Amongst those views sometimes attributed to the later Wittgenstein are included both a deflationary theory of truth, as well as a non-factualism about certain regions of discourse. Evidence in favor of the former attribution, it is thought, can be found in Wittgenstein’s apparent affirmation of the basic definitional equivalence of ‘p’ is true and p in §136 of his Philosophical Investigations. Evidence in favor of the latter attribution, it might then be presumed, can be found in the context of the (...) so-called ‘private language argument’, wherein Wittgenstein provides an expressivist treatment of first-person present tense sensation utterances. In this paper, by contrast, I will argue that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is best understood as endorsing neither a non-factualism about sensation utterances, nor a deflationism about truth. Wittgenstein should instead be understood as offering a ‘mixed’ view of sensation utterances according to which some while not others are apt for expressivist treatment. Moreover, he should be thought of as identifying truth-conditions with semantic ‘correctness-conditions’, and thus truth with semantic ‘assertibility’. (shrink)

The article is divided in three main parts. The first part shows that the first three chapters of the second essay of On the Genealogy of Morality give a genealogical account of the emergence of reason in human history, and that this account involves the claim that reason is a development of human engagement with social rules: Nietzsche understands the emergence of reason as the emergence of a normative space of reasons. The second part interrogates Nietzsche’s conception of value, purpose, (...) and meaning in order to show that he is not a proponent of any version of “bald naturalism”: he does not equate what is “really real” with a natural world of causation devoid of value, purpose, and meaning. The third part of the article shows that, although Nietzsche’s perspectivism does not assign to the space of reasons the status of a purely autonomous realm of justification, he does not dismiss rational normativity, or the space of reasons, as merely illusory. Nietzschean genealogy is shown to be a reflective questioning of our values that investigates the reasons behind our deeper normative commitments. (shrink)

Against a broad consensus within contemporary analytic philosophy, Hattiangadi (Mind and Language 21(2):220–240, 2006 , 2007 ) has recently argued that linguistic meaning is not normative, at least not in the sense of being prescriptive. She maintains, more specifically, that standard claims to the effect that meaning is normative are usually ambiguous between two readings: one, which she calls Prescriptivity , and another, which she calls Correctness . According to Hattiangadi, though meaning is normative in the uncontroversial sense specified in (...) the principle Correctness , it is not normative in the sense specified by Prescriptivity . In this paper, I instead show that meaning is normative in the sense of being prescriptive. My argument for this claim takes the form of a classical disjunctive syllogism. I argue that either Correctness implies (because it presupposes) Prescriptivity , or linguistically meaningful items are ‘intrinsically intentional.’ But linguistically meaningful items are not intrinsically intentional, and thus Correctness implies (because it presupposes) Prescriptivity. (shrink)

Recent discussions in critical social epistemology have raised the idea that the concept 'knower' is not only an epistemological concept, but an ethical concept as well. Though this idea plays a central role in these discussions, the theoretical underpinnings of the claim have not received extended scrutiny. This paper explores the idea that 'knower' is an irreducibly ethical concept in an effort to defend its use as a critical concept. In Section 1, I begin with the claim that 'knower' is (...) an irreducibly normative and social concept, drawing from some ideas in Wilfrid Sellars. In Section 2, I argue that one's being a knower involves demands for various sorts of ethically-laden recognition. I develop this thought by arguing that Axel Honneth's threefold typology of recognition—love, respect, and esteem—finds clear expression within the context of socio-epistemic practice. I conclude in Section 3 by arguing that Miranda Fricker's proposed " analogy " between epistemic and moral perception should be modified to indicate a closer relationship than mere analogy. (shrink)

In this paper, I make explicit some implicit commitments to realism and conceptualism in recent work in social epistemology exemplified by Miranda Fricker and Charles Mills. I offer a survey of recent writings at the intersection of social epistemology, feminism, and critical race theory, showing that commitments to realism and conceptualism are at once implied yet undertheorized in the existing literature. I go on to offer an explicit defense of these commitments by drawing from the epistemological framework of John McDowell, (...) demonstrating the relevance of the metaphor of the “space of reasons” for theorizing and criticizing instances of epistemic injustice. I then point out how McDowell’s own view requires expansion and revision in light of Mills' concept of 'epistemologies of ignorance'. I conclude that, when their strengths are used to make up for each others' weaknesses, Mills and McDowell’s positions mutually reinforce one another, producing a powerful model for theorizing instances of systematic ignorance and false belief. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism makes the case that the conjunction of evolutionary theory and naturalism cannot be rationally believed, as, if both evolutionary theory and naturalism were true, it would be highly unlikely that our cognitive faculties are reliable. I present Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism and survey a theory of meaning espoused by Robert Brandom, known as semantic inferentialism. I argue that if one accepts semantic inferentialism, as it is developed by Brandom, then Plantinga's motivation for the (...) evolutionary argument against naturalism is undermined. (shrink)

Dans la première partie de cet article, je presente une thèse parapluie — la thèse de l'«exhaustion» — qui cerne bien l'élément central des diverses positions déflationnistes au sujet de la vérité : l'idée que le contenu du prédicat de vérité s'épuise entièrement dans le contenu de ce à quoi le prédicats'applique. Je soutiens que cette thèse n'est supportée que d'une manière triviale par l'idée courante que la vérite résiste à une analyse substantielle, car les prédicats en général ne se (...) prêtent guere à ce genre d'analyse. J'examine ensuite deux élaborations positives de la thèse de l'exhaustion; et je soutiens que ni l'une ni l'autre ne commence même à montrer que la thèse en question soit explicativement adéquate. (shrink)

The determination argument is supposed to show that a sentence's meaning is at least a truth-condition. This argument is supposed to rest on innocent premises that even a deflationist about truth can accept. The argument comes in two versions: one is metaphysical and the other is epistemological. In this paper we will focus on the epistemological version. We will argue that the apparently innocent first premise of that version of the argument is not as innocent as it seems. If the (...) premise is understood in the sense required for the argument to go through then it should be rejected by a deflationist. (shrink)

If correct, Christopher Peacocke’s [20] “manifestationism without verificationism,” would explode the dichotomy between realism and inferentialism in the contemporary philosophy of language. I first explicate Peacocke’s theory, defending it from a criticism of Neil Tennant’s. This involves devising a recursive definition for grasp of logical contents along the lines Peacocke suggests. Unfortunately though, the generalized account reveals the Achilles’ heel of the whole theory. By inventing a new logical operator with the introduction rule for the existential quantifier and the elimination (...) rule for the universal quantifier, I am able to show that Peacocke’s theory only avoids verificationism to the extent that it does not satisfy manifestationism. (shrink)

This paper has two main parts. In the first part, I argue that prominent moves in two related current debates in epistemology—viz., the debates over classical invariantism and the knowledge first movement—depend on one or the other of two claims about epistemic propriety: (1) Impropriety due to lack of a particular epistemic feature suffices for epistemic impropriety; and (2) Having justification to believe P suffices for having warrant to assert P. In the second part, I present and defend novel arguments (...) against both claims. (shrink)

Praxis, Language, Dialogue Human engagement with the world develops and evolves into increasingly social, complex, and explicit modes. This essay examines the evolution of meaningful human engagement from simple embodied activity, to language-less social praxis, and then to praxis incorporating increasingly rich forms of linguistic action, culminating in theory. Each mode of meaningful engagement creates a space in which new modes of meaning can develop. These new ways of experiencing, acting, and communicating create their own meaning contexts, which provide the (...) settings for the further evolution of humans' phenomenological, hermeneutic, and practical involvements. Each mode of meaning gives rise to its successors, allowing humans to acquire new powers to understand and manipulate their environments and each other. This increase and refinement of human power raises ethical issues that we address using the Gadamerian concept of dialogue. (shrink)

The most common way of analysing the meaning of causal generalisations relies on referentialist semantics. In this article, we instead develop an analysis based on inferentialist semantics. According to this approach, the meaning of a causal generalisation is constituted by the web of inferential connections in which the generalisation participates. We distinguish and discuss five classes of inferential connections that constitute the meaning of causal generalisations produced in policy-oriented economic research. The usefulness of our account is illustrated with the analysis (...) of generalisations about unemployment put forward by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in its highly influential 1994 OECD Jobs Study. The article ends with a discussion of some crucial philosophical questions about the use of inferentialism in the analysis of causal generalisations. (shrink)

