2º Encontro Nacional de Filosofia Analítica 2nd National Meeting for Analytic Philosophy Sob os auspícios da Sociedade Europeia de Filosofia Analítica (SEFA) Under the auspices of the European Society for Analytical Philosophy (ESAP) Porto, October 7-9 2004 Livro de Resumos/ Book of Abstracts Comissão Científica / Scientific Commitee João Branquinho, FLUL João Sàágua, FCSH-UNL Henrique Jales Ribeiro, FLUC Sofia Miguens, FLUP José Manuel Curado, UM Comissão Organizadora / Organizing Commitee Sofia Miguens, FLUP João Alberto Pinto, FLUP Carlos E.E. Mauro, FLUP Realizado em / Held at Faculdade de Letras – Universidade do Porto Via Panorâmica s/n 4150-564 PORTO PORTUGAL Patrocinado por / Sponsored by Universidade do Porto Departamento de Filosofia (FLUP) e Gabinete de Filosofia Moderna e Contemporânea do Instituto de Filosofia (Unidade I&D 502 FCT)
Transcript
2º Encontro Nacional de Filosofia Analítica 2nd National Meeting for Analytic PhilosophySob os auspícios da Sociedade Europeia de Filosofia Analítica (SEFA)
Under the auspices of the European Society for Analytical Philosophy (ESAP)
Phonological awareness allows the listener to divide the speech chain intosegments. What is the relationship of these segments to the units presumably involvedin the processing of spoken language? Can we define specific formats for the processingunits of spoken language? Moreover, is the idea of processing unit a necessary, or usefulnotion? Cognitive psychologists addressing issues such as this are bound to use the wellknown ‘divide-to-conquer’ strategy. This allows them to treat problems experimentally,and to provide tentative answers that are backed up by empirical evidence. Here, as acase study of the general problem of what is the link between knowledge andrepresentation, I will examine experimental and theoretical work on phonologicalawareness, and will discuss how it leads us into the view of cognition as a task-dependent activity of the mind-brain system.
Circumscribing the natural numbersFernando Ferreira
In the last pages of a paper published in 1931, Rudolf Carnap takes up the problem ofthe seeming circularity of impredicative definitions. He reacts against Frank Ramsey's proposedsolution because of the "conceptual absolutism" (platonism) underlying it. Carnap's ownsolution hinges on a distinction between two kinds of generality: generality in the sense of"every single one" and generality in the sense of logical validity through proof. Only in thelatter sense of generality are impredicative definitions legitimized without falling into Ramsey'sabsolutism. We discuss Carnap's solution and draw three conclusions. First, that on Carnap'sview of generality, second-order sentences are apt for justification only. This view brings abouta change of the logic, squarely on account of impredicativity. Second, that in the specializedarena of first-order arithmetic, with the notion of natural number envisaged through the Frege-Dedekind definition, classical logic nonetheless prevails. Third, that Carnap's position is, in theend, not able to vindicate its stated purpose, viz. classical second-order arithmetic.
Richard Rorty claimed that in a world without minds there would be no truths. This canbe taken as the seemingly trivial contention that, if truth bearers are mind-dependent entitiessuch as statements or beliefs, then in a world without minds there would be no true truthbearers (for there would be no truth bearers whatever). Even this, however, could turn out tohave controversial implications: it could be incompatible with the necessary truth of(Den) p if and only if it is true that p.
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For in a world without minds there might be (e.g.) stars: thus there would be stars insuch a world, though it would not be true that there are stars, contrary to (Den). However, thisfollows only if ‘A is true in world w’ entails ‘A exists in w’. But the phrase ‘true in a world w’may be given two readings. In the first reading (a), a truth bearer A is true in w is w is such thatA, i.e. if A’s truth condition is satisfied by the way things are in w. Let us say that, if such is thecase, A is true of w. In the second reading (b), A is true in w if A exists in w and is true of w.The bothersome implication only follows if ‘A is true in w’ is taken in the (a) reading. On theother hand, if ‘A is true in w’ is taken in the (b) reading, there could be truths in a non-mindedworld even if the truth bearers are mind-dependent entities. For example, my belief that thereare stars might be true in such a world (in the (b) reading). Failure to distinguish between thetwo readings breeds confusion: the platitudinous thesis that no true statements would be madeor true beliefs entertained in a non-minded world may be taken to imply that in such a world itwould not be true that (e.g.) there are stars. Indeed, Rorty presents his thesis as an antirealisticobjection. However, the thesis counts as an objection against realism only in the (b) reading,but in that reading it appears to be clearly false. Notice that, on the (b) reading, the thesis isincompatible with the necessary truth of (Den).
Martin Heidegger held a closely related thesis: before there were minds, there were notruths. For example, Newton’s laws were not true, even though the objects they are aboutexisted and behaved according to the laws. Like Rorty, Heidegger has trouble with thenecessitation of (Den). Rorty’s trouble is worse, however, for, unlike Heidegger, he iscommitted to the necessary truth of (Den) by way of his endorsement of Davidson’sprogramme.
A Room with Two Views – retrying an old mind-body solutionPeter Simons
Whereas early analytic philosophy was centred mainly on problems of logic andlanguage, in recent decades the emphasis has shifted to mind and metaphysics. Most of my ownwork has been on general metaphysics and the relation between logic and ontology, but in thistalk I shall focus on the metaphysics of mind. There is, I believe, no mind/body dualism ofdifferent substances or properties. Where there are not two kinds of things, mental things on theone hand and material things on the other, there is no problem about how the two kinds arerelated. Hence, as a metaphysical monist, I recognize no metaphysical mind-body problem. Theproblem for a monist then is how there can appear to be a problem, and here I think we do needsome explanation and some theory. But not much. Firstly, I accept, with reservations, Brentano's characterization of mentality as entailing intentionality or directedness to an object.I use this to mention four distinctions. Let us call a creature endowed with mentalcharacteristics a subject. The first and certainly vague distinction is between subjects and non-subjects. I shall not speculate about this ontological duality but simply assume it exists.Secondly we have the distinction between a subject and a subject's mental or intentional act.This is a metaphysical distinction, between a substance and one of the processes or eventshappening in it. Thirdly we have the distinction between a mental act and what that mental actintends. This is an epistemic distinction and the proper subject of the theory of intentionality.Finally we have the distinction between being a mental act enjoyed by a subject and being amental act intended by that subject. This is a special case of the third distinction, where theobject is a mental act. Armed with these minimal distinctions, I shall show how metaphysicalmonism is compatible with and indeed leads to epistemic dualism. The result is a simple dualaspect theory. There are some residual puzzles about mentality, some of them perhaps deep, butno metaphysical or epistemological mind-bodyproblem.
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A natureza da necessidade nas verdades necessárias a posterioriAndré Barata
Admitindo que nem todas as proposições necessárias são conhecidas a priori, havendo tambémas conhecíveis a posteriori, procurarei cumprir dois objectivos:A. Mostrar que nestas últimas a necessidade não é de natureza metafísica. B. Dar conta, apesar de A., da relevância epistémica destas necessidades.
Sendo as necessidades conhecidas a posteriori ou identidades ou predicações, tratarei cada umdestes casos separadamente.
O caso das identidades:
I-1. Logicamente, todas as identidades são identidades necessárias. Assim, não é o caso queseja fisicamente possível verificar-se uma identidade contingente. Significa isto que nem énenhum aspecto da natureza das coisas o que faz com que as identidades sejam necessárias,nem é nenhum aspecto da natureza das coisas o que nos poderia fazer concluir que umaidentidade não é necessária. Ora, se a natureza das coisas, o seu escrutínio empírico, emnada contribui para a afirmação/negação do carácter necessário de uma identidade, entãonão é claro em que sentido a afirmação da necessidade de uma identidade pudesseacrescentar algum conhecimento ao nosso conhecimento do mundo.
I-2. Mas apresento um argumento mais forte. A montante de I.1, o problema coloca-se logo nofacto de não haver realmente identidades no mundo empírico. O que há são identidadesentre referentes semânticos. Donde, eu qualificar estas identidades como “semânticas”. Defacto, não existem um Véspero e um Fósforo no mundo real; a afirmação, semântica, da suaidentidade equivale justamente à negação de que existam realmente duas entidadesidênticas no mundo. Logo, se a identidade é meramente semântica, então a necessidade daidentidade assim afirmada não poderá, obviamente, ser uma necessidade realmenteatribuível ao mundo empírico, muito menos valer como uma necessidade metafísica.
I-3. Contudo, a afirmação de que Véspero é Fósforo consiste numa descoberta de inegávelvalia. Não significa isto afirmar uma identidade? O meu ponto é este: o que estáverdadeiramente em causa com essa descoberta não é, de pronto, a identificação deVéspero com Fósforo, mas a verificação de que Véspero e Fósforo satisfazem ambos umacerta descrição definida, pelo que – por definição de descrição definida – tenhamos, comoconsequente da condicional (∀ x)(∀ y) [(Px & Py) → x=y], que Véspero=Fósforo. Poroutras palavras, apenas se afirma a identidade porque os dois astros satisfazem umpredicado unissatisfazível. Neste sentido, parece-me legítimo discernir doiscomportamentos semânticos distintos para ambos os termos ‘Véspero’ e ‘Fósforo’:designam rigidamente os seus referentes sempre que entendermos estes qua entidadesexclusivamente semânticas, mas valem como descrições definidas abreviadas (tal qualRussell propunha) sempre que entendermos os seus referentes qua entidades semânticasepistemicamente comprometidas. E esta é uma forma de renovar o interesse pelodescritivismo.
O caso das predicações:
P-1. Defenderei que se deixam subsumir a pelo menos dois subcasos: i) Ou são necessitadas porum conjunto de enunciados teóricos de leis físicas, sendo, porém, problemático o seu valorde verdade; ii) Ou o seu valor de verdade é claramente determinável, sucedendo, porém, anatureza da sua necessidade ser meramente analítica. Um exemplo do primeiro caso será a
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proposição ‘Necessariamente, nada se desloca a velocidade superior à da luz’; um exemplodo segundo caso será a proposição ‘Sócrates é necessariamente humano’. O valor deverdade em i) é problemático porque os enunciados teóricos universais, enquantodependerem de condições empíricas, não têm nunca inteiramente garantidas as condiçõesda sua verdade. A necessidade de ii) é analítica porque não compromete nenhum conteúdoempírico: num qualquer mundo possível com leis físicas diferentes das do mundo actual,Sócrates continuaria a ser humano, ainda que Sócrates e ser humano fossem aí muitodiferentes do que são no mundo actual.
P-2. Ao caso das verdades necessárias a posteriori como ´Sócrates é necessariamente humano’tem-se feito corresponder (Cf. Kripke, Murcho) uma necessidade metafísica. O ModusPonens modal, por si só, não é capaz de sustentar esta posição pois, para tal, serianecessário começar por qualificar a necessidade da condicional ‘Se Sócrates é humano,então Sócrates é necessariamente humano’ como sendo metafísica, que é precisamente oque está em questão. Uma outra razão que sustentaria esta posição reside na expectativa deque Sócrates é humano mesmo em mundos possíveis com leis físicas diferentes das domundo actual. Assim, não sendo a necessidade de natureza física nem, obviamente, lógica,presume-se uma necessidade intermédia, metafísica. Contudo, a isto replico que a mesmaexpectativa de que há uma necessidade mais forte do que a necessidade inferível dos nossosenunciados teóricos de leis físicas, mas não tão forte quanto a necessidade lógica, podeainda ser pensada como uma necessidade física. Aponto uma razão a favor desta réplica: Seadmitirmos que há progresso no conhecimento científico e, além disso, que esse progressose deixa atestar pelo facto de as teorias físicas precedentes, com os seus enunciados de leis,poderem ser deduzidas, como casos particulares, das subsequentes, e seus enunciados deleis, então há um património de conhecimento científico preservável apesar da contingênciada história das teorias físicas.
P-3. Mas, admitindo P-2, posso, ainda assim, afirmar que as verdades necessárias a posterioriapenas são dotadas de uma necessidade analítica? O que defenderei é que a Física“analitiza” necessidades que se seguem, em dado momento, de um dado conjunto deenunciados teóricos de forma a preservá-las da contingência histórica a que este conjuntode enunciados está submetido. Resultam assim duas proposições: uma propriamente física,outra analitizada. Por exemplo, sustento que ao enunciado ‘A matéria possui massa’corresponde, por um lado, uma verdade necessária que se segue da física einsteiniana, masem que por massa de um corpo se entende uma medida que varia com as variações deenergia do corpo, e, por outro, uma verdade analiticamente necessária que não estádependente do que sejam realmente matéria e massa, mantendo o seu valor de verdadeestejamos a falar da física einsteiniana ou da newtoniana (para a qual massa é a quantidade,constante, de matéria de um corpo). No caso da proposição analitizada, a posse de massaserá, pois, um atributo de facto essencial à matéria, mas apenas por definição, ainda queinformada empiricamente.
Conceptual content and aesthetic perceptionChristopher Bartel
A problem that has received much recent attention in the philosophy of mind is theissue of whether the content of perceptual experience is best understood as being wholyconceptual or, at least in part, nonconceptual. In what way and to what extent are our mentalrepresentations of perceptual experience contrained by the perceiving subject’s conceptualabilities? Though this debate has received wide attention from many philosophers, this paperwill center on the debate between Evans, Peacocke, and McDowell. Restricting my paper toonly these three unfortunately forces me to leave out a great many interesting discussions on
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subject by others (Bermudez, Tye, Crane, Dretske), however I feel that the Evans-Peacocke-McDowell debate most clearly brings out what is at stake. This debate centers on whethersubject’s doxastic perceptual states must be described using only concepts that the subjectpossesses, and if not, whether those nonconceptual doxastic states are consciously open to thesubject.
This problem becomes most acute when applied to aesthetic perception. Making onlypassing references to the representational content of aesthetic perception, this problem becomesmired in presupposition and a too limited understanding of aesthetics. The purpose of this paperwill be first to shed light on the complexity of the problem of aesthetics, and second to voicemy doubt over the handling of this problem by Evans and Peacocke.
I will begin with a very brief account of a question central to theconceptual/nonconceptual debate, that of the fineness of grain of perceptual experience.Beginning with Evans’ remark that we are capable of making distinctions and colour perceptionfiner than our linguistic ability to referentially distinguish colours; McDowell attempts toresolve this problem by employing his notion of demonstrative concepts; which Peacockerejects in favour of his protopropositional content. When aesthetics is mentioned, it is taken (byEvans and Peacocke) as being an obvious and clear case of nonconceptual content: as Kantargued in his Third Critique, judgements of beauty are not grounded in concepts. It is to me,however, neither obvious nor clear that Kant is not being misunderstood on this point: it is notso much the case that Kant viewed judgements of beauty as perceptual states lacking in anyconceptual framework, but rather that judgements of beauty were not bound to rules specifiablein advance of the subject’s perceptual experience. If this is an acceptable reading of Kant, thenit seems that we are open to explaind judgements of beauty using McDowell’s demonstrativeconcepts. Beauty is not a rule-guided concept, but a demonstrative one.
Aesthetics is a field that has suffered from much ambiguity, and the motivations thatdrive a nonconceptualist in aesthetics are no less ambiguous and in need of clarification. Theremainder of my paper will enumerate these motivations and elucidate some of thenonconceptualist’s arguments for these – notions of ineffability, inexhaustibility, fineness ofgrain, and the seeming ease with which aesthetic reasons may be given without a subject’sfamiliarity with aesthetic theory. After examining these motivations, I will conclude byconsidering whether a conceptualist position such as McDowell’s is indeed blocked irreparablyfrom offering an explanation of aesthetic perception.
Frege on Sentences and proper namesMichael Blome-Tillmann
The paper examines Frege’s views on the semantics of sentences and proper names andargues against the view common among interpreters that Frege’s philosophical logic containsonly a partial and relatively harmless assimilation of sentences to names.
In the first section of the paper I situate Frege’s view that sentences are proper nameswithin the context of his philosophical logic. I briefly explicate Frege’s analysis of the logicalstructure of sentences in terms of function and argument in Concept Script and his extension ofthe functional analysis to the realm of Bedeutung in Function and Concept. On the basis ofFrege’s Compositionality Principle of Bedeutung I then show why Frege took the view thatsentences have truth-values as their Bedeutung (sometimes referred to as the ‘SlingshotArgument’). The importance of Frege’s views about the Bedeutung of sentences with regard tohis project of giving a systematic account of how a sentence’s truth-value depends on thesemantic features of its parts will be emphasised. Baring in mind that the overall motivation forFrege’s philosophical logic is his logicist project of reducing the Peano Axioms to the laws oflogic, Frege’s view that sentences have truth-values as Bedeutung will be shown to be wellmotivated.
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The second section of the paper then analyses two core problems of Frege’s view:firstly, from a syntactical point of view, sentences and names belong to different categories, fortheir intersubstitution doesn’t preserve grammaticality. Secondly, sentences and names belongto different pragmatic categories: names cannot be used to make genuine moves in languagegames (assertions, questions, commands) and sentences cannot be used to refer to truth-values.These considerations prompt us to split Frege’s view into the following six theses:
(a) Sentences have Bedeutung.(b) The Bedeutung of a sentence is its truth-value.(c) The Bedeutung of a sentence is an object.(d) Sentences are of the same semantic type as proper names.(e) Sentences are of the same pragmatic type as proper names.(f) Sentences are of the same syntactic type as proper names.
The remainder of the paper argues that Frege accepted (a) – (d) while rejecting (e) and(f). Frege only partially assimilated sentences to names.
To yield support for this view I take a closer look at Frege’s notion of Bedeutung in thethird section. I argue with Dummett that Frege’s notion of Bedeutung is of an entirelyprogrammatic nature, the Compositionality Principle and the Substitution Principle playing acrucial role determining its content. I thus come to the conclusion that Fregean Bedeutung issemantic value. Moreover, I argue that once we yield this interpretation of Bedeutung, (a) – (d)are prima facie uncontroversial.
Section four then points out that an interpretation according to which Frege held (a) –(d) while rejecting (e) – (f) has two serious downsides. Firstly, Frege frequently characterisesproper names as devices to refer to objects, thus specifying the pragmatic type of proper names.According to the interpretation under consideration, Frege thus conceived of genuine singularterms as of a subspecies of proper names, which is fairly implausible. Secondly, the relevantinterpretation ascribes Frege an incoherent view, for it is a violation of the SubstitutionPrinciple: if the singular term ‘the True’ and the sentence ‘2 + 3 = 5’ had the same Bedeutung,they would be intersubstitutable salva veritate. However, intersubstitution of singular termsand sentences doesn’t preserve grammaticality, and, as a consequence, it also doesn’t preservemeaningfulness and Bedeutung: we cannot separate an expression’s syntactic type from itssemantic type.
In the last section of the paper I resolve the problem by arguing that Frege doesn’tregard expressions such as ‘3 + 5 = 8’ as sentences. Quite to the contrary, in Basic Laws suchexpressions are explicitly regarded as singular terms designating truth-values. To be precise,when introducing the judgement stroke ‘|’ in §5 of Basic Laws, Frege explicitly notes thatexpressions such as ‘2 + 3 = 5’, i.e. expressions counting as sentences in natural language,aren’t sentences in his formal system, but proper names of truth-values. However, if suchexpressions are conjoined with both Frege’s horizontal stroke ‘—’ and the judgement stroke‘|’, then we yield an assertoric sentence in the formal language of Basic Laws. Frege’s formallanguages are thus languages that contain only one predicate: the predicate ‘is a fact’ (ConceptScript). Thus, when Frege claims that ‘22 = 4’ and ‘3 > 2’ are proper names of the True, thisdoesn’t involve an assimilation of sentences to proper names, it rather merely means thatexpressions that are sentences in English are proper names in the formal language of BasicLaws (clausal terms designating truth-values). Moreover, since Frege has it that the symbol ‘|—’ doesn’t have Bedeutung, he claims that the Bedeutung of the sentence ‘|—22 = 4’ is thesame as the Bedeutung of the proper name ‘22 = 4’.
