This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract The Model ‐ Theoretic Argument Difficulties and Differences Putnam's Progress Implications Objections and Replies References.

First published in 1978, this reissue presents a seminal philosophical work by professor Putnam, in which he puts forward a conception of knowledge which makes ethics, practical knowledge and non-mathematic parts of the social sciences just as much parts of 'knowledge' as the sciences themselves. He also rejects the idea that knowledge can be demarcated from non-knowledge by the fact that the former alone adheres to 'the scientific method'. The first part of the book consists of Professor Putnam's (...) John Locke lectures, delivered at the University of Oxford in 1976, offering a detailed examination of a 'physicalist' theory of reference against a background of the works of Tarski, Carnap, Popper, Hempel and Kant. The analysis then extends to notions of truth, the character of linguistic enquiry and social scientific enquiry in general, interconnecting with the great metaphysical problem of realism, the nature of language and reference, and the character of ourselves. (shrink)

Argument is a critical component in policy deliberations. In this study, negotiation is viewed as a type of policy deliberation, one characterized by attack and defense of proposals, interdependence between disputants, and mixed motives of cooperation and competition. Argument in negotiation, then, functions as a reason-giving activity to enact policy. Employing a category system based on rhetorical stasis, the researchers examine whether bargainers specialize in their use of argument types and whether this specialization remains consistent throughout (...) a teacher-school board negotiation and whether it differs for the type of settlement of agenda items. Results of the study suggest that bargainers specialize in argument types at different times during the bargaining. In the early stages of negotiation, teachers center on harm and workability arguments to prepare their case and justify the merits of their proposals, but in the latter phases of bargaining they switch to arguments on implementation to reaffirm their demands and to prioritize issues. Board members, in the early stages, rely on disadvantage, workability, and implementation arguments to establish resistance points and to refute appeals for change, but in the latter stages of negotiation they employ harm-inherency and disadvantage arguments to weigh the costs of concessions and to rationalize the settlement. This study, then, supports the existence of phase variation in bargaining and argues for a developmental approach in deciphering how negotiators who hold antithetical positions reach mutually satisfactory settlements. (shrink)

Temporal analyses of causal directionality fail if causes needn't precede their effects. Certain well-known difficulties with alternative (non-temporal) analyses have, in recent accounts, been avoided by attending more carefully to the formal features of relations typically figuring in philosophical discussions of causation. I discuss here a representative of such accounts, offered by David Sanford, according to which a correct analysis of causal priority must issue from viewing the condition relation as nonsymmetrical. The theory is shown first to be an implicitly (...) counterfactual treatment at its base: this provides for an explicit reformulation of several key notions in the theory. An argument is then presented, independent of these modal considerations, for the conclusion that causal priority is possible only given certain implausible assumptions about the asymmetric character of causal laws which, I claim, are not met. The best objection to this argument is shown to fail on several counts, partly in light of the counterfactual results offered earlier. It is concluded that, if laws are symmetric, analyses of the sort discussed must look elsewhere for the source of causal priority; but if laws are not symmetric, resting causal priority so heavily on nomological asymmetry is no analysis at all. (shrink)

This paper describes the enormous impact of Gödel's work on mathematical logic and recursion theory. After a brief description of the major theorems that Gödel proved, it focuses on subsequent work extending what he did, sometimes by quite different methods. The paper closes with a new result, applying Gödel's methods to show that if scientific epistemology could be completely represented by a particular Turing machine, then it would be impossible for us to know that fact.

This paper offers a new argument against raising and killing sentient non-human animals for food. It is immoral to non-lethally impair sentient non-human animals for pleasure, and since raising and killing sentient animals for gustatory pleasure impairs them to a much greater degree, it also is wrong. This is because of the impairment principle: if it is immoral to impair an organism to some degree, then, ceteris paribus, it is immoral to impair it to a higher degree. This (...) argument is structurally analogous to Perry Hendricks’s impairment argument for the immorality of abortion. However, the argument is more defensible applied to the raising and killing of sentient nonhuman animals for food because of the sentience of the non-human animals involved. I explain how the argument is distinct from other pro-vegan, pro-vegetarian arguments. (shrink)

This paper explores some of the benefits informal logic may have for the analysis of mathematical inference. It shows how Stephen Toulmin’s pioneering treatment of defeasible argumentation may be extended to cover the more complex structure of mathematical proof. Several common proof techniques are represented, including induction, proof by cases, and proof by contradiction. Affinities between the resulting system and Imre Lakatos’s discussion of mathematical proof are then explored.

The first section of the paper gives a very condensed history of the evolution of the author’s views on realism and anti-realism. It emphasizes that his previously accepted form of anti-realism was abandoned not because of the alleged fallacies in the model-theoretic argument against metaphysical realism, but due to his rejection of some of the assumptions on which it rests - assumptions which have been almost universal in philosophy after Descartes. The second section discusses and defends the part of (...) the model-theoretic argument that many critics have almost universally found fallacious, namely the „just more theory” move. In the appendix to the paper the author elaborates what does his return to common sense realism mean. He points out that his position involves a negative element, the rejection of the idea that truth cannot outrun verifiability, and two positive elements: returning (as close as possible) to „naive realism” with respect to perception, and a disquotational account of truth similar to one endorsed by Wittgenstein. (shrink)

The following interview took place between Jacques Bouveresse and Hilary Putnam on May 11, 2001 in Paris at the Collège de France. Sandra Laugier was present, preserved the transcription, and proposed that we publish the text here. It was translated into English by Marie Kerguelen Feldblyum LeBlevennec and lightly edited by Jacques Bouveresse, Juliet Floyd, and Sandra Laugier. Themes covered in the interview include the question of Wittgenstein’s importance in contemporary philosophy, Putnam’s development with respect to realism, especially (...) in philosophy of mathematics, and the differences and motivations for realism in mathematics, physics, and ethics. The editors thank Marie Kerguelen Feldblyum LeBlevennec for her translation, and Jacques Bouveresse, Mario De Caro, and Sandra Laugier for permission to publish this transcription. (shrink)

