).

Susanna Siegel, "Two phenomenological constraints on object-seeing(PDF)

I argue that there are two phenomenological constraints on what it is to see an object, and that these are overlooked by some theories that offer allegedly sufficient causal and counterfactual conditions on object-seeing. (This is one of two continuants of a paper that used to be posted here called "Object-seeing and the mental.)

Jordan Howard Sobel, "Blackburn's Problem: On Its Not Insignificant Residue"(PDF) Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2001).

FreE-Publications

Donald Zeyl - Review of Pierre Hadot's What is Ancient Philosophy?, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003.06.09

What is ancient philosophy? Pierre Hadot makes very clear what he thinks it is not: it is not the deposit of philosophical concepts, theories and systems to be found in the surviving texts of Graeco-Roman antiquity, the subject matter of courses of study in the curricula of modern universities. This subject matter indeed does constitute the “philosophical discourse” of the ancient philosophers. But that discourse is itself merely the expression of what Hadot takes to be the essence of ancient philosophy which, in his view, is . way of life.

The Equality Exchange, Equality From Theory to Action, 76K. (book) (PDF) Baker J., K. Lynch, S. Cantillon, J. Walsh.

Inequality is a pervasive fact of our world. But in every country there is resistance to power and privilege, with people working at many levels to create more equal societies. What is equality? What would more equal societies look like? How can they be brought about? Those are the questions that have shaped this book. We treat egalitarianism as a practical project of developing new ideas, restructuring social institutions and achieving social change. We do not claim to answer all of the questions egalitarians need to ask, but we hope to show how these questions – and some of their answers – fit together within a coherent overall framework.

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Journal of Philosophical Logic June 2003, Volume 32, Issue 3

Some Supervaluation-based Consequence Relations Kremer P.; Kremer M.
Frege's Content-Principle and Relevant Deducibility Tennant N.
Synonymous Logics Pelletier F.J.; Urquhart A.
Communication and Strong Compositionality Pagin P.
Why the Liar Does not Matter Berk L.

Other Changes of Note

Aesthetic Judgment (Nick Zangwill) [REVISED: June 23, 2003]

2003-06-23T09:14:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Functional Explanations and Reasons as Causes (PDF)

That a conceptual connection, of sorts, holds between a person's reasons for acting and her actions, has served as grounds for embracing two dramatic theses:
1. Reasons (as they manifest themselves in beliefs and desires) do not cause actions. (The Anti- Causal Thesis) 2. The explanation of nature is fundamentally different from the explanation of action. (The Explanatory Dualism Thesis)
If we assume that a conceptual connection does hold between reasons and action, the arguments for both theses are strikingly simple. In defense of the first thesis, all that need be added is Hume's Principle: between cause and effect only a (logically) contingent relation holds. For given Hume's Principle, and the conceptual connection (which after all is not a contingent one), it follows that no causal connection holds. In defense of the second thesis, all that need be added is one assumption and one observation. The assumption is that the covering- law model of explanation is adequate to the natural sciences; the observation is that if a conceptual connection does hold, then covering- laws are not required to explain a person's action given the presence of the relevant beliefs and desires (because the presence of the latter entail the performance of the former). Together the assumption and the observation undermine the view that one model of explanation will fit both natural science and human psychology.

Subscription Publications

Journal of Medical Ethics 1 June 2003, Volume 29, Issue 3 Publisher: BMJ Publishing Group

It is immoral to require consent for cadaver organ donation Emson H.E.
Death, us and our bodies: personal reflections Savulescu J.
Organ procurement: dead interests, living needs Harris J.
Cadaveric tissue donation: a pathologist’s perspective van Diest P.J.; Lopes Cardoso N.W.J.; Niesing J.
An ethical market in human organs Erin C.A.; Harris J.

Other Changes of Note

Changes made to about 20 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries prior to June 21, 2003 are listed here.

2003-06-20T10:06:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Henry Stapp, Entry in "Cambridge Handbook of Cosciousness" CH5: The Eccles-Beck Approach (DOC) (First Draft) (June 19, 2003)

Eccles gives "two most weighty reasons" for rejecting the classical-physics-based concept of materialism. (Eccles 1994, p,9) First, classical physics does not entail the existence or emergence of the defining characteristic of consciousness, namely "feelings," and hence entails no theory of consciousness. Second, because the nature of the mapping between brain states and states of consciousness never enters into the behavior of an organism, there is no evolutionary reason for consciousness to be closely connected to behavior, which it clearly is.

John Gardner, Review of Thomas Nagel, Concealment and Exposure (PDF), for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

In Concealment and Exposure, Thomas Nagel collects eighteen previously published essays of varying length and importance. Most are works of moral and political philosophy, although the final five (which I will not discuss) relate to his other main area of philosophical interest, the relationship between mind and reality. Among the papers in moral and political philosophy, a few might equally be classified as works of cultural commentary, and a couple perhaps even as works of social psychology. Five were published in scholarly books and journals, but the rest appeared in newsstand periodicals such as The New Republic and The London Review of Books (which gives us some reason to be more optimistic about public culture than Nagel is himself). More than half are review articles, mostly, but not only, discussing works by other philosophers.

Torin Alter, Epistemicism and the Combined Spectrum (with Stuart Rachels)

Derek Parfit’s combined-spectrum argument seems to conflict with epistemicism, a viable theory of vagueness. While Parfit argues for the indeterminacy of personhood, epistemicism denies indeterminacy. But, we argue, the linguistically based determinacy that epistemicism supports lacks the sort of normative or ontological significance that concerns Parfit. Thus, we reformulate his argument to make it consistent with epistemicism. We also dispute Roy Sorensen’s suggestion that Parfit’s argument relies on an assumption that fuels resistance to epistemicism, namely, that ‘the magnitude of a modification must be proportional to its effect.’

FreE-Publications

Rachel Zuckert - Review of Rodolphe Gaschés The Idea of Form: Rethinking Kant’s Aesthetics

Gasché offers here a comprehensive discussion of Kant’s aesthetics in the Critique of Judgment, tracing Kant’s account as it unfolds from the placement of pure judgments of taste within the general doctrine of reflective judgment in the published and unpublished introductions to the CJ, through the characterizations of judgments of taste and of sublimity, to the claim that beauty is the “symbol of morality,” with which the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment concludes. His discussion focuses, however, on the two themes announced in his title: Kant’s aesthetic formalism and (via the technical meaning of “idea”) the “crucial role played by reason in the formation and judgment of form” (p. 12).

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Supplement to the Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society, Vol 77, Issue 1, July 2003

Journal of Moral Education Vol 32, Issue 2, JUNE 2003

Ethics, Place and Environment, Vol 5, Issue 3, 2002

2003-06-19T09:08:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Antony Eagle, "Could there be exactly two things?"(42k pdf)

A defence of Mereology in the face of the objection that it entails there could not be exactly two material objects (this is a reply to a paper by Juan Comesaña).

Hans Halvorson, Characterizing quantum theory in terms of information-theoretic constraints (with J. Bub and R. Clifton)

We show that three fundamental information-theoretic constraints--the impossibility of superluminal information transfer between two physical systems by performing measurements on one of them, the impossibility of broadcasting the information contained in an unknown physical state, and the impossibility of unconditionally secure bit commitment--suffice to entail that the observables and state space of a physical theory are quantum-mechanical. We demonstrate the converse derivation in part, and consider the implications of alternative answers to a remaining open question about nonlocality and bit commitment.

John Burgess, Can Truth Out? (DOC)

It is rather discouraging that forty years have passed since Frederic Fitch first propounded his paradox of knowability without philosophers having achieved agreement on a solution.1 As a general rule, when modal phenomena prove puzzling, it is a good idea to look at the corresponding temporal phenomena, and accordingly I propose to examine here not the knowability principle that whatever is true can be known, but rather the discovery principle that whatever is true will be known.

Kevin O'Regan Skill, corporality, and alerting capacity in an account of sensory consciousness. J. K. O'Regan, E. Myin & A. Noë. Submitted to Consciousness & Cognition, June 2003.

We suggest that within a skill-based, sensorimotor approach to sensory consciousness, two measurable properties of perceivers' interaction with the environment, "corporality" and "alerting capacity", explain why sensory stimulation is experienced as having a “sensory feel", unlike thoughts or memories. We propose that the notions of "corporality" and "alerting capacity"make possible the construction of a 'phenomenality plot', which allow to chart in a principled way the degree to which conscious phenomena are experienced as having a sensory quality.

Maria Bittner, 'A Richer Ontology? Names and Quotes in Texts.' (PDF) Reflections on Chris Potts (2003) "A Layered Semantics for Utterance Modifiers."

FreE-Publications

SSRN Legal Philosophy Papers, Rational Commitment and Legal Reason, BRUCE CHAPMAN, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

In this paper I argue that what economic theory needs to resolve the problem of rational commitment is an account of rationality that is so structured that it can simultaneously comprehend both the preference maximizing rationality of adopting a commitment and the more formal (less substantive, less preference-based) rationality of carrying out the commitment once it has been made. The difficulty, of course, is that a rationality that is too formal, or rigid, in its adherence to the planned commitment ceases to look rational at all. Indeed, it appears to look more like "blind commitment" or mere "mechanical habit," the sort of thing that takes the agent beyond the state of reflection or deliberation that is characteristic of rational behavior.

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Patrick Greenough, 'Vagueness: A Minimal Theory', Mind, Volume 112, Issue 446, March 2003 (PDF)

There is a well-known argument from Leibniz's Law for the view that coincident material things may be distinct. For given that they differ in their properties, then how can they be the same? However, many philosophers have suggested that this apparent difference in properties is the product of a linguistic illusion; there is just one thing out there, but different sorts or guises under which it may be described. I attempt to show that this 'opacity' defence has intolerable consequences for the functioning of our language and that the original argument should therefore be allowed to stand.

Other Changes of Note

Sovereignty (Dan Philpott) [REVISED: June 18, 2003]

2003-06-18T09:58:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Ben Caplan, Review of Alan Berger, Terms and Truth: Reference Direct and Anaphoric(PDF), forthcoming in Dialogue

Alan Berger’s Terms and Truth covers various expressions particularly names and anaphoric pronouns, but also demonstratives and general terms as they occur in various linguistic contexts, including identity sentences, belief ascriptions, and negative existentials. A central thesis of Berger’s book is that all of these expressions are rigid designators. (So I assume that Berger would say, contrary to what the subtitle might suggest, that anaphoric reference is direct reference.)

John MacFarlane, Future Contingents and Relative Truth (PDF), The Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2003), 321-36

If it is not now determined whether there will be a sea battle to-morrow, can an assertion that there will be one be true? The problem has persisted because there are compelling arguments on both sides. If there are objectively possible futures witnessing the truth of the prediction and others witnessing its falsity, symmetry considerations seem to forbid counting it either true or false. Yet if we think about how we will assess the prediction tomorrow, when a sea battle is rag-ing (or not), it seems we must assign the utterance a definite truth value. I argue that both arguments must be given their due, and that this requires relativizing utterance truth to a context of assessment. I show how this relativization can be handled in a rigorous formal semantics, and I argue that we can make coherent sense of assertion without assuming that utterances have their truth values absolutely.

Kieran Setiya, Against Internalism(PDF), forthcoming in Noûs

It might be a good idea, at this point, to expunge the word "internalism" from the philosophy of practical reason. In general, the internalist proclaims a necessary connection between states of one kind (normative facts, propositions, beliefs, judgements) and those of another (actual motivation, possible motivation, rational motivation, desire, reasons). The externalist denies that this connection is necessary or "internal" and claims that it is merely contingent. But – as this general description suggests – the forms of internalism are bewilderingly various; and it is easy to confuse one with another. At the risk of such confusion, I want to frame the following discussion in terms of a kind of internalism about reasons to act.

Lars Hertzberg, The Idea of a Weltanschauung and its Relation to Philosophy (DOC) (DRAFT)

Early readers of The Idea of a Social Science tended to respond to the book in ways that missed its philosophical import, perhaps partly because Peter Winch himself did not see the need to forestall this kind of response. They thought the book offered a kind of Weltanschauung, an outlook on human life and its relation to science, a reading that seems to have made the book attractive to some of them and repellent to others. Geert-Lueke Lueken seems to be, on the whole, favourably disposed, but in his reading too I seem to detect a response of this type. I hope that by showing in what ways such a reading misses the mark I shall be able to point a way out of some of the problems that Lueken encounters in trying to understand Winch.

Maria Bittner, 'Ontology for Incremental Update: Polysynthesis Online' (PDF), talk to be presented at the Workshop on Direct Compositionality. Brown University, 19 June.

This paper is a step toward the distant ideal of a crosslinguistic semantic theory where universal rules would apply to language-specific surface structures and yet, somehow, converge on the same meaning for corresponding sentences. This ideal faces a formidable challenge in Kalaallisut, an Eskimo language spoken in West Greenland, where rampant polysynthesis and free word order often combine to yield radically different surface bracketing than in English.

FreE-Publications

Stephen Watt - Review of John Kekes' The Art of Life, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003.06.07

John Kekes attempts in this book to discuss one way in which life may be lived well. He does this by analyzing a specific type of good life, that which consists in practising the art of life to achieve personal excellence.

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Synthese July 2003, Volume 136, Issue 1 Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers

Structural Realism and the Interpretation of Quantum Field Theory Cao T.Y.
Appendix: Ontological Relativity and Fundamentality – Is QFT the Fundamental Theory? Cao T.Y.
Remodelling Structural Realism: Quantum Physics and the Metaphysics of Structure French S.; Ladyman J.
Can We Dissolve Physical Entities into Mathematical Structures? Cao T.Y.
The Dissolution of Objects: Between Platonism and Phenomenalism French S.; Ladyman J.
Critical Notice: Tian Yu Cao's ``The Conceptual Development of 20th Century Field Theories'' Saunders S.
What is Ontological Synthesis? – A Reply to Simon Saunders Cao T.Y.
Structural Realism, again Saunders S.

Other Changes of Note

Constructive Mathematics (Douglas Bridges) [REVISED: June 17, 2003], Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

2003-06-17T09:23:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

John Burgess, Review of Kit Fine, The Limits of Abstraction (doc), Draft, comments invited

Kit Fine's long article, "The limits of abstraction", introducing his distinctive perspective on neo-Fregeanism, has now been expanded into a short book of the same title. The present review of that book is divided into three parts of unequal length. The long introduction §1 surveys recent neo-Fregeanism. Then §2 summarizes Fine's technical contributions, which presumably are what is of primary interest for readers of the present journal. The brief conclusion §3 touches on more purely philosophical issues.

Michael Pelczar, Change, Difference, and Time(PDF), draft

As ordinarily understood, change requires a single thing to possess differ-ent properties at different times. It is shown that change thus understood is incom-patible with the indiscernibility of identicals (the principle that for any A and any B, if A is the same as B, then whatever is true of A is true of B and vice versa). As a result of this incompatibility, considerations of ordinary change have no bearing on the debate between three- and four-dimensionalists. If we choose the indiscernibility of identicals over ordinary change, the upshot is that our ordinary beliefs about change are, as McTaggart argued, false. If we choose ordinary change over the indiscernibility of identicals, we may usefully define time as the possibility for a thing to differ from itself.

Nick Smith, 'Worldly Indeterminacy: A Rough Guide' (PDF) co-authored with Gideon Rosen.

There is a widespread suspicion that indeterminacy and vagueness can only be features of claims or representations, and hence that it makes no more sense to ask whether the world is indeterminate than it does to ask whether the world rhymes or whether it’s written in English. On this view, it is not a genuine possibility that the world itself — as opposed to our representations of it — may be unsettled or inchoate in some way: the world must be a fully determinate array of facts or things.

V. Akman, S. Erdogan, J. Lee, V. Lifschitz and H. Turner , "Representation of the Zoo World and the Traffic World on the language of the Causal Calculator, (PS) to appear in Artificial Intelligence

FreE-Publications

JC Beall and David Ripley's - Review of John Woods' Paradox and Paraconsistency: Conflict Resolution in the Abstract Sciences, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003.06.06

When physicists disagree as to whose theory is right, they can (if we radically idealize) form an experiment whose results will settle the difference. When logicians disagree, there seems to be no possibility of resolution in this manner. In Paradox and Paraconsistency John Woods presents a picture of disagreement among logicians, mathematicians, and other “abstract scientists” and points to some methods for resolving such disagreement. Our review begins with (very) short sketches of the chapters. Following the sketches, we respond to a few of Woods’ arguments.

Semantics Archive:

Capone Alessandro, On Michelangelo Bambaci's analysis of Conrad's style(RTF)
Büring, Daniel, Semantics, Intonation, and Information Structure(PDF)
Büring, Daniel, Bound To Bind(PDF)

Subscription Publications

Biology and Philosophy, June 2003, Volume 18, Issue 3 Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers

Non-essentialist methods in pre-Darwinian taxonomy, Winsor M.P.
The Galilean turn in population ecology, Colyvan M.; Ginzburg L.R.
From theory to data: Representing neurons in the 1940s, Abraham T.H.
Darwinian functions and Freudian motivations, Garvey B.
The concept of group heritability, Okasha S.
The Good, the Bad and the Impossible, Maclaurin J.
Developmental Systems and Animal Behaviour, Robert J.S.
Ecosystem Organization as Side-effects of Replicator and Interactor Activities, Dagg J.L.

Other Changes of Note

APA Philosophy in the News:

Book Review: "Nature and nurture entwining to shape human behavior". Review of Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley. Reviewed by Merle Rubin.

2003-06-16T09:56:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Allan Hazlett, Against Fictionalism (PDF)

In this paper I defend the view that some positive existential mathematical statements are true. My opponent is the fictionalist, who denies this. My argument for anti-fictionalism about mathematics comes in two parts. First, I argue that the burden of proof is on the fictionalist to show that no positive existential mathematical statements are true. Some such statements certainly appear to be true ("Two plus two is four", for example); we should not deny that these statements are true without good reason. Second, I argue that all the best reasons that have been given to deny that these sentences are true are not good reasons.

Allan Hazlett, Contingent Brute Truths (PDF)

There has been considerable discussion of whether the fact that the fundamental constants for our universe "fall within a very narrow range" and apparently must do so for there to be intelligent life gives us reason to believe either in the existence of an intelligent designer or in the existence of a multitude of other universes. I argue that we should believe no such thing, but rather should believe that there are contingent brute truths - facts that require no explanation. The fact that the fundamental constants of our universe are what they are is a fact of this sort.

Henry Stapp, CH4: von Neumann/Stapp Approach (Second Draft, PDF) Cambridge Handbook of Cosciousness, Second draft (June 13, 2003)

Von Neumann quantum theory is a formulation in which the entire physical universe, including the bodies and brains of the conscious human participant/observers, is represented in the basic quantum state, which is called the state of the universe. The state of a subsystem, such as a brain, is formed by averaging (tracing) this basic state over all variables other than those that describe the state of that subsystem.

Henry Stapp, "The Illusion of Conscious Will?" PDF A response to Wegner's book. Revised June 9 2003.

Wegner's begins Chapter 1 with the statement: "It usually seems that we consciously will our voluntary actions, but this is an illusion." That assertion appears to be a clear statement of what Wegner intends to demonstrate. The questions in need of addressing are: Does the empirical evidence cited by Wegner entail that a person's stream of consciousness cannot causally influence that person's physical actions? Do Wegner's arguments, or the empirical evidence upon which they are based, create any difficulties for the von Neumann's formulation of quantum theory, which provides a mechanism that allows a person's "experiences of conscious willing" to influence that person's physical actions? The answers to these two questions are 'No' and 'No.'

Pekka Väyrynen, A Theory of Hedged Moral Principles (PDF)

Classical moral principles are no less in trouble than classical laws of nature. So how does the general knowledge we have in science and ethics hook up with the notion of explanatory power and other notions that have traditionally been associated with law-likeness? This paper develops a theory of exception-tolerating and yet robustly explanatory moral principles. I first develop a semantics for hedged moral principles that shows how exception-laden generalizations can have determinate and informative truth conditions without being backed by exceptionless generalizations. I then turn to discuss what features hedged moral principles must possess if they are to play an explanatory role regarding the moral status of actions, and how exactly they figure in such explanations. The upshot of this paper is that we should find nothing paradoxical about the idea of defeasible and yet explanatory moral generalizations, and that such generalizations give us a recognizably principled morality, even if not in the classical sense.

Ted Hinchman, Trust and Reasons

This paper takes a new angle on an old debate. The debate is that between ‘internalists’ and ‘externalists’ about practical reasons, the new angle my emphasis on the non-deliberative rationality of trust. The paper shows how this emphasis can resolve the debate by permitting internalists to embrace a thesis deemed distinctive of externalism. If my interpretation is correct, the old debate misconstrues an important underlying issue: how to understand the motivating force of personal trust. The debate about reasons, I conclude, should really be a debate about the nature of human relations.

Yujin Nagasawa, Divine Omniscience and Knowledge De Se, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (Kluwer), Vol. 53, Issue 2, pp. 73-82. Refereed.

Patrick Grim argues that God cannot be omniscient because no one other than me can acquire knowledge de se of myself. In particular, according to Grim, God cannot know what I know in knowing that I am making a mess. I argue, however, that given two plausible principles regarding divine attributes there is no reason to accept Grim’s conclusion that God cannot be omniscient. In this paper I focus on the relationship between divine omniscience and necessary impossibilities, in contrast to the general trend of research since Aquinas, which has concentrated on the relationship between divine omnipotence and necessary impossibilities.

Yujin Nagasawa, 'The Knowledge Argument Against Dualism', Theoria: A Swedish Journal of Philosophy. Refereed.

Paul Churchland argues that Frank Jackson’s Knowledge Argument against physicalism is so strong that if it defeated physicalism it would, at the same time, defeat ‘substance dualism’. The purpose of this paper is to articulate this ‘parity of reasons’ objection. In the first part of the paper, I discuss Churchland’s argument. I demonstrate that although his formulation of the objection is not wholly satisfactory, it may be revised so that the Knowledge Argument would defeat a certain form of dualism. In the second part, I apply the parity of reasons objection to David Chalmers’ dualism. Chalmers rejects physicalism on the basis of the Knowledge Argument and introduces two possible forms of dualism. I show that of those two forms of dualism, Chalmers has to endorse the one that he does not prefer because the other is vulnerable to the parity of reasons objection.

FreE-Publications

Punishment (Hugo Adam Bedau) [NEW: June 13, 2003]

The concept of punishment -- its definition -- and its practical application and justification during the past half-century have shown a marked drift away from efforts to reform and rehabilitate offenders in favor of retribution and incarceration. Punishment in its very conception is now acknowledged to be an inherently retributive practice, whatever may be the further role of retribution as a (or the) justification or goal of punishment. A liberal justification of punishment would proceed by showing that society needs the threat and the practice of punishment, because the goal of social order cannot be achieved otherwise and because it is unfair to expect victims of criminal aggression to bear the cost of their victimization. Constraints on the use of threatened punishments (such as due process of law) are of course necessary, given the ways in which authority and power can be abused. Such a justification involves both deontological as well as consequentialist considerations.

2003-06-13T09:32:00.000-04:00

FreE-Publications

Lucas Swaine - Review of Paul J. Weithman's Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003.06.05

Weithman opens this book declaring his interest in the nature and ethics of “responsible citizenship” (2-3). He asks what role churches play in preparing people to be citizens and ponders how religious believers can be good democratic citizens (ix, 11). From the outset, Weithman expresses his discontent with “standard” versions of public reason that stipulate a need to justify political or coercive arrangements “by reasons which are accessible to everyone” (6). Numerous liberals propose that citizens should rely upon accessible reasons in public debate, but the notion of accessibility is “hardly self-explanatory,” Weithman remarks (8, 9). He stands “deeply skeptical” of the criterion of accessibility for public reasons, and he claims, a fortiori, that an adequate conception of accessibility “cannot plausibly be spelled out” (9, 132).

Roman Ingarden (Amie Thomasson) [NEW: June 12, 2003] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Roman Ingarden (1893 -- 1970) was a Polish phenomenologist, ontologist and aesthetician. A student of Edmund Husserl's from the Göttingen period, Ingarden was a realist phenomenologist who spent much of his career working against what he took to be Husserl's turn to transcendental idealism. As preparatory work for narrowing down possible solutions to the realism/idealism problem, Ingarden developed ontological studies unmatched in scope and detail, distinguishing different kinds of dependence and different modes of being. He is best known, however, for his work in aesthetics, particularly on the ontology of the work of art and the status of aesthetic values, and is credited with being the founder of phenomenological aesthetics. His work The Literary Work of Art has been widely influential in literary theory as well as philosophical aesthetics, and has been crucial to the development of New Criticism and Reader Response Theory.

2003-06-12T08:07:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Coherentist Epistemology and Moral Theory (PDF)

Moral knowledge, to the extent anyone has it, is as much a matter of knowing how -- how to act, react, feel and reflect appropriately -- as it is a matter of knowing that -- that injustice is wrong, courage is valuable, and care is due. Such knowledge is embodied in a range of capacities, abilities, and skills that are not acquired simply by learning that certain things are morally required or forbidden or that certain abilities and skills are important. 1 To lose sight of this fact, to focus exclusively on questions concerning what is commonly called propositional knowledge, is to lose one's grip on (at least one crucial aspect of) the intimate connection between morality and action. At the same time, insofar as it suggests that moral capacities can be exhaustively accounted for by appeal to peoples' cognitive states, to focus on propositional knowledge is to invite an overintellectualized picture of those capacities. No account of moral knowledge will be adequate unless it does justice to the ways in which knowing right from wrong, and good from bad, is not simply a matter of forming the correct beliefs but is a matter of acquiring certain abilities to act, react, feel, and reflect appropriately in the situations in which one finds oneself. And this means a satisfying treatment of moral epistemology must give due attention to what's involved in knowing how to be moral.

Stephen Yablo, Advertisement for a Sketch of an Outline of a Proto-Theory of Causation (PDF)

A couple of thousand years before Hume made the remark that inspired the counterfactual theory of causation, Plato said something that bears on the principal problems for that theory. The idea will seem at first utterly familiar and of no possible help to anyone, so please bear with me. What Plato said, or had Socrates say, is that a distinction needs to be drawn between “the cause” and “that without which the cause would not be a cause” (Phaedo, 98e).
This sounds like the distinction between causes and enabling conditions: conditions that don't produce the effect themselves but create a context in which something else can do so; conditions in whose absence the something else would not have been effective. And, indeed, that is what Plato seems to have had in mind.

Richard Zach, Characterization of the axiomatizable prenex fragments of first-order Gödel logics . 33rd International Symposium on Multiple-valued Logic. Proceedings. Tokyo, May 16-19, 2003 (IEEE Computer Society Press, 2003) 175-180 (with Matthias Baaz and Norbert Preining). (check home page for changes, if link is down).

FreE-Publications

Semantics Archive, Conjunction meets negation: a study in cross-linguistic variation (PDF), Szabolcsi, Anna and Bill Haddican

This inquiry is prompted by the observation of a sharp cross-linguistic contrast in the interaction of conjunction and negation. It turns out that conjunctions in Hungarian (Russian, Italian, Japanese) behave in the expected way, because they replicate the behavior of plurals, their natural semantic relatives. The puzzle is why English (German) presents a different range of interpretations. By teasing out finer distinctions in intonation and context the paper tracks down missing readings in both language types and takes several steps towards concluding that it is eventually not necessary to postulate a radical cross-linguistic semantic difference.

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SSRN (Jurisprudence & Legal Philosophy)

Denying Prejudice: Internment, Redress, and Denial. Jerry Kang UCLA School of Law
What to Compensate? Some Surprisingly Unappreciated Reasons Why the Problem is So Hard. San Diego Law Review, Forthcoming Leo Katz University of Pennsylvania - School of Law
Just Say No to Retribution. Buffalo, Criminal Law Review, Forthcoming

2003-06-11T10:21:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Achille C. Varzi, Counting the Holes(PDF), to appear in Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Cargle. I know where Argle and Bargle went wrong. Dargle. Concerning what? Cargle. Concerning holes. Argle claimed that holes supervene on their material hosts, and that every truth about holes boils down to a truth about perforated things. This may well be right, assuming holes are perforations. (I suppose a similar theory can be worked out to account for our discourse about cuts, inden-tations, fissures, inner cavities, nooks, and the like.) But we still need an explicit theory of holes to do justice to the ordinary way of counting holes. For example, take this card. How many holes do we have here?

Johnathan L. Kvanvig, Truth and the Epistemic Goal, Matthias Steup and Ernest Sosa, eds., forthcoming 2004.

The question before us concerns the epistemic goal, standardly taken in epistemology over the last fifty years or so to be that of getting to the truth and avoiding error. In order to assess the plausibility of any answer to this question, it will be useful to begin by thinking about the question itself to make sure that it is properly understood. Asking about goals is asking about values or goods. To ask what one’s goals are in, say, going to college, we inquire about the perceived values or goods that are being pursued. So the first thing to note about our question is that it asks about the values or goods that are epistemic in character.

Johnathan L. Kvanvig, Scientific Naturalism and the Value of Knowledge,in Knowledge and Reality: Essays in Honor of Alvin Plantinga, Thomas F. Crisp, ed., (Dordrecht: Kluwer Publishing Co., forthcoming 2003).

Philosophical naturalism is, arguably, the dominant philosophical tradition in contemporary western philosophy. Naturalistic theories abound in nearly every area of philosophical investigation, and epistemology is no exception. Just what counts as a naturalistic theory in epistemology is not completely obvious, but the call for and interest in such is unquestionable.

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Robert McCarthy - Review of James R. Otteson's Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003.06.04

Otteson’s attention to the mechanistic character of Smith’s psychology is a strength of the book. His language (calling the impartial spectator a ’procedure,’ for example) shows that he sees clearly that Smith’s method is to give a causal account of human behavior in terms of the interaction of human passions. The passions are simple, but interact in complex ways. It is from this basis that what Otteson calls “unintended order” arises. People acting on “basic, natural drives” cause “an order that they did not consciously intend to create but that nevertheless unfolds on its own and serves both to strengthen the interpersonal bonds and increase the wealth of the community” (p. 6). It is Smith’s interest in this phenomenon, according to Otteson, that unites his two major works. In particular, Otteson argues, the impartial spectator is the tool that in both works produces this order, through the mechanisms of the marketplace.

Biodiversity (Dan Faith) [NEW: June 11, 2003],Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Biodiversity" is often defined as the variety of all forms of life, from genes to species, through to the broad scale of ecosystems (for a list of variants on this simple definition see Gaston 1996). "Biodiversity" was coined as a contraction of "biological diversity" in 1985, but the new term arguably has taken on a meaning and import all its own. A symposium in 1986, and the follow-up book BioDiversity (Wilson 1988), edited by biologist E. O. Wilson, heralded the popularity of this concept. Ten years later, Takacs (1996, p.39) described its ascent this way: "in 1988, biodiversity did not appear as a keyword in Biological Abstracts, and biological diversity appeared once. In 1993, biodiversity appeared seventy-two times, and biological diversity nineteen times". Ten years further on, it would be hard to count how many times "biodiversity" is used every day by scientists, policy-makers, and others.

Giambattista Vico (Timothy Costelloe) [NEW: June 11, 2003], Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Giovanni Battista Vico (1668-1744) spent most of his professional life as Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Naples. He was trained in jurisprudence, but read widely in Classics, philology, and philosophy, all of which informed his highly original views on history, historiography, and culture. His thought is most fully expressed in his mature work, the Scienzia Nuova or The New Science. In his own time, Vico was relatively unknown, but from the nineteenth century onwards his views found a wider audience and today his influence is widespread in the humanities and social sciences.

Semantics Archive, Questioning to resolve decision, by Rooy, Robert van

Abstract. Why do we ask questions? Because we want to have some information. But why this particular kind of information? Because only information of this particular kind is helpful to resolve the decision problem that the agent faces. In this paper I argue that questions are asked because their answers help to resolve the questioner’s decision problem, and that this assumption helps us to interpret interrogative sentences. Interrogative sentences are claimed to have a semantically underspecified meaning and this underspecification is resolved by means of the decision problem.

Semantics Archive, A modal analysis of modal subordination (PDF), by Rooy, Robert van

According to standard pragmatics, we should account for conversational implicatures in terms of Grice’s (1967) maxims of conversation. Neo-Griceans like Atlas & Levinson (1981) and Horn (1984) seek to reduce those maxims to the so-called Q and I-principles. In this paper I want to argue that (i) there are major problems for reducing Gricean pragmatics to these two principles, and (ii) in fact, we can better account for implicatures by means of an exhaustivity operator defined in terms of a relevance-based ordering relation.

Semantics Archive, Relevance Implicatures(PDF), by Rooy, Robert van

Other Changes of Note

Human Rights (James Nickel) [REVISED: June 11, 2003] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

2003-06-10T09:41:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Bryan Frances, When a Skeptical Hypothesis Is Live (draft)

I argue for a new kind of scepticism with a new kind of sceptical argument. It has the traditional form (here's a sceptical hypothesis; you can't rule it out; you have to be able to rule it out to know such-and- such; so you don't know such-and-such), but the sceptical hypotheses I plug into it are "real, live" scientific-philosophical hypotheses often thought to be actually true, unlike any of the outrageous traditional hypotheses (e.g., 'You're a brain in a vat'). The argument goes through even if we adopt all the clever anti-sceptical fixes thought up in recent years: reliability, proper functioning, relevant alternatives, contextualism, safety, sensitivity, and the rejection of epistemic closure. That is, even if each of those anti-sceptical strategies succeeds in defeating the traditional forms of scepticism, the new sceptical arguments go through. Furthermore, the sceptical conclusion is bizarre: you can know that there are black holes, but you can't know that your shirt is red, that Moore thought that scepticism is false, or even that you believe that your shirt is red or that Moore thought that scepticism is false. Finally, the sceptical conclusion applies to just certain people, for limited parts of their lives, and can be overcome.

Bryan Frances, Universal Skepticism (draft)

The holy grail for the skeptic is universal skepticism, according to which you know nothing at all, not even that you have hands, that 2 + 2 = 4, that you exist, or even that it seems to you that you exist. In this essay I will be putting forward a set of delicious new arguments for universal skepticism. And yes, I do take them as offering a serious possibility that at least for some of us, for some parts of our adult lives, universal skepticism is true. The reason is that the new skeptical arguments utilize skeptical hypotheses utterly unlike any of the traditional ones: these are hypotheses that many genuine experts think are actually true.

Bryan Frances, A Test for Theories of Belief Ascription (expanded version of a published paper)

If publication rates are an accurate guide to popularity, then the two most currently popular approaches to belief ascription are Millianism and Contextualism. For those who enthusiastically concur with current conventional wisdom, the primary argument of this essay, centering on a puzzle about belief reports, is modest; for those who don’t buy the fashionable views, such as most Fregeans, the argument is challenging. Facts about the puzzle case and commonsensical principles about belief entail that one of the two approaches must be correct, although the puzzle is perhaps best thought of as a test case for all theories of belief ascription. If one thinks that any version of either Millianism or Contextualism must flout important intuitive principles regarding belief, then one is left with the conclusion that any adequate theory of belief ascription will have to be significantly revisionary with regard to semantic intuitions. If so, then we can forget about letting those intuitions have the weight that they are commonly accorded in theory construction for belief ascription (and, as a consequence, belief).

Other Changes of Note

Gilbert Harman, Review of Timothy Williamson, Knowledge and Its Limits for The Philosophical Review (newly revised June 9, 2003). PDF

Williamson’s Knowledge and its Limits is the most important philosophical discussion of knowledge in many years. It sets the agenda for epistemology for the next decade and beyond.

Game Theory (Don Ross) [REVISED: June 9, 2003] , Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Plato's Middle Period Metaphysics and Epistemology (Allan Silverman) [NEW: June 9, 2003], Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

2003-06-09T10:24:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Alexander R. Pruss, Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit: A Study of the Principle of Sufficient Reason(PDF), book manuscript, currently under submission.

Andrew Boucher, Proving Quadratic Reciprocity (PDF),

F, the system of arithmetic considered in Consistency, is used to prove more theorems, including Quadratic Reciprocity. This confirms the power of F, which is essentially second-order arithmetic without the ad infinitum assumption that there is always a next number.

Emmon Bach, Linguistic Universals and Particulars

Reflections, retrospective and prospective, about the activities and results of linguistics. Theory and description: methodological desiderata. Linguistic universals and linguistic particulars. Language extinction and the politics and ethics of linguistics. Linguistic creativity at the level of grammar creation and transmission: humans as members of the species homo loquens grammaturgicus.

John Burgess, E Pluribus Unum: Plural Logic and Set Theory(doc)

A revised version. Introduces "Bernays-Boolos" set theory, whose background logic is the plural logic of Boolos, and whose only positive set-theoretic existence axiom is a reflection principle of Bernays. It is a very simple system of axioms sufficient to obtain the usual axioms of ZFC, plus some large cardinals, and to reduce every question of plural logic to a question of set theory.

Jonathan L. Kvanvig, "The Haecceity Theory and Perspectival Limitation,", (also : Australasian Journal of Philosophy 67.3 (September 1989), pp. 295-305).

Impressive work has been done in recent years in attempting to understand how self-awareness is related to other sorts of awareness. One theory of this relation is what I shall call the haecceity theory. In spite of its many accomplishments, I shall argue that the haecceity theory is flawed beyond hope. This defect alone would be cause for alarm, for the haecceity theory has its followers. However, much more than the haecceity theory is at stake; rather an entire (and dominant) way of thinking about awareness and self-awareness must be abandoned. To begin to clarify these cursory remarks, I turn first to the haecceity theory itself.

Maribel Romero, "On Negative Yes/No Questions"(PDF)

This paper is concerned with two generalizations involving negation in yes/no (yn-)questions. The first generalization reflects an interpretational difference correlated with preposed and non-preposed negation in yn-questions. Preposed negation in yn-questions necessarily contributes the implicature that the speaker believed or at least expected that the positive answer is correct

FreE-Publications

Michael Tye , Qualia [REVISED: June 6, 2003] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Feelings and experiences vary widely. For example, I run my fingers over sandpaper, smell a skunk, feel a sharp pain in my finger, seem to see bright purple, become extremely angry. In each of these cases, I am the subject of a mental state with a very distinctive subjective character. There is something it is like for me to undergo each state, some phenomenology that it has. Philosophers often use the term ‘qualia’ (singular ‘quale’) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of our mental lives. In this standard, broad sense of the term, it is difficult to deny that there are qualia. Disagreement typically centers on which mental states have qualia, whether qualia are intrinsic qualities of their bearers, and how qualia relate to the physical world both inside and outside the head. The status of qualia is hotly debated in philosophy largely because it is central to a proper understanding of the nature of consciousness. Qualia are at the very heart of the mind-body problem.

2003-06-06T10:33:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Graeme Forbes, Depiction Verbs and the Definiteness Effect (PDF) (Draft 1, June 2003)

This paper is about a puzzling aspect of the behavior of depiction verbs ('sketch', 'draw', 'sculpt', 'imagine' etc.). Most groups of intensional transitive verbs form verb phrases with quantified noun phrases in a way that permits a notional reading of the verb phrase, regardless of the quantificational determiner in the noun phrase. For example, "Perseus seeks exactly one gorgon", "Perseus seeks another gorgon", and "Perseus seeks every gorgon" can all be understood notionally (the coda "but no particular gorgon(s)" makes sense in each case). But if we change "seeks" to "drew", the notional reading with "every gorgon" disappears. Similarly with "most", "the" and "both". I offer an account of why this happens in terms of Keenan's classification of determiners vis à vis the definiteness effect.

Jordan Howard Sobel, A Calculus for Truth and Propositions (PDF)

Petra Hendriks, A New Hypothesis on Compositionality , (with Reinhard Blutner and Helen de Hoop). Paper to be presented at the 4th International Conference on Cognitive Science, Sydney, Australia, July 13-17, 2003. (PDF)

In this paper we put forward a new hypothesis on compositionality of meaning, namely that compositionality is bidirectional optimization. Underspecification approaches to natural language interpretation generally start with an underspecified or weak meaning, which is strengthened by contextual information. In contrast, the bidirectional optimization approach we advocate proceeds from the strongest possible meaning. This meaning can be changed or weakened by contextual information. Under this approach, the meaning of an utterance is composed in a functional rather than a concatenative way. Hence, this approach avoids a number of well-known empirical problems associated with concatenative compositionality.

Richard Holton, 'Freedom, Coercion and the Act of Choice' (PDF) for Common Minds Conference on Philip Pettit's work, Canberra July 2003

FreE-Publications

Kristin Shrader-Frechette - Review of Dale Jamieson's Morality's Progress, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003.06.02

In the title essay, Jamieson argues that moral progress is possible and that we have experienced it in our lifetimes. The remainder of the volume includes 21 previously published essays, all of which address specific issues on which moral progress is needed. Most of the chapters focus on treatment of animals, but several deal with other environmental issues such as sustainable development. From a substantive point of view, the book is important because it is full of compassion and ethical insight. From a methodological point of view, the book is interesting both because of its readability and because it offers a window on how a "philosophically naturalist, morally consequentialist, and metaethically constructivist" (vii) person might do practical ethics.

Charles Chihara - Review of Alvin Plantinga's Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003.06.03

This book consists of an introduction by the editor, eleven of Plantinga’s previously published pieces ... In all these works, Plantinga makes reference to, and relies upon, the entities of the metaphysical theory he has been developing for more than thirty years. These include states of affairs, propositions, properties, functions, and sets. Thus, in the very first of these pieces-a work to a large extent concerned with defending the coherence of de re modality against the objections of various philosophers-one finds Plantinga making heavy use of propositions, properties, and functions. One can see why the book is entitled "Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality".

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Erkenntnis July 2003, Volume 59, Issue 1 Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers
For abstracts and full text see Ingenta

Requiring and Justifying: Two Dimensions of Normative StrengthGert J.
An Argument against the Trope TheoryStjernberg F.
Meaning and Testability in the Structuralist Theory of Science Zamora Bonilla J.P.
Bohm's Metaphors, Causality, and the Quantum Potential Guarini M.
Quantum Vagueness French S.; Krause D.
A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger .Gabriel G.

2003-06-05T09:47:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Johnathan Sutton, Testimony(PDF), draft of book chapter.

Two questions concerning testimony are the central subject of this chapter. The answers one gives to these questions, I will argue, should be intimately related, although the literature on testimony tends to focus on one or the other of the questions without exploring their relation. The first question is: under what conditions is a belief derived from the testimony of another justified? The second is: under what conditions does a belief derived from the testimony of another constitute knowledge?

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Neil Levy, A Dilemma for Libertarians ,(CAPPE)(PDF- DRAFT) Melbourne University

Abstract: To the extent that indeterminacy intervenes between our reasons for action and our decisions, intentions and actions, our freedom seems to be reduced, not enhanced. Free will becomes nothing more than the power to choose irrationally. In recognition of this problem, recent libertarians have suggested that free will is paradigmatically manifested only in actions for which we have reasons for both or all the alternatives. In these circumstances, however we choose we choose rationally. Against this kind of account of approach, most fully developed by Robert Kane, critics have pressed the demand for contrastive explanations. Kane has responded by arguing that the demand does not need to be met: responsibility for an action does not require that there is a contrastive explanation of that action. However, this responses proves too much: it implies that agent’s are responsible not only for the actions they choose, but also for their counterfactual actions which were equally available to them.

JC Beall - Review of Roy Sorensen's Vagueness and Contradiction, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

According to epistemicists vagueness is nothing but an epistemic matter: there is no objective indeterminacy. Though by now a familiar position, epistemicism continues to strike contemporary philosophers as implausible. (There is a last second of one’s childhood. There was a first second at which Buddha became a fat man. And so on.) Sorensen’s Vagueness and Contradiction aims to address the incredulity with which epistemicism is commonly greeted. My aim in this review is two-fold. First, I indicate the structure of the book by swiftly describing the aims of each chapter. Second, I indicate what I think is the chief defect of the book. I conclude with a brief overall evaluation of the book. I should note that throughout the review I assume familiarity with epistemicism, either in the form discussed by Timothy Williamson (Vagueness Routledge: 1994) or in Sorensen’s earlier book (Blindspots Oxford University Press: 1988) of which his Vagueness and Contradiction is a sort of sequel.

2003-06-04T11:20:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Graeme Forbes, Depiction Verbs: The Languages of Art Semantics (PDF), prepared for the Society for Exact Philosophy and Logica 2003

This paper is descended from one written for a symposium on the work of Terence Parsons (Notre Dame University, 7th to 8th February 2003). Creation verbs ('build', 'construct', 'assemble' etc.) and depiction verbs ('sketch', 'draw', 'sculpt', 'imagine' etc.) have certain affinities, and my solution to the unfinished-object problem for creation verbs in the progressive has consequences for the the semantics I propose for notional readings of depiction-verb phrases. The paper ends with a theory about why depiction verbs betray a definiteness effect in DP syntactic complements ("Verrocchio painted two/many/no angels" have notional readings, "Verrocchio painted the two/most/all angels" don't).

Oliver Schulte:

Respect for Public Preferences and Iterated Backward Inference. (PDF) Oliver Schulte (2003). Working Paper, Version of June 3, 2003. Comments welcome.
Iterated Backward Inference: An Algorithm for Proper Rationalizability.(PDF) Oliver Schulte (2003). Proceedings of TARK IX (Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning About Knowledge).
Representing von Neumann-Morgenstern Games in the Situation Calculus. (PDF) Oliver Schulte and James Delgrande (2002). Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence, Special Issue on Multi-Agent Systems and Computational Logic. Forthcoming. A shorter version appeared in the Workshop on Decision and Game Theory, AAAI 2002.

FreE-Publications

Biological Altruism, Samir Okasha for Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

In evolutionary biology, an organism is said to behave altruistically when its behaviour benefits other organisms, at a cost to itself. The costs and benefits are measured in terms of reproductive fitness, or expected number of offspring. So by behaving altruistically, an organism reduces the number of offspring it is likely to produce itself, but boosts the number that other organisms are likely to produce. This biological notion of altruism is not identical to the everyday concept. In everyday parlance, an action would only be called ‘altruistic’ if it was done with the conscious intention of helping another. But in the biological sense there is no such requirement. Indeed, some of the most interesting examples of biological altruism are found among creatures that are (presumably) not capable of conscious thought at all, e.g. insects. For the biologist, it is the consequences of an action for reproductive fitness that determine whether the action counts as altruistic, not the intentions, if any, with which the action is performed.

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Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy, Michael Perry, Wake Forest University School of Law (at SSRN)

The proper role of religious faith in the public life of a liberal democracy is one of the most important and controversial issues in the United States today. I have addressed the issue -actually, a complex of related issues - before, principally in two books: Love and Power (Oxford, 1991) and Religion in Politics (Oxford, 1997). I revisit the central questions in this book, because my views have continued to develop and, in some important respects, to change.
I argue, in "Under God?," that political reliance on religious faith violates neither the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment nor, more broadly, the morality of liberal democracy. I also argue, however, that religious believers sometimes have good reasons to be wary about relying on religious beliefs in making political decisions. Along the way, I address three subjects at the heart of fierce contemporary political debate: school vouchers, same-sex marriage, and abortion.

Other Changes of Note

Jordan Howard's Nearly Believable Liars(PDF). (4 June 03: replaces "On Nearly Believable Liars.")

2003-06-03T09:54:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Jessica Wilson: Causality Forthcoming, Routledge Philosophy of Science (5-31-03 Draft) (PDF) and Supervenience-based Formulations of Physicalism Draft of 5-30-03

The many and varied formulations of physicalism instantiate the following schema:
Physicalism: All entities are nothing over and above physical entities. It’s often suggested that "nothing over and aboveness" at issue in Physicalism can be characterized by reference to supervenience, as per the following schema:
Supervenience-based Nothing Over and Aboveness: The A-entities are nothing over and above the B-entities iff the A-entities supervene on the B-entities.
The four main approaches to filling in the latter schema correspond to different ways of characterizing the modal strength, the supervenience base, or the supervenience connection at issue. I consider each approach in turn, and argue that a physicalism based on the as-sociated account of nothing over and aboveness is compatible with non-physicalist views: non-naturalism, supernaturalism, and a naturalist emergentism.

John Burgess, "Can Truth Out?"(Word)

A discussion of the temporal analogue of Fitch's paradox of knowability, ending with an application to the original paradox.

Michael Glanzberg, A Contextual-Hierarchical Approach to Truth and the Liar Paradox(PDF)(forthcoming in the Journal of Philosophical Logic)

This paper presents an approach to truth and the Liar paradox which com- bines elements of context dependence and hierarchy.This approach is de- veloped formally,using the techniques of model theory in admissible sets. Special attention is paid to showing how starting with some ideas about context drawn from linguistics and philosophy of language,we can see the Liar sentence to be context dependent.Once this context dependence is properly understood,it is argued,a hierarchical structure emerges which is neither ad hoc nor unnatural.

Thomas Williams, Moral Vice, Cognitive Virtue: Jane Austen on Jealousy and Envy, Philosophy and Literature 27 (2003): 222-229.

FreE-Publications

David Hyder - Review of Ian Hacking's Historical Ontology Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003.06.01

Ian Hacking’s newest book is many things at once: an anthology of occasional pieces, a reflection on the uses of history in philosophy, a treatment of the work of Michel Foucault, a contraction and extension of ideas in Hacking’s earlier work. Although some of the pieces ("Dreams in Place", "Wittgenstein as Philosophical Psychologist") lie apart from the main lines of the collection, the bulk of them combine to form an invaluable overview of Hacking’s philosophy, above all of the twin strands of traditional conceptual analysis and Foucaultian historicism running through his work. The essays are written in a clear and straightforward style, although the varied genres (including popular reviews, lectures for specialists, as well as academic articles) do put varying demands on the reader’s knowledge.