On the basis of these considerations it is plausible that Frege didn’t intend to construesentences as a species of singular terms, i.e. as expressions designating truth-values. The paperfinally achieves a more charitable interpretation of Frege: he rejected (e) and (f) while
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nevertheless holding (d). The incoherence arising from this position if combined with (SUB)Frege intended to circumvent by the special status of the symbol ‘|—’, which, even thoughhaving no semantic value, has syntactic impact, its function being, among others, to turn propernames of truth-values into sentences.
Contrary to standard interpretations, the languages of Concept Script and Basic Lawsinvolve neither a syntactic nor a pragmatic assimilation of sentences to names.
Neuroethics: no need for normative language in moral philosophy(on the Churchlands’ neurobehaviorism)
The extraordinary development of the neurosciences especially over the last twodecades has been interpreted by both Paul and Patricia as a confirmation of their thesesabout the practical character of ethics, which excludes any kind of normative argument.Moral behavior is not acquired either by learning or by discussing how to follow rules,but by acquiring a set of prototypes which are formed in the brain as neural networksthat correspond to a know-how to be activated and applied in specific social situations. Itseems that everything may be summarized this way: “Don’t ask why. Just do it”. Onejust needs an ethical know-how, not an ethical know why. The Churchlands have beenputing forward their views especially since Patricia’s Neurophilosophy. Toward aunified science of the mind-brain (1986) and Paul’s A NeurocomputationalPerspective. The Nature of the Mind and the Structure of Science (1989). In 1995 Pauldeveloped his views in The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A PhilosophicalJourney into the Brain and in 1998 he published “Toward a cognitive neurobiology ofthe moral virtues” . This is a rather puzzling text since he seems to held somecontradictory views:
First: “What we are contemplating here is no imperialistic takeover of the moral bythe neural. Rather, we should anticipate a mutual flowering of both our high-levelconceptions in the domain of moral knowledge and our lower-level conceptions in thedomain of normal and pathological neurology. For each level has much to teach theother…” (1998/ republished in João Branquinho 2001, 77). But then he seems to sayquite the opposite:
Second: “we are about to contemplate a systematic and unified account sketched inneural-network terms, of the following phenomena: moral knowledge, moral learning,moral perception, moral ambiguity, moral conflict, moral argument, moral virtues,moral character, moral pathology, moral correction, moral diversity, moral progress,moral realism and moral unification” (1998/2001, 78).
Churchland’s critics have been arguing that prototypes, whatever their neuralbasis may be, do not contradict the existence of moral argumentation in general and ofmoral rules in particular. Prototypes are often linguistically expressed as moral rules,and these may indeed lead to changes in moral prototypes. As James Sterba argues:“Why should we have to choose between thinking about moral problems in terms ofeither recognizing the appropriate prototypes or applying the appropriate rules? Whycouldn’t it be both?”(1996, 252). This is also the essence of a recent debate betweenChurchland and Clark. I want to show that The Churchland’s views are a sort ofneurobehaviorism that has little or no support whatsoever in real life, and that moralargumentation is at the very core of moral philosophy.
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References
Branquinho, J. 2001. The Foundations of Cognitive Science, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.
Campbell, R. & Hunter, B. 2000. Moral Epistemology Naturalized. Calgary:University of Galgary Press.
Chuchland, P. 1989. A Neurocomputational Perspective, Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Churchland, P. 1995. The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul. Cambridge: MITPress.
Churchland, P.1996. The Neural Representation of the Social World”. In Minds andMorals. Ed. L. May, M. Friedman and A. Clark. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Churchland, P. 2000. “Rules, Know-How and the Future of Moral Cognition”. InMoral Epistemology Naturalized. Ed. R. Campbell & B. Hunter. Calgary: Universityof Galgary Press.
Churchland, P. S., 1986. Neurophilosophy. Toward a unified science of the mind-brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Clark, A. 1996a. “Connectionism, Moral Cognition and Collaborative ProblemSolving”. In Minds and Morals. Ed. L. May, M. Friedman and A. Clark. Cambridge:MIT Press.
Clark, A. 1996b. Dealing in futures: Folk psychology and the role of representationsin cognitive science” in Robert N. McCauley (ed.), 1996.The Churchlands and theirCritics. Oxford: Blackwell.
That there are necessary a posteriori truths meansthat there are analytic truths
It is my general view, a view that I shall not defend here, that: to argue that thereare no analytic truths because meaning changes, or because words change in meaning(from time to time, or from language to language), is as spurious as to argue that thereare no a priori truths because children must learn everything they can know, or becausethere are no innate ideas, or because mathematics can be taught. I believe that there canbe analytic truths. But I will not argue for this thesis. Rather, I would like to defend aconditional one: the thesis that if there are necessary a posteriori truths then, there areanalytic truths.
So, to accept that there are necessary a posteriori truths is to accept that there areanalytic truths. My view is that thesis can be read in Kripke´s works or, at least, this ispart of what I would like to show here. I will take the following passage, among others,as a general point in favour of what I am saying:
All cases of the necessary a posteriori advocated (...) have the special characterattributed to mathematical statements: Philosophical analysis tells us that they cannot becontingently true, so any empirical knowledge of their truth is automatically empiricalknowledge that they are necessary. (Kripke, S. 1980, p. 159.)
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Kripke is saying here that every empirically, a posteriori, necessary statement should besanctioned by a priori philosophical analysis. We know a priori, by pure reasoningalone, that mathematical truths are necessary. So whenever they are proved, they areproved as necessarily true. A posteriori necessity and, in general, every necessary truthshould be sanctioned by a priori analytic reasoning. This is true in the case ofmathematics, but it also true of any identity statement holding between rigid designators(i.e., proper names or rigid designators for physical phenomena), and of any truestatement concerning the material origin of material bodies or things.
Moreover, I would like to argue that the idea of a posteriori analytic truthsmakes no sense, and that what seems to be Putnam´s view on the contrary has to bewrong, or based on an indefensible view on analyticity. In doing so, I will not offer aclosed definition of analyticity, nor I will thus argue against the famous Quineanargument against its possibility. However, in the course of the discussion I will use anidea of analyticity that, I believe, makes justice to the Gricean-Strawsonian complaintagainst Quine.
In a way, and if I am successful, these ideas amount to the view that knowablepossibility finally rests on conceivability and definition. An this is to say that accessiblepossibility is finally backed up by analyticity: the case of definitional truths, if any,would be a clear case of analyticity; and conceivability directly depends on how muchwe allow ourselves to stretch a given concept. This, I will try to argue, is what thoughtexperiments show.
Now, the idea that modal truths are based on analytic truths should not beunderstood in the traditional way in which whatever is conceivable is possible becauseotherwise it could be refuted by pure, demonstrative or analytic, reasoning alone. On theother side, it is also clearly true that we can conceive the impossible. That is, I do notwish to maintain that the modal realm is restricted by thought and rationality. Rather, Ido wish to maintain that, in the end, they are our only route to the necessary.
As a warning point, I would also say that the view I shall defend is not related tothe latter two-dimensionalist account. Quite the contrary, the discussion does notconcern the problem of reference fixing, but: (i) the idea that analytic truths arenecessary premises in any argument that aims to show that a given statement (that is aparticular case of the analytic corresponding truth) is necessarily the case, and (ii) theidea that the conclusion statement is not reducible nor fully explained in terms of theanalytic corresponding one. Thesis (i) would explain why there is no knowable necessitythat is not based upon analyticity. Thesis (ii) opens the door to a thought independentrealm of the necessary, and its proper defence should also explain why we can conceivethe impossible.
Uma abordagem anti-realista em favor da redução psico-neuralJoão Fonseca
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Universidade Nova de [email protected]
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A discussão acerca da redução psico-neural tem-se mantido à margem da querelametafísica ‘realismo/anti-realismo’. No entanto, tal alheamento parece-nos serprejudicial para a própria compreensão e esclarecimento da problemática em questão(i.e., o reducionismo psico-neural).
Defende-se que a abordagem clássica ao problema do reducionismo mente-cérebro labora sobre uma base realista assente conjuntamente em dois pontos: 1)Existem duas teorias verdadeiras: uma acerca da mente (uma teoria psicológica) e outraacerca do cérebro, e 2) Existe uma relação (positiva ou negativa) de redução entre asduas teorias (note-se que o realismo aqui invocado corresponde a um realismo científicoe não a um putativo realismo metafísico segundo o qual tanto as teorias como a relaçãode redução podem transcender as nossas capacidades cognitivas). Aceitando esta matrizrealista podem-se elaborar argumentos acerca da natureza de 2) ou seja, se a relação deredução é positiva (tese da identidade) ou negativa (eg., o fisicalismo não reducionistamediante a mobilização do argumento da realização múltipla).
A presente comunicação pretende colocar em questão a base realista sobre a qualassenta a discussão clássica acerca do reducionismo. Particularmente em questão estaráa sustentabilidade da afirmação 2) ou seja, contesta-se a possibilidade de se determinar omodo como se estabelece a relação de redução entre duas teorias. Esta contestação partedo escrutínio crítico ao projecto reducionista New-wave proposto por John Bickle(1998) com o qual se tenta contornar esta questão. Afirma-se, então, a impossibilidadede estabelecer (de um modo realista) uma relação redutiva entre duas teorias.
A solução para este problema consiste em adoptar uma perspectiva anti-realistarelativamente à relação de redução apelando ao modo como essa relação é estabelecidano seio da própria actividade científica. Uma alternativa poderá ser a Teoria Heurísticada Identidade (THI) proposta por Bechtel e McCauley (1999). Segundo estes autores,«Drawing its inspiration from scientific practice, heuristic identity theory construesidentity claims as hypotheses that guide subsequent inquiry, not as conclusions of theresearch» (1999). Este pragmatismo anti-realista aplicado a 2) arrasta consigo aconsideração realista 1) uma vez que o que se compara em termos redutivos não sãoduas teorias ‘concluídas’ ou desenvolvidas, em vez disso é introduzida uma dinâmicaco-evolutiva em que as duas teorias se desenvolvem em função uma da outra.
Assim, a redução psico-neural é assegurada no interior da própria actividadecientífica tendo em consideração certos preceitos pragmáticos. Esta abordagem anti-realista do problema da redução psico-neural difere consideravelmente da formulaçãoclássica. A partir desta nova abordagem argumentos anti-reducionistas como o darealização múltipla ficam sem efeito e, não obstante defender-se um certo tipo dereducionismo, ele é completamente distinto do reducionismo clássico. Por outro lado,esta perspectiva quando aplicada à questão mais geral da relação mente-corpo pode-nosforçar a adoptar uma posição semelhante àquela proposta por Bickle (2003) que apela àdistinção carnapiana entre questões internas e externas.
Referências
Bechtel, W. & McCuley, R.(1999); “Heuristic Identity Theory (or Back to the Future):The Mind-Body Problem Against the Background of Research Strategies in CognitiveNeuroscience”, Proceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive ScienceSociety, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bickle, J. (1998); Psychoneural Reduction: the New-Wave, MIT press, CambridgeMass.
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Bickle, J. (2003); Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly reductive Account,Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands
Individualism and psychologism in epistemology:making out a case against bayesianism
Michael FrauchigerOpen University, UK & Lauener Foundation for Analytical Philosophy, Suíça
Bayesian approaches to epistemology are often charged with being unacceptablysubjective. Taking account of relevant Bayesian counter-arguments against the charge ofindividualistic subjectivism, the psychologistic basic conception of Bayesian epistemology ishighlighted and objections are raised to it.
It’s a fundamental principle of Bayesian epistemology that there are gradations of beliefand that the degrees of belief of rational scientists conform to the mathematical principles ofprobability theory. Hence, assuming the discovery of some new evidence, the degree of beliefin a hypothesis which predicts this evidence becomes greater than the unconditional belief inthe hypothesis. That is, according to Bayes’ theorem, the posterior probability of the hypothesison the new evidence depends on its prior, initial subjective probability.
The criterion of confirmation in terms of increase of probability thus becomesrelativized to a particular individual’s credence function. For that reason, Bayesian approachesto epistemology are continually charged with being unacceptably subjective, with a notoriouslyindividualistic cast to them. In order to comprehend this anti-subjectivist criticism, we need torecall that prior probabilities are largely indefinite factors so that it can justly be said that theinitial probability measures the subjective degree of a particular rational scientist’s belief in therespective hypothesis. This way personal partial beliefs are included in the epistemologicaltheory of confirmation.
I take account of relevant Bayesian counter-arguments against this charge ofsubjectivism. For instance, objective Bayesians propose further principles, which are expectedto determine the priors uniquely in appropriate cases. Their suggestions, however, suffer fromambiguity among other things. A more important Bayesian strategy for blocking the charge ofsubjectivism is the introduction of an abstract Bayesian individual by means of beliefaggregation. Against this strategy I argue that group degrees of belief can only be arrived atthrough the analysis of the individual beliefs of group members.
I admit that, as far as the subject of cognition is construed as an abstract Bayesianindividual, Bayesianism can’t be charged of subjectivism. Nevertheless, Bayesian epistemologyis bound to methodological individualism.
Furthermore, in addition to its individualistic procedure, Bayesian epistemology has adescriptive orientation. Notwithstanding that Bayesianism is often regarded as a normativetheory of rational behaviour in science, I argue that the core parts of contemporary Bayesianepistemology turn out to be descriptive, endeavouring to enhance our understanding of thepsychological facts of the behaviour of scientists. The combination of the individualistic anddescriptive aspects of the core Bayesian strategies results in a psychological naturalization ofepistemology, which blurs the boundary between epistemology and cognitive psychology.
I thus claim to elucidate the systematical commitment of Bayesian epistemology topsychologism. What is more, I advocate the thesis that this psychologistic foundationconstitutes a severe weakness of Bayesianism when it is faced with certain key epistemologicalissues concerning confirmation and theoretical meaning. I clarify this thesis further with regardto central methodological issues such as the one over the kind of background informationassumed in the process of confirmation and the one over the assessment of the impact ofparticular evidence on specific hypotheses.
I doubt that there is any feasible individualistic procedure to explain the allegedtransition from personal beliefs of different scientists to fully integrated intersubjective systems
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of knowledge. I conclude that it is difficult to see how Bayesians can plausibly make up for thelack of a role for fully-integrated conceptual systems in their account of background knowledgeand prior belief, for only such consistent conceptual networks could impose certain equivalenceclasses on the domain of application of the hypotheses that are to be confirmed.
I object to Bayesianism that epistemology cannot be a mere prolongation of cognitivepsychology as it deals not with passive human objects of investigation, but with active membersof academic communities, who create these very scientific theories. From this external point ofview, the psychologistic fundamental conception of Bayesianism does not enable any plausiblesolution to central epistemological problems. I presume that such problems can only beresolved with the help of a moderately holistic and normative (and therefore anti-psychologistic) approach, according to which it’s not the explanation of the processes ofevolution, reinforcement and change of the beliefs of representative competent scientists thatmatters in epistemology. Instead this alternative approach focuses on the pragmatic justificationof general feasible conditions of the logico-semantical conception, stabilization and empiricalinterpretation of entire theoretical systems in accordance with the deliberated andintersubjectively agreed on explanatory goals and norms of the respective entire academiccommunity.
O Consequencialismo das regras reconsideradoPedro Galvão
A comunicação consistirá numa discussão da teoria consequencialista propostarecentemente por Brad Hooker em Ideal Code, Real World (2000, Clarendon Press).
Durante algumas décadas, prevaleceu a ideia de que o consequencialismo das regrasenfrentava um dilema fatal: ou esta teoria normativa não era coerentemente consequencialistaou colapsava no consequencialismo dos actos em virtude de lhe ser extensionalmenteequivalente e, por isso, não proporcionava uma alternativa atraente. A proposta de Hooker éuma tentativa de mostrar que o consequencialismo das regras não é refutado por este dilema. Asua versão de consequencialismo das regras diz-nos que um acto é moralmente errado se éproibido pelo código moral ideal. O código moral ideal é aquele cuja interiorização pelaesmagadora maioria de todos os agentes em cada geração tem o máximo valor esperado emtermos de bem-estar (atribuindo-se alguma prioridade àqueles que vivem pior).
Para avaliar um código moral, é preciso atender aos custos da sua inculcação em cadanova geração. Dadas as limitações cognitivas humanas, isto significa que as regras morais queconstituem o código ideal não podem ter um enorme grau de especificidade. Deste modo, evita-se o colapso no consequencialismo dos actos: será moralmente acertado seguir as regrasrazoavelmente simples do código ideal mesmo nos casos particulares em que a observânciadessas regras não maximizará o bem. À objecção de que esta posição é incoerente com umcompromisso básico com a maximização do bem e de que, portanto, implica a rejeição doconsequencialismo, Hooker responde alegando que o melhor argumento a favor doconsequencialismo das regras não parte do reconhecimento desse compromisso, mas dacapacidade que a teoria tem para acomodar apropriadamente as nossas intuições morais maisfortes. Hooker sustenta, mais precisamente, que o tipo de escrutínio baseado no método doequilíbrio recíproco torna manifesta a superioridade do consequencialismo das regras emrelação ao utilitarismo dos actos.
A adequação intuitiva do consequencialismo das regras avançado por Hooker seráquestionada de três maneiras.
(1) Hooker defende que o consequencialismo das regras, contrariamente aoconsequencialismo dos actos, não impõe aos agentes exigências morais excessivas. Porém, emalgumas circunstâncias possíveis (por exemplo, numa situação em que existe um grandenúmero de «pobres» e um ínfimo número de «ricos») o consequencialismo das regras também
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pode tornar-se intoleravelmente exigente, e noutros casos (por exemplo, numa situação em queexiste um número ínfimo de «pobres» e um grande número de «ricos») colide com as intuiçõesmorais comuns por ser insuficientemente exigente.
(2) Hooker define o código ideal em termos do máximo valor esperado da suaaceitação, acrescentando que, se dois códigos morais tiverem o mesmo valor esperado, deveráser preferido aquele que estiver mais próximo da moralidade comum. Dado que é extremamentedifícil determinar o valor esperado de um código moral, na prática o consequencialismo dasregras pode limitar-se a sancionar a moralidade comum. Porém, este conservadorismo radical éfortemente contra-intuitivo.
(3) Segundo Hooker, o código moral ideal é aquele que maximizaria o valor numasituação de aceitação (e não observância) das regras que o constituem -- e o que importa não é asua aceitação total, mas a sua aceitação pela grande maioria dos agentes. Algo arbitrariamente,Hooker sugere que pensemos num nível de aceitação de 90%. Porém, esta arbitrariedade não éinofensiva, já que níveis de aceitação ligeiramente diferentes podem conduzir à aprovação deregras morais incompatíveis. No entanto, é contra-intuitivo que diferenças mínimas no nível deaceitação estipulado sejam moralmente significativas.
Rigid designation, modality and atomismMarcin GokieliWarsaw University
I will present two problems for Kripke’s theory of modal propertiesI) part – whole problem
I will evaluate a problem for Krike’s theory, raised by A. Zabludowski(unpublished). He discussed such expressions, as ‘first 50 years of John’s life’(let it be called J*). If we accept that those are rigid designators, then we shallsay, that if John (or J) lived 50 years, then J is necessarily identical to J. Thefact that John lived for 50 years seems then to be an essential property of John.This is contrary to plausible intuitions that he could have lived longer. I argue that expressions like J* are not rigid designators. The way the objectsdisappear (for example the temperature in which they solute) is determiningfor the substances, so it should be treated as essential. J’s end is caused bynatural facts, when J*’s end is determined semantically. So J* refers in somepossible worlds to objects, that have different essential properties. As J* is notrigid, N(J=J*) is not implied by J=J*, even if we still have J(N=)J*. So Kripkecan Kripke can refute Zabludowski along the lines of his refutation of Quine’s‘9’ and ‘number of planets’ famous example’
II) Atomicity and essenceI assume it is natural to think that two object can differ in contingent propertiesonly. I show, that two objects cannot differ in contingent properties only aslong as they meet the requirement of atomicity. I reconstruct this postulate insuch a form:a) ∀F∀xy {[POS(Fx) ∧ POS(Fy)] ⇒ POS(Fx ∧ Fy)}(where POS stands for possible)Accepting a) leads to a conclusion that if two object differ in contingentproperties only, then there must be a world where they share all properties.Which is contrary to Kripke’s central thesis of necessity of identities.
