Searle’s Chinese Room Argument (CRA) has been the object of great interest in the philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence and cognitive science since its initial presentation in ‘Minds, Brains and Programs’ in 1980. It is by no means an overstatement to assert that it has been a main focus of attention for philosophers and computer scientists of many stripes. It is then especially interesting to note that relatively little has been said about the detailed logic of the argument, whatever significance (...) Searle intended CRA to have. The problem with the CRA is that it involves a very strong modal claim, the truth of which is both unproved and highly questionable. So it will be argued here that the CRA does not prove what it was intended to prove. (shrink)

I argue that there are living and everyday case in which rationality requires you, as a non-idealized human thinker, to have inconsistent beliefs while recognizing the inconsistency. I defend my argument against classical and insightful objections by Doris Olin, as well as others. I consider three versions of the preface paradox as candidate cases, including Makinson’s original version. None is free from objection. However, there is a fourth version, Modesty, that supposes that you believe that at least one of your (...) beliefs is false. I argue that this version escapes all the objections that could trouble the other versions, including the objection that given certain closure principles for justified belief, justified inconsistent beliefs saddle you with a pair of justified beliefs that are in explicit contradiction. I also argue more tentatively for the same verdict for Modesty*, a version that supposes that you believe that at least one of your beliefs is false. In that case, your belief guarantees that its content is true, in which case your beliefs are inconsistent, because at least one of them must be false. Once you think you’re wrong, you must be right! Crucial to my argument is a distinction between explicitly contradictory beliefs and three forms of inconsistency in belief. In the first of these, you believe contingent propositions each of which is logically independent of the others, yet you also believe the syntactic negation of their conjunction. In the second, your beliefs are inconsistent because of the rigid designation of demonstratives such as ‘this’ embedded in their contents. In the third, as in Modesty and Modesty* your beliefs are inconsistent because of self-reference. (shrink)

The mooronic solution to the surprise quiz paradox says students know there will be a surprise quiz one day this week but they lose this knowledge on the penultimate day. This is because ‘there will be a surprise quiz one day this week’ then becomes an instance of Moore's paradox. This view has surprising consequences. Furthermore, even though the surprise quiz announcement becomes an instance of Moore's paradox on the penultimate day, this does not prevent the students from knowing the (...) quiz is coming. I conclude that the first stage of the paradoxical argument succeeds and the mooronic solution fails. (shrink)

Mostraremos que o tratamento dado por Sorensen à vaguidade e ao sorites não deve ser classificado como epistemicista. Além disso, tentaremos mostrar que as aproximações que Sorensen tenta fazer entre o paradoxo sorítico e os paradoxos do não-não e do prefácio não são bem-sucedidas.

This paper draws attention to the potential pitfalls and possibilities of a new cosmopolitanism. The first part of the paper briefly portrays cosmopolitanism as a name and metaphor for a way of life, an ideal and an outlook. The second part, however, discloses a paradoxical attribution of the metaphor, revealing the ways in which it assumes something which it is not. The third part of the paper further explores the powers of this paradox, arguing that the new cosmopolitanism can be (...) seen as a riddle that surprises, bewilders and educates: The surprise is in the deviation from current and most common ways of speech. The bewilderment happens as the mantra of cosmopolitanism is bringing together logical opposites, jumbling categories and disturbing pre-existing modes of thought. The educational work of cosmopolitanism thus occurs as a violation of the cognitive framework and logical categories generating our very modes of learning. The vital work of the new cosmopolitanism is therefore in the ways in which it creates epistemic ruptures, recasts our mental categories, generates radically new modes of learning, and thus completely new ways of experiencing, seeing and knowing a world of change. But what are the potential pitfalls and possibilities of a discourse jeopardizing the very vision of the social world, and thus the world itself? (shrink)

In this article the standard philosophical method involving intuition-driven conceptual analysis is challenged in a new way. This orthodox approach to philosophy takes analysanda to be the specifications of the content of concepts in the form of sets of necessary and sufficient conditions. Here it is argued that there is no adequate account of what necessary and sufficient conditions are. So, the targets of applications of the standard philosophical method so understood are not sufficiently well understood for this method to (...) be dependable. (shrink)

This paper contains an argument to the effect that possible worlds semantics renders semantic knowledge impossible, no matter what ontological interpretation is given to possible worlds. The essential contention made is that possible worlds semantic knowledge is unsafe and this is shown by a parallel with the preface paradox.