In the last few decades, the relevance of quantum mechanics to the free-will debate has been discussed at length, especially in relation to the prospects of libertarianism. Basing his interpretation on Anscombe’s seminal work, Putnam argued in 1979 that, given that quantum mechanical indeterminacy is holistic at the macrolevel—i.e., it is not traceable to atomistic events such as quantum jumps of single atoms—it can provide libertarians with the kind of freedom they seek. As shown in this article, however, (...) class='Hi'>Putnam ultimately reached the conclusion—together with the other author of this article—that his argument was wrong due to problems with the way it appealed to the Uncertainty Principle.**. (shrink)

Michela Bella & Anna Boncompagni – This conversation will focus on your role and your position with respect to pragmatism; those who you consider allies and enemies in the field; and then finally your ideas about the future of philosophy and the future of pragmatism. You worked with famous philosophers like Carnap, Reichenbach and many others. But let us start from the beginning. Hilary Putnam – My alma mater was the University of Pennsylvania. The first teacher who really (...) influenced me there... (shrink)

Many areas of genetic research, genetic forensics and genetic essentialism are treated in public sphere debate as suspicious and problematic or are subject to waves of moral panic. In cultural theory, likewise, strong critiques of the genetic essentialism emerge as part of a broader critical assessment of the discourses of the biological sciences and the assertion of a connection between genes and human behavior. However, the scientific and popular claim to the existence of a “gay gene” is not treated in (...) the same way, and has been widely celebrated both within lesbian/gay culture and more broadly in liberal-humanist speech. This essay suggests that it is not enough to presume that this is a result of the extension of essentialism into new popular understandings of human biology. Rather, this essay examines five reasons which have made the popular acceptance of a “gay gene” tenable: the dominance of “gay personage” arguments, the continued influence of early sexology, the suspicion of psychological and constructionist approaches to lesbian/gay sexualities, the effectiveness of genetic essentialism in“ethnic rights” political approaches and the continued centrality of “fixed subjecthood” in contemporary western culture. (shrink)

Although adverbialism is not given much attention in current discussions of phenomenal states, it remains of interest to philosophers who reject the representationalist view of such states, in suggesting an alternative to a problematic ‘act-property’ conception. We discuss adverbialism and the formalization Tye once offered for it, and criticize the semantics he proposed for this formalization. Our central claim is that Tye’s ontological purposes could have been met by a more minimal view, which we dub “attributeism”. We then show (...) that there is no incompatibility between the ontology of attributeism and the postulation of pictorial representations in the brain. (shrink)

Contents Preface General Introduction 1 | Science and Pseudoscience Introduction Karl Popper, Science: Conjectures and Refutations Thomas S. Kuhn, Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research? Imre Lakatos, Science and Pseudoscience Paul R. Thagard, Why Astrology Is a Pseudoscience Michael Ruse, Creation-Science Is Not Science Larry Laudan, Commentary: Science at the Bar---Causes for Concern Commentary 2 | Rationality, Objectivity, and Values in Science Introduction Thomas S. Kuhn, The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions Thomas S. Kuhn, Objectivity, Value Judgment, and (...) Theory Choice Ernan McMullin, Rationality and Paradigm Change in Science Larry Laudan, Kuhn’s Critique of Methodology Helen E. Longino, Values and Objectivity Kathleen Okruhlik, Gender and the Biological Sciences Commentary 3 | The Duhem-Quine Thesis and Underdetermination Introduction Pierre Duhem, Physical Theory and Experiment W. V. Quine, Two Dogmas of Empiricism Donald Gillies, The Duhem Thesis and the Quine Thesis Larry Laudan, Demystifying Underdetermination *Colin Howson and Peter Urbach, The Duhem Problem Commentary 4 | Induction, Prediction, and Evidence Introduction Peter Lipton, Induction Karl Popper, The Problem of Induction Wesley C. Salmon, Rational Prediction Carl G. Hempel, Criteria of Confirmation and Acceptability Peter Achinstein, Explanation v. Prediction: Which Carries More Weight? *Nelson Goodman, The New Riddle of Induction Commentary 5 | Confirmation and Relevance: Bayesian Approaches Introduction Wesley C. Salmon, Rationality and Objectivity in Science *Deborah G. Mayo, A Critique of Salmon’s Bayesian Way *Alan Chalmers, The Bayesian Approach Paul Horwich, Therapeutic Bayesianism Commentary 6 | Models of Explanation Introduction Rudolf Carnap, The Value of Laws: Explanation and Prediction Carl G. Hempel, Two Basic Types of Scientific Explanation Carl G. Hempel, The Thesis of Structural Identity Carl G. Hempel, Inductive-Statistical Explanation Peter Railton, A Deductive-Nomological Model of Probabilistic Explanation *Philip Kitcher, Explanatory Unification *James Woodward, The Manipulability Conception of Causal Explanation Commentary 7 | Laws of Nature Introduction A. J. Ayer, What Is a Law of Nature? Fred I. Dretske, Laws of Nature D. H. Mellor, Necessities and Universals in Natural Laws Nancy Cartwright, Do the Laws of Physics State the Facts? Commentary 8 | Intertheoretic Reduction Introduction Ernest Nagel, Issues in the Logic of Reductive Explanations Paul K. Feyerabend, How to Be a Good Empiricist *Jerry A. Fodor, Special Sciences Philip Kitcher, 1953 and All That: A Tale of Two Sciences Commentary 9 | Empiricism and Scientific Realism Introduction Grover Maxwell, The Ontological Status of Theoretical Entities Bas C. van Fraassen, Arguments Concerning Scientific Realism Alan Musgrave, Realism versus Constructive Empiricism Larry Laudan, A Confutation of Convergent Realism *Juha T. Saatsi, On the Pessimistic Induction and Two Fallacies Ian Hacking, Experimentation and Scientific Realism David B. Resnik, Hacking’s Experimental Realism *Martin Carrier, What Is Right with the Miracle Argument Arthur Fine, The Natural Ontological Attitude Alan Musgrave, NOA’s Ark---Fine for Realism Commentary Glossary Bibliography Name Index Subject Index. (shrink)