To avoid that consequence, I propose to stipulate, that for every object o, o must have aproperty P, that only one object of the class of objects that share all of o’s necessary propertieshas. So I stipulate as a law that there must be properties that are contingent, but cannot beshared by objects that share essential properties. Spatiotemporal properties meet this condition.
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O conceito de consciênciaJorge Gonçalves
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Universidade Nova de [email protected]
A consciência tem sido um tema muito estudado na Filosofia da Mente nos últimosanos. O problema mais focado tem sido o de como enquadrar a consciência dentro de uma visãonaturalista e científica do mundo. Como relacionar a consciência com o resto da Natureza?
Este problema entretanto conduziu a um interesse pelo definição do próprioconceito de consciência, pois os investigadores nem sempre concordam entre si sobreaquilo que é necessário explicar. Se não se sabe o que se quer explicar como avaliar oresultado? Claro que a ciência muitas vezes avança para a investigação sem ter o seuobjecto definido (a linguagem, a vida), mas no caso da consciência o problema é maisgrave, porque de acordo com o conceito do investigador assim é dada a explicação.
Nesta comunicação sigo a linha dos que como Ned Block, David Chalmers,Joseph Levine e outros pensam que o que é verdadeiramente problemático é aconsciência fenomenal, que se distingue de outros sentidos como acesso à informação,auto-consciência, introspecção, auto-controle. Oponho-me assim a autores que comoDennett negam a utilidade do conceito de consciência fenomenal ou como Searle quenão distingue esse conceito dos outros conceitos de consciência.
O que pretendo é assim isolar o conceito de consciência fenomenal quercomparando-o com outros modos de encarar a mente, quer definindo positivamente assuas características. Estas podem ser captadas usando a heurística “o que é ser euagora?”, no seguimento do conhecido “What is it to be like?” de Thomas Nagel. Estadimensão de “ como é que eu sinto o mundo num dado momento” não pode ser captadapelos métodos objectivistas, da terceira pessoa, mas pode ser correlacionada com osdados recolhidos por estes métodos. Pode ser assim elaborada uma ciência daconsciência fenomenal nos seres humanos, pois temos compreensão do “que é serhumano”. No caso dos animais será mais difícil, pois possivelmente nunca saberemos“o que é ser um morcego”.
Referential descriptions revisitedAdriana Silva GraçaUniversidade de [email protected]
In this paper I want to provide an argument to the effect that Donnellans’s distinctionbetween ‘attributive’ and ‘referential’, in his seminal paper “Reference and DefiniteDescriptions” (1966), is a distinction between two different uses of definite descriptions andthat it is not to be seen as a distinction between two different meanings those phrases may have.I think that Kripke showed in “Speaker’s Reference and Semantic Reference” (1979) that PaulGrice’s distinction between the proposition semantically expressed by a certain utterance of acertain sentence and the proposition that the speaker wants to convey by that very sameutterance, which is pragmatically implied by him, is enough to account for Donnellan’s cases.Therefore, Donnellan’s primary distinction is between two uses and not between two meaningsconcerning phrases of the form ‘the F’ in sentences of the form “The F is G”.
My argument goes against recent attempts to support the thesis according to which,besides two different uses, there are two different meanings involved in Donnellan’s cases. Inhis paper “The Case for Referential Descriptions” (2003), Devitt provides a powerful set of
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arguments for that thesis. If what I think is correct, then something must be wrong with Devitt’sperspective. I try to state precisely what is wrong with it.
The core of the point made by Devitt is the following. There exists a conventionaccording to which ‘the F’ is used in a sentence of the form ‘the F is G’ to express a singularthought, namely to express a thought about a particular object the speaker has in mind, eventhough ‘the F’ actually misdescribes the object. As it is a result of a convention, and as itdetermines the truth-value of what the speaker wants to communicate, the relation between thespeaker and the object he has in mind when he uses ‘the F’ in ‘the F is G’ is to be seen as asemantic relation. Therefore, definite descriptions have two meanings: the referential one,involved in such cases, and the attributive one, long ago characterised by Bertrand Russell(1905). Then it is provided an account of the semantic nature of this convention based on ananalogy between referential tokens of ‘the F’ and tokens of complex demonstratives like ‘thatF’. It is alleged that if, for the demonstrative case, the convention to express a singular thoughtby a particular use of ‘that F is G’ is a semantic one, so the convention to express a singularthought must also be a semantic one for the definite description case (given the fact that ‘the F’and ‘that F’ may be substituted for each other without a cost in the goal of communicating asingular thought).
Against Devitt I will develop two arguments that establish my main point: Donnellan’sdistinction is relative to two uses, not two meanings, of definite descriptions.
Argument (1): If Devitt’s argument were correct, then all that Grice said about thedifference between what is literally said and what the speaker wants to communicate would bewrong. This distinction is traditionally seen as a distinction between one proposition beingsemantically expressed and another proposition being pragmatically implied by a particulartoken of a sentence. According to Devitt, “it is a semantic not pragmatic fact that a certaindescription token refers to the person the speaker has in mind” (footnote 5). Then, applying thiscriterion for ‘semanticity’ to the cases discussed by Grice we end up concluding that not onlyhim but also all the tradition in the Philosophy of Language is wrong in classifying thosephenomena as pragmatic ones. But it does not seem at all to be the case that Grice is wrong inthat point.
Argument (2): It is possible to develop Devitt’s own argument based on the analogybetween complex demonstratives and definite descriptions used referentially to identify itsmain problem. Having in mind Kaplan’s well know distinction between the character and thecontent of a demonstrative, and applying this distinction to the case of definite descriptions, itgets clear what the ‘main problem’ is: not distinguishing the content of what is said by aparticular token of a sentence containing a definite description token and what sort ofmechanism enables us to fix the reference of that token. This is enough to show that Devitt’sargument is not sound, since it has a false premise, namely, the one which says that theconvention for using ’the F’ to express a singular thought is as semantic as the one about ‘thatF’; therefore, the argument does also not succeed in proving the truth of its conclusion, namely,that there are two meanings for definite descriptions. I think this point illuminates thediscussion that has been going on since 1966. In this paper I want to provide an argument to theeffect that Donnellans’s distinction between ‘attributive’ and ‘referential’, in his seminal paper“Reference and Definite Descriptions” (1966), is a distinction between two different uses ofdefinite descriptions and that it is not to be seen as a distinction between two differentmeanings those phrases may have. I think that Kripke showed in “Speaker’s Reference andSemantic Reference” (1979) that Paul Grice’s distinction between the proposition semanticallyexpressed by a certain utterance of a certain sentence and the proposition that the speakerwants to convey by that very same utterance, which is pragmatically implied by him, is enoughto account for Donnellan’s cases. Therefore, Donnellan’s primary distinction is between twouses and not between two meanings concerning phrases of the form ‘the F’ in sentences of theform “The F is G”.
My argument goes against recent attempts to support the thesis according to which,besides two different uses, there are two different meanings involved in Donnellan’s cases. Inhis paper “The Case for Referential Descriptions” (2003), Devitt provides a powerful set ofarguments for that thesis. If what I think is correct, then something must be wrong with Devitt’sperspective. I try to state precisely what is wrong with it.
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The core of the point made by Devitt is the following. There exists a conventionaccording to which ‘the F’ is used in a sentence of the form ‘the F is G’ to express a singularthought, namely to express a thought about a particular object the speaker has in mind, eventhough ‘the F’ actually misdescribes the object. As it is a result of a convention, and as itdetermines the truth-value of what the speaker wants to communicate, the relation between thespeaker and the object he has in mind when he uses ‘the F’ in ‘the F is G’ is to be seen as asemantic relation. Therefore, definite descriptions have two meanings: the referential one,involved in such cases, and the attributive one, long ago characterised by Bertrand Russell(1905). Then it is provided an account of the semantic nature of this convention based on ananalogy between referential tokens of ‘the F’ and tokens of complex demonstratives like ‘thatF’. It is alleged that if, for the demonstrative case, the convention to express a singular thoughtby a particular use of ‘that F is G’ is a semantic one, so the convention to express a singularthought must also be a semantic one for the definite description case (given the fact that ‘the F’and ‘that F’ may be substituted for each other without a cost in the goal of communicating asingular thought).
Against Devitt I will develop two arguments that establish my main point: Donnellan’sdistinction is relative to two uses, not two meanings, of definite descriptions.
Argument (1): If Devitt’s argument were correct, then all that Grice said about thedifference between what is literally said and what the speaker wants to communicate would bewrong. This distinction is traditionally seen as a distinction between one proposition beingsemantically expressed and another proposition being pragmatically implied by a particulartoken of a sentence. According to Devitt, “it is a semantic not pragmatic fact that a certaindescription token refers to the person the speaker has in mind” (footnote 5). Then, applying thiscriterion for ‘semanticity’ to the cases discussed by Grice we end up concluding that not onlyhim but also all the tradition in the Philosophy of Language is wrong in classifying thosephenomena as pragmatic ones. But it does not seem at all to be the case that Grice is wrong inthat point.
Argument (2): It is possible to develop Devitt’s own argument based on the analogybetween complex demonstratives and definite descriptions used referentially to identify itsmain problem. Having in mind Kaplan’s well know distinction between the character and thecontent of a demonstrative, and applying this distinction to the case of definite descriptions, itgets clear what the ‘main problem’ is: not distinguishing the content of what is said by aparticular token of a sentence containing a definite description token and what sort ofmechanism enables us to fix the reference of that token. This is enough to show that Devitt’sargument is not sound, since it has a false premise, namely, the one which says that theconvention for using ’the F’ to express a singular thought is as semantic as the one about ‘thatF’; therefore, the argument does also not succeed in proving the truth of its conclusion, namely,that there are two meanings for definite descriptions. I think this point illuminates thediscussion that has been going on since 1966.
Pluralism, objectivity and history in ethics:a study of Bernard William’s relativism
The aim of this paper is to examine the attitude we should adopt towards the historicalprocesses that have shaped our ethical ideas by studying Bernard Williams’s relativism ofdistance. This relativism, applied to the history of ethics, can be understood as saying that, inconfrontations with ethical outlooks of the past, the language of appraisal is inappropriate and
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no real judgments are made. For such ‘appraisals’ are nothing but a gratuitous way of affirmingour own outlook and rejecting theirs. I will argue that this relativism of distance is inconsistentwith Williams’s general meta-ethical position.
The paper has three parts. In a first part I will set forth Williams’s meta-ethics. Whatmakes this meta-ethics interesting is the fact that it acknowledges the plurality not only ofethical outlooks that were in fact accepted in the course of history but also of outlooks that are(and were) reasonably acceptable. By doing so it stresses the contingency of our own outlook,while at the same time recognizing the authority which our ethical ideas demand.
In the second part, I will show that Williams’s relativism of distance rest on an implicitand implausible view of the hermeneutics of history. More in particular, it rests on the premisethat we should set aside our ethical convictions while studying history (even while studying thehistory of ethics) and on a too static conception of language. The fact of the matter is that wecannot avoid to judge the past while studying and interpreting history. Since appraisal of thepast is unavoidable, it cannot be denounced as an inappropriate way of affirming our ownethical ideas.
In the concluding section, I will examine what attitude towards the ethical outlooks ofthe past follows from all this. Since this analysis is purged of Williams’s implausible view ofthe hermeneutics of history, it is actually more in line with his meta-ethics than his ownrelativism of distance is. By carefully distinguishing the demands of ethics and of historicalinterpretation, we succeed in reconciling the recognition of the authority of our ethical ideaswith the acknowledgment of ethical pluralism in history and the contingency of our outlook.
An account of some aspect of an organism is internalist (Chomsky 2000) if it does not makereference to the embedding of the organism in an external environment. Internalism in thisbiological sense contrasts with externalism, say the attempt to rationalize the mind in terms ofits functioning in the external world (Godfrey-Smith 1998).
In semantic theory, internalism about reference seems entirely improper, in that toaccount for the reference of a name or noun, it would seem that the external object referred tomust come into the picture essentially. On many current accounts, all there is to the meaning ofa word is derived from the way it relates to the world (causally, teleologically, etc.). But even toaddress the question of internalism about truth may seem rather bizarre. Truth is the primerealist notion, and although realism is not the same thing as externalism and (I argue) not evenconnected to it, it would seem that from Aristotle to Barwise, truth has been thought of as anessentially relational notion. But what relation exactly are we talking about?
Suppose that relation is representation. Then the idea is that a sentence or propositionrepresents the world as being in a certain way, and if the world is that way, the sentence orproposition is true. Now, representation is a relation between a (possibly mental) symbol andsomething represented. In the case of a name, the symbol is “Caesar”, say, and the thing isCaesar. In the case of a sentence, “Caesar was the greatest emperor”, say, the symbol is theexpression just quoted, and the thing is – what? Maybe a state of affairs, maybe a fact, maybeCaesar’s being the greatest emperor. What we notice here is that in the logic of this proposal,the relation we are after turns out to be basically the same in the two cases, the case of thename, and the case of the sentence.
Objects Facts
Representation Representation
Names Sentences
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Why does the problem of the sameness of the relation in the case of names and sentencesmatter to the issue of the nature of truth? Well, the difference between names and sentences (orpropositions, a difference orthogonal to my concerns here), to put it simply, is precisely thedifference between something that is truth-evaluable and something that is not. Now, we startedfrom the assumption that truth is a relation, or relational. Then, if truth exclusively applies tosentences, and truth is relational, then the difference between names and sentences shouldmatter. But the above representational model ignores it.
The same problem would have arisen if we had talked, not of representation as therelation in question, but reference, for reference, to the extent that there is a truth/referencedistinction at all, is a notion paradigmatically suited to Noun Phrases (NPs), not sentences, thethings that are true or false. Paradigmatically, we refer to things with NPs like this greatemperor, but not with sentences. Also grammatically, (only) NPs are the locus of referentiality,and I know of no linguistic evidence for referentiality in the case of sentences. In short, if wekeep up the idea that truth is relational, we had better come up with an interesting idea of whatthe relation in the case of truth is, and how it differs from the relation that we have in the caseof names (or, more generally, NPs). Whatever the relation X is that we are after in the case ofthe truth of sentences, it can’t be representation, for representation is a notion that is as suchneutral as to the difference between the way in which names (or noun phrases, NPs) refer, andin which sentences (are supposed to) refer.
In the paper, I explore candidates for X, and do not find any good ones. The reasonsrelate to Fodor’s (2003, 91-2) recent reminder that a sequence of ideas (each with a referentialcontent) doesn’t constitute a complex idea. But there are complex ideas, over and above simpleones. Therefore thinking a complex idea (such as a sentence) is not thinking a sequence ofideas. What makes a sentence a sentence (rather than a list) is not another substantive orreferential constituent in it, which we might identify externalistically. We cannot hang on to themodel of reference when spelling out the alleged relational character of sentences.
But why in fact should anyone think that truth has anything to do with representation?Suppose a person tells you: “Abortion is a perfectly unproblematic device at any stage of thepregnancy.” You would, I suppose, at least be tempted to think that what this person says isplainly false. The point of such examples is that it is more than questionable that any of thesejudgements refer to facts out there, as the relational theorist of truth seeking to instantiate Xwould want us to believe. Even if such facts existed, I argue they would not help for our moraljudgement, and possibly quite irrelevant to it.
This throws up the issue of whether there is ethical truth, but I argue that in ordinaryhuman practices there is, and the whole meta-ethical dispute on truth in ethics presupposes thisempirical fact. In sum, if judgements like the above are truth judgements, and representation offact is not what is at stake here, then making a truth judgement in such cases is not a matter ofrepresenting some fact (of the sort that exists prior to and independently of your truthjudgement, and which the truth judgement then merely “depicts” or “represents”).
I also briefly argue that truth in science, is not a matter of representation, but ofinterference, theoretical abstraction and experiment, which are quite different matters (Hacking1983).
References
Chomsky, N. (2000), New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, CUP.
Fodor, J. (2003), Hume Variations, Oxford.
Godfrey-Smith, P. (1998), Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature, CUP.
Hacking, I. (1983), Representing and Intervening, CUP.
Indexicalism is the view according to which the determination of the truth condition of asentence as it is uttered in a certain context depends entirely on some assignment of reference,relative to that context, to elements of its syntactic structure or logical form. This amounts tosaying that context-dependency may be described in terms of indexicality, where indexicality isunderstood in a broad sense. In the narrow sense of ‘indexicality’, an indexical is a context-dependent expression that shares the characteristics of words such as ‘I’, ‘here’ and ‘now’.Indexicals in the narrow sense, together with demonstratives (words such as ‘this’ or ‘that’) andpronouns (words such as ‘he’ or ‘she’) are overt context-dependent expressions. Instead, on abroad construal an indexical is any expression, including covert variables, whose reference issupplied entirely by context, with or without the help of a definite linguistic rule. The claimthat context-dependency may be described in terms of indexicality is often regarded withsuspicion, mostly because of the degree of complexity it imposes on syntactic structure.Accordingly, a common way of arguing against it is to provide cases in which postulating asyntactic structure of the prescribed complexity is assumed to be implausible. The aim of thepaper is to show that, at least for some cases, this assumption of implausibility rests onconfusion. Its main point is that it is not essential to indexicalism to assume that, in order tounderstand a sentence and to use it correctly and successfully in communication, it is necessarythat speakers assign definite values to all the variables in its syntactic structure. This means thatthat there are important differences between indexicals in the narrow sense and indexicals inthe broad sense.
Two Forms of Consequentialism orWhat should we expect from a normative theory
Contemporary act-consequentialism is divided on the question of how the criterion ofrightness for an act or a course of action should be interpreted. According to objectiveconsequentialism (OC), the criterion of rightness for an act is whether that act in fact wouldmost promote the good among those acts that are available to the agent. This version has beendefended by H. Sidgwick and G.E. Moore and in the contemporary discussion by, e.g., PeterRailton. According to the decision-theoretical account of consequentialism (DTC) the criterionof rightness for an act is whether that act is the act with the highest expected (consequentialist)value according to the agent’s probability function at the time of action. This version has beendefended by, e.g., Frank Jackson.
I argue that the choice between OC’s and DTC’s criteria of rightness is a function ofseveral prior choices, among them choices with regard to the following issues: (a) What senseof ‘ought’ do we believe to be the primary business of an ethical theory? (b) To what extent arenormative theories supposed to be action-guiding? (c) Should our focus primarily be on theepistemic status of the agent or should it be on the objective features of the act?
In the first part of the paper I discuss the merits and drawbacks of both versions’ viewwith respect to these factors, together with additional features that allegedly support eitherversion’s criterion of rightness. I argue that these theoretical disagreements withincontemporary consequentialism have their origin in a much wider disagreement about moralphilosophy and that they can only be settled if we take a stand on that wider issue. I thus arguethat it is fruitful and perhaps necessary to regard problems within contemporary
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consequentialism as problems about moral philosophy in a wider sense. More precisely, it is aquestion about what role we believe a normative ethical theory can or should play in practice.
In the second part of the paper I thus turn to this wider issue. Pursuing the widerquestion in relation to (a)-(c) above (together with various other important factors) is called for,since the criterion of rightness is only an end product based on the approach taken to them. Wewill see that the respective positions OC and DTC take towards these factors result from prior,and often implicit, considerations about what tasks a normative ethical theory should fulfil. Theneed for meta-ethical questions and justification is therefore crucial for taking a stand on theintra-theoretical issue as to whether OC or DTC is the best version of consequentialism.
I end the paper by claiming that we have some (though certainly not conclusive) reasonsto prefer the decision-theoretical approach to consequentialism. The main reasons being that itdoes not impose excessively high standards on right action and that its criterion of rightness hasa plausible case for being actually, and not only ideally, action-guiding.
Music Lessons - What the philosophy of music can teach us about nominalismAntónio Lopes
The aim of the paper will be to show how current philosophical discussion within the analytictradition about the nature of musical works can help dissipate some notions that, althoughapparently opposite, are, surprisingly, sometimes both taken for granted or obvious in thephilosophy of art in ontologic matters. These are Nelson Goodman’s view of the musical work,and what I will call the historico-musicological view of music in general (not necessarily ofworks as such).
