Authors have a lot of leeway with regard to what they can make true in their story. In general, if the author says that p is true in the fiction we’re reading, we believe that p is true in that fiction. And if we’re playing along with the fictional game, we imagine that, along with everything else in the story, p is true. But there are exceptions to these general principles. Many authors, most notably Kendall Walton and Tamar Szabó Gendler, (...) have discussed apparent counterexamples when p is “morally deviant”. Many other statements that are conceptually impossible also seem to be counterexamples. In this paper I do four things. I survey the range of counterexamples, or at least putative counterexamples, to the principles. Then I look to explanations of the counterexamples. I argue, following Gendler, that the explanation cannot simply be that morally deviant claims are impossible. I argue that the distinctive attitudes we have towards moral propositions cannot explain the counterexamples, since some of the examples don’t involve moral concepts. And I put forward a proposed explanation that turns on the role of ‘higher-level concepts’, concepts that if they are satisfied are satisfied in virtue of more fundamental facts about the world, in fiction, and in imagination. (shrink)

We provide a new interpretation of Zeno’s Paradox of Measure that begins by giving a substantive account, drawn from Aristotle’s text, of the fact that points lack magnitude. The main elements of this account are (1) the Axiom of Archimedes which states that there are no infinitesimal magnitudes, and (2) the principle that all assignments of magnitude, or lack thereof, must be grounded in the magnitude of line segments, the primary objects to which the notion of linear magnitude applies. Armed (...) with this account, we are ineluctably driven to introduce a highly constructive notion of (outer) measure based exclusively on the total magnitude of potentially infinite collections of line segments. The Paradox of Measure then consists in the proof that every finite or potentially infinite collection of points lacks magnitude with respect to this notion of measure. We observe that the Paradox of Measure, thus understood, troubled analysts into the 1880’s, despite their knowledge that the linear continuum is uncountable. The Paradox was ultimately resolved by Borel in his thesis of 1893, as a corollary to his celebrated result that every countable open cover of a closed line segment has a finite sub-cover, a result he later called the “First Fundamental Theorem of Measure Theory.” This achievement of Borel has not been sufficiently appreciated. We conclude with a metamathematical analysis of the resolution of the paradox made possible by recent results in reverse mathematics. (shrink)

Normative Externalism argues that it is not important that people live up to their own principles. What matters, in both ethics and epistemology, is that they live up to the correct principles: that they do the right thing, and that they believe rationally. This stance, that what matters are the correct principles, not one's own principles, has implications across ethics and epistemology. In ethics, it undermines the ideas that moral uncertainty should be treated just like factual uncertainty, that moral ignorance (...) frequently excuses moral wrongdoing, and that hypocrisy is a vice. In epistemology, it suggests we need new treatments of higher-order evidence, and of peer disagreement, and of circular reasoning, and the book suggests new approaches to each of these problems. Although the debates in ethics and in epistemology are often conducted separately, putting them in one place helps bring out their common themes. One common theme is that the view that one should live up to one's own principles looks less attractive when people have terrible principles, or when following their own principles would lead to riskier or more aggressive action than the correct principles. Another common theme is that asking people to live up to their principles leads to regresses. It can be hard to know what action or belief complies with one's principles. And now we can ask, in such a case should a person do what they think their principles require, or what their principles actually require? Both answers lead to problems, and the best way to avoid these problems is to simply say people should follow the correct principles. (shrink)

Certain puzzling cases have been discussed in the literature recently which appear to support the thought that knowledge can be obtained by way of deduction from a falsehood; moreover, these cases put pressure, prima facie, on the thesis of counter closure for knowledge. We argue that the cases do not involve knowledge from falsehood; despite appearances, the false beliefs in the cases in question are causally, and therefore epistemologically, incidental, and knowledge is achieved despite falsehood. We also show that the (...) principle of counter closure, and the concomitant denial of knowledge from falsehood, is well motivated by considerations in epistemological theory--in particular, by the view that knowledge is first in the epistemological order of things. (shrink)

Abstract Kant claims that the basis of a judgment of taste is a merely subjective representation and that the only merely subjective representations are feelings of pleasure or displeasure. Commentators disagree over how to interpret this claim. Some take it to mean that judgments about the beauty of an object depend only on the state of the judging subject. Others argue instead that, for Kant, the pleasure we take in a beautiful object is best understood as a response to its (...) qualities, and that, accordingly, feelings of pleasure or displeasure are no different from other representations, such as colors or smells. While I agree that the judgment of taste is best understood as asserting a claim about an object's qualities, I argue that the distinction Kant makes between feelings of pleasure or displeasure and other representations should not be ignored. I show that one's liking or disliking for an object is merely subjective in the sense that its significance depends on what one has made of oneself through one's aesthetic education. The judgment of taste, then, is merely subjective because one must first become the kind of person whose feelings have the right significance at the right time before one can determine whether an object's qualities make it beautiful. (shrink)

