According to foundationalism, some beliefs are justified but do not depend for their justification on any other beliefs. According to access internalism, a subject is justified in believing some proposition only if that subject is aware of or has access to some reason to think that the proposition is true or probable. In this paper I discusses a fundamental challenge to internalist foundationalism often referred to as the Sellarsian dilemma. I consider three attempts to respond to the (...) class='Hi'>dilemma – phenomenal conservatism, BonJour’s classical foundationalism, and Fumerton’s classical foundationalism. I argue that, of these three, only the last seems to avoid getting impaled on one or the other horn of the dilemma. I end by responding to some concerns with Fumerton’s account. (shrink)

I propose a version of foundationaUsm with the following distinctive features. First, it includes in the class of basic beliefs ordinary beliefs about physical objects. This makes it unrestricted. Second, it assigns the role of ultimate justifiers to A-states: states of being appeared to in various ways. Such states have propositional content, and are justifiers if they are presumptively reliable. The beliefs A-states justify are basic if they are non-inferential. In the last three sections of the paper, I defend this (...) version of foundationalism against Sellars's famous anti-foundationalist dilemma, according to which sense-experiential states can't be justifiers ifthey lack propositional content, and can't terminate the justificatory regress if they have propositional content. I argue that the latter of these two claims is false. A-states can play the role of justifiers because they have propositional content, and they can terminate the justificatory regress because they themselves are capable of neither being true or false, nor being justified or unjustified. (shrink)

Foundationalists and coherentists disagree over the structure of the part of the mental state corpus that is relevant for epistemic achievement (Bonjour, 1999; Dancy, 1989; Haack, 1993; Sosa, 1980; Pollock and Cruz, 1999). Given the goals of a theory of epistemic justification and the trajectory of the debate over the last three decades, it is not difficult to see how structural questions possess a kind of immediacy. In order to undertake an epistemic evaluation of a belief, one intuitive and appealing (...) strategy is to investigate the reasons for that belief to determine whether it is epistemically positive, where the reasons are typically other beliefs. This demands that we must in turn determine whether the reasons for the belief are themselves justified. A regress looms (and thus a regress argument is in the making), and foundationalism and coherentism propose proprietary views on the structural relations between beliefs with an eye toward resolving it. (shrink)

BonJour affirme qu’il a trouvé un moyen de sortir du dilemme sellarsien de la justification non-doxastique. Dans cet article, je soutiens trois thèses afin de montrer que sa solution alléguée échoue. Tout d’abord, il y a deux exigences pour qu’une raison soit bonne, et la notion de prise de conscience non-conceptuelle de l’expérience sensorielle développée par BonJour donne lieu à un dilemme sérieux en ce qui concerne ces exigences. Deuxièmement, il tire son idée de la soi-disant «prise de conscience constitutive (...) du contenu» de sa conception de la croyance consciente et occurrente. Mais cette conception conduit à un dilemme analogue à l’égard de ces exigences. Troisièmement, son explication se heurte au problème de la représentation. (shrink)

Much of the intuitive appeal of evidentialism results from conflating two importantly different conceptions of evidence. This is most clear in the case of perceptual justification, where experience is able to provide evidence in one sense of the term, although not in the sense that the evidentialist requires. I argue this, in part, by relying on a reading of the Sellarsian dilemma that differs from the version standardly encountered in contemporary epistemology, one that is aimed initially at the (...) epistemology of introspection but which generalizes to theories of perceptual justification as well. (shrink)

Fales defends the doctrine of the given against the Sellarsian dilemma. On his view, sensory experiences, to which one has direct access, can justify basic beliefs. He upholds this view by way of defending an expansive conception of inference, according to which a broadly inferential relation can hold between sensory experiences and perceptual beliefs. The purpose of this paper is to show that Fales’s defense of the given fails. For this purpose, I argue that there are two requirements (...) for being a good reason, and that his conception of direct apprehension faces a serious dilemma with regard to these requirements. In addition, I argue that his expansive conception of inference is unfounded. (shrink)

: Experiential acquaintance is an alleged relation between ourselves and our experiences that has sometimes been hypothesized as necessary for knowledge of our experiences. This paper begins with a clarification of ‘acquaintance’ and an explanation of ‘experience’ that focuses attention on a famous, but flawed, argument by G. E. Moore. It goes on to critically examine several recent arguments concerning experiential acquaintance and to show how internalist foundationalism can respond to a famous Sellarsian dilemma without appeal to a (...) relation of acquaintance with our experiences. It concludes that we can dispense with experiential acquaintance. (shrink)

