In these replies I develop responses to the fascinating issues raised in the commentaries on my book The Metaphysics of Truth from Matti Eklund, Gila Sher, Crispin Wright, and Jeremy Wyatt. I focus on four main areas where there seemed to be a degree of convergence amongst the critics: (1) the viability and use of the sparse/abundant property distinction; (2) truth, dependence, and superassertibility; (3) correspondence, realism, and anti—realism; and (4) my ‘globalizing’ argument against deflationism.

Philosophers widely agree that emotions may have or lack appropriateness or fittingness, which in the emotional domain is an analogue of truth. I defend de Sousa's account of emotional truth by arguing that emotions have cognitive content as digitalized evaluative perceptions of the particular object of emotion, in terms of the relevant formal property. I argue that an emotion is true if and only if there is an actual fit between the particular and the formal objects of emotion, and the (...) emotion's propositional content is semantically satisfied, or the target of the emotion exists. Emotions meet the syntactic and disciplinary requirements of minimally truth-apt states. Appropriate fit occurs when lower-level properties of particular objects of emotion provide sufficient warrant to make ascription of the relevant formal properties superassertable. (shrink)

Is truth itself natural? This is an important question for both those working on truth and those working on naturalism. For theorists of truth, answering the question of whether truth is natural will tell us more about the nature of truth (or lack of it), and the relations between truth and other properties of interest. For those working on naturalism, answering this question is of paramount importance to those who wish to have truth as part of the natural order. (...) In this paper, we focus primarily on the kinds of theories of truth that occupy the central positions in current debates about truth, namely correspondence theories, deflationary theories, epistemic theories, and pluralist theories, and aim to discern the extent to which truth is a natural property on each view. (shrink)

Is truth itself natural? This is an important question for both those working on truth and those working on naturalism. For theorists of truth, answering the question of whether truth is natural will tell us more about the nature of truth (or lack of it), and the relations between truth and other properties of interest. For those working on naturalism who wish to have truth as part of the natural order, answering this question is of paramount importance. In this (...) chapter, we focus primarily on the kinds of theory of truth that occupy the central positions in current debates about truth, namely correspondence theories, deflationary theories, epistemic theories, and pluralist theories, and aim to discern the extent to which truth is a natural property on each view. (shrink)

In _Truth and Objectivity_, Crispin Wright argues that the notion of superassertibility affords the antirealist (with respect to a given range of discourse) a viable alternative to the realist’s more robust notion of truth. Toward this end, he endeavors to prove that a superassertibility predicate can satisfy the traditional equivalence schema: it is true that P iff P. (Wright takes satisfaction of this schema to be a criterion of adequacy for any viable truth predicate.) In this paper, I (...) will argue that, not only does Wright’s attempt to prove that a superassertibility predicate satisfies the equivalence schema fail, an examination of its failure reveals a dilemma for the antirealist who would adopt superassertibility as a model of truth. (shrink)

The superassertability theory of truth, inspired by Crispin Wright (1992, 2003), holds that a statement is true if and only if it is superassertable in the following sense: it possesses warrant that cannot be defeated by any improvement of our information. While initially promising, the superassertability theory of truth is vulnerable to a persistent difficulty highlighted by James Van Cleve (1996) and Terrence Horgan (1995) but not properly fleshed out: it is formally illegitimate in a similar sense that unsophisticated epistemic (...) theories of truth are widely acknowledged to be. Sustained analysis reveals that the unrestricted formal legitimacy argument is firmly grounded in first person conceivability evidence. (shrink)

RésuméUne partie des raisons invoquées par Wright en faveur de sa théorie «neutre» de la vérité tiennent à ce qu'il considère comme déficiente à plusieurs égards une approche apparentée proposée par Putnam. Je soutiens ici que ces déficiences affectent soit les deux doctrines, soit ni l'une ni l'autre, mais que celle de Wright est néanmoins supérieure. À mettre ensemble l'explication du prédicat de vérité offerte par Putnam et l'extension qu'il entend lui attribuer, on se heurte en effet à un dilemme (...) : revenir au réalisme traditionnel, ou verser dans un optimisme épistémique radical. Or Putnam rejette explicitement la première branche de cette alternative, tandis que la seconde est extrêmement peu plausible. Wright, lui, évite le dilemme en demeurant en retrait par rapport aux prises de position de ce genre. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Une partie des raisons invoquées par Wright en faveur de sa théorie «neutre» de la vérité tiennent à ce qu'il considère comme déficiente à plusieurs égards une approche apparentée proposée par Putnam. Je soutiens ici que ces déficiences affectent soit les deux doctrines, soit ni l'une ni l'autre, mais que celle de Wright est néanmoins supérieure. À mettre ensemble l'explication du prédicat de vérité offerte par Putnam et l'extension qu'il entend lui attribuer, on se heurte en effet à un (...) dilemme: revenir au réalisme traditionnel, ou verser dans un optimisme épistémique radical. Or Putnam rejette explicitement la première branche de cette alternative, tandis que la seconde est extrêmement peu plausible. Wright, lui, évite le dilemme en demeurant en retrait par rapport aux prises de position de ce genre. (shrink)