This paper considers two competing pictures of knowledge of what one ought to do—one which assimilates this to other propositional knowledge conceived as partial ‘locational’ knowledge of where one is in a space of possibilities, the other which distinguishes this from other propositional knowledge by construing it as partial ‘directional’ knowledge of what to do in particular circumstances. I argue that the apparent tension can be lessened by better understanding the contextualized modal-cum-prescriptive nature of ‘ought’ and enriching our conception of (...) the kinds of possibilities within which we can locate ourselves. (shrink)

In his essay, ‘Heidegger's Categories in Sein und Zeit’, Robert Brandom argues that Heidegger, particularly in the notion of Zuhandenheit, anticipates his own normatively pragmatist conception of intentionality. He attempts to demonstrate this by marshalling short passages from right across the relevant sections of Sein und Zeit in such a way that they do seem to say what Brandom claims. But does one reach the same conclusion when one examines, more or less in sentence‐by‐sentence fashion, the large slab of text (...) in which Heidegger introduces the notion of Zuhandenheit? I believe not. First, however, let us look at how Brandom reads Heidegger, in particular, how he interprets the notion of Zuhandenheit, which, in contrast both to Macquarrie and Robinson and to Brandom, I shall translate as ready‐to‐handedness.1. (shrink)

This paper addresses the “creeping minimalism” challenge to quasi-realist forms of expressivism by arguing that the solution suggested by Dreier doesn’t work and proposing an alternative solution based on the different inferential roles of ethical and descriptive judgments.

In the contemporary metaethical debate, expressivist (Blackburn, Gibbard) and constructivist (Korsgaard, Street) views can be viewed as inspired by irrealist ideas from Hume and Kant respectively. One realist response to these contemporary irrealist views is to argue that they are inconsistent with obvious surface-level appearances of ordinary ethical thought and discourse, especially the fact that we talk and act as if there is ethical knowledge . In this paper, I explore some constructivist and expressivist options for responding to this objection. (...) My conclusion is that, although both constructivists and expressivists can capture other surface-level features of ethical thought and discourse, the possibility of ethical knowledge causes special problems for these versions of irrealism. I end with some comments about where I think irrealists should begin to look for a response to these special problems, which points, somewhat surprisingly, towards an alternative inferentialist form of irrealism about epistemic and ethical thought and discourse, which is inspired by Sellars. (shrink)

This article examines Wilfrid Sellars's views on the epistemic status of philosophical propositions. It suggests that according to Sellars philosophical propositions are normative and practically oriented. They do not form a theory for the description of reality; their function is, rather, that of motivating actions which aim at changing reality. The article argues that the role of philosophical propositions can be illuminated if they are understood as a special kind of (proposed) “material” rules of inference, provided that the latter are (...) construed as being firmly entrenched in practice. To this end, a distinction between “theoretical” and “practical” anomalies is drawn to better elucidate—and in some cases criticize and further expand—Sellars's position on the relation between the theoretical and practical dimensions of philosophical activity. In this connection, the Weberian notion of the “disenchantment of the world” is used to throw light on the relation between these two dimensions. (shrink)

In this special issue, we put together papers that explore the theme “objectivity, space, and mind” from various angles. In the introduction we minimally discuss what are involved in this theme.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the problem of rule-following—notably discussed by Kripke (Wittgenstein on rules and private language, 1982) and Wittgenstein (Philosophical investigations, 1953)—from the perspective of the study of generics. Generics are sentences that express generalizations that tolerate exceptions. I first suggest that meaning ascriptions be viewed as habitual sentences, which are a sub-set of generics. I then seek a proper semantic analysis for habitually construed meaning sentences. The quantificational approach is rejected, due to its (...) persistent difficulties. Instead, a cognitive approach is adopted, where psychological considerations of meaning attributors play a crucial role. This account is then compared with the picture of meaning offered by Kripke and Wittgenstein, respectively. I show how this fresh way of conceiving of meaning sentences respects some of their insights while avoiding some of the drawbacks, and serves to improve the framework in which the current debate and inquiry about rule-following are conducted. (shrink)