Experiential acquaintance is an alleged relation between ourselves and our experiences that has sometimes been hypothesised as necessary for knowledge of our experiences. This paper begins with a clarification of ‘acquaintance’ and an explanation of ‘experience’ that focuses attention on a famous, but flawed, argument by G. E. Moore. It goes on to critically examine several recent arguments concerning experiential acquaintance and to show how internalist foundationalism can respond to a famous Sellarsian dilemma without appeal to a relation (...) of acquaintance with our experiences. It concludes that we can dispense with experiential acquaintance. (shrink)

The Sellarsian dilemma is a famous argument that attempts to show that nondoxastic experiential states cannot confer justification on basic beliefs. The usual conclusion of the Sellarsian dilemma is a coherentist epistemology, and the usual response to the dilemma is to find it quite unconvincing. By distinguishing between two importantly different justification relations (evidential and nonevidential), I hope to show that the Sellarsian dilemma, or something like it, does offer a powerful argument against (...) standard nondoxastic foundationalist theories. But this reconceived version of the argument does not support coherentism. Instead, I use it to argue for a strongly externalist epistemology. (shrink)

The Sellarsian dilemma is a powerful argument against internalistic foundationalist views that aim to end the regress of reasons in experiential states. Laurence BonJour once defended the soundness of this dilemma as part of a larger argument for epistemic coherentism. BonJour has now renounced his earlier conclusions about the dilemma and has offered an account of internalistic foundationalism aimed, in part, at showing the errors of his former ways. I contend that BonJour’s early concerns about the (...) Sellarsian dilemma are correct, and that his latest position does not adequately handle the dilemma. I focus my attention on BonJour’s claim that a nonconceptual experiential state can provide a subject with a reason to believe some proposition. It is crucial for the viability of internalistic foundationalism to evaluate whether this claim is true. I argue it is false. The requirement that the states that provide justification give reasons to a subject conflicts with the idea that these states are nonconceptual. In the final section I consider David Chalmers’s attempt to defend a view closely similar to BonJour’s. Chalmers’s useful theory of phenomenal concepts provides a helpful framework for identifying a crucial problem with attempts to end the regress of reasons in pure experiential states. (shrink)

Phenomenalist dogmatist experientialism (PDE) holds the following thesis: if $S$ has a perceptual experience that $p$ , then $S$ has immediate prima facie evidential justification for the belief that $p$ in virtue of the experience’s phenomenology. The benefits of PDE are that it (a) provides an undemanding view of perceptual justification that allows most of our ordinary perceptual beliefs to be justified, and (b) accommodates two important internalist intuitions, viz. the New Evil Demon Intuition and the Blindsight Intuition. However, in (...) the face of a specific version of the Sellarsian dilemma, PDE is ad hoc. PDE needs to explain what is so distinct about perceptual experience that enables it to fulfill its evidential role without being itself in need of justification. I argue that neither an experience’s presentational phenomenology, nor its phenomenal forcefulness can be used to answer this question, and that prospects look dim for any other phenomenalist account. The subjective distinctness of perceptual experience might instead just stem from a higher-order belief that the experience is a perceptual one, but this will only serve to strengthen the case for externalism: externalism is better suited to provide an account of how we attain justified higher-order beliefs and can use this account to accommodate the Blindsight Intuition. (shrink)

This paper responds to Ernest Sosa's recent criticism of Richard Fumerton's acquaintance theory. Sosa argues that Fumerton's account of non-inferential justification falls prey to the problem of the speckled hen. I argue that Sosa's criticisms are both illuminating and interesting but that Fumerton's theory can escape the problem of the speckled hen. More generally, the paper shows that an internalist account of non-inferential justification can survive the powerful objections of the Sellarsian dilemma and the problem of the speckled (...) hen. (shrink)

A central project of traditional epistemology is to address skeptical questions and concerns regarding the rationality or epistemic justification of our empirical beliefs, especially beliefs regarding the external world, with the aim of understanding what makes it possible for such beliefs to have or lack justification, and of determining how much justification we have. A prominent anti-skeptical view in the history of epistemology, a view I shall call classical foundationalism, can be distinguished from other more contemporary versions of foundationalism in (...) part on the basis of two central commitments: (i) the traditional methodological commitment to carry out the project of addressing skepticism “from the armchair,” i.e., on the basis of what can be determined by a posteriori deliverances of introspection and a priori use of reason and reflection, without relying on empirical or scientific research that presupposes the existence of any external world of material objects (including armchairs); and (ii) a substantive commitment to the doctrine of the given, understood roughly as the view that empirical beliefs ultimately depend for their justification on a direct or immediate awareness of reasons to think these beliefs true, reasons simply “given” to us in conscious experience. -/- There has been a recent resurgence of interest in classical or “old-fashioned” varieties of foundationalism, and the debate seems, in some ways, to be repeating itself. Critics object that these attempted resurrections of classical foundationalism are just attempts to square the same old circles.”They argue that there are decisive or clearly sufficient reasons to deny that such a view can be right, let alone that an adequate theory can be developed that is defensible in all its essential details. I think that these critics are either missing the point of the traditional project, misunderstanding classical foundationalism, or exaggerating the severity of the problems they raise. -/- I will show that a number of common arguments against classical foundationalism are not nearly as worrisome as their proponents think. In Chapter 2, I defend classical foundationalism against the Sellarsian dilemma, and provide prima facie support from examples for the availability of foundational empirical beliefs. I then discuss some recent classical foundationalist accounts of the justification of foundational beliefs, argue that these accounts are less than satisfactory, and develop an account of my own. In Chapter 3 I defend classical foundationalism, as a version of internalism, against Bergmann’s recent dilemma for internalism. Finally, in Chapter 4, I take up the issue of skepticism about the external world, and, in closing, the related issue of whether any beliefs about the external world can themselves be empirically foundational. (shrink)

