Showing papers in "Philosophy and Phenomenological Research in 2009"

Against Arguments from Reference

Abstract: It is common in various quarters of philosophy to derive philosophically significant conclusions from theories of reference. In this paper, we argue that philosophers should give up on such ‘arguments from reference.’ Intuitions play a central role in establishing theories of reference, and recent cross-cultural work suggests that intuitions about reference vary across cultures and between individuals within a culture (Machery et al. 2004). We argue that accommodating this variation within a theory of reference undermines arguments from reference.

Transparency, Intentionalism, and the Nature of Perceptual Content

Abstract: Moore's idea here is often summarized by saying that experience is transparent: when we try to examine the features of an experience, we end up 'looking through' the experience and examining features of what the experience is an experience of.2 Though there is widespread agreement that the transparency of experience shows something important about perception, there is little agreement about what it shows. Many have argued that we can use it to decide questions about the objects of experience whether they are sense data, propositions of some sort, or external particulars and their properties. I agree that there is something important to be learned from Moore's observation: but I think that it concerns the contents, not the objects, of perception. These two topics are not the same. To ask whether perceptual experiences have objects is to ask whether the having of a perceptual experience is a matter of instantiating a certain monadic property or of

Two Kinds of Self-Knowledge

Abstract: I argue that a variety of influential accounts of self-knowledge are flawed by the assumption that all immediate, authoritative knowledge of our own present mental states is of one basic kind. I claim, on the contrary, that a satisfactory account of self-knowledge must recognize at least two fundamentally different kinds of self-knowledge: an active kind through which we know our own judgments, and a passive kind through which we know our sensations. I show that the former kind of self-knowledge is in an important sense fundamental, since it is intimately connected with the very capacity for rational reflection, and since it must be present in any creature that understands the first-person pronoun. Moreover, I suggest that these thoughts about self-knowledge have a Kantian provenance.

Egocentric Spatial Representation in Action and Perception

Abstract: Neuropsychological findings used to motivate the “two visual systems” hypothesis have been taken to endanger a pair of widely accepted claims about spatial representation in visual experience. The first is the claim that visual experience represents 3-D space around the perceiver using an egocentric frame of reference. The second is the claim that there is a constitutive link between the spatial contents of visual experience and the perceiver’s bodily actions. In this paper, I carefully assess three main sources of evidence for the two visual systems hypothesis and argue that the best interpretation of the evidence is in fact consistent with both claims. I conclude with some brief remarks on the relation between visual consciousness and rational agency.

Know how to be Gettiered

Abstract: Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson’s influential article “Knowing How” argues that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that. One objection to their view is that knowledge-how is significantly different than knowledge-that because Gettier cases afflict the latter but not the former. Stanley and Williamson argue that this objection fails. Their response, however, is not adequate. Moreover, I sketch a plausible argument that knowledge-how is not susceptible to Gettier cases. This suggests a significant distinction between knowledge-that and knowledge-how.

Putting Thoughts to Work: Concepts, Systematicity, and Stimulus-Independence*

Abstract: I argue that we can reconcile two seemingly incompatible traditions for thinking about concepts On the one hand, many cognitive scientists assume that the systematic redeployment of representational abilities suffices for having concepts On the other hand, a long philosophical tradition maintains that language is necessary for genuinely conceptual thought I argue that on a theoretically useful and empirically plausible concept of ‘concept’, it is necessary and sufficient for conceptual thought that a thinker be able to entertain many of the potential thoughts produced by recombining her representational abilities apart from a direct confrontation with the states of affairs being represented Such representational abilities support a cognitive engagement with the world that is flexible, abstract, and active

The Abductivist Reply to Skepticism

Abstract: Abductivists claim that explanatory considerations (e.g., simplicity, parsimony, explanatory breadth, etc.) favor belief in the external world over skeptical hypotheses involving evil demons and brains in vats. After showing how most versions of abductivism succumb fairly easily to obvious and fatal objections, I explain how rationalist versions of abductivism can avoid these difficulties. I then discuss the most pressing challenges facing abductivist appeals to the a priori and offer suggestions on how to overcome them.