Although recent epistemology has been marked by several prominent disagreements – e.g., between foundationalists and coherentists, internalists and externalists – there has been widespread agreement that some form of fallibilism must be correct. According to a rough formulation of this view, it is possible for a subject to have knowledge even in cases where the justification or grounding for the knowledge is compatible with the subject’s being mistaken. In this paper, I examine the motivation for fallibilism before providing a fully (...) general account of the view. I conclude by looking at the two major difficulties for fallibilism: the Gettier problem and the lottery paradox. (shrink)

The leading idea of this article is that one cannot acquire knowledge of any non-epistemic fact by virtue of knowing that one that knows something. The lines of reasoning involved in the surprise exam paradox and in Williamson’s _reductio_ of the KK-principle, which demand that one can, are thereby undermined, and new type of counter-example to epistemic closure emerges.

In philosophy and political theory, the term paradox is often used synonymously with antinomy, contradiction and aporia. This article clarifies the meaning of these terms through tracing their respective etymology. We see that antinomy denotes a deep-seated conceptual opposition, whereas contradiction and aporia represent alternative responses to antinomy. The former presents the antinomy as potentially resolvable at some future time, and the latter sees the antinomy instead as a constitutive impasse. By way of contrast, para doxa originally referred to a (...) statement that is ‘contrary to received opinion’, but this idea has generally been subsumed – both in philosophy and more common place understandings – under the notion of aporia. This conceptual recovery enables a better understanding of key traditions in social and political theory, notably post-structuralism and Habermasian critical theory, which can be demarcated through their respective responses to the emergence of ‘paradoxes’. However, the article also demonstrates the material significance of these philosophical categories through their application to contemporary democratic politics. I analyse the constitutive tension between liberalism and democracy as well as the emergence of populism and show how these conceptual tools provide new insights for understanding these most pressing political developments of our time. (shrink)

In this journal, Hamid Vahid argues against three families of explanation of Moore-paradoxicality. The first is the Wittgensteinian approach; I assert that p just in case I assert that I believe that p. So making a Moore-paradoxical assertion involves contradictory assertions. The second is the epistemic approach, one committed to: if I am justified in believing that p then I am justified in believing that I believe that p. So it is impossible to have a justified omissive Moore-paradoxical belief. The (...) third is the conscious belief approach, being committed to: if I consciously believe that p then I believe that I believe that p. So if I have a conscious omissive Moore-paradoxical belief, then I have contradictory second-order beliefs. In their place, Vahid argues for the defective-interpretation approach, broadly that charity requires us to discount the utterer of a Moore-paradoxical sentence as a speaker. I agree that the Wittgensteinian approach is unsatisfactory. But so is the defective-interpretation approach. However, there is a satisfactory version of each of the epistemic and conscious-belief approaches. (shrink)

This paper offers a new solution to the Surprise Test Paradox. The paradox arises thanks to an ingenious argument that seems to show that surprise tests are impossible. My solution to the paradox states that it relies on a questionable closure principle. This closure principle says that if one knows something and competently deduces something else, one knows the further thing. This principle has been endorsed by John Hawthorne and Timothy Williamson, among others, and I trace its motivation back to (...) work by Alvin Goldman. I provide counterexamples to the principle and explain the flaw in the reasoning of those who defend it. (shrink)