Precipitated largely by publication of the Theodicy in 1706, requests for a systematic exposition of Leibniz’s philosophy led to his self-described Éclaircissement sur les monades, begun in the summer of 1714 at the request of Remond. Unlike the treatise on philosophical theology, Leibniz’s Monadology is at once broadly systematic but sketchy and compressed: so it is useful, but then not so useful, as an introduction to his philosophy. Leibniz later decompressed it somewhat by adding references to the Theodicy, where (...) certain issues received fuller treatment. Rescher’s new book goes several steps further, still reckoning Leibniz as his own best commentator: in addition to those passages from the Theodicy, other passages from the Leibniz corpus are brought alongside each section of the Monadology, letting them pretty much speak for themselves about the ideas of that section, with a miminum of added commentary. This is a swell idea, and I think Rescher succeeds in executing it. The result is a useful work for students, who in a single edition get Leibniz’s original effort at carving his system at its joints—the principles of philosophy, he called them—and enough additional text to flesh out a full-bodied picture of his mature philosophy. (shrink)

Perhaps the most commonly discussed argument against the possibility of extended simples is the argument from heterogeneity. The argument states that, if extended simples are possible, then extended simples which exhibit intrinsic qualitative variation across space (or spacetime) are also possible [Premise 1]. But, the argument goes, it is impossible for an extended simple to exhibit intrinsic qualitative variation across space (or spacetime) [Premise 2]. Thus, extended simples are impossible. I argue that there is a (...) serious problem with the argument from heterogeneity: the best arguments in support of the first premise undermine support for the second. Thus, there appears to be no good reason to accept both premises. (shrink)

The revival of Leibniz studies in the past twenty-five years has cast important new light on both the context and content of Leibniz's philosophical thought. Where earlier English-language scholarship understood Leibniz's philosophy as issuing from his preoccupations with logic and language, recent work has recommended an account on which theological, ethical, and metaphysical themes figure centrally in Leibniz's thought throughout his career. The significance of these themes to the development of Leibniz's philosophy is the subject of increasing attention by philosophers (...) and historians. This collection of new essays by a distinguished group of scholars offers an up-to-date overview of the current state of Leibniz research. In focusing on nature and freedom, the volume revisits two key topics in Leibniz's thought, on which he engaged both contemporary and historical arguments. Important contributions to Leibniz scholarship in their own right, these articles collectively provide readers a framework in which to better situate Leibniz's distinctive philosophy of nature and the congenial home for a morally significant freedom that he took it to provide. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy: 1637–1739J. A. CoverKenneth Clatterbaugh. The Causation Debate in Modern Philosophy: 1637–1739. New York and London: Routledge, 1999. Pp. xi + 239. Cloth, $75.00. Paper, $21.00.Over the scholastics and earliest moderns, Hume had an advantage of hindsight in declaring that "There is no question, which on account of its importance, as well as difficulty, has caus'd more disputes both among ancients and modern (...) philosophers, than this concerning the efficacy of causes, or that quality which made them be followed by their effects" (Treatise I.iii.14). Between the scholastics and Hume fell (i) Descartes, (ii) classical mechanists such as Hobbes and Gassendi, (iii) the Cartesians Le Grand and Malebranche, (iv) the explanatory rationalists Spinoza and Leibniz, (v) later experimental mechanists such as Boyle, Rohault and Newton, and (vi) the so-called empiricists Locke and Berkeley. This book presents an accessible and admirably broad overview of the modern debate about causation, without sacrificing serious attention to textual details. With two chapters on (i) and one apiece on (ii) - (vi), Clatterbaugh earns for himself and his reader a helpfully synoptic picture of philosophical shifts in the causation debate in the hundred years separating Descartes' Discourse and Hume's Treatise. By the end of the (modern) day, (1) the four-fold causes of Aristotelian-Scholasticism have given way to efficient causation alone; (2) no pre-existing forms in efficient causes are to be found, nor indeed any substantial active powers whatever; (3) there is no deep sense in which causes communicate reality to effects; (4) necessary connection has gone by the board; (5) divine causation has no place in a natural philosophy of causation. No surprises there, but Clatterbaugh's effort reminds us afresh of the varied and torturous routes to such shifts, helping advanced students better (or newly) appreciate them in the comfortable space of 200 pages.Of those pages, a third are devoted to Descartes and the Cartesians. That's not inappropriate, given the importance and difficulty of Descartes's response to Aristotelian-Scholastic accounts of causation, and its influence on occasionalist sentiments on the Continent. The tenor and value of this book may be illustrated by reflecting on the first of these—a rich and frustrating business, both in Descartes's texts and in Clatterbaugh's book. Suppose we grant Descartes the back of his hand to substantial forms and active formal causes as at best "unexplanatory" (counseling Regius): his "at-least-as-much-reality-in-the-cause-as-in-the-effect" principle might be treated as the basis of "an alternative" metaphysical account of causation (19-32). Well, it might be so-treated: but three versions of the principle later, the reader will be excused for judging it little more than a necessary condition for some event-pair x,y counting as a cause-effect pair. If the scholastic appeal to active forms is unexplanatory, then Descartes's [End Page 600] principle—which isn't Descartes's principle at all but a scholastic commonplace—can scarcely fill the explanatory gap. Glossed as a predictable consequence of some strong form of influxus physicus, it is embarrassed by Foucher's objection (that mind bears no likeness to body) and by the weight of texts urging that accidents are individual to their bearers. Having offered us no deep metaphysical story about what in the world answers to 'vis,' Descartes is at best a bungling "interactionist" (here appropriating Clatterbaugh's word for someone whose apparent talk of secondary causes we are asked to respect as expressing a strict and considered philosophical commitment). One can only side with Voetius in reckoning Descartes's replacement of forms by purely quantitative, mechanical principles of motion as expressing a mere "disposition of the movable to move... not an activity of an efficient cause, but merely a necessary condition and a causa sine qua non" (my emphasis: Selectarum Disputationum I [1648-59], 873). Descartes has no deep theory about the nature of causation.Is that too harsh? Had this book a different target, one could fairly complain that the author too infrequently steps away from the texts and commentators to offer and defend a... (shrink)

The first section of the paper gives a very condensed history of the evolution of the author's views on realism and anti-realism. It emphasizes that his previously accepted form of anti-realism was abandoned not because of the alleged fallacies in the model-theoretic argument against metaphysical realism, but due to his rejection of some of the assumptions on which it rests - assumptions which have been almost universal in philosophy after Descartes. The second section discusses and defends the part of (...) the model-theoretic argument that many critics have almost universally found fallacious, namely the "just more theory" move. In the appendix to the paper the author elaborates what does his return to common sense realism mean. He points out that his position involves a negative element, the rejection of the idea that truth cannot outrun verifiability, and two positive elements: returning (as close as possible) to "naive realism" with respect to perception, and a disquotational account of truth similar to one endorsed by Wittgenstein. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel argument against the phenomenal intentionality thesis (or PIT for short). The argument, which I'll call the extended mind argument against phenomenal intentionality, is centered around two claims: the first asserts that some source intentional states extend into the environment, while the second maintains that no conscious states extend into the environment. If these two claims are correct, then PIT is false, for PIT implies that the extension of source intentionality is predicated (...) upon the extension of phenomenal consciousness. The argument is important because it undermines an increasingly prominent account of the nature of intentionality. PIT has entered the philosophical mainstream and is now a serious contender to naturalistic views of intentionality like the tracking theory and the functional role theory (Loar 1987, 2003; Searle 1990; Strawson 1994; Horgan and Tienson 2002; Pitt 2004; Farkas 2008; Kriegel 2013; Montague 2016; Bordini 2017; Forrest 2017; Mendelovici 2018). The extended mind argument against PIT challenges the popular sentiment that consciousness grounds intentionality. (shrink)

To recapitulate, then, for Reichenbach probability is the foundation of both metaphysics and epistemology. Metaphysically, probability is fundamental because it is the probability relations among the sequences of events in the world that gives rise to causality, time, and space. Epistemologically, probability is fundamental because empirical knowledge is simply knowledge of probabilities. Even knowledge of observation sentences is considered to be probabilistic knowledge by Reichenbach (EP, pp. 183–188), because Reichenbach's fallibilism leads him to hold that no observation sentence is (...) absolutely incorrigible, and with the advance of scientific knowledge we need to inquire into the probability that our singular observation judgments may be in error.My aim here has not been to argue that Reichenbach succeeded in his magnificent attempt any more than Carnap succeeded in his. But I hope to have convinced you that is was one of the most magnificent attempts by any empiricist philosopher of this or of any other century, and I believe that the effort to understand it and to master its details will as richly repay us as the much greater effort which has been devoted to the study of Carnap's work has already repayed us. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show that human persons belong, ontologically, in social ontology. After setting out my views on ontology, I turn to persons and argue that they have first-person perspectives in two stages (rudimentary and robust) essentially. Then I argue that the robust stage of the first-person persective is social, in that it requires a language, and languages require linguistic communities. Then I extend the argument to cover the rudimentary stage of the (...) first-person perspective as well. I conclude by enumerating ways in which human persons differ from nonhuman animals. (shrink)

In addition to being arguably the greatest Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides was also the most radical of the medieval proponents of “negative theology”. Building on some recent important work by Ehud Benor, I propose to discuss the puzzles and paradoxes of negative theology not as simply peculiar to Maimonides’ thought, but as revealing something that can assume great importance for religious life at virtually any time. My discussion will begin with a brief review of well known aspects of Maimonides’ view; (...) following that I will say something about Wittgensteinian views of religious language; then I will return to Maimonides’ negative theology; and finally I will consider some philosophical criticisms, not only of Maimonides’ view but of the medieval discussion as a whole. (shrink)

In a memorable passage near the beginning of William James asks us to imagine a world in which all our dearest social utopias are realized, and then to imagine that this world is offered to us at the price of one lost soul at the farthest edge of the universe suffering eternal, intense, lonely pain. Then he asks.

There are old and convincing arguments for intellectual liberty in all of its forms — freedom to think, to speak, to publish — based on assumptions that we who have been brought up in Western democratic countries take for granted. Two major arguments are particularly powerful. The first I shall call the Utilitarian argument which, in its simplest form, says that without intellectual liberty any Party and any government will harden into an exploiting class, a tyranny. The Kantian (...) class='Hi'>argument is that, quite apart from its value to society, intellectual liberty — Kant calls it autonomy — is absolutely indispensable to the integrity of the person. In this paper I defend the Kantian approach. The philosophical-epistemological question "How do you know autonomy is a good thing?" remains unanswered. No further foundation can be given. (shrink)

There are old and convincing arguments for intellectual liberty in all of its forms — freedom to think, to speak, to publish — based on assumptions that we who have been brought up in Western democratic countries take for granted. Two major arguments are particularly powerful. The first I shall call the Utilitarian argument which, in its simplest form, says that without intellectual liberty any Party and any government will harden into an exploiting class, a tyranny. The Kantian (...) class='Hi'>argument is that, quite apart from its value to society, intellectual liberty — Kant calls it autonomy — is absolutely indispensable to the integrity of the person. In this paper I defend the Kantian approach. The philosophical-epistemological question "How do you know autonomy is a good thing?" remains unanswered. No further foundation can be given. (shrink)