The relation between the Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions is "the great problem" of Western philosophy, according to Emmanuel Levinas. In this book Brian Schroeder, Silvia Benso, and an international group of philosophers address the relationship between Levinas and the world of ancient thought. In addition to philosophy, themes touching on religion, mythology, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, and politics are also explored. The volume as a whole provides a unified and extended discussion of how an engagement between Levinas and thinkers (...) from the ancient tradition works to enrich understandings of both. This book opens new pathways in ancient and modern philosophical studies as it illuminates new interpretations of Levinas' ethics and his social and political philosophy. (shrink)

This essay investigates whether or not we should think that the things we say are identical to the things our sentences mean. It is argued that these theoretical notions should be distinguished, since assertoric content does not respect the compositionality principle. As a paradigmatic example, Kaplan's formal language LD is shown to exemplify a failure of compositionality. It is demonstrated that by respecting the theoretical distinction between the objects of assertion and compositional values certain conflicts between compositionality and contextualism are (...) avoided. This includes the conflict between eternalism and the semantics of tense, the embedding problems for contextualism about epistemic modals and taste claims, and the conflict between direct reference and the semantics of bound pronouns (and monstrous operators). After presenting the theoretical picture which distinguishes assertoric content from compositional semantic value, some objections to the picture are addressed. In so doing, the objection from King (2003) stemming from apparent complications with the interaction of temporal expressions and attitude reports is assessed and shown to be non-threatening. (shrink)

This article argues that, in public and policy contexts, the ways in which many scientists talk about uncertainty in simulations of future climate change not only facilitates communications and cooperation between scientific and policy communities but also affects the perceived authority of science. Uncertainty tends to challenge the authority of chmate science, especially if it is used for policy making, but the relationship between authority and uncertainty is not simply an inverse one. In policy contexts, many scientists are compelled to (...) talk about uncertainty but do not wish to imply that uncertainty is a serious challenge to the authority of scientific knowledge or to its substantial use in policy making. "Boundary-ordering devices, " the contextual discursive attempts to reconcile uncertainty and authority in science, depend critically for their success on their "dual" interpretation: at a general level across a boundary and differently on either side of it. The authors empirically identify a range of such boundary-ordering devices in the climate field. (shrink)

"Brian Orend's The Morality of War promises to become the single most comprehensive and important book on just war for this generation. It moves far beyond the review of the standard just war categories to deal comprehensively with the new challenges of the conflict with terrorism. It thoughtfully reviews every major military conflict of the past few decades, mining them for implications of the evolving tradition of just war thinking. It concludes with a critical engagement with the major alternatives (...) to just war thinking: pacifism and 'realism.' It is, in short, the most comprehensive and thoughtful assessment of all aspects of just war since Michael Walzer's classic Just and Unjust Wars." - Martin L. Cook, United States Air Force Academy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Most theorists agree that our social order includes a distinctive legal dimension. A fundamental question is that of whether reference to specific legal phenomena always involves a commitment to a particular moral view. Whereas many philosophers advance the ‘positivist’ claim that any correspondence between morality and the law is just a function of political circumstance, natural law theorists insist that law is intrinsically moral. Each school claims the crucial advantage of consistency with our folk concept. Drawing on the notion (...) of dual character concepts, we develop a set of hypotheses about the intuitive relation between a rule’s moral and legal aspects. We then report a set of studies that conflict unexpectedly with the predictions by legal positivists. Intuitively, an evil rule is not a fully-fledged instance of law. (shrink)

For a long time before the ‘climategate’ emails scandal of late 2009 which cast doubt on the propriety of science underpinning the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, attention to climate change science and policy has focused solely upon the truth or falsity of the proposition that human behaviour is responsible for serious global risks from anthropogenic climate change. This article places such propositional concerns in the perspective of a different understanding of the relationships between scientific knowledge and public policy issues (...) from the conventional ‘translation’ model, in which prior scientific research and understanding is communicated and translated into corresponding policies — or not, if it remains disputed and overly uncertain. Explaining some of the key contingencies and bases for uncertainty in IPCC climate projections and human influences, I show how social and technical analysis of climate science is not about denial of the scientific propositional claims at issue, but about understanding the conditional and essentially ambiguous epistemic character of any such knowledge, however technically sophisticated and robust it may be. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it is entirely plausible that existing scientific representations of climate change and its human causes may understate the risks induced by prevailing social-economic processes rather than exaggerate them. As the article shows, the public meanings given to climate science, and to ‘the climate problem’, and thus also the public culture which that knowledge is supposed to inform, are themselves already in key respects presumed and imposed by the science and its framing. This gives rise to perverse effects on public readiness to take informed democratic responsibility for ‘the global climate problem’, and associated cross-cutting issues which existing scientific framings of public policy erase from view. (shrink)

Kaplan (1989a) insists that natural languages do not contain displacing devices that operate on character—such displacing devices are called monsters. This thesis has recently faced various empirical challenges (e.g., Schlenker 2003; Anand and Nevins 2004). In this note, the thesis is challenged on grounds of a more theoretical nature. It is argued that the standard compositional semantics of variable binding employs monstrous operations. As a dramatic first example, Kaplan’s formal language, the Logic of Demonstratives, is shown to contain monsters. For (...) similar reasons, the orthodox lambda-calculus-based semantics for variable binding is argued to be monstrous. This technical point promises to provide some far-reaching implications for our understanding of semantic theory and content. The theoretical upshot of the discussion is at least threefold: (i) the Kaplanian thesis that “directly referential” terms are not shiftable/bindable is unmotivated, (ii) since monsters operate on something distinct from the assertoric content of their operands, we must distinguish ingredient sense from assertoric content (cf. Dummett 1973; Evans 1979; Stanley 1997), and (iii) since the case of variable binding provides a paradigm of semantic shift that differs from the other types, it is plausible to think that indexicals—which are standardly treated by means of the assignment function—might undergo the same kind of shift. (shrink)