This thesis mounts an attack against accounts of perceptual justification that attempt to analyze it in terms of evidential justifiers, and has defended the view that perceptual justification should rather be analyzed in terms of non-evidential justification. What matters most to perceptual justification is not a specific sort of evidence, be it experiential evidence or factive evidence, what matters is that the perceptual process from sensory input to belief output is reliable. I argue for this conclusion in the following way. (...) Chapter 1: The Arguments from HallucinationChapter 1 presents a skeptical argument from hallucination that starts from a premise about the alleged introspective indistinguishability of perception and hallucination, and concludes that perceptual knowledge is impossible. Underlying this argument are certain assumptions about the nature of perceptual justification, and different responses to the argument portray different views of perceptual justification. Evidentialism and dogmatism both reject the premise that appearances do not provide evidence sufficient for perceptual knowledge, although they disagree about the precise nature of the appearances. Epistemological disjunctivism rejects the premise that introspectively indistinguishable experiences provide the same evidence, while upholding the idea that some sort of evidence, namely factive evidence, is necessary for perceptual justification and knowledge. Process reliabilism rejects the premise that evidence is necessary for perceptual knowledge on the grounds that even perceptual justification can be obtained without evidence, as long as the cognitive process producing the belief is reliable.Chapter 2: EvidentialismChapter 2 starts by introducing some motivations for experientialist views of perceptual justification, such as evidentialism and dogmatism, which hold that conscious experiences evidentially justify perceptual beliefs. These motivations have to do with their ability to accommodate the New Evil Demon Intuition that demon-deceived subjects have justified perceptual beliefs and the Blindsight Intuition that blindsighters do not have justified perceptual beliefs. However, experientialist views are also faced with a Sellarsian dilemma: either experience is construed as non-propositional, but then the proposed evidential relation is unclear, or experience is construed as propositional, but then it is ad hoc to hold that they can evidentially justify without being justified themselves.Chapter 2 continues with a discussion of evidentialism, which grasps the first horn of this dilemma. I argue that evidentialism cannot adequately explain why a non-propositional experience constitutes evidence for this rather than that belief, and also does not provide any account of how to determine which belief fits an evidence-set which partly consists out of non-propositional experiences. Although a reliabilist version of evidentialism can provide a better account of these matters, it suffers from counter-intuitive predictions about justification and a conception of evidence that is so liberal that it could even include blindsighters and clairvoyants as having such evidence.Chapter 3: DogmatismChapter 3 focuses on variants of dogmatism, a theory of perceptual justification that grasps the second horn of the Sellarsian dilemma by holding that a perceptual experience with the content that p is sufficient for immediate prima facie justification of the belief that p. I first argue that dogmatism should identify perceptual experiences with high-level conscious states to accommodate the problem of novice vs. expert identification and the problem of the speckled hen. I then argue that this version of dogmatism still fails to meet a certain explanatory challenge which I dub the `Distinctiveness Problem'. Dogmatism should explain what is so distinctive about perceptual experience that enables it, in contrast with desire and imagination, to evidentially justify the belief that p without, in contrast with belief, being justified itself.Phenomenalist answers to this problem fail because they either do not provide a distinctive property of perceptual experience, or else provide a property that is reducible to or possibly caused by beliefs. In both cases, dogmatism would have the result that intuitively unjustifying experiences, such as imaginations, nevertheless become capable of justifying beliefs. Moreover, phenomenalists still need some explanation of why phenomenology is epistemically relevant at all.A new variant of the problem of the speckled hen is an intuitive illustration of this point against dogmatists. If a perceptual experience that p is not reliably connected to the fact that p or the belief that p, then beliefs based on this experience simply will not be intuitively justified. One possible response to this problem incorporates reliability into the content of experience in the sense that an experience cannot have the content that p if it is not reliably connected to both the fact that p and the belief that p. However, this will lose the motivation from the New Evil Demon Scenario, and will make large concessions towards reliabilism.Chapter 4: Epistemological DisjunctivismGiven these problems for experientialist views of perceptual justification, chapter 4 focuses on a different evidential account of justification: epistemological disjunctivism. According to the Justified True Belief version of Epistemological Disjunctivism, the fact that I see that p is the factive and reflectively accessible evidence in virtue of which I know that p. I argue that JTBED faces formidable problems: first, it cannot adequately deal with the basis problem, second, it cannot accommodate the New Evil Demon Intuition, third,it faces the problem of hyper-intellectualization, and fourth, it has no good account of reflective access.Knowledge First Epistemological Disjunctivism, in contrast, holds that