2003-06-02T10:05:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Ana Carolina Sartorio, The Causal and the Moral (PDF), dissertation M.I.T.

My dissertation is about the following two questions: The causal question: When is something a cause of something else? The moral question: When is someone morally responsible for something?
I examine the way in which these questions overlap. I argue that, in some important respects, the relation between the causal and the moral question is tighter than people have taken it to be, but, in other important respects, it is looser than people have taken it to be.

FreE-Publications

Merin, Arthur,Information, Relevance, and Social Decisionmaking: Some Principles and Results of Decision-Theoretic Semantics in: Moss, L. S., Ginzburg, J., Rijke, M. de (eds.), Logic, language, and computation, Vol 2, Stanford CA: CSLI Publications, 179-221 (1999)

This paper submits an approach to meaning, with a focus on broadly non-truth-conditional aspects of natural language. Semantics is treated as a branch of pragmatics, identified as decision-theory in the way of C.S. Peirce, F.P. Ramsey, and Rudolf Carnap in his later work.

2003-06-01T01:35:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Andy Egan with James John, A Puzzle about Perception

The following theses form an inconsistent triad.
REPRESENTATIONISM: The phenomenal properties of a perceptual experience are identical to (some of) the experience's representational properties.
PHENOMENAL INTERNALISM: The phenomenal properties of a perceptual experience supervene on the intrinsic properties of the experience's subject.
STRONG EXTERNALISM: None of the representational properties of a perceptual experience is fixed by the intrinsic properties of the experience's subject.
The fact that these three theses are jointly inconsistent is one of the emerging problems in the recent literature on the philosophy of perception and consciousness. It's a problem because the theses are all quite attractive. Our aim here is to make the problem explicit and survey the options for resolving it.

FreE-Publications

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Sovereignty (Dan Philpott)

Sovereignty, though its meanings have varied across history, also has a core meaning, supreme authority within a territory. It is a modern notion of political authority. Historical variants can be understood along three dimensions -- the holder of sovereignty, the absoluteness of sovereignty, and the internal and external dimensions of sovereignty. The state is the political institution in which sovereignty is embodied. An assemblage of states forms a sovereign states system.
The history of sovereignty can be understood through two broad movements, manifested in both practical institutions and political thought. The first is the development of a system of sovereign states, culminating at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Contemporaneously, sovereignty became prominent in political thought through the writings of Machiavelli, Luther, Bodin, and Hobbes. The second movement is the circumscription of the sovereign state, which began in practice after World War II and has since continued through European integration and the growth and strengthening of laws and practices to protect human rights. The most prominent corresponding political thought occurs in the writings of critics of sovereignty like Bertrand de Jouvenel and Jacques Maritain.

Subscription Publications

Philosophical Forum, June 2003

The Virtues of Nonreduction, Even When Reduction Is a Virtue, Jones T.
Arbitrary Foundations?, Huemer M.
Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory, Shelby T.
Bivalence as an Issue in the Confirmation of Belief, Mitchell S.

Other Changes of Note

Geoffrey Nunberg, Letter Perfect (on acronyms), for Fresh Air 3 June

2003-05-31T12:43:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Henry Stapp, The Illusion of Conscious Will? [Comments on Wegner's Book]

Matthew Adler, Risk, Death and Harm: The Normative Foundations of Risk Regulation (via SSRN)

In this Article, I consider the harmfulness of death, and of the risk of death, in a philosophically rigorous way. The analysis is complicated, since a variety of plausible theories of welfare have been proposed, and since risk too is a multifaceted concept. A given person P's "risk" of death might be risk in a Bayesian sense (some person's subjective probability that P will die), or risk in the frequentist sense (the objective frequency with which persons like P die prematurely as a result of the kind of threat to which P is exposed). These two conceptions of risk are very different, yet too often are not distinguished in legal or policy-analytic writing about risk. As for the harmfulness of death: this raises knotty philosophical problems, problems that have prompted some contemporary philosophers to deny that the dying person is worse off than she would have been had she continued to live.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Robert Metcalf - Review of Claudia Baracchi's Of Myth, Life and War in Plato’s Republic

Claudia Baracchi offers something extraordinary to readers of her book, Of Myth, Life and War in Plato’s Republic. I will not say that the book “adds” anything to Plato scholarship, for as Baracchi says in the book’s Introduction, her purpose is rather to subtract from the sediment of commentary layered upon Plato’s text. As she explains it, the book attempts “to encourage a certain emptying, a certain hesitation to embrace all too customary assumptions” (3). It seems to me that the book succeeds in this attempt, and does so principally through its receptiveness to what is extravagant in Plato’s text—that surprising or disconcerting extravagance which we might otherwise eliminate if we were not receptive to the text in the way Baracchi suggests (4-5). Through such receptiveness the book itself becomes extravagant in the literal sense of wandering outside the customary bounds of interpretation. No doubt some readers will find Baracchi’s reading extravagant in other ways—for example, in its unhesitancy to make provocative claims, or its determination to engage Plato’s text from within the language peculiar to contemporary Continental thought. Nonetheless, the reply will be, I take it, that this latter extravagance is something derivative, consequent upon that extravagance in Plato’s text to which Baracchi has skillfully focused our attention.

2003-05-30T10:56:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Alex Byrne (with David Hilbert) Color Realism Redux (response to commentators on Color Realism and Color Science)

Our reply is in three parts. The first part concerns some foundational issues in the debate about color realism. The second part addresses the many objections to the version of physicalism about color ("productance physicalism") defended in the target article. The third part discusses the leading alternative approaches and theories endorsed by the commentators.

Our target article had three aims: (a) to explain clearly the structure of the debate about color realism; (b) to introduce an interdisciplinary audience to the way philosophers have thought about the issue; and (c) to argue that colors are certain sorts of physical properties ("productances").

Alexander Pruss, Eight Tempting Big-Picture Errors in Ethics

Presented at the University Faculty for Life Conference, Georgetown University, May 31, 2003

Despite the fact that the strength of argument is clearly on the pro-life side—nobody except a handful of academics would question the grave wrongness of abortion were pregnancy never inconvenient—somehow ordinary intelligent people, like our students, often remain unconvinced. There are many reasons for this, of course. For instance, a number of students have had their children aborted while many know others who have had abortions, and one does not want to condemn oneself or one’s friends. I am a philosopher, however, and so I will be interested in intellectual reasons, even though these subjective psychological ones are almost surely more important. Specifically, I will be interested in the fact that the ordinary person subscribes to a number of erroneous big-picture ethical beliefs, each of which, to a different degree, does something to block access to the pro-life arguments. I will not talk about all such erroneous beliefs and I would be grateful in the discussion for more examples.

John Burgess, Truth Will Out

A note on Fitch's modal paradox of knowability and the analogous temporal paradox of discovery. Footnotes remain to be added, and a more technical sequel remains to be written.

Other Changes of Note

Geoffrey Nunberg, Meeting of the Minds (do the Arabs have a word for "compromise"?)

Fresh Air, May 29 2003

2003-05-29T21:52:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Stephen Coleman, When Police Should Say “NO!” to Gratuities (via CAPPE Working Papers)

The issue of police acceptance of gratuities has long been a source of contention. Many writers on police corruption see the acceptance of even the smallest gift or benefit as being the beginning of the end of an honest officer’s career. Others suggest that the acceptance of gratuities does little harm, and that there may in fact be positive benefits in the practice, not just for the officer involved, but for society as a whole. I wish in this paper to examine the practice of the acceptance of gratuities, in order to highlight some particular situations in which the acceptance of gratuities will always cause problems, and thus to bring to notice those situations where police ought to say “NO” to gratuities.

Neil Levy, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Universals and the Standard Social Science Model (via CAPPE Working Papers)

Proponents of evolutionary psychology take the existence of human universals to constitute decisive evidence in favor of their view. If the same social norms are found in culture after culture, we have good reason to believe that they are innate, they argue. In this paper I propose an alternative explanation for the existence of human universals, which does not depend on them being the product of inbuilt psychological adaptations. Following the work of Brian Skyrms, I suggest that if a particular convention possesses even a very small advantage over competitors, whatever the reason for that advantage, we should expect it to become the norm almost everywhere. Tiny advantages are translated into very large basins of attraction, in the language of game theory. If this is so, universal norms are not evidence for innate psychological adaptations at all. I end with a few brief reflections on how adopting this perspective, as part of a more conciliatory standard social science model, can help make evolutionary psychology more palatable to those who oppose it on political grounds.

Andrew Schaap, The Time of Reconciliation & the Space of Politics (via CAPPE Working Papers)

Thomas Metzinger with Vittorio Gallese, Motor ontology. The representational reality of goals, actions, and selves.

Philosophical Psychology, 16 (9)

----, Why are identity-disorders interesting for philosophers?

In Thomas Schramme und Johannes Thome (Hrsg.), Philosophy and Psychiatry. Berlin: de Gruyter. [ PDF; 65,7 KB ]

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Duncan Ivison - Review of Ross Harrison's Hobbes, Locke, and Confusion’s Masterpiece: An Examination of Seventeenth Century Philosophy

This extremely interesting and well-written book is billed as an “important new study of the foundations of modern political theory”. Authors probably shouldn’t be held responsible for their publisher’s blurbs, but this immediately raises a series of questions and expectations. What counts as a “foundation” in the first place, and how can reading Hobbes, Locke, Grotius and Pufendorf contribute to our grasp of these foundations? It also suggests something like Quentin Skinner’s project in his now classic Foundations of Modern Political Thought. For Skinner, the foundations of political thought were to be exposed historically in part to reveal their contingency—which didn’t necessarily mean they were arbitrary—and to help us see the connections between philosophical arguments and contestable claims to social power. Harrison’s project is more explicitly philosophical than Skinner’s, in the sense that he is less concerned with detailed reconstruction of contexts and problems of power. But his philosophical claims about foundations are also built on a historical thesis.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Lvov-Warsaw School (Jan Wolenski)

The Lvov-Warsaw School (LWS) was the most important movement in the history of Polish philosophy. It was established by Kazimierz Twardowski at the end of the 19th century in Lvov, a city at that time belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The LWS flourished in the years 1918-1939. Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, Tadeusz Kotarbinski, Stanislaw Lesniewski, Jan Lukasiewicz and Alfred Tarski are its most famous members. It was an analytical school similar to the Vienna Circle in many respects. On the other hand, the attitude of the LWS toward traditional philosophy was much more positive that of logical empiricism. Although logic became the most important field in the activities of the LWS, its members were active in all spheres of philosophy. World War II and political changes in Poland after 1945 caused the end of the LWS as an organized philosophical enterprise. One can consider it to have later been continued individually by its representatives.

2003-05-29T21:30:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Ben Caplan and Bob Bright, Fusions and Ordinary Physical Objects

In “Tropes and Ordinary Physical Objects,” Kris McDaniel (2001) argues that ordinary physical objects are fusions of monadic and polyadic tropes. McDaniel (2001: 273, 287 n. 9) calls his view ‘TOPO’.for ‘Theory of Ordinary Physical Objects’. He argues that we should accept TOPO because of the philosophical work that it allows us to do (2001: 274). Among other things, TOPO is supposed to allow endurantists to reply to Mark Heller’s (1990) argument for perdurantism (2001: 278-282). But, we argue in this paper, TOPO does not help endurantists do that; indeed, we argue that anyone who accepts TOPO should reject endurantism.

Benj Hellie, Inexpressible Truths and the Allure of the Knowledge Argument

I argue on linguistic grounds that when Mary comes to know what it's like to see a red thing, she comes to know a certain inexpressible truth about the character of her own experience. The reason the Knowledge Argument has proven so intractable may be that we believe that an inexpressible concept and an expressible concept cannot have the same referent.

Dan Markel, Against Mercy (via SSRN)

The standard trope in the literature on retributive theory is that mercy serves as an unwelcome interruption of the narrative between crime and punishment. Underlying this theme is the purportedly retributivist notion that the criminal law and its institutions should impose some form of divine or poetic justice for wrongdoing of all different kinds. On this view, the exercise of mercy works a simple failure of justice. But once retribution is better understood - not as revenge or retaliation but as a complex institutional practice arising from and enforcing liberal legal norms of democratic pedigree - its relationship to mercy requires reexamination. That reexamination reveals previously unanticipated problems about the difficulties associated with democratically authorized sites for mercy. The unsettling dimensions of this tension have not been sufficiently appreciated by previous retributivist critiques. Importantly, the retributivist case against mercy still endures - not because mercy is a failure of justice (qua just deserts), but because it is a failure of equality. This realization suggests robust and surprising implications for the responsible design of attractive criminal justice institutions.

M. Fleurbaey and F. Maniquet, Compensation and responsibility (via the Equality Exchange)

M. Hild and A. Voorhoeve, Equality of opportunity and opportunity dominance (via the Equality Exchange)

Equality of opportunity is a popular ideal. Under its banner, many social movements have, in recent history, made their case for eliminating inequalities due to race, sex, cultural and religious differences, physical handicaps and social class. In some form or other, both private and public institutions in mostWestern democracies today appeal to this ideal to regulate the distribution of specific goods like jobs, educational resources, and positions of political power. Nonetheless, the precise meaning of this normative concept remains unclear. Equality of opportunity in education, for example, may mean the absence of discrimination on the basis of race, religion or gender, but it can also entail the elimination of inequalities due to family circumstances and social background, or even due to students’ innate physical and mental abilities. Confronted with this plethora of interpretations, some commentators have called for the abandonment of the ‘treacherous’ term ‘equal opportunity’ (Jencks 1988, Radcliffe Richards 1997). A further source of controversy is the fact that equal opportunity is often advanced in tandem with other distributive ideals, such as merit, desert, some consequentialist principle, or a theory of individual responsibility. To help facilitate the debate on these controversies, we will construct a conceptual framework that allows us to place different notions of equal opportunity in relation to each other and to disentangle from them other normative principles that call for separate consideration. We then examine to what extent equality of opportunity may help us arbitrate between opposing distributive principles. We also extend this discussion to cases where we strive for equality of opportunity only in as far as it benefits the most disadvantaged.

UPDATE: This is actually the report for Wednesday May 28. It didn't get published at the time because of a Blogger error.

2003-05-27T11:19:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Nick Bostrom, The Mysteries of Self-Locating Belief and Anthropic Reasoning

Summary of some of the difficulties that a theory of observation selection effects faces and a solution sketch. [Harvard Review of Philosophy, forthcoming]

Janna Thompson, Cultural Property, Restitution & Value (via CAPPE Working Papers)

----, Obligations to the Elderly and Generational Equity

----, From Slaughter to Abduction

Neil Levy, Responsibility for Belief (via CAPPE Working Papers)

Many contemporary philosophers defend a deontological conception of epistemic justification. However, the viability of such a conception seems to depend crucially upon agents being able to exert control over their beliefs. I examine various attempts to show, either that the deontological concept does not require doxastic voluntarism, or that doxastic voluntarism is true. These attempts all fail. I claim that this demonstrates that the range of appropriate ascriptions of responsibility for belief is very limited: epistemic recklessness is the only kind of doxastic responsibility there is.

----, A Dilemma for Libertarians

To the extent that indeterminacy intervenes between our reasons for action and our decisions, intentions and actions, our freedom seems to be reduced, not enhanced. Free will becomes nothing more than the power to choose irrationally. In recognition of this problem, recent libertarians have suggested that free will is paradigmatically manifested only in actions for which we have reasons for both or all the alternatives. In these circumstances, however we choose we choose rationally. Against this kind of account of approach, most fully developed by Robert Kane, critics have pressed the demand for contrastive explanations. Kane has responded by arguing that the demand does not need to be met: responsibility for an action does not require that there is a contrastive explanation of that action. However, this responses proves too much: it implies that agents are responsible not only for the actions they choose, but also for their counterfactual actions which were equally available to them.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Michael O’Rourke - Review of Wolfram Hinzen and Hans Rott's (eds.)Belief and Meaning: Essays at the Interface

For a semantic theorist, belief and language are two important proving grounds. Belief systems and languages both provide agents with information about our world and influence our activity within it. More importantly, as many have noted, each provides a window on the other: holding belief content and utterances constant, we can solve for linguistic meaning; alternatively, holding linguistic meaning and utterances constant, we can solve for belief content. Given this, semantic theorists must pay heed to the relationship between belief and language, if only to argue that the suggested connections are misleading.

2003-05-25T14:12:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

R Jay Wallace, The Rightness of Acts and the Goodness of Lives

Forthcoming in R. Jay Wallace, Philip Pettit, Michael Smith, and Samuel Scheffler, eds. Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

John Burgess, A Remark on Henkin Sentences and Their Contraries

The fact that the result of flipping quantifiers and negating what comes after, applied to branching-quantifier sentences (or what is essentially the same thing, sentences of Hintikka's "independence friendly" logic), is not equivalent to the negation of the original has been known for as long as such sentences have been studied. It is here pointed out that this syntactic operation fails in the strongest possible sense to correspond to any operation on classes of models.

Gilbert Harman, Why Linguistics Is Mentalistic

A brief explanation for students and colleagues. (Not written for publication.)

2003-05-24T14:59:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Penelope Maddy, Second philosophy

Lakatos Award Lecture

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Seumas Miller - Review of Raimo Tuomela's Philosophy of Social Practices: A Collective Acceptance View

This is Raimo Tuomela’s most recent book, and it continues the general intellectual project he has pursued in his earlier works, such as the The Importance of Us (Stanford UP, 1995). Roughly speaking, that project is one of providing philosophical analyses of various basic social action concepts, including joint action and collective intentionality, and using these to provide accounts of less basic social notions such as social institutions. Joint actions are actions involving a number of agents performing interdependent actions in the service of some common intention or goal (e.g. two people dancing together or a team of bricklayers and labourers building a wall). Such intentions or goals are referred to as collective or we-intentions since they are in some sense shared and interdependent. We-intentions - together with mutual beliefs (e.g. we all believe that p, we believe that we all believe that p, and we believe that we all believe that we all believe that p) - constitute the core of what is usually referred to by the term, “collective intentionality”.

Subscription Publications

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, June 2003

A Case for Extrinsic Dispositions, McKitrick J.
McDowell, Scepticism, and the ‘Veil of Perception’, Macarthur D.
A Slim Semantics for Thin Moral Terms?, Schroeter L.; Schroeter F.
Perdurantism, Universalism, and Quantifiers, Varzi A.C.
Knowability and Epistemic Truth, Hand M.
‘Scottish Commonsense’ about Memory, A Defence of Thomas Reid's Direct Knowledge Account
. Does the Existence of Mathematical Objects Make a Difference?, Baker A.
Against Maxcon Simples, McDaniel K.
Epistemicism, Parasites, and Vague Names, Weatherson B.

Bioethics, June 2003

Toward a Pluralist Account of Parenthood, Bayne T.
Anorexia Nervosa and Refusal of Naso-Gastric Treatment: A Response to Heather Draper, Giordano S.
Anorexia Nervosa and Refusal of Naso-Gastric Treatment: A Reply to Simona Giordano, Draper H.

2003-05-23T12:08:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Malcolm R. Forster, Unification

Wayne Myrvold (Philosophy of Science, April, 2003) has captured an important feature of unified theories, and he has done so in Bayesian terms. What is not clear is whether the virtue of such unification is most clearly understood in terms of Bayesian confirmation. I argue that the virtue of such unification is better understood in terms of other truth-related virtues such as predictive accuracy.

Maria Bittner, Word Order and Incremental Update

Ralph Wedgwood, Review of Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics, by James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter, Journal of Homosexuality 45, no. 1 (2003), 152-159.

Susanna Siegel and Michael Glanzberg, Policing and Presupposition in Complex Demonstratives

We argue that in classic perceptual uses of that F, the nominal F plays what we call a "policing role" with respect the proposition semantically expressed by utterances in which the use occurs: roughly speaking, no proposition is semantically expressed by an utterance ofThat F is G if no contextually appropriate object is F. We argue for this on grounds that are independent of whether complex demonstratives are quantificational, referring expressions, or something else (Version of May 22, 2003).

FreE-Publications

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Speusippus (Russell Dancy)

Speusippus of Athens was the son of Plato's sister Potone; he became head of the Academy on Plato's death in 348/347 and remained its head for eight years (Diogenes Laertius iv 1), apparently until his death. His date of birth is harder to get a fix on; it has reasonably been estimated at ca. 410. He apparently wrote a lot: “a great many treatises and many dialogues” (ibid. iv 4; Diogenes lists about 30 titles, and his bibliography is on his own admission incomplete). We have very little of what he wrote, if any (we have something from a work later attributed to him, On Pythagorean Numbers, discussed below, but this is not one of Diogenes' titles; and we may have something preserved in Iamblichus, De communi mathematica scientia iv, also discussed below).

2003-05-22T10:18:00.000-04:00

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Jonathan Michael Kaplan - Review of Gordon Graham's Genes: A Philosophical Inquiry

Genes: A Philosophical Inquiry, is at its best when Gordon Graham focuses his attention on aspects of the contemporary debates surrounding biotechnology that purport to have an ethical dimension. Here, in the second half of the book, Graham presents a series of compelling arguments to the effect that, for the most part, the ethical issues engendered by new advances in biotechnology (e.g., genetic engineering, adult mammalian cloning) are not different in kind from those issues engendered by more ’traditional’ biological technologies (e.g., ’ordinary’ plant and animal breeding, assisted reproductive technologies, etc.). However, Graham’s apparent lack of familiarity with the relevant literature and lack of experience with biology more generally results in his arguments being weaker and less well developed than they need be, and the lack of references to those people that have made these or similar arguments before (and, in many cases, made them better) is frustrating.

Philosophers Imprint, Timothy Schroeder, "Donald Davidson's Theory of Mind is Non-Normative"

Donald Davidson's theory of mind is widely regarded as a normative theory. This is a something of a confusion. Once a distinction has been made between the categorisation scheme of a norm and the norm's force-maker, it becomes clear that a Davidsonian theory of mind is not a normative theory after all. Making clear the distinction, applying it to Davidson's theory of mind, and showing its significance are the main purposes of this paper. In the concluding paragraphs, a sketch is given of how a truly normative Davidsonian theory of mind might be formulated.

2003-05-21T14:05:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

John Burgess, Numbers and Ideas

Expository. Originally my speech on the negative side in a debate with Reuben Hersh on the topic, "Do mathematical objects and entities exist in the world of shared human ideas and concepts?" Rivised for the Richmond Journal of Philosophy, a new journal aimed specifically at students of philosophy studying for undergraduate degrees.

Yoad Winter, Functional Quantification

To appear in Research on Language and Computation

This paper develops a unified analysis of "functional" anaphora and wide-scope indefinites. A new operator is added to Jacobson's variable-free semantics of functional readings, which leads to an analysis of theses readings using the general Skolem function interpretation of wide-scope indefinites. This accounts for the distributional, technical and intuitive similarities between the two phenomena. Moreover, after formally characterizing the class of generalized quantifiers that are treated by the proposed mechanism, it is argued that this class is a good approximation of the quantifiers that empirically support functional readings.

---- with Gilad Ben-Avi, On Scope Dominance with Monotone Quantifiers.

To appear in Proceedings of MOL8.

We characterize pairs of monotone generalized quantifiers Q1 and Q2 that give rise to an entailment relation between their two relative scope construals. This result is used for identifying entailment relations between the two scopal interpretations of simple sentences of the form NP1-V-NP2. The general characterization that we give turns out to cover more examples of such entailments besides the familiar type where the NPs are headed by some and every.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, R.J. Hankinson - Review of Katerina Ierodiakonou's Byzantine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources

“The title of this volume leaves no doubt as to its main objective”, writes the editor at the beginning of her introduction: “the articles here are meant to shed light on Byzantine philosophy against the background of ancient philosophical thought”. And as she justly remarks a paragraph later “Byzantine philosophy remains an unknown field”. Was there even any such thing in its own right? “Isn’t it all theology”, as a later subtitle provocatively asks? The function of such a volume is to return the answer “No” to that syntactically yes-expecting question. And the purpose of this review is to assess how far it succeeds in so doing.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, The Free Rider Problem (Russell Hardin)

In many contexts, all of the individual members of a group can benefit from the efforts of each member and all can benefit substantially from collective action. For example, if each of us pollutes less by paying a bit extra for our cars, we all benefit from the reduction of harmful gases in the air we breathe and even in the reduced harm to the ozone layer that protects us against exposure to carcinogenic ultraviolet radiation (although those with fair skin benefit far more from the latter than do those with dark skin). If all of us or some subgroup of us prefer the state of affairs in which we each pay this bit over the state of affairs in which we do not, then the provision of cleaner air is a collective good for us. (If it costs more than it is worth to us, then its provision is not a collective good for us.)
Unfortunately, my polluting less does not matter enough for anyone -- especially me -- to notice. Therefore, I may not contribute my share toward not fouling the atmosphere. I may be a freerider on the beneficial actions of others. This is a compelling instance of the logic of collective action, an instance of such grave import that we pass laws to regulate the behavior of individuals to force them to pollute less.

