Scientific Essentialism defends the view that the fundamental laws of nature depend on the essential properties of the things on which they are said to operate, and are therefore not independent of them. These laws are not imposed upon the world by God, the forces of nature, or anything else, but rather are immanent in the world. Ellis argues that ours is a dynamic world consisting of more or less transient objects that are constantly interacting with each other, and whose (...) identities depend on their roles in these processes. The laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, and consequently, there are necessary connections between events. (shrink)

This paper motivates and describes a non-alethic approach to faultless disagreement involving predicates of personal taste. In section 1 I describe problems faced by Sundell's indexicalist approach, and MacFarlane's relativist approach. In section 2 I develop an alternative, non-alethic, approach. The non-alethic approach is broadly expressivist in that it endorses both the negative semantic thesis that simple sentences containing PPTs do not semantically encode complete propositions and the positive pragmatic thesis that such sentences are used to express evaluative mental states. (...) Finally, in section 3 I explain how the non-alethic approach explains faultless disagreement. (shrink)

Fodor (Mind Lang 16:1–15, 2001 ) endorses the mixed view that thought, yet not language, is compositional. That is, Fodor accepts the arguments of radical pragmatics that language is not compositional, but he claims these arguments do not apply to thought. My purpose here is to evaluate this mixed position: Assuming that the radical pragmaticists are right that language is not compositional, what arguments can be provided in support of the claim that thought is compositional? Before such arguments can be (...) evaluated, the relevant notion of compositionality must be clarified. So I first clarify this notion of compositionality, and then consider three arguments in support of the mixed position. All three of these arguments are found to be inadequate, and thus I conclude that the mixed position is unstable: If one endorses the arguments of radical pragmatics against the compositionality of language, then one should also reject the compositionality of thought. (shrink)

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

We provide an account of necessary a posteriori identity statements that relies upon Perry’s multipropositionalism. On our account an utterance of, e.g., ‘Hesperus is Phosphorus’, semantically makes available several propositions, one of which is necessary (and a priori) and another of which is a posteriori (and contingent). Since our view resembles two-dimensionalism, one might assume that it is undermined by the sorts of nesting arguments that Soames and others have raised against two-dimensionalism. We demonstrate, however, that our account is immune (...) to such nesting arguments. (shrink)

To solve the referential sub-problem of negative existentials one must explain why we interpret uses of, e.g., ‘Sherlock Holmes doesn’t exist’ as saying something coherent and intuitively true, even though the speaker purports to refer to something. Pragmatic Meinongism solves this problem by allowing ‘does not exist’ to be pragmatically modulated to express an inclusive sense under which it can be satisfied by something. I establish three points in defense of pragmatic Meinongism: it is superior to Russell-inspired solutions; it is (...) supported by independent evidence of pragmatic modulation; and it requires no dubious ontological commitments. (shrink)

Truth conditional semantics is the project of ‘determining a way of assigning truth conditions to sentences based on A) the extension of their constituents and B) their syntactic mode of combination’. This research program has been subject to objections that take the form of underdetermination arguments, an influential instance of which is presented by Travis: … consider the words ‘The leaf is green,’ speaking of a given leaf, and its condition at a given time, used so as to mean what (...) they do mean in English. How many distinct things might be said in words with all that true of them? Many.… Suppose a Japanese maple leaf, turned brown, was painted green for a decoration. In sorting leaves by colour, one might truly call this one green. In describing leaves to help identify their species, it might, for all the paint, be false to call it that. (shrink)

Paradigmatic uses of negative existentials such as ‘Vulcan does not exist’ are problematic because they present the interpreter with a pragmatic paradox: a speaker who uses such a sentence seems to be asserting something that is incompatible with what she presupposes. An adequate solution must therefore explain why we interpret paradigmatic uses of negative existentials as saying something true, even though such uses present us with a pragmatic paradox. I provide such an explanation by analyzing paradigmatic uses of negative existentials (...) as corrections of previous assertions that are judged to suffer from referential presupposition failure. I present the explanation within the framework of a simple version of segmented discourse representation theory. (shrink)

Indexicalism is a strategy for defending truth-conditional semantics from under-determination arguments. According to indexicalism the class of indexical expressions includes not only the obvious indexicals, e.g. demonstratives and personal pronouns, but also unobvious indexical expressions, expressions which allegedly have been discovered to be indexicals. This paper argues that indexicalism faces significant obstacles that have yet to be overcome. The issue that divides indexicalism and truth-conditional pragmatics is first clarified. And then three general problems for indexicalism are presented, and some potential (...) solutions that have been proposed in its defense are criticized. (shrink)