Fallibilism, Epistemic Possibility, and Concessive Knowledge Attributions

Abstract: 1. If knowing requires believing on the basis of evidence that entails what’s believed, we have hardly any knowledge at all. Hence the near-universal acceptance of fallibilism in epistemology: if it’s true that “we are all fallibilists now” (Siegel 1997: 164), that’s because denying that one can know on the basis of non-entailing evidence is, it seems, not an option if we’re to preserve the very strong appearance that we do know many things (Cohen 1988: 91). Hence the significance of concessive knowledge attributions (CKAs) (Rysiew 2001) – i.e., sentences of the form ‘S knows that p, but it’s possible that q’ (where q entails not-p). To many, utterances of such sentences sound very odd indeed. According to David Lewis (1996: 550), however, such sentences are merely “overt, explicit” statements of fallibilism; if so, their seeming incoherence suggests that, contrary to our everyday epistemic pretensions, “knowledge must be by definition infallible” after all (ibid.: 549). Recently Jason Stanley (2005) has defended fallibilism against the Lewisian worry that overtly fallibilistic speech is incoherent. According to Stanley, CKAs are not just odd-sounding: in most cases, they are simply false. But this doesn’t impugn fallibilism. Insofar as the oddsounding utterances Lewis cites state the fallibilist idea, the latter portion thereof (‘S cannot eliminate a certain possibility in which not-p’, e.g.) expresses the idea that the subject’s evidence doesn’t entail what’s (allegedly) known (hence, the negation of any contrary propositions).

Assertion and its Constitutive Norms

Abstract: Alston, Searle, and Williamson advocate the restrictive model of assertion, according to which certain constitutive assertoric norms restrict which propositions one may assert. Sellars and Brandom advocate the dialectical model of assertion, which treats assertion as constituted by its role in the game of giving and asking for reasons. Sellars and Brandom develop a restrictive version of the dialectical model. I explore a non-restrictive version of the dialectical model. On such a view, constitutive assertoric norms constrain how one must react if an interlocutor challenges one’s assertion, but they do not constrain what one should assert in the first place. I argue that the non-restrictive dialectical perspective can accommodate various linguistic phenomena commonly taken to support the restrictive model.1

What Mary Did Yesterday: Reflections on Knowledge-wh

Abstract: Reductionists about knowledge-wh hold that “s knows-wh” (e.g. “John knows who stole his car”) is reducible to “there is a proposition p such that s knows that p, and p answers the indirect question of the wh-clause.” Anti-reductionists hold that “s knows-wh” is reducible to “s knows that p, as the true answer to the indirect question of the wh-clause.” I argue that both of these positions are defective. I then offer a new analysis of knowledge-wh as a special kind of de re knowledge.

Heirs of Nothing: The Implications of Transparency

Abstract: Recently representationalists have cited a phenomenon known as the transparency of experience in arguments against the qualia theory. Representationalists take transparency to support their theory and to work against the qualia theory. In this paper I argue that representationalist assessment of the philosophical importance of transparency is incorrect. The true beneficiary of transparency is another theory, naive realism. Transparency militates against qualia and the representationalist theory of experience. I describe the transparency phenomenon, and I use my description to argue for naive realism and against representationalism and the qualia theory. I also examine the relationship between phenomenological study and phenomenal character, and discuss the results in connection with the argument from hallucination.

Primitive agency and natural norms

Abstract: My main objective in this paper is to rough out a notion of primitive agency. A secondary objective is to connect primitive agency to natural norms, and to make some remarks on how natural norms apply once primitive agency is linked with an agent’s perceptually identified goals. Both of these objectives bear on primitive antecedents of the higherlevel types of agency that we as philosophers tend to be most interested in—intentional agency, norm-guided agency, deliberative agency, morally responsible agency, intellectual agency, and so on. I believe that by setting these higher levels of agency in a broader, more generic framework, we gain insight into them. For present purposes, I will not defend this belief. What I have to say here in action theory is closely connected to parallel but more extensive work that I have done on perception. One of the main points of the work on perception is to distinguish between mere sensory capacities and sensory-perceptual capacities. Broadly speaking, this distinction marks where representational mind begins. The distinction hinges on perception’s having representational content with accuracy conditions and with perception’s involving a certain type of objectification, exhibited paradigmatically in perceptual constancies. Perceptual constancies are capacities systematically to represent a given particular entity or specific property, relation, or kind as the

Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Substance: The Substance-Mode Relation as a Relation of Inherence and Predication

Abstract: In his groundbreaking work of 1969, Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation, Edwin Curley attacked the traditional understanding of the substance-mode relation in Spinoza, according to which modes inhere in substance. Curley argued that such an interpretation generates insurmountable problems, as had already been claimed by Pierre Bayle in his famous Dictionary entry on Spinoza. Instead of having modes

The Duty of Self‐Knowledge

Abstract: Kant is well known for claiming that we can never really know our true moral disposition. He is less well known for claiming that the injunction “Know Yourself” is the basis of all self-regarding duties. Taken together, these two claims seem contradictory. My aim in this paper is to show how they can be reconciled. I first address the question of whether the duty of self-knowledge is logically coherent (§1). I then examine some of the practical problems surrounding the duty, notably, self-deception (§2). Finding none of Kant’s solutions to the problem of self-deception satisfactory, I conclude by defending a Kantian account of self-knowledge based on his theory of conscience (§3).

Truth, Value and Epistemic Expressivism

Abstract: A familiar view in ethical theory is that ethical c laims do not literally describe the world; they do not – in at least one s ense – state facts. Rather, they express our sentiments, or emotional attitudes , or convey our moral stances and commitments. Variations on this view ar e now legion. 1 I’ll call this general family of views expressivism. Expressivism, isn’t confined to ethics. One might a dopt it towards any type of value and claims about that value. 2 In this paper, I want to examine whether we can adopt it towards the value of truth. I s all argue that we lack any standpoint from which we can make expressi vism about the value of truth intelligible. This turns out to tell us so mething important both about truth and about value.

Hearing and Seeing Musical Expression

Abstract: Everybody assumes (1) that musical performances are sonic events and (2) that their expressive properties are sonic properties. This paper discusses recent findings in the psychology of music perception that show that visual information combines with auditory information in the perception of musical expression. The findings show at the very least that arguments are needed for (1) and (2). If music expresses what we think it does, then its expressive properties may be visual as well as sonic; and if its expressive properties are purely sonic, then music expresses less than we think it does. And if the expressive properties of music are visual as well as sonic, then music is not what we think it is—it is not purely sonic.

Knowing what one wants

Abstract: Katherine, a young woman, stands by her son's crib, watching him sleep. "Have another"-she hears the words in her head. She is startled. Was she thinking about that? She supposes she was, but she wonders: was that a directive from some part of her? Or was it a question? Or was it something else? When Katherine hears these words, have another, she realizes that she has been thinking on and off about the possibility. So, on hearing the words, she thinks perhaps she has already been deliberating, and here is the answer: have another. But then, if this is an answer, it does not feel decisive. And so she thinks perhaps she has not been deliberating, but merely entertaining a possibility without thinking squarely and focusedly about it here then is not an answer, but rather "the question is being called." A decision of some importance must be taken, and it is time to think squarely about it. What kind of question is being called? The question Katherine faces is not just the question of what her ends are to be, or of what she should all-things-considered pursue. She also faces the question, a distinct question, of what it is that she wants. That there are two distinct questions here may be difficult to discern. The question of what one wants often blurs into the question of what to want. The reasons for this are complex: often, the question of what one wants does not even arise outside the sphere of practical reflection. It is not until one asks oneself, "What end might I pursue here?" that the question of what one wants even takes shape. Nonetheless, these are distinct problems for us as human agents: knowing what to want, and knowing what one wants, plain and simple. The question Katherine faces is not only about what her ends are to be, but also about whether an impulse counts as a desire, as something that might even compete as a candidate end.