seeing that p just is a way of knowing that p. The fact that I see that p constitutes my justification for believing that p, even though it is not necessary for my knowledge that p. Although this view solves most of the above problems, I argue that KFED still faces a challenge of its own: its notion of justification is so strong that justification entails knowledge but is not itself entailed by it. This means that it too faces a hyper-intellectualization objection because it cannot accommodate animal justification, and that it too will struggle to accommodate the New Evil Demon Intuition.Nevertheless, there is something to the epistemological disjunctivist idea that higher-order capabilities are important to perceptual justification. Specifically, higher-order capabilities provide one with a way of accommodating the Blindsight Intuition without appealing to the notion of experiential evidence: blindsighters are epistemically worse off than normal human perceivers because they lack higher-order beliefs about how they are gaining their information. If one holds that these higher-order beliefs provide a special sort of justification for perceptual beliefs, then blindsighters lack this type of justification. Chapter 5: Process ReliabilismAfter displaying the problems of several evidential accounts of perceptual justification, chapter 5 introduces a non-evidential account: process reliabilism. The classic version of this view holds that the reliability of a belief-forming process is necessary and sufficient for the prima facie justification of a specific set of beliefs, namely, those that arise out of belief-independent processes. Two classic major problems for this view consist of counterexamples to both the necessity and sufficiency of reliability for justification. Although the Generality Problem raises some difficulties for reliabilism, they do not appear to be insurmountable.The second part of chapter 5 focuses on a variety of process reliabilism, inferentialist reliabilism, that is explicitly aimed at responding to clairvoyance cases. According to inferentialist reliabilism, one should distinguish between basic and non-basic beliefs, where basic beliefs are those that result out of the non-inferential operation of an inferentially opaque cognitive system that developed in a natural way. Reliability is only sufficient for the justification of basic beliefs, while non-basic beliefs also require conditional reliability and justification of the beliefs on which they are based.This distinction between basic and non-basic beliefs is meant to answer the challenge arising out of clairvoyance cases because these are all supposedly cases in which the resulting beliefs arenon-basic. However, I argue that the beliefs in these cases come out as non-basic primarily because of the etiological constraint on cognitive systems, a constraint that is unfortunately undermotivated. It seems that beliefs can be justified even if they are produced by a cognitive system that developed by accident, or by a system that was artificially designed to produce those beliefs. So even though the inferentialist reliabilist might have a point in distinguishing between basic and non-basic beliefs, it is still in need of a different response to clairvoyance cases. Chapter 6: Rejoinders for ReliabilismChapter 6 improves on the inferentialist reliabilist account of justification by presenting a different way of dealing with the clairvoyance cases and New Evil Demon Scenario. I start from the empirically plausible idea that we know that we are perceiving when we are perceiving, not because of the use of experiential evidence, but rather, because of an unconscious source-monitoring mechanism. I then argue that the existence of such a source-monitoring mechanism could be used to explain why clairvoyance cases actually have to do with defeat rather than absence of prima facie justification: beliefs that pop up in our head should be recognized as stemming from untrustworthy sources, and so we acquire defeating higher-order beliefs about the first-order beliefs. I also argue that this defeat should be able to occur even if the higher-order beliefs are themselves unjustified. This defeater-account of clairvoyance is preferable to several externalist alternatives. Making reliability relative to a specific world seems rather ad hoc, and further requirements on justification, such as evidence-based belief, cognitively integrated belief, or properly produced belief, all appear unnecessary and are susceptible to adapted versions of the clairvoyance case.I further argue for an alternative inferentialist reliablist response to the New Evil Demon Intuition which treats it as mistaken rather than correct. The New Evil Demon Intuition might arise because of a mistaken view of actual perceptual justification as having to do with experiential evidence. This mistaken view could be explained by the fact that experience is actually reliably connected to belief and is often cited in response to a knowledge-challenge. If this is a correct analysis of the New Evil Demon Intuition, then there is an element of question-begging involved when this scenario is still pressed against inferentialist reliabilists who do not adhere to the experientialist assumption it presupposes.With the inferentialist reliabilist account in hand,we are able to see that many of the premises of the epistemological argument from hallucination are problematic. Evidence does not appear to be required for perceptual knowledge, as perceptual justification does not even require such evidence. Moreover, if we accept a reliabilist model of introspection, then we are often able to know on the basis of introspection that we are perceiving rather than hallucinating. Once one gets clear about the alternatives, it becomes apparent that the argument thrives on internalist assumptions about justification and knowledge that one need not accept. (shrink)