Strawson :96–118, 1964) argued that definite NPs trigger presuppositions as an aspect of their conventional meanings, and this semantic conception of presupposition triggers is incorporated into the binding theory of presuppositions. The phenomenon of presupposition denials, however, presents a problem for the semantic conception of presupposition triggers, for in such denials the alleged semantic presuppositions seem to be “cancelled” by a negation operator. Geurts :274–307, 1998; Presupposition and pronouns, 1999) attempts to solve this problem by utilizing the binding theory’s allowance (...) for local accommodation. Geurts’ proposal, however, is inadequate, primarily because Geurts formulates the binding theory within discourse representation theory, which makes no allowance for the illocutionary force of denial. Asher and Lascarides’ segmented discourse representation theory, however, has the resources to account for the illocutionary force of denial. Utilizing a version of SDRT I demonstrate that the “cancelling” of a presupposition by echoic negation in presupposition denials crucially depends upon the denial of information that is pragmatically communicated by accommodation. (shrink)

Le Verrier’s attempts to use ‘Vulcan’ to refer to an inter-Mercurial planet failed: Vulcan is a mere mythical entity. But, as the previous sentence demonstrates, we now use ‘Vulcan’ not in failed attempts to refer to a planet, but in seemingly successful attempts to refer to a mythical entity. These different uses of ‘Vulcan’ present critical pragmatics with a dilemma. On one horn, my use of ‘Vulcan’ cannot be conditionally co-referential with Le Verrier’s uses, because he failed to refer (to (...) a planet), whereas I (seemingly successfully) refer to a mythical entity. But, on the other horn, such uses of ‘Vulcan’ are not a simple case of nambiguity, because what I say in uttering ‘Vulcan is a mythical entity’ is incompatible with Le Verrier’s assertion of, e.g., ‘Vulcan is hot’. I propose to escape this dilemma by appeal to a different relation between uses of names which I call converse conditional co-reference. (shrink)

The problem of negative existentials arises because utterances of such sentences have the paradoxical feature of denying what they presuppose, thus undermining their own truth. There are only two general strategies for solving the problem within the constraints traditional static semantics, and both strategies attempt to explain away this paradoxical feature. I argue that both strategies are fundamentally flawed, and that an adequate account of negative existentials must countenance, and not explain away, this paradoxical feature. Moreover, I argue that a (...) framework of dynamic semantics can achieve this result. Thus negative existentials provide a case in support of dynamic semantics. (shrink)

Several of the better essays in On Quine are critical of Quine’s views. In “Against Naturalized Epistemology,” Bas Van Fraassen challenges empiricists to provide a self-consistent statement of their view; if empiricism is the view that “experience is our one and only source of information,” then that piece of information must itself have experience only as its source. Van Fraassen argues that Quine’s naturalized epistemology cannot meet this challenge and thus “is itself a metaphysics of the sort which empiricists disdain”. (...) Barry Stroud argues in “Quine on Exile and Acquiescence” that there is a tension between Quine’s thesis of “immanence”—that we can work only from within our language and/or conceptual scheme—and Quine’s doctrine of the indeterminacy of translation. And in “Quine’s Experiment with Intensional Objects and His Existentialist Quantified Modal Logic,” Hector-Neri Castañeda explores how “pseudo-Quine,” the Quine who experimented with modal logic in his 1947, might respond to the attack on quantified modal logic presented in his 1961. (shrink)

En "Existenciales negativos como denegaciones metalingüísticas" (García 2012), Eduardo García presenta una propuesta metalingüística sobre los existenciales negativos y argumenta en contra de la propuesta de la corrección dinámica (Clapp 2008). Aquí argumento que aunque la posición de García es atractiva porque satisface un criterio importante que muchas interpretaciones de los existenciales negativos no logran hacer justicia, no presenta una posición convincente en contra de la propuesta de la corrección dinámica ni a favor de su propuesta metalingüística. In his (...) "Existenciales negativos como denagaciones metalinguísticas" (García 2012) Eduardo García presents a metalinguistic approach to negative existentials, and he argues against the dynamic correction proposal (Clapp 2008). Here I argue that García's proposal is attractive because it satisfies an important criterion that many approaches to negative existentials do not satisfy. However, I also argue that García has made neither a persuasive case against the dynamic correction proposal, nor a persuasive case in favor of his metalinguistic proposal. (shrink)