Precipitated largely by publication of the Theodicy in 1706, requests for a systematic exposition of Leibniz’s philosophy led to his self-described Éclaircissement sur les monades, begun in the summer of 1714 at the request of Remond. Unlike the treatise on philosophical theology, Leibniz’s Monadology is at once broadly systematic but sketchy and compressed: so it is useful, but then not so useful, as an introduction to his philosophy. Leibniz later decompressed it somewhat by adding references to the Theodicy, where (...) certain issues received fuller treatment. Rescher’s new book goes several steps further, still reckoning Leibniz as his own best commentator: in addition to those passages from the Theodicy, other passages from the Leibniz corpus are brought alongside each section of the Monadology, letting them pretty much speak for themselves about the ideas of that section, with a miminum of added commentary. This is a swell idea, and I think Rescher succeeds in executing it. The result is a useful work for students, who in a single edition get Leibniz’s original effort at carving his system at its joints—the principles of philosophy, he called them—and enough additional text to flesh out a full-bodied picture of his mature philosophy. (shrink)

Precipitated largely by publication of the Theodicy in 1706, requests for a systematic exposition of Leibniz’s philosophy led to his self-described Éclaircissement sur les monades, begun in the summer of 1714 at the request of Remond. Unlike the treatise on philosophical theology, Leibniz’s Monadology is at once broadly systematic but sketchy and compressed: so it is useful, but then not so useful, as an introduction to his philosophy. Leibniz later decompressed it somewhat by adding references to the Theodicy, where (...) certain issues received fuller treatment. Rescher’s new book goes several steps further, still reckoning Leibniz as his own best commentator: in addition to those passages from the Theodicy, other passages from the Leibniz corpus are brought alongside each section of the Monadology, letting them pretty much speak for themselves about the ideas of that section, with a miminum of added commentary. This is a swell idea, and I think Rescher succeeds in executing it. The result is a useful work for students, who in a single edition get Leibniz’s original effort at carving his system at its joints—the principles of philosophy, he called them—and enough additional text to flesh out a full-bodied picture of his mature philosophy. (shrink)

There is something undeniably puzzling, difficult, about relations. Socrates is a fine individual substance, and his paleness a fine accident; but what of his being taller than Simmias? If to our eyes Aristotle is working no harder in chapter seven of the Categories than in chapter eight, to medieval eyes things were messier there—or at any rate sufficiently unsettled to yield an extended and hotly disputed controversy than which only the question of universals is knottier. Leibniz evidently managed no better (...) than Aristotle, which scarcely counts against him: there were of course more medieval thinkers offering their glosses on Aristotle on relations than there are Leibniz scholars, but those of the latter who’ve thought they had something helpful to say about Leibniz on relations would agree that things are unsettled, and maybe even hotly disputed. Readers can gain some sense of this from Dennis Plaisted’s excellent but sadly under-reviewed contribution to the debate in Leibniz on Purely Extrinsic Denominations, which represents the most extended and detailed attack on broadly “reductionist” readings of Leibniz on relations to date. For reasons owing more to divine intervention than creaturely freedom, the present review is delinquent in a way that discussion of Plaisted’s work should not be. (shrink)

Putnam’s model-theoretic arguments for the indeterminacy of reference have been taken to pose a special problem for mathematical languages. In this paper, I argue that if one accepts that there are theory-external constraints on the reference of at least some expressions of ordinary language, then Putnam’s model-theoretic arguments for mathematical languages don’t go through. In particular, I argue for a kind of descriptivism about mathematical expressions according to which their reference is “anchored” in the reference of expressions (...) of ordinary language. These anchors add enough to the content of mathematical expressions to forestall the radical kind of indeterminacy that model-theoretic arguments are purported to show, while still leaving room for a plausible, moderate kind of indeterminacy. (shrink)

This chapter concentrates on the version of Putnam's argument set forth in his Reason, Truth and History. It explains how, in general terms, that argument is best conceived as working. Cursory inspection of Putnam's overall dialectic reveals it to incorporate three sub‐arguments, collectively designed to show that the metaphysical realist confronts an insuperable problem over explaining how our words may possess determinate reference. The chapter considers Putnam's version of the Permutation Argument, aimed at showing (...) that reference cannot be determined by fixing the truth‐conditions of whole sentences. It then reviews Putnam's 'just more theory' argument, designed to show that the metaphysical realist cannot rescue the situation by appeal to causal or other natural connections between our words and the world. The chapter considers how the considerations adduced by Hilary Putnam might be seen as an argument telling selectively against metaphysical realism. (shrink)

I present an argument against the thesis of Uniqueness and in favour of Permissivism. Counterexamples to Uniqueness are provided, based on ‘Safespot’ propositions – i.e. a proposition that is guaranteed to be true provided the subject adopts a certain attitude towards it. The argument relies on a plausible principle: (roughly stated) If S knows that her believing p would be a true belief, then it is rationally permitted for S to believe p. One motivation for denying this (...) principle – viz. opposition to ‘epistemic consequentialism’ – is briefly discussed. The principle is extended to cover degrees of belief and compared with a couple of other well-known constraints on rational degrees of belief. (shrink)

Since 1976 Hilary Putnam has on many occasions proposed an argument, founded on some model-theoretic results, to the effect that any philosophical programme whose purpose is to naturalize semantics would fail to account for an important feature of every natural language, the determinacy of reference. Here, after having presented the argument, I will suggest that it does not work, because it simply assumes what it should prove, that is that we cannot extend the metatheory: Putnam appears (...) to think that all we may determinately say about the relations between words and entities in the world is what the model theory tells us, but he has never offered justifications for that. At the end of the article, I will discuss the apparently reliable intuition that seems to me to be at the root of the argument, that is that, given a formal theory, there is an infinite number of ways of connecting it to, or of projecting it onto, the world. I will suggest that we should resist this intuition, because it rests on a very doubtful notion of world, which assumes that for any class of objects there is a corresponding property. (shrink)

Erin Kelly’s The Limits of Blame offers a series of powerful arguments against retributivist accounts of punishment. Among these, I first focus on Kelly’s Inscrutability Argument, which casts doubt on our epistemic justification for making judgments of moral desert. I then discuss Kelly’s defense of the Just Harm Reduction account of punishment. I consider how retributivists might respond to and learn from these arguments.