Most internalist views hold that experience provides evidential justification for perceptual belief, although there are different ideas about how experience is able to provide this justification. Evidentialism holds that experiences can act as evidence for belief without having propositional content, while dogmatism holds that only an experience with the content that p can provide prima facie justification for the belief that p. I argue that both views succumb to a version of the well-known Sellarsian dilemma: it’s entirely unclear (...) how an experience could act as evidence for belief without having propositional content, and it is ad hoc to claim that experiences with propositional content can act as evidence for belief without explaining why these experiences need not be justified themselves. The way out of the dilemma lies in accepting the non-evidential nature of perceptual experience. (shrink)

Studies in Wilfrid Sellars' philosophy: Aune, B. Sellars on practical reason.--Castañeda, H.-N. Some reflections on Wilfrid Sellars' theory of intentions.--Donagan, A. Determinism and freedom: Sellars and the reconciliationist thesis.--Robinson, W. S. The legend of the given.--Clark, R. The sensuous content of perception.--Grossmann, R. Perceptual objects, elementary particles, and emergent properties.--Rosenberg, J. F. The elusiveness of categories, the Archimedean dilemma, and the nature of man: a study in Sellarsian metaphysics.--Turnbull, R. G. Things, natures, and properties.--Wells, R. The indispensable word (...) "now."--Van Fraassen, B. C. Theories and counterfactuals.--Harman, G. H. Wilfrid Sellars' Theory of induction.--Sellarsiana: Sellars, W. Autobiographical reflections.--Sellars, W. The structure of knowledge. Lecture I, perception. Lecture II, minds. Lecture III, epistemic principles.--Wilfrid Sellars' Philosophical bibliography. (p. 349-353). (shrink)

In his book Mind and World, John McDowell grapples with the problem that the world must and yet seemingly cannot constrain our empirical thought. I first argue that McDowell’s proposed solution to the problem throws him onto the horns of his own, intractable dilemma, and thus fails to solve the problem of rational constraint by the world. Next, I will argue that Wilfrid Sellars, in a series of articles written in the 1950s and 1960s, provides the tools to solve (...) the dilemma McDowell sets before us. We will see how, borrowing from Sellars and certain neo-Sellarsians, we can solve the problem of rational constraint by perception without resorting to a McDowellian quasi-enchantment of the world. (shrink)

According to the Kantian-Brandomian view of concepts, we can understand concepts in terms of norms or rules that bind those who apply them, and the application of a concept requires that the concept-user be sensitive to the norms governing its application. But this view faces some serious objections. In particular, according to Rosen, Glüer and Wikforss, this view leads to a vicious regress of norms. The purpose of this paper is to defend a version of the Kantian-Brandomian view of concepts (...) against this objection. I argue that we can deal with this problem along the lines of a coherentist account of justification. (shrink)

This chapter argues that mental fictionalism can only be a successful account of our ordinary folk-psychological practices if it can in some way preserve its original function, namely its explanatory aspect. A too strong commitment to the explanatory role moves fictionalism unacceptably close to the realist or eliminativist interpretation of folk psychology. To avoid this, fictionalists must degrade or dispense with this explanatory role. This motivation behind the fictionalist movement seems to be rather similar to that of Sellars when he (...) came up with the Myth of Jones, his proto-theory of mental concepts. He was faced with the problem of preserving the explanatory status of mental concepts without turning them into proper theoretical entities. By introducing the Sellarsian proto-theory of concepts related to the mental and outlining its main points, this chapter aims to provide a critique of the two versions of mental fictionalism that are arguably the strongest: Adam Toon’s prop-oriented pretence theory and Tamás Demeter’s expressive storyism. (shrink)

This is an opinionated guide to the literature on epistemic dilemmas. It discusses seven kinds of situations where epistemic dilemmas appear to arise; dilemmic, dilemmish, and non-dilemmic takes on them; and objections to dilemmic views along with dilemmist’s replies to them.

