Showing papers in "Philosophical Studies in 1976"

Intuitive semantics for first-degree entailments and ‘coupled trees’

Abstract: Classically, an argument A therefore B is ‘valid’ (or A is said to ‘entail’ B) if and only if (iff) each situation (model) is such that either A is false or B is true. This fits well with so-called ‘tableau’ methods for showing that A entails B by working out the mutual inconsistency of A and ~B. But both the classical notion of validity and the corresponding tableau methods allow that A may entail B because of some feature of A alone, irrespective of B, and vice versa. Thus if A is a contradiction, then each situation is such that A is false, and so a fortiori is such that A is false or B is true. And if A is a contradiction, then a tableau construction will show that A is inconsistent, and so a fortiori that A and ~B are inconsistent. Of course, the same points can be made dually when B is a logical truth.

Skepticism, relevant alternatives, and deductive closure

Abstract: My view is that the relevant alternative position should be conceived of as in two parts: (1) With respect to many propositions, to establish a knowledge claim is to be able to support it as opposed to a limited number of alternatives — i.e., only those which are relevant in the context. (2) With respect to many propositions — in particular those which are such that their negations are not relevant alternatives in the context in question — we simply know them to be true and do not need evidence, in the normal sense, that they, rather than their negations, are true. So conceived, the relevant alternative view neither supports the abandonment of deductive closure, nor is such abandonment in any way needed to provide the relevant alternative view with an answer to the skeptic, insofar as he can be answered.

The coherence theory of empirical knowledge

Abstract: In a paper written for a commemorative symposium on the philosophy of C. I. Lewis, Roderick Firth remarks that Lewis liked to confront his Harvard epistemology students with a fundamental choice between a foundation theory of knowledge based on 'the given', like that advocated so ably in Lewis's own books, and "a coherence theory like that of Bosanquet" .' As Firth notes, there are many different philosophical views which have been called 'coherence theories', including theories of truth and of meaning; but what Lewis seems to have had primarily in mind is a coherence theory of epistemic justification: the view that the epistemic warrant or authority of empirical statements derives entirely from coherence and not at all from any sort of 'foundation'.2 Since Lewis's strong version of foundationism is by now everywhere in eclipse, it seems appropriate to examine the Bosanquetian alternative. The purpose of this paper is to explore, and tentatively defend, a view of the Bosanquetian sort, which I shall call "the coherence theory of empirical knowledge" (hereafter CTEK). As discussed here, the CTEK is not to be identified with any specific historical view, though it has obvious affinities with some. It is intended rather as an idealized reconstruction of a relatively pure coherence theory, one which avoids all versions of foundationism.3 Views like the CTEK, though often employed as dialectical bogeymen, have rarely been treated as serious epistemological alternatives, since they have been thought to be subject to obvious and overwhelming objections. Thus the essential first step in a defense of such a view is to provide a sketch of its overall shape and rationale and show on this basis that these supposedly fatal objections can be answered. Such a preliminary defense of the CTEK, aimed at establishing its epistemological viability, is the goal of this paper.

Logical form and agency

Abstract: A good deal of Donald Davidson's important and widely influential paper, `The Logical Form of Action Sentences',1 is taken up with demonstrating the failure of the Kenny-Chisholm-von Wright style 2 account of the syntax of agency to adequately cope with a varied collection of problems. The approach repudiated by Davidson enjoins partitioning an action-sentence into an agent, a state of affairs, and an operation of bringing about: `Socrates drops the cup'. becomes `Socrates brings it about that the cup falls'. I call this style of analysis the Anselmian approach, arguing that not only can this approach deal well enough with Davidson's problems to restore itself as an interesting subject of investigation, but in some respects it handles these problems so perspicuously that we can begin to see them in an entirely new perspective, one that is favorable to the Anselmian approach.