Some have suggested that images can be arguments. Images can certainly bolster the acceptability of individual premises. We worry, though, that the static nature of images prevents them from ever playing a genuinely argumentative role. To show this, we call attention to a dilemma. The conclusion of a visual argument will either be explicit or implicit. If a visual argument includes its conclusion, then that conclusion must be demarcated from the premise or otherwise the argument will beg the question. If (...) a visual argument does not include its conclusion, then the premises on display must license that specific conclusion and not its opposite, in accordance with some demonstrable rationale. We show how major examples from the literature fail to escape this dilemma. Drawing inspiration from the graphical logic of C. S. Peirce, we suggest instead that images can be manipulated in a way that overcomes the dilemma. Diagrammatic reasoning can take one stepwise from an initial visual layout to a conclusion—thereby providing a principled rationale that bars opposite conclusions—and the visual inscription of this correct conclusion can come afterward in time—thereby distinguishing the conclusion from the premises. Even though this practical application of Peirce’s logical ideas to informal contexts requires that one make adjustments, we believe it points to a dynamic conception of visual argumentation that will prove more fertile in the long run. (shrink)

In an effort to carve a distinct place for social facts without lapsing into a holistic ontology, John Greenwood has sought to define social phenomena solely in terms of the attitudes held by the actor in question. I argue that his proposal allows for the possibility of a “lone collectivity” that is unpalatable in its own right and incompatible with the claim that sociology is autonomous from psychology. As such, I conclude that the relevant beliefs need to be held by (...) more than one person. (shrink)

This essay argues that acknowledging the existence of mind-independent facts is a matter of vital importance, in that acquiescence before the layout of the world is something demanded of knowing agents from the most elementary empirical deliverance to the most abstract construct. Building on the idea that normativity requires the presence of more than one option to choose from, the essay shows how the cessation of one's life is the disjunctive alternative of any experiential episode. This much has been missed, (...) it argues, because of a generalized failure to appreciate how even the simplest atomic contents embroil their subjects in acts of assent. Its account thus casts a new light on relativism and skepticism, revealing them to be provisional luxuries supported only by the cognitive labor of others. (shrink)

The recent wave of data on exoplanets lends support to METI ventures (Messaging to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence), insofar as the more exoplanets we find, the more likely it is that “exominds” await our messages. Yet, despite these astronomical advances, there are presently no well-confirmed tests against which to check the design of interstellar messages. In the meantime, the best we can do is distance ourselves from terracentric assumptions. There is no reason, for example, to assume that all inferential abilities are language-like. (...) With that in mind, I argue that logical reasoning does not have to be couched in symbolic notation. In diagrammatic reasoning, inferences are underwritten, not by rules, but by transformations of self-same qualitative signs. I use the Existential Graphs of C. S. Peirce to show this. Since diagrams are less dependent on convention and might even be generalized to cover non-visual senses, I argue that METI researchers should add some form of diagrammatic representations to their repertoire. Doing so can shed light, not just on alien minds, but on the deepest structures of reasoning itself. (shrink)

Robert Brandom holds that what we mean is best understood in terms of what inferences we are prepared to defend, and that such a defence is best understood in terms of rule-governed social interactions. This manages to explain quite a lot. However, for those who think that there is more to making correct/incorrect inferences than obeying/breaking accepted rules, Brandom’s account fails to adequately capture what it means to reason properly. Thus, in an effort to sketch an alternative that does not (...) rely primarily on peer pressure, I draw on the work of C. S. Peirce. Peirce argued that, when we reason, we manipulate abstract diagrams in order to observe what results. Since some manipulations are barred by the self-same nature of the diagrams, I try to show that this qualitative incompatibility, which I dub “contrapiction,” is a good reason to regard some reasoning as bad. (shrink)

Abstract:Much of Western speculative metaphysics has subscribed to what has been called “explanatory rationalism,” which holds that there is a reason for everything that is and for the way everything is. Theodicies, or metaphysical attempts to solve the problem of evil, have relied on a special application of this principle of explanatory rationalism, namely, the principle of plenitude, which holds that the evil in the world is a necessary ingredient in the world's overall perfection or degree of reality. This essay (...) argues that the principle of plenitude is aesthetically motivated, and that only in art and perhaps in revealed religion can the demands of explanatory rationalism be satisfied. (shrink)