----, Consequentialism (Walter Sinnott-Armstrong)

Consequentialism, as its name suggests, is the view that normative properties depend only on consequences. This general approach can be applied at different levels to different normative properties of different kinds of things, but the most prominent example is consequentialism about the moral rightness of acts, which holds that whether an act is morally right depends only on the consequences of that act or of something related to that act (such as the motive behind the act or a general rule requiring acts of the same kind). Narrower uses of the term ‘consequentialism’ are also common, as we shall see, but it is useful analytically to construe the essence of consequentialism as this exclusive focus on consequences.

2003-05-20T10:47:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Greg Restall and Tim Bayne, A Participatory Theory of the Atonement

In this paper we develop a participatory model of the Christian doctrine of the atonement, according to which the atonement involves participating in the death and resurrection of Christ. In part one we argue that current models of the atonement – exemplary, penal, substitutionary and merit models – are unsatisfactory. The central problem with them is that they assume a purely deontic (or moral) conception of sin and fail to address sin as a relational and ontological problem. In part two we argue that a participatory model of the atonement is both exegetically and philosophically plausible, and should be taken seriously within philosophical theology.

----, Multiple Conclusions

I argue for the following four theses. (1) Denial is not to be analysed as the assertion of a negation. (2) Given the concepts of assertion and denial, we have the resources to analyse logical consequence as relating arguments with multiple premises and multiple conclusions. Gentzen’s multiple conclusion calculus can be understood in a straightforward, motivated, non-question-begging way. (3) If a broadly anti-realist or inferentialist justification of a logical system works, it works just as well for classical logic as it does for intuitionistic logic. The special case for an anti-realist justification of intuitionistic logic over and above a justification of classical logic relies on an unjustified assumption about the shape of proofs. Finally, (4) this picture of logical consequence provides a relatively neutral shared vocabulary which can help us understand and adjudicate debates between proponents of classical and non-classical logics.

Ed Zalta, Essence and Modality

2003-05-19T11:48:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Christopher Potts, The Logic of Conventional Implicatures

PhD Dissertation. Department of Linguistics, UC Santa Cruz.

The history of conventional implicatures is rocky, their current status uncertain. I return to Grice’s (1975) original definition with an eye open for novel support. I argue that, even without textbook examples such as therefore and but, conventional implicatures would still be widely attested in natural language. Grice’s definition characterizes a class of speaker-oriented commitments that trace back to individual lexical items and invariably yield semantic multidimensionality. These properties unify the (syntactically diverse) factual domain, which divides fairly easily into two broad classes: (i) supplements, including appositive relatives, nominal appositives, (As)-parentheticals, speaker- and topic-oriented adverbs, and utterance modifiers (chapter 3); and (ii) expressives, including adjectives like damn, the descriptive content of epithets, some kinds of subjunctive voice, and honorification in Japanese (chapter 4). I define a higher-order lambda calculus that provides the tools we need for formalizing Grice’s definition and in turn for modelling the meanings of the expressions in (i)-(ii). The logic, which extends and sharpens the insights of Karttunen and Peters 1979, imbues the label conventional implicature with theoretical content. Though considerable attention is paid to the model-theoretic aspects of the investigation, particularly as they relate to the formal modelling of discourses, much of the dissertation concerns the nature of natural language semantic composition, which we can study independently of a specific class of structures. In the setting of the logic I define, conventional-implicature content is often distinguished solely in the meaning language. Thus, the facts under discussion seem to provide reason to view a representational language for meanings as an essential part of semantic theory. I close by asking what happens when we make slight revisions to Grice’s definition. Removing speaker-orientation results in another rich class of semantically multidimensional constructions, including many that were originally classified as conventional-implicature contributors. I show that the meaning language defined here yields a theory of them as well.

----, A layered semantics for utterance modifiers

Other Changes of Note

Geoffrey Nunberg, As Google Goes, So Goes the Nation (from NY Times Week in Review)

2003-05-17T03:27:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Eric Funkhouser, Abstractions, Composition, and Supervenience

This paper sketches a conception of properties as abstractions. This conception rules out certain mereological principles for properties. First, abstractions do not compose concreta (contrary to the bundle theory). Second, micro-abstractions do not compose macro-abstractions (consistent with multiple realizability). Along the way to sketching the theory of abstractions, it is shown that multiple realizability is inconsistent with bundle theories. The proposed theory of abstractions offers an appropriate metaphysics for non-reductionists about the special sciences.

Michael Strevens, Mackie's Theory of Causation Revivified (Abstract only - paper presumably to follow)

Abstract: Cases of overdetermination or preemption continue to play an important role in the debate about the proper interpretation of causal claims of the form C was a cause of E. I argue that the best treatment of preemption cases is given by Mackie's venerable INUS account of causal claims. The Mackie account suffers, however, from problems of its own. Inspired by its ability to handle preemption, I propose a dramatic revision to the Mackie account – one that Mackie himself would certainly have rejected – to solve its problems. The result is, I contend, the best available account of causal claims.

Ned Block, Tactile Sensation/Spatial Perception

Forthcoming in Trends in Cognitive Science, 2003. This is a reply to Susan Hurley and Alva Noe, Neural plasticity and consciousness.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Joëlle Proust - Review of John Searle's Consciousness and Language

The fourteen essays collected in this book—most of them already published—cover a variety of topics that John Searle has been concerned with over twenty years, from language, conversation, and speech-act theory to consciousness, cognition, and the indeterminacy of translation. As a whole, the book offers many stimulating views, and some of the most controversial should spark new interdisciplinary reflections. Chapter 10, “How performatives work”, presents a fascinating discussion of how declarations are encoded. The analysis of self-referentiality in promises that is offered in this chapter is a great piece of philosophical theorizing. The present review will concentrate on the main topic of the book: consciousness and its role in cognition.

2003-05-16T12:16:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

William J. Rapaport, What Is the `Context' for Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition?

Paper to be delivered at 4th Joint International Conference on Cognitive Science/7th Australasian Society for Cognitive Science Conference (ICCS/ASCS-2003; Sydney, Australia).

"Contextual" vocabulary acquisition is the active, deliberate acquisition of a meaning for a word in a text by reasoning from textual clues and prior knowledge, including language knowledge and hypotheses developed from prior encounters with the word, but without external sources of help such as dictionaries or people. But what is "context"? Is it just the surrounding text? Does it include the reader's background knowledge? I argue that the appropriate context for contextual vocabulary acquisition is the reader's "internalization" of the text "integrated" into the reader's "prior" knowledge via belief revision.

Steven R. Ratner, Overcoming Temptations to Violate Human Dignity in Times of Crisis: On the Possibilities for Meaningful Self-Restraint (via SSRN)

Theoretical Inquiries in Law, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2003

The codification of key instruments of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and the accession to those treaties by a large majority of states, does not, at least at first glance, seem to have any significant effect upon states' behavior in situations of crisis. Any understanding of the prospects for such law in these situations requires an appraisal of both the motivations of states in concluding these treaties and the pressures on them to ignore them. This paper analyzes those motivations and temptations through the framework of precommitment theory, a component of rational choice theory, originally articulated by Jon Elster and Thomas Schelling. The metaphor of Ulysses offers a useful way to address three different dimensions of the purposes that states join treaties: (1) beliefs, i.e., the state's attitude toward the norms in the treaty; (2) predictions, the state's concerns about its own future behavior; and (3) interactions, i.e., the extent to which the state is trying to influence or bind other states. And it permits linking those motivations to the propensity of states to comply at a later time. The paper offers a four-part typology for why states commit to such treaties, contrasting it with notions from contemporary international relations theories. It then explores the contrasting approaches of compliance theories and international law doctrine to the temptation of states to violate treaties and elaborates the contributions of the precommitment framework. Building upon that framework, it proposes a set of strategies that those concerned with compliance might explore for making international law more relevant when governments seem most inclined to discount it.

Huw Price, On the origins of the arrow of time: why there is still a puzzle about the low entropy past

Late in the nineteenth century, physics noticed a puzzling conflict between the laws of physics and what actually happens. The laws make no distinction between past and future—if they allow a process to happen one way, they allow it in reverse.1 But many familiar processes are in practice ‘irreversible’, common in one orientation but unknown ‘backwards’. Air leaks out of a punctured tyre, for example, but never leaks back in. Hot drinks cool down to room temperature, but never spontaneously heat up. Once we start looking, these examples are all around us—that’s why films shown in reverse often look odd. Hence the puzzle: What could be the source of this widespread temporal bias in the world, if the underlying laws are so even-handed?

Paul Franceschi, Une classe de concepts (via the Semantics Archive)

English translation of a paper originally published in French under the title ’Une classe de concepts’ in Semiotica (2002), vol. 139, pp.121-3

Angelika Kratzer, Indefinites and Functional Heads: From Japanese to Salish. (via the Semantics Archive)

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Patrick Kain - Review of Otfried Höffe's Categorical Principles of Law: A Counterpoint to Modernity

Many supporters and critics of “modernity” have proceeded with an inadequate understanding of Kant’s political philosophy. In this collection of thematically linked essays (some new, others revised for the occasion), Otfried Höffe, one of Europe’s leading political philosophers and interpreters of Kant’s practical philosophy, offers a powerful apology for the revival of a more authentically Kantian foundation for contemporary social and political philosophy and for the more nuanced understanding of modernity such a revival would bring. Höffe insists that modernity be understood, from its origins, as a “polyphonic” composition, with Kant’s voice providing the necessary counterpoint to the legitimate, yet exaggerated strains of modernity’s prima donnas, empiricism and pluralism (4). [Contrary to the translation of the subtitle, Kantianism is a counterpoint within modernity.] There is a positive and negative side to Höffe’s thesis. On the positive side, Höffe contends that there is a rather compelling justification for Kant’s categorical imperative and the “categorical principles of law” that follow from it, such as the human rights widely recognized in the modern world. The justificatory refrain is “practical metaphysics plus [moral] anthropology” (9, 93, 99). On the negative side, Höffe alleges, neither contemporary legal theory, given its empirical-pragmatic bias, nor contemporary social theory, given its uncritical obsession with radical pluralism, can justify such categorical principles.

Subscription Publications

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Vol 16 number 3

Genetically Modified (GM) Crops: Precautionary Science and Conflicts of Interests, Myhr A.I.; Traavik T.
Exposing violences: Using women's human rights theory to reconceptualize food rights, Bellows A.C.
Environmental Implications of the Erosion of Cultural Taboo Practices in Awka-South Local Government Area of Anambra State, Nigeria: 1. Forests, Trees, and Water Resource Preservation, Anoliefo G.O.; Isikhuemhen O.S.; Ochije N.R.
Critical Impact Assessment of Organic Agriculture, Biao X.; Xiaorong W.; Zhuhong D.; Yaping Y.

Nous, June 2003

Explanatory Generalizations, Part II: Plumbing Explanatory Depth, Hitchcock C.; Woodward J.
The Power of an Idea: Spinoza's Critique of Pure Will, Della Rocca M.
A Dilemma for Asymmetric Dependence, Mendola J.
Local Miracle Compatibilism, Beebee H.
Meaningfulness and Contingent Analyticity, Simchen O.
Should Deflationists Be Dialetheists?, Beall J.; Armour-Garb B.
Ramsey on Saying and Whistling: A Discordant Note, Holton R.; Price H.
Balancing Our Epistemic Goals, Riggs W.D.
Alvin Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief, Fales E.

Ratio, June 2003

Is Representation Rife?, Papineau D.
‘(I am) Thinking’, Haldane J.
Substantial Change and Spatiotemporal Coincidence, Lowe E.J.
The Immortality Requirement for Life's meaning, Metz T.
Ontology, Understanding, and the A Priori, Sosa E.
The Sad Truth: Optimism, Pessimism, and Pragmatism, Waller B.N.

The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, June 2003

On What We Know About Chance, Arntzenius F.; Hall N.
Hypercomputation and the Physical Church-Turing Thesis, Cotogno P.
Probability and Nonlocality in Many Minds Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, Hemmo M.; Pitowsky I.
Quantitative Parsimony and Explanatory Power, Baker A.
Ascribing Functions to Technical Artefacts: A Challenge to Etiological Accounts of Functions, Vermaas P.E.; Houkes W.
The Von Neumann Entropy: A Reply to Shenker, Henderson L.
Is Sex Really Necessary? And Other Questions for Lewens, Matthen M.
Making Time Stand Still: A Response to Sober's Counter-Example to the Principle of the Common Cause, Steel D.
Taking Self-Excitations Seriously: On Angel's Initial Condition, Laraudogoitia J.P.
Presentism and Relativity, Balashov Y.; Janssen M.

2003-05-15T02:57:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Amy Kind, What's So Transparent About Transparency

Intuitions about the transparency of experience have recently begun to play a key role in the debate about qualia. Specifically, such intuitions have been used by representationalists to support their view that the phenomenal character of our experience can be wholly explained in terms of its intentional content. But what exactly does it mean to say that experience is transparent? In my view, recent discussions of transparency leave matters considerably murkier than one would like. As I will suggest, there is reason to believe that experience is not transparent in the way that representationalism requires. Although there is a sense in which experience can be said to be transparent, transparency in this sense does not give us any particular motivation for representationalism-or at least, not the pure or strong representationalism that it is usually invoked to support.

Donka Farkas, Varieties of Indefinites (via the Semantics Archive)

Languages that have determiners often have a rich inventory of them. In English, indefinite determiners include a(n), some, a certain, this, one, another, cardinals, partitives, the zero determiner of bare plurals (in some analyses), and, according to Horn 1999 and Giannakidou 2001, any. Despite the attention indefinites have received in the literature, characterizing what is common to all of them and what is specific to each is still an elusive task. This paper investigates the first three determiners in this list, attempting to provide a semantic characterization that accounts for their distribution.

----, Specificity Distinctions (via the Semantics Archive)

Henry Stapp, Entries in "Cambridge Handbook of Cosciousness"

CH1: Introduction
CH2: Penrose-Hameroff Approach
CH3: Bohm Approach

Juan Comesana, Internalism and Externalism in Epistemology: A Reconciliation, But Not the One You Are Thinking Of

My main aim in this paper is to argue for a combination of internalism and externalism in epistemology (but not the one you are thinking of). To do so, I present a general framework in which to give accounts of epistemic justification, where the central idea is that for a belief to be epistemically justified is for it to be explained in a certain way—in a way which accords with the rules of theoretical rationality. The notion of epistemic justification can then be (partly) accounted for in terms of a list of explanatory epistemic rules or principles. I then argue that the correct notion of epistemic justification is one where the main component of the antecedents of those explanatory principles is a non-factive mental state—hence the internalism; and that a main reason why the principles are correct is that their antecedents are reliably connected to the truth of the proposition mentioned in their consequents—hence the externalism.

2003-05-14T12:05:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Ben Caplan, Fictional Characters and Other Abstract Objects

In this paper, I argue that the decreasing popularity of these views is unjustified: if you accept the Kripke-van Inwagen view about creatures of fiction, then you should also accept the Kripke-Salmon view about creatures of myth and the Braun-Thomasson view about creatures of imagination. This is a problem for those, like van Inwagen (1977), who accept the Kripke-van Inwagen view about creatures of fiction but who don’t accept the Kripke-Salmon view about creatures of myth. It is also a problem for those, like Salmon (1998), who accept the Kripke-van Inwagen view about creatures of fiction and the Kripke-Salmon view about creatures of myth but who reject the Braun-Thomasson view about creatures of imagination. In Section 1, I present the Kripke-van Inwagen view about creatures of fiction. In Section 2, I present the Kripke-Salmon view about creatures of myth, and I argue that those who accept the Kripke-van Inwagen view about creatures of fiction should also accept the Kripke-Salmon view about creatures of myth. In Section 3, I present the Braun-Thomasson view about creatures of imagination, and I argue that those who accept the Kripke-van Inwagen view about creatures of fiction and the Kripke-Salmon view about creatures of myth should also accept the Braun-Thomasson view about creatures of imagination.

John Burgess, E Pluribus Unum - Revised Version

A companion piece to the preceding, starting from Cantor rather than Frege, and stressing the use of the plural logic of Boolos in axiomatizing set theory. It ends with a discussion of the justification for introducing, as Boolos does, a set-theoretic model theory for plural logic.

Thomas Williams, Review of Tobias Hoffmann, Creatura intellecta: Die Ideen und Possibilien bei Duns Scotus mit Ausblick auf Franz von Mayronis, Poncius und Mastrius (Münster: Aschendorff, 2002), forthcoming in Speculum.

2003-05-13T02:26:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Anton Benz, Partial Blocking, Associative Learning, and the Principle of Weak Optimality (via the Semantics Archive)

Pekka Väyrynen, Usable Moral Principles

A central adequacy constraint on moral theories is that they be usable in moral reasoning as guides for action. This paper addresses the challenge to moral generalism that moral principles are useless in finding out which are the right actions. I argue that the usability constraint is best seen as grounded in the importance of certain forms of autonomy and justice, and draw on the argument both to provide a reasonable interpretation of the constraint and to characterize the sort of agent by reference to whom the usability of generalist theories is appropriately assessed. In a slogan, I propose that moral principles guide us by structuring our responsiveness to reasons in certain ways. In being responsive to moral reasons, the relevant test agents are guided by the principles they endorse in that they reason in light of their understanding of those principles. To show that it is possible for normal moral agents to be such agents, I address objections from the psychology of moral reasoning. This gives me enough to conclude that generalist moral theories satisfy the usability constraint. I finish by arguing that generalist theories are at least no worse off than their particularist rivals with respect to the constraint.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Steven Nadler - Review of Adam Sutcliffe's Judaism and Enlightenment

What is to be done about the Jews? This, of course, is the great question faced by all Western societies from late antiquity onwards. Sometimes, as during certain periods in the Middle Ages, the answer was a relatively simple one, involving expulsion and/or violence. But the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were, in some nations at least, supposed to be an “age of reason”. Despite the fact that, at the beginning of this period, Jews were still officially banned from several domains (including France and England), there was a great deal of sophistication in both official and unofficial attitudes towards Jews and Judaism in early modern Europe.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer (Robert Wicks)

Among 19th century philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer was among the first to contend that at its core, the universe is not a rational place. Inspired by Plato and Kant, both of whom regarded the world as being more amenable to reason, Schopenhauer developed their philosophies into an instinct-recognizing, mystical, and essentially ascetic outlook, emphasizing that in the face of what he believed to be a world filled with endless strife, we ought to minimize our natural desires in order to achieve a more tranquil frame of mind and a disposition towards universal beneficence. Often considered to be a thoroughgoing pessimist, Schopenhauer in fact advocated ways -- via artistic, moral and ascetic forms of awareness -- to overcome what he considered to be a frustration-filled and fundamentally painful human condition. Since his death in 1860, Schopenhauer's philosophy has had a special attraction for those engaged in music, literature, and the visual arts.

----, Mereology (Achille Varzi)

Mereology is the theory of parthood relations: of the relations of part to whole and the relations of part to part within a whole. Its roots can be traced back to the early days of philosophy, beginning with the Presocratic atomists and continuing throughout the writings of Plato (especially the Parmenides and the Thaetetus), Aristotle (especially the Metaphysics, but also the Physics, the Topics, and De partibus animalium), and Boethius (especially In Ciceronis Topica). Mereology has also occupied a prominent role in the writings of medieval ontologists and scholastic philosophers such as Garland the Computist, Peter Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, Raymond Lull, and Albert of Saxony, as well as in Jungius's Logica Hamburgensis (1638), Leibniz's Dissertatio de arte combinatoria (1666) and Monadology (1714), and Kant's early writings (the Gedanken of 1747 and the Monadologia physica of 1756). As a formal theory of parthood relations, however, mereology made its way into modern philosophy mainly through the work of Franz Brentano and of his pupils, especially Husserl's third Logical Investigation (1901). The latter may rightly be considered the first attempt at a rigorous formulation of the theory, though in a format that makes it difficult to disentagle the analysis of mereological concepts from that of other ontologically relevant notions (such as the relation of ontological dependence). It is not until Lesniewski's Foundations of a General Theory of Manifolds (1916, in Polish) that the pure theory of part-relations as we know it today was given an exact formulation. And because Lesniewski's work was largely inaccessible to non-speakers of Polish, it is only with the publication of Leonard and Goodman's The Calculus of Individuals (1940) that this theory has become a chapter of central interest for modern ontologists and metaphysicians.

In the following we shall focus mostly on contemporary formulations of mereology as they grew out of these recent theories -- Lesniewski's and Leonard and Goodman's. Indeed, although such theories came in different logical guises, they are sufficiently similar to be recognized as a common basis for most subsequent developments. To properly assess the relative strength and weaknesses, however, it will be convenient to proceed in steps. First we consider some core mereological notions and principles. Then we proceed to an examination of the stronger theories that can be erected on this basis.

Other Changes of Note

Cécile Meier, Review of Sebastian Löbner (2002) Understanding Semantics

Geoffrey Nunberg, All That You Can Bee (for Fresh Air)

2003-05-12T00:45:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Michael Glanzburg, Truth, Disquotation, and Expression (On McGinn's Theory of Truth)

In Logical Properties, Colin McGinn offers a new theory of truth, which he describes as “thick disquotationalism.” In keeping with wider theme of the book, truth emerges as conceptually primitive. Echoing Moore, it is simple and unanalyzable. Though truth cannot be analyzed, in the sense of giving a conceptual decomposition, McGinn argues that truth can be defined. A non-circular statement of its application conditions can be given. This makes truth a singularly remarkable property. Indeed, by McGinn’s lights, it is the only property which enjoys being both unanalyzable and definable.

Gideon Rosen and Nicholas Smith, Worldly Indeterminacy: A Rough Guide

There is a widespread suspicion that indeterminacy and vagueness can only be features of claims or representations, and hence that it makes no more sense to ask whether the world is indeterminate than it does to ask whether the world rhymes or whether it’s written in English. On this view, it is not a genuine possibility that the world itself — as opposed to our representations of it — may be unsettled or inchoate in some way: the world must be a fully determinate array of facts or things. Our aim in this paper is to make clear sense of the idea that the world itself may be vague or indeterminate in some respect. We shall not be arguing that the world is indeterminate. We shall not even be arguing that worldly indeterminacy is a genuine metaphysical possibility. Our aim is the more basic one of showing that contrary to the widespread suspicion just mentioned, the idea cannot be ruled out on grounds of incoherence or unintelligibility.

2003-05-10T10:40:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Jonathan Kvanvig, Truth and the Epistemic Goal

Our question arises primarily from the perspective of the theoretical project of epistemology, and I will address the question from that point of view. We will see that the perspective of the cognitive system itself plays a role in this investigation, but only an ancillary one. In addressing the question before us I will be arguing for a negative answer to it. I will be arguing, instead, that there is a plurality of epistemic values and goals, and that though truth is an important epistemic goal, it has no claim to being the primary such value or goal. In order to argue for this plurality view, it is important to begin with a general account of the subject matter of epistemology, for the narrower one’s conception of epistemology, the easier it is to defend the idea that truth is the primary epistemic goal. After explaining the appropriate domain of epistemological theorizing, I will take up the task of defending the pluralistic view.

Ted Hinchman, Reply to Bratman

"is my reply to, you guessed it, Bratman -- specifically to his "Shared Valuing and Frameworks for Practical Reasoning." (The Bratman paper, but not this reply, is forthcoming in Philip Pettit, Samuel Scheffler, Michael Smith, and R. Jay Wallace, ed., Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz (Oxford University Press). I wrote the reply for a conference at Franklin and Marshall in April 2003, and I plan to turn it into a full paper over the summer.)"

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Victor Nuovo - Review of Jeremy Waldron's God, Locke and Equality: Christian Foundations of Locke’s Political Thought

In God, Locke and Equality , Jeremy Waldron argues that Locke’s mature writings present an idea of basic human equality, grounded in Christian theism, and that this idea is “a working premise of his whole political theory” whose influence can be detected in “his arguments about property, family, slavery, government, politics, and toleration”. Waldron also argues that contemporary liberalism lacks just such a well founded and versatile idea as well as the resources to supply it. Its self imposed secular stance is the reason for this deficiency. Since Locke’s idea of human equality is rooted in theism, it is only reasonable that contemporary liberalism should relax its restrictive stance and consider religious reasons such as Locke’s for its commitment to equality.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Scientific Explanation (James Woodward)

Issues concerning scientific explanation have been a focus of philosophical attention from Pre-Socratic times through the modern period. However, recent discussion really begins with the development of the Deductive-Nomological (DN) model. This model has had many advocates (including Popper 1935, 1959, Braithwaite 1953, Gardiner, 1959, Nagel 1961 ) but unquestionably the most detailed and influential statement is due to Carl Hempel (Hempel, 1942, 1965, Hempel and Oppenheim, 1948). These papers and the reaction to them have structured subsequent discussion concerning scientific explanation to an extraordinary degree. After some general remarks by way of background and orientation (Section 1), this entry describes the DN model and its extensions, and then turns to some well-known objections (Section 2). It next describes a variety of subsequent attempts to develop alternative models of explanation, including Wesley Salmon's Statistical Relevance (Section 3) and Causal Mechanical (Section 4) models and the Unificationist models due to Michael Friedman and Philip Kitcher (Section 5). Section 6 provides a summary and discusses directions for future work.

