A widely accepted thesis in the philosophy of language is that natural language proper names are rigid designators, and that they are so de jure, or as a matter of the “semantic rules of the language.” This paper questions this claim, arguing that rigidity cannot be plausibly construed as a property of name types and that the alternative, rigidity construed as a property of tokens, means that they cannot be considered rigid de jure; rigidity in this case must be viewed (...) as a pragmatic and not a semantic property. (shrink)

This paper argues that Kripke's claim that there are contingent a priori truths would be vitiated by a seemingly unorthodox understanding of the term "a priori".

This paper argues that English quantifier phrases of the form ‘every F’ admit of a literal referential interpretation, contrary to the standard semantic account of this expression, according to which it denotes a set and a second-order relation. Various arguments are offered in favor of the referential interpretation, and two likely objections to it are forestalled.

This paper questions the claim that definite descriptions have a referential semantics. Two possible definitions of “referential meaning” are discussed, and it is argued that definite descriptions are not referential according to either one. Devitt’s (2004, 2007) recent account of descriptions’ referential meaning is also briefly examined, and some problems with it are pointed out. It is suggested (though not shown) that the troubles with specifying exactly in what sense definite descriptions are referential point to the incoherence of the very (...) notion of semantic reference and support instead a pragmatic understanding of reference. In Spanish. (shrink)

This paper has two purposes: the first is to critically examine Kripke’s well-known arguments against Descriptivism and suggest that they are not as decisive as many have thought; the second is to argue that proper names do encode descriptive information of various kinds, that such information may be truth-conditionally significant, and hence that a name’s truth-conditional contribution is not limited to its referent.

This paper challenges the Kripke-Putnam thesis about natural kind terms, according to which natural kind terms are referential and rigid. I argue that natural kind terms are semantically underdetermined expressions, and are therefore intrinsically neither referential nor rigid. After reviewing Kripke’s and Putnam’s original arguments, I look at examples of natural kind terms discussed by them and others in the literature, aiming to show that they are indeed semantically underdetermined. I conclude that contextualist considerations should be taken into account to (...) explain the differing truth-conditional values these expressions may have. In Spanish. (shrink)

The Direct Reference view of proper names remains popular today, even though it is dogged by three longstanding problems: Frege’s puzzle of identity statements, Frege’s second puzzle concerning substitution in non-extensional contexts, and the problem of empty names. This paper criticizes the recent attempts by Braun and Soames to rescue Direct Reference from these traditional objections.

Se examina un argumento de Musonio Rufo sobre la relación entre el placer y el bien moral. In Spanish.

This paper argues that proper names may have literal non-referential truth-conditional values, thereby undermining the notion of semantic reference.

Algorithmic predictions are promising for insurance companies to develop personalized risk models for determining premiums. In this context, issues of fairness, discrimination, and social injustice might arise: Algorithms for estimating the risk based on personal data may be biased towards specific social groups, leading to systematic disadvantages for those groups. Personalized premiums may thus lead to discrimination and social injustice. It is well known from many application fields that such biases occur frequently and naturally when prediction models are applied to (...) people unless special efforts are made to avoid them. Insurance is no exception. In this paper, we provide a thorough analysis of algorithmic fairness in the case of insurance premiums. We ask what “fairness” might mean in this context and how the fairness of a premium system can be measured. For this, we apply the established fairness frameworks of the fair machine learning literature to the case of insurance premiums and show which of the existing fairness criteria can be applied to assess the fairness of insurance premiums. We argue that two of the often-discussed group fairness criteria, independence (also called statistical parity or demographic parity) and separation (also known as equalized odds), are not normatively appropriate for insurance premiums. Instead, we propose the sufficiency criterion (also known as well-calibration) as a morally defensible alternative that allows us to test for systematic biases in premiums towards certain groups based on the risk they bring to the pool. In addition, we clarify the connection between group fairness and different degrees of personalization. Our findings enable insurers to assess the fairness properties of their risk models, helping them avoid reputation damage resulting from potentially unfair and discriminatory premium systems. (shrink)

A review and discussion of Keith DeRose's "The Case for Contextualism".

