31 research outputs found
Rigidity, natural kind terms and metasemantics
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Externalism, internalism and logical truth
The aim of this paper is to show what sorts of logics are required by externalist and internalist accounts of the meanings of natural kind nouns. These logics give us a new perspective from which to evaluate the respective positions in the externalist--internalist debate about the meanings of such nouns. The two main claims of the paper are the following: first, that adequate logics for internalism and externalism about natural kind nouns are second-order logics; second, that an internalist second-order logic is a free logic—a second order logic free of existential commitments for natural kind nouns, while an externalist second-order logic is not free of existential commitments for natural kind nouns—it is existentially committed
Assessment Sensitivity about Future Contingents, Vindication and Self-Refutation
John MacFarlane has recently argued that his brand of truth relativism –
Assessment Sensitivity – provides the best solution to the puzzle of future
contingents: statements about the future that are metaphysically neither
necessary nor impossible. In this paper, we show that even if we grant all of
the metaphysical, semantic and pragmatic assumptions in terms of which
MacFarlane sets and solves the puzzle, Assessment Sensitivity is ultimately
self-refutin
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[Review] Amirouch Moktefi and Francine F. Abeles (2016) What the tortoise said to Achilles: Lewis Carroll's Paradox of Inference
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Logical expressivism and Carroll’s Regress
In this paper, I address a key argument in favour of logical expressivism, the view that knowing a logical principle such as Modus Ponens is not a cognitive state but a pro-attitude towards drawing certain types of conclusions from certain types of premises. The argument is that logical expressivism is the only view that can take us out of Lewis Carroll’s Regress – which suggests that elementary deductive reasoning is impossible. I show that the argument does not hold scrutiny and that logical cognitivism can be vindicated. In the course of the discussion, I draw substantially on a comparison with a similar argument in meta-ethics, for moral expressivism
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Norms, reasons and reasoning: a guide through Lewis Carroll’s regress argument
This chapter concerns the connection between knowledge of a logical principle, such as Modus Ponens, and actions of reasoning with it. Contemporary discussions of this issue typically mention Lewis Carroll’s regress. There is widespread agreement that the regress shows something important about the connection between knowing logical principles and reasoning with them—and, more generally, between knowing epistemic or practical principles and actions involving them. My first aim is to address key interpretations of Carroll’s regress in order to assess its relevance to the question of how knowing logical principles connects to reasoning with them, and, more generally, of how knowing epistemic or practical principles might be action-guiding. My second aim is to show that the regress fails to establish anything of substance about such connections unless substantive, contentious, and typically undefended assumptions are made
The open future, bivalence and assertion
It is highly intuitive that the future is open and the past is closed—whereas it is unsettled whether there will be a fourth world war, it is settled that there was a first. Recently, it has become increasingly popular to claim that the intuitive openness of the future implies that contingent statements about the future, such as ‘there will be a sea battle tomorrow,’ are non-bivalent (neither true nor false). In this paper, we argue that the non-bivalence of future contingents is at odds with our pre-theoretic intuitions about the openness of the future. These are revealed by our pragmatic judgments concerning the correctness and incorrectness of assertions of future contingents. We argue that the pragmatic data together with a plausible account of assertion shows that in many cases we take future contingents to be true (or to be false), though we take the future to be open in relevant respects. It follows that appeals to intuition to support the non-bivalence of future contingents is untenable. Intuition favours bivalence
Understanding the logical constants and dispositions
Many philosophers claim that understanding a logical constant (e.g. ‘if, then’) fundamentally consists in having dispositions to infer according to the logical rules (e.g. Modus Ponens) that fix its meaning. This paper argues that such dispositionalist accounts give us the wrong picture of what understanding a logical constant consists in. The objection here is that they give an account of understanding a logical constant which is inconsistent with what seem to be adequate manifestations of such understanding. I then outline an alternative account according to which understanding a logical constant is not to be understood dispositionally, but propositionally. I argue that this account is not inconsistent with intuitively correct manifestations of understanding the logical constants
Propositions, dispositions and logical knowledge
This paper considