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Roy Sorensen [106]Roy A. Sorensen [83]Roya Sorensen [3]Roy Arnold Sorensen [1]
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Roy Sorensen
University of Texas at Austin
  1. Blindspots.Roy A. Sorensen - 1988 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
    Sorensen here offers a unified solution to a large family of philosophical puzzles and paradoxes through a study of "blindspots": consistent propositions that cannot be rationally accepted by certain individuals even though they might by true.
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  2. Thought Experiments.Roy A. Sorensen - 1992 - Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
    Sorensen presents a general theory of thought experiments: what they are, how they work, what are their virtues and vices. On Sorensen's view, philosophy differs from science in degree, but not in kind. For this reason, he claims, it is possible to understand philosophical thought experiments by concentrating on their resemblance to scientific relatives. Lessons learned about scientific experimentation carry over to thought experiment, and vice versa. Sorensen also assesses the hazards and pseudo-hazards of thought experiments. Although he grants that (...)
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  3. Vagueness and Contradiction.Roy A. Sorensen - 2001 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
    Roy Sorenson offers a unique exploration of an ancient problem: vagueness. Did Buddha become a fat man in one second? Is there a tallest short giraffe? According to Sorenson's epistemicist approach, the answers are yes! Although vagueness abounds in the way the world is divided, Sorenson argues that the divisions are sharp; yet we often do not know where they are. Written in Sorenson'e usual inventive and amusing style, this book offers original insight on language and logic, the way world (...)
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  4.  11
    Thought Experiments.Roy A. Sorensen - 1992 - Oxford and New York: Oup Usa.
    In this book, Sorensen presents the first general theory of the thought experiment. He analyses a wide variety of thought experiments, ranging from aesthetics to zoology, and explores what thought experiments are, how they work, and what their positive and negative aspects are. Sorensen also sets his theory within an evolutionary framework and integrates recent advances in experimental psychology and the history of science.
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  5. Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows.Roy Sorensen - 2008 - New York, US: Oxford University Press.
    The eclipse riddle -- Seeing surfaces -- The disappearing act -- Spinning shadows -- Berkeley's shadow -- Para-reflections -- Para-refractions : shadowgrams and the black drop -- Goethe's colored shadows -- Filtows -- Holes in the light -- Black and blue -- Seeing in black and white -- We see in the dark -- Hearing silence.
  6. Blindspots.Roy Sorensen - 1990 - Mind 99 (393):137-140.
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  7. Bald-faced lies! Lying without the intent to deceive.Roy Sorensen - 2007 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (2):251-264.
    Surprisingly, the fact that the speaker is lying is sometimes common knowledge between everyone involved. Strangely, we condemn these bald-faced lies more severely than disguised lies. The wrongness of lying springs from the intent to deceive – just the feature missing in the case of bald-faced lies. These puzzling lies arise systematically when assertions are forced. Intellectual duress helps to explain another type of non-deceptive false assertion : lying to yourself. In the end, I conclude that the apparent intensity of (...)
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  8.  16
    Vagueness and Contradiction.Roy Sorensen - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (3):695-703.
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  9.  83
    Thought experiments and the epistemology of laws.Roy A. Sorensen - 1992 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (1):15-44.
    The aim of this paper is to show how thought experiments help us learn about laws. After providing examples of this kind of nomic illumination in the first section, I canvass explanations of our modal knowledge and opt for an evolutionary account. The basic application is that the laws of nature have led us to develop rough and ready intuitions of physical possibility which are then exploited by thought experimenters to reveal some of the very laws responsible for those intuitions. (...)
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  10.  34
    Lie for me: the intent to deceive fails to scale up.Roy Sorensen - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-15.
    To understand lying, we naturally focus on small scale lies involving one speaker, one listener, one assertion. This methodology confers artificial plausibility upon the requirement that liars intend to deceive. For it excludes principal-agent conflicts that emerge from linguistic division of labor. When an employee lies for her boss, she need not inherit his motive to deceive. She displays loyalty even if her lie does not deceive. Focus on a single lie in isolation also blinds us to tactical deceptions such (...)
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  11. Yablo's paradox and Kindred infinite liars.Roy A. Sorensen - 1998 - Mind 107 (425):137-155.
    This is a defense and extension of Stephen Yablo's claim that self-reference is completely inessential to the liar paradox. An infinite sequence of sentences of the form 'None of these subsequent sentences are true' generates the same instability in assigning truth values. I argue Yablo's technique of substituting infinity for self-reference applies to all so-called 'self-referential' paradoxes. A representative sample is provided which includes counterparts of the preface paradox, Pseudo-Scotus's validity paradox, the Knower, and other enigmas of the genre. I (...)
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  12. A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of the Mind.Roy Sorensen - 2003 - Oxford University Press.
    Can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift? Can time have a beginning? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Riddles, paradoxes, conundrums--for millennia the human mind has found such knotty logical problems both perplexing and irresistible. Now Roy Sorensen offers the first narrative history of paradoxes, a fascinating and eye-opening account that extends from the ancient Greeks, through the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and into the twentieth century. When Augustine asked what God was doing before (...)