An important caveat must be introduced from the start, that being the circumscribingof music under discussion to the so-called western classic tradition from the Middle-Ages untiltoday.
In the first part of the paper, I discuss Goodman’s definition of a work of music in hisLanguages of Art, as the class of all performances compliant with the score as written by thecomposer of that work. I elaborate on the nominalist inspiration of the definition, and present anumber of arguments showing its shortcomings and clashes with the reality of the currentunderstanding of what a musical work is, by specialists and non-specialists alike.
I point out that there is a certain amount of ambiguity about the formulation ofGoodman’s definition as to whether or not it includes all possible performances of the work,pointing out the unwanted drifts from strict nominalism that the affirmative, which is the mostplausible, would generate.
The arguments proper are mostly of the reductio kind. The first group concerns theimpediments that such a definition would cause on consensually true predications about worksof music, such as “having been written in 1889 in Wiesbaden” or “has been very popular sinceits premiére, and remains one of the most performed works in the repertoire”, or “has neverbeen performed”, which would imply, respectively, that a class of (at least some actual)performances of a work could be created at a certain time and place, contemporarily with thework itself, that the work (a class) would be getting bigger and bigger as time went by, andeven, that all work that have never been performed simply don’t exist, or are all one and thesame work, since the class they would all exemplify would be the null class.
Other arguments concern the dissimilarities between performances of the same work,which might present a violation of Leibniz’s Law under Goodman’s definition (NicholasWolterstorff). Also, the salva veritate substitutability would not be observed, I propose, incases like “Mozart is the author of Cosí fan Tutte”, where substitution by the Goodmanianequivalent phrase would involve ignoring the efforts of singers, players, directors and staffresponsible for the multiple performances of the opera in favour of Wolfgang. In my view, thestrategy that would claim this to be a referentially opaque contexts would be unfounded.
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A final line of criticism focuses on problems of individuation, in particular, thecriterion under which a given set of performances can be said to be of this particular work.Following Richard Wollheim, I find Goodman’s strategy of explaining away classes via theconcept of resemblance unsatisfactory, and possibly viciously circular, besides being counter-intuitive as regards the common explanation of this identification between performances andthe works they are performances of, made by reference to a previously, independently existentwork, capable of being repeatedly performed at different times and places and in various ways.
The second part of my paper tries to gather a diffuse set of views on the ontology ofmusical works common among scholars working at the intersection of musicology, thepsychology of music and philosophical aesthetics, and focuses on the general claim, which canbe loosely associated with the work of Lydia Goehr, of the structural contingency of the veryconcept of a work of music, which would be a historical-sociological phenomenon that cameinto being at the start of the XIX century (mainly with the ideology connected with “Beethoven,the creative genius”). Along these lines, several authors mount an attack on the allegedlyahistorical and formalist point of view of analytic ontology, and on the whole discussion of theconcept of musical work, which wouldn’t historically apply, for instance, to the works of Bachas conceived by himself or any other composer working before the Romantic paradigm.
After clarifying the tenets and motivations of this influential cluster of views, I try toshow an unexpected allegiance between it and musical nominalism, mainly in sharing the beliefthat works directly depend, for their existence, on actual or foreseeable performance, and havean “abstract existence” outside the production of the required sounds (the score) which canonly have the status of an heuristic to help us talk about very general (and technical) features ofthe music.
Against such a position, I claim that leads to a nominalist denial of the abstractexistence of musical works; that it involves a confusion between ‘work of music’ and ‘music’,and an uncalled-for incompatibility between an ontology of objects and an ontology of events;I refute the historical-musicological examples given in the literature in support of the tenet thatonly performances “really” exist, mostly involving the indeterminacy of older musicalnotations, and present a defence of a “natural ontology” of works of music, these being presentat all times (possibly even before the temporal limits mentioned at the beginning), of asomewhat realist/Platonist inspiration (along the lines of what Peter Kivy calls a “proto-ontology” for the period before modern notation). I illustrate this point by resorting to simpleanalysis of the performance practices that regulate those and all examples.
In conclusion, I hope to show the inadequacy of Goodman’s proposal, to cast someserious doubts about concepts that often pass for common-sense in talking about philosophy ofmusic, and also to call the listener’s attention, and comments, to this particular area of it, aflowering field in the contemporary Philosophy of Art which also has some unexpected butinteresting bearing upon issues of general ontology.
Poderá o cognitivismo dar conta do poder motivador dos nossos juízos morais?Pedro Madeira
Um dos argumentos mais comuns usados contra o cognitivismo é o seguinte. Ocognitivismo, o internalismo motivacional e o modelo crença-desejo são juntamenteinconsistentes. Há boas razões disponíveis para pensar que o internalismo motivacional e omodelo crença-desejo são verdadeiros. Logo, o cognitivismo é falso.
Em maior detalhe, o argumento é o seguinte. A diferença entre cognitivismo eexpressivismo começa logo com a resposta que cada um dá a seguinte questão: o que fazemosquando emitimos um juízo moral? O cognitivismo diz que estamos a expressar uma crença ("Eu
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acredito que fazer X é errado.") O expressivismo diz que estamos a expressar uma pró-atitude("Eu não gosto que se faça X."). De acordo com o modelo crença-desejo, a função prática dascrenças é a de nos dizer qual a melhor maneira de satisfazermos os nossos desejos. A funçãodas crenças não é a de nos motivar para agir; essa é a tarefa dos desejos. Logo, se os juízosmorais fossem crenças, então o internalismo motivacional seria falso porque não haveriaqualquer ligação entre acreditar que fazer X era certo e estar motivado para fazer X.
As pró-atitudes, por outro lado, têm uma relação muito mais estreita com a motivaçãopara a acção. Sentir que fazer X é certo é, entre outras coisas, estar motivado para fazer X.Logo, se os juízos morais fossem pró-atitudes, então o internalismo motivacional seriaverdadeiro porque seria impossível emitir sinceramente um juízo moral sem nos sentirmosmotivados para agir de acordo com ele.
A estrutura geral do argumento é, por isso, a seguinte. O internalismo motivacional nãopode ser verdadeiro a não ser que os juízos morais expressem pró-atitudes (sendo que nessecaso o cognitivismo é falso), ou que as crenças possam motivar (sendo que nesse caso o modelocrença-desejo é falso). As crenças não podem motivar. Logo, os juízos morais expressam pró-atitudes e, consequentemente, o cognitivismo é falso.
Agora temos quatro alternativas disponíveis. Podemos (i) rejeitar o cognitivismo, (ii)rejeitar o internalismo motivacional, (iii) rejeitar o modelo crença-desejo, ou (iv) negar que astrês teses sejam verdadeiramente inconsistentes.
Creio que devemos optar por (iv). A única razão pela qual as três teses podem parecerinconsistentes é a de que está na mesa uma versão pouco plausível do modelo crença-desejo.
O modelo crença-desejo é composto basicamente por duas ideias. Em primeiro lugar,de modo a explicarmos qualquer acção temos de mencionar sempre pelo menos uma crença epelo menos um desejo do agente em questão. As crenças tem uma direcção de correspondênciamente-mundo, os desejos uma direcção de correspondência mundo-mente. Precisamos deambos para fazer sentido das acções de qualquer pessoa. Em segundo lugar, crença e desejo sãoestados mentais distintos. Não há estados mentais com direcção de correspondência mente-mundo e mundo-mente.
Tal como o apresentei, o modelo crença-desejo não implica (pelo menos trivialmente)a tese de que as crenças são causalmente inertes. A inconsistência entre o internalismomotivacional, o cognitivismo e o modelo crença-desejo só é gerada caso partamos do princípiode que o modelo crença-desejo implica esta tese – o que, a ser verdade, está longe de ser óbvio.Quem acredita nessa implicação deve-nos um argumento, mas esse argumento nunca éfornecido. A implicação é assumida tacitamente.
Parece-me que o problema reside na ambiguidade do termo “motivar”. Quando alguémdiz que as crenças não podem motivar, pode estar a querer dizer uma de duas coisas: ou que ascrenças não podem causar desejos, ou que as crenças não podem tomar o papel de desejos(levando-nos a agir sem a mediação destes). A segunda afirmação parece-me trivialmente falsa;a primeira, por outro lado, parece-me interessante e não é trivialmente falsa nem trivialmenteverdadeira.
É de notar que este tipo de confusão não surge noutros contextos. Quando eu digo: “Elemotivou-me para eu continuar o trabalho que estava a desenvolver”, estou a dizer que ele gerouem mim um desejo para continuar com o dito trabalho. Não estou, evidentemente, a dizer queele tomou o lugar de um desejo na minha cabeça. Nunca alguém pensaria que eu estava a dizertal coisa. É lamentável, por isso, que esta confusão surja no caso das crenças.
Há boas razões empíricas para pensar que as crenças podem motivar – ou seja, que ascrenças podem causar desejos. Para exemplificar, tomemos dois casos de conversão: o daconversão de Santo Agostinho, e o da conversão de São Paulo. A conversão de SantoAgostinho faz sentido mesmo que achemos que as crenças são causalmente inertes. Embora eletivesse uma vida devassa quando novo, já nessa altura ele se sentia algo culpado por isso. Odesejo de, como ele diz nas Confissões, ser casto e continente por fim triunfou, e ele converteu-se ao Cristianismo. Tomemos agora o caso de São Paulo. São Paulo, como é sabido, perseguiaos Cristãos. No entanto, ele eventualmente “viu a luz” e tornou-se, também ele, Cristão. Omodo mais natural de explicar (descrever) a conversão dele seria dizer que uma mudançaradical no seu sistema de crenças causou uma mudança radical no seu conjunto de motivações.
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De acordo com as pessoas que acreditam que as crenças não podem causar desejos, oúnico modo de descobrir a razão pela qual São Paulo se converteu ao Cristianismo seria andar a“vasculhar” nos seus desejos prévios e procurar estabelecer porque é que ele passou a ver apossibilidade de conversão “sob uma luz favorável”. Esta posição é simplesmente implausívelporque implica que quase todos os nossos desejos são inatos ou derivaram (por caminhos maistransparentes, ou por caminhos mais tortuosos) de desejos inatos. De facto, só em casosanormais é que poderíamos ter um desejo que nem era inato nem havia derivado de um desejoinato. Se temos o desejo de comer bacalhau à Brás, muito embora não tenhamos já nascido jácom esse desejo, nem ele tenha tido origem num desejo inato, então algo de muito estranho sepassou. Se calhar bateram-nos na cabeça com um martelo e vimo-nos, subitamente, com odesejo de comer bacalhau à Brás.
Concluindo: quem acredita na inércia causal das crenças está forçado a acreditar que,salvo raríssimas (e conturbadas) excepções, todas as pessoas que passaram por um processo deconversão nas suas vidas tinham já em si, desde a nascença, a semente da sua mudança. Isto éimplausível porque um verdadeiro processo de conversão é aquele em que, por assim dizer, éplantada uma nova semente, não simplesmente aquele em que passa mais uma etapa na vida deuma planta.
Logo, a tese da inércia causal das crenças é, ela própria, implausível.Dado que o internalismo motivacional, o cognitivismo e o modelo crença-desejo só são
inconsistentes caso acreditemos na tese da inércia causal das crenças, uma vez abandonada estatese, desaparece também a inconsistência.
Sobre o livre arbítrio: o contrafactual de Moore e seu sentido positivoAntónio Marques
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de [email protected]
O problema do livre arbítrio foi reconsiderado e actualizado por vários autores aolongo do século XX, os quais debateram sob várias formas a questão de saber se há acçõesvoluntárias e se estas podem ser consideradas boas ou más em função da existência de um livrearbítrio. G. E. Moore assumiu que sempre que uma acção é boa ou má, o agente podia numcerto sentido fazer algo diferente. Para Moore o sentido em que um agente pode fazer algodiferente traduz-se na fórmula: “um agente podia ter feito algo, se tivesse escolhido fazê-lo”.Será pois mediante a análise deste contrafactual que se pode rá esclarecer a existência ouinexistência de algo como uma vontade livre. Passaremos em revista os comentários de J. L.Austin e Donald Davidson às posições de Moore, comentários que nos levam à discussão dascondições em que aquela proposição contrafactual é verdadeira, isto é em que condições é queé verdadeiro dizer que “eu podia ter feito x , se tivesse escolhido fazer x”. Em particular aanálise do verbo “escolher” é determinante neste contexto e em grande medida foi Austin quemrealizou tal trabalho, em “Ifs and Cans” (Philosophical Papers).
Mostraremos que a análise das condições de contrafctuais exprimindo o livre arbítriodevem satisfazer algumas condições entra as quais: 1. a suposição que alguém na 1ª pessoaexprime (ou exprimiu) uma intenção de faze r algo, 2. que o agente não conheça qualquerprevisão que outro faça a respeito das suas acções presentes ou futuras, 3 – que o agente possaavaliar as possibilidades de sucesso das próprias acções.
Conclui-se existe um livre arbítrio, entendido negativamente: o agente optaindiferentemente por alternativas, assim como existe um livre arbítrio entendido positivamente:o agente escolhe fazer algo que podia não ter feito, segundo as condições acima referidas docontrafactual de Moore.
The principle of bivalence says that every item of a certain kind – every truth-bearer – iseither true or false. A counterexample to bivalence should be a truth-bearer that is neither. Callsuch counterexamples to bivalence, if existing, genuine truth-value gaps. Timothy Williamsonargues in his Vagueness (1994: pp. 188-9) that the supposition of genuine cases of truth-valuegaps is incoherent. Williamson’s argument relies fundamentally on disquotational (orequivalence) schemas for truth and falsehood, and explores the inconsistency between holdingthe correctness of the schemas for truth and falsehood and supposing that there are genuinetruth-value gaps. This inconsistency is a problem for deflationists not inclined to endorsebivalence: how can the meaning of the truth predicate be fully given in instances of adisquotational or equivalence schema, if some of such apparently legitimate instances entailcontradictions? But if Williamson’s argument stands strong, then there cannot be genuine truth-value gaps.
Some recent proposals purport to avoid the inconsistency that results from the suppositionof truth-value gaps. Thus, JC Beall (2002) proposes that deflationism is compatible with theexistence of gaps, as long as we recognize the difference between two senses of negation:strong and weak. A slightly distinct proposal has been put forward by Mark Richard (2000),who argues that the supposition of truth-value gaps need not lead to contradictions, if werecognize the distinction between denying a sentence and asserting its negation. Theseproposals have in common the following idea: when we say that it is neither true nor false thatP, we obviously do not mean to say it is not true, in the sense that we can infer that P is not thecase, and we do not mean to say it is not false, in the sense that we can infer that not P is notthe case – if we did, we would arrive at contradictions. Perhaps we hold instead a neutralattitude towards particular problematic instances; we could express such an attitude byappealing to some form of weak negation, or by denying some sentence or proposition, but notasserting its negation.
I shall argue that these kinds of proposal are misguided. On the one hand, the introductionof different senses of negation is ad hoc, offering a localized solution with no independentmotivation other than avoiding the derivation of contradictions, and the same goes for thedistinction between denying something and asserting its negation. Moreover, it is questionablewhether disquotational schemas can be made compatible with gaps merely by distinguishingbetween different readings of negation. So, I argue, adopting any of these strategies is not howyou should deny bivalence. Finally, I suggest that there is a plausible sense of negation that canbe appealed to, namely metalinguistic negation. The problem is that metalinguistic negationdoes not eliminate the deflationist’s problem: metalinguistic negation can only be helpful toavoid the derivation of contradictions if it also prevents any disquotation, including in thestatement of truth-conditions. Hence, Williamson’s argument stands – the supposition ofgenuine cases of truth-value gaps is incoherent.
References:
Beall, JC. (2002). Deflationism and Gaps: untying 'not's in the debate. Analysis 62: 299-304.
Horn, L. (1989). A Natural History of Negation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Richard, M. (2000). On an argument of Williamson's. Analysis 60: 213-217.
Williamson, T. (1994). Vagueness. London and New York: Routledge.
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Pattern of Emotion and Emotional GrowthDina Mendonça
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Universidade Nova de [email protected]
This paper constructs a pattern of emotion by thinking of emotions in terms of activity andexplores the notion of emotional maturity in light of such a pattern.
The first part of the paper presents the pattern of emotional activity. Such a pattern ofemotion aims to capture the dynamic nature of emotional life providing a vocabulary to focusour attention in the lively activities of mind instead of its results. The design of the pattern ofemotional activity is made in analogy to the Deweyan pattern of inquiry, given the startlingconclusion that under Dewey’s description emotions behave like ideas. After an explanation ofthe pattern of emotional activity, it will be shown how the pattern of emotion allows us toexplain some of the mysterious aspects of emotional life (e.g. some of the ambiguities ofemotion-words). In addition, the paper argues that such a pattern may provide a unifying tool ofresearch among the different philosophical investigation about emotion, such that this patternmay open the possibility for a Unified Theory of Emotion.
The second part explores how thinking of emotions in terms of activity provides afruitful way to understand the process of emotional maturity. Building upon the pattern ofemotional activity, the paper argues that the reasons why stories help us to grow emotionallylies in the fact that they embody a deliberate search of paradigm situations (De Sousa 1987). Iwill argue for such perspective claiming first, that this analysis provides the ground to conceivea different answer to the paradox of fiction and paradox of tragedy in aesthetic theory in whatconcerns the impact of emotions in fine art’s creation and appreciation. And secondly, that itprovides an ideal background to consider the contribution of language to emotional activity(Cavell 1993). Showing that language impact on emotion illustrates the evaluative processesthat underlies emotional activity, this part ends by showing why thinking in term of a pattern ofemotion helps us understand more clearly what it means to be emotionally mature.
I conclude by pointing out some of the things that have been left open and unansweredabout the pattern of emotional activity, and finish the paper with some comments of theconsequences of such a pattern for the application of philosophy of language to the philosophyof emotions.
Bibliography:
Cavell, Martha. “The Subject of Emotion” in The Psychoanalytic Mind. From Freud toPhilosophy, pp.137-158, Cambridge, Mass. And London, England: Harvard UniversityPress, 1993
Cunningham, Suzanne. “Dewey on Emotion: Recent Experimental Evidence” inTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Fall, 1995, Vol. XXXI, No. 4: 865-874.
De Sousa, Ronaldo. The Rationality of Emotion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987.
Dewey, John “The Theory of Emotions” in The Early Works, 1882-1898, vol. 4: 1893-1894. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville/ London and Amsterdam:Southern Illinois University Press/ Feffer & Simons, Inc., 1971.
——— “What are states of mind?” in The Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 7: 1912-1914.Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press,1985.
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———. “Experience and Nature” in The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 1: 1925. Ed. Jo AnnBoydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.
———. “Affective Thought” in The Later Works , 1925-1953, Vol. 2:1925-1927. Edited byJo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. 1988.
———. “Appreciation and Cultivation” in John Dewey: The later Works, 1925-1953, vol.6: 1931-1932Essays, Reviews and Miscellany. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale andEdwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.
———. “How We Think” in The Later Works, 1925-1953, Vol.8: 1933, ed. Jo AnnBoydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.
———. “Art as Experience” in The Later Works, 1025-1953, Vol.10: 1934, ed. Jo AnnBoydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.
———. “Logic: The Theory of Inquiry” in The Later Works, 1025-1953, Vol.12: 1938. Ed.Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990.
Gordon, Robert. The Structure of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987
Gunther, York H. “The Phenomenology and Intensionality of Emotion” In PhilosophicalStudies, vol. 117, nº1-2, 2004.
James, William. “What is an Emotion?” in Mind, 1984, 19: 188-204.
