The present crisis of truth, the "post-truth" crisis, puts the philosophy of truth in a new light. It calls for a reexamination of the tasks of the philosophy of truth and sets a new adequacy condition on this philosophy. One of the central roles of the philosophy of truth is to explain the importance of truth for human life and civilization. Among other things, it has to explain what is, or will be, lost in a post-truth era. Clearly, the deflationist (...) answer that the role of truth is to serve as a tool of generalization and oblique endorsement will not do. My account of truth in this paper addresses this task. Truth, I argue, is first and foremost a human value. Its importance to our life/civilization lies, not exclusively, but principally, in the centrality of this value to our humanity. I investigate the ramifications of this answer to the issues discussed in the contemporary philosophy of truth, and I end with a comparison of the substantivist and deflationist approaches to truth in light of this new perspective. (shrink)

This is a critique of Michael P. Lynch’s functional pluralism with respect to truth. The paper is sympathetic to Lynch’s overall approach to truth, but is critical of (i) his platitudinous characterization of the general principles of truth, (ii) his excessive pluralism with respect to the “realizers” of truth, (iii) his treatment of atomic truth, and (iv) his analysis of “mixed” logical inferences. The paper concludes with a proposal for a functional pluralism that puts greater emphasis on the unity of (...) truth. For example: while Lynch regards truth as based on correspondence principles in some domains and on coherence principles in others, the current proposal regards truth as based on correspondence principles in all domains, restricting the plurality of truth to a plurality of correspondence principles. (shrink)

In his 1936 paper,On the Concept of Logical Consequence, Tarski introduced the celebrated definition oflogical consequence: “The sentenceσfollows logicallyfrom the sentences of the class Γ if and only if every model of the class Γ is also a model of the sentenceσ.” [55, p. 417] This definition, Tarski said, is based on two very basic intuitions, “essential for the proper concept of consequence” [55, p. 415] and reflecting common linguistic usage: “Consider any class Γ of sentences and a sentence which (...) follows from the sentences of this class. From an intuitive standpoint it can never happen that both the class Γ consists only of true sentences and the sentenceσis false. Moreover, … we are concerned here with the concept of logical, i.e.,formal, consequence.” [55, p. 414] Tarski believed his definition of logical consequence captured the intuitive notion: “It seems to me that everyone who understands the content of the above definition must admit that it agrees quite well with common usage. … In particular, it can be proved, on the basis of this definition, that every consequence of true sentences must be true.” [55, p. 417] The formality of Tarskian consequences can also be proven. Tarski's definition of logical consequence had a key role in the development of the model-theoretic semantics of modern logic and has stayed at its center ever since. (shrink)

Physicians have a sacred commitment to dedicate themselves through their art and through science to the improvement of the human condition. They have the solemn responsibility to focus on both the prevention and the cure of disease. The human genome project, a 15-year effort to draw the first detailed map in human DNA, will inevitably lead to the widespread implementation of human-gene therapy for the treatment and prevention of disease. We are on the verge of nothing less than a biomedical (...) revolution, the likes of which have not been encountered before. The human genome project will lead to profound changes in the ability to manipulate genes. It will change the way we are born, how we live, how we die, and how we view ourselves in relation to our destiny. Before us lies a difficult transition. (shrink)

Following Henkin’s discovery of partially-ordered (branching) quantification (POQ) with standard quantifiers in 1959, philosophers of language have attempted to extend his definition to POQ with generalized quantifiers. In this paper I propose a general definition of POQ with 1-place generalized quantifiers of the simplest kind: namely, predicative, or “cardinality” quantifiers, e.g., “most”, “few”, “finitely many”, “exactly α ”, where α is any cardinal, etc. The definition is obtained in a series of generalizations, extending the original, Henkin definition first to a (...) general definition of monotone-increasing (M↑) POQ and then to a general definition of generalized POQ, regardless of monotonicity. The extension is based on (i) Barwise’s 1979 analysis of the basic case of M↑ POQ and (ii) my 1990 analysis of the basic case of generalized POQ. POQ is a non-compositional 1st-order structure, hence the problem of extending the definition of the basic case to a general definition is not trivial. The paper concludes with a sample of applications to natural and mathematical languages. (shrink)

'O men, serve your Lord who created you and those before you, so that you may guard against evil. Deals with Allah, Prophet Muhammad PBUH, Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Sahib -- What are the signs of the appearance of the promised messiah? and do these signs appear in the being of Hazrat Mirza Sahib?