2003-05-09T08:23:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

David Braun, Review of Michael Thau's Consciousness and Cognition, forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Michael Thau's book challenges much of current orthodox theory about consciousness and cognition. It is an enormously stimulating tour de force. I highly recommend it.

Henry Stapp, Dennett's Behaviourism

The recent Journal of Consciousness Studies Volume (10. no,1) on "The double life of B.F. Skinner" has an article by Daniel C. Dennett defending a certain kind a behaviorism and opposing a certain kind of dualism. The kind of "behaviorism" that Dennett defends has room for "feelings, pains, dreams, beliefs, and hopes and expectations" " but only so long as these are understood to be physical (`informational' or `computational') processes that could be accomplished by the machinery of the brain." Dennett evidently grants "the central importance for a science of psychology of making sense of the Jamesian stream of consciousness" but rejects the idea of taking "this stream of consciousness to be sharply distinguished from the streams of mere information-manipulation discernible in the activities of cortical subsystems, etc., etc.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Tim O'Keefe - Review of James Warren's Epicurus and Democritean Ethics: An Archaeology of Ataraxia

Epicurus’ debt to Democritus’ metaphysics is obvious. Even where Epicurus feels the need to modify Democritus’ metaphysics because of its skeptical or fatalist implications, he is working within Democritus’ general framework. The situation is quite different in ethics. Ancient critics of Epicurus claim that the Cyrenaics’ hedonism is the inspiration for his ethics, and in modern times, Epicurus’ ethics is usually viewed in the context of Aristotle’s eudaimonism.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Eliminative Materialism (William Ramsey)

Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist. Descartes famously challenged much of what we take for granted, but he insisted that, for the most part, we can be confident about the content of our own minds. Eliminative materialists go further than Descartes on this point, since they challenge of the existence of various mental states that Descartes took for granted.

Subscription Publications

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, June 2003

Listening to the Animals: The Confucian View of Animal Welfare, Blakeley D.N.
Confucian Values and the Internet: A Potential Conflict, Bockover M.I.
Scientism, Technocracy, and Morality in China, Ouyang G.
The Taiji Diagram: A Meta-Sign In Chinese Thought, GU M.D.
A Brief Note On The Two-Part Division Of The Received Order Of The Hexagrams In The Zhouyi, Hacker E.A.; Moore S.
Human Agency And Change: A Reading Of Wang Bi's Yijing Commentary, Hon T-K.
On Human Nature And Developments In The Dao Of Human Administration, Li H.
Comparative Philosophy: Its Aims And Methods, Fleming J.

Journal of Political Philosophy, June 2003

Radical Liberals, Reasonable Feminists: Reason, Power and Objectivity in MacKinnon and Rawls, Laden A.S.
Symposium: Responding to Terror: Just War Doctrine and the Military Response to Terrorism, Boyle J.
Preemptive Self-defense: Hegemony, Equality and Strategies of Legal Change, Byers M.
Security and Liberty: The Image of Balance, Waldron J.
Fanaticism, Toleration and Philosophy, Passmore J.

2003-05-08T10:31:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Ben Caplan, Millian Descriptivism

Scott Soames (2002) and Michael Thau (2002) argue for a view that I’ll call Millian Descriptivism. On this view, sentences that contain names express singular propositions (hence the Millianism); but, when they use such sentences, speakers communicate descriptive propositions (hence the descriptivism). In this paper, I argue against Millian Descriptivism. More precisely, I argue that Millian Descriptivism can’t solve the problems that it’s supposed to.

Jon Williamson, Probability and causality

Slides of a talk given to the Summer School in Philosophy and Probability, Konstanz, September 15-22 2002.

Peter Danielson, Modeling Complex Ethical Agents

Ethics seeks to improve the mechanisms by which agents achieve better outcomes. Therefore it needs a generator of varied agents and a testing regime that can unify over them. For example, we need to know when agents should be selfish, and when more cooperative, and when different ways of being cooperative clash. Crude intuitive modeling methods have restricted ethicists in the past to asking what if every agent followed morality Mk; the more sophisticated modeling methods of economics and biology are too often restricted to selfish agents. In previous work we have found interesting cases where agents that can shift along a selfishcooperative scale race to the top as well as to the bottom. Evidently we need to be able to model non-intuitive combinations of agent-elements. In this paper we extend (Koza 1992)’s Genetic Programming method, introducing a common programming platform for agents, suitable for evolutionary generation and testing. Technically, our method avoids reducing agents to preferences or moves by passing whole agents as objects. Our framework allows agents of wide variety to satisfy a rich set of functions (in this weak sense, a common programming language) by which to learn and to differentially reproduce. This permits us to construct multi-level models of interacting ethical agents of greater variety than previously.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, James A. Harris - Review of Thomas Reid's The Correspondence of Thomas Reid

The latest volume of the Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid collects 103 letters from Reid, twenty-one letters addressed to him, and seven letters which are neither by Reid nor addressed to him, but which touch closely on aspects of his life or writings and are likely to have been passed on to him in some shape or form. (One of these seven is Hume's letter to Hugh Blair about Reid's Inquiry; another is from Lord Deskford to William Cullen, describing Reid as “the fittest Man in the Kingdom” to replace Adam Smith as professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow (p. 32).) Thirty-four of the letters from Reid, and nineteen of those to him, are previously unpublished. A good number of the letters from Reid, having been included by Sir William Hamilton in his edition of Reid's works, will already be familiar to students of the philosophy of common sense, but it is nevertheless a great pleasure to encounter them again in Paul Wood's beautifully edited collection. As Wood notes in a brief introduction to the volume, Hamilton's idea of best editorial practice is very different from ours today: Hamilton modernizes Reid's spelling, changes wordings, silently omits passages, and conflates letters. Where possible, Wood has returned to the manuscripts. The result is an exceedingly clean text of every extant letter from or to Reid. Explanatory and textual notes for each letter are given at the end of the book and are always helpful. If there is anything missing, it is short biographical sketches of Reid's correspondents. This reader, at least, would have been aided by three or four sentences about, for example, William Hunter, or Robert Adair, or La Blancherie.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Interpretations of Probability (Alan Hájek)

Revised. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography.

2003-05-07T08:40:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Caroline Heycock and Roberto Zamparelli, Friends and colleagues: Plurality, coordination, and the structure of DP (via the Semantics Archive)

Starting from an analysis for the diverging crosslinguistic grammaticality of DP-internal conjunctions such as this [man and woman] are in love, the article develops a theory of the syntax/semantics interface within the DP and a novel proposal for the interpretation of conjunction. The main claims are that plural/mass denotations are built in stages within the DP, by the combined effect of number features and semantic operators associated with functional heads; that languages differ in whether the denotation of nouns is filtered for singular or plural number, and that the word and crosslinguistically denotes SET PRODUCT, an operation which, in different contexts, can mimic the behavior of intersection and union.

Michael Pelczar, Material World

Here are the first eight chapters of a book I'm working on, in defense of supervenient materialism. I would be especially grateful for any feedback on this, since it represents the primary focus of my current research.

FreE-Publications

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Saadya [Saadiah] (Sarah Pessin)

In his philosophical commitment to reason and revelation as joint grounds for knowing and living, Saadya creates a space for the interplay of faith, understanding, tradition, and law. Saadya defends the truth as well as the reasonableness of Biblical and rabbinic writings within the Jewish tradition, engages in polemics against members of the Jewish community who dispense with rabbinic authority, and brings a unique blend of philosophical and theological sensibilities to bear on questions of epistemology, morality and religion. Well-known for his discussion of the difference between “laws of reason” and “laws of revelation,” Saadya is also often characterized, in his focus on the importance of human reason, as following certain trends in Islamic (in particular, Mu‘tâzilite) Kalâm theology.

2003-05-06T10:26:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Haim Gaifman, Reasoning with Bounded Resources and Assigning Probabilities to Arithmetical Statements

There are three sections in this paper. The first is a philosophical discussion of the general problem of reasoning under limited deductive capacity. The second sketches a rigorous way of assigning probabilities to statements in pure arithmetic; motivated by the preceding discussion, it can nonetheless be read separately. The third is philosophical discussion that highlights the shifting contextual character of subjective probabilities and beliefs.

Francis Joseph Mootz, A Future Foretold: Neo-Aristotelian Praise of Postmodern Legal Theory (via SSRN)

Is theory defined by its practical effects, or by its refusal to become complicit in everyday practices? Is the urge to theorize a product of modernist ideology that leads us astray, or our openness to enlightenment? Although postmodern thinking has made these questions particularly pressing, they are timeless. Therefore, it should not be surprising that contemporary readings of Aristotle can provide a helpful guide for uncovering the possibilities of postmodern legal theory. I address the postmodern puzzle regarding the nature of theory and its relationship to practice by drawing from the contemporary appropriations of Aristotle's practical philosophy by Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Joseph Dunne.

----, Nietzschean Critique and Philosophical Hermeneutics (via SSRN)

Legal practice inevitably is hermeneutical, with lawyers and judges interpreting governing legal texts and the social situations in which they must be applied. Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics describes this practice well, but he treats the question of the possibility of a critical hermeneutics in an ambiguous and under-developed manner. Consequently, Gadamer is frequently (and unfairly) accused of conventionalism and quietism. At the other end of the spectrum, Nietzsche's perspectival hermeneutics is seemingly nothing but thoroughgoing critique, to the point of collapsing into irrationalism under certain postmodern readings. This article develops a critical hermeneutics by demonstrating that philosophical hermeneutics can accommodate Nietzschean critique.

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Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Theodor Adorno (Lambert Zuidervaart)

Theodor W. Adorno was one of the most important philosophers and social critics in Germany after World War II. Although less well known among anglophone philosophers than his contemporary Hans-Georg Gadamer, Adorno had even greater influence on scholars and intellectuals in postwar Germany. In the 1960s he was the most prominent challenger to both Sir Karl Popper's philosophy of science and Martin Heidegger's philosophy of existence. Jürgen Habermas, Germany's foremost social philosopher after 1970, was Adorno's student and assistant. The scope of Adorno's influence stems from the interdisciplinary character of his research and of the Frankfurt School to which he belonged. It also stems from the thoroughness with which he examined Western philosophical traditions, especially from Kant onward, and the radicalness to his critique of contemporary Western society. He was a seminal social theorist and a leading member of the first generation of Critical Theory.

2003-05-04T21:02:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Delia Graff, Gap Principles, Penumbral Consequence, and Infinitely Higher-Order Vagueness

Formerly titled "Infinitely Higher-Order Vagueness (and other problems for supervaluationists)"

To appear in Liars and Heaps: New Essays on the Semantics of Paradox, J.C. Beall (editor), Oxford University Press

Kieran Setiya, Introduction to Reasons without Rationalism

This book attempts to remedy some philosophical distortions of practical reason, and to put in their place a picture of practical thought on which its standards are those of ethical virtue. Philosophers have been too often misled, I argue, by a crude division of the human soul into reason and character, affect and intellect. They have adopted a rationalistic conception of practical reason, and of human agency. But rationalism of this kind is false. To see through it is to see our way to the insight that we cannot be fully good without the perfection of practical reason, or have that perfection without being good.

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Gary Gutting - Review of Béatrice Han's Foucault's Critical Project

In this impressive and provocative book, Béatrice Han argues that Foucault, for all his express opposition to phenomenology and other forms of transcendental thought, never really got beyond its standpoint. Her case is based on a series of detailed and challenging readings of key methodological passages in Foucault's writings, from his thesis on Kant's Anthropology (where Han provides the worthy service of summarizing, with extensive quotations, this unpublished text) through his final work on the history of ancient sexuality. Although, as will be apparent, I find her case unconvincing, there is much to be learned from the details of her thorough and informed analysis. The translation of the book, from the French original, L'ontologie manquée de Michel Foucault (Jérôme Millon, 1998), is very well done.

Subscription Publications

Biology and Philosophy, January 2003

Introduction, Akins K.; Gerrans P.
Innateness and the Brain, Quartz S.R.
Nativism and Neuroconstructivism in the Explanation of Williams Syndrome, Gerrans P.
In Defense of Some `Cartesian' Assumptions Concerning the Brain and Its Operation, Grush R.
Varieties of Representation in Evolved and Embodied Neural Networks, Mandik P.
Neural Plasticity and Consciousness, Hurley S.; Noë A.
The Neural Mechanisms of Moral Cognition: A Multiple-Aspect Approach to Moral Judgment and Decision-Making, Casebeer W.D.; Churchland P.S.
Neuroscience and the Art of Single Cell Recordings, Hardcastle V.G.; Stewart C.M.

Ethics and Behaviour, January 2003

IQ Testing: A Matter of Life or Death, Koocher G.P.
Ethical and Professional Demands for Forensic Mental Health Professionals in the Post-Atkins Era, Brodsky S.L.; Galloway V.A.
The Difficulty of Basing Death Penalty Eligibility on IQ Cutoff Scores for Mental Retardation, Ceci S.J.; Scullin M.; Kanaya T.
Execution Exemption Should Be Based on Actual Vulnerability, Not Disability Label, Greenspan S.; Switzky H.N.
Straight Talk About IQ and the Death Penalty, Kane H.
Competency to Be Sentenced and Executed, Watt M.J.; MacLean W.E.
Notice of Audiovisual Aid, Ethics and Behavior, 1 January 2003, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 43-44(2)
Research: An Opportunity to Revisit Classic Ethical Problems in Behavioral Research, Pittenger D.J.
Nonsexual Multiple Role Relationships: Attitudes and Behaviors of Social Workers, DeJulio L.M.; Berkman C.S.
Voluntary Assent in Biomedical Research With Adolescents: A Comparison of Parent and Adolescent Views, Brody J.L.; Scherer D.G.; Annett R.D.; Pearson
The Ethical Ideologies of Psychologists and Physicians: A Preliminary Comparison, Hadjistavropoulos T.; Malloy D.C.; Sharpe D.; Fuchs-Lacelle S.

Journal of Indian Philosophy, December 2002

The Attainment of Immortality: From Nathas in India to Buddhists in Tibet, Schaeffer K.R.
Structure and Composition of the Mnava Dharmastra, Olivelle P.
Apologetics and Philosophy in Mandana Mira's Brahmasiddhi, Nicholson H.
Crvka Fragments: A New Collection, Bhattacharya R.
Nun Befuddles King, Shows karmayoga Does Not Work Sulabh's Refutation of King Janaka at MBh 12.308, Fitzgerald J.L.

Mind and Language June 2003

Animal Action in the Space of Reasons, Hurley S.
Charting Control-Space: Comments on Susan Hurley's ‘Animal Action in the Space of Reasons’, Sterelny K.
Folk Psychology Under Stress: Comments on Susan Hurley's ‘Animal Action in the Space of Reasons’, Godfrey-Smith P.
Making Sense of Animals: Interpretation vs. Architecture, Hurley S.
David Kellogg Lewis Philosopher and Philosopher of Mind, Jackson F.
David Lewis's Philosophy of Language, Holton R.

British Journal of Aesthetics, April 2003

In Praise of Gardens, Cooper D.E.
Aesthetic Principles, Conolly O.; Haydar B.
The Interpretation of Music in Performance, Thom P.
Fictional Characters and Literary Practices, Thomasson A.L.
The Aesthetic Experience, Matravers D.
Paradoxes of Aesthetic Distance, Hanfling O.

2003-05-01T09:39:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Tim Fernando, Finite-state descriptions for temporal semantics

Finite-state descriptions for temporal semantics are outlined through which to distinguish soft inferences reflecting manners of conceptualization from more robust semantic entailments defined over models. Just what descriptions are built (before being interpreted model-theoretically) and how they are grounded in models of reality explain (upon examination) why some inferences are soft.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Eileen Sweeney - Review of Thomas Aquinas' The Treatise on Human Nature: Summa Theologiae 1a 75-89

This book offers a new translation of questions 75-89 of the first part of the Summa Theologiae. The translation is based on the Leonine edition of the text, to which emendations have been made. The text also includes a short introduction and fairly extensive commentary (about 200 pages, compared to 220 pages of translated text). There are eight appendices, which are translations of passages from other works of Aquinas which are important for the issues considered in questions 75-89. Several of these are passages from Aquinas's commentaries on Aristotle, especially De Anima; there are also passages from a crucial discussion of free choice in the Quaestiones Disputatae de Malo, and from a couple of biblical commentaries.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Karl Leonhard Reinhold (Dan Breazeale)

Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1757-1823), Austrian philosopher and first occupant of the chair on Critical Philosophy established at the University of Jena in 1787, first achieved fame as a proponent of popular Enlightenment and as an early and effective popularizer of the Kantian philosophy. During his period at the University of Jena (1787-94), Reinhold proclaimed the need for a more “scientific” and systematic presentation of the Critical philosophy, one based upon a single, self-evident first principle. In an effort to satisfy this need, he expounded his own “Elementary Philosophy” in a series of influential works between 1789 and 1791. Though Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy was much criticized, his call for a more coherent and systematic exposition of transcendental idealism exercised a profound influence upon the subsequent development of post-Kantian idealism and spurred others (such as J. G. Fichte) to seek a philosophical first principle even more “fundamental” than Reinhold's own “Principle of Consciousness.” After moving to the University of Kiel, Reinhold became an adherent, first of Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre and then of C. G. Bardili's “rational realism,” before finally proposing a novel “linguistic” approach to philosophical problems.

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Journal of Social Philosophy, June 2003

Libertarianism, Worker Ownership, and Wage Slavery: A Critique of Ellerman's Labor Theory of Property, Howard M.W.
Stories, Autobiographies, and Moral Inquiry, Wiland E.G.
Feinberg and Martin on Human Rights, Darby D.
Nozick in Zimbabwe, Shaw W.H.
Granting the Suffrage to Felons in Prison, Brenner S.; Caste N.J.
Xenografting, Species Loyalty, and Human Solidarity, Welchman J.
The Moral Basis for Public Policy Encouraging Sport Hunting, Van de Pitte M.
The Duty to Hire the Most Qualified Applicant, Kershnar S.
Defending Affirmative Action, Defending Preferences, Sterba J.P.
What Really Is Pell's Ideal of Formal Equality?, Sterba J.P.
Racial Preferences and Formal Equality, Pell T.J.
What's the Big Deal about Racial Preferences?, Pell T.J.

2003-04-30T08:03:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Alexander Pruss, Fine and Coarse Tuning, Renormalizability and Probabilistic Reasoning

The laws of physics depend on a number of basic constants. It has been argued that these constants appear “fine tuned” for the possibility of life. If the mass of the proton were significantly different from what it is, say, then life would be impossible. But, it is claimed, no more basic scientific reason can be given for why the mass of the proton falls in the life-admitting range rather than outside of it. The proponent of the fine tuning argument (FTA) concludes that this, together with many similar cases, gives some evidence for the existence of an intelligent designer of the cosmos who chose the values of the basic constants in the laws of nature in such a way that life would be possible.

Ted Honderich, Consciousness as Existence, Devout Physicalism, Spiritualism

Very generally speaking, there are three answers to the question of what it is for you to be aware of the room you are in. (1) It is for the room in a way to exist. (2) It is for there to be neural activity in your head, however additionally described. (3) It is for there to be non-spatial facts somehow in your head. The first theory satisfies criteria for an adequate account of consciousness. They have to do with the seeming nature of this consciousness and with subjectivity, reality and non-abstractness, mind-body causation, and the differences between perceptual, reflective and affective consciousness. The theory is not open to an objection about a deluded brain in a vat. The theory explains its own degree of failure in characterizing consciousness. It releases neuroscience and cognitive science from nervousness about consciousness. That is a summary of most of what follows here.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Ewa Plonowska Ziarek - Review of Rosalyn Diprose's Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas

In contrast to the influential poststructuralist resuscitation of the notions of gift and welcome, feminist philosophers and writers tend to be rather suspicious that the “virtue” of generosity, even in its postmodern reincarnation, remains in complicity with violence, oppression, and the subordination of women. It is not by accident, for instance, that Virginia Woolf famously portrays a refusal of the violent demand of generosity as the condition of the possibility of women's creativity. As Lily Briscoe, the figure of the feminist painter in To the Lighthouse, observes with anger, “that man, she thought, her anger rising in her, never gave, that man took. She, on the other hand, would be forced to give . . . . You shan't touch your canvas, he seemed to say, bearing down on her, till you've given what I want of you” (149-150). Presenting its complex arguments with an enviable clarity and eloquence, Diprose's Corporeal Generosity not only shares Woolf's unease but also in fact provides a brilliant diagnosis of the complicity between generosity, domination and gender inequality. Indeed, the main question the book poses pertains to the relations between generosity, power, and social justice. The book rightly criticizes both the traditional philosophical understanding of generosity as a moral virtue and the poststructuralist theories of the gift precisely for their failure to investigate the unequal distributions of the social benefits, labor, costs, and the cultural capital of generosity. One of the effects of such an unequal distribution lies in the extortion of the unacknowledged and devalued “gifts” from disempowered social groups, and in the systematic forgetting of these contributions. As Diprose puts it, “women seem to be incapable of giving anything except that which already belongs to someone else or that which must be extracted by force” (56).

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Laws of Nature (John W. Carroll)

Science includes many principles once thought to be laws of nature: Newton's law of gravitation, his three laws of motion, the ideal gas laws, Mendel's laws, the laws of supply and demand, and so on. Philosophers of science and metaphysicians address various issues about laws of nature, but the basic question is: What is it to be a law? Two influential answers are David Lewis's systems approach (1973, 1983, 1986, 1994) and David Armstrong's universals approach (1978, 1983, 1991, 1993). More recent treatments include views on which there no laws (van Fraassen 1989, Giere 1999) and antireductionist views (Carroll 1994, Lange 2000). Besides the basic question, the recent literature has also focused on (i) discussions of the role laws play in the problem of induction, (ii) whether laws involve metaphysical necessity, and (iii) the role laws have in scientific practice, especially the practice of physics as it contrasts with the practice of the other sciences.

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Metaphilosophy, April 2003

The History of Sexual Anatomy and Self-Referential Philosophy of Science, Soble A.G.
Aesthetics and the Problem of Evil, Nussbaum C.
Analytic and Continental Philosophy: Explaining the Differences, Levy N.
What do we Want from a Theory of Happiness?, Haybron D.M.
Editor's Introduction, Brady M.S.; Pritchard D.
Felix Culpa: Luck In Ethics And Epistemology, Axtell G.
Virtue and Luck, Epistemic and Otherwise, Greco J.
The Conflation of Moral and Epistemic Virtue, Driver J.

Social Epistemology, October-December 2002

On rules and practice, HATTIANGADI J.
Indigenized psychologies, ALLWOOD C.M.
Reliabilism 'naturalized', MILLER S.; FREDERICKS M.
Leaving Dr Pangloss behind, GRASSWICK H.
Philosophy fettered? A review of Science Unfettered: A Philosophical Study In Sociohistorical Ontology by J. E. McGuire and Barbara Tuchanska, SCHMAUS W.
Surprise! Philosophy of science vindicated by hermeneutic phenomenology, DEPEW D.
More fetters to unfetter: a reply to Depew and Schmaus, McGUIRE J.E.; TUCHANSKA B.

2003-04-29T09:44:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Peter Godfrey-Smith, A (Slightly) Different Account of Folk Psychology

Draft only. Given at a "Coglunch" talk at CSLI, Stanford University, April 24, 2003.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Win-chiat Lee - Review of David Boonin's A Defense of Abortion

In this book Boonin is primarily interested in establishing a negative case for the moral permissibility of abortion by showing that the arguments made against it by its critics all fail. But Boonin does not have his eye set on doing that alone. In fact, he is also interested in showing that these arguments can be defeated on grounds that the critics of abortion accept. To this end, Boonin goes over a very large number of such arguments, organized around three themes, and shows how they all fail.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Reflective Equilibrium (Norman Daniels)

In what follows, we first give an overview of the method of reflective equilibrium and comment briefly on its history. We then discuss in more the evolution of the method and its role in the work of John Rawls. Against that background, we then explore the controversy surrounding the claim that coherence among our moral or our logical beliefs in reflective equilibrium counts as a justification for them. Finally, we discuss some implications the method has for work in ethics.

2003-04-28T09:23:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Alex Rosenberg, On The Priority of Intellectual Property Rights, Especially in Biotechnology

Here I want to advance an argument for giving intellectual property rights which are untrumpable by any other sort of considerations from human welfare. The notion that there are basic human or natural rights, which cannot be overridden no matter what the welfare-consequences of do so, is a familiar one. But no one supposes that intellectual property rights, or indeed any property rights, are among this privileged set. Moreover, that considerations from human welfare should underwrite such status for any human right is perhaps more surprising. After it all, it is to limit the writ of welfare-considerations that untrumpable rights are invoked.

Ernest Lepore, An Abuse Context in Semantics:The Case of Incomplete Definite Descriptions

In Descriptions and Beyond: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays on Definite and Indefinite Descriptions and Other Related Phenomena, eds Anne Bezuidenhout and Marga Reimer., Oxford University Press.

---- with Herman Cappelen, Unarticulated Constituents and Hidden Indexicals: An Abuse of Context in Semantics

In Essays in Honor of John Perry, eds. M. O'Rourke and C. Washington, MIT Press.

Michael Strevens, The Myth of the Final Criterion

Theories of psychological categories have all conformed to the thesis that for every psychological category, there is a final criterion that is the ultimate arbiter of category membership. This final criterion not only determines a category's boundaries but also key aspects of its cognitive significance. I propose that the thesis is false: there are no final criteria. I then explore what a theory of concepts might look like in the absence of final criteria. My chief aim is consciousness-raising: rather than presenting arguments against the thesis of the final criterion, I seek to show that some very interesting psychological possibilities lie outside its purview; we should not limit ourselves to theories of concepts that are built according to the criterion.

Robert van Rooy, Being polite is a handicap: Towards a game theoretical analysis of polite linguistic behavior

Manuscript to appear in the proceedings of TARK 9

In this paper I argue for a broad game theoretical perspective on language use. Polite linguistic behavior, in particular, should be taken as rational interaction of conversational partners that each come with their own beliefs and preferences. I argue that the function of making a request in a polite way is to turn a situation in which preferences are not well aligned to one where they are by assuming that to utter polite expressions is costly. This idea will be formalized by making use of Lewisean signaling games and the biological handicap principle.

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Michael Gagarin - Review of Antiphon the Sophist's The Fragments

Until now, the standard collection of the fragments of "Antiphon the Sophist" was the magisterial work of Diels-Kranz (Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6 th ed. vol. 2, 334-370 [Berlin 1952]), who established the order and numbering of fragments used by almost all scholars since, including Untersteiner (Sofisti, vol. 4, 1-211 [Florence 1962]). Much has been written about Antiphon since these editions, and in 1984 a tiny scrap of papyrus was published that forced scholars to abandon some generally accepted restorations in a papyrus text published earlier and to reexamine some widespread views about this late fifth-century thinker. Thus a new edition of the fragments has long been desired, and scholars working on the sophists should be most grateful to Pendrick (hereafter 'P') for undertaking not only a new edition but the first extended commentary on the fragments as well. P's work began as a 1987 dissertation written under Leonardo Tarán at Columbia, and this much revised edition has now been published in this handsome edition by Cambridge University Press.

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Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, June 2003

Is I Guaranteed to Refer?, de Gaynesford M.
Victim-Centered Retributivism, Lippke R.L.
The Model Theoretic Argument, Indirect Realism, and the Causal Theory of Reference Objection, Reynolds S.L.
Obligation as Self-Determination: A Critique of Hegel and Korsgaard, Shelton M.
Sometimes The World is Not Enough: The Pursuit of Explanatory Laws in a Humean World, Ward B.
Functionalism and Causal Exclusion, Gene Witmer D.

Studia Logica, April 2003

A Logic is Referential iff it is Selfextensional, Wójcicki R.
The First-Order Theories of Dedekind Algebras, Weaver G.
All Proper Normal Extensions of S5-square have the Polynomial Size Model Property, Bezhanishvili N.; Marx M.
A Sahlqvist Theorem for Relevant Modal Logics, Seki T.
An Axiomatization of 'Very' within systiems of Set Theory, Tzouvaras A.
Amalgamation in Varieties of Pseudo-interior Algebras, Klunder B.
Book Review: Achille C. Varzi, editor, The Nature of Logic, European Review of Philosophy, Restall G.

Synthese, May 2003

Preface, Dacey R.
Probability Transformations In The Study Of Behavior Toward Risk, Neilson W.S.
Framing Effects in International Relations, Mintz A.; Redd S.B.
Applications of Prospect Theory to Political Science, Levy J.S.
The S-Shaped Utility Function, Dacey R.

2003-04-23T06:54:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Peter Alward, Excluding Tropes

There has of late been an interesting (and, in my view, welcome) development in the philosophy of mind. After years of drift towards cognitive science and increasing reliance on results in empirical psychology, issues in fundamental ontology have come into play. An increasingly popular strategy for resolving Kim’s exclusion problem is to suggest that mental and physical property instances are identical despite the non-identity of the mental and physical properties themselves. And in order to implement this strategy, an account of properties and their instances that can be reconciled with this suggestion is required. There seems to be something of an emerging consensus among advocates of this strategy that serious difficulties arise if property instances are taken to be exemplifications of universals, but that these problems can be avoided if they are instead taken to be tropes – abstract particulars. Noordhof, however, offers us some cautionary advice here: we need to be careful that we simply have not replaced one “bulge in the carpet” with another. Metaphysical manoeuvres of this sort risk pushing theoretical difficulties to one side rather than solving them. I want to argue that this is exactly what happens for the appeal to tropes. While it appears to accommodate the identity of mental and physical property instances, it does so at the cost of dispositional indeterminacy of putatively mental instances.

Chase Wrenn, Truth and Other Self-effacing Properties

Colin McGinn (2000) introduces the idea of a self-effacing property, a property that can be defined without referring to it in any way. He also claims that truth is the one and only such property. This paper shows that, if truth is a self-effacing property, then there are too many others to constitute a set.

Gillian Russell, Truth in Virtue of Meaning

Are you skimming this paper in the half hour before the dissertation seminar? Then here’s what you need to know: there are three main ideas in the paper, and if you came to my last dissertation seminar you’ll have seen one of them before. The paper assumes the four-way ambiguity in the word ‘meaning’ that I argued for last time and that the reader is familiar with the direct reference picture of language. Section 2 is a return to my response to Quine’s 2-factor argument. The response is here in full because some of you haven’t seen it, because I now have the definitions of the intuitive notions I was after, and because a good way to motivate idea 2 is to start with a worry about this response. Section 3 presents a new (3 dimensionalist?!) way of thinking about the modal profile of a sentence. (We don’t usually talk about the modal status of sentences (because we think it’s propositions that have modal status) except when we’re rehearsing the modal argument from ‘Naming and Necessity’). This (idea 2) is a more complicated way to think about a sentence’s modal profile, and it helps solve the worries about idea 1. Russellian’s think that there is a more fine-grained ‘picture’ of content that can only be approximated with intensions, and Kaplan thinks there is a finegrained picture of character that can only be approximated with a function from contexts to intensions. Section 4 is where I give the ‘picture’ of synonymy and truth in virtue of meaning that I think the modal notion in section 3 only approximates. This is idea three. You can think of each idea as an improvement on/refinement of the previous one. I’m going to try to persuade you to think just that way in 25 minutes time...

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Kristin Shrader-Frechette - Review of Cass Sunstein's Risk and Reason

What should be done about risks such as genetically engineered food and environmentally induced cancer? Cass Sunstein, University of Chicago chairholder and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, says society can respond either with “uninformed stabs in the dark” or with “cost-benefit balancing” (6). Supporting the latter, his book argues for a “cost-benefit state” controlled largely by economic experts (ix): “because I will place a high premium on technical expertise and sound science, this book is, in many ways, a plea for a large role for technocrats” (7). Sunstein’s volume is important not only because he has had a distinguished career in administrative and constitutional law (including many awards from the American Bar Association) but also because the current US presidential administration defends causal, ethical, and political claims virtually identical to those in the book. Although Sunstein correctly calls for “sound science” in risk policy, he often gets his science wrong and almost always attempts to reduce ethical to purely scientific questions.

2003-04-22T11:55:00.000-04:00

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Ethical Theory and Practice, March 2003

Editorial introduction, Heeger R.; Musschenga A.
Taking Religious Pluralism Seriously. Arguing for an Institutional Turn. Introduction, Bader V.
Religious Parties, Religious Political Identity, and the Cold Shoulder of Liberal Democratic Thought, Rosenblum N.L.
Religions and States. A New Typology and a Plea for Non-Constitutional Pluralism, Bader V.
Institutions of Conscience: Politics and Principle in a World of Religious Pluralism, Swaine L.A.

Journal for General Philosophy of Science, Vol 34 Issue 1

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), Pöggeler O.
Das Ontologische Dilemma der Normativen Ethik, Greimann D.
Ist die linguistische Theorie des logischen Apriori obsolet?, Koriako D.
Beweislastverteilung und Intuitionen in philosophischen Diskursen, Sander T.
Zwischen Berechenbarkeit und Nichtberechenbarkeit. Die Thematisierung der Berechenbarkeit in der aktuellen Physik komplexer Systeme, Schmidt J.C.
Über den Produktiv-Operativen Ansatz zur Begründung der Geometrie in der Protophysik, Amiras L.
Book Review: Wilfried Kuhn: Ideengeschichte der Physik – Eine Analyse der Entwicklung der Physik im historischen Kontext, Hedrich R.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Zeitschriftenschau, Anacker M.; Breuer M.; Cohnitz D.

Journal of Medical Ethics, April 2003

JME reviewers 1998–2002: Thank you to the journal’s assessors, Journal of Medical Ethics, April 2003, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. e1-e2(1)
double helix 50 years on: models, metaphors, and reductionism, Ashcroft R.E.
IVF mixup: white couple have black babies, Spriggs M.
What makes a parent? It’s not black or white, Fuscaldo G.
Genetic ties and genetic mixups, Murray T.H.; Kaebnick G.E.
Concern for families and individuals in clinical genetics, Parker M.; Lucassen A.
Balancing autonomy and responsibility: the ethics of generating and disclosing genetic information, Hallowell N.; Foster C.; Eeles R.; Ardern-Jones A.;
What exactly is an exact copy? And why it matters when trying to ban human reproductive cloning in Australia, Gogarty B.
Is there an ethical difference between preimplantation genetic diagnosis and abortion?, Cameron C.; Williamson R.
Issues of consent and feedback in a genetic epidemiological study of women with breast cancer, Richards M.P.M.; Ponder M.; Pharoah P.; Everest S.; Mackay
Differences in medical students’ attitudes to academic misconduct and reported behaviour across the years—a questionnaire study, Rennie S.C.; Rudland
What do patients value in their hospital care? An empirical perspective on autonomy centred bioethics, Joffe S.; Manocchia M.; Weeks J.C.; Cleary P.D.
Consensus and contention regarding redundant publications in clinical research: cross-sectional survey of editors and authors, Yank V.; Barnes D.
Patient organisations should also establish databanks on medical complications, Gebhardt D.O.E.
What is saving of human life worth in Poland?, Madalinski M.H.
Introducing "ERIC", a living research ethics database, Davies H.T.; Wiseman T.
Ethics briefings, English V.; Romano-Critchley G.; Sheather J.; Sommerville A.
Commentary on Spriggs: genetically selected baby free of inherited predisposition to early onset Alzheimer’s disease, Delatycki M.B.

2003-04-21T14:23:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Norman Swartz, The Concept of Physical Law

Second edition, 2003. The complete book, free of charge, 220pp + viii.

John Hawthorne, Epistemicism and Semantic Plasticity (via the NYU seminar on Factually Questionable Discourse)

I shall endeavor to make vivid a kind of puzzle that arises when Timothy Williamson’s epistemicist machinery is applied to borderline cases of (i) personhood and (ii) semantic properties. My aim will be to make trouble for Williamson’s development of the epistemicist view, and then to propose an alternative way of thinking about epistemicism.

Other Changes of Note

Geoffrey Nunberg, two new Fresh Air pieces: The Politics of Polysyndeton and The Side of Fries

2003-04-20T07:56:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Allan Hazlett, Calculators, Digital Watches, and Practical Anti-skepticism

I examine two cases of testing to see if one is dreaming for purposes other than those philosophical - Kelvin's test in Lem's Solaris is an attempt to determine that he is not massively hallucinating that appeals to his ability to reason mathematically; lucid dreamers apparently learn to detect experiential cues such that they can know that they are dreaming. I draw some philosophical conclusions: we can argue for a weak form of realism (and hence against solipsism) without appeal to perception; Austin was right about the existence of a "dream-like quality" (on one interpretation of what he meant by that), but this does little work against the philosophical skeptic.

2003-04-19T10:48:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Henry Stapp, Quantum Approaches to Consciousness (MS Word format)

Quantum approaches to consciousness are sometimes said to be motivated simply by the idea that consciousness is a mystery, and quantum theory is a mystery, so maybe these two mysteries are related. That opinion betrays a profound misunderstanding of the nature of quantum mechanics, which consists, above all, in a scientific solution to the problem of the relationship between mind and matter. A key achievement of the founders of quantum theory was to forge a rationally coherent and pragmatically useful linkage between the two kinds of descriptions that jointly comprise the foundation of science. Descriptions of the first kind are descriptions of empirical findings, expressed in a language that allows us to communicate to our colleagues what we have done and what we have learned. Descriptions of the second kind are descriptions of physical states, expressed in terms of mathematical properties assigned to tiny space-time regions. A new conception of the linkage between these to kinds of description was formulated by Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, and their colleagues, and this conception was later extended by John von Neumann from the domain of atomic science to the realm of neuroscience and to the problem of the relationship between the minds and brains of human beings.

Subscription Publications

History and Philosophy of Logic, Vol 24 Issue 1

Conceptual Closure in Anselm's Proof, Roark T.
Russell's 1903 - 1905 Anticipation of the Lambda Calculus, Klement K.
A Strange Remark Attributed to Gödel, Humberstone L.
Constructive Versus Ontological Construals of Cantorian Ordinals, Hinzen W.

2003-04-18T08:25:00.000-04:00

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Adrian Peperzak - Review of Catherine Chalier's What Ought I to Do? Morality in Kant and Levinas

Catherine Chalier is known for several fine books that demonstrate her familiarity with the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas or develop his thought in relation to urgent questions of our time. A new book of hers that confronts Levinas with the greatest moral philosopher of modern history, with whom Levinas, despite radical differences, shares a deep affinity, is therefore particularly welcome, not only for a reassessment of Kant’s revolution, but also for a clarification of the questions and answers by which Levinas went beyond Kant’s ethical theory.

2003-04-17T09:39:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Yujin Nagasawa, Divine Omniscience and Experience: A Reply to Alter (forthcoming in Ars Disputandi)

According to one antitheist argument, the necessarily omniscient, necessarily omnipotent, and necessarily omnibenevolent Anselmian God does not exist, because if God is necessarily omnipotent it is impossible for Him to comprehend fully certain concepts, such as fear, frustration and despair, that an omniscient being needs to possess. Torin Alter examines this argument and provides three elaborate objections to it. I argue that theists would not accept any of them because they conflict with traditional Judaeo-Christian doctrines concerning divine attributes.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Richard Fumerton - Review of Max Kölbel's Truth Without Objectivity

Kölbel’s book is a swashbuckling attempt to defend the initially implausible view that there is a semantically respectable notion of relativized truth. Indeed, on one reading of his view, he seems to be arguing that that the concept of relativized truth can be thought of as a conceptual building block in terms of which we can understand the more commonly employed concept of objective truth.

2003-04-16T09:52:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Christopher Potts. Conventional implicatures, a distinguished class of meanings. To appear in Gillian Ramchand and Charles Reiss, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

I return to Grice's original definition of conventional implicature and argue that it picks out a theoretically important and widely attested class of meanings. I focus on nominal appositives like Lance, a cyclist, arguing that the propositions they express are best classified as conventional implicatures. I imbue this classification with theoretical content by developing a multidimensional meaning language that is suited to describing constructions with the properties specified in Grice's definition. I illustrate with an analysis of nominal appositives that locates their special semantic properties in their characteristic comma intonation.

2003-04-15T15:01:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Ralph Wedgwood, The Metaethicists' Mistake

Normative judgment internalism (NJI) is the view that normative judgments--that is, judgments of the sort that are typically expressed by statements of the form 'A ought to f' and the like--are in some way "essentially practical", or essentially connected to practical reasoning, or to motivation for action. Among metaethicists, NJI is highly controversial. One reason for this is that many metaethicists believe that NJI is incompatible with a robustly realist conception of normative judgments. This is why these metaethicists often appeal to NJI in arguing for an anti-realist conception, or else argue against NJI in the course of defending a robustly realist conception. As I shall argue, however, this view about the implications of NJI is a mistake. In fact, NJI is perfectly compatible with a robustly realist conception of normative judgment. This mistake about the implications of NJI seems to be due to hasty and undefended assumptions about the nature of belief. According to most philosophical conceptions of belief, there is no problem at all in combining NJI with the denial of all these broadly anti-realist conceptions of normative judgment.

Brandon Fitelson, Probability, (with Alan Hájek and Ned Hall)

Forthcoming in Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia, (J. Pfeifer and S. Sarkar, eds.), Routledge Press.

There are two central questions concerning probability. First, what are its formal features? That is a mathematical question, to which there is a standard, widely (though not universally) agreed upon answer. We review this answer in §2. Second, what sorts of things are probabilities—what, that is, is the subject matter of probability theory? This is a philosophical question, and while the mathematical theory of probability certainly bears on it, the answer must come from elsewhere. To quickly see why, observe that there are many things in the world that have the mathematical structure of probabilities—the set of measurable regions on the surface of a table, for example—but that one would never mistake for being probabilities. So probability is distinguished by more than just its formal characteristics. The bulk of this essay (§§3-7) will be taken up with the central metaphysical question of what this “more” might be.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Deborah Cook - Review of Yvonne Sherratt's Adorno’s Positive Dialectic

In The Coast of Utopia, Alexander Herzen muses aloud about the course of human history. Asking, “Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature’s highest creation?” Herzen offers this oracular response: “Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we’re expected! But there is no such place, that’s why it’s called utopia.” Tom Stoppard’s evocation of the millenarian Zeitgeist in his remarkable trilogy finds an enigmatic echo in Yvonne Sherratt’s attempt to unearth a positive thesis in Adorno’s forbiddingly negative critical theory. According to Sherratt, Adorno does sight the coast of utopia. Yet his utopia is neither situated in any place nor realizable at any point in time. Indeed, Sherratt argues that Adorno’s critical theory is teleological precisely because he believes that the subterranean flow of history courses towards an aim that is simultaneously “unrealised and unrealisable.” This new Erewhon is enlightenment (44), or “the ‘good’ society governed by genuine reason” (19).

Other Changes of Note

Joshua Knobe posted a response by Al Mele to his paper on intentional action in folk psychology.

2003-04-14T07:34:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

David Chalmers, The Representational Character of Experience

Consciousness and intentionality are perhaps the two central phenomena in the philosophy of mind. Human beings are conscious beings: there is something it is like to be us. Human beings are intentional beings: we represent what is going on in the world. Correspondingly, our specific mental states, such as perceptions and thoughts, very often have a phenomenal character: there is something it is like to be in them. And these mental states very often have intentional content: they serve to represent the world.

Neil McKinnon, Presentism and Consciousness

Presentism draws you in. When you first become acquainted with the presentist view of time it’s hard not to concur that this is how time must be. What is it that makes the presentist theory of time so compelling? Its appeal is often said to reside in the way that it illuminates the temporal aspect of human experience. Psychologically, there is something special about the present. All of our thoughts, feelings and actions occur there. Past joys and hurts become less palpable and visit us more and more infrequently as they recede into distant memory, while past visions and sounds ebb into dullness and pallor. The future is more elusive and even less tangible than the distant past. We often try to sniff it out, striving to locate it, yet not for what it is, only for what it will be. But present awareness is fresh, immediate, lustrous, and sometimes, exciting in a way that past awareness never is. Given the psychological uniqueness of the present it is therefore tempting to imbue this specialness with ontological import—to make this psychological centrepoint a centrepoint of our metaphysics. The presentist does this, but not merely by elevating the metaphysical status of present states of affairs above all other temporal states of affairs. Rather, other temporal states of affairs are ontologically excluded.

2003-04-13T12:14:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Michael Brody and Anna Szabolcsi, Overt Scope in Hungarian (via the Semantics Archive)

The focus of this paper is the syntax of inverse scope in Hungarian, a language that largely disambiguates quantifier scope at spell-out. Inverse scope is attributed to alternate orderings of potentially large chunks of structure, but with appeal to base-generation, as opposed to non-feature-driven movement as in Kayne 1998. The proposal is developed within mirror theory and conforms to the assumption that structures are antisymmetrical. The paper also develops a matching notion of scope in terms of featural domination, as opposed to c-command, and applies it to otherwise problematic cases of pied piping. Finally, the interaction of different quantifier types is examined and the patterns are explained invoking morphological considerations on one hand and A-bar reconstruction on the other.

Allan Hazlett, On the indifference objection to the indexical theory

In which I argue that the modal realist can respond to at least one version of Robert Adams's objection from our lack of moral concern about possible people with the view that our moral responses to fictions are our moral responses to possible situations. We think we ought to be morally disgusted by evil characters in a film, say - this feeling of disgust is evidence of our concern for possible evils.

Subscription Publications

Business Ethics: A European Review, April 2003

The case against Microsoft: An ethical perspective, Spinello R.A.
Saints and CEOs: an historical experience of altruism, self-interest and compromise, Molyneaux D.
Whistleblowing and media logic: a case study, van Es R.; Smit G.
Ethical judgments and intentions: a multinational study of marketing professionals, Vitell S.J.; Bakir A.; Paolillo J.G.P.; Hidalgo E.R.; Al-Khatib J.; Rawwas
Business ethics in the Netherlands: a survey, Kaptein M.
Anglo-Saxification of Swedish business: working paper within the project ‘Scandinavian Heritage’, Geer H.D.; Borglund T.; Frostenson M.
Competence and trust guardians as key elements of building trust in east-west joint ventures in Russia, Ayios A.
Ethical perceptions of Asian managers: evidence of trends in six divergent national contexts, Chatterjee S.R.; Pearson C.A.L.

2003-04-12T10:32:00.000-04:00

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Robert Miner - Review of Leon Pompa's (ed. and trans.) Vico: The First New Science

Composed in 1725 but never before published in a full-length English edition, The First New Science is Leon Pompa’s translation of the first version of the master work that Vico wrote and rewrote until his death in 1744. Understandably, the editors of the series in which this serviceable translation appears (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) decided not to go with the text’s full title. Principles of a New Science Concerning the Nature of the Nations, Through Which the Principles of a New System of the Natural Law of the Gentes are Retrieved does not fit very well on a book’s front cover.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Episteme and Techne (Richard Parry)

Epistêmê is the Greek word most often translated as knowledge, while technê is translated as either craft or art. These translations, however, may inappropriately harbor some of our contemporary assumptions about the relation between theory (the domain of ‘knowledge’) and practice (the concern of ‘craft’ or ‘art’). Outside of modern science, there is sometimes skepticism about the relevance of theory to practice because it is thought that theory is conducted at so great a remove from reality, the province of practice, that it can lose touch with it. In fact, at the level of practice, concrete experience might be all we need. And within science, theory strives for a value-free view of reality. As a consequence, scientific theory cannot tell us how things should be -- the realm of ‘art’ or ‘craft’ . So we must turn elsewhere for answers to the profound, but still practical, questions about how we should live our lives. However, some of the features of this contemporary distinction between theory and practice are not found in the relation between epistêmê and technê. As we move chronologically from Xenophon to Plotinus, we go from an author who does not distinguish between the two terms, to an author who has little use for technê because it is so far from reality. It is in Aristotle that we find the basis for something like the modern opposition between epistêmê as pure theory and technê as practice. Yet even Aristotle refers to technê or craft as itself also epistêmê or knowledge because it is a practice grounded in an ‘account’ -- something involving theoretical understanding. Plato -- whose theory of forms seems an arch example of pure theoretical knowledge -- nevertheless is fascinated by the idea of a kind of technê that is informed by knowledge of forms. In the Republic this knowledge is the indispensable basis for the philosophers' craft of ruling in the city. Picking up another theme in Plato's dialogues, the Stoics develop the idea that virtue is a kind of technê or craft of life, one that is based on an understanding of the universe. The relation, then, between epistêmê and technê in ancient philosophy offers an interesting contrast with our own notions about theory (pure knowledge) and (experience-based) practice. There is an intimate positive relationship between epistêmê and technê, as well as a fundamental contrast.

2003-04-11T14:38:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Allan Hazlett, On the meaning of life

In which I determine what the question "Does my life have meaning?" means, and conclude that the answer is "no".

FreE-Publications

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Alcmaeon (Carl Huffman)

Alcmaeon of Croton was an early Greek medical writer and philosopher-scientist. His exact date, his relationship to other early Greek philosopher-scientists, and whether he was primarily a medical writer/physician or a typical Presocratic cosmologist, are all matters of controversy. He is likely to have written his book sometime between 500 and 450 BC. The surviving fragments and testimonia focus primarily on issues of psychology and epistemology and reveal Alcmaeon to be a thinker of considerable originality. He was the first to identify the brain as the seat of understanding and to distinguish understanding from perception. Alcmaeon thought that the sensory organs were connected to the brain by channels (poroi) and may have discovered the poroi connecting the eyes to the brain (i.e. the optic nerve) by excising the eyeball of an animal, although it is doubtful that he used dissection as a standard method. He was the first to develop an argument for the immortality of the soul. He used a political metaphor to define health and disease: The equality (isonomia) of the opposing powers which make up the body (e.g. the wet, the dry, the hot, the cold, the sweet, the bitter etc.) preserve health, whereas the monarchy of any one of them produces disease. Alcmaeon discussed a wide range of topics in physiology including sleep, death and the development of the embryo. It is unclear whether he also presented a cosmology in terms of opposing powers, but we do have some testimonia concerning his views on astronomy. Alcmaeon had considerable impact on his successors in the Greek philosophical tradition. Aristotle wrote a treatise responding to him, Plato adopted his argument for the immortality of the soul, and both Plato and Philolaus accepted his view that the brain is the seat of intelligence.

