In their book, Relevance, Sperber and Wilson make an important contribution towards constructing a credible theory of this unforthcoming notion. All is not clear sailing, however. If it is accepted as a condition on the adequacy of any account of relevance that it not be derivable either that nothing is relevant to anything or that everything is relevant to everything, it can be shown that Sperber and Wilson come close to violating the condition.

Hume’s famous argument against the credibility of testimony about miracles invokes two premises: 1) The reliability of the witness (the extent to which he is informed and truthful) must be compared with the intrinsic probability of the miracle. 2) The initial probability of a miracle is always small enough to outweigh the improbability that the testimony is false (even when the witness is assumed to be reliable). I defend the first premise of the argument, showing that Hume’s argument can be (...) applied to purported observations of miracles, as well. I then show that Hume failed to provide an adequate support for his second premise. A more cogent defence can be provided for a weaker premise. The resultant argument has, consequently, a less sweeping conclusion than Hume’s. (shrink)

It seems obvious that our beliefs are logically imperfect in two ways: they are neither deductively closed nor logically consistent. But this common-sense truism has been judged erroneous by some philosophers in the light of various arguments. In defence of common sense I consider and rebut interpretative arguments for logical perfection and show that the assumption espoused by common sense is theoretically superior, and capable - unlike its rival - of accounting for the informativeness of mathematics. Finally, I suggest that (...) common sense opens the way to genuine disputes about the correct logic. (shrink)

Significance testing is the primary method for establishing causal relationships in psychology. Meehl [1978, 1990a, 1990b] and Faust [1984] argue that significance tests and their interpretation are subject to actuarial and psychological biases, making continued adherence to these practices irrational, and even partially responsible for the slow progress of the ‘soft’ areas of psychology. I contend that familiar standards of testing and literature review, along with recently developed meta-analytic techniques, are able to correct the proposed actuarial and psychological biases. In (...) particular, psychologists embrace a principle of robustness which states that real psychological effects are (1) reproducible by similar methods, (2) detectable by diverse means, and (3) able to survive theoretical integration. By contrast, spurious significant findings perish under the strain of persistent tests of their robustness. The resulting vindication of significance testing confers on the world a role in determining the rationality of a method, and also affords us an explanation for the fast progress of ‘hard’ areas of psychology. *I would like to thank Dick Boyd and Phil Gasper for helpful comments on the ideas presented here. (shrink)

This paper discusses a puzzle about philosophical beliefs. Core philosophical beliefs that are widely shared among philosophers, such as the belief that skepticism is false, are often held with extreme confidence. However, this confidence is not justified if these beliefs are based on what are traditionally seen as the sources of philosophical evidence, such as intuitions or observation (or reasoning on these bases). Charity requires that we should look for some other basis for these beliefs. I argue that these beliefs (...) are based on our knowledge of what we find interesting. Further, I argue that this is a good basis for belief. Knowing what we find interesting allows us to tune our inquiry in ways we could not otherwise. (shrink)

Cohen (1981) and others have made an interesting argument for the thesis that humans are rational: normative principles of reasoning and actual human reasoning ability cannot diverge because both are determined by the same process involving our intuitions about what constitutes good reasoning as a starting point. Perhaps the most sophisticated version of this argument sees reflective equilibrium as the process that determines both what the norms of reasoning are and what actual cognitive competence is. In this essay, I will (...) evaluate both the general argument that humans are rational and the reflective equilibrium argument for the same thesis. While I find both accounts initially appealing, I will argue that neither successfully establishes that humans are rational. (shrink)

Dialogical egalitarianism is the thesis that any proposition asserted in dialogue, if questioned, must be supported or else retracted. Dialogical foundationalism is the thesis that some propositions are privileged over this burden of proof, standing in no need of support unless and until support for their negation is provided. I first discuss existing arguments for either thesis, dismissing each one of them. Absent a successful principled argument, I then examine which thesis it is pragmatically more advantageous to adopt in analytic (...) philosophical dialogue. This requires identifying the goal of such dialogue, to the attainment of which the thesis would be so advantageous. To identify this goal, I draw on Douglas Walton’s typology of dialogues for an analysis of the types of dialogue of 110 representatively selected journal articles in current analytic philosophy. 95% of articles are found to instantiate persuasion dialogue. In light of the thus prevalent goal of persuading one’s opponent, I argue that the adoption of dialogical egalitarianism in analytic philosophical dialogue is pragmatically inescapable. (shrink)

Cognitive relativists‐pragmatists (Stich, Churchland) claim that human cognitive strategies, lacking a common goal, are in addition divergent to the point of incommensurability. They appeal to the study of reasoning heuristics for evidence on cognitive diversity and incorrigibility. It is here argued that no such evidence is offered by the research, which, on the contrary (1) presents heuristics as uniform across great variations; (2) offers advice for correcting and improving human reasoning; and (3) very often postulates a uniformity of core logical (...) strategies, built into reasoning competence. Cognitive research thus supports a moderate rationalism rather than relativism‐pragmatism. (shrink)

In this paper I will try to defend a quasi-naturalistic interpretation of J.L. Austin’s work. I will rely on P. Kitcher’s 1992 paper “The Naturalists Return” to compile four general criteria by which a philosopher can be called a naturalist. Then I will turn to Austin’s work and examine whether he meets these criteria. I will try to claim that versions of such naturalistic elements can be found in his work.