Should property owners have a unique right to express their opinion just because they own property? While current law recognizes owners’ rights to express their voices in certain instances, it does not provide comprehensive and coherent answers to this question. This article provides an analytical framework for recognizing the owners’ right to voice as an independent property entitlement within the owners’ property bundle of rights and delineates its boundaries. Yet even when the owners’ voice is property-dependent, there is a difference (...) between voice that facilitates the realization of another property entitlement (such as the right to exclude, use, or trade) and voice that is constitutive to ownership in and of itself. Only the latter instances justify recognition of the owners’ right to a voice as an independent property entitlement. By examining different branches of both tangible and intellectual property law, such as inheritance law, eminent domain, homeowners’ association law, zoning law, and copyright law, this article demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed analytical framework in explaining certain parts of the current law and suggests modifications of other parts. (shrink)

In a recent paper on Truth, Knowability and Neutrality Timothy Kenyon sets out to defend the coherence of a putative anti-realist truth-predicate, superassertibility, due to Wright (1992, 1999), against a number of Wright’s critics. By his own admission, the success of Kenyon’s defensive strategies turns out to hinge upon a realist conception of absolute warrant which conflicts with the anti-realist character of the original proposal, based, as it was, on a notion of defeasible warrant. Kenyon’s potential success in resisting (...) Wright’s critics brings a pyrrhic victory: either way, realism wins. Here I argue that the link between superassertibility and defeasible warrant can be restored in a way which clarifies the consistency of the pair, provided that the notion of inference to superassertibility is properly understood in logical terms. As one might expect, the requisite notion is not classical in character. As one might not expect, the notion cannot be properly construed in intuitionist terms either. Hence, I propose an alternative logical framework which, I believe, is at least formally adequate to the representation of superassertibility on the basis of defeasible warrant. The price to be paid for rejecting the ‘third way’ proposed here in favour of either of the two more traditional logical options is precisely that indicated by Kenyon’s discussion. (shrink)

This paper provides an analysis of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction, as applied both to properties and to relations. In contrast to other accounts, the approach taken here locates the source of a property’s intrinsicality or extrinsicality in the manner in which that property is ‘logically constituted’, and thus – plausibly – in its nature or essence, rather than in e.g. its modal profile. Another respect in which the present proposal differs from many extant analyses lies in the fact that it (...) does not seek to analyse the ‘global’ distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties on the basis of the ‘local’ distinction between having a property intrinsically and having it extrinsically. Instead, the latter distinction is explicated on the basis of the former. (shrink)

I argue that the best scientific package is anti-Humean in its ontology, but Humean in its laws. This is because potencies and the best system account of laws complement each other surprisingly well. If there are potencies, then the BSA is the most plausible account of the laws of nature. Conversely, if the BSA is the correct theory of laws, then formulating the laws in terms of potencies rather than categorical properties avoids three serious objections: the mismatch objection, the (...) impoverished worlds objection, and the metaphysical 'oomph' objection. I argue that combining anti-Humean properties with Humean laws into a Potency-Best System Account of Laws is a powerful and science-friendly account---something that people on both sides should be able to appreciate. (shrink)

_Property Rights: Philosophic Foundations,_ first published in 1977, comprehensively examines the general justifications for systems of private property rights, and discusses with great clarity the major arguments as to the rights and responsibilities of property ownership. In particular, the arguments that hold that there are natural rights derived from first occupancy, labour, utility, liberty and virtue are considered, as are the standard anti-property arguments based on disutility, virtue and inequality, and the belief that justice in distribution must take precedence over (...) private ownership. Lawrence Becker goes on to contend that there are four sound lines of argument for private property that, together with what is sound in the anti-property arguments, must be co-ordinated to form the foundations of a new theory. He therefore expounds a concise but sophisticated theory of property that is relevant to the modern world, and concludes by indicating some of the implications of his theory. (shrink)