This paper explores ethical issues raised by quadratic voting. We compare quadratic voting to majority voting from two ethical perspectives: the perspective of utilitarianism and that of democratic theory. From a utilitarian standpoint, the comparison is ambiguous: if voter preferences are independent of wealth, then quadratic voting out- performs majority voting, but if voter preferences are polarized by wealth, then majority voting may be superior. From the standpoint of democratic theory, we argue that assess- ments in terms of efficiency are (...) too narrow. Voting institutions and political institutions more generally face a legitimacy requirement. We argue that in the presence of inequalities of wealth, any vote buying mechanism, including quadratic voting, will have a difficult time meeting this requirement. (shrink)

To be responsible for their acts, agents must both perform those acts voluntarily and in some sense know what they are doing. Of these requirements, the voluntariness condition has been much discussed, but the epistemic condition has received far less attention. In Who Knew? George Sher seeks to rectify that imbalance. The book is divided in two halves, the first of which criticizes a popular but inadequate way of understanding the epistemic condition, while the second seeks to develop a more (...) adequate alternative. It is often assumed that agents are responsible only for what they are aware of doing or bringing about--that their responsibility extends only as far as the searchlight of their consciousness. The book criticizes this "searchlight view" on two main grounds: first, that it is inconsistent with our attributions of responsibility to a broad range of agents who should but do not realize that they are acting wrongly or foolishly, and, second, that the view is not independently defensible. The book's positive view construes the crucial relation between an agent and his failure to recognize the wrongness or foolishness of what he is doing in causal terms: the agent is responsible when, and because, his failure to respond to his reasons for believing that he is acting wrongly or foolishly has its origins in the same constitutive psychology that generally does render him reason-responsive. (shrink)

The Bounds of Logic presents a new philosophical theory of the scope and nature of logic based on critical analysis of the principles underlying modern Tarskian logic and inspired by mathematical and linguistic development. Extracting central philosophical ideas from Tarski’s early work in semantics, Sher questions whether these are fully realized by the standard first-order system. The answer lays the foundation for a new, broader conception of logic. By generally characterizing logical terms, Sher establishes a fundamental result in semantics. Her (...) development of the notion of logicality for quantifiers and her work on branching are of great importance for linguistics. Sher outlines the boundaries of the new logic and points out some of the philosophical ramifications of the new view of logic for such issues as the logicist thesis, ontological commitment, the role of mathematics in logic, and the metaphysical underpinning of logic. She proposes a constructive definition of logical terms, reexamines and extends the notion of branching quantification, and discusses various linguistic issues and applications. (shrink)

Gila Sher approaches knowledge from the perspective of the basic human epistemic situation—the situation of limited yet resourceful beings, living in a complex world and aspiring to know it in its full complexity. What principles should guide them? Two fundamental principles of knowledge are epistemic friction and freedom. Knowledge must be substantially constrained by the world (friction), but without active participation of the knower in accessing the world (freedom) theoretical knowledge is impossible. This requires a grounding of all knowledge, empirical (...) and abstract, in both mind and world, but the fall of traditional foundationalism has led many to doubt the viability of this ‘classical’ project. Sher challenges this skepticism, charting a new foundational methodology, foundational holism, that differs from others in being holistic, world-oriented, and universal (i.e., applicable to all fields of knowledge). Using this methodology, Epistemic Friction develops an integrated theory of knowledge, truth, and logic. This includes (i) a dynamic model of knowledge, incorporating some of Quine’s revolutionary ideas while rejecting his narrow empiricism, (ii) a substantivist, non-traditional correspondence theory of truth, and (iii) an outline of a joint grounding of logic in mind and world. The model of knowledge subjects all disciplines to demanding norms of both veridicality and conceptualization. The correspondence theory is robust and universal yet not simplistic or naive, admitting diverse forms of correspondence. Logic’s grounding in the world brings it in line with other disciplines while preserving, and explaining, its strong formality, necessity, generality, and normativity. (shrink)

In his In Praise of Blame, George Sher aims to provide an analysis and defense of blame. In fact, he aims to provide an analysis that will itself yield a defense by allowing him to argue that morality and blame "stand or fall together." He thus opposes anyone who recommends jettisoning blame while preserving morality. In this comment, I examine Sher's defense of blame. Though I am much in sympathy with Sher's strategy of defending blame by providing an analysis that (...) shows its connection to our commitment to morality, I question his execution of this strategy. Sher hopes to defend our blaming practices by showing our dispositions to them to be a merely contingent consequence of a belief-desire pair that is itself justified by whatever justifies our commitment to morality. I doubt our blaming practices can be defended in this way. In explaining my doubts, I provide a short comparison of Sher's approach with that of P. F. Strawson in "Freedom of Resentment." I suggest that we might do better by exploring the connection between our commitment to morality and our blaming practices themselves. (shrink)