Philosophy for Us is a collection of accessible and engaging philosophical papers on topics that matter to all of us. The text features select papers written by contemporary, professional philosophers specifically for beginning students. These papers are organized into five sections, each dealing with a philosophical issue or problem: Is there a God?; Do we have free will?; Are there objective moral truths?; What sort of thing is a person?; Is it moral to eat animals? Each section includes a brief (...) introduction to the topic. Key terms and concepts are defined as they occur naturally within the text. Philosophy for Us bridges the gap between philosophers and introductory philosophy students, making it ideal for introductory philosophy courses. Leonard Clapp has been teaching introductory philosophy classes for over twenty-five years. He earned his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Clapp specializes in the philosophy of language at Northern Illinois University. In addition to teaching courses on this aspect of the discipline he also teaches classes on the history of analytic philosophy and the philosophy of mind. His writing has been featured in journals such as The Journal of Philosophy, Mind and Language, Philosophical Studies, the Journal of Pragmatics, and Linguistics and Philosophy. (shrink)

Asher and Lascarides maintain that speech act types, the sorts of linguistic actions described and categorized, most influentially, by Austin and Searle are rhetorical relations. This relational account of speech acts is problematic for two reasons: Despite Asher and Lascarides ingenious appeal to dot type speech acts, the relational account is incompatible with the widespread phenomenon of indirect speech; only some speech acts are plausibly identified with rhetorical relations. These problems can be solved if a distinction between two kinds of (...) speech act is recognized: Discourse-structuring speech acts are performed upon utterances and thus are plausibly identified with rhetorical relations, while non-discourse-structuring speech acts are performed upon conversational participants and thus are not plausibly identified with such relations. The typologies for these two kinds of speech acts cut across one another, and this suggests a promising approach to the phenomenon of indirect speech acts. (shrink)

Since its introduction by Evans , the generality constraint has been invoked by various philosophers for different purposes. Our purpose here is, first, to clarify what precisely the GC states by way of an interpretive framework, the GC Schema, and second, to demonstrate in terms of this framework some problems that arise if one invokes the GC without clearly specifying an appropriate interpretation. By utilizing the GC Schema these sorts of problems can be avoided, and we thus propose it as (...) a tool to facilitate argumentation that appeals to the GC. (shrink)

Several of the better essays in On Quine are critical of Quine’s views. In “Against Naturalized Epistemology,” Bas Van Fraassen challenges empiricists to provide a self-consistent statement of their view; if empiricism is the view that “experience is our one and only source of information,” then that piece of information must itself have experience only as its source. Van Fraassen argues that Quine’s naturalized epistemology cannot meet this challenge and thus “is itself a metaphysics of the sort which empiricists disdain”. (...) Barry Stroud argues in “Quine on Exile and Acquiescence” that there is a tension between Quine’s thesis of “immanence”—that we can work only from within our language and/or conceptual scheme—and Quine’s doctrine of the indeterminacy of translation. And in “Quine’s Experiment with Intensional Objects and His Existentialist Quantified Modal Logic,” Hector-Neri Castañeda explores how “pseudo-Quine,” the Quine who experimented with modal logic in his 1947, might respond to the attack on quantified modal logic presented in his 1961. (shrink)

Asher and Lascarides maintain that speech act types, the sorts of linguistic actions described and categorized, most influentially, by Austin and Searle are rhetorical relations. This relational account of speech acts is problematic for two reasons: Despite Asher and Lascarides ingenious appeal to dot type speech acts, the relational account is incompatible with the widespread phenomenon of indirect speech; only some speech acts are plausibly identified with rhetorical relations. These problems can be solved if a distinction between two kinds of (...) speech act is recognized: Discourse-structuring speech acts are performed upon utterances and thus are plausibly identified with rhetorical relations, while non-discourse-structuring speech acts are performed upon conversational participants and thus are not plausibly identified with such relations. The typologies for these two kinds of speech acts cut across one another, and this suggests a promising approach to the phenomenon of indirect speech acts. (shrink)