This issue of the Journal of Medical covers a range of ethical issues and care settings making the task of beginning to summarise these papers challenging. They reflect the diversity of our field, representing different branches of bioethics focussing on specific areas or topics using a variety of methodologies: but how do we categorise these branches of bioethics? What demarks one branch from another? And what function do such categorisations fulfil? From the early days of medical ethics we now have (...) a growing proliferation of different branches, from those with a more specific focus: clinical ethics, global ethics, nursing ethics, public health ethics for example, to a widening out, in terms of bioethics becoming the broader usage and medical ethics sitting within that. More recently, a new area of ethical focus has arisen, One Health, the subject of Johnson and Degeling’s article in this issue. They define One Health as follows: ‘One Health is generally construed as an integrated approach to understanding and managing disease. Although primarily associated with the prevention and control of Emerging Infectious Diseases, the approach is also relevant to dealing with endemic and zoonotic animal diseases, as well as securing food safety. In its most comprehensive form, it extends to fostering the health of humans, animals and their shared environments.’ This raises, in many ways, a different set of ethical concerns from those usually encountered in bioethics and medical ethics and this leads Johnson and Degeling to ask whether One Health merits having its own ‘ethical framework’. They use ethical frameworks in two senses: as value neutral deliberative tools and as embodying values, and consider how each usage could be applied in One Health. In terms of the first usage they state: ‘When ethical frameworks are regarded as a procedural tool then, the One Health perspective can broaden …. (shrink)

This is an article whose intended scope is to deal with the question of infinity in formal mathematics, mainly in the context of the theory of large cardinals as it has developed over time since Cantor’s introduction of the theory of transfinite numbers in the late nineteenth century. A special focus has been given to this theory’s interrelation with the forcing theory, introduced by P. Cohen in his lectures of 1963 and further extended and deepened since then, which leads (...) to a development and further refinement of the theory of large cardinals ultimately touching, especially in view of the discussion in the last section, on the metatheoretical nature of infinity. The whole undertaking, which takes into account major stages of the research in large cardinals theory, tries to present a defensible argumentation against an ontology of infinity actually rooted in the notion of subjectivity within the world. This means that rather than talking of a general ontology of infinity in the ideal platonic or in the aristotelian sense of potentiality, even in the alternative sense of an ontology of the event in A. Badiou’s sense, one can argue from a subjective point of view about the impossibility of defining cardinalities greater than the first uncountable one \ that would correspond to a distinct existence in real world terms or would be supported by a mathematical intuition in terms of reciprocity with experience. The argumentation from the particular standpoint includes also certain comments on the delimitative character of Gödel’s constructive universe L and the influence of the constructive approach in narrowing the breadth of an ‘ontology’ of infinity. (shrink)

Is the brain the biological substrate of consciousness? Most naturalistic philosophers of mind have supposed that the answer must obviously be «yes » to this question. However, a growing number of philosophers working in 4e (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive) cognitive science have begun to challenge this assumption, arguing instead that consciousness supervenes on the whole embodied animal in dynamic interaction with the environment. We call views that share this claim dynamic sensorimotor theories of consciousness (DSM). Clark (2009) a founder and (...) leading proponent of the hypothesis of the extended mind, demurs, arguing that as matter of fact the biology of consciousness doesn’t allow for a brain, body and world boundary crossing architecture. We begin by looking at one of the arguments for DSM, the variable neural correlates argument. We then outline two criticisms that Clark has made of this argument and endorse his criticisms. However we finish up by using the case of sensory substitution to argue that something of this argument for DSM nevertheless survives. We suggest that Clark ought to concede sensory substitution as a case in which the conscious mind extends. (shrink)

The paper presents two objections against Putnam’s Twin Earth argument, which was intended to secure semantic externalism. I first claim that Putnam’s reasoning rests on two assumptions and then try to show why these assumptions are contentious. The first objection is that, given what we know about science, it is unlikely that there are any natural-kind terms whose extension is codetermined by a small set of microstructures required by Putnam’s indexical account of extension determination. The (...) second objection is that there may not be a plausible concept of a speech community whose adoption would classify Oscar and Twin Oscar as members of different speech communities and, at the same time, render Oscar and Twin Oscar as being in the same psychological state. I contend that Putnam’s argument fails because both objections are justified. (shrink)

Stanford’s argument against scientific realism focuses on theories, just as many earlier arguments from inconceivability have. However, there are possible arguments against scientific realism involving unconceived (or inconceivable) entities of different types: observations, models, predictions, explanations, methods, instruments, experiments, and values. This paper charts such arguments. In combination, they present the strongest challenge yet to scientific realism.

‘Grounding and the indispensability argument’ presents a number of ways in which nominalists can use the notion of grounding to rebut the indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objects. I will begin by considering the strategy that puts grounding to the service of easy-road nominalists. I will give some support to this strategy by addressing a worry some may have about it. I will then consider a problem for the fast-lane strategy and a problem for easy-road (...) nominalists willing to accept Liggins’ grounding strategy. Both are related to the problem of formulating nominalistic explanations at the right level of generality. I will then consider a problem that Liggins only hints at. This problem has to do with mathematics’ function of providing the sort of covering generalizations we need in scientific explanations. (shrink)