2003-04-10T13:27:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Michael Smith, Cognitivist vs. Non-Cognitivist Explanations of the Belief-Like and Desire-Like Features of Evaluative Judgement via the NYU seminar on factually defective discourse.

When an agent judges her performance of some action to be desirable she thereby conveys her assessment of the importance of acting in the way in question, an assessment in which she might have more or less confidence and for which she might have more or less justification (Brink 1989). To this extent an agent's evaluative judgements seem to express her beliefs. At the same time, an agent's assessment of the importance of acting in a certain way seems to correlate in a fairly robust way with her motivational potential, at least in so far as she is rational (Hare 1952). No desire to (say) do whatever she happens to value doing seems needed to lead a rational subject who judges it desirable to act in a certain way to be motivated to act in that way, and, indeed, to be more motivated to do that which judges more desirable and less motivated to do what she judges less desirable. To this extent, an agent's evaluative judgements seem to express her desires.

The fact that evaluative judgements have both belief-like and desire-like features leads to a common assumption, an assumption that seems to me to structure much of the debate in contemporary meta-ethics (see also Smith 1994, Ch.1). The assumption is that whereas cognitivism — the view evaluative judgements express beliefs — has an easy time accommodating the belief-like features of evaluative judgement, it faces an insuperable difficulty in accounting for the desire-like features. Non-cognitivism — the view that evaluative judgements express some non-belief state; or, more precisely, that version of non-cognitivism according to which evaluative judgements express desires — is supposed to have the opposite problem. While it has an easy time explaining the connection between evaluative judgement and motivation — desire is, after all, a motivating state — it is supposed to face an insuperable difficulty in accounting for the potential for justification and rational defence that such motivational antecedents must therefore have.

My suspicion is that this assumption is simply mistaken. There is at least one version of cognitivism that can accommodate both the potential that evaluative beliefs have for justification and rational defence and the connection between evaluative beliefs and motivation. Moreover no version of non-cognitivism — or, anyway, no version with which I am familiar — is able to accommodate either of these features. This rather sweeping negative claim about non-cognitivism might be wrong, of course. Perhaps there is some unknown form of non-cognitivism waiting in the wings that can explain either the belief-like features, or the desire-like features, or perhaps even both. But if there is then I suspect that that will be because this more plausible form of noncognitivism differs in some fundamental way from the versions that are currently on offer. I will be happy enough if the effect of this paper is to force non-cognitivists to come up with a more plausible formulation.

Wayne Wright, Individualism, Behavior, and Marr's Theory of Vision

Individualism has it that the type-classification of a subject's token mental states is independent of facts regarding the subject's external (i.e., physical, linguistic, or social) environment. A number of arguments, quite often of the Twin Earth variety, have been offered against the individualistic theory of mind. According to the nonindividualist, these arguments establish that the individuation of the contents of a wide assortment of mental states is metaphysically dependent on external factors. As a response to nonindividualism, some have tried to blunt its force by arguing that the anti-individualistic arguments are successful to a point (namely, with respect to commonsense attributions of attitudes), but that nonindividualism is incompatible with the goals and practices of a mature psychological theory. Tyler Burge attempts to cut off this line of response by arguing that an important psychological theory, David Marr's computational theory of vision, is nonindividualistic, which should lead us to expect that other psychological theories are also nonindividualistic. Gabriel Segal raises several interesting objections to Burge's interpretation of Marr's theory and argues that the theory is reconcilable with individualism.

----, Kant's B-Deduction as a Diptych

Little agreement has been reached on a basic issue relevant to the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories from the B-edition (1787) of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the structure of its argument. This note targets the major interpretative difficulty posed by the Deduction, the need to explain the appearance of two different arguments for apparently similar conclusions, which has led some commentators to dismiss it as a botched patchwork of disparate arguments. Despite the Deduction's dubious initial appearance, in this essay I propose to offer a plausible resolution to the problem at hand on Kantian grounds.

Maria Bittner, Word Order and Incremental Update

This paper makes a case for incremental interpretation of word order, even when it is supposedly 'free'. Incremental updates are feasible, assuming composition by anaphoric bridging (Bittner 2001a, b). The benefits include crosslinguistic insights into centering, prominence-guided anaphora and sententence-internal context-setting role of word order. Since Montague's PTQ it has been assumed that semantic composition crucially relies on bracketing but not on linear order. Accordingly, theories of the syntax-semantics interface have been set up so that word order is not even represented in the syntactic input to semantic composition, at least not in languages whose order is supposedly 'free'.

Challenging this view, Bittner (2001a, b) argues that composition is a dynamic process. The primary burden rests on anaphoric bridging, with anaphora guided by current prominence rather than arbitrary indexation (see also Dekker 1994, Muskens 1995, Stone and Hardt 1999). This reconciles incrementality with crosslinguistically stable basic meanings and compositional rules, even in typologically distant languages with radically different bracketing.

Assuming the anaphoric view of composition, the context-setting role of word order in inter-sentential anaphora carries over to sentence-internal anaphoric bridging. This paper explores the hypothesis that in all languages anaphoric bridging incrementally derives word-by-word updates for surface-faithful tree representations of topological fields, and that 'free' order simply means no fixed links to grammatical functions.

I present empirical evidence from topologically based word-by-word updates for an actual text in Kalaallisut (available at http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~mbittner). The supposedly 'free' word order of this language belies systematic patterns of order-sensitive anaphora. For example, the text is about a man, a woman and a boy, and the woman is predictably referred to as 'his wife' if the last mentioned discourse referent is the man (e.g., (1a), (2a)) but as 'his mother' if it is the boy ((1b), (2b)) — supporting the hypothesis of incremental word-by-word update. Similar order-sensitivity is found for temporal and modal anaphora.

Finally, I present evidence from English that 'rigid' order likewise has anaphoric import, albeit obscured by fixed links to grammatical functions. The overall conclusion is that both 'free' and 'rigid' word orders receive a natural and unified account under the anaphoric perspective.

Benedickt Löwe, The Pointwise View of Determinacy: Arboreal Forcings, Measurability and Weak Measurability (via ILLC)

We prove that for all standard arboreal forcing notions P there is a counterexample for the implication "If A is determined, then A is P-measurable". Moreover, we investigate for which forcing notions this is extendible to "weakly P-measurable".

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Philip L. Quinn - Review of Charles Taylor's Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited

This slender volume derives from lectures Charles Taylor was invited to give at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna in the spring of 2000. It addresses the large question of the place of religion in our secular age. Taylor’s argument takes the form of a confrontation with the thought of William James that is focused on Varieties of Religious Experience and some of the essays in The Will to Believe. As Taylor notes in the preface, his engagement with James “is idiosyncratic and selective” (vi). His aim is to highlight ways in which James speaks to our present religious predicament.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, The Turing Test by Graham Oppy and David Dowe

The phrase “The Turing Test” is most properly used to refer to a proposal made by Turing (1950) as a way of dealing with the question whether machines can think. According to Turing, the question whether machines can think is itself “too meaningless” to deserve discussion (442). However, if we consider the more precise -- and somehow related -- question whether a digital computer can do well in a certain kind of game that Turing describes (“The Imitation Game”), then -- at least in Turing's eyes -- we do have a question that admits of precise discussion. Moreover, as we shall see, Turing himself thought that it would not be too long before we did have digital computers that could “do well” in the Imitation Game.
The phrase “The Turing Test” is sometimes used more generally to refer to some kinds of behavioural tests for the presence of mind, or thought, or intelligence in putatively minded entities. So, for example, it is sometimes suggested that The Turing Test is prefigured in Descartes' Discourse on the Method. (Copeland (2000:527) finds an anticipation of the test in the 1668 writings of the Cartesian de Cordemoy. Gunderson (1964) provides an early instance of those who find that Turing's work is foreshadowed in the work of Descartes.) In the Discourse, Descartes says:

If there were machines which bore a resemblance to our bodies and imitated our actions as closely as possible for all practical purposes, we should still have two very certain means of recognizing that they were not real men. The first is that they could never use words, or put together signs, as we do in order to declare our thoughts to others. For we can certainly conceive of a machine so constructed that it utters words, and even utters words that correspond to bodily actions causing a change in its organs. … But it is not conceivable that such a machine should produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence, as the dullest of men can do. Secondly, even though some machines might do some things as well as we do them, or perhaps even better, they would inevitably fail in others, which would reveal that they are acting not from understanding, but only from the disposition of their organs. For whereas reason is a universal instrument, which can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need some particular action; hence it is for all practical purposes impossible for a machine to have enough different organs to make it act in all the contingencies of life in the way in which our reason makes us act. (Translation by Robert Stoothoff)

Although not everything about this passage is perfectly clear, it does seem that Descartes gives a negative answer to the question whether machines can think; and, moreover, it seems that his giving this negative answer is tied to his confidence that no mere machine could pass The Turing Test: no mere machine could talk and act in the way in which adult human beings do. Since Descartes explicitly says that there are “two very certain means” by which we can rule out that something is a machine -- it is, according to Descartes, inconceivable that a mere machine could produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence; and it is for all practical purposes impossible for a machine to have enough different organs to make it act in all the contingencies of life in the way in which our reason makes us act -- it seems that he must agree with the further claim that nothing that can produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence can be a machine. Given the further assumption -- which one suspects that Descartes would have been prepared to grant -- that only things that think can produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in their presence, it seems to follow that Descartes would have agreed that the Turing Test would be a good test of his confident assumption that there cannot be thinking machines. Given the knowledge that something is indeed a machine, evidence that that thing can produce different arrangements of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence is evidence that there can be thinking machines.

The phrase “The Turing Test” is also sometimes used to refer to certain kinds of purely behavioural allegedly logically sufficient conditions for the presence of mind, or thought, or intelligence, in putatively minded entities. So, for example, Ned Block's “Blockhead” thought experiment is often said to be a (putative) knockdown objection to The Turing Test. (Block (1981) contains a direct discussion of The Turing Test in this context.) Here, what a proponent of this view has in mind is the idea that it is logically possible for an entity to pass the kinds of tests that Descartes and (at least allegedly) Turing have in mind -- to use words (and, perhaps, to act) in just the kind of way that human beings do -- and yet to be entirely lacking in intelligence, not possessed of a mind, etc.

The subsequent discussion takes up the preceding ideas in the order in which they have been introduced. First, there is a discussion of Turing's paper (1950), and of the arguments contained therein. Second, there is a discussion of current assessments of various proposals that have been called “The Turing Test” (whether or not there is much merit in the application of this label to the proposals in question). Third, there is a brief discussion of some recent writings on The Turing Test, including some discussion of the question whether The Turing Test sets an appropriate goal for research into artificial intelligence. Finally, there is a very short discussion of Searle's Chinese Room argument, and, in particular, of the bearing of this argument on The Turing Test.

Subscription Publications

Grazer Philosophische Studien, February 2003

Introduction, Slors M.; Walter S.
Epiphenomenalism and Cross-Realization Induction, Slors M.
Is Type Identity Incompatible with Multiple Realization?, Pauen M.
Need Multiple Realizability Deter the Identity-Theorist?, Walter S.
Emergentism, Irreducibility, and Downward Causation, Stephan A.
The Varieties of Emergence: Their Purposes, Obligations and Importance, Gillett C.
Causation by Relational Properties, De Muijnck W.
Mental Causation: A Real Phenomenon in a Physicalistic World without Epiphenomenalism or Overdetermination, Newen A.;
Warum kommen "mentale Ursachen" physikalischen Erklärungen eigentlich nicht in die Quere? Einige grundsätzliche Überlegungen zur Verwendung des Ausdrucks "A verursacht B" im Umkreis moderner naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien, Ludwig B.
Timothy Williamson, Knowledge and its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, Leitgeb H.
Facts and Universals: Besprechungsaufsatz zu: Herbert Hochberg, Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein: The Revival of Realism. Frankfurt, a. M.: Hänsel-Hohenhausen, 2001, MacBride F.
Christian Kanzian, Ereignisse und andere Partikularien: Vorbemerkungen zu einer mehrkategorialen Ontologie. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh 2001, Seibt J.
Wittgenstein's Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, Schulte J.
Ulrike HEUER, Gründe und Motive. Paderborn: Mentis, 2001, Stoecker R.
Erwin ROGLER und Gerhard PREYER: Materialismus, anomaler Monismus und mentale Kausalität. Frankfurt: Humanities Online, 2001, Walter S.
Alexander PIECHA: Die Begründbarkeit ästhetischer Werturteile. Paderborn: Mentis, 2002, Reicher M.E.
Otto NEUMAIER (Hrsg.): Satz und Sachverhalt. Sankt Augustin: Akademia Verlag, 2001, Bacon J.

Journal of Philosophical Logic, April 2003

Strong Completeness Theorems for Weak Logics of Common Belief, Lismont L.; Mongin P.
A Revenge-Immune Solution to the Semantic Paradoxes, Field H.
Possible-Worlds Semantics for Modal Notions Conceived as Predicates, Halbach V.; Leitgeb H.; Welch P.

Philosophical Studies, March 2003

Color: A Functionalist Proposal, Cohen J.
Are Truth and Reference Quasi-Disquotational?, Buchanan R.
Presentism and the Non-Present, Davidson M.

2003-04-08T12:38:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

John Gardner, Backwards and Forwards with Tort Law.

Draft paper (no footnotes yet) destined for a sympsium on Jules Coleman's work.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Gabriel Uzquiano - Review of Volker Halbach and Leon Horsten's (eds) Principles of Truth

Two strands of research are prominent in the philosophical literature on truth. One is provoked by the semantic paradoxes and makes extensive use of mathematical methods in order to develop sophisticated formal theories of truth. The other attempts to answer such philosophical questions as what it is for a putative truth bearer to be true or false or what practical and theoretical purposes are accomplished by our use of a truth predicate. The present volume consists of nine excellent articles on the interface between the two areas by distinguished logicians and philosophers. The collection aspires to draw attention to important connections between technical developments and insights from philosophical reflection on truth in the conviction that they will illuminate each other.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Analysis (Michael Beaney)

Analysis has always been at the heart of philosophical method, but it has been understood and practised in many different ways. Perhaps in its broadest sense, it might be defined as disclosing or working back to what is more fundamental by means of which something can be explained (which is often then exhibited in a corresponding process of synthesis); but this allows great variation in specific method. The dominance of ‘analytic’ philosophy in the English-speaking world, and increasingly now in the rest of the world, might suggest that a consensus has formed concerning the role and importance of analysis. But this begs the question as to what ‘analysis’ means. On the other hand, Wittgenstein's later critique of analysis in the early (logical atomist) period of analytic philosophy, and Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction, for example, have led some to claim that we are now in a ‘post-analytic’ age. But such criticisms are only directed at particular conceptions of analysis. If we look at the history of philosophy (and even if we just look at the history of analytic philosophy), we find a rich and extensive repertoire of conceptions of analysis which philosophers have continually drawn upon and reconfigured in different ways. Analytic philosophy is alive and well precisely because of the range of conceptions of analysis that it involves. It may have fragmented into various interlocking subtraditions, but those subtraditions are held together by both their shared history and their methodological interconnections. It is the aim of this article to indicate something of the range of conceptions of analysis in the history of philosophy and their interconnections, and to provide a bibliographical resource for those wishing to explore analytic methodologies and the philosophical issues that they raise.

Other Changes of Note

Geoffrey Nunberg, War Speak Worthy of Milton and Chuck Norris, New York Times April 6.

2003-04-06T11:26:00.000-04:00

Personal Papers

Tim Bayne and Elisabeth Pacherie (2003) Monothematic delusions, empiricism, and framework beliefs: A reply to Campbell.

A popular approach to monothematic delusions in the recent literature has been to argue that monothematic delusions involve broadly rational responses to highly unusual experiences. Campbell (2001) calls this the empiricist approach to monothematic delusions, and argues that it cannot account for the links between meaning and rationality. In place of empiricism Campbell offers a rationalist account of monothematic delusions, according to which delusional beliefs are understood as Wittgensteinian framework propositions. We argue that neither Campbell’s attack on empiricism nor his rationalist alternative to empiricism is successful.

Joshua Knobe, Olum, K. & Vilenkin, A. Philosophical Implications of Inflationary Cosmology

Co-authored with two physicists. Argues that every possible history is realized in infinitely many regions of our universe, hence that there are infinitely many planets exactly like the Earth — completely with infinitely many people exactly like you, looking at infinitely many websites exactly like this one. Comments and suggestions would be much appreciated.

Subscription Publications

Metaphor and Symbol April 2003

"Something in the Way She Moves"-Metaphors of Musical Motion, Johnson M.L.; Larson S.
Reversibility, Aptness, and the Conventionality of Metaphors and Similes, Chiappe D.; Kennedy J.M.; Smykowski T.
Metaphor and Knowledge in George Eliot's Middlemarch, Paxman D.
"ARGUMENT IS WAR"-Or is it a Game of Chess? Multiple Meanings in the Analysis of Implicit Metaphors, Ritchie D.

CORRECTIONS: I edited this slightly to remove an incorrect statement that Bayne and Pacherie’s paper was forthcoming. Apologies for my mistake, and thanks to Tim Bayne for spotting it.

2003-04-05T10:59:00.000-05:00

Personal Papers

Chris Kennedy, Towards a Grammar of Vagueness

This paper investigates the grammatical principles governing the interpretation of a class of vague predicates --- gradable adjectives --- focusing on the context dependence of the `standard of comparison' with respect to which these predicates are judged to be true. I show that the range of variability in interpretation of the standard of comparison is broader than has generally been assumed, specifically that there are distinct types of standards with distinct effects on truth conditions, and I argue that an empirically adequate semantics for such predicates must be able to account for this variability. I then argue that the observed range of interpretations can be explained in terms of the interaction of the scalar properties of gradable predicates and general constraints on semantic economy and strength.

Yuncheng Zhou, Water Is Whatever There Is to Water (via the Semantics Archive)

Robert Pasnau, Mind and Extension (Descartes, Hobbes, More)

Michael Sinclair, Postmodern Argumentation: Deconstructing the Presidential Age Limitation (via SSRN)

What is deconstruction? This article examines six texts claiming to deconstruct the Constitution's presidential age limitation to see how they do it. They use five different forms of argument, mostly familiar in "pre-pomo" thought, some fallacious. But for a new and obscure jargon, they have disappointingly little to offer.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Leslie Green - Review of Philip Soper's The Ethics of Deference: Learning from Law’s Morals

According to many legal philosophers, law claims that its subjects have an obligation to obey it. According to many moral philosophers, no credible justification for authority will validate the wide sweep of law’s claims. Even in a reasonably just state, law’s authority is not always justified. But the law doesn’t say that people must obey it except when moral philosophy permits otherwise; the law says people must obey except when it permits otherwise. So what law claims is one thing, what it deserves is another. Philip Soper has for some time been perplexed by this difference. This gap, he feels, marks an “oddity” (xiv), a “conflict” (12), a “stalemate” (13)—maybe even a “paradox.” (52).

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Samuel Clarke by Ezio Vailati

Samuel Clarke (b. 1675-d. 1729) was the most important British philosopher in the generation between Locke and Berkeley, and a leading figure in Newton's circle. His philosophical interests were mostly in theology, metaphysics, and marginally in ethics; epistemology seems to have held little attraction for him. His philosophical vocabulary and some of his metaphysical ideas were influenced by Descartes, whom he followed in holding that the world contains two types of substance, mind and matter, the combination of which constitutes humans. However, he sided with Malebranche and Locke in denying that introspection lets us reach the substance of the soul. Indeed, like Locke and Newton he held that we just don't know the substance of things. Furthermore, Clarke's overall judgment of Descartes was quite critical. He shared the view expressed by More, Pascal, Bayle, and Leibniz that Descartes' system could be, and had been, used to further irreligion and had naturally developed into Spinozism. In particular, he believed that Descartes' identification of matter with extension, and therefore space, entails making it eternal and infinite. He defended natural religion from naturalism (the view that nature constitutes a self-sufficient system of which we are but a part) and revealed religion from deism in two sets of Boyle Lectures and in exchanges with Anthony Collins and Leibniz.

Subscription Publications

Cognitive Science, March 2003

Sequential sampling models of human text classification, Lee M.D.; Corlett E.Y.
Navigating joint projects with dialogue, Bangerter A.; Clark H.H.
Modeling developmental transitions on the balance scale task, van Rijn H.; van Someren M.; van der Maas H.
Intrinsic cognitive models, Waskan J.A.
Lexical effects on compensation for coarticulation: the ghost of Christmash past, Magnuson J.S.; McMurray B.; Tanenhaus M.K.; Aslin R.N.
Area activation: a computational model of saccadic selectivity in visual search, Pomplun M.; Reingold E.M.; Shen J.
ERP evidence for task modulations on face perceptual processing at different spatial scales, Goffaux V.; Jemel B.; Jacques C.; Rossion B.; Schyns P.G.
''Effective systematicity'' in, ''effective systematicity'' out: a reply to Edelman and Intrator (2003), Hummel J.E.
Better limited systematicity in hand than structural descriptions in the bush: A reply to Hummel, Edelman S.; Intrator N.

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, June 2003

The non-relativistic limits of the Maxwell and Dirac equations: the role of Galilean and gauge invariance, Holland P.; Brown H.R.
Symmetry and gauge freedom, Belot G.
Scribbling on the blank sheet: Eddington's structuralist conception of objects, French S.
Are instantaneous velocities real and really instantaneous?: an argument for the affirmative, Smith S.R.
An arbitrarily short reply to Sheldon Smith on instantaneous velocities, Arntzenius F.
Author's response, Smith S.
The principle of least action as the logical empiricist's Shibboleth, Stoltzner M.
Quantum mechanics does not require the continuity of space, Davies E.B.
Consistent quantum theory - Robert B. Griffiths, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 400, US $95, ISBN 0521803497, Omnes R.
The physics of quantum information: quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation, quantum computation - D. Bouwmeester, A. Ekert and A. Zeilinger (Eds.); Germany, 2000, 314pp, US$ 54, ISBN 3-540-66778-4, Duwell A.
Holism in philosophy of mind and philosophy of physics - Michael Esfeld, Dordrecht, 2001, pp. xiv+366, US $113, ISBN 0-7923-7003-1, Healey R.

2003-04-04T08:26:00.000-05:00

Personal Papers

Vivienne Fong - Unmarked 'already': Aspectual expressions in two varieties of English (via the Semantics Archive)

This paper examines variation in the expression of aspect both from a language-internal and a cross-linguistic perspective. We make the following proposals: (i) the morpheme already encodes the meaning of two contrasting phases; (ii) several types of event structures, including that of the Perfect, also encode a similar meaning of contrasting phases, but with particular orderings of phases specified. If in addition we assume Optimality Theory with partial ordering, we derive a range of expressions of a given aspectual meaning that is cross-linguistically supported, and show that already emerges as an unmarked aspectual operator in Colloquial Singapore English.

Arto Anttila and Vivienne Fong - Variation, Ambiguity, and Noun Classes in English (via the Semantics Archive)

This paper explores a theory of the meaning-form relation based on ranked and violable constraints (Prince and Smolensky, 1993), using the English genitive construction as a testing ground. Our main thesis is that partially ordered optimality-theoretic grammars allow us to relate four apparently independent empirical phenomena: (i) categorical grammaticality contrasts; (ii) variation and preferences in expression; (iii) ambiguity and preferences in interpretation; (iv)
lexical organization.

FreE-Publications

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Intergenerational Justice (Lukas Meyer)

Do justice considerations apply to intergenerational relations, that is, to relations between non-contemporaries? If we follow a broad understanding of justice, this is the case if future or past generations can be viewed as holding legitimate claims or rights against present generations, who in turn stand under correlative duties to future or past generations. One of the legitimate claims of future generations vis-à-vis present generations appears to be a claim of distributive justice: Depending on the understanding of the relevant principles of distributive justice to be applied, if there is an intergenerational conflict of interests, present generations may be obligated by considerations of justice not to pursue policies that create benefits for themselves but impose costs on those who will live in the future.

This entry will focus on two questions: first, whether present generations can be duty-bound because of considerations of justice to past and future people; and second, whether other moral considerations should guide those currently alive in relating to both past and future people. Concerning the first question, the entry will suggest that present generations have duties of justice to future people but not to past people. Concerning the second question, the entry will suggest that present generations also have additional moral duties (duties not grounded in correlative rights) to future people as well as moral duties to past people owing, in part, to the rights these people had while alive.