Blame is an unpopular and neglected notion: it goes against the grain of a therapeutically-oriented culture and has been far less discussed by philosophers than such related notions as responsibility and punishment. This book seeks to show that neither the opposition nor the neglect is justified. The book's most important conclusion is that blame is inseperable from morality itself - that any considerations that justify us in accepting a set of moral principles must also call for the condemnation of those (...) who violate the principles. Properly understood, blame and morality must stand or fall together. (shrink)

This book addresses two main topics—first, the morality of thought and, second, what’s involved in having a free mind. It connects these topics by arguing that to have a free mind, a person must be willing to follow his thoughts wherever they lead, and that this just isn’t possible if the person thinks that some thoughts are morally off limits. The book therefore defends the unpopular position that it is not morally wrong to have even the nastiest of attitudes, the (...) most biased of beliefs, or the vilest of fantasies. Even when some of what we think is ugly, there is beauty and value in our being able to think it. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sozzini’s Ghost: Pierre Bayle and Socinian TolerationBarbara Sher TinsleyPierre Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary (1686–87), a Huguenot exile’s response to the Revocation of Nantes, established its author as a defender of free conscience for pagans, Muslims, Jews, atheists, Catholics, Protestants, Anabaptists, and Socinians. 1 The virtues of Pagans and Atheists are most fully treated in Bayle’s work on the comet. 2 In this work pagans, Catholics (whom Bayle equated with pagan (...) idolators), and atheists were compared to the advantage of the latter, a conclusion that caused widespread scandal and for which Bayle was obliged by his church to write an apology or clarification found in his Dictionary. 3 In toleration there was no juste milieu. 4 Everyone must act according to conscience no matter how errant. Bayle reiterated a position taken in his criticism of the Jesuit Louis Maimbourg’s History of Calvinism. 5 In it Bayle first enunciated the principle that he noted frightened readers and caused a scandal, namely, that error disguised as truth must be allowed all the privileges of truth, i.e., must be permitted to be believed by those convinced they had found truth. This doctrine of errant conscience was basic to Bayle’s understanding of God and man’s search for Him; and after his death it became basic to concepts of individualism, free [End Page 609] inquiry, free speech, and inalienable rights, concepts which were all made concrete during the Enlightenment. Forcing conscience was wrong. 6Bayle’s lack of partisanship in treating religious history invited criticism from Calvinists in Holland. He wrote to Mr. Pecher, a minister at Emmerick, that in his Dictionary he had avoided passionate prejudice with respect to Jesuits or to any other subject. 7 But had he also avoided an indifference to dogma? Not according to his chief critic who was his erstwhile patron turned enemy, Pierre Jurieu, Pastor of the Reformed church of Rotterdam and theologian in the Ecole Illustre. This school, founded expressly for Bayle and Jurieu by the city council of Rotterdam, 8 allowed Bayle to teach philosophy and history. Since Jurieu thought Bayle “indifferent” to dogma, he believed him to be a covert Socinian or atheist. In 1693 he managed to have Bayle dismissed from his teaching post.Indifference was a concept that started with the ancients, particularly Stoics, Skeptics, and Cynics, who regarded everything except virtue as matters of indifference, a posture with which many of Bayle’s writings, though not all, seemed to agree. In scholastic logic indifferentism meant that things were neither particular nor universal but indifferently so according to the viewpoint from which they were regarded. Jurieu made the charge of indifferentism in 1687. 9 He remarked then of Bayle’s concept of the erring conscience that it was “developed with a view to establishing tolerance and a general indifference of all sects and even of all religions.” 10 Bayle was not indifferent to doctrine. He remained loyal to the Reformed faith, defended orthodoxy, and in a letter to his cousin protested that he was ready to show that his work on comets contained nothing that was contrary to right reason, Scripture, or the Confession of faith of the Reformed Church. 11 Paul Dibon noted that Bayle was especially consistent in his concern for divine transcendance rather than indifference. 12 Henry Kamen wrote that Bayle wrote in “complete theological indifference,” 13 a statement ignoring Bayle’s disapproval of much theological heterodoxy, the orthodoxy of others. While Bayle was usually non-partisan, he was never indifferent. Kamen’s remark contrasts [End Page 610] with Theodore Rabb’s, who wrote that Jean Bodin and Bayle took their stand on “the equality of all beliefs” 14 a statement suggesting indifference, but in a positive rather than negative way.Bodin’s own religion was particularly problematic. Tolerant for his age, a whole century before Bayle, Bodin, a Carmelite friar for several years, had already repudiated forcing conscience. In his book on the state he warned that those who do so merely create more intransigence among their already alienated subjects. 15 He also insinuated that a multiplicity of religions—“all the religions of all people”—including natural religion, Jupiter’s... (shrink)

"--Jeffrie Murphy, The Philosophical Review (forthcoming).