Has the renewal of interest in the ostensible agency of living beings signaled an advance from a merely heuristic Kantian sense of purposiveness to an unequivocally, empirically grounded research program or are there as yet hidden tensions or contradictions in, for example, the organizational autonomy approach to natural agency? Can normativity be found to be immanent in nature but only beginning with the living cell or must a thoroughgoing naturalism find the seeds of normativity immanent throughout abiotic as well as (...) biotic nature? Beginning with a brief exposition of Kant´s influential treatment and recommendation for how to methodologically combine what he took to be the inevitable epistemological limit to explaining the origins of ostensible biotic purposefulness with the legitimate intentions of scientific research and explanation, this essay will critically engage with three recent essays that attempt to grapple with the preceding questions. Having putatively raised questions about the consistency and adequacy of each of the individual positions, the essay will attempt to move synthetically, drawing upon aspects of all three contributions, in the direction of a “cooperativity theoretic” approach to incipient natural normativity and agency. (shrink)

A historical and critical analysis of the concept of the gene that attempts to provide new perspectives and metaphors for the transformation of biology and its philosophy.

Medical professionals are a community of highly educated individuals with a commitment to a core set of ideals and principles. This community provides both technical and ethical socialization. The ideal physician is confident, empathic, forthright, respectful, and thorough. These ideals allow us to define broadly "the excellence" of being a physician. At the core of these ideals is the ability to be empathic. Empathy exhibits itself in attributes of an individual's moral character and also in actions that actualize and support (...) communal life. Empathy, however, can be diminished or even lost and must be nurtured on an ongoing basis. The development of ethical physicians is strongly linked to experiences in the training period. Moral traits are situation-sensitive psychological and behavioral dispositions. The clinical environment of medical training programs can be so intense as to lead to conditions that may actually deprofessionalize trainees. Creating a clinical environment that is ethically nurturing and sustaining is an indispensable component of practicing medicine. (shrink)

A presente Comunicação pretende analisar comparativamente alguns aspectos da definição de modernidade e pós-modernidade e sua aplicabilidade na análise do contexto religioso brasileiro. Partindo de autores como Giddens e Bauman, desenvolvemos a contextualização de suas teorias para uma realidade eminentemente européia. Depois, com autores como Canclini, Mariano e Prandi, dentre outros, que analisaram o contexto latino americano e, principalmente, brasileiro, procurou-se delinear o erro em se considerar que os conceitos de modernidade e pós-modernidade cabem à análise do cenário religioso brasileiro (...) irrestritamente, como se este cenário fosse equivalente ao europeu, lugar no qual esses conceitos surgiram e foram delineados. Palavras-chave : Modernidade; Pós-modernidade, Cenário Religioso Brasileiro, Cenário Religioso Europeu. (shrink)

There is accumulating evidence that disgust plays an important role in prejudice toward individuals with obesity, but that research is primarily based on self-reported emotions. In four studies, we examined whether participants displayed a physiological marker of disgust in response to images of obese individuals, and whether these responses corresponded with their self-reported disgust to those images. All four studies showed the predicted self-reported disgust response toward images of obese individuals. Study 1 further showed that participants exhibited more levator activity (...) to images of obese individuals than to neutral images. However, Studies 2–4 failed to provide any evidence that the targets’ body size affected levator responses. These findings suggest that disgust may operate at multiple levels, and that the disgust response to images of obese individuals may be more of a cognitive-conceptual one than a physiological one. (shrink)

The existence claim of a "genetic program" encoded in the DNA molecule which controls biological processes such as development has been examined. Sources of belief in such an entity are found in the rhetoric of Mendelian genetics, in the informationist speculations of Schrodinger and Delbruck, and in the instrumental efficacy found in the use of certain viral, and molecular genetic techniques. In examining specific research models, it is found that attempts at tracking the source of biological control always leads back (...) to the complex state of a cell as a whole, the organizational structure of which is not itself encoded in the DNA. It is argued that the "genetic program" is not an existing biological entity and its philosophical and heuristic status is challenged. (shrink)

Several recent anti-obesity campaigns appear to embrace stigmatization of obese individuals as a public health strategy. These approaches seem to be based on the fundamental assumptions that (1) obesity is largely under an individual’s control and (2) stigmatizing obese individuals will motivate them to change their behavior and will also result in successful behavior change. The empirical evidence does not support these assumptions: Although body weight is, to some degree, under individuals’ personal control, there are a range of biopsychosocial barriers (...) that make weight regulation difficult. Furthermore, there is accumulating evidence that stigmatizing obese individuals decreases their motivation to diet, exercise, and lose weight. Public health campaigns should focus on facilitating behavioral change, rather than stigmatizing obese people, and should be grounded in the available empirical evidence. Fundamentally, these campaigns should, first, do no harm. (shrink)