In this article, I introduce Robert Brandom’s inferentialism as an alternative to common representational interpretations of constructivism in science education. By turning our attention away from the representational role of conceptual contents and toward the norms governing their use in inferences, we may interpret knowledge as a capacity to engage in a particular form of social activity, the game of giving and asking for reasons. This capacity is not readily reduced to a diagrammatic structure defining the knowledge to be acquired. (...) By considering the application of these ideas to the concept of electrical current and the use of analogies in science education, I hope to illustrate how they may be given practical employment as the child comes to explore within the concepts derived from historical scientific endeavours and not merely meander through her individual experiences of scientific phenomena themselves. In moving away from the representational role of analogy, our focus shifts from the quality of the analogy itself toward the quality of the discourse utilising the analogy. (shrink)

Many now accept the thesis that norms are somehow constitutively involved in people's contentful intentional states. I distinguish three versions of this normative thesis that disagree about the type of norms constitutively involved. Are they objective norms of correctness, subjective norms of rationality, or intersubjective norms of social practices? I show the advantages of the third version, arguing that it improves upon the other two versions, as well as incorporating their principal insights. I then defend it against two serious challenges: (...) (1) If content is constituted by others' normative judgments, how can content be causally efficacious? (2) This account appears to make having contentful thoughts a matter of people having contentful thoughts about your thoughts. That appears to be viciously circular and so can't be naturalistic. (shrink)

In “Study of Concepts”, Peacocke puts forward an argument for non-conceptualism derived from the possession conditions of observational concepts. In this paper, I raise two objections to this argument. First, I argue that if non-conceptual perceptual contents are scenario contents, then perceptual experiences cannot present perceivers with the circumstances specified by the application conditions of observational concepts and, therefore, they cannot play the semantic and epistemic roles Peacocke wants them to play in the possession conditions of these concepts. Second, I (...) argue that if non-conceptual perceptual contents are protopropositions, then Peacocke’s account of the possession conditions of observational concepts falls into the Myth of the Given. (shrink)

The Hypothesis of Extended Cognition (HEC)—that many cognitive processes are carried out by a hybrid coalition of neural, bodily and environmental factors—entails that the intentional states that are reasons for action might best be ascribed to wider entities of which individual persons are only parts. I look at different kinds of extended cognition and agency, exploring their consequences for concerns about the moral agency and personal responsibility of such extended entities. Can extended entities be moral agents and bear responsibility for (...) actions, in addition to or in place of the individuals typically held responsible? What does it mean to be autonomous when one’s cognition is influenced and supported by a milieu of environmental factors? To answer these questions, I explore strong parallels between HEC’s critique of individualism in cognition, and feminist critiques of individualist accounts of self, agency, and autonomy. This relational and social conception of autonomous agency, as scaffolded and supported (or undermined and impaired) by a milieu of social, relational, and normative factors, has important lessons for HEC. Drawing together these two visions of distributed and decentralized aspects of personhood highlights how cognition, action, and responsibility are inextricably linked. It also encourages a reconceptualization of all cognition and all concerns about responsibility for actions, not simply as sometimes extended around individuals, but as fundamentally communal, social, and normative, with individual cognition and individual moral responsibility being derivative special cases, not the paradigm examples. Individuals are merely one of many possible loci of cognition, action, and responsibility. (shrink)

How many notions of cause are there? The causality literature is witnessing a flourishing of pluralist positions. Here I focus on a recent debate on whether interpreting causality in terms of inferential relations commits one to semantic pluralism (Reiss 2011) or not (Williamson 2006). I argue that inferentialism is compatible with a ‘weak’ form of monism, where causality is envisaged as one, vague cluster concept. I offer two arguments for this, one for vagueness, one for uniqueness. Finally, I qualify in (...) what sense the resulting form of monism is ‘weak’.¿Cuántas nociones de causa hay? Hay un resurgir de posiciones pluralistas en la bibliografía sobre causalidad. Me ocuparé aquí de un debate reciente sobre si la interpretación de la causalidad en términos de relaciones inferenciales nos compromete con el pluralismo semántico (Reiss 2011) o no (Williamson 2006). Defiendo que el inferencialismo es compatible con una forma ’debil’ de monismo, donde la causalidad se presenta como un único concepto vago y de agrupación (cluster). Ofrezco para ello dos argumentos, uno sobre vaguedad y otro sobre unicidad. Finalmente, matizaré en qué sentido esta forma demonismo es ’débil’. (shrink)