Bien des difficultés que nous éprouvons à comprendre les oeuvres philosophiques des Anciens proviennent souvent du fait que nous commmettons en les interprétant un double anachronisme: nous croyons que, comme beaucoup d'oeuvres modernes, elles sont destinées à communiquer des informations concernant un contenu conceptuel donné et que nous pouvons aussi en tirer directement des renseignements clairs sur la pensée et la psychologie de leur auteur. Mais en fait, elles sont très souvent des exercices spirituels que l'auteur pratique lui-même et fait (...) pratiquer à son lecteur. Elles sont destinées à former les âmes. Elles ont une valeur psychagogique. (shrink)

Challenging the assumption that that the capitalist transformation includes a radical break with the past, this edited volume traces how historically older forms of social inequality are transformed but persist in the present to shape the social structure of contemporary societies in the global South. Each society comprises an interpretation of itself - including the meaning of life, the concept of a human being and the notion of a collective. This volume studies the interpretation that various societies have of themselves. (...) This interpretation is referred to as social ontology. All chapters of the edited volume focus on the relation between social ontology and structures of inequality. They argue that each society comprises several historical layers of social ontology that correspond to layers of inequality, which are referred to as sociocultures. Thereby, the volume explains why and how structures of inequality differ between contemporary collectives in the global South, even though all of them seem to have similar structures, institutions, and economies. The volume is aimed at academics, students and the interested public looking for a novel theorization of social inequality pertaining to collectives in the global South. (shrink)

There is a very plausible principle of the transitivity of justifying reasons. It says that if "p" is better justified than "q" (all things considered) and "q" better than "r", then "p" is better justified than "r" (all things considered). There is a corresponding principle of rational theory choice. Call one theory "a better theory than" another theory if all criteria of theory choice considered (explanatory power, simplicity, empirical adequacy, etc.), the first theory meets the criteria better than the second (...) theory. The corresponding transitivity principle says that if theory A is a better theory than theory B and if theory B is a better theory than theory C, then A is a better theory than theory C. I argue against this principle. It turns out that whenever there are 2 or more relevant and independent criteria of theory evaluation, and whenever at least of one the criteria is "non-linear" in a certain sense, there may be violations of transitivity which do not violate any standards of rationality (of theory choice). This shows, again, that theory choice cannot be seen as merely the application of given rules of rational theory choice. (shrink)

Ricoeur has written about translation as an ethical paradigm. Translation from one language to another, and within one’s own language, provides both a metaphor and a real mechanism for explaining oneself to the other. Attempting and failing to achieve symmetry between two languages is a manifestation of the asymmetry inherent in human relationships. If actively pursued, translation can show us how to forgive other people for being different from us and thus serves as a paradigm for tolerance. In full acceptance (...) that this will be impossible, Ricoeur uses the model of translation as a way of understanding European integration, with three aspects: translation, shared narrative and shared forgiveness of Europe’s history. These models provide a strong statement about tolerance and become even more significant through their conversation with the negativity that suffuses them. He draws on his knowledge of psychoanalysis to explain that the translator suffers through remembering and through mourning the loss of perfection; there must be acknowledgement of deficiency. This acceptance of imperfection and of limits to success is a key element in Ricoeur’s philosophy and is explored from the 1950s onwards in his study of negativity; denied by phenomenology and explored by Hegel. Negation is vital for understanding the world, but it can preclude us from access to meaning when it becomes negativity. Translation can provide the bridge to span the tension between the pathology of denial and different interpretations, and projection of evil into others, which I believe is at the heart of the perceived incompatibilities between Islam and the West. There is a political urgency to this enterprise, given the ‘othering’ of the Muslim world that has replaced the Cold War dichotomies between Communist as ‘other’ and the capitalist world. References to the Muslim as the current ‘other’ will be part of my discussion. As well as seeking to understand Ricoeur’s model of translation, we will examine whether his model works in a world where many speak no Arabic, Urdu or Farsi, or indeed whether it has any relevance for people who do not translate from one language to another. (shrink)

The core argument of this article is that Adorno adopts the distinction between an abstract and a concrete universal from Hegel and criticizes Hegel, on that basis, as abstract. The first two parts of the article outline that both thinkers take the abstract universal to be the form of a false type of knowledge and society, and the concrete universal to be a positive aim. However, as the third part argues, Adorno rejects how the concrete universal is understood in Hegel’s (...) philosophy and formulates a different conception of it. The fourth part questions if Adorno manages to overcome the problems he identifies in Hegel or whether they are inherent to the programme of dialectics both endorse. (shrink)

Introduction to and overview over my book "Epistemic Contextualism. A Defense" (OUP 2016).