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  13.  16
    Thought Experiments And The Epistemology Of Laws.Roy A. Sorensen - 1992 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (1):15-44.
    The aim of this paper is to show how thought experiments help us learn about laws. After providing examples of this kind of nomic illumination in the first section, I canvass explanations of our modal knowledge and opt for an evolutionary account. The basic application is that the laws of nature have led us to develop rough and ready intuitions of physical possibility which are then exploited by thought experimenters to reveal some of the very laws responsible for those intuitions. (...)
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  14. Knowledge-lies.Roy Sorensen - 2010 - Analysis 70 (4):608-615.
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  15. Dogmatism, junk knowledge, and conditionals.Roy A. Sorensen - 1988 - Philosophical Quarterly 38 (153):433-454.
  16.  56
    Vagueness. [REVIEW]Roy A. Sorensen - 1994 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (2):483-486.
  17.  20
    Identity and Discrimination.Roy A. Sorensen - 1992 - Philosophical Quarterly 42 (166):95-98.
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  18. Ducking harm.Christopher Boorse & Roy A. Sorensen - 1988 - Journal of Philosophy 85 (3):115-134.
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  19. An argument for the vagueness of vague.Roy A. Sorensen - 1985 - Analysis 45 (3):134.
    The argument proceeds by exploiting the gradually decreasing vagueness of a certain sequence of predicates. the vagueness of 'vague' is then used to show that the thesis that all vague predicates are incoherent is self-defeating. a second casualty is the view that the probems of vagueness can be avoided by restricting the scope of logic to nonvague predicates.
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  20. The art of the impossible.Roy Sorensen - 2002 - In John Hawthorne & Tamar Szab'O. Gendler (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility. Oxford University Press. pp. 337--368.
    Prize: One hundred dollars to the first person who identifies a picture of a logical impossibility. I may be willing to pay more for the painting itself. This finder’s fee is simply for pointing out the picture. Let me explain more precisely what I seek.
     
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  21. Unknowable Obligations.Roy Sorensen - 1995 - Utilitas 7 (2):247-271.
    You face two buttons. Pushing one will destroy Greensboro. Pushing the other will save it. There is no way for you to know which button saves and which destroys. What ought you to do? Answer: You ought to make the correct guess and push the button that saves Greensboro. Second question: Do you have an obligation to push the correct button?
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  22.  68
    Anti-expertise, instability, and rational choice.Roy Sorensen - 1987 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 65 (3):301 – 315.
  23. Meta-agnosticism: Higher order epistemic possibility.Roy Sorensen - 2009 - Mind 118 (471):777-784.
    In ‘Epistemic Modals’ (2007), Seth Yalcin proposes Stalnaker-style semantics for epistemic possibility. He is inspired by John MacFarlane’s ingenious defence of relativism, in which claims of epistemic possibility are made rigidly from the perspective of the assessor’s actual stock of information (rather than from the speaker’s knowledge base or that of his audience or community). The innovations of MacFarlane and Yalcin independently reinforce the modal collapse espoused by Jaakko Hintikka in his 1962 epistemic logic (which relied on the implausible KK (...)
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  24.  10
    Vagueness.Roy Sorensen - 1997 - In Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University.
  25. Seeing Intersecting Eclipses.Roy Sorensen - 1999 - Journal of Philosophy 96 (1):25.
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  26. 'P, therefore, P' without Circularity.Roy A. Sorensen - 1991 - Journal of Philosophy 88 (5):245-266.
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  27.  27
    I—Lucifer’s Logic Lesson: How to Lie with Arguments.Roy Sorensen - 2017 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 91 (1):105-126.
    My thesis is that you can lie with ‘ P therefore Q ’ without P or Q being lies. For you can lie by virtue of not believing that P supports Q. My thesis is reconciled with the principle that all lies are assertions through H. P. Grice’s account of conventional implicatures. These semantic cousins of conversational implicatures are secondary assertions that clarify the speaker’s attitude toward his primary assertions. The meaning of ‘therefore’ commits the speaker to an entailment thesis (...)
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  28.  63
    Semivaluationism: Putting vagueness in context in context.Roy Sorensen - 2008 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (2):471–483.
  29.  66
    Recalcitrant variations of the prediction paradox.Roy A. Sorensen - 1982 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 60 (4):355 – 362.
  30. What lies behind misspeaking.Roy Sorensen - 2011 - American Philosophical Quarterly 48 (4):399.
     
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  31.  91
    Conditional blindspots and the knowledge squeeze: A solution to the prediction paradox.Roy A. Sorensen - 1984 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (2):126 – 135.
    (1984). Conditional blindspots and the knowledge squeeze: A solution to the prediction paradox. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 62, No. 2, pp. 126-135.
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  32.  11
    A Brief History of the Paradox: Philosophy and the Labyrinths of the Mind.Roy Sorensen - 2005 - Oxford University Press USA.
    A Brief History of the Paradox is the first narrative history of paradoxes. Sorenson draws us deep inside the tangles of riddles, paradoxes and conundrums by answering the questions which are seemingly unanswerable. Can God create a stone too heavy for him to lift? Can time have a beginning? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Filled with illuminating anecdotes, A Brief History of the Paradox is vividly written and will appeal to anyone who finds trying to answer unanswerable (...)