Daniel Greco (forthcoming) argues that there cannot be epistemic dilemmas. I argue that he is wrong. I then look in detail at a would-be epistemic dilemma and argue that no non-dilemmic approach to it can be made to work. Along the way, there is discussion of octopuses, lobsters, and other ‘inscrutable cognizers’; the relationship between evaluative and prescriptive norms; a failed attempt to steal a Brueghel; epistemic and moral blame and residue; an unbearable guy who thinks he’s God’s gift (...) to women; excuses; stupid games involving hats; radical permissivism; how I’ll never be able to afford to buy a house in Hampstead; and many other exciting topics. (shrink)

I argue that a Sellarsian approach to experience allows one to take seriously the thought that there is something given to us in perception without denying that we can only be conscious of conceptually structured content. I argue against the traditional empiricist reading of Sellars, according to which sensations are understood as epistemically graspable prior to concrete propositional representations, by showing that it is unclear on such a view why sensations are not just the given as Sellars so famously (...) criticizes it. I suggest an alternative transcendental reading, according to which there are two sides to the subject matter of perceptual judgments: The matter given in perception, and its form. I present an account of sensations and intuitions on which it is unproblematic to see sensations as what is given in perception: They are not intelligible independently of their role as the matter of intuitions, the content of which is accessible to us only in the context of a judgment. (shrink)

Most discussion of Sellars’ deployment of the distinct images of “man-in-the-world” in "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man" focus entirely on the manifest and the scientific images. But the original image is important as well. In this essay I explore the importance of the original image to the Sellarsian project of naturalizing epistemology, connecting Sellars’ insights regarding this image to recent work in cognitive development.

Most discussion of Sellars’ deployment of the distinct images of “man-in-the-world” in Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man focus entirely on the manifest and the scientific images. But the original image is important as well. In this essay I explore the importance of the original image to the Sellarsian project of naturalizing epistemology, connecting Sellars’ insights regarding this image to recent work in cognitive development.

Abstract In this article, a critical assessment is carried out of the two available forms of nominalism with respect to the ontological constitution of material objects: resemblance nominalism and trope theory. It is argued that these two nominalistic ontologies naturally converge towards each other when the problems they have to face are identified and plausible solutions to these problems are sought. This suggests a synthesis between the two perspectives along lines first proposed by Sellars, whereby, at least at the level (...) of the simplest, truly fundamental constituents of reality, every particular is literally both an object and a particularized property (or, alternatively put, the distinction between objects and properties dissolves). Some potential problems and open issues for such an approach to nominalism in ontology are identified and discussed, with particular emphasis on the sort of fundamentalism that seems to crucially underlie the proposed ontology. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-14 DOI 10.1007/s12136-011-0145-x Authors Matteo Morganti, Department of Philosophy, University of Rome ‘RomaTRE’, Via Ostiense, 234, 00144 Rome, Italy Journal Acta Analytica Online ISSN 1874-6349 Print ISSN 0353-5150. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Jay Garfield’s accounts of the self, consciousness, and phenomenology in his book, Engaging Buddhism: Why It Matters to Philosophy. I argue that Garfield’s views on these topics are shaped, in problematic ways, by views he takes over from Wilfrid Sellars and applies to Buddhist philosophy.

In this article, it is argued that Sellars’ view of normativity is the key for a proper resolution of the debate between normativism and anti-normativism, as the latter is described in Turner’s recent book Explaining the Normative. Drawing on an early Sellarsian article , I suggest that both normativism and anti-normativism are ultimately unsatisfactory positions and for the same reason: due to their failure to draw a distinction between causal or explanatory reducibility and logical or conceptual reducibility of the (...) normative to the non-normative. (shrink)

Undergraduate social work students are exposed to ethical and legal dilemmas during their fieldwork training. This article presents a study that examined these ethical dilemmas in an Israeli sample of undergraduate social work students. 117 students who participated in a course in ethics submitted 31 written presentations of ethical-dilemma analysis. Their oral presentations were recorded and transcribed. Using a qualitative analysis, three major themes emerged: 1. The tension between the duty to maintain client's confidentiality and its violation under certain (...) conditions; 2. The students’ conflict of loyalty toward the client vs. the organization; 3. The question of the clients’ right to self-determination when, in the student's view, this is against their best interests.Our findings point to the vital role of an ethics course in the social work undergraduate curriculum that can enhance students’ knowledge of specific laws relevant to the limits of confidentiality in social work and their ability to analyze ethical dilemmas as future professionals. Furthermore, it is essential to raise awareness in educators and supervisors concerning moral distress that may afflict students coping with ethical dilemmas at this early professional developmental phase. (shrink)