Leibniz on Natural Teleology and the Laws of Optics

Abstract: This essay examines one of the cornerstones of Leibniz’s defense of teleology within the order of nature. The first section explores Leibniz’s contributions to the study of geometrical optics, and argues that his “Most Determined Path Principle” or “MDPP” allows him to bring to the fore philosophical issues concerning the legitimacy of teleological explanations by addressing two technical objections raised by Cartesians to non-mechanistic derivations of the laws of optics. The second section argues that, by drawing on laws such as the MDPP, Leibniz is able to introduce a thin notion of teleology that gives him the resources to respond to the most pressing charges of his day against teleological explanations within natural philosophy. Finally, the third section argues that contemporary philosophers have been overly hasty in their dismissal of Leibniz’s account of natural teleology, and indeed that their own generally thin conceptions of teleology have left them with few well-motivated resources for resisting his elegant position.

Inconsistency Theories of Semantic Paradox

Abstract: It is argued that a certain form of the view that the semantic paradoxes show that natural languages are “inconsistent” provides the best response to the semantic paradoxes. After extended discussions of the views of Kirk Ludwig and Matti Eklund, it is argued that in its strongest formulation the view maintains that understanding a natural language is sharing cognition of an inconsistent semantic theory for that language with other speakers. A number of aspects of this approach are discussed and a few objections are entertained.

Evidentialism, Vice, and Virtue

Abstract: This Article pre-print is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy at Digital Commons @ Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons@Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@lmu.edu. Repository Citation Baehr, Jason, \"Evidentialism, Vice, and Virtue\" (2009). Philosophy Faculty Works. 32. http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/phil_fac/32

Atomism, Pluralism, and Conceptual Content

Abstract: Conceptual atomists argue that most of our concepts are primitive. I take up three arguments that have been thought to support atomism and show that they are inconclusive. The evidence that allegedly backs atomism is equally compatible with a localist position on which concepts are structured representations with complex semantic content. I lay out such a localist position and argue that the appropriate position for a non-atomist to adopt is a pluralist view of conceptual structure. I show several ways in which conceptual pluralism provides an advantage in satisfying the empirical and philosophical demands on a theory of conceptual structure and content.

Transmission Failure Explained

Abstract: In this paper I draw attention to a peculiar epistemic feature exhibited by certain deductively valid inferences. Certain deductively valid inferences are unable to enhance the reliability of one’s belief that the conclusion is true—in a sense that will be fully explained. As I shall show, this feature is demonstrably present in certain philosophically significant inferences—such as GE Moore’s notorious ‘proof’ of the existence of the external world. I suggest that this peculiar epistemic feature might be correlated with the much discussed phenomenon that Crispin Wright and Martin Davies have called ‘transmission failure’—the apparent failure, on the part of some deductively valid inferences to transmit one’s justification for believing the premises.

Contextualism, Subject‐Sensitive Invariantism, and the Interaction of ‘Knowledge’‐Ascriptions with Modal and Temporal Operators*

Abstract: Jason Stanley has argued recently that Epistemic Contextualism (EC) and Subject-Sensitive Invariantism (SSI) are explanatorily on a par with regard to certain data arising from modal and temporal embeddings of ‘knowledge’-ascriptions. This paper argues against Stanley that EC has a clear advantage over SSI in the discussed field and introduces a new type of linguistic datum strongly suggesting the falsity of SSI.

The Conventional and the Analytic

Abstract: Empiricist philosophers like Carnap invoked analyticity in order to explain a priori knowledge and necessary truth. Analyticity was ‘‘truth purely in virtue of meaning.’’ The view had a deflationary motivation: in Carnap’s proposal, linguistic conventions alone determine the truth of analytic sentences, and thus there is no mystery in our knowing their truth a priori, or in their necessary truth; for they are, as it were, truths of our own making. Let us call this ‘‘Carnapian conventionalism,’’ conventionalismC and cognates for short. This conventionalistC explication of the a priori has been the target of sound criticisms. Arguments like Quine’s in ‘‘Truth by Convention’’ are in our view decisive: the truth of conventionalismC requires that the class of logical truths and logical validities be reductively accounted for as conventionally established; however, no such reduction is forthcoming, because logic is needed to generate the entire class from any given set of conventions properly so-called. Granted that conventionalismC is untenable, we want to take issue with a different, usually made criticism. Although the argument uncovers some difficulties for the way conventionalist claims are defended by