Review of Fodor, "Hume Variations".

Ricœur lectured and wrote for over twenty years on negation (‘Do I understand something better if I know what it is not, and what is not-ness?') and never published his extensive writings on this subject. Ricœur concluded that there are multiple forms of negation; it can, for example, be the other person (Plato), the not knowable nature of our world (Kant), the included opposite (Hegel), apophatic spirituality (Plotinus on not being able to know God) and existential nothingness (Sartre). Ricœur, working (...) on Kant, Hegel and Sartre, decided that all these forms of negation are incompatible and also fatally flawed because they fail to resolve false binaries of negative: positive. Alison Scott-Baumann demonstrates how Ricœur subsequently incorporated negation into his linguistic turn, using dialectics, metaphor, narrative, parable and translation in order to show how negation is in us, not outside us: language both creates and clarifies false binaries. He bestows upon negation a strong and central role in the human condition, and its inevitability is reflected in his writings, if we look carefully. Ricœur and the Negation of Happiness draws on Ricœur's published works, previously unavailable archival material and many other sources. Alison Scott-Baumann argues that thinking positively is necessary but not sufficient for aspiring to happiness - what is also required is affirmation of negative impulses: we know we are split by contradictions and still try to overcome them. She also demonstrates the urgency of analysing current socio-cultural debates about wellbeing, education and equality, which rest insecurely upon our loose use of the negative as a category mistake. (shrink)

Making meaning out of life requires effort, sustained thought and action. It can be difficult to reassert our responsibility for solving real life problems from within social science research or current trends, such as extremely deconstructivist text, and postmodernism in its cheerfully nihilistic guise. Hermeneutical philosophy, of the Ricoeurian reconstructive mode, rehabilitates text as a powerful device for influencing others and offers us courage to proceed with the human project by developing a way of writing, thinking and behaving that is (...) provisional, affirmative and conciliatory, yet constantly questioning. Ricoeur invites the person, both reflective subject and empiricist object of research, to combine these elements and use written text and action as text for an active mode of living. Within philosophy he attempts to achieve a rapprochement between hermeneutical and rational thought. Understanding oneself, through better understanding of the other, derives benefit from crossing disciplinary boundaries between, in this study, philosophy and the social sciences (education and psychology), in order to attempt to move from the particular, individual issues to the general, holistic view and return to one’s own situation to act for oneself and others. Ricoeur offers us the opportunity to repossess language, to be ethical and practical, and to challenge the hegemony of Explaining, going beyond method and methodology into epistemology and beyond fact into Understanding: an ontology of hope that makes sense of plurality, without the damage of relativism. This text attempts a narrative ethics, illustrating how Ricoeur’s work transformed my thinking from that of a method-bound psychologist to that of, perhaps, a philosopher in the making. Key Words: critical realism • hermeneutics • holism • Hollis • individualism • Norris • rational analytic • Ricoeur • self • text. (shrink)

We distinguish between citizens of a state and strangers in a categorical way that seems clear and has the force of law behind it. In fact nationality is a highly contested phenomenon and one that is desired by many who are considered to be aliens or strangers. They range from guest-workers, to immigrants, to asylum seekers and they are often viewed with deep suspicion, even fear. The Kantian injunction to be hospitable to others is not being heeded, but should be (...) the major consideration in any new legislation. It may now be necessary to consider a new law of asylum, as many Western states seek to bar such people from entry even if they are fleeing persecution. Moreover, we will only be able to resolve this persecutory, exclusionist tendency if we develop a strong, secure sense of self. (shrink)