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  33.  44
    Nothing: A Philosophical History.Roy Sorensen - 2021 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
    An entertaining history of the idea of nothing - including absences, omissions, and shadows - from the Ancient Greeks through the 20th century How can nothing cause something? The absence of something might seem to indicate a null or a void, an emptiness as ineffectual as a shadow. In fact, 'nothing' is one of the most powerful ideas the human mind has ever conceived. This short and entertaining book by Roy Sorensen is a lively tour of the history and philosophy (...)
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  34.  96
    We see in the dark.Roy Sorensen - 2004 - Noûs 38 (3):456-480.
    Do we need light to see? I argue that the black experience of a man in a perfectly dark cave is a representation of an absence of light, not an absence of representation. There is certainly a difference between his perceptual knowledge and that of his blind companion. Only the sighted man can tell whether the cave is dark just by looking. But perhaps he is merely inferring darkness from his failure to see. To get an unambiguous answer, I switch (...)
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  35.  20
    Semivaluationism: Putting Vagueness in Context in Context.Roy Sorensen - 2008 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (2):471-483.
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  36.  58
    The symmetry problem.Roy Sorensen - 2013 - In Fred Feldman Ben Bradley (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Death. pp. 234.
  37.  51
    Logical luck.Roy A. Sorensen - 1998 - Philosophical Quarterly 48 (192):319-334.
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  38.  13
    `P, Therefore, P' Without Circularity.Roy A. Sorensen - 1991 - Journal of Philosophy 88 (5):245-266.
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  39.  58
    Self-deception and scattered events.Roy A. Sorensen - 1985 - Mind 94 (373):64-69.
  40. Knowing, believing, and guessing.Roy A. Sorensen - 1982 - Analysis 42 (4):212-213.
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  41. Vagueness, measurement, and blurriness.Roy A. Sorensen - 1988 - Synthese 75 (1):45 - 82.
  42.  66
    Fugu for Logicians.Roy Sorensen - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (1):131-144.
    What do you get when you cross a fallacy with a good argument? A fugu, that is, a valid argument that tempts you to reach its conclusion invalidly. You have yielded to the temptation more than you realize. If you are a teacher, you may have served many fugus. They arise systematically through several mechanisms. Fugus are interesting intermediate cases that shed light on the following issues: bare evidentialism, false pleasure, philosophy of education, and the ethics of argument. Normally, a (...)
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  43.  73
    Originless Sin: Rational Dilemmas for Satisficers.Roy Sorensen - 2006 - Philosophical Quarterly 56 (223):213 - 223.
    Suppose you have an infinite past. If you had banked the spare dollar you have always had, then the interest would have made you rich by now. Your procrastination is inexcusable. But what should you have done? At any time at which you invest the dollar you would regret not investing it earlier. Satisficers can solve prospective puzzles involving infinite choice but cannot solve this retrospective puzzle about regret. A moral version of the puzzle suggests that there can be inevitable (...)
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  44.  64
    Silhouettes: A Reply from the Dark Side. [REVIEW]Roy Sorensen - 2011 - Acta Analytica 26 (2):199-211.
    This is a reply to Casey O'Callaghan and Jonathan Westphal’s comments on Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows. Both attempt to soften the blow to intuition that comes from the most controversial thesis of the book: we see the backs of back-lit objects. Each characterizes the viewing of silhouettes as a kind of marginal seeing that only discloses shapes, sizes and location. In response, photographs are presented to show that silhouettes are typically three-dimensional and they often have internal structure. (...)
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  45. Vagueness has no function in law.Roy Sorensen - 2001 - Legal Thoery 7 (4):385--415.
    Islamic building codes require mosques to face Mecca. The further Islam spreads, the more apt are believers to fall into a quandary. X faces Y only when the front of X is closer to Y than any other side of X. So the front of the mosque should be oriented along a shortest path to Mecca. Which way is that? Does the path to Mecca tunnel through the earth? Or does the path follow the surface of the earth?
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  46. Ducking Harm.Christopher Boorse & Roy A. Sorensen - 1988 - Journal of Philosophy 85 (3):115-134.
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  47.  77
    Unicorn Atheism.Roy Sorensen - 2018 - Noûs 52 (2):373-388.
    Kripshe treats ‘god’ as an empty natural kind term such as ‘unicorn’. She applies Saul Kripke's fresh views about empty natural kinds to ‘god’. Metaphysically, says Kripshe, there are no possible worlds in which there are gods. Gods could not have existed, given that they do not actually exist and never did. Epistemologically, godlessness is an a posteriori discovery. Kripshe dismisses the gods in the same breath that she dismisses mermaids. Semantically, the perspective Kripshe finds most perspicacious, no counterfactual situation (...)
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  48. Nothingness.Roy Sorensen - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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  49. The cheated God: Death and personal time.Roy Sorensen - 2005 - Analysis 65 (2):119–125.
  50. A thousand clones.Roy A. Sorensen - 1994 - Mind 103 (409):47-54.
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