I will present a novel account of justification in terms of knowledge on which one is justified in believing p just in case one could know that p. My main aim is to unravel some of the formal properties that justification has in virtue of its connection to knowledge. Assuming that safety is at least a necessary condition for knowledge, I show that justification doesn’t iterate trivially; isn’t a luminous condition; is closed under a certain kind of multi-premise closure principle, (...) but; surprisingly one can nevertheless believe with justification a set of claims that’s jointly inconsistent. This last feature allows for a rather satisfying solution to the preface paradox. Finally, I contrast my account with other knowledge-first accounts of justification. (shrink)

The meaning of the term ‘dialectic’ is often obscured by its chameleonic multiuse in contemporary theology, and is habitually confused with its sibling concept ‘paradox’. This article narrates dialectic’s theological foundations in the modern dialectical theology school, highlighting in particular Karl Barth’s ‘dialectical’ relationship to dialectic, and dialectical theology’s relationship to paradox. To illuminate and distinguish these concepts further, the article then briefly sketches four varied but conceptually consistent expressions of theological paradox (in Chesterton, Eckhart, Kierkegaard, and Milbank). It is (...) argued that paradox may be exclusively distinguished from dialectical method, yet conceived within a broader dialectical scope. The conclusion offers four primary dialectical modes through which theological polarities interact (including paradox), before briefly reflecting upon the simultaneous essentiality and boundedness of dialectic for theological speech. (shrink)

Moore′s paradox came of age when John N. Williams gave us a simple paradoxical argument according to which the Moorean believer must hold false belief while believing contingent propositions. Simplicity was key; it was groundbreaking for the topic. On Williams′s account, given only the notions of inconsistency and self‐refutation, the thesis that belief distributes over conjunction, and a tiny bit of classical logic, we can derive a paradox from the Moorean propositional schemata. But, as argued here, it′s easy to overestimate (...) the significance of his argument to a proper understanding of the problem. His fundamental claim can be established in a way that shows how the paradox arises for any propositional attitude that distributes over conjunction, which gives us the opportunity to reconsider the problem we have been calling “Moore′s paradox”, and to conclude that all of the available analyses of the problem are, at best, incomplete. On this new approach, we lose a little formal simplicity vis‐à‐vis Williams′s approach, but make conceptual economy, as we gain a farther‐reaching problem than the one we have known. (shrink)

It is argued, on the basis of new counterexamples, that neither knowledge nor epistemic justification (or “epistemic rationality”) can reasonably be thought to be closed under logical implication. The argument includes an attempt to reconcile the fundamental intuitions of the opposing parties in the debate.

In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel develops a subtle analysis of Megarian paradoxes: the Liar, the Veiled Man and the Sorites. In this paper, we focus on Hegel's interpretation of...

It is argued, on the basis of new counterexamples, that neither knowledge nor epistemic justification (or epistemic rationality ) can reasonably be thought to be closed under logical implication. The argument includes an attempt to reconcile the fundamental intuitions of the opposing parties in the debate.

In this paper we argue that our conception of and intuitions about paradoxes are themselves paradoxical. Specifically, we argue that our commitment to the existence and nature of paradoxes is inconsistent with a norm of rationality—which is a paradox.

This paper applies what I call the shrieking method (a refined version of an idea with roots in Priest's work) to one of – if not the – issues confronting glut-theoretic approaches to paradox (viz., the problem of ‘just true’ or, what comes to the same, ‘just false’). The paper serves as a challenge to formulate a problem of ‘just true’ that isn't solved by shrieking (as advanced in this paper), if such a problem be thought to exist.