Roughly, behaviorist accounts of self-knowledge hold that first persons acquire knowledge of their own minds in just the same way other persons do: by means of behavioral evidence. One obvious problem for such accounts is that the fail to explain the great asymmetry between the authority of first person as opposed to other person attributions of thoughts and other mental states and events. Another is that the means of acquisition seems so different: other persons must infer my mental contents from (...) my behavior, whereas I need not. In this paper, I articulate a specifically Sellarsian behavioristic account of our knowledge of our own and others’ minds, and defend it against these two obvious objections. I further defend it against objections from Davidson, to the effect that Sellars’ account in particular cannot properly formulate the asymmetry at issue, and that behaviorism in general cannot account for the a priori character of the asymmetry. I argue that Davidson misinterprets Sellars at key points, and also misconstrues his own explanandum: What Sellars account can explain is an asymmetry in the reliability of first and other person attributions, but this asymmetry is not a priori. What is a priori is an asymmetry in the practice of according epistemic authority to such attributions. I argue that this asymmetry is what Davidson can and does explain, by appeal to the constitutive features of radical interpretation. But accepting this explanation does not require the rejection of Sellars’ account of the way that first and other persons in fact arrive at beliefs about their mental contents. The two approaches — one descriptive and empirical, the other constitutive and ideal — are compatible. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relation between what James Conant has called Kantian and Cartesian varieties of skepticism. It is argued that a solution to the most prominent example of a Kantian variety of skepticism, i.e. Kripkensteinian skepticism about rule-following and meaning, can be found in the works of Wilfrid Sellars. It is then argued that, on the basis of that very same solution to the Kantian problematic of rule-following and meaning, a novel argument against external world skepticism can be formulated. (...) This argument takes the shape of a transcendental argument, which is reminiscent of Hilary Putnam’s infamous argument against the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis, but is, as is argued, superior to it in certain respects. (shrink)

In virtue of what do we enjoy episodes of pleasure? According to the phenomenological theory of pleasure, we enjoy pleasures in virtue of having certain kinds of phenomenal experiences. According to the attitude theory of pleasure, we enjoy pleasures in virtue of having a certain kind of pro-attitude. In this chapter, we show that the attitude theory faces a dilemma. The attitude that is relevant to pleasure—the desire, liking, or favoring—is either necessarily co-instantiated with certain phenomenology, or not. If (...) the attitude theorist denies that the relevant attitudes are phenomenologically enriched in this sense, then their theory has the problematic implication that pleasure can come radically apart from phenomenology. This leads to a *problem of hedonic inversion*. If the attitude theorist instead affirms that the relevant attitudes are phenomenologically enriched, then they undermine their main objection to the phenomenological theory of pleasure. This is the so-called *heterogeneity problem*, according to which pleasures do not feel alike. Either way, the attitudinal theorist faces a difficult challenge in their ongoing debate with phenomenological theorists. (shrink)

The demands of morality can seem straightforward. Be kind to others. Do not lie. Do not murder. But moral life is not so simple. We are often confronted with difficult situations in which someone is going to get hurt no matter what we do, in which we cannot meet all of our obligations, in which loyalties come into conflict, in which we cannot help everyone who needs it, or in which we must compromise on important values. It is natural to (...) describe such situations as moral dilemmas. This chapter is about the psychology of how we represent, process, and make decisions about what to do when moral life is difficult in this way. Our first aim is to provide some conceptual clarity on what exactly turns a choice situation into a moral dilemma. Here, we propose a normative account of moral dilemmas in terms of moral appropriate feelings of conflict in response to strongly conflicting reasons. Our second aim is to critically survey existing psychological work, providing an overview of some important findings, while raising questions for future research. (shrink)

In this article, we will attempt to understand Sellars’ puzzling notion of ‘adequate picturing’ and its relation to the Sellarsian ‘conceptual order’ through Spinoza’s intuitive knowledge. First, it will be suggested that there are important structural similarities between Sellarsian ‘adequate picturing’ and Spinoza’s intuitive knowledge which can illuminate some ‘dark’ and not so well understood features of Sellarsian picturing. However, there remain some deep differences between Sellars’ and Spinoza’s philosophy, especially with regard to their notion of ‘adequacy’ (...) and the sense in which an idea can be said to ‘correspond’ with its object. As a consequence of those differences it turns out that, from a Sellarsian viewpoint, Spinoza’s notion of intuitive knowledge is a version of the myth of the Given. However, Sellars’ own proposed way out of the Myth has problematic consequences by Sellars’ own lights: His sharp distinction between the ‘space of reasons’ level and the level of picturing makes the Sellarsian vision of the ‘stereoscopic fusion’ of those levels virtually unintelligible. Finally, it will be argued that a non-standard interpretation of Spinoza’s intuitive knowledge -proposed in Baltas -, combined with a Sellars-inspired bifurcated understanding of Dreyfusian expert knowledge, can provide the means 1) for constructing a notion of intuitive knowledge that evades the myth of the Given, and, 2) for making full sense of the claim that the ‘space of reasons’ dimension of understanding the world can in principle be fused with the ‘picturing’ dimension and provide us with a single complex coherent experience of reality and our place in it. (shrink)

According to what we will call subjectivity theories of consciousness, there is a constitutive connection between phenomenal consciousness and subjectivity: there is something it is like for a subject to have mental state M only if M is characterized by a certain mine-ness or for-me-ness. Such theories appear to face certain psychopathological counterexamples: patients appear to report conscious experiences that lack this subjective element. A subsidiary goal of this chapter is to articulate with greater precision both subjectivity theories and the (...) psychopathological challenge they face. The chapter’s central goal is to present two new approaches to defending subjectivity theories in the face of this challenge. What distinguishes these two approaches is that they go to great lengths to interpret patients’ reports at face value – greater length, at any rate, than more widespread approaches in the extant literature. (shrink)