Many people, including many contemporary philosophers, believe that the state has no business trying to improve people's characters, elevating their tastes, or preventing them from living degraded lives. They believe that governments should remain absolutely neutral when it comes to the consideration of competing conceptions of the good. One fundamental aim of George Sher's book is to show that this view is indefensible. A second complementary aim is to articulate a conception of the good that is worthy of promotion by (...) the state. The first part of the book analyses attempts to ground the neutrality thesis in the value of autonomy, respect for autonomy, the dangers of a non-neutral state, and scepticism about the good. The second part defends an objective conception of the good which remains sensitive to some of the considerations that make subjectivism attractive. (shrink)

The description for this book, Desert, will be forthcoming.

abstractThis paper addresses the relation between morality and private thought. It is widely agreed that government and society have no business trying to control our thoughts—that, as long as we d...

Gila Sher interviewed by Chen Bo: -/- I. Academic Background and Earlier Research: 1. Sher’s early years. 2. Intellectual influence: Kant, Quine, and Tarski. 3. Origin and main Ideas of The Bounds of Logic. 4. Branching quantifiers and IF logic. 5. Preparation for the next step. -/- II. Foundational Holism and a Post-Quinean Model of Knowledge: 1. General characterization of foundational holism. 2. Circularity, infinite regress, and philosophical arguments. 3. Comparing foundational holism and foundherentism. 4. A post-Quinean model of knowledge. (...) 5. Intellect and figuring out. 6. Comparing foundational holism with Quine’s holism. 7. Evaluation of Quine’s Philosophy -/- III. Substantive Theory of Truth and Relevant Issues: 1. Outline of Sher’s substantive theory of truth. 2. Criticism of deflationism and treatment of the Liar. 3. Comparing Sher’s substantive theory of truth with Tarski’s theory of truth. -/- IV. A New Philosophy of Logic and Comparison with Other Theories: 1. Foundational account of logic. 2. Standard of logicality, set theory and logic. 3. Psychologism, Hanna’s and Maddy’s conceptions of logic. 4. Quine’s theses about the revisability of logic. -/- V. Epilogue. (shrink)

Many philosophers are baffled by necessity. Humeans, in particular, are deeply disturbed by the idea of necessary laws of nature. In this paper I offer a systematic yet down to earth explanation of necessity and laws in terms of invariance. The type of invariance I employ for this purpose generalizes an invariance used in meta-logic. The main idea is that properties and relations in general have certain degrees of invariance, and some properties/relations have a stronger degree of invariance than others. (...) The degrees of invariance of highly-invariant properties are associated with high degrees of necessity of laws governing/describing these properties, and this explains the necessity of such laws both in logic and in science. This non-mysterious explanation has rich ramifications for both fields, including the formality of logic and mathematics, the apparent conflict between the contingency of science and the necessity of its laws, the difference between logical-mathematical, physical, and biological laws/principles, the abstract character of laws, the applicability of logic and mathematics to science, scientific realism, and logical-mathematical realism. (shrink)

Two central themes of Douglas Edwards’s The Metaphysics of Truth are anti-deflationism and substantial pluralism. In Part I of this paper I discuss Edwards’s grounds for rejecting deflationism and suggest a few additional grounds. In Part II I discuss Edward's truth-pluralism and respond to his criticism of my correspondence-pluralism. While these pluralisms share significant features, their differences also raise several important questions.

This paper is a critical discussion of the recent tendency to moralize various aspects of life that were previously viewed as private and discretionary. The paper takes as its starting point six recently unearthed moral prohibitions, and it examines the prospects for defending each as an extension of some familiar moral requirement. Its conclusion is not only that none of the extended prohibitions are defensible, but also that each impedes morality's function by limiting the ability of those whose lives it (...) governs to pursue their own aims as they see fit. (shrink)

This book offers a new and compelling account of distributive justice and its relation to choice. Unlike luck egalitarians, who treat unchosen differences in people's circumstances as sources of unjust inequality to be overcome, Sher views such differences as pervasive and unavoidable features of the human situation. Appealing to an original account of what makes us moral equals, he argues that our interest in successfully negotiating life's ever-shifting contingencies is more basic than our interest in achieving any more specific goals. (...) He argues, also, that the state's obligation to promote this interest supports a principled version of the view that what matters about resources, opportunity, and other secondary goods is only that each person have enough. The book opens up a variety of new questions, and offers a distinctive new perspective for scholars of political theory and political philosophy, and for those interested in distributive justice and luck egalitarianism. (shrink)