There are many ordinary propositions we think we know. Almost every ordinary proposition entails some "lottery proposition" which we think we do not know but to which we assign a high probability of being true (for instance: “I will never be a multi-millionaire” entails “I will not win this lottery”). How is this possible - given that some closure principle is true? This problem, also known as “the Lottery puzzle”, has recently provoked a lot of discussion. In this paper I (...) discuss one of the most promising answers to the problem: Stewart Cohen’s contextualist solution which is based on ideas about the salience of chances of error. After presenting some objections to it I sketch an alternative solution which is still contextualist in spirit. (shrink)

Those of us who have followed Fred Dretske's lead with regard to epistemic closure and its impact on skepticism have been half-wrong for the last four decades. But those who have opposed our Dretskean stance, contextualists in particular, have been just wrong. We have been half-right. Dretske rightly claimed that epistemic status is not closed under logical implication. Unlike the Dretskean cases, the new counterexamples to closure offered here render every form of contextualist pro-closure maneuvering useless. But there is a (...) way of going wrong under Dretske's lead. As the paper argues, Cartesian skepticism thrives on closure failure in a way that is yet to be acknowledged in the literature. The skeptic can make do with principles which are weaker than the familiar closure principles. But I will further claim that this is only a momentary reprieve for the skeptic. As it turns out, one of the weaker principles on which a skeptical modus tollens must rest can be shown false. (shrink)

In the course of this paper, I shall argue that an absolute ineffable God of Islam is contradictory beyond the ordinary categories (substantive or insubstantive) of truth. In order to demonstrate my thesis, I shall refer to a metaphysical and epistemological inquiry. In virtue of both of these inquires, I shall establish that the contradictory assumption ‘the God of Islam is absolutely ineffable’ cannot be false in a substantive or an insubstantive sense. The metaphysical inquiry shall comprise of two related (...) phases. The first phase includes logical realism and anti-realism, while the second phase includes ontological realism and ontological deflationism. I demonstrate that the contradictory assumption ‘the God of Islam is absolutely ineffable’ cannot be considered false in virtue of these outlooks for different reasons. The epistemological inquiry refers to epistemicism. I demonstrate that although this particular view infers an indeterminate truth-value of the contradictory assumption ‘the God of Islam is absolutely ineffable’, it is incompatible with the notion of an absolute ineffable God of Islam. In light of both these inquires, it will become apparent that the contradictory assumption of an absolute ineffable God of Islam cannot be false in a substantive or insubstantive sense. This is because an absolute ineffable God of Islam transcends beyond these very categories of falsehood and truth. (shrink)

Paradoxes have played an important role both in philosophy and in mathematics and paradox resolution is an important topic in both fields. Paradox resolution is deeply important because if such resolution cannot be achieved, we are threatened with the charge of debilitating irrationality. This is supposed to be the case for the following reason. Paradoxes consist of jointly contradictory sets of statements that are individually plausible or believable. These facts about paradoxes then give rise to a deeply troubling epistemic problem. (...) Specifically, if one believes all of the constitutive propositions that make up a paradox, then one is apparently committed to belief in every proposition. This is the result of the principle of classical logical known as ex contradictione (sequitur) quodlibetthat anything and everything follows from a contradiction, and the plausible idea that belief is closed under logical or material implication (i.e. the epistemic closure principle). But, it is manifestly and profoundly irrational to believe every proposition and so the presence of even one contradiction in one’s doxa appears to result in what seems to be total irrationality. This problem is the problem of paradox-induced explosion. In this paper it will be argued that in many cases this problem can plausibly be avoided in a purely epistemic manner, without having either to resort to non-classical logics for belief (e.g. paraconsistent logics) or to the denial of the standard closure principle for beliefs. The manner in which this result can be achieved depends on drawing an important distinction between the propositional attitude of belief and the weaker attitude of acceptance such that paradox constituting propositions are accepted but not believed. Paradox-induced explosion is then avoided by noting that while belief may well be closed under material implication or even under logical implication, these sorts of weaker commitments are not subject to closure principles of those sorts. So, this possibility provides us with a less radical way to deal with the existence of paradoxes and it preserves the idea that intelligent agents can actually entertain paradoxes. (shrink)