Analysis Preprints, On Staying the Same - Jim Stone

Other Changes of Note

Alexander Pruss - Comments on John Haldane’s ‘The Soul’ and Comments on Alvin Plantinga’s ‘Games Scientists Play’ - both to be presented in Pittsburgh April 5.

2003-04-03T09:54:00.000-05:00

Personal Papers

Tim Bayne, Phenomenal Holism, Internalism, and the Neural Correlates of Consciousness

Robert van Rooy, A modal analysis of modal subordination

In this paper I give a modal two-dimensional analysis of presupposition and modal subordination. I will think of presupposition as a non-veridical propositional attitude. This allows me to evaluate what is presupposed and what is asserted at different dimensions without getting into the binding problem. What is presupposed will be represented by an accessibility relation between possible worlds. The major part of the paper consists of a proposal to account for the dependence of the interpretation of modal expressions, i.e. modal subordination, in terms of an accessibility relation as well. Moreover, I show how such an analysis can be extended from the propositional to the predicate logical level.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, David O’Connor - Review of Jan Patocka's Plato and Europe

Jan Patocka (1907-1977) was a Czech philosopher who lived most of his life quietly refusing to succumb to the oppressive political forces of his native land. These forces deprived him for all but a handful of years of any regular academic employment, including the right to publish. When he died under police interrogation in his Socratic seventieth year, having been a modest participant in the Charter 77 human rights movement, he lived on as a moral hero for many Czechs, including Vaclav Havel.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Provability Logic (Rineke (L.C.) Verbrugge)

Provability logic is a modal logic that is used to investigate what arithmetical theories can express in a restricted language about their provability predicates. The logic has been inspired by developments in meta-mathematics such as Gödel's incompleteness theorems of 1931 and Löb's theorem of 1953. As a modal logic, provability logic has been studied since the early seventies, and has had important applications in the foundations of mathematics.
From a philosophical point of view, provability logic is interesting because the concept of provability in a fixed theory of arithmetic has a unique and non-problematic meaning, other than concepts like necessity and knowledge studied in modal and epistemic logic. Furthermore, provability logic provides tools to study the notion of self-reference.

Other Changes of Note

Torin Alter, Reply to van Gulick

Branden Fitelsen, Comments on Kenneth Presting’s 'Computability and Newcomb’s Problem', presented at the APA Pacific Division meetings, March 2003.

----, Some Recent Applications of Computing to Problem-Solving in Philosophy of Science, Logic, and Metaphysics, presented at the APA Pacific Division meetings (Committee on Philosophy and Computers), March 2003.

François Recanati, Précis of Oratio Obliqua, Oratio Recta: an Essay on Metarepresentation

2003-04-02T06:03:00.000-05:00

Personal Papers

Michael Pelczar, The Unreality of Ordinary Change

Dorothy Edgington, Conditionals, Truth, and Objectivity (via NYU)

Thomas Nagel, The Psychophysical Nexus

Jessica Wilson, Free Will and Mental Causation (March 30 Draft)

FreE-Publications

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Divine Freedom (William Rowe)

The topic of divine freedom concerns the extent to which a divine being -- in particular, the supreme divine being, God -- can be free. Two preliminary questions play a central role in framing the discussion of divine freedom. I: Apart from freedom, what properties are held to be essential to God? II: What conception(s) of freedom govern the inquiry? Discussions of divine freedom typically concern the traditional conception of God as a being who is essentially omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and eternal. With respect to the second question, there are two conceptions of freedom common in philosophical discussion: the compatibilist conception and the libertarian conception. The topic of divine freedom concerns the question of whether God, as traditionally conceived, can enjoy whatever sort and degree of freedom required for moral responsibility, thankfulness, and praise. But when it is asked, “Can God be Free?” it is important to specify what it is about which God might be thought to act freely. Since God is essentially omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and eternal, it is clear that God is not free to weaken himself, to become ignorant, to do something evil, or to destroy himself. But it does seem important that God be free with respect to bringing about any one of a number of possible worlds, as well as free to bring about no world at all. What if, however, among possible worlds there is one that is the best? Is God then free to create any world other than the best? This question has been a center of controversy for centuries. In considering this question and others it will be helpful to consider the views of some important philosophers who have contributed significantly to the literature on the topic of divine freedom. The philosophers whose views will be considered most fully are Leibniz and Samuel Clarke. These two are particularly important because, in addition to being very able philosophers, they engaged each other in the controversy between the compatibilist's and the libertarian view of freedom. In the justly famous Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, Leibniz championed compatibilism, while Clarke represented the libertarian cause. In addition to Leibniz and Clarke, some important 20th century contributions on this topic by Thomas Morris and Robert Adams will also be discussed.

----, Michel Foucault (Gary Gutting)

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French historian and philosopher, associated with the structuralist and post-structuralist movements. He has had wide influence not only (or even primarily) in philosophy but also in a wide range of humanistic and social scientific disciplines.

Subscription Publications

Analysis, April 2003

Causation and perception: the puzzle unravelled, Noë A.
When does ‘everything’ mean everything?, Rayo A.
Paradoxes of multi-location, Barker S.; Dowe P.
3D/4D equivalence, the twins paradox and absolute time, McCall S.; Lowe E.J.
A variant of Benardete's paradox, Laraudogoitia J.p.
The loneliness of the long-distance truck driver, Lycan W.G.; Ryder Z.
Lest we forget ‘the correspondence theory of truth’, Vision G.
Epistemic rights and legal rights, Wenar L.
Choice-egalitarianism and the paradox of the baseline, Smilansky S.
Paradox without satisfaction, Bueno O.; Colyvan M.
Tooley on backward causation, Noordhof P.
Freeing assumptions from the Liar paradox, Read S.
Rieger's problem with Frege's ontology, Denyer N.
Nominalist things, Fitzgerald H.

The Journal of Ethics, vol 7 number 2

After the Terror: A Book and Further Thoughts, Honderich T.
Internalism and the Origin of Rational Motivation, Smit H.
Book Review: Morals from Motives by Michael Slote, Driver J.

2003-04-01T17:59:00.000-05:00

Personal Papers

Henry Stapp, Neuroscience, Atomic Physics and the Human Person

This article is an integration of the contents of three talks and one text that I have prepared and delivered during the past year. They were aimed at four different audiences. The first talk was at a small conference in Philadelphia of scientists who are leading proponents of various diverse efforts to further develop and understand quantum theory. The second talk was at a public event in Switzerland where a number of scientists, and several artists, described to a general audience recent developments aimed at a better understanding the nature of the human person. The third talk was at a conference in Tucson entitled "Quantum Approaches to the Understanding of Consciousness" attended mainly by physicists, psychologists, and neuroscientists. The 'text' was a section of a chapter of a book aimed at neuroscientists. Although the details of these four presentations were different, the essential content was the same: an explanation of the enormous difference in the scientific conception of the connection between mind and brain brought about by the replacement of the essentially seventeenth century classical physical theory of Newton, Galileo, and Descartes by the twentieth century quantum physics of Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, and von Neumann.

Armin von Stechow, Feature Deletion under Semantic Binding

This is the actual text of my NELS talk. It covers the same material as the previous paper, but it is shorter and contains, hopefully, less errors and typos. The paper concentrates on temporal adverbs and the sequence of tenses in different languages.

T. W. Pogge, Can the capability approach be justified? via the Equality Exchange

John Gardner, The Legality of Law.

Short version prepared for the IVR (Lund 12-18 August 2003). Long version to follow.

Barbara Partee and Vladimir Borschev. Genitives, relational nouns, and argument-modifier ambiguity.

In E. Lang, C. Maienborn, and C. Fabricius-Hansen (eds.), Modifying Adjuncts. (Series: Interface Explorations). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

FreE-Publications

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Ingvar Johansson - Review of Georg Meggle's (ed.) Social Facts & Collective Intentionality

The anthology Social Facts & Collective Intentionality contains twenty-three papers by twenty-one authors who approach and discuss philosophical problems connected to the topics stated in the title. Within analytic philosophy, there are in particular three books that have played a major role in shaping the philosophy of social facts: Margaret Gilbert, On Social Facts (1989), Raimo Tuomela, The Importance of Us (1995), and John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (1995). Gilbert and Tuomela have written two papers each in the volume to be reviewed; Searle is present only in spirit.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Plato's Ethics and Politics in The Republic by Eric Brown

Plato's Republic centers on a simple question: is it always better to be just than unjust? The puzzles in Book One prepare for this question, and Glaucon and Adeimantus make it explicit at the beginning of Book Two. To answer the question, Socrates takes a long way around, sketching an account of a good city on the grounds that a good city would be just and that defining justice as a virtue of a city would help to define justice as a virtue of a human being. Socrates is finally close to answering the question after he characterizes justice as a personal virtue at the end of Book Four, but he is interrupted and challenged to defend some of the more controversial features of the good city he has sketched. In Books Five through Seven, he addresses this challenge, arguing (in effect) that the just city and the just human being as he has sketched them are in fact good and are in principle possible. After this long digression, Socrates in Books Eight and Nine finally delivers three "proofs" that it is always better to be just than unjust. Then, because Socrates wants not only to show that it is always better to be just but also to convince Glaucon and Adeimantus of this point, and because Socrates' proofs are opposed by the teachings of poets, he bolsters his case in Book Ten by indicting the poets' claims to represent the truth and by offering a new myth that is consonant with his proofs.

Subscription Publications

Argumentation, vol 17 number 1

Begging the Question: A Case Study, Ritola J.
Rational Comprehension of Arguments in Theoretical Texts: A Program for an Argumentative-Linguistic Approach, Vassiliev L.G.
Who Needs Valid Moral Arguments? (Dedicated to the Memory of R.M. Chisholm, 1916–1999), Nelson M.T.
Special Section on Argumentation and Paradoxes. Introduction, Kienpointner M.
Persuasive Paradoxes in Cicero's Speeches, Kienpointner M.
Logical, Semantic and Cultural Paradoxes, Orlandini A.
Paradoxes in Aulus Gellius, Garcea A.
Paradoxes in the Argumentation of the Comic Double and Classemic Contradiction, García-Hernández B.
Antonyms and Paradoxes, Bertocchi A.

Bioethics, vol 17 number 2

From the editors, Chadwick R.F.; Schüklenk U.
Co-operation despite disagreement: from politics to healthcare, Zohar N.J.
‘Hitting you over the head’: Oncologists’ disclosure of prognosis to advanced cancer patients, Gordon E.J.; Daugherty C.K.
The exploitation argument against commercial surrogacy, Wilkinson S.
Update on unethical use of placebos in randomised trials, Michels K.B.; Rothman K.J.
Lethal injection, autonomy and the proper ends of medicine, Silver D.
Lethal injection, autonomy and the proper ends of medicine: a response to David Silver, Dworkin G.

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, vol 17 number 2

Editorial, Haynes R.P.
Swiss Market for Meat from Animal-Friendly Production –Responses of Public and Private Actors in Switzerland, Phan-Huy S.A.; Fawaz R.B.
Societal Concerns about Pork and Pork Production and Their Relationships to the Production System, Kanis E.; Groen A.F.; De Greef K.H.
Impact of Animal Welfare on Costs and Viability of Pig Production in the UK, Bornett H.L.I.; Guy J.H.; Cain P.J.
Issues Associated with Research on Sheep Parasite Control in New Zealand – a Descriptive Ethic, Morris M.C.
Ingrid Leman Stefanovic, Safeguarding our Common Future. Rethinking Sustainable Development, Lijmbach S.

Nursing Philosophy, April 2003

On the quest for a theory of nursing, Edwards S.; Liaschenko J.
Popper and nursing theory, Allmark P.
Open-mindedness: a virtue for professional practice, Sellman D.
Through pragmatic eyes: philosophy and the re-sourcing of family nursing, Hartrick Doane G.
The exclusion of the other: challenges to the ethics of closeness, Myhrvold T.
Expanding the use of empiricism in nursing: can we bridge the gap between knowledge and clinical practice?, Giuliano K.K.
Fuzzy logic and nursing, Im E-O.; Chee W.
Midnight reckonings: on a question of knowledge and nursing, Ceci C.
A philosophy of nursing conference, Keane K.S.
When Hephaistos wept, Oguz N.Y.
Letter to the editors, Lusby H-R.
Between technology and humanity, the impact of technology on health care ethics, Edwards S.
Law and Ethics for Clinicians, Norton L.

Philosophical Psychology, March 2003

Representationalism vs. anti-representationalism: a debate for the sake of appearance, Haselager P.; de Groot A.; van Rappard H.
The relational correspondence between category exemplars and names, Jameson K.A.; Alvarado N.
Are ethical judgments intrinsically motivational? Lessons from "acquired sociopathy" [1], Roskies A.
What is it like to be conscious? The ontogenesis of consciousness, Cle´ment F.; Malerstein A.J.
The debate between current versions of covariation and mechanism approaches to causal inference, Newsome G.L.
True fiction: philosophy and psychology of religious belief, Pyysia¨inen I.
Depth psychology and self-deception, Lockie R.
A critical review of Nicholas Maxwell's The human world in the physical universe: consciousness,

2003-03-30T23:39:00.000-05:00

Personal Papers
Ralph Wedgwood, Normative Explanations
Peter Carruthers, Why the question of animal consciousness might not matter very much
Daniel Howard-Snyder, Trinity Monotheism
FreE-Publications
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Joanna Crosby - Review of Theodore Schatzki's The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change

Through the analysis of two disparate communities, a 19th-century Shaker village and 20th-century day traders, Theodore Schatzki defends, clarifies, and revises the arguments he presented in Social Practices. These two examples provide him with a rich field of events and interactions that he uses to illustrate his concept of site ontology. The example of the Shaker village illustrates the full range of his theoretical claims. The practice of day trading concentrates Schatzki’s claims about social sites, providing a concrete and concise example of how social sites, social orders, practices, and agency provide a coherent and adequate account of social life.

----, Richard Rorty - Review of Pascal Engel's Truth

Pascal Engel, who teaches at the Sorbonne, is one of the leading figures in the ongoing attempt to make the disciplinary matrix of French philosophy more like that of Anglo-American philosophy, and to get French philosophers to take seriously the problems discussed by their Anglophone colleagues. In this book, he offers a clear, succinct, and very useful review of discussions of the concept of truth by such figures as Moore, Ramsey, Strawson, Davidson, Wright, Rorty, Horwich, and Putnam.

Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer (Mark van Atten)

Dutch mathematician and philosopher who lived from 1881 to 1966. He is traditionally referred to as ‘L.E.J. Brouwer’, with full initials, but was called ‘Bertus’ by his friends.

In classical mathematics, he founded modern topology by establishing, for example, the topological invariance of dimension and the fixpoint theorem. He also gave the first correct definition of dimension.

In philosophy, his brainchild is intuitionism, a revisionist foundation of mathematics. Intuitionism views mathematics as a free activity of the mind, independent of any language or Platonic realm of objects, and therefore bases mathematics on a philosophy of mind. The implications are twofold. First, it leads to a form of constructive mathematics, in which large parts of classical mathematics are rejected. Second, the reliance on a philosophy of mind introduces features that are absent from classical mathematics as well as from other forms of constructive mathematics: unlike those, intuitionistic mathematics is not a proper part of classical mathematics.

Subscription Publications
Journal of Indian Philosophy, October 2002

Introduction: Working Papers on Sanskrit Knowledge-Systems on the Eve of Colonialism, Pollock S.

What is New and what is Navya: Sanskrit Poetics on the Eve of Colonialism, Bronner Y.

The Brahmin Intellectual: History, Ritual and ``Time out of Time'', Houben J.E.M.

Novelty of Form and Novelty of Substance in Seventeenth Century Mmms, McCrea L.

Astronomers and their Reasons: Working Paper on Jyotihstra, Minkowski C.

Journal of Philosophical Logic, February 2003

Operating on Functions with Variable Domains, Calabrese P.G.

Mechanism, Truth, and Penrose's New Argument, Shapiro S.

Thought-Contents and the Formal Ontology of Sense, Boër S.E.

Mind, March 2003

The Non-Identity of a Material Thing and Its Matter, Fine K.

Vagueness: A Minimal Theory, Greenough P.

Vagueness by Numbers? No Worries, Smith N.J.J.

Unsolved Problems with Numbers: Reply to Smith, Keefe R.

Higher-Order Vagueness and the Vagueness of ‘Vague’, Varzi A.C.

Higher-Orders of Vagueness Reinstated, Hyde D.

On the Right Track, Moore A.W.
Reviews

Kant's Empirical Realism, Stern R.

Responsibility in Law and Morality, Corlett J.A.

The Indispensability of Mathematics, Cole J.; Shapiro S.

Descartes' System of Natural Philosophy, Lolordo A.

The Mind's Arrows: Bayes Nets and Graphical Causal Models in Psychology, Hitchcock C.

Wittgenstein and William James, Wilkerson T.E.

Good Knowledge, Bad Knowledge, Faulkner P.

Choosing Character: Responsibility for Virtue and Vice, Smilansky S.

Understanding Philosophy of Science, Mumford S.

Heidegger, Language, and World-Disclosure, Cerbone D.R.

Freud Among the Philosophers: The Psychoanalytic Unconscious and Its Philosophical Critics, Erwin E.

Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life, Adamson P.

Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and the Origins of Meaning, Cavell M.

A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing: The Meanings of Emotion, Cavell M.

Women and Human Development, Lane M.

Living Without Free Will, Mele A.R.

Objectivity and Insight, Stroud B.

Goodness and Justice: Plato, Aristotle and the Moderns, Stalley R.F.

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, number 2 2003

Consciousness as sensory quality and as implicit self-awareness, Kriegel U.

The swaying form: imagination, metaphor, embodiment, Neisser J.U.

How long is “now”? Phenomenology and the specious present, Pockett S.

Sheets-Johnstone, M. The Primacy of Movement, Crease R.P.

Response to Crease's review essay: Exploring Animate Form, Sheets-Johnstone M.

Philosophical Investigations, April 2003

Two Puzzles about Intentions, Scheer R.K.

Wittgenstein as Anthropologist: The Concept of Ritual Instinct, Lara P.d.

Logic in Action: Wittgenstein's Logical Pragmatism and the Impotence of Scepticism, Moyal–Sharrock D.

I Think, Therefore I May Not Exist: Cavell, Skepticism, and the Melodrama of the Unknown Woman, Hall R.L.

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, April 2003

Mental Ballistics Or The Involuntariness Of Spontaneity, Strawson G.

Seeing Causing, Beebee H.

Representational Advantages, Casati R.

Should We Trust Our Intuitions? Deflationary Accounts Of The Analytic Data, Margolis E.; Laurence S.

Unity Of Consciousness And The Self, Rosenthal D.M.

World And Object: Metaphysical Nihilism And Three Accounts Of Worlds, Coggins G.

Imagining Experiences Correctly, Joyce P.

Singularism, Whittle A.

Synthese, March 2003

Manifest Invalidity: Neil Tennant's New Argument for Intuitionism, Cogburn J.

A Really Fuzzy Approach to the Sorites Paradox, Paoli F.

Erotetic Search Scenarios, Winiewski A.

All Brutes are Subhuman: Aristotle and Ockham on Private Negation, Martin J.N.

Externalism and Identity, Drai D.

Consciousness, Higher-Order Content, and the Individuation of Vehicles, Kriegel U.

The Journal of Ethics, vol 7 number 1

Editor's Introduction, Corlett J.A.

Latino/as, Asian Americans, and the Black–White Binary, Alcoff L.M.

``Heart'' Attack: A Critique of Jorge Garcia's Volitional Conception of Racism, Mills C.W.

A Lockean Argument for Black Reparations, Boxill B.R.

Achieving Democratic Equality: Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Reparations, McGary H.

The Morality of a Moral Statute of Limitations on Injustice, Roberts R.C.

Reparations and the Rectification of Race, Zack N.

Other Changes of Note
Geoff Nunberg, Naming of Foreign Parts from Fresh Air.

2003-03-26T04:16:00.000-05:00

Personal Papers
Kent Bach, Context ex Machina
Klaus von Heusinger, The Double Dynamics of Definite Descriptions.

In: J. Peregrin (ed.). Meaning in the Dynamic Turn. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 150-168, in press.

Alessandro Capone, Modal adverbs and discourse ETS PIsa monograph (via the Semantics Archive)
E. Ooghe, E. Schokkaert, D. Van de gaer, Equality of opportunity versus equality of opportunity sets (via the Equality Exchange)

2003-03-25T09:44:00.000-05:00

Personal Papers
Stephen Yablo, New Grounds for Naive Truth Theory
----, Content Carving for Fun and Profit
----, Why I Am Not a Nominalist

Oliver Schulte, Iterated Backward Inference: An Algorithm for Proper Rationalizability
Ken Safir, The Syntax of (In)dependence

The fact that the distribution of anaphoric readings is regulated by the geometry of syntactic form was one of the great discoveries of generative grammar, and even today the nuances of this relationship between form and possible meanings remains a source of new, more subtle discoveries. Perhaps the fundamental property of anaphoric readings is that one form depends on another for its reference. This monograph explores the idea that the fundamental factor determining the distribution of anaphoric dependencies is a simple syntax-dependent principle, but one that comes in the form of a prohibition, rather than a licensing condition. By rejecting the licensing approach, the dominant theory of the last 25 years, important consequences are established for the nature of form-to-meaning relations and the architecture of formal grammar. In addition, some ancillary principles are explored and a variety of anaphoric phenomena are studied in great detail, especially the distribution of bound readings in crossover environments and reconstruction contexts, although the distribution of anaphors, scrambling and ellipsis constructions are also brought to bear on the issues explored.

FreE-Publications
Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Ann E. Cudd - Review of Nancy J. Hirschmann's The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom
This book presents and defends a social constructionist account of freedom and applies the account to three examples of women’s unfreedom to develop and illustrate the use of the theory. Hirschmann’s main aim is to define freedom in a way that is useful to feminism, that is, to understanding the oppression of women. This effort goes against the grain of much recent feminist literature that rejects freedom in favor of autonomy as the basic aim of feminism.

Subscription Publications
Philosophy and Social Criticism, March 2003

Moral discourse as reflection: Comments on James Swindal's Reflection Revisited, Rehg W.

Coordinating perspectives in context: Comments on James Swindal's Reflection Revisited, Fultner B.

Discourse, reflection and commitment, Swindal J.

Procedural justice?: Implications of the Rawls-Habermas debate for discourse ethics, Lafont C.

The failure of the radical democratic imaginary: Zizek versus Laclau and Mouffe on vestigial utopia, Brockleman T.

Totalizing identities: The ambiguous legacy of Aristotle and Hegel after Auschwitz, Long C.P.

Truth and Singularity, Flynn B.

Other Changes of Note
Gregory Carlson, Reference to Kinds in English, his dissertation from 1977, via the Semantics Archive

2003-03-23T15:29:00.000-05:00

Personal Papers
Gregory Chatain, From Philosophy to Program Size

Computer Science Winter School - Estonia, March 2003

Cian Dorr, Vagueness without Ignorance

Jason Stanley, Context, Interest-Relativity, and the Sorites

Forthcoming in: Analysis (October, 2003).

Richard Zach, Characterization of the Axiomatizable Prenex Fragments of First-Order Gödel Logics. arXiv:math.LO/0303011

Subscription Publications
Philosophy, Politics and Economics February 2003

Constitutional quandaries and critical elections, Schofield N.

Political obligation and military service in three countries, Klosko G.; Keren M.; Nyikos S.

On the counterfactual dimension of negative liberty, Kramer M.H.

Flexible citizenship for a global society, Frey B.S.

Reflections on the minimal state, Hasnas J.

Double-counting inequalities, Steiner H.I.

Diogenes 1 April 2002

Introduction: Justifying a Retrospective Approach, Ganascia J-G.; Lebrave J-L.

On the Supposed Neo-structuralism of Hypertext, Ganascia J-G.

The Art of Memory and the Art of Page Layout in the Middle Ages, Carruthers M.J.

Visual Construction of Writing in the Medieval Book, Llamas Pombo E.

Gathering Memory: Thoughts on the History of Libraries, Jacob C.

Principles of HyperNietzsche, D’Iorio P.

Genesis and Hypertext: Exchanging Scores, Crasson A.

Electronic Publishing in France: Closed (Temporarily) for Stock-taking, Ollé J-M.; Sakoun J-P.

Who were the Authors before Homer in Mesopotamia, Glassner J-J.

The Author’s Right to Intellectual Property, Piriou F-M.

External Memories: Hypertext, Traces and Agents, Boy G.

How will they write?, Lebrave J-L.

History and Philosophy of Logic Issue 4 2002

Stoic Conditionals, Necessity and Explanation, LABARGE S.

The Logic of Necessity in Aristotle--an Outline of Approaches to the Modal Syllogistic, Together with a General Account of de dicto- and de re-Necessity, NORTMANN U.

Jaina Logic and the Philosophical Basis of Pluralism, GANERI J.

Essay Review, WEIDEMANN H.

Handbook of philosophical logic, GABBAY D.; GUENTHNER F.