In the twentieth century, philosophy came to be dominated by the English-speaking world, first Britain and then the United States. Accompanying this development was an unprecedented professionalization and specialization of the discipline, the consequences of which are surveyed and evaluated in this article. The most general result has been a decline in philosophy's normative mission, which roughly corresponds to the increasing pursuit of philosophy in isolation from public life and especially other forms of inquiry, including ultimately its own history. This (...) is how the author explains the increasing tendency, over the past quarter-century, for philosophy to embrace the role of "underlaborer" for the special sciences. Indicative of this attitude is the long-term popularity of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which argues that fields reach maturity when they forget their past and focus on highly specialized problems. In conclusion, the author recalls the history of philosophy that, following Kuhn's advice, has caused us to forget, namely, the fate of Neo-Kantianism in the early twentieth century. Key Words: analytic philosophy • normative • positivism • pragmatism • professionalism • underlaborer. (shrink)

This is a critical examination of Johnstone's thesis that all valid philosophical arguments are ad hominem. I clarify his notions of valid, philosophical, and ad hominem. I illustrate the thesis with his refutation ofthe claim that only ordinary language is correct. r discuss his three supporting arguments (historical, theoretical, and intermediate). And r criticize the thesis with the objections that if an ad hominem argument is valid, it is really ad rem; that it's unclear how his own theoretical argument can (...) be ad hominem; that if an ad hominem argument is really valid, it would have to be based on the proponent's own assumptions; and that the thesis is not true of philosophical arguments that are constructive rather than critical. (shrink)

David N. Perkins has studied everyday reasoning by an experimental-critical approach involving taped interviews during which subjects reflect on controversial issues and articulate their reasoning on both sides. The present author has studied scientific reasoning in natural language by an historical-textual approach involving the reconstruction and evaluation of the arguments in Galileo's Two Chief World Systems. They have, independently, reached the strikingly similar substantive conclusion that the most common flaw of informal reasoning is the failure to consider lines of argument (...) supporting conclusions contrary to the one in fact reached. This article describes, compares, and contrasts their respective approaches, results, and theoretical frameworks. (shrink)

The classical analysis of relevance in probabilistic terms does not fit legal, moral or conversational relevance, and, though analysis in terms of a psychological model may fit conversational relevance, it certainly does not fit legal, moral or evidential relevance. It is important to notice here that some sentences are ambiguous between conversational and non-conversational relevance. But, if and only ifR is relevant to a questionQ, R is a reason, though not necessarily a complete or conclusive reason, for accepting or rejecting (...) something as an answer toQ. Reasons of this kind are governed by appropriate covering laws or principled probabilities and a number of questions thus arise about the relationship between relevance and certain formal-logical properties. (shrink)

Ruth Byrne presents a three-step argument to the conclusion that counterfactual imagining is rational. Insofar as this argument is valid, the conclusion is weaker than it seems. More importantly, it does not represent the central contributions of this book – contributions that, if anything, point instead to what is irrational about counterfactual imagining.

Despite being there from the beginning, philosophical approaches have never had a settled place in cognitive research and few cognitive researchers not trained in philosophy have a clear sense of what its role has been or should be. We distinguish philosophy in cognitive research and philosophy of cognitive research. Concerning philosophy in cognitive research, after exploring some standard reactions to this work by nonphilosophers, we will pay particular attention to the methods that philosophers use. Being neither experimental nor computational, they (...) can leave others bewildered. Thought experiments are the most striking example but not the only one. Concerning philosophy of cognitive research, we will pay particular attention to its power to generate and test normative claims, claims about what should and should not be done. (shrink)

According to the thought experiment most commonly used to argue against reliabilism, Mr. Truetemp is given an unusual but reliable cognitive faculty. Since he is unaware of the existence of this faculty, its deliverances strike him as rather odd. Many think that Truetemp would not have justified beliefs. Since he satisfies the reliabilist conditions for justified belief, reliabilism appears to be mistaken. I argue that the Truetemp case is underdescribed and that this leads readers to make erroneous assumptions about Truetemp's (...) epistemic situation. After examining empirical studies of actual subjects who, like Truetemp, have received new perceptual faculties, I show that Truetemp must have been endowed with all of the reorganized neural circuitry and cognitive skills that subjects with new perceptual faculties normally acquire during a long and difficult process of adaptation and development. When readers realize how much more the designers of Truetemp's new faculty had to do than simply slip an artificial device under Truetemp's scalp, I find that they no longer think his beliefs would be unjustified. Because the thought experiment fails to support anti-reliabilist intuitions when further details of the case are made explicit, the Truetemp thought experiment does not constitute a clear and decisive counterexample to reliabilism. (shrink)

According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decisions on our judgments about their consequences for achieving our goals. Our goals give us reason to endorse consequentialism as a standard of decision making. Alternative standards invariably lead to consequences that are less good in this sense. Yet some people knowingly follow decision rules that violate consequentialism. For example, they prefer harmful omissions to less harmful acts, they favor the status quo over alternatives they would otherwise judge to be (...) belter, they provide third-party compensation on the basis of the cause of an injury rather than the benefit from the compensation, they ignore deterrent effects in decisions about punishment, and they resist coercive reforms they judge to be beneficial. I suggest that nonconsequentialist principles arise from overgeneralizing rules that are consistent with consequentialism in a limited set of cases. Commitment to such rules is detached from their original purposes. The existence of such nonconsequentialist decision biases has implications for philosophical and experimental methodology, the relation between psychology and public policy, and education. (shrink)