I consider some uses of citations in academic writing and analyze them as instances of the “appeal to expert opinion” argumentative scheme to show that the critical questions commonly linked to this scheme are difficult to apply. I argue that, by considering citations as special communicative and argumentative situated acts, their use in real practice can be explained more adequately. Adaptation to the audience and to the social constraints is common and necessary in order to collaborate with others and to (...) advance in a discipline, but also to attain rhetorical goals that differ from strictly cognitive ones. (shrink)

This article examines what is known about the cognitive science of working memory, and brings the findings to bear in evaluating philosophical accounts of central cognitive processes of thinking and reasoning. It is argued that central cognition is sensory based, depending on the activation and deployment of sensory images of various sorts. Contrary to a broad spectrum of philosophical opinion, the central mind does not contain any workspace within which goals, decisions, intentions, or non-sensory judgments can be active.Introduction: philosophers’ commitmentsMost (...) philosophers believe that our so-called “personal-level” propositional attitudes—our personal judgments, beliefs, goals, values, decisions, and intentions—are consciously accessible. Many will also allow, of course, that some of the processing that takes place within our perceptual faculties is inaccessible to us; and many will grant the possibility of unconscious attitudes, as well as processes of inference and decision mak. (shrink)

Several legal arguments use the notion of ratio legis in order to sustain a normative conclusion, in particular the argument from analogy and some forms of teleological argumentation. However, determining the ratio is often a difficult and controversial task. In this paper we look firstly at the speech acts typically performed by legal practitioners in order to determine the ratio and, secondly, we take into account the argumentative commitments they undertake in so doing and the argumentative constraints put on them. (...) This will lead us to distinguish different uses of the notion of ratio legis and to ask on what conditions each of them is justified. (shrink)

The A Simili Argument draws the conclusion that a target case has a normative property Q since it shares a relevant property P with a source case. It can be seen as a complex inference constituted by three inferential steps: An abduction of the relevant property P , an induction of the class having that property, and a deduction of the target's having property Q . A major problem of this argument is the characterization of the property relevance. The standard (...) answer refers to the notion of ratio: It is the ratio that fixes what is relevant for what. But the determination of the ratio is often a difficult and controversial task. This issue is considered here from an inferentialist point of view, claiming that the ratio and relevance are determined by the normative statuses reciprocally attributed by the speakers in the context of legal argumentation. (shrink)

In this paper we consider whether a pragmatics of semantic content can be a useful approach to legal interpretation. More broadly speaking, since a pragmatic conception of meaning is a component of inferential semantics, we consider whether an inferentialist approach to legal interpretation can be useful in dealing with some problems of this important aspect of law. In other words, we ask whether Legal Inferentialism is a suitable conception for legal interpretation. In Section 1 we briefly consider the semantics/pragmatics debate (...) in contemporary philosophy of language and in relation to legal interpretation. In Section 2 we discuss the relations between a pragmatics of semantic content and an inferentialist conception of content. In Section 3 we consider how Inferentialism can be applied to legal interpretation. Finally, in Section 4 we consider some possible advantages and drawbacks of Inferentialism applied to legal interpretation and adjudication. (shrink)

It is argued that indicative conditionals are best viewed as having truth conditions (and so they are in part factual) but that these truth conditions are ‘gappy’ which leaves an explanatory gap that can only be filled by epistemic considerations (and so indicative conditionals are in part epistemic). This dual nature of indicative conditionals gives reason to rethink the relationship between logic viewed as a descriptive discipline (focusing on semantics) and logic viewed as a discipline with a normative import (focusing (...) on epistemic notions such as ‘reasoning’, ‘beliefs’ and ‘assumptions’). In particular, it is argued that the development of formal models for epistemic states can serve as a starting point for exploring logic when viewed as a normative discipline. (shrink)

This paper provides finitary jointly necessary and sufficient acceptance and rejection conditions for the logical constants of a first order quantificational language. By introducing the notion of making an assignment as a distinct object level practice—something you do with a sentence—(as opposed to a meta-level semantic notion) and combining this with the practice of (hypothetical and categorical) acceptance and rejection and the practice of making suppositions one gains a structure that is sufficiently rich to fully characterize the class of classical (...) first order theories. The analysis thus provides a way of characterizing classical first order quantification by expressivist means. (shrink)