Nussbaum, Martha. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Why there can’t be a science of rationality – D. Davidson and cognitive scienceSofia Miguens
This paper aims at assessing the impact on cognitive science of D. Davidson’s claimthat there cannot be a (natural) science of rationality (Davidson 1995). First, I will identify amethodological assumption commonly made within cognitive science research on rationality.Then I will introduce the way Davidson conceives of rationality in the context of his UnifiedTheory of Thought, Meaning and Action (Davidson 1980). Then I will point out that beneaththe conceptions of rationality dealt with in cognitive science lie specific issues in the theory ofmeaning and action, regarding which one must take some decisions. Among other things, thesedecisions concern the status of ‘mentalistic ways of thinking about human behaviour’
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(Davidson 1995) and consequently the need for mentalistic idioms in a science of mind andcognition. The discussion whether or not a science of cognition requires mentalistic idioms hasbeen at centre stage in philosophy of mind for the last decades. One way to look at it is toconsider that it was prompted by the problematic status for the theory of mind to which Quine’stwo influential ideas of i) naturalized epistemology and ii) radical translation gave rise. Ibelieve Davidson’s Unified Theory, and the place it gives to rationality, must be seen as aproposal in that context, one which defies the idea of a ‘naturalized’ approach to rationality.
The Unified Theory brings together issues formerly dealt with in the theory of actionand in the theory of meaning (involving both truth and interpretation) and aims atunderstanding thought, meaning and action taking overt behaviour as its start. It has, accordingto Davidson, many of the characteristics of a science (such as describing or defining an abstractstructure, with properties which it is possible to prove, and rendering prediction possible). Still,it is not meant to be natural science, or to compete with natural science, and has even beenaccused by people such as J. Fodor and N. Chomsky of being simply unscientific. The fact is,the entire theory «rests on structures dictated by our concept of rationality» (Davidson 1995):decision theory, a truth theory and assumptions about conditions for holding a proposition truein face of evidence. They suggested the theory and give it the structure it has. For Davidson,this theory is what we can have when we aim at ‘explaining behaviour’. So, although theUnified Theory allows us to make sense of overt behaviour, as Quine intended, one should keepit in mind that it is built on the norms of rationality and it is a theory of ‘knowledge we alreadypossess’.
Hence Davidson’s dual answer to the question ‘could there be a science of rationality?’:on the one hand there could be such a science – it is the Unified Theory – on the other handthere couldn’t, in that the Unified Theory is not natural science and is not in any way incompetition with natural science. This should keep us from looking upon cognitive scienceresearch on rationality as simply constituting a ‘science of rationality’.
References
Baron, J, 1988, Thinking and Deciding, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Davidson, Donald, 1980, A Unified Theory of Thought, Meaning and Action, in D. Davidson,Problems of Rationality, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Davidson, Donald, 1995, Could There Be a Science of Rationality? in D. Davidson, Problemsof Rationality, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Evans, J. St. B. T, Newstead, S. & Byrne, R. M. J. 1993, Human Reasoning: The psychology ofdeduction. Hove, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Fogelin, Robert, 2004, Aspects of Quine’s Naturalized Epistemology, in Gibson, R. (ed.) TheCambridge Companion to Quine, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Gibson, Roger F., 2004, Quine’s Behaviorism cum Empiricism, in Gibson, R. (ed.) TheCambridge Companion to Quine, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. & ABC Research Group, 2000, Simple Heuristics that make us smart,Oxford, Oxford University Press
Quine, W.O, 1985, States of Mind, Journal of Philosophy LXXXII, 5-8Ryle, Gilbert, 1949, The Concept of Mind, New York, Barnes and Noble.
Samuels, R., Stich, S. & Tremoulet, P, 1999, Rethinking Rationality: from bleak implications toDarwinian modules, in Lepore E. & Pylyshyn Z, eds, What is Cognitive Science?, Oxford,Blackwell.
Em filosofia da literatura, uma das questões levantadas pela interpretação de obrasliterárias é a da relevância das intenções do autor. O debate ganhou particular importância, natradição analítica, com o famoso ensaio de Wimsatt e Beardsley 'The Intentional Fallacy', ondesão avançados alguns argumentos importantes contra o uso, pelos críticos, de possíveisinformações sobre as intenções de um autor ao escrever determinado poema. Wimsatt eBeardsley defendem que as discussões críticas não se resolvem 'consultando o oráculo', porquetudo o que há para interpretar deverá ser 'manifesto' no poema, sendo por isso apenasnecessário conhecer as convenções linguísticas e artísticas relevantes para responderadequadamente ao poema. O problema está em que, entre outras coisas, nem sempre é possíveldistinguir entre o que está e o que não está 'manifesto' no poema. Por outro lado, muitas vezescertas informações biográficas acerca do autor condicionam efectivamente a nossa percepçãode certos aspectos de uma obra e, consequentemente, podem afectar a nossa interpretação eapreciação dessa obra. Nesse caso, faria sentido não tê-las em conta, por serem aparentemente'externas' (nos termos de Wimsatt e Beardsley) à obra?
No debate entre os chamados anti-intencionalistas (como Wimsatt e Beardsley) eintencionalistas está, ainda, em causa saber se a interpretação de obras literárias é umaactividade da mesma natureza que a interpretação de outros produtos de acções humanascomplexas, na qual, de modo não problemático, os intérpretes têm em conta tudo o quepotencialmente contribua para uma melhor compreensão dessa acção (ou do seu resultado).Interessantemente, enquanto que a teoria literária tem preferido sistematicamente as ideias anti-intencionalistas (não apenas de Wimsatt e Beardsley mas também as de Roland Barthes e deFoucault), a filosofia da literatura da tradição analítica tem-se concentrado em respostasintencionalistas ao problema, sendo que o debate se encontra hoje limitado à dicotomia entre ointencionalismo simples (como o defendido por Noël Carroll, entre outros) e o intencionalismohipotético (cuja versão mais difundida é a de Jerrold Levinson). Enquanto que ointencionalismo considera que as intenções do autor histórico são relevantes para ainterpretação, o intencionalismo hipotético defende que os intérpretes não visam colocarhipóteses interpretativas que tenham em conta as intenções do autor histórico, mas do autor queo leitor mais informado - i.e., mais conhecedor das convenções linguísticas e literáriasrelevantes, bem como das informações históricas publicamente disponíveis - poderia postularcomo hipótese interpretativa.
Não me proponho continuar o debate entre o intencionalismo simples e ointencionalismo hipotético, mas apenas avançar alguns problemas que cada uma dessas versõesainda enfrenta. Pretendo ainda mostrar que a distinção entre texto e obra, tal como é propostapor Gregory Currie, e a concepção das obras de arte como performances, como avançadarecentemente por David Davies, podem, enquanto propostas relativas ao estatuto ontológico dasobras de arte, ser iluminadoras neste debate, uma vez que podem contribuir para esclarecer oslimites do objecto que é suposto que os críticos literários interpretem e avaliem. Se as visões deCurrie e Davies sobre o estatuto ontológico das obras de arte estiverem correctas, entãointerpretar uma obra literária não pressupõe apenas a identificação de propriedades textuais deuma obra, mas inclui necessariamente a consideração das suas condições de produção (e,portanto, as intenções do autor). Assim, ter em conta essas informações não implica acrescentaralgo 'externo' àquilo que tomamos como objecto de interpretação, mas apenas não excluir o queargumentavelmente faz parte da obra literária. É a extensão desses limites das obras literárias -e as consequências que a definição desses limites tem para a interpretação e para a crítica - queo meu ensaio pretende discutir.
The Greek word muthos names the role of the viewer or the reader in the process ofrecognizing a given narrative form or structure. It constitutes an active work of composition,integration and synthesis of heterogeneous elements and the establishment of a dynamicidentity to the story being presented. It consists also of a sort of "negotiation" between theexpected and the unexpected elements of a narrative, the foreseeable and the unforeseen.Through it, the reader or spectator is able to sustain and calibrate a level of expectation thatexplains for much of the narrative tension and the fruition provided by it. Not everything ispredictable and not everything is unpredictable. The narrative structure provides the viewer orreader with a number of macro and micro ranges of possibilities and, therefore, with the chanceto discriminate between the congruity and the incongruity of any diegetic sequence (i.e., theoccurrence of events or reactions within those ranges and those which fall outside them).
Film theorists have introduced and developed several surveying devices that help us tobetter grasp how this muthos takes place in the case of film viewing as well as to realize thedifferent levels, both diegetic and perceptual, in which this activity takes place. These devicesare, for instance, the relation between point-glance and point-object focal perspectives, therelation between music and emotion, erotetic narrative, the narrative enthymeme and therelation between reading-for-the-story and reading-within-the system.
The objective of this paper is to propose a panoramic and comparative view of theseexplanatory devices and to present and assess their common rationale. All of them describe theway films are basically constructed through complex and juxtaposed sequences consisting onthe instauration of a given range of possibilities and the cropping out or selection of one ofthose possibilities. Another common feature lies on the way these devices attribute the vieweran active role in the extraction, elaboration and development of cinematic meaning. Filmviewing appeals constantly to the memory and activates different common cognitive abilities inthe spectator, namely, our common methods of decision-making.
I shall expand this view by proposing other ways through which movies exert acontrolled appeal to the spectators' cognitive capabilities and to their collaboration in filling inthe gaps. I shall assume the hypothesis that the spectator's more or less conscious awareness ofher active role in film viewing could lead her - as Ernst Gombrich suggested in the case ofpainting -"to experience something of the 'thrill of making' " and thus contribute to theexplanation of the power of contemporary movies.
The Good Sense of Nonsense:a non self-repudiating reading of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
Daniele Moyal-SharrockUniv of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
In this paper, I attempt to clarify Wittgenstein's view of nonsense, and show that itallows for a consistent and nonself-repudiating reading of the Tractatus. This new readingrejects the two main, competing, readings of the Tractatus: the so-called Therapeutic (orresolute) and the Metaphysical (or ineffabilist) readings. I contend that a restricted andjudgmental conception of Wittgensteinian nonsense is responsible for the general failure tounderstand the Tractatus. I take particular issue with Peter Hacker's judgmental interpretationof Wittgensteinian nonsense and go on to delineate my reading of the Tractatus which I call,
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anachronistically, the grammatical reading. Max Black got it right when he saw Tractarianpropositions as formal propositions, but On Certainty allows us (in retrospect) to situate themmore precisely: precursors of grammatical propositions, not part of the language-game, notendowed with sense, but enabling it – they form a ladder or a scaffolding from which to makesense. Tractarian propositions do not transgress the bounds of sense, as Hacker believes theydo; they are the bounds of sense. Their being characterised as nonsense by Wittgenstein, farfrom precluding their regulatory function, confirms it. I conclude by suggesting that inasmuchas sayability is internally linked to sense in the Tractatus, it is the grammatical, and thereforenonsensical, nature of Tractarian sentences that makes them technically unsayable. ThatTractarian sentences cannot technically be said, however, does not mean they cannot bespoken. Once we distinguish between saying and speaking, the author of the Tractatus can nolonger be taxed with inconsistency in articulating the ineffable.
In this paper I will argue that reality and truth play central roles in determining whethera person’s life has a meaning. I will show that no life can have a meaning, even if it is full ofpleasures and ‘happiness’, if those pleasures and that ‘happiness’ are illusory. The mainthought is that a life of merely subjective happiness and pleasure — e.g. a life under Nozick’scelebrated Pleasure Machine — is not a meaningful life. Although there is not much in the wayof a clear-cut argument for this thought, I will explore some intuitions that seem to favour it.These are intuitions that come to the fore when we consider specific contrasting examples.
Many of those who argue that life has no meaning do so precisely because they believeall happiness and well-being is somewhat illusory. But can one be an objectivist regarding somevalues — e.g. ethical values — and still be a pessimist regarding the meaning of life? ThomasNagel is precisely a philosopher that embraces the two. I will try to show why this is wrong.The main argument is as follows. Assuming there are objective values, a life that promotesthem plays a central and important role, overall. Putting aside cases where someone else wouldhave promoted those values, the world becomes a better place — objectively better — owing tothat person’s life. Intuitively, at least, this is enough to give meaning to that life. Nagel’sobjection is that humans crave for more than merely intersubjective value. But if we believethere are objective values (and not just intersubjective values), nothing more can be asked togive life a meaning. If someone believes this kind of meaning a life can have is not enough, theburden of proof rests with her. An analysis of what this person can have in mind reveals that itmay be an illusion — like the wrong thought that an eternal life would be meaningful. ThomasNagel and Bernard Williams also argue against this, but I will try to show that this illusion restson a wrong notion of the meaning of life — a notion that does not consider reality, and tries toconceive meaningfulness from a purely subjective point of view.
Property dualism about consciousness and epistemic necessityChristian Onof
This paper examines the (quasi-)epiphenomenalism implied by Chalmers’s (1996)property dualistic view of consciousness. A thought experiment is constructed to show that thepurported explanatory independence between the properties of access and phenomenalconsciousness is not compatible with certain epistemic requirements. The paper thus questionsproperty dualism in a sense akin to a range of objections based upon the notion of metaphysicalnecessity (Papineau, Loar, …). For it claims that conceptual considerations are not sufficient todraw ontological conclusions, so that although zombies are logical possible, there are othergrounds for rejecting the possibility of zombies. However, this paper takes a radically differentdirection in identifying epistemic normativity as the source of these additional constraints. Andrather than leading to a rejection of property dualism, this points to a link between accessconsciousness and phenomenal consciousness that builds a dependence structure uponChalmers’s dualism of properties.
In ‘The Conscious Mind’, David Chalmers develops a multifaceted argument to showthat the phenomenal nature of conscious experience is not reducible to functional properties ofa physical substance. For Chalmers, this conclusion is inevitable if one is to ‘take seriously’ thecertainty that we are phenomenally conscious. The argument turns, in particular, on the logicalpossibility of creatures identical to us but for their lack of phenomenal experience. Thesezombies without qualia behave in ways identical to us, which makes phenomenal propertiesirrelevant to the explanation of our behaviour.
I take Chalmers’s argument to be a valid inference from the hypothesis we are certainof being phenomenally conscious. But tensions emerge when we consider the nature of thiscertainty in relation to logically possible scenarios of temporally altered phenomenal properties.Thus, consider Mary, Lucy and Suzie identified as follows. As in Jackson’s (1982, 1986)classic papers, Mary is brought up in a black and white world and at time T, enters ourcolourful world for the first time and encounters a red rose. Her sister Lucy who also looks atthe rose, has been brought up in our world. But she has a twin sister Suzie living in a possibleworld W1 defined as follows: it is identical to ours except that before T, visual qualia are allblack and white. Property dualism tells us that Suzie does not report anything new whenlooking at the rose, since her behaviour is identical to Lucy’s. However, intuitively, Suzie’ssituation is akin to Mary’s.
The counter-intuitiveness of this result is no objection to property dualism. Butconsider Suzie’s mental states. Chalmers tells us we have immediate access to our phenomenalexperience (this is essential to the above claim of certainty). So the mental state in which one isphenomenally conscious of a red rose is available for reporting. Suzie’s phenomenal experienceduring the interval [T-ΔT,T+Δt] is apparently that of a change in the phenomenal experiencefeaturing the novelty of the experience of ‘red’, but it is not available for reporting. As a result,Suzie’s access consciousness appears to be operating differently from Lucy’s who is able toreport her phenomenal experience during [T-ΔT,T+Δt]. So there is a mental state which isaccess conscious in W, but not in W1. This is not allowed by property dualism.
The only possible response to the above for the property dualist would be to deny thatSuzie’s mental state is different from Lucy’s so that she has no mental state the content ofwhich includes the change of phenomenal properties at T. This would mean that Suzie’s grip onher phenomenal experience is rather poor, but the property dualist may argue that all he needsfor his argument is the certainty of being phenomenally conscious, not of getting its natureright.
Although this does not reflect the grasp we think we have of qualia, we can respond tothis reply by replacing Suzie by Zuzie in the experiment. Zuzie is another twin of Lucy’s livingin a possible world W2 identical to ours but for the absence of all phenomenal experiencebefore time T. She is therefore a zombie before T. If the mental state in which Zuzie considersthe experience of the red rose during [T-ΔT,T+Δt] is identical to Lucy’s, then Zuzie is not intouch with the phenomenal experience starting at time T. That is, it is not the nature of theexperience, but its very coming into being which Zuzie has no experience of. The problem isZuzie’s (and Suzie’s) claim to be certain of being phenomenally conscious after T, as it is nowrepresented in the framework of property dualism, is not the claim with which we started,
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namely that which each one of us has of having qualia. For part of that claim is that we knowwhen phenomenal experiences start and when they change. So even if some minimal notion ofcertainty remains (which is arguable), property dualism does not provide an adequaterepresentation of this epistemic certainty in the cases shown above, thus undermining theassumption that underpins the argument for it.
Issues about the nature of the access we have to our being phenomenally conscious areexamined to ward off possible objections. The only way forward is then for the property dualistto provide grounds for rejecting the cases we have considered above, namely the cases ofchanging phenomenal properties (dancing qualia) and the possibility of zombies. The groundsfor so doing are epistemic. They can be seen either as the successful functioning of accessconsciousness, or equivalently, the correct representation of the certainty of beingphenomenally conscious.
The conclusion is that the dualism which separates phenomenal from accessconsciousness properties and which is grounded in the logical possibility of zombies, is nowgiven a dependence structure on the grounds of epistemic normativity. Namely, invariantphenomenal properties are required for a proper access to our mental states which translatesinto phenomenal judgements that are adequate to these states. The consequence of this result isfurther explored for the meaning it gives to phenomenal experience.
Temporal becoming: can we do away with it?Elisa Paganini
I propose to consider the paradox of temporal becoming using conceptual instrumentsderived from Lewis’ definition of the problem of intrinsic change. I will show that there are twopossible solutions to this paradox (not three, as for Lewis’ problem of intrinsic change), that thetwo solutions are ontologically incompatible and that they both solve the paradox at the cost ofgetting rid of temporal becoming.
The problem I want to raise is: how we should consider temporal becoming? There are twopossible answers to this question. The first answer is that temporal becoming is unreal: theparadox of temporal becoming is a demonstration of the impossibility of temporal becoming;there are, of course, two different and competing models of the nature of time (i.e. the twosolutions of the paradox), but they both exclude the reality of temporal change. I intend topropose a second answer: temporal becoming is conceptually inaccessible, the paradoxconcerns our conceptual abilities and not reality in itself, the two possible answers to theparadox of time reveal two possible conceptual attitudes to an unattainable reality.
1. The paradox of temporal becoming There are three properties: being past, being present and being future. These three
properties are both monadic intrinsic (they apply to an object independently of any relationwith other objects, temporal items, etc.) and temporary (they are possessed only for a certainamount of time, not always).
To be monadic intrinsic and temporary is both conceptually contradictory and extensionallycontradictory. It is conceptually contradictory for a property to be monadic intrinsic (nonrelational) and temporary (which means that it is possessed only in relation to certain times): itmeans that the property is both relational and non-relational.
The two characterizations give rise also to two incompatible ways of applying theproperties in consideration (i.e. to two contradictory extensions of the predicates correspondingto the properties). If the three properties are monadic intrinsic, then they are possessedsimpliciter by an object or by an event, independently of any relation. For example, if theelection of the European Parliament has all of them intrinsically, they just apply to it; it followsthat the election of the European Parliament is past and present and future. If e is “the election
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of the European Parliament” and P, N and F are the properties being past, being present andbeing future, then it follows:
(1) Pe∧Ne∧FeOn the other hand, if the three properties are temporary, they are had only in relation to a
time, and given an event, like the election of the European Parliament, and a time, that eventhas only one of the three properties, i.e.:
(2) Pe∨Ne∨Fe(1) and (2) are obviously contradictory.
2. The two solutions to the paradox There are two well known solutions to the paradox so presented.The first one, the most popular one, is to assume that being past, being present and being
future are not monadic intrinsic properties, but they are just relations to times (B-theorist’ssolution). The fact that we consider them monadic intrinsic is a mistake, it depends on a wrongassumption on the reasons that prevent a tensed sentence from being translated into a tenselessone.
The second solution is to assume that only one among the properties being past, beingpresent and being future is intrinsic: only being present is a monadic intrinsic property, beingpast and being future are either not properties at all or relational properties (Presentist A-theorist’s solution).
The two solutions are ontologically incompatible. In order to see this it is useful to inquireinto the set of the existing things according to the two possible solutions. According to the firstsolution, the temporal properties are relations and the objects which stand in those relations areequally existing: so all objects, events and times in the history of the universe are equallyexisting. According to the second solution, the monadic intrinsic property being present is whatcharacterizes the objects, the events and the time existing: so, only the present objects, eventsant time are existing.