In the first full-length analysis of Wittgenstein's Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, Brian R. Clack presents a fresh and innovative interpretation of Wittgenstein's conception of religion. While previous commentators have tended to sideline the Remarks on Frazer, Clack shows how the key to Wittgenstein's thought on religion lies in these remarks on primitive magico-religious observances. This book shows that Wittgenstein neither embraces expressivism, as it is generally assumed, nor straightforwardly denies instrumentalism. Focusing instead on Wittgenstein's suggestion that magic is (...) somehow akin to metaphysics, a view of ritual as the spontaneous expression of human beings is presented. (shrink)

Among politicians and policy-makers it is almost universally assumed that more transparency in government is better. Until now, philosophers have almost completely ignored the topic of transparency, and when it is discussed there seems to be an assumption that increased transparency is a good thing, which results in no serious attempt to justify it. In this book Brian Kogelmann shows that the standard narrative is false and that many arguments in defence of transparency are weak. He offers a comprehensive (...) philosophical analysis of transparency in government, examining both abstract normative defences of transparency, and transparency's role in the theory of institutional design. His book shows that even when the arguments in favour of transparency are compelling, the costs associated with it are just as forceful as the original arguments themselves, and that strong arguments can be made in defence of more opaque institutions. (shrink)

The problem of evil -- Aquinas, philosophy, and theology -- What there is -- Goodness and badness -- God the creator -- God's perfection and goodness -- The creator and evil -- Providence and grace -- The trinity and Christ -- Aquinas on god and evil.

Dominant social sciences approaches to complexity suggest that awareness of complexity in late-modern society comes from various recent scientific insights. By examining today’s plant and human genomics sciences, I question this from both ends: first suggesting that typical public culture was already aware of particular salient forms of complexity, such as limits to predictive knowledge ; second, showing how up-to-date genomics science expresses both complexity and its opposites, predictive determinism and reductionism, as coexistent representations of nature and scientific knowledge. I (...) suggest we can understand this self-authored epistemic confusion in modern science by avoiding ‘the usual suspects’ – fading simpler discourses left over from previous scientific times; media oversimplifications; or the need to ‘simplify’ to essentials, for ignorant publics – and looking instead at the silent imaginations of extra-scientific reference groups reflected and projectively performed in scientific discourses-practices themselves. Thus contradictions of complex scientific understandings are systematically created by science’s own embodiment of epistemic commitments influenced by commercial cultures, and by imagined publics who are important new constructed objects of institutional scientific concerns – over authority and trust. New dimensions of complexity thus come alive through paying attention to neglected tacit dimensions of science–society interrelations. (shrink)

Andrew Webster proposes that science and technology studies align itself more thoroughly with practical policy contexts, actors and issues, so as to become more useful, and thus more a regular actor in such worlds. This commentary raises some questions about this approach. First, I note that manifest influence in science or policy or both should not become-by default, or deliberately-a criterion of intellectual quality for STS research work. I distinguish between reflective historical work, which delineates the contingent ways in which (...) existing policy and technoscientific cultures have become entrenched as such inscribed and perhaps dysfunctional institutional habit; and, work of the kind that Webster's three case studies exemplify, that is, geared to influence policy-decision outcomes. I suggest that many of the important issues facing STS-and "policy"-are not explicit "policy-decision issues" as such, but implicit "policy syndromes" that need naming, diagnosing and open, if enforced, institutional reflection. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Quine insisted that the satisfaction of an open modalised formula by an object depends on how that object is described. Kripke's ‘objectual’ interpretation of quantified modal logic, whereby variables are rigid, is commonly thought to avoid these Quinean worries. Yet there remain residual Quinean worries for epistemic modality. Theorists have recently been toying with assignment-shifting treatments of epistemic contexts. On such views an epistemic operator ends up binding all the variables in its scope. One might worry that this yields (...) the undesirable result that any attempt to ‘quantify in’ to an epistemic environment is blocked. If quantifying into the relevant constructions is vacuous, then such views would seem hopelessly misguided and empirically inadequate. But a famous alternative to Kripke's semantics, namely Lewis' counterpart semantics, also faces this worry since it also treats the boxes and diamonds as assignment-shifting devices. As I'll demonstrate, the mere fact that a variable is bound is no obstacle to binding it. This provides a helpful lesson for those modelling de re epistemic contexts with assignment sensitivity, and perhaps leads the way toward the proper treatment of binding in both metaphysical and epistemic contexts: Kripke for metaphysical modality, Lewis for epistemic modality. (shrink)

None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin.Henry Thoreau, Walden.