The paper presents a non-monotonic inference relation on a language containing a conditional that satisfies the Ramsey Test. The logic is a weakening of classical logic and preserves many of the ‘paradoxes of implication’ associated with the material implication. It is argued, however, that once one makes the proper distinction between supposing that something is the case and accepting that it is the case, these ‘paradoxes’ cease to be counterintuitive. A representation theorem is provided where conditionals are given a non-bivalent (...) semantics and epistemic states are represented via preferential models. (shrink)

The connectives of classical propositional logic are given an analysis in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions of acceptance and rejection, i.e. the connectives are analyzed within an expressivist bilateral meaning-is-use framework. It is explained how such a framework differs from standard inferentialist frameworks and it is argued that it is better suited to address the particular issues raised by the expressivist thesis that the meaning of a sentence is determined by the mental state that it is conventionally used to (...) express. Furthermore, it is shown that the classical requirements governing the connectives completely characterize classical logic, are conservative and separable, are in bilateral harmony, are structurally preservative with respect to the classical coordination requirements and resolve the categoricity problem. These results are taken to show that one can give an expressivist bilateral meaning-is-use analysis of the connectives that confer on them a determinate coherent classical interpretation. (shrink)

When dealing with ‘meaning’ or related notions, one cannot ignore what for a long time was the dominant paradigm in semantics. According to such paradigm, truth-conditional formal semantics for natural language is a theory of semantic competence. In this article, I shall discuss a foundational problem for such semantic program. I shall first be following authors who claim that truth-conditional formal semantics is unable to provide a complete account of lexical competence, and, therefore, it suffers from incompleteness. Moreover, as a (...) few authors observed, a coherent completion of lexical meaning/competence cannot be easily provided in the philosophical framework of truth-conditional semantics. The problem is a consequence of Kripke’s and Putnam’s arguments against the view that semantic values of words are cognitively determined. I shall argue that these arguments undermine the notion that formal semantics can be, at the same time, a theory of truth-conditions and a theory of semantic competence. I shall outline and critically discuss two general attempts to solve this problem, which I shall refer to as the social/ideal route and the concepts route. The conclusions of the article are deliberately open. I shall argue that both these attempts are exposed to conceptual troubles and counterintuitive consequences, and so the lexical problem still remains a deep and unresolved issue for semantics. (shrink)

Reasons motivate our intentions and thus our actions, justify our beliefs, ground our hopes and connect our feelings of shame and pride to our thoughts. Given that intentions, beliefs and emotions are intentional states, intentionality is strongly connected with normativity. Yet what is more precisely their relationship? Some philosophers, notably Brandom and McDowell, contend at places that intentionality is intrinsically normative. In this paper, we discuss Brandom and McDowell’s thesis and the arguments they provide for its defence. In contrast to (...) what they hold, we argue that neither reference intentionality nor content intentionality are intrinsically normative, although at least content intentionality has normative implications. More precisely, we argue that neither species of intentionality are normative from a semantical viewpoint, because being in an intentional state is not being in a state that is semantically correct or incorrect. Nevertheless, being in a state endowed with content may be a reason for believing or acting. Thus, we argue that content intentionality has normative implications. More precisely, we argue that any content is such that, if it is the content of a state that is sensitive to reasons - as judging paradigmatically is – then it entitles the subject of that state to have further states or to act in certain ways. (shrink)

Karen Barad develops a view she calls ‘posthumanism,’ or ‘agential realism,’ where the human is reconfigured away from the central place of explanation, interpretation, intelligibility, and objectivity to make room for the epistemic importance of other material agents. Barad is not alone in this kind of endeavor, but her posthumanism offers a unique epistemological position. Her aim is to take a performative rather than a representationalist approach to analyzing ‘socialnatural’ practices and challenge methodological assumptions that may go unnoticed in some (...) disciplinary fields. Yet for all the good of the challenge, Barad must support it with sound epistemological theorizing, theorizing that would apply to any methodology, whether that be sociological, historical, anthropological, or philosophical. Thus, where one might critique Barad on her assessments of sociological, historical, or anthropological incorporations of humans and the nonhuman, I critique Barad’s epistemology on its sense of objectivity and dismissal of the centrality of the human. I argue that Barad’s epistemology must retain a particular form of humanism, a humanism that stakes human subjectivity as the locus of rationality and objectivity, without which it creates intractable problems. To recuperate Barad’s challenge to contest assumptive distinctions while avoiding her epistemological problems, I offer some parting reflections. (shrink)