In Reason, Truth and History, Putnam provides an influential argument for the materialist view that the supposition that we are all “actually” brains in a vat [BIV’s] is “necessarily false”. Putnam admits that his argument, inspired by insights in Wittgenstein’s later views, is “unusual”, but he is certain that it is a correct. He argues that the claim that we are BIV’s is self-refuting because, if we actually are BIV’s, then we cannot refer to real (...) physical things like vats. Although the present author agrees, fundamentally, with Heidegger’s view that we are essentially “in a world”, and, therefore, with Putnam’s conclusion that we cannot possibly be BIV’s, the paper argues that Putnam’s argument is fallacious. The proper conclusion to draw from Putnam’s argument is that asserting that one is a BIV is beyond the limits of a BIV’s language. That is, Putnam only shows that if we actually are BIV’s, then we cannot think or assert either that we are or that we are not BIV’s. It does not show that we are not “actually” BIV’s. The cogency of this criticism is illustrated with a concrete “science-fiction” example. (shrink)

This article examines Hilary Putnam's work in the philosophy of mathematics and - more specifically - his arguments against mathematical realism or objectivism. These include a wide range of considerations, from Gödel's incompleteness-theorem and the limits of axiomatic set-theory as formalised in the Löwenheim-Skolem proof to Wittgenstein's sceptical thoughts about rule-following, Michael Dummett's anti-realist philosophy of mathematics, and certain problems – as Putnam sees them – with the conceptual foundations of Peano arithmetic. He also adopts a thought-experimental approach (...) – a variant of Descartes' dream scenario – in order to establish the in-principle possibility that we might be deceived by the apparent self-evidence of basic arithmetical truths or that it might be ‘rational’ to doubt them under some conceivable set of circumstances. Thus Putnam assumes that mathematical realism involves a self-contradictory ‘Platonist’ idea of our somehow having quasi-perceptual epistemic ‘contact’ with truths that in their very nature transcend the utmost reach of human cognitive grasp. On this account, quite simply, ‘nothing works’ in philosophy of mathematics since wecan either cling to that unworkable notion of objective truth or abandon mathematical realism in favour of a verificationist approach that restricts the range of admissible statements to those for which we happen to possess some means of proof or ascertainment. My essay puts the case, conversely, that these hyperbolic doubts are not forced upon us but result from a false understanding of mathematical realism – a curious mixture of idealist and empiricist themes – which effectively skews the debate toward a preordained sceptical conclusion. I then go on to mount a defence of mathematical realism with reference to recent work in this field and also to indicate some problems – as I seethem – with Putnam's thought-experimental approach as well ashis use of anti-realist arguments from Dummett, Kripke, Wittgenstein, and others. (shrink)

I develop a formal logic in which quantified arguments occur in argument positions of predicates. This logic also incorporates negative predication, anaphora and converse relation terms, namely, additional syntactic features of natural language. In these and additional respects, it represents the logic of natural language more adequately than does any version of Frege’s Predicate Calculus. I first introduce the system’s main ideas and familiarize it by means of translations of natural language sentences. I then develop a formal system (...) built on these principles, the Quantified Argument Calculus or Quarc. I provide a truth-value assignment semantics and a proof system for the Quarc. I next demonstrate the system’s power by a variety of proofs; I prove its soundness; and I comment on its completeness. I then extend the system to modal logic, again providing a proof system and a truth-value assignment semantics. I proceed to show how the Quarc versions of the Barcan formulas, of their converses and of necessary existence come out straightforwardly invalid, which I argue is an advantage of the modal Quarc over modal Predicate Logic as a system intended to capture the logic of natural language. (shrink)

This paper surveys work on applying the insights of lexicalized grammars to low‐level discourse, to show the value of positing an autonomous grammar for low‐level discourse in which words (or idiomatic phrases) are associated with discourse‐level predicate–argument structures or modification structures that convey their syntactic‐semantic meaning and scope. It starts by describing a lexicalized Tree Adjoining Grammar for discourse (D‐LTAG). It then reviews an initial experiment in parsing text automatically, using both a lexicalized TAG and D‐LTAG, and (...) class='Hi'>then touches upon issues involved in how lexico‐syntactic elements contribute to discourse semantics. The paper concludes with a brief description of the Penn Discourse TreeBank, a resource being developed for the study of discourse structure and semantics. (shrink)

In his recent article On Relativity Theory and Openness of the Future (1991), Howard Stein proves not only that one can define an objective becoming relation in Minkowski spacetime, but that there is only one possible definition available if one accepts certain natural assumptions about what it is for becoming to occur and for it to be objective. Stein uses the definition supplied by his proof to refute an argument due to Rietdijk (1966, 1976), Putnam (1967) and Maxwell (...) (1985, 1988) that Minkowski spacetime leaves no room for objective becoming whatsoever. However, Stein's proof does not seem to go far enough. By considering only what events have become from the standpoint of any given event, Stein's uniqueness proof fails from the outset to allow for a more general kind of becoming whereby it is understood to occur from the standpoint of events on the particular worldlines followed by observers. This suggests that there may, after all, be more than one way to define objective becoming in Minkowski spacetime once each observer's worldline is allowed to figure in the definition. This suspicion is further aroused by two recent proposals for objective, worldline-dependent becoming due to Peacock (1992) and Muller (1992) who advocate ways of defining becoming that are not equivalent to the definition Stein's uniqueness proof delivers. Nevertheless, we show that Stein's uniqueness proofcan be extended in a natural way to cover this more general kind of becoming, provided one does not enrich standard Minkowski spacetime by privileging certain sets of worldlines over others in an unwarranted manner. Thus we aim to reinforce Stein's point that standard Minkowski spacetime does make room for objective becoming, but in essentially only one way, despite arguments and proposals to the contrary. (shrink)