Substantivism is a general philosophical methodology advocating a substantive approach to philosophical theorizing. In this article, I present an overview of this methodology with a special emphasis on the field of truth. I begin with a framework for understanding what is at stake in the substantivist–deflationist debate and describe the substantivist critique of deflationism. I then proceed to discuss contemporary substantivism as a positive methodology, present examples of recent substantivist theories of truth, delineate several principles of philosophical substantivism, and connect (...) it to contemporary thought about the nature and methods of philosophy. Due to limitations of space, I am unable to discuss all the forms contemporary substantivism has taken. But I try to give a clear sense of the central principles, challenges, and promise of this methodology. (shrink)

In his 1936 paper,On the Concept of Logical Consequence, Tarski introduced the celebrated definition oflogical consequence: “The sentenceσfollows logicallyfrom the sentences of the class Γ if and only if every model of the class Γ is also a model of the sentenceσ.” [55, p. 417] This definition, Tarski said, is based on two very basic intuitions, “essential for the proper concept of consequence” [55, p. 415] and reflecting common linguistic usage: “Consider any class Γ of sentences and a sentence which (...) follows from the sentences of this class. From an intuitive standpoint it can never happen that both the class Γ consists only of true sentences and the sentenceσis false. Moreover, … we are concerned here with the concept of logical, i.e.,formal, consequence.” [55, p. 414] Tarski believed his definition of logical consequence captured the intuitive notion: “It seems to me that everyone who understands the content of the above definition must admit that it agrees quite well with common usage. … In particular, it can be proved, on the basis of this definition, that every consequence of true sentences must be true.” [55, p. 417] The formality of Tarskian consequences can also be proven. Tarski's definition of logical consequence had a key role in the development of the model-theoretic semantics of modern logic and has stayed at its center ever since. (shrink)

On religion, philosophy philosophical study of religions and universe.

My aim in this essay is to explore the implications of the fact that even our most deeply held moral beliefs have been profoundly affected by our upbringing and experience—that if any of us had had a sufficiently different upbringing and set of experiences, he almost certainly would now have a very different set of moral beliefs and very different habits of moral judgment. This fact, together with the associated proliferation of incompatible moral doctrines, is sometimes invoked in support of (...) liberal policies of toleration and restraint, but the relevance of these considerations to individual moral deliberation has received less attention. In Sections II through V, I shall argue that this combination of contingency and controversy poses a serious challenge to the authority of our moral judgments. In Section VI, I shall explore a promising way of responding to this challenge. (shrink)

The paper offers a new analysis of the difficulties involved in the construction of a general and substantive correspondence theory of truth and delineates a solution to these difficulties in the form of a new methodology. The central argument is inspired by Kant, and the proposed methodology is explained and justified both in general philosophical terms and by reference to a particular variant of Tarski's theory. The paper begins with general considerations on truth and correspondence and concludes with a brief (...) outlook on the "family" of theories of truth generated by the new methodology. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate how differences in approach to truth and logic (in particular, a deflationist vs. a substantivist approach to these fields) affect philosophers’ views concerning pluralism and normativity in these fields. My perspective on truth and logic is largely epistemic, focusing on the role of truth in knowledge (rather than on the use of the words “true” and “truth” in natural language), and my reference group includes Carnap (1934), Harman (1986), Horwich (1990), Wright (1992), Beall and Restall (...) (2006), Field (2009), Lynch (2009), and Sher (2016a).1 Whenever possible, I focus on positive rather than negative views on the issues involved, although in some cases this is not possible. (shrink)

[TofC cont.] Social ideals: Justice, A utilitarian theory of justice / J.S. Mill, Egalitarianism with changed motivation / G. Cohen; Equality, Multidimensional equality / M. Walzer, Equality of capacity / A. Sen; Liberty, rights, property, and self-ownership, A defense of the primacy of liberty rights / L. Lomasky, Atomism and the primacy of rights / C. Taylor -- Social institutions: Education, Educating about familial values / W. Galston, For vouchers and parental choice / M. Friedman; Family, In defense of filial (...) obligations / C.H. Sommers; Punishment, A utilitarian theory of punishment / J. Bentham. In [this book, the editors] provide students [with] a wide variety of readings covering the problems of political and social philosophy. Such topics as political obligation, democracy, rights, and justice are represented, in addition to less widely discussed subjects as the family. Both common approaches and those which are less familiar are presented, as well as recent developments in the topic area. -Back cover. (shrink)