The two solutions get rid of temporal becoming. This is quite uncontroversial for the firstsolution, it is a matter of discussion for the second solution. I believe that if we assume that thesecond solution saves temporal becoming, then we must say that being present is not just amonadic intrinsic property, but that it is also a temporary property and the paradox rises again.
3. How to consider temporal becomingIf the two previous solutions of the paradox reject temporal becoming, it could be
believed that the conclusion to draw is that temporal becoming is impossible and that the natureof time is to be looked for in one of the two opposing solutions to the paradox.
I suppose that another possibility is open: it is possible that the paradox shows ourconceptual inability to grasp change in general and more specifically temporal becoming. Isuppose that it is at least a conceptual possibility that reality does not correspond to ourconceptual abilities. If that is the case, the two solutions to the paradox are not to be consideredas two competing descriptions of the ontological reality, they have to be interpreted as twoconceptual approximations to an unattainable reality. The general idea behind this secondpossibility is that we can give only static conceptual representations of a dynamic reality. If thissecond solution is viable, the problem is: why the two solutions are incompatible andcompeting? I suppose that the answer is to be looked for in the different elements which areconsidered as primitive by the two solutions. As I showed, the paradox emerges from theincompatibility between two characteristics of temporal properties: being monadic intrinsic andbeing temporary. One solution adopts the temporary nature as the primitive characteristic oftemporal properties, while the other solution adopts the monadic intrinsic nature as theprimitive characteristic of the only essential temporal property.
Conceptualism and the supposed Non Transitivity of colour indiscriminabilityCharles PellingReading University
In the philosophy of perception, the conceptualist asserts, and the non-conceptualistdenies, that the representational content of experience is exclusively conceptual content. In thispaper, I show that Delia Graff’s recent arguments1 for the traditionally unpopular view thatcolour indiscriminability is transitive have important implications for the conceptualism versusnon-conceptualism debate.
This is because (1) conceptualism can be true only if we possess context-dependentdemonstrative colour concepts, and (2) only if colour indiscriminability is transitive can wepossess such concepts.
This paper addresses (2). In order to establish its truth, I consider two accounts ofdemonstrative colour concept possession, those given by the two most prominentconceptualists, John McDowell and Bill Brewer. McDowell and Brewer each propose acondition that a subject must satisfy in order to possess a demonstrative colour concept. In thebulk of the paper, I am concerned to establish two things: first, that unless colourindiscriminability is transitive, neither of the conceptualists’ proposed conditions aresatisfiable; and second, that at least one of these conditions must indeed be satisfied by anygenuine demonstrative colour concept possessor.
Possibly, there are bare possibiliaPhilip Percival
I. Recently, Williamson has argued for an ontology of merely possible people etc., where"possible" is construed not predicatively, but attributively. Thus construed, possible people arenot people who are possible, but "bare possibilia" i.e. non-concrete objects the non-formalproperties of which are mere "potentialities," such as "(merely) possibly concrete" and"(merely) possibly human" etc. My aim is to articulate the first step of a very different line ofthought from Williamson's in favour of such an ontology. This is a novel argument for theclaim there are concrete objects which might have been bare possibilia. In symbols:
(T) ∃x[concrete(x) ∧ ◊[¬(concrete(x) ∧ ∃yy=x]]
II. (T) follows from the truth of "Clinton might have been a bare possibile," i.e.
(C) ◊[¬concrete(Clinton) ∧ ∃yy=Clinton]
I claim that (C) is true because in certain counterfactual situations in which Clinton is notconcrete, there is a true proposition about him of the form "F(Clinton)" which is necessarilyobject-involving in the sense that: Necessarily, [F(Clinton)→∃yy=Clinton]. These situations aresituations in which Clinton is not born, and the relevant truth about him in these situations isthat he might have been born and grown to possess exactly the intrinsic properties he actuallypossesses at t (where t, say, is the instant of Clinton's twentieth birthday).
Let "ψcx" be a predicate that captures exactly the intrinsic properties Clinton actually hasat t. To show that (C) is true in this way, I need to establish two claims:
(C1) ◊[¬concrete(Clinton) ∧ ◊ψc(Clinton)]and
(C2) Necessarily [◊ψc(Clinton) → ∃yy=Clinton]
1 In her ‘Phenomenal Continua and the Sorites.’ Mind 110, 905-936. In fact, Graff’s arguments extendalso to other forms of indiscriminability, but this is not important for my purposes.
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(C1) is straightforward. Had a nuclear explosion occurred in the immediate vicinity shortlybefore the relevant sperm reached the relevant ovum, Clinton would not have been conceived,with the result that he would not have been concrete. Equally, however, it would still have beenthe case that, even so, he could have been born (and hence concrete), and grown to be exactlyas he actually was intrinsically at t.
III. (C2) is not straightforward, however. Its constituent "◊ψc(Clinton)" can be analysed (a)as expressing the proposition "Clinton has the property ◊ψc" or (b) as expressing theproposition "◊(Clinton has the property ψ)". It will be objected thatn(C2) is only true onanalysis (a), whereas (C1) is only true on analysis (b).
Against this, I argue that (C2) is true even on interpretation (b). The proposition "◊(Clinton has the property ψ)" is necessarily object-involving because its being so is aconsequence of the best explanation, with respect to each situation in which it is true, of that invirtue of which it is true in that situation. That is, I claim that "the "In virtue of what?"challenge - namely, "had Clinton not been concrete, in virtue of what would it have been thecase that: possibly, ψc(Clinton)?" - is best met by the suggestion that it would have been thecase in virtue of the existence of an object - Clinton - having the property of being possibly ψc.
I must show that this challenge needs to be met, and that my way of meeting it is betterthan alternatives.
IV. In justifying the challenge, I argue that:(i) It isn't loaded. It does not presume that the question "In virtue of what?" is to be
answered by specifying an object. Rather, in "There is something in virtue of what ...," thequantifier is propositional, not first-order.
(ii) The proposition at which the challenge is directed is object-discriminating: whereas ◊ψc
(Clinton) is true in the counterfactual situation at issue, ◊ψc(The Eiffel Tower) is impossible.Any such object-discriminating truth demands an answer to the question "In virtue of what is ittrue?", even if it is necessary.
(iii) Once the legitimacy of the question "in virtue of what is it true that …?" with respectto actual truths is admitted, it becomes obligatory to ask it with respect to what would havebeen true counterfactually.
V. In arguing that my proposal best meets the challenge, I defend what I call: The Principle of Genuine Counterfactuality - Necessarily, nothing that answers a question"in virtue of what is it the case that s?", but which wouldn't have been, had it been the case thatp, is that in virtue of which, had it been the case that p, it would have been the case that q.
This principle refutes the suggestion that had the explosion occurred, preventing Clinton'sconception, that in virtue of which Clinton might still have been ψc, would have been (a) that invirtue of which Clinton is ψc, or (b) that in virtue of which actually, Clinton is ψc. (Theprinciple undermines (a) directly, but (b) indirectly i.e. via the principle that wide-scope"actually" is redundant, in the sense that that in virtue of which "Actually, Clinton is ψc" is trueis the same as that in virtue of which "Clinton is ψc" is true.)
A dilemma undermines the suggestion that had Clinton not been born, that in virtue ofwhich he might still have been ψc, would have been the existence of a state of affairs, s, suchthat possibly, s might have obtained (i.e. where had s obtained Clinton would have grown to beintrinsically as he actually is at t). If this state of affairs does not involve Clinton it cannot bethat in virtue of which Clinton would have been possibly ψc. But if this state of affairs doesinvolve Clinton, its existence wouId require Clinton's existence.
I invoke Lewis's arguments against ersatzist answers to the challenge, and everyone else'earguments against a Lewisian answer to it.
I end by considering the "brute" modalist answer to the challenge - namely, that that invirtue of which it would have been the case that ◊ψc(Clinton), had Clinton not been born,would have been the (brute modal) fact that possibly, Clinton is ψc. I argue that an ontology ofsuch facts is more obscure than is an ontology of bare possibilia.
In the first section of this paper I distinguish, on a purely conceptual level, between twokinds of reasons, which I call attitude-related reasons and content-related reasons.
Think of any attitude we might have towards some proposition p, which, because wehave some attitude towards it, I call the content of this attitude. It might be an epistemic attitudelike belief or doubt, an attitude like desiring, wanting or, intending, or an emotional attitude likeanger or fear or gratefulness. For all these attitudes we can have reasons that speak in favour oragainst adopting them. Content-related reasons are such that, if we are aware of them, theyshow us p in a certain light. They point to some feature of p, which makes a certain attitudetowards p the appropriate one to have. Attitude-related reasons, by contrast, are such that, if weare aware of them, they show us our having a certain attitude towards p in a certain light. Theypoint to some feature of our having this attitude that makes it the appropriate one to have.
Some examples: The propositional content of my belief that p might be entailed byother things I believe with good reason. This feature of the proposition that p, namely beingentailed by what I reasonably believe, makes it the case that I have a very good reason tobelieve that p. Because we are talking about a feature of the proposition that p, the reasonmentioned is a content-related reason. In contrast, believing that p might be beneficial to me insome way, without p itself having this property. Then, if there were such things, we would havean attitude-related reason for believing that p, as being beneficial is a property of our havingthis attitude. Similarly with emotions: being incapable of doing something most other peoplecan do, might well be a reason for me to be ashamed of myself. I am ashamed of myselfbecause I have the property of being incapable of doing something others can do easily. Myreason for feeling shame is content-related. If my being ashamed, in fact, prevents me fromdoing what others can do easily, then I have an attitude-related reason against feeling ashamed.My attitude of feeling ashamed has the property of preventing me from doing something thedoing of which is important to me.
In the second section I argue that even if there couldn’t be attitude-related reasons forbeliefs, there would still be attitude-related reasons for preferences. I show that commonarguments denying attitude-related reasons for beliefs cannot be generalized and give examples,which invite the acceptance of attitude-related reasons. Here is a famous example which comesfrom Amartya Sen. It’s a story about two boys who find two apples, one large, one small. ‘BoyA [whom we also might call Nice] tells boy B [whom we also might call Nasty], ‘You choose’.B immediately picks the larger apple. A is upset and permits himself to remark that this wasgrossly unfair. ‘Why?’ asks B. ‘Which one would you have chosen, if you were to chooserather than me?’ ‘The smaller one, of course,’ A replies. B is now triumphant: ‘Then what areyou complaining about? That’s the one you’ve got!’ (Sen, ‘Rational Fools’, Philosophy andPublic Affairs 1977, 328). A prefers the smaller apple only insofar as preferring the smallerapple is the polite thing to do. Politeness is a feature of his preferring the small apple, i.e. anattitude-related reason for preferring it, it is not a feature of the apple, i.e. a content-relatedreason for preferring it. That’s why A would happily choose the small apple, but is unhappyabout receiving it. In this second section I also argue against alternative interpretations of thisexample due to, e.g. John Broome and Philip Pettit, and I try to counter the general scepticismtowards attitude-related reasons for preferences, which we find in Alan Gibbard and DerekParfit.
In the third section I employ the category of attitude related reasons in a discussion ofwhat Joseph Raz has called exclusionary reasons, which are reasons not to act on certain first-order reasons (Raz, Practical Reason And Norms 1990). Raz discusses three examples in whichexclusionary reasons play a crucial role: incapacity-based exclusionary reasons, authority-based
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exclusionary reasons, and commitment-based exclusionary reasons. I will focus on the secondcategory, though all three admit of the same analysis. Here is Raz’s example: ‘While serving inthe army Jeremy is ordered by his commanding officer to appropriate and use a van belongingto a certain tradesman. Therefore he has reason to appropriate the van. His friend urges him todisobey the order pointing to weighty reasons for doing so. Jeremy does not deny that his friendmay have a case. But, he claims, it does not matter whether he is right or not. Orders are ordersand should be obeyed even if wrong, even if no harm will come from disobeying them. That iswhat it means to be a subordinate’ (Raz 1990, 38).
My analysis of this example goes as follows: Preferring to appropriate the van has adesirable feature: it is prefering in accordance with what one has been ordered to do. Thus,Jeremy has an attitude-related reason to prefer appropriating the van, which, in the story told,outweighs even strong content-related reasons against having this preference.
Raz has a different understanding of the nature of exclusionary reasons. Attitude-related and content-related reasons can be weighed against each other, whereas Raz would denythat weighing is possible if exclusionary reasons conflict with what he calls first-order reasons.I investigate which account provides us with a more plausible analysis of acting on authority(or acting because of a commitment or an incapacity). I end up defending a principle which Razexplicitly denies, namely that it is always the case that one ought, all things considered, to dowhatever one ought to do on the balance of reasons.
Reasons, causes and experience: Extending Anomalous MonismManuel de Pinedo
In this paper I am going to review McDowell’s criticism of the myth of the given and hiscontention that coherentist positions such as Davidson’s motivate the acceptance of the mythrather than the avoidance of it. In epistemology, both fundationalism and coherentism share theaxiom that experience is less than rational, i.e. that our perceptions are somehow separatedfrom our conceptual, doxastic states. Both positions can be avoided by an understanding ofexperience which rejects the possibility of making a principled separation between the world’sand the person’s contributions. I will recommend this approach to experience as a naturalcomplement to Davidson’s anomalous monism. I will hold that anomalous monism cannot be athesis about the mind without also being a thesis about experience and the world. Thisextension has dramatic consequences for Davidson’s philosophy of mind and causation, butallows to retain with renewed strengh his epistemological theses.
McDowell’s criticism of the given takes its inspiration from Sellars’ work: we cannot holdthat the results of an innate capacity—our passively receiving inputs from the world—entailsomething—knowledge—which is itself the output of an acquired faculty—rationality, throughlanguage learning. What brings empiricism to this cul de sac is running together a causal story(which concerns the necessary enabling conditions of knowledge, such as having a brain andreceiving stimuli in our nerve endings) with a rational story (which concerns the conceptual andnormative relationships between mental states). What counts as knowledge partially depends onthe way the world is and on public standards of justification. There is nothing wrong instudying the causal mechanisms behind reason, which can be characterized in pre-epistemic
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ways, and related, causally, to epistemic episodes. But we are not going to obtain justificationsfor our beliefs from the neural activity which makes them possible: sense impressions, sensedata, non-conceptual content are the mythical Given only if we want them to play anepistemological role. They are perfectly respectable concepts in Philosophy of Psychology.
A coherentist theory of knowledge is precisely Davidson’s alternative to the given. It is aresponse to Quine’s pretence to have it both ways: experience cannot be outside the sphere ofjustification and simultaneously work as a tribunal for our beliefs. For Davidson, the duality offactors that persists in Quine is itself a dogma. This dogma separates between conceptualscheme, what Quine calls language, and empirical content, what Quine calls empiricalsignificance. Davidson’s attack on this dogma comes from both sides; from the side of theconceptual scheme by pointing out that mutually unintelligible world-views don’t make sense,and from the side of empirical content by highlighting that experience cannot be a basis forknowledge from outside the scope of our beliefs.
If we cannot appeal to anything outside the space of reasons to justify a belief, andexperience for Davidson is outside that space, experience cannot offer reasons for holding abelief. But, if experience, which provides our only contact with the world, cannot play anyjustificatory role for our knowledge of that world, what can? Or, to phrase it in a differentmanner, if experience only provides brutely causal connections between the empirical worldand our knowledge of it, what guarantees that our knowledge is knowledge of the world? Wehave to find a way to restore our confidence on the openness of our knowledge to the world,without falling on the idea that the world blindly imposses itself on us. McDowell does this byrecommending a different conception of experience, one which isn’t merely causal, as it is forDavidson, but which doesn’t sneak in justifications from outside the space of reasons.
Davidson has defended an ontological thesis about the relationship between mind andworld which he calls ‘anomalous monism’. Anomalous monism starts with the idea that theconcepts used by our commonsensical interpretation of people’s mental states cannot bereduced to the concepts used by a scientific, causal description of them. This is so because theformer are normative and, hence, not nomological but anomalous. On the other hand,psychological states can cause physical states, but all causation is nomological. Therefore eachtoken of a mental event (if not each type) is also a physical event. However, if we takeDavidsonian interpretationism seriously, and if we allow for the physical base on which mentalevents supervene to include the person’s environment, we should extend anomalous monism toexperience and the world. I call this position ‘holistic anomalous monism’. Two kinds of storiescan be told about the world; in one of them, interpretative, we find people and public objectsand it is normative and anomalous; the other, causal, comes after, and talks about organisms,atoms, and sensory irritations. The world both causes and justifies our beliefs because theworld can be described both in the vocabulary of natural science and of natural language. Butby tying together the everyday world and the mind with experience, a token-identity theorylooses its attraction, and leads us to wonder whether the priciple of the nomological characterof causation can be argumentatively sustained, or it is just another dogma inherited from themodern awe at science’s marvels.
Há um conjunto fixo de condições necessárias para o conhecimento?Luís Rodrigues
A tradição filosófica ocidental vem sugerindo que há um conjunto fixo de condiçõesnecessárias que devem ser satisfeitas nos casos em que se quer validar que S sabe que P.Sugere-se, portanto, que há um conjunto fixo de condições cuja satisfação é suficiente para quehaja conhecimento proposicional. É também geralmente aceite que esse conjunto de condiçõesé constituído - no mínimo - pelas seguintes três condições necessárias:
1) a condição necessária de S ter a crença que P, i.e, ser o caso de S acreditar (racional econscientemente) que P é verdadeira;
2) a condição necessária de P ser de facto verdadeira, i.e; de ser o caso daquilo que asemântica da proposição implica;
3) a condição necessária de S estar justificado em acreditar em P, i.e, de ser o caso de S terboas razões para sustentar a sua crença de que P é verdadeira.
O propósito desta análise tripartida do conhecimento proposicional é encontrar um critériouniversal de avaliação e validação do próprio conhecimento proposicional. Mas, como a recentediscussão dos exemplos de Gettier (Gettier, 1973) vem demonstrando, é difícil, se não mesmoimpossível, chegar a um consenso quanto à forma desse critério universal, critério esse queseria constituído por um conjunto fixo de condições e que permitiria a avaliação e a validaçãodo conhecimento proposicional. Ora, o objectivo deste ensaio é disputar a ideia de que há umtal critério universal, i.e, que há um conjunto fixo de condições cuja satisfação validauniversalmente o conhecimento proposicional, independentemente dos casos em contexto ou docarácter das proposições envolvidas. Vou sugerir, em alternativa a esta primeira hipótese, umasegunda hipótese de que ou há um conjunto variável de condições necessárias (variável emquantidade e/ou em qualidade dos seus elementos) ou múltiplos conjuntos de condiçõesnecessárias (a disjunção é possivelmente inclusiva) que cumprem a tarefa de validar oconhecimento proposicional em função dos contextos e do carácter das proposições. Aargumentação a apresentar em favor desta segunda hipótese irá basear-se em alguns exemplosque mostram a gradual insuficiência das condições - habitualmente aceites como necessárias esuficientes para validar o conhecimento proposicional - em função dos contextos e do carácterdas proposições envolvidas. Vou assim argumentar que a segunda hipótese pode ser umahipótese mais económica e eficaz do que a primeira quando se trata de avaliar e validar oconhecimento proposicional. Por último, tentarei evitar os possíveis efeitos colateraisoriginários da eventual aceitação da segunda hipótese, efeitos como sejam o relativismo e ocepticismo, apresentando para tal uma solução de cariz holista e coerentista.
A partir de uma controvérsia entre Alain de Libera, Claude Panaccio e Pascal Engel –originada a partir da introdução do «estilo» analítico na historiografia da filosofia medieval –são examinadas algumas das principais teses debatidas entre as abordagens histórico-filosóficae analítica em História da Filosofia.
Esse debate parece-nos, todavia, insuperável, a não ser que se reconheça que essasabordagens correspondem, efectivamente, a dois níveis de análise distintos – e não a posiçõesconcorrentes na persecução do mesmo tipo de tarefas e de objectivos.