We offer a new outlook on the vexed question of the reference of natural-kind terms. Since Kripke and Putnam, there is a widespread assumption that natural-kind terms function just like proper names: they designate their referents directly and they are rigid designators: their reference is unchanged even in worlds in which the referent lacks some or all the properties associated with it in the actual world, and which are useful to us in identifying that referent. There have, however, been (...) heated debates about what should be taken as a natural-kind term. Some challenge the very existence of a separate category of natural-kind terms ; some their being directly referential ; some raise the possibility that direct reference extends to terms beyond those usually assumed to fall under the category, e.g. to ‘polemical’ terms. When these debates turn on the question of what natural kinds are, they take on a strong epistemological or metaphysical dimension. We think the issues can be clarified within the limits of the philosophy of language: by looking into what ranges of general terms are perceived by speakers as rigid designators of natural kinds. The first step to take is to ground the various kinds of semantic externalism in distinct brands of semantic deference. This we define as speakers’ being disposed to use words in line with the norms of their linguistic community and as consenting to being corrected when it is manifest that their use and understanding of a word does not match common practice. When those dispositions are present, speakers defer semantically to something beyond themselves. Here, our focus is on spotting the words for which speakers would defer not to the current usage of the word in the linguistic community, nor to the current experts of the field to which the word pertains, but ultimately to the very nature of the referent of the term. When speakers’ deference conforms to that pattern, we argue, that is evidence that indexical externalism provides the right metasemantic account of how the meaning of the word is determined. In other words, one can say that the word is treated like a natural-kind term. But how can patterns of deference be measured? In an ongoing survey, participants are confronted with conditions that may prompt them to revise certain classificatory statements, e.g. An emu is a bird. Each condition makes salient one of the targets we have identified for deference: the community usage, the experts, the ‘world as it is’. In the condition that seeks to tap into the latter kind of deference, participants are presented with a scenario in which future scientific discoveries result in excluding from the extension of a term certain members currently thought to fall under that extension, e.g. discoveries that require excluding certain species now thought to be birds from the Aves class. The scenario is such that it is clear that the ‘discoveries’ bring us closer to the actual essence, if there is one, of birds. Our reasoning is that, if participants significantly modify their statements in the light of that scenario, they can be taken to ‘defer’ to the nature of the referent, thus vindicating indexical externalism. We test if words not normally assumed to be natural-kind terms – for instance summer, contract or rape – exhibit patterns of deference similar to those for bird. If so, then there’s a case for an extension of indexical externalism beyond the usual set of terms. What would be shown in this way is that speakers have something like realist intuitions with respect to words whose meaning is usually taken to be purely conventional or polemical. We are at the pre-test stage for the survey. We cannot yet report on our results. We should, however, have initial results by March, which, we believe, will enrich the observations made by previous empirical studies. References: Braisby, N., Franks, B. & Hampton, J. 1996. Essentialism, word use, and concepts. Cognition 59, 247-74./Genone, J. & Lombrozo, T. 2012. Concept possession, experimental semantics, and hybrid theories of reference. Philosophical Psychology 25, 717-742./Häggqvist, S. & Wikforss, Å. 2015. Experimental semantics: the case of natural kind terms, in J. Haukioja, Experimental Philosophy of Language, London, Bloomsbury./Jylkkä, J., Railo, H. & Haukioja, J. 2009. Psychological essentialism and semantic externalism: Evidence for externalism in lay speakers’ language use. Philosophical Psychology 22, 37-60./Mallon, R., Machery, E., Nichols, S. & Stich, S. 2009. Against arguments from reference, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79, 332-356./ Marconi, D. 1997. Language, Speech, and Communication. Lexical Competence. Cambridge : MIT Press./Moravcsik, J. 2016. Meaning, Creativity, and the Partial Inscrutability of the Human Mind, 2nd ed. Stanford: CSLI./Schroeter, L. & Schroeter, F. 2014. Normative concepts: a connectedness model, Philosophers’ Imprint 14, 1-26./ Wikforss, Å. 2010. Are natural kind terms special?, in H. Beebee and N. Sabbarton-Leary, The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds, New York, Routledge, 64-83. (shrink)

In the course of his discussion of the sensible quality of color in the Dialogues Berkeley advances an argument that I shall refer to as the argument from microscopes (AFM). I offer an account of the AFM that treats it as part of Berkeley’s extended Reductio of Hylas’ philosophical theory of metaphysical realism. I then criticize two representative interpretations of the AFM which fail to appreciate its Reductio structure and, as a consequence, mistakenly attribute to Berkeley such (...) problematic claims as that sensible objects are not colored and that the microscopic view of objects reveals the real nature of objects. If I am correct, properly construed, Berkeley’s AFM escapes these and other objections commonly raised against it. (shrink)

This chapter will address the axiological objection to cognitive enhancement, which is that the use of cognitive enhancers reduces the value of cognitive achievement. In a recent defense of cognitive enhancement, Carter and Pritchard (2019) utilize the extended mind hypothesis to argue that cognitive enhancers do not compromise knowledge acquisition. In this chapter, it will be demonstrated that the reliance on the extended mind hypothesis leaves some cognitive enhancers vulnerable to the axiological objection. To expand the scope of the (...) class='Hi'>argument, it will be shown that criteria for cognitive integration are applicable even to enhancers that cause changes to cognition internal to the human organism. This chapter will begin with a description of several cognitive enhancers and with the identification of the type of cognitive process they purportedly improve. It will then be demonstrated that even when those improvements are internal, they need not affect cognitive character and do not compromise cognitive agency. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that a deflationist theory of truth must conservatively extend any base theory to which it is added. But when applied to arithmetic, it's argued, the imposition of a conservativeness requirement leads to a serious objection to deflationism: for the Gödel sentence for Peano Arithmetic is not a theorem of PA, but becomes one when PA is extended by adding plausible principles governing truth. This paper argues that no such objection succeeds. The issue turns on how we understand (...) the notion of logical consequence implicit in any conservativeness requirement, and whether we possess a categorical conception of the natural numbers. I offer a disjunctive response: if we possess a categorical conception of arithmetic, then deflationists have principled reason to accept a rich notion of logical consequence according to which the Gödel sentence follows from PA. But if we do not, then the reasons for requiring the derivation of the Gödel sentence lapse, and deflationists are free to accept a conservativeness requirement stated proof-theoretically. Either way, deflationism is in the clear. (shrink)