Realism about the external world enjoys little philosophical support these days. I rectify this predicament by taking a relatively pragmatist line of thought to defend commonsense realism; I support commonsense realism through an interpretation and application of Donald Davidson’s notion of triangulation, the triangle composed of two communicators coordinating and correcting their responses with a shared causal stimulus. This argument is important because it has a crucial advantage over the often used abductive argument for realism. My argument avoids unwarranted conclusions, (...) whereas the abductive argument is “inflationary” because it reaches beyond the limits of evidence for its realist conclusion. To illustrate the problems of the abductive argument and motivate my Davidsonian approach, I take a brief look at the abductive argument for realism in Frederick Will’s work. (shrink)

In this paper I address the issue of the subject matter of linguistics. According to the prominent Chomskyan view, linguistics is the study of the language faculty, a component of the mind-brain, and is therefore a branch of cognitive psychology. In his recent book Ignorance of Language Michael Devitt attacks this psychologistic conception of linguistics. I argue that the prominent Chomskyan objections to Devitt's position are not decisive as they stand. However, Devitt's position should ultimately be rejected as there is (...) nothing outside of the mind of a typical speaker that could serve to fix determinate syntactic rules of her language or constitute the supervenience base of her connection to any such rules. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the most prominent and familiar features of Wittgenstein’s rule following considerations generate a powerful argument for the thesis that most of our concepts are innate, an argument that echoes a Chomskyan poverty of the stimulus argument. This argument has a significance over and above what it tells us about Wittgenstein’s implicit commitments. For, it puts considerable pressure on widely held contemporary views of concept learning, such as the view that we learn concepts by constructing (...) prototypes. This should lead us to abandon our general default hostility to concept nativism and be much more sceptical of claims made on behalf of learning theories. (shrink)

I begin with an exposition of the two main variants of the Prosentential Theory of Truth (PT), those of Dorothy Grover et al. and Robert Brandom. Three main types of criticisms are then put forward: (1) material criticisms to the effect that (PT) does not adequately explain the linguistic data, (2) an objection to the effect that no variant of (PT) gives a properly unified account of the various occurrences of "true" in English, and, most importantly, (3) a charge that (...) the comparison with proforms is explanatorily idle. The last objection is that, given a complete semantic account of pronouns, proadjectives, antecedents, etc., together with a complete (PT), the essential semantic character of "true" could be deduced, but then, the idleness of the comparison with pronouns would be apparent. It turns out that objections (2) and (3) are related in the following way: the prosentential terminology is held to conceal the lack of unity in (PT), by describing the different data in the same terms ("proform", "antecedent", etc.). But this, I argue, is only a way of truly describing, rather than explaining, the data, these being certain relations of equivalence and consequence between sentences. I consider a language for which (PT) would be not only true, but also explanatory, but note that this language is very different from English. I end by showing that Robert Brandom's case that "is true" is not a predicate fails, and that his motivation for saying so is based on fallacious reasoning (namely, Boghossian's argument against deflationism). (shrink)

The article first rehearses three deflationary theories of reference, (1) disquotationalism, (2) propositionalism (Horwich), and (3) the anaphoric theory (Brandom), and raises a number of objections against them. It turns out that each corresponds to a closely related theory of truth, and that these are subject to analogous criticisms to a surprisingly high extent. I then present a theory of my own, according to which the schema “That S(t) is about t” and the biconditional “S refers to x iff S (...) says something about x” are exhaustive of the notions of aboutness and reference. An account of the usefulness of “about” is then given, which, I argue, is superior to that of Horwich. I close with a few considerations about how the advertised theory relates to well-known issues of reference, the conclusions of which is (1) that the issues concern reference and aboutness only insofar as the words “about” and “refer” serve to generalise over the claims that are really at issue, (2) that the theory of reference will not settle the issues, and (3) that it follows from (2) that the issues do not concern the nature of aboutness or reference. (shrink)