Dessa distinção de níveis de análise pode concluir-se que essas abordagens se constituemcomo momentos de um processo gradual de abstracção na análise do mesmo objecto: a históriada filosofia. Segundo Panaccio, os princípios de fidelidade e de pertinência são necessários auma legitimação do método analítico em História da Filosofia. Procuro mostrar que toda estacontrovérsia, em geral, e que esta tese de Panaccio, em particular, ajudam a esclarecer a realdistinção entre os métodos histórico-filosófico e analítico, bem como o sentido e o alcance dométodo de ‘reconstrução teórica’, acolhido pela filosofia analítica na sua abordagem daHistória da Filosofia.
Bibliografia:
Engel, P., “La philosophie peut-elle échapper à l’histoire ?”, in J.Boutier e D.Julia (ed.), Passés Récomposés, Paris, Éd. Autrement, 1995, pp. 96-111.
Engel, P., La Dispute: une introduction à la philosophie analytique, Paris, Minuit, 1997.
Kretzmann, N., Kenny, A., Pinborg, J. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Later MedievalPhilosophy, Cambridge (G.-B.), Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982.
Libera, A. de, «Retour à la philosophie médiévale ?», Le Débat, 72 (1992), M.Gauchet(ed.), La Philosophie qui vient, pp. 242-260.
Libera, A. de, La Querelle des Universaux: de Platon à la fin du Moyen Âge, Paris,Seuil/ Des Travaux, 1996.
Libera, A. de, «Le relativisme historique: théorie des ‘complexes questions-réponses’ et‘traçabilité’», Les études philosophiques, 4 (1999), pp. 479-494.
Libera, A. de, La Référence vide – Théories de la Proposition, Paris, PUF, 2002.
Panaccio, Cl., Les mots, les concepts et les choses. La sémantique de Guillaumed’Occam et le nominalisme d’aujourd’hui (Analytiques, 3), Montréal-Paris,Bellarmin-Vrin, 1991.
Panaccio, Cl., “De la reconstruction en histoire de la philosophie”, in Gilbert Boss (ed.),
La Philosophie et son histoire, Zurich, Editions du Grand Midi, 1994, pp. 173-95.
In the literature on conditionals, contrasts like the one ilustrated by (1) and (2) have beenwidely discussed:
(1) Butter melts only if it is heated.(2) If butter melts, then it is heated.
These examples defeat the naïve view according to which a conditional of the form If Athen C can always be rephrased as A only if C (assuming tenses are kept fixed). In fact,whereas (1) seems to be stating that, besides a necessary condition for the melting, the heatingis also a cause for it, (2) seems to be stating that, besides a necessary condition for the melting,the heating is an effect of it, or at least is supposed to occur after it (this is why (2) soundsweird, unlike (1)). This reading distinction can even perhaps be construed as a truth-conditionalone, i.e. as distinction concerning the propositions literally expressed by the conditionals.
The distinction, regardless of its truth-contitional import, can arguably be analysed interms of Bennett’s typology (cf. Bennett (2003)) between conditionals (i) whose antecedent canbe interpreted as refering to the (typically causal) explanation of the state of affairs decribed bythe consequent (I will refer to these as C readings, meaning readings where the consequent actsas the explanandum) (ii) whose consequent can be interpreted as referring to the (typicallycausal) explanation of the state of affairs described by the antecedent (I will refer to these as Areadings, meaning readings where it is the antecedent that acts as explanandum) (iii) whoseconsequent, given the hypothesis put forward by the antecedent, can be interpreted aspresenting the best available explanation for the body of evidence supporting the assertion ofthe conditional (these I will refer to as E readings, meaning ones where the explanandum is the— contextually determined — body of evidence E). A single conditional is often liable to allthree kinds of readings. One vivid example of this is the infamous
(3) If Oswald didn´t murder Kennedy, someone else did.
(3) can indeed be understood (i) as stating that in the relevant hypothetical circumstanceswhere Oswald did not murder Kennedy, someone else (presumably, a fellow conspirator) did(C reading); (ii) as stating that in the relevant hypothetical circumstances where Oswald did notnot murder Kennedy, someone else managed to do it first, the idea in this case being thatOswald was not quick enough (A reading) ; (iii) as stating that in the relevant hypotheticalcircumstances where Oswald did not murder Kennedy, someone else did do it (E reading). Inthis talk, I will claim that Bennett´s typology has truth-conditional import, i.e., that it concernsthe truth conditions of conditionals (rather than merely their assertibility conditions). In otherwords, I will claim that a conditional like (3) can be used to express (at least) threepropositions, according to the pragmatic idiosyncrasies of the utterance situation.
This hypothesis is clearly committed to an anti-Gricean stance concerning the way thetruth conditions and the literal propositional content of a statement are determined, in thefollowing way. Whereas someone adopting Grice’s minimalist view about truth conditionswould claim that the three kinds of reading predicted by Bennett’s typology for a conditionallike (3) can best be treated as conversational implicatures, my truth-conditional treatment ofthe typology entails that each of them is associated to distinct literally expressed propositions(and therefore to propositions which are not being conversationally implicated by (3)).Interestingly, this hypothesis does not entail, on the other hand, that conditionals like (3) areambiguous, i.e. that the three kinds of reading are generated by their semantics alone. Rather, it
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is consistent with the idea that the communicative intentions of, say, the utterers of (3)determine, on the basis of one and the same semantic input, which kinds of antecedent-states ofaffairs are being characterized (in a given context of utterance) as consequent-states of affairs –and therefore which statement is being made.
In other words, if this analysis stands, the communicative intentions of speakersdetermine what is literally being said whenever a conditional is uttered. Thus, in the case of (3),if the speaker intends to assume the conspiracy theory on Kennedy’s assassination, she isreferring to those (hypothetical) circumstances where the antecedent holds and a conspiracy tokill Kennedy was on; she is therefore literally saying (rather than implying) that all hypotheticalcircunstances where Oswald did not kill Kennedy were ones where, as a consequence of that, aco-conspirator did (C reading). On the other hand, if she is asserting (3) on the basis of the factthat Kennedy was murdered, she is referring to circumstances where the antecedent holds andKennedy was murdered; she is therefore literally saying that, under the hypothesis that themurderer was not Oswald, someone other than him must have been the one (E reading).
Such a systematic interference of pragmatic inferences on the determination of the truthconditions of conditionals (including counterfactuals, for the remarks above apply mutatismutandis to that variety of conditional) is in line with the contextualist theses about meaningchampioned by, among others, and F. Recanati, R. Carston and the hardliners J. Searle and C.Travis. In this talk I will argue for the merits of the overall approach (in its non-hardlineversion), drawing on my analysis of conditionals.
References
Bennett, J. (2003) A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford.
Recanati, F. (2001) “What is said”, Synthese 128, 75-91.
Recanati, F. (2003) “What is said and the Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction",in ClaudiaBianchi & Carlo Penco (eds.) What is said and the Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction:Proceedings form WOC 2002, CSLI, Stanford.
Acção e explicação causalRicardo Santos
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Universidade Nova de [email protected]
O modo como hoje explicamos os fenómenos físicos e biológicos é muito diferentedaquele com que quer Aristóteles quer Descartes estavam familiarizados, mas o mesmo nãoacontece com a grande maioria das nossas explicações do comportamento humano. Quer sejapor não termos avançado significativamente nesse domínio, quer seja por a própria concepçãoaristotélica ser já bastante sofisticada, o certo é que há uma forma de explicação da acçãohumana – a sua explicação em termos das crenças, desejos e outros estados mentaisintencionais do agente que podem constituir razões para agir de um certo modo – quepermanece invariável. A presente comunicação será dedicada à discussão da questão de saberse as explicações intencionais da acção humana devem ou não devem ser consideradas comouma forma de explicação causal .
A filosofia tem, desde os gregos, uma longa e respeitável tradição de respostasafirmativas a esta questão, segundo a qual as acções voluntárias seriam causadas pelos estadosmentais intencionais que as justificam racionalmente. Todavia, de acordo com a visão humeanada causalidade, toda a relação causal tem de ser apoiada por uma lei. Ora isso não acontece comas explicações intencionais: quando digo que Marta fez isto porque queria aquilo, não estou ainvocar nenhuma lei segundo a qual sempre que alguém quer aquilo faz invariavelmente isto. A
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existência de leis psicológicas estritas é problemática, mas, independentemente disso, é umfacto incontroverso que as nossas explicações intencionais particulares não instanciam leis. Noentanto, como Davidson mostrou, não somos forçados a concluir daqui que elas não sãoexplicações causais. Pois, pelo menos numa certa leitura, tudo o que a análise humeana exige éque existam descrições dos acontecimentos causalmente relacionados sob as quais a suaconexão seja apenas um caso particular de uma lei. De acordo com a teoria identitativa damente, tais descrições existem e são físicas. Esta solução será viável somente se conseguirafastar a acusação de epifenomenalismo de que é alvo.
Mas há ainda uma segunda objecção à teoria causal da acção a que este tipo defisicalismo parece não responder. Esta objecção é de inspiração wittgensteiniana e acusa ateoria causal de assentar numa concepção cartesiana da mente como conjunto de estados eprocessos interiores, conceptualmente distintos do comportamento manifesto e do seu contextoalargado. Por seu lado, os causalistas argumentam que só a causalidade permite explicar adiferença entre “ela fez isto e queria aquilo” e “ela fez isto porque queria aquilo”. Na basedeste debate entre causalistas e anticartesianos parece estar um desacordo a respeito daontologia pressuposta pelas explicações intencionais. Para que as crenças e os desejos doagente pudessem ser causas das suas acções, seria preciso que elas fossem entidades do tipoadequado; em particular, seria preciso que elas fossem entidades estruturalmente análogas àsacções, ainda que ‘interiores’.
Na comunicação, concentrar-me-ei sobretudo neste último argumento, ao qual julgoque deve ser reconhecida força. De facto, para estarmos em condições de afirmar que ascrenças e os desejos são causas, deveríamos saber mais do que actualmente sabemos sobre otipo de coisa que elas são. Porém, o argumento exibe também uma considerável fraqueza, aopressupor que as acções são o lado manifesto e bem conhecido da relação, parecendo identificá-las de modo simplista com os movimentos corporais. Wittgenstein detectou o carácterproblemático desta identificação quando perguntou pela diferença entre o meu acto de erguer obraço e o movimento do meu braço a erguer-se.
Some weaknesses of a priori warrantsDaniele Sgaravati
The concept of apriority has enjoyed, in later years, a renewed attention in thephilosophical debate, and a sort of re-evaluation, as to the relevance of its role in epistemologyand philosophy generally. At the same time a strong debate developed about how exactly theconcept has to be understood, and it lead to a substantial change in the understanding of theconcept. Most interestingly from an epistemological point of view, the majority ofcontemporary theorists agrees that a priori warranted beliefs are 1) Fallible. An a prioriwarranted belief can be false. 2) Rationally revisable. You can rationally abandon a belief thatwas, or even is, a priori warranted for you. We can call this the weak conception of a priori.The first aim of this paper is to clarify some aspects of this change, while casting some doubtson the motivations that have been given for it, and on its theoretical utility. Traditionally, infallibility and rational unrevisability were held to definitional featuresof a priori beliefs. It is an epistemological common-place, but nonetheless true, that the questfor certainty has been the main concern of epistemology, at least since Descartes to the lastcentury; and many philosophers hoped a priori beliefs could supply the needed foundation forthis kind of epistemology. It is this role for a priori beliefs that goes lost in the passage to theweak conception. The reasons that lead to the change, in my opinion, ultimately derive from thefact that both science (with the discovery and advent of non-Euclidean geometries) andphilosophy (with Quine’s well known attack) have shown there might not be any infallible andunrevisable beliefs. That is, under the traditional definitions, there might not be any a prioribeliefs. The weak a priori has the advantage, from a rationalist point of view, of completely
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bypassing those problems. This move however is successful only if there are independentmotivations for thus weakening the concept, and it has been claimed that there are suchmotivations.
We will consider Bonjour’s counterexamples to the thesis that a priori beliefs areinfallible. He claims to have provided many clear cases of a priori warranted false beliefs.Those examples, he says, fall under three categories. Firstly there are very general principles oflogics and mathematics that have proved to be false, of which paradigmatic examples areprovided by Euclidean geometry or Frege’s naïve set theory. The second kind of examples isprovided by history of philosophy. The third and last class of examples is nearer to everydayexperience; it consists of errors in calculation, proof and reasoning, errors inevitable, at times,even for the most competent people. I will argue that in most cases there is no genuine warrantfor the belief considered, and in the remaining cases it is not clear that the belief is false. In sodoing we will exploit some intuitive difference between a priori and empirical warrants. Thelatter are immediately and intuitively considered fallible, contrary to the former. We will then consider the problem of revisability, and some putative examples, byCasullo and others, of rational revisions of a priori warranted beliefs. We ought to distinguishhere between two kinds of revisability; again the empirical and the a priori. Casullo considers aweak thesis about unrevisability:
WUT a priori beliefs cannot be rationally revised on empirical grounds. I agree with Casullo that this thesis can hardly be defended, although not for the same
reasons he thinks so. There is a class of trivial counter-examples to WUT, revisions of truemathematical and logical beliefs based on the opinions of experts, or the results of calculators. Ithink Casullo does not provide essentially different examples. There are different strategies torule out examples of this kind, although no one is completely uncontroversial. However betterexamples of rational revision of a priori beliefs can be provided by history of science andphilosophy.
It seems to me it would be easier to defend a different weak thesis:WUT2 a priori beliefs cannot be rationally revised on a priori grounds. In short, there is a risk of incoherence in postulating a priori warrants that are a priori rationallyrevisable. If a belief is warranted independently of experience, and it is revised stillindependently of experience, it seems that there must be an error, either in the warrant or in therevision. But a warrant that contains an error risks not to be a warrant at all, and a rationalrevision containing an error is not completely rational.
Finally, conceding that it is coherent (although counterintuitive) to think about a kindof warrant independent of experience and at the same time fallible and empirically revisable,one might ask what is the role of this concept for epistemology and philosophy. Such a warrantdoes not meet the central requirement of the traditional concept of a priori, which, I submit, isempirical unrevisability. It was analytically true that a priori beliefs are not empiricallyrevisable. As Kant put it, “when you are outside the sphere of experience, you are sure not to berefuted by experience”.
The fact itself we can trace a coherent distinction does not suffice to show there is anepistemologically interesting distinction. As Philip Kitcher notices, we can distinguishknowledge obtained by reason alone from knowledge obtained by the use of perception, andfrom knowledge obtained by testimony or memory, but we can also distinguish knowledgeobtained by our visual system from knowledge obtained by the auditory system or by tactilemethods. We cannot presuppose, however, that each categorization has the sameepistemological relevance.
Semântica e pragmática: considerações sobre a Sprachkritik de BrentanoLuísa Couto Soares
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Univ Nova de [email protected]
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1. Um dos desafios que se apresentam à epistemologia contemporânea é o dereformular uma teoria do juízo e da proposição que reconcilie duas noções que a modernidadetem pensado de forma disjuntiva – a de verdade e de sentido. Esta disjunção pode rever-se nabipolarização entre as noções de correspondência e coerência que representam duas fortesalternativas para formular uma teoria da verdade. No entanto, a própria controvérsia entrecorrespondencionalistas e coerentistas, é reveladora das aporias que nenhuma das duas noçõeslogram resolver cabalmente. A lição a tirar é talvez a da necessidade de recorrer a uma outradimensão – prática, espontânea, reflexiva – para sair do impasse. A semântica da verdadeparece ser inseparável da pragmática. A conclusão que alguns tiram do argumento de infinitoregresso proposto por Frege para mostrar a impossibilidade de definir verdade em termos decorrespondência, é precisamente esta: uma teoria da verdade tem de admitir a espontaneidadedo juízo.
2. Com efeito, autores como Frege, Wittgenstein, Austin, Tugendhat, pensam aestrutura da enunciação partindo precisamente de um conteúdo proposicional sobre o qual recaiuma força assertiva associável ao assentimento, noções relevantes para a compreensão dasemântica da verdade. Este acento tónico na dimensão pragmática e reflexiva do acto de julgare sua expressão linguística, encontra-se antecipado na teoria do juízo evidente de Brentano,entendido como posição e não síntese predicativa e como locus privilegiado da verdade.Arquitectonicamente fundada nas noções de assentimento, força assertiva e evidência, estareformulação preludia a actual pragmática e a exploração do carácter performativo dalinguagem.
3. A Sprachkritik brentaniana acentua precisamente a intervenção da prática linguísticae do uso dos termos pelo locutor, para a realização efectiva de qualquer acto judicativo. Adimensão prática revela-se na própria expressão proposicional, que não se limita a significaralgo, mas determina a própria realidade: a asserção é um acto de fala e todas as proposiçõesdeclarativas têm, nesta perspectiva, um carácter pragmático, que os signos linguísticos nãopodem senão mostrar, exprimir. O juízo como posição excede a própria materialidade efactualidade da linguagem, exibindo o carácter intensional.
A Crítica da Linguagem de Brentano permite-lhe elucidar as noções de juízo, asserção(e negação), verdade e evidência, libertando-as da camisa de forças imposta até então pelaconcepção da linguagem como “imagem” ou espelho do pensamento. A relevância desta críticaé imprescindível para evitar equívocos sérios no modo de entender o nosso próprio aparatoconceptual e as nossas categorias linguísticas.
4. Interessar-nos-á destacar e caracterizar algumas noções estreita e familiarmenteligadas ao problema da verdade, que indiciam precisamente uma dimensão, não estritamentecognitiva, mas antropológica, na medida em que não convocam apenas o entendimento ou arazão, mas o sujeito de acção espontânea. Nomeadamente, as noções de asserção (negação),afirmação de existência, convicção, assentimento, crença. As respectivas «gramáticas»,exploradas através de uma analítica aproximada de uma fenomenologia da prática linguística,permitem uma visão panorâmica (empregando uma expressão wittgensteiniana) da rede deconexões entre diversos binómios que se entrecruzam – linguagem-mundo, linguagem- uso,mente-acção.
There are basically two main reasons that are commonly used by eliminativistempiricists to reject the a priori, and both can be found in Quine’s writings:
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(I) Nothing is immune from empirical revision.(II) A priori knowledge is as mysterious as the capacity of rational insight.
My aim is to show that both reasons are bad reasons for rejecting the a priori.The first reason is supported by Quine’s epistemic holism. Quine’s main argument is
roughly the following: (i) all beliefs are empirically revisable; (ii) a priori beliefs are norempirically revisable; therefore (iii) there is no a priori. I will argue that even if premise (i)were true, premise (ii) of Quine’s argument is false; and thus we have no good reason to acceptthe conclusion. My main argument against premise (ii) is basically the following: Thedistinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge has to do with modes of acquiringbeliefs, not with modes of rejecting them. Premise (ii) is about the latter. Therefore, premise (ii)is false.
The argument for reason (II) is roughly the following: All the attempts to explain the apriori were flawed; therefore, it is a mysterious notion. My main objection to this line ofargument is that it is a fallacious move to say that the phenomenon of a priori knowledge or thecapacity of rational intuition are obscure and should be rejected because we are unable toexplain it. There are so many things we cannot yet explain, like the phenomenon ofconsciousness or the beginning of the universe. And we obviously don’t want to reject theirexistence because of our inability to explain them. The same goes for the a priori.
My conclusion is that we should aim at explaining the a priori given that we have nogood reasons to discharge it.
A Filosofia da Mente, a neurociência e o cérebroJoão de Teixeira Fernandes
O objetivo desta comunicação é examinar o impacto que a neurociência cognitiva temsobre a filosofia da mente contemporânea, especialmente no que diz respeito ao problemacentral que configura esta última, qual seja, as relações entre mente e cérebro. Nosso ponto departida é que os filósofos da mente, mesmo aqueles mais ambiciosos na defesa da possibilidadeda redução psiconeural pouco parecem ter se importado com os problemas epistemológicos oumetodológicos que a neurociência apresenta e como estes poderiam afetar suas posiçõesfilosóficas.O exame desta questão constituirá, igualmente, o primeiro passo para a constituiçãode uma epistemologia da neurociência, uma tarefa que ainda se encontra em estado incipiente.Afinal, do que estão falando os filósofos da mente quando se referem ao cérebro? Que papeldeve ter a neurociência na filosofia da mente? A ciência do cérebro deve ser concebida comouma ciência de como nós representamos nosso próprio cérebro, ou seja, de como falamos deuma entidade construída através do conhecimento neurocientífico – uma entidadeessencialmente teórica. Como então construir essa entidade que chamamos de cérebro? Oumelhor, como começar a construir nosso conhecimento acerca de nosso cérebro?