Has foundationalism been refuted

Abstract: It is no part of my purpose in this paper to advocate Minimal Foundationalism. In fact I believe there to be strong objections to any form of foundationalism, and I feel that some kind of coherence or contextualist theory will provide a more adequate general orientation in epistemology. Will and Lehrer are to be commended for providing, in their different ways, important insights into some possible ways of developing a nonfoundationalist epistemology. Nevertheless if foundationalism is to be successfully disposed of it must be attacked in its most defensible, not in its most vulnerable, form. Although Will and Lehrer reveal weaknesses in historically important forms of foundationalism, it has been my aim in this paper to show that their arguments leave untouched the more modest and less vulnerable form I have called ‘Minimal Foundationalism’, a form approximated to by the most prominent contemporary versions of the position. It is to be hoped that those who are interested in clearing the decks for an epistemology without foundations will turn their critical weapons against such modest and careful foundationalists as Chisholm, Danto, and Quinton

Proper names: A defence of Burge

Abstract: I wish to take up an issue arising out of Steven Bo6r'sl criticism of Tyler Burge's account2 of the proper names of natural languages. Like Boer, I shall not concern myself with the formal elaboration of Burge's proposal. But unlike Boer, I think it is worth emphasizing at the outset that Burge's claim that proper names are predicates is a claim about how the proper names of English should be represented within a formal theory, a theory with specific goals, and so equally, a theory with a specific set of constraints. This is not the place to discuss whether we should aim, as Burge thinks we should, at providing a Tarskian theory of truth for a natural language to serve as a substantial part of the theory of meaning for the language.3 But inasmuch as 'individual constant' and 'predicate' alike are terms of formal theories, the question whether a class of expressions is to be represented by one or the other, may be treated simply at the level of theory. Since Boer offers no criticism of Burge's assumption that a Tarskian theory is the desired one, I shall take that framework as common ground. This means that proposed alternative methods to accommodate the phenomena adduced by Burge can only be regarded as viable if they are indeed suited to incorporation within a finite theory of truth for the language under study. But I hope eventually to show that quite general considerations arise from the theoretical discussion, considerations which make appeal to no particular style of formal theory and yet count in favour of Burge's thesis.

The stillness of time and philosophical equanimity

Abstract: Being a philosopher has been traditionally associated with the ability to resist being both dazed by prosperity and broken by adversity. The philosopher is supposed to remain unperturbed by his changing fortunes and face the future with equanimity. According to the Oxford Dictionary, "Philosophical: ... befitting or characteristic of a philosopher: wise; calm; temperate ..." Now it may well be that only a fraction of the class of philosophers, especially among the analytic or linguistic variety, is actually endowed with these qualities, but there are, as I shall point out at the end of my paper, well known reasons why these should be commonly attributed to philosophers. The purpose of this paper, however, is to examine two modern views on the nature of time and to show that one of them may force upon its holders a somewhat astonishing reason to adopt a 'philosophical attitude' to a certain class of experiences. Since the particular attitude is quite unnatural, the fact that it should be required seems to count heavily against that specific doctrine concerning time. But let me begin at the beginning.

A modified dutch book argument

Abstract: A unifying strand in the debate between objectivists and subjectivists is the thesis that a man's degrees of belief ought to obey the axioms of the probability calculus. This paper is concerned to reconstruct the argument most widely employed in support of this thesis the Dutch Book Argument (DBA). We first note a critical shortcoming in the usual presentation of the DBA; we then introduce a general principle of rationality as the basis for a modification that overcomes this shortcoming; and, finally, we argue that the modified DBA is immune from certain further objections that might be or have been advanced to the DBA.

Are numbers properties of objects

Abstract: Part of Frege's concern about whether number words are properties of objects was that if they could be construed as such it would lend support to the view that truths of arithmetic were empirical truths. Such concern is ill-founded. Even if number words do apply to objects as predicates, this does not entail that numerical truths would be empirical, any more than the fact that ‘bachelor’ and ‘unmarried’ are predicates of objects entails that their relationship is an empirical one. The account of number words as predicates given here, consequently, should not be taken as supportive of any one particular theory concerning arithmetic truth rather than another. The view of number words that emerges above from the criticism of Frege's arguments is that sentences containing number words can and do say something about objects in a collective and syncategorematic way. That is, they say something about classes of objects, when it is clear what is to count as an object. Whether this view commits us to accepting certain ontological entities, classes of individuals, above and beyond individuals themselves, I am not prepared to say, and at any rate this question falls beyond the intended scope of this essay. To those who would eschew abstract entities, however, it may be noted that the ontological problems that arise are not peculiar to this view; they seem no more or less severe than those that arise in connection with other collective predicate statements, as, for example, “Blue whales are becoming extinct.” The view presented here also does not pretend to be a fatal criticism of the logicist program. Taking our cue from the above noted fact that syncategorematic predicates share in a common ‘partial’ abstract sense, it seems reasonable to say that it is just the set of such partial senses of number words, and the relationships that hold between such senses, that the logicist and the pure number theorist investigate.