Ricoeur placed a great deal of importance upon text and the interpretation of text. Bell accepts this by virtue of his extended analysis of the story of Babel, and I hope to offer ways of extending and developing Bell’s arguments to incorporate the ethical demands that Ricoeur placed upon text, upon our interpretation of text and upon action as a form of readable text. This will not include a commentary on discourse analysis, which I am not qualified to give. Ricoeur (...) differed from the structuralist tradition in that he saw the relationship between language and life as taking a dialectical form: debate that presumes the possibility of altering one’s position by grappling with different views, and often taking inspiration from Hegelian dialectics, with their contrasting polarized views and the eventual attempt at affirmative common ground. The term λoƔoσ was first used in a philosophical way by Heraclitus to give us the principle of order and knowledge, and yet for Heraclitus the world was dominated by conflict and change. Ricoeur studied this tension within logos between order and disorder, partly by his writing about language and his work on signs and symbols, partly through metaphor and narrative and also through his insights on translation. For him, all these are facets of the need for both Explaining and Understanding as forms of interpretation of language, ethics and action. Ricoeur’s work on logos provides us with an approach that asks whether ethics controls language or vice versa or both and how this fits in with structuralism and later movements. For Ricoeur, signs are not the centres of our perceptual experience. At the heart of our perception are our motivations and our actions, for which we must take responsibility in a sort of provisional affirmation that we will keep trying. In so doing we must doubt our own motives just as much as those of others, and see action as a form of readable text. (shrink)

Pierre Bourdieu is arguably one of the twentieth century’s greatest socio-philosophical thinkers and his writings have much to offer anyone interested in the ways that people value, consume and produce architecture. Bourdieu spent much of his life attempting to understand cultural consumption and production through detailed empirical research that included studies of dwellings, art, museums, photography and aesthetics. This book introduces the architectural reader to Bourdieu’s key writings on culture and outlines the ways in which they offer powerful practical (...) tools and novel conceptual frameworks for understanding architectural value, taste, and practice. (shrink)

Safety accounts of knowledge claim, roughly, that knowledge that p requires that one's belief that p could not have easily been false. Such accounts have been very popular in recent epistemology. However, one serious problem safety accounts have to confront is to explain why certain lottery‐related beliefs are not knowledge, without excluding obvious instances of inductive knowledge. We argue that the significance of this objection has hitherto been underappreciated by proponents of safety. We discuss Duncan Pritchard's recent solution to the (...) problem and argue that it fails. More importantly, the problem reaches deeper and poses a threat to any current safety accounts that require a belief's modal stability in close possibilities (as well as safety accounts that appeal to ‘normality’). We end by arguing that ways out of the problem require substantial reconstruction for a safety‐based account of knowledge. (shrink)

As corporations are going global, they are increasingly confronted with human rights challenges. As such, new ways to deal with human rights challenges in corporate operations must be developed as traditional governance mechanisms are not always able to tackle them. This article presents five different views on innovative solutions for the relationships between business and human rights that all build on empowerment, dialogue and constructive engagement. The different approaches highlight an emerging trend toward a more active role for corporations in (...) the protection of human rights. The first examines the need for enhanced dialogue between corporations and their stakeholders. The next three each examine a different facet of empowerment, a critical factor for the respect and protection of human rights: empowerment of the poor, of communities, and of consumers. The final one presents a case study of constructive corporate engagement in Myanmar (Burma). Altogether, these research projects provide insight into the complex relationships between corporate operations and human rights, by highlighting the importance of stakeholder dialogue and empowerment. All the five projects were presented during the Second Swiss Master Class in Corporate Social Responsibility, held in Lausanne, Switzerland on December 12, 2008. The audience for this conference, which examined business and human rights, was composed of researchers, governmental representatives, and business and non-governmental organization practitioners. (shrink)

Lexicalized theories of syntax often assume that verb-structure regularities are mediated by lemmas, which abstract over variation in verb tense and aspect. German syntax seems to challenge this assumption, because verb position depends on tense and aspect. To examine how German speakers link these elements, a structural priming study was performed which varied syntactic structure, verb position, and verb overlap.structural priming was found, both within and across verb position, but priming was larger when the verb position was the same between (...) prime and target. Priming was boosted by verb overlap, but there was no interaction with verb position. The results can be explained by a lemma model where tense and aspect are linked to structural choices in German. Since the architecture of this lemma model is not consistent with results from English, a connectionist model was developed which could explain the cross-linguistic variation in the production system. Together, these findings support the view that language learning plays an important role in determining the nature of structural priming in different languages. (shrink)