A construção de um conhecimento do cérebro começa pela chamada cartografiacerebral - um problema que exige decisões metodológicas e epistemológicas. Quando se falaem mapeamento cerebral (relação entre atividades cognitivas e regiões cerebrais) é precisodefinir com que tipo de mapa do cérebro estamos trabalhando, ou seja, qual o critériocartográfico utilizado para dividir o cérebro em suas várias regiões. Uma primeira questão quepodemos formular é indagar até que ponto os critérios cartográficos adotados podem ter umainfluência sobre as possíveis soluções para o problema mente-cérebro. Uma segunda questão,igualmente complexa, consiste em saber até que ponto as funções cerebrais dependem deformas específicas. O principal desdobramento desta segunda questão diz respeito àpossibilidade de sustentar o modelo computacional da mente e a doutrina filosófica que o apóia,
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qual seja, o funcionalismo. A estratégia que adotaremos para discutir estas questões consistiráem:
a) um rápido re-exame dos critérios cartográficos de mapeamento cerebralutilizados na história da neurociência;
b) a re-discussão da tese da múltipla instanciação (multiple realizability) à luzdos critérios de mapeamento cerebral (localizacionismo versusequipotencialismo;
c) a re-discussão do estatuto da redução psiconeural (type-type identity versustoken-token identity).
Reference intentionality is an internal relationAlberto Voltolini
Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Università del Piemonte [email protected]
In what follows, I will focus on the basic form of intentionality, referenceintentionality, the property an intentional state has of being ‘directed upon’ a certain object, itsintentional object. I will try to prove that (as Husserl, Wittgenstein and others originallyenvisaged) reference intentionality is not only a state - intentional object relation but it also isan internal, i.e., a necessary, relation between that state and that object: the state would notexist if its object did not exist either. The strategy of the argument will be the following. First, Iwill assume that externaism and internalism are exhaustive conceptions of intentional states.Second, I will claim that, no matter whether one has an externalist or an internalist conceptionof intentional states, one is forced to allow an understanding of reference intentionality as aninternal relation.
To begin with, metaphysical externalism, i.e., the thesis according to which intentionalstates are individuated in terms of the outer objects that make up their contents, presupposesthat intentionality is an internal relation. Second, modal externalism, i.e., the weaker doctrineaccording to which intentional states depend on the objects they are about, has the samepresupposition. The only form of externalism that fails to have this presupposition is existentialexternalism, the doctrine according to which the existence of an intentional state entails theexistence of entities outside of the thinker, is a mere sufficient condition of the existence ofsuch entities. Existential externalism indeed implies that intentionality is an external, i.e. acontingent, relation: even if a certain object did not exist, the state which is ‘directed upon’ itcould still exist. (Both nomological externalism and Davidsonian externalism are forms ofexistential externalism.)
So, theoretically speaking one may be an externalist and conceive of intentionality asan external relation. Yet metaphysical externalism is the best version of externalism, for it isthe only version that can capture the tenet of social externalism, according to which intentionalstates are individuated in terms of the meanings the words used by a thinker in order to expressher thoughts have in her linguistic community. As a result, if one really wants to be anexternalist, it is better for him to conceive of intentionality as internal relation.
Moreover, if internalism has a relational nature, it also presupposes that intentionalityis an internal relation. For, by analogy with externalism, the best version of relationalinternalism is metaphysical relational internalism, according to which intentional states areindividuated in terms of the inner objects they are about. So, relational internalism takesintentionality as an internal relation of the intentional state to inner objects.
At this point, it seems that if one wants not to have a relational conception ofintentionality, one is forced to defend monadic internalism, according to which intentionalstates are to be conceived only in terms of intrinsic properties of the thinker. Yet it turns outthat monadic internalism cannot have a monadic conception of intentionality, but again it relieson understanding intentionality as an internal relation. For either it has a crypto-relational
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conception of it which makes intentionality an internal relation, or, insofar as it is simplyeliminativist about intentionality, is not interested in defending an alternative conception of it.In the former case, a monadic internalist takes intentionality as the fact that an intentional statehas a certain nonrelational content; yet this is tantamount to making intentionality as an internalrelation of that state to that content. In the latter case, for a monadic internalist whenever anintentional state is said to have reference intentionality, what it really has is a monadic propertythat is completely heterogeneous to that of another intentional state which is said to havereference intentionality as well. As a result, those monadic properties do not fall under acommon genus. Hence, for that internalist there really is no such a property as referenceintentionality. Yet this makes that internalist raise no objection to the thesis that, if there werereference intentionality, its nature would be that of an internal relation.
Chisholm, Naturalism and the role of logic in epistemologyGregory Wheeler & Luís Moniz Pereira
CENTRIA, Centro de Inteligência Artificial, Faculdade de Ciências e TecnologiaUniversidade Nova de Lisboa
Traditionally, the pre-theoretic notion of epistemic justification is thought to involvetwo properties: transparency and truth-conduciveness. Epistemic justification is thought to betransparent in the sense that an agent S who is justified to believe a proposition p is in aposition, even if only in principle, to access the item that justifies p—whether that item be aprecept, memory or other belief. This property is thought necessary to facilitate S’sdemonstration of his reason for holding p, which is one role that the notion of justificationplays. Truth-conduciveness concerns the contribution that justification makes to S holding truebeliefs. We aren’t interested in possessing epistemic justification to have a just-so story for ourbelief that p. Rather, we’re interested in epistemic justification because we think that a set ofjustified beliefs tends to include more true beliefs than sets of unjustified belief. That these twoproperties are in tension is the back-story to philosophical theories of epistemic justification.
There is a tendency to view naturalized epistemology as, necessarily, favoring truth-conduciveness over transparancy. Methodological naturalism in epistemology holds that someresults from natural science are necessary to form an adequate theory of knowledge. Typically,the arguments advanced in favor of naturalized epistemology appeal to the truthconducivenessproperties of appropriate belief forming processes, and we must turn to the natural sciences ifwe are to learn about such processes. In practice, naturalized epistemologies have beenproposed based upon results from cognitive psychology [Quine 1967; Goldman 1969; 1986;Stich 1983; Carruthers, Stich and Siegal 2002]. The critical discussion of these theories in theliterature has turned upon the meaning of naturalism [Kim 1986] and the merits ofmethodological naturalism [Weinberg, forthcoming, Kornblith 2001; Feldman 2002],particularly in the ability of naturalistic theories of justification to come to terms with thetransparency property.
This paper argues that the preference for truth-conduciveness over transparency amongmethodological naturalists holds only if one accepts a particular reading of RoderickChisholm’s view of epistemic properties. Chisholm’s view is that epistemic properties andepistemic relations are irreducible, meaning that they are of a kind that simply cannot bedefined by a complex of psychological or familiar logical operations [Chisholm 1966]. If onelooks at the dispute between methdological naturalists and Chisholmians one can see that whatthey have been arguing over is the place of cognitive psychology in epistemology—specificallywhether a detailed causal account of human belief formation is a relevant matter to weigh inadvancing a theory of justification. The point to notice is that this debate has been conductedwith a tacit agreement within the field that Chisholm was at least right about logic offeringtraditional epistemologists little theoretical advantage in the analysis of epistemic concepts and,
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more importantly, epistemic relations. What we’ve been arguing about for 40 years is Quine’scontention that epistemology should be moved from philosophy to cognitive psychology.
We argue that there is another naturalistic position, one that arises from denying thesecond condition of Chisholm’s anti-reductivism—namely, the tacitly held view incontemporary analytic epistemology that logic offers little analytical advantage to constructingan adequate theory of knowledge. We then explore the consequences of de-couplingmethodological naturalism from externalist views of epistemic justification, noting in particulara recent mentalistic argument in defense of internalism advanced by Earl Conee and RichardFeldman (2004). The paper then proposes a source for mathematical and experimental resultsthat may be mined to realize this option, namely some scientific and technological results fromlogical artificial intelligence.
References
[1] Bonjour, L. and E. Sosa. 2003. Epistemic Justification, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.[2] Carruthers, P., S. Stich and M. Siegal (eds.) 2002. The Cognitive Basis of Science,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[3] Chisholm, R. 1966. Theory of Knowledge, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.[4] Conee, E. 1987. “Evident, but Rationally Unacceptable”, Australasian Journalof Philosophy, 65: 316-26.[5] De Rose, K. and T. Warfield. 1999. Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader, Oxford:Oxford University Press.[6] Elio, R. [ed.] 2002. Common Sense, Reasoning, and Rationality, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.[7] Feldman, R. and E. Conee. 2004. Evidentialism, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.[8] Feldman, R. 1974. “An Alledged Defect in Gettier Counterexamples”, AustralasianJournal of Philosophy (52): 68-69.[9] Ford, K., C. Glymour and P. Hayes, [eds.] 1995. Android Epistemology, Cambridge:MIT Press.[10] Foley, R. 1987. The Theory of Epistemic Rationality, Cambridge, Mass: HarvardUniversity Press.[11] Goldman, A. 1967. “A Causal Theory of Knowing”, Journal of Philosophy 64:357-372.[12] Goldman, A. 1986. Epistemology and Cognition, Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress.[13] Harman, G. 2001. “Internal Critique: A Logic is not a Theory of Reasoningand a Theory of Reasoning is not a Logic”, appearing in Studies in Logic andPractical Reasoning, Vol. 1. Gabbay, D. et. al. [ed.]. London: Elsevier Science.[14] Kim, J. 1988. “What is ‘Naturalized Epistemology’ ?”, Philosophical Perspectives2, J. Tomberlin [ed.]. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing, 381-406.[15] Kornblith, H.(ed.). 2001. Epistemology: Internalism and Externalism, Oxford:Blackwell.[16] Mayo, D. 1996. Error and the Growth of Knowledge, Chicago: University ofChicago Press.[17] Prior, J. 2001. “Highlights of Recent Epistemology”, The British Journal forthe Philosophy of Science 52: 1-30.[18] Quine, W. V. 1969. Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York:Columbia University Press.[19] Stich, S. 1983. From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case AgainstBelief, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.[20] Weinburg, J. ”Can one challenge intuitions without risking skepticism?”, unpublishedmanuscript, Department of Philosophy, Indiana University.
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Interests and the moral statute of animalsHarry WitzthumUniversität Basel
It is widely agreed in ethics that persons deserve moral consideration since each personhas a moral claim on others who can recognise that claim. A morally considerable person is abeing who can be wronged in a morally relevant sense. It is also generally assumed that onlyhuman beings can justifiably make such claims on us. In the past, however, environmentalethicists have challenged this assumption of exclusive moral standing and have tried to extendit more widely to non-human beings. The moral standing of non-human animals has thusbecome increasingly important among moral philosophers who investigate the ethically rightway of how humans should behave toward nature.
Generally it is thought that having moral standing (or moral rights) is conceptuallyrelated to having interests (Feinberg, 1974; Frey, 1979; McClosky, 1965; Nelson, 1956). If abeing does not have interests, it cannot have a moral standing and we do not have to take it intoour moral consideration. Moreover, a being does have interests if and only if it can be benefitedor harmed in and for itself (and does thereby have a good or „sake“ of its own).
A simple argument for the moral status of animal goes like this: All and only beingsthat have interests, have a moral status; nonhuman animals like humans have interests;therefore nonhuman animals have a moral status. Peter Singer (1976, 1979), for instance,famously argues that all sentient beings have interests because interests are grounded in thecapacity for suffering and enjoying things. Putting this claim together with his basic moralprinciple –the interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account andgiven the same weight as the like interests of any other being – he safely deduces thatnonhuman animals have a moral claim on us.
But is it so obvious that nonhuman animals are capable of having interests? Manyphilosophers would doubt this. Raymond G. Frey (1979) introduces arguments intending toshow that interests are not only grounded in sentience, but also strongly connected to beliefs. Ina classic Davidsonian (1982) move, Frey then claims that in the absence of language andlinguistic capacities, nonhuman animals cannot possibly possess beliefs. Like Davidson, Freyclaims that to possess beliefs, a being would have to possess the concept of belief. But topossess the concept of belief, a being would have to be able to draw the distinction betweentrue and false beliefs and thus would have to possess the concept of objective truth. Finally, abeing possesses the concept of objective truth only if it can master a language. Since nonhumananimals do not master languages, they cannot possess beliefs. Without beliefs, they cannot haveinterests; and without interests, they cannot have moral status.
Frey’s arguments are important because they highlight the contentious issues inpositions that wish to extend moral status to nonhuman animals. All too often, positions infavour of the moral standing of nonhuman animals brush these issues aside lightly and claimthat it is patently obvious that nonhuman animals are capable of having interests. A furtheradvantage of Frey’s arguments is that they connect issues discussed in the larger field ofphilosophy of mind with recent developments in environmental ethics.
I will show in my paper, however, that Frey’s arguments are not successful inconclusively showing that nonhuman animals cannot possess beliefs, and thereby interests. Thecrucial weakness of Frey’s (and Davidson’s) argument lies in the step leading from (1) havingbeliefs to (2) possessing the concept of belief (and thereby making the distinction between trueand false beliefs). While it is true that the possession of beliefs requires cognitive mechanismsthat (a) monitor whether a particular belief has been satisfied and (b) initiate some sort of self-correcting behaviour that results in the revision of one’s false beliefs, it does not evidentlyfollow that these cognitive mechanisms have to be of a conceptual nature (that finally leads tolinguistic abilities). I will argue that we can make room for cognitive mechanisms that fulfilfunctions (1) and (2), but are not of a conceptual nature. If correct, nonhuman animals would beable to grasp the contrast between true and false beliefs without the need of a conceptuallysophisticated cognitive apparatus that would imply the possession of linguistic abilities.
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The result of my paper will therefore show that nonhuman animals are capable ofpossessing some forms of beliefs independently of language. If they can have beliefs, it willfollow on Frey’s position that they also have interests. Since interests are crucial in moraldebates about the moral status of nonhuman animals, the outcome of this paper will havebroader ramifications for this debate too.
References:
Davidson, D. (1982): „Rational Animals“, Dialectica, 36.
Frey, R.G. (1979): „Rights, Interests, Desires and Beliefs“, American Philosophical Quarterly,16, pp. 233-239.
Singer, P. (1976): „All Animals are Equal“, in: T. Regan and P. Singer (eds.): Animal Rightsand Human Obligation, Englewood Cliffs, pp. 73-86.
Singer, P. (1979): Practical Ethics, Cambridge.
McCloskey, H.J. (1965): „Rights“, The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 59, pp. 115-127.
Nelson, L. (1956): System of Ethics, New Haven.
Feinberg, J. (1974): „The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations“, in: W.T. Blackstone(ed): Philosophy and Environmetal Crisis, Athens/Georgia, pp. 140-179.
Must Conceptual Analysts Assume Full Definability?Andrew Woodfield
Analysing a concept is a project that aims to produce an outcome (‘an analysis’) by adistinctive method that Jackson (1998) calls the ‘method of intuitions about possible cases’.The analyst /experimenter E describes a possible scenario. A Subject S is invited to judgewhether the targeted concept or linguistic expression applies to a specified thing in thescenario. Subjects say either that the described entity falls within the extension, or that it doesnot, or that the matter is indeterminate, or that they cannot tell. E builds up a picture of where Splaces the boundaries. Then E formulates hypotheses about the classificatory rules that S isfollowing.
In taking S’s responses to be evidence for or against a given hypothesis, E relies onvarious assumptions. I shall not try to list them all. Instead I focus upon one allegedassumption.
Stich (1992), Stich and Laurence (1992), Laurence and Margolis (2003) allege thatanyone who engages in analysis must assume that the analysandum has discrete, independentlyidentifiable, non-circular satisfaction-conditions that are individually necessary and jointlysufficient. They point out that past attempts to define interesting philosophical concepts interms of necessary and sufficient conditions have mostly ended in failure, and that the evidencefrom linguistic semantics suggests that hardly any lexical items are precisely definable (cf.Fodor 1981, and 1998 chapters 3 and 4). They conclude that the project is doomed.
I do not agree that analysis is doomed. Agreed, full definitions are often unattainable.But the analytical project is not necessarily committed to the assumption of full definability. Itsaim is to investigate whether and to what extent the analysandum is governed by rules and tomake explicit whatever rules there are.
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Outcomes may take various forms. There can be different sorts of partial analyses, aswell as revelations of systematic resistance to analysis. In general, the enterprise revealspreviously buried facts about the meanings of terms, sometimes of whole classes of terms (e.g.natural kind words).
On what basis do the critics claim that the method is wedded to the false assumption?The only passage which tries to justify this claim is in Stich (1992). Stich characterisesconceptual analysis as a competitive game in which one participant C proposes a would-beideal definition of the target concept, and the other party S tries to produce a counterexample tothe proposed ideal definition, then the first party tries out another would-be ideal definition,and the second party tries to produce a counterexample to that, and so on. Stich notes that this‘philosophical game of definition and counter-example makes little sense’ unless necessary andsufficient conditions exist. He presents matters thus: conceptual analysis just is C’s activitywithin a game regulated by rules, and producing a true bi-conditional statement of the right sortis the only outcome that counts as winning.
However, the game that Stich describes is not the same as the task I described above. On mymodel, the two role-players S and E are engaged in a cooperative scientific enterprise. Edevises and tests semantic explanatory hypotheses, S provides the data to be explained.
Secondly, I see the labour being divided within a project that has a unifying goal,though the outcomes may take various forms. The goal is to make explicit whatever generalrules there may be that constrain the extension of the target concept. Such a goal does notprejudge whether the concept is governed by rules.
Thirdly, I distinguish between the overall project (making semantic rules explicit) andthe method (conducting thought-experiments). The method of intuitions about possible cases isa heuristic technique for generating data. When evaluating the relevance of a particular result toa given hypothesis, E may see that it amounts to a counterexample. The rules of logic applyhere just as they do in any other branch of science or in a game. So if S’s response is acceptedas correct, the hypothesis in question must be rejected. But if E does reject it, E has severaloptions about what to do next. There is no rule of the game that binds him to try to discover aclassical definition.
The activity that I am referring to is alive and well in 21st century metaphysics,epistemology, philosophy of mind and language, and other areas. Plenty of philosophers whoare sceptical about definability engage in conceptual analyses. This includes Fodor, many ofwhose writings from 1984 through 1990 up to 1998 attempt to develop an analytic theory ofrepresenting. It also includes Stich, whose work on content-ascriptions in 1982 containedthought-experiments designed to probe intuitions about the extensions of intentional predicates.It’s hard not to do meaning-analysis when you argue philosophically.
I end by considering two objections. The first is that the verb ‘to analyse’ is a success-verb, so that ‘X analysed proposition P’ entails ‘X produced a correct analysis of P’. Thesecond is that the meaning of the noun ‘analysis’ demands that analyses be complete. Ironically,both objections appeal to meanings that they presume they have correctly identified, and bothfail because they are wrong about the meanings.
References:
J. Fodor (1981) ‘The Present Status of the Innateness Controversy’, in Representations, 257-316. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press.
J. Fodor (1984) ‘Semantics, Wisconsin style’, Synthese 59, 1-20
J. Fodor (1990) ‘A Theory of Content’, in A Theory of Content and Other Essays, 51-136.Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.
J. Fodor (1998) Concepts. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
F. Jackson (1998) From Metaphysics to Ethics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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S. Laurence & E. Margolis (2003) ‘Concepts and Conceptual Analysis’, Philosophy andPhenomenological Research 67, 2.
S. Stich (1982) ‘On the Ascription of Content’, in A. Woodfield (ed) Thought and Object:Essays on Intentionality, 153-206. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
S. Stich (1992) ‘What is a Theory of Mental Representation?’ Mind 101, 243-261
S. Stich and S. Laurence (1992) ’Intentionality and Naturalism’, reproduced as ch 5 of StichDeconstructing the Mind Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996.