Abstract:Although the idea of intellectual property (IP) rights—proprietary rights to what one invents, writes, paints, composes or creates—is firmly embedded in Western thinking, these rights are now being challenged across the globe in a number of areas. This paper will focus on one of these challenges: government-sanctioned copying of patented drugs without permission or license of the patent owner in the name of national security, in health emergencies, or life-threatening epidemics. After discussing standard rights-based and utilitarian arguments defending intellectual property (...) we will present another model. IP is almost always a result of a long history of scientific or technological development and numbers of networks of creativity, not the act of a single person or a group of people at one moment in time. Thus thinking about and evaluating IP requires thinking about IP as shared rights. A network approach to IP challenges a traditional model of IP. It follows that the owner of those rights has some obligations to share that information or its outcomes. If that conclusion is applied to the distribution of antiretroviral drugs, what pharmaceutical companies are ethically required to do to increase access to these medicines in the developing world will have to be reanalyzed from a more systemic perspective. (shrink)

Drawing on empirical evidence from history and anthropology, we aim to demonstrate that there is room for genealogical ideology critique within normative political theory. The test case is some libertarians’ use of folk notions of private property rights in defence of the legitimacy of capitalist states. Our genealogy of the notion of private property shows that asking whether a capitalist state can emerge without violations of self-ownership cannot help settling the question of its legitimacy, because the notion of private property (...) presupposed by that question is a product of the entity it is supposed to help legitimise: the state. We anchor our genealogical critique in recent work on ideology in epistemology and philosophy of language, and in current debates on the methodology of political theory. But, unlike more traditional approaches that aim to debunk whole concepts or even belief systems, we propose a more targeted, argument-specific form of ideology critique. (shrink)

Dans la section 1, j’explique pourquoi une conception Dummet-tienne du réalisme n’a de pertinence que dans certains cas particuliers. Dans la section 2, j’indique qu’il est raisonnable de penser que Crispin Wright soutient que la vérité de certains jugements dépend de notre capacité de la connaître (si et) seulement si leur vérité consiste dans le fait qu’ils sont superassertables. Dans la section 3, je souligne qu’insister, avec Dummett et Wright, sur la connaissabilité, nous empêche de voir qu’il y a d’autres (...) formes légitimes de réalisme. Je propose une réfutation de la thèse attribuée à Wright dans la section 2, ce qui m’amène à suggérer que c’est une erreur de penser que la question du réalisme concerne essentiellement la nature de la vérité. (shrink)

Revised and reprinted; originally in Dov Gabbay & Franz Guenthner (eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Volume IV. Kluwer 133-251. -- Two sorts of property theory are distinguished, those dealing with intensional contexts property abstracts (infinitive and gerundive phrases) and proposition abstracts (‘that’-clauses) and those dealing with predication (or instantiation) relations. The first is deemed to be epistemologically more primary, for “the argument from intensional logic” is perhaps the best argument for the existence of properties. This argument is presented in (...) the course of discussing generality, quantifying-in, learnability, referential semantics, nominalism, conceptualism, realism, type-freedom, the first-order/higher-order controversy, names, indexicals, descriptions, Mates’ puzzle, and the paradox of analysis. Two first-order intensional logics are then formulated. Finally, fixed-point type-free theories of predication are discussed, especially their relation to the question whether properties may be identified with propositional functions. (shrink)

Revised and reprinted in Handbook of Philosophical Logic, volume 10, Dov Gabbay and Frans Guenthner (eds.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, (2003). -- Two sorts of property theory are distinguished, those dealing with intensional contexts property abstracts (infinitive and gerundive phrases) and proposition abstracts (‘that’-clauses) and those dealing with predication (or instantiation) relations. The first is deemed to be epistemologically more primary, for “the argument from intensional logic” is perhaps the best argument for the existence of properties. This argument is presented in (...) the course of discussing generality, quantifying-in, learnability, referential semantics, nominalism, conceptualism, realism, type-freedom, the first-order/higher-order controversy, names, indexicals, descriptions, Mates’ puzzle, and the paradox of analysis. Two first-order intensional logics are then formulated. Finally, fixed-point type-free theories of predication are discussed, especially their relation to the question whether properties may be identified with propositional functions. (shrink)

This chapter defends the property dualism argument. The term “semantic premise” mentioned is used to refers to an assumption identified by Brian Loar that antiphysicalist arguments, such as the property dualism argument, tacitly assume that a statement of property identity that links conceptually independent concepts is true only if at least one concept picks out the property it refers to by connoting a contingent property of that property. It is argued that, the property that does the work in explaining the (...) possibility of a posteriori identities need not be a first-order property of the referent in question. On his view, the property dualism argument requires only a weaker semantic premise, which allows that the property in question be a higher order property. A refined version of the property dualism argument is formulated, which uses the weaker premise, and defends the argument against various objections. (shrink)

David Lewis may be regarded as an antiessentialist. The reason is that he is said to believe that individuals do not have essential properties independent of the ways they are represented. According to him, indeed, the properties that are determined to be essential to individuals are a matter of which similarity relations among individuals are salient, and salience, in turn, is a contextual matter also determined to some extent by the ways individuals are represented. Todd Buras argues that (...) the acknowledgment of natural properties in counterpart theoretic ontology affects Lewis’s theory with regard to essentialism. Buras’s reasoning is appealing. He claims that, since natural properties determine the existence of similarity relations among individuals that are salient independent of context, Lewis can no longer be claimed to be an antiessentialist. The aim of this paper is to argue, against Buras, that if counterpart theory was antiessentialist before natural properties were taken into account, then it remains so afterwards. (shrink)

Our prominent definitions of cognition are too vague and lack empirical grounding. They have not kept up with recent developments, and cannot bear the weight placed on them across many different debates. I here articulate and defend a more adequate theory. On this theory, behaviors under the control of cognition tend to display a cluster of characteristic properties, a cluster which tends to be absent from behaviors produced by non-cognitive processes. This cluster is reverse-engineered from the empirical tests that (...) comparative psychologists use to determine whether a behavior was generated by a cognitive or a non-cognitive process. Cognition should be understood as the natural kind of psychological process that non-accidentally exhibits the properties assessed by these tests (as well as others we have not yet discovered). Finally, I review two plausible neural accounts of cognition's underlying mechanisms?one based in localization of function to particular brain regions and another based in the more recent distributed networks approach to neuroscience?which would explain why these properties non-accidentally cluster. While this notion of cognition may be useful for a number of debates, I here focus on its application to a recent crisis over the distinction between cognition and association in comparative psychology. (shrink)

According to David Chalmers, the virtual entities found in Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) environments instantiate virtual properties of a specific kind. It has recently been objected that such a view (i) can’t extend to all types of properties; (ii) leads to a proliferation of property-types; (iii) implausibly ascribes massive errors to VR and AR users; and (iv) faces an analogue of Jackson’s “many-property problem”. My first objective here is to show that advocates of virtual (...) class='Hi'>properties can deal with each of these objections. The other goal of this paper is to examine the consequences of Chalmers’ theory in the particular case of AR. If we countenance virtual properties, AR highlights that non-virtual objects can possess both non-virtual and virtual properties. With AR, it also appears that a same non-virtual object can have different and even incompatible properties across augmented environments. Lastly, considering properties in light of AR highlights the risk of an “augmented solipsism”, and calls forth interesting questions about the persistence conditions of non-virtual objects in AR environments. (shrink)

In this paper I develop an argument against a type of Non-Analytic Normative Naturalism. This argument, the Normative Property Dualism Argument, suggests that, if Non-Analytic Normative Naturalists posit that normative properties are identical to natural properties and that such identities are a posteriori, they will be forced to posit that these properties which are both normative and natural have higher-order normative properties of their own.

I try in this essay to accomplish two things. First I offer some first thoughts toward a clarification of the ethical foundations of private property rights that avoids pitfalls common to more strictly Lockean theories, and is thus better prepared to address arguments posed by critics of standard private property arrangements. Second, I'll address one critical argument that has become pretty common over the years. While versions of the argument can be traced back at least to Pierre Joseph Proudhon, I'll (...) focus on a formulation given it by Jeremy Waldron. The basic idea is that the only sound arguments for private property rights lead to the conclusion that society has an obligation to insure that every citizen possess private property. In Waldron's formulation, what is justifiable is a general, rather than a special, right to private property. I shall try to suggest that this conclusion is unwarranted. (shrink)

It has been maintained by such philosophers as Quine and Goodman that purely ‘extensional’ language suffices for all the purposes of properly formalized scientific discourse. Those entities that were traditionally called ‘universals’ — properties, concepts, forms, etc. — are rejected by these extensionalist philosophers on the ground that ‘the principle of individuation is not clear’. It is conceded that science requires that we allow something tantamount to quantification over non-particulars (or, anyway, over things that are not material objects, not (...) space-time points, not physical fields, etc.), but, the extensionalists contend, quantification over sets serves the purposes nicely. The ‘ontology’ of modern science, at least as Quine formalizes it, comprises material objects (or, alternatively, space-time points), sets of material objects, sets of sets of material objects,... but no properties, concepts,or forms. Let us thus examine the question: Can the principle of individuation for properties ever be made clear? (shrink)

It is argued that, because of scientific essentialism, two currently popular arguments against the mind-body identity thesis -- the multiple-realizability argument and the Nagel-Jackson knowledge argument -- are unsatisfactory as they stand and that their problems are incurable. It is then argued that a refutation of the identity thesis in its full generality can be achieved by weaving together two traditional Cartesian arguments -- the modal argument and the certainty argument. This argument establishes, not just the falsity of the identity (...) thesis, but also the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment. (shrink)