Imagining, Recognizing and Discriminating: Reconsidering the Ability Hypothesis

Abstract: According to the Ability Hypothesis, knowing what it is like to have experience E is just having the ability to imagine or recognize or remember having experience E. I examine various versions of the Ability Hypothesis and point out that they all face serious objections. Then I propose a new version that is not vulnerable to these objections: knowing what it is like to experience E is having the ability to discriminate imagining or having experience E from imagining or having any other experience. I argue that if we replace the ability to imagine or recognize with the ability to discriminate, the Ability Hypothesis can be salvaged.

What's metaphysical about metaphysical necessity?

Abstract: I begin by contrasting three approaches one can take to the distinction between the essential and accidental properties: an ontological, a deflationary, and a mind-dependent approach. I then go on to apply that distinction to the necessary a posteriori, and defend the deflationist view. Finally I apply the distinction to modal truth in general and argue that the deflationist position lets us avoid an otherwise pressing problem for the actualist: the problem of accounting for the source of modal truth.

The Conditional Analysis of Dispositions and the Intrinsic Dispositions Thesis

Abstract: The idea that dispositions are an intrinsic matter has been popular among contemporary philosophers of dispositions. In this paper I will first state this idea as exactly as possible. I will then examine whether it poses any threat to the two current versions of the conditional analysis of dispositions, namely, the simple and reformed conditional analysis of dispositions. The upshot is that the intrinsic nature of dispositions, when properly understood, doesn’t spell trouble for either of the two versions of the conditional analysis of dispositions. Along the way, I will propose an extensionally correct and practically useful criterion for identifying nomically intrinsic dispositions and criticize one objection raised by Lewis against the simple conditional analysis of dispositions.

Transworld Depravity and Unobtainable Worlds

Abstract: The free will defense attempts to show that the existence of God is logically compatible with the existence of evil, and it received its most sophisticated development in the work of Alvin Plantinga (1974). Many philosophers believe that Plantinga's free will defense conclusively demonstrates the logical compatibility of God and evil. Philosophers such as W. Alston, R. Adams, and W. Rowe have written that Plantinga's version of the free will defense solves the deductive problem of evil.1 An integral part of Plantinga's free will defense is the concept of transworld depravity. If every essence suffers from transworld depravity, God could not create a morally perfect world, i.e., a world containing moral good but no moral evil. Thus, if every essence suffers from transworld depravity, God has a reason for creating a world containing evil. Since Plantinga is giving a free will defense and not a theodicy, he does not claim that all essences have transworld depravity.2 Instead, he claims that it is possible that all essences suffer from transworld depravity; let us call this the hypothesis of universal transworld depravity. Recently some philosophers have argued that Plantinga has not proved that universal transworld depravity is logically possible. It has

The Murderer at the Door: What Kant Should Have Said

Abstract: Embarrassed by the apparent rigorism Kant expresses so bluntly in ‘On a Supposed Right to Lie,’ numerous contemporary Kantians have attempted to show that Kant’s ethics can justify lying in specific circumstances, in particular, when lying to a murderer is necessary in order to prevent her from killing another innocent person. My aim is to improve upon these efforts and show that lying to prevent the death of another innocent person could be required in Kantian terms. I argue (1) that our perfect Kantian duty of self-preservation can require our lying to save our own lives when threatened with unjust aggression, and (2) that Kant’s understanding of moral duty was that duties are symmetrical, such that if one has a duty to perform a given action on one’s own behalf or to protect one’s own rational nature, then one also has a duty to perform similar acts on other’s behalf or to protect their rational nature. Thus, that the individual protected against aggression by means of deception is not oneself should be of no consequence from a Kantian perspective. Lying to the murderer is thus an extension of the Kantian requirement of self-defense.