A strong tradition in philosophy denies the possibility of moral dilemmas. Recently, several philosophers reversed this tradition. In this dissertation, I clarify some fundamental issues in this debate, argue for the possibility of moral dilemmas, and determine some implications of this possibility. ;In chapter I, I define moral dilemmas roughly as situations where an agent morally ought to adopt each of two alternatives but cannot adopt both. Moral dilemmas are resolvable if and only if one of the moral oughts overrides (...) the other. ;In chapter II, I criticize several opponents of moral dilemmas, including utilitarians, Kant, Aquinas, and Ross. My main criticism is that no opponent of moral dilemmas can adequately justify moral residue . ;Chapters III and IV concern the two main arguments against the possibility of moral dilemmas. First, the argument for 'ought' implies 'can' runs as follows. If the agent cannot adopt both, then it is not the case that the agent ought to adopt both. But the agent ought to adopt both, since the agent ought to adopt each . Thus, the defining judgements of a moral dilemma seem to imply a contradiction. In response, I argue that the relation between 'ought' and 'can' is not a logical implication but a conversational implicature. ;Chapter IV concerns the argument from 'ought' implies 'permitted': If the agent ought to adopt one alternative, then the agent is permitted to adopt that alternative, which means that it is not the case that the agent ought not to adopt that alternative. But the agent ought not to adopt that alternative, since the agent ought to adopt the other alternative and cannot adopt both. I respond that 'ought' does not logically imply but conversationally implicates 'permitted'. ;In chapter V, I argue that, despite recent claims, both moral realism and anti-realism are compatible with the possibility of moral dilemmas. Thus, there are several reasons to accept and no reasons to deny the possibility of moral dilemmas. (shrink)

This draft now appears (in revised form) as the Preamble to _Self-Reflection for the Opaque Mind_. See http://philpapers.org/rec/PARSFT-3.

In A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume attempts to explain all human cognition in terms of impressions, ideas, and their qualities, behaviors, and relations. This explanation includes a complicated attempted reduction of beliefs, or judgments, to single ideas. This paper attempts to demonstrate one of the inadequacies of this approach, and any of its kind (any attempted reduction of judgments to their constituent parts, single or multiple) via an argument concerning the logical forms of judgment found implicitly in Kant's Critique (...) of Pure Reason, and more explicitly in the works of Wilfrid Sellars. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, 'false dilemma (FD)'. According to Andrea A. Lunsford, John J. Ruskiewicz, and Keith Walters, a FD tends to “reduce a complicated issue to excessively simple terms” or, when intentionally created, tends to “obscure legitimate alternatives”. FD reflects incorrect thinking because it presents a problem or issue as having only two possible solutions when in fact there are more. Liam Dempsey noted that shows such as The Daily Show (...) and The Colbert Report often employed FD in order to highlight the “theatrics” that are found in political events or the use of FD by politicians. Politics aside, an FD exists anytime an extreme dichotomy of choices appears as the only possible answers. Advertisers also create an FD when creating a situation with only two outcomes and the only correct or positive outcome leads to their brand. (shrink)

While the traditional view was that in order to understand language and our linguistic practices we must explain meaning, the 'pragmatic turn' emerging within the writings of various philosohpers of the second half of the twentieth century caused a basic change of the perspective: the tendency is to concentrate directly on explaining the linguistic practices and leave the need for explaining meaning to emerge (or, as the case may be, not to emerge) subsequently. I argue that after this turn we (...) should explain the peculiar kinds of 'meaningfulness' that characterizes our expressions in terms of what Sellars called "pattern governed behavior". Furthermore, I argue that the turn should not make us discard meanings, but only to reappraise them: to see them as the roles of expressions vis-à-vis the rules that govern our language games. (shrink)

These two puzzles were classic if academic examples of the dilemmas Professor Ryle is concerned with.

What should we believe when epistemic and practical reasons pull in opposite directions? The traditional view states that there is something that we ought epistemically to believe and something that we ought practically to (cause ourselves to) believe, period. More recent accounts challenge this view, either by arguing that there is something that we ought simpliciter to believe, all epistemic and practical reasons considered (the weighing view), or by denying the normativity of epistemic reasons altogether (epistemic anti-normativism). I argue against (...) both accounts and defend the traditional view. An agent can be blameworthy in doxastic dilemmas for complying with their practical but not their epistemic reasons. This reveals how epistemic reasons are normative: the concept of epistemic blame helps us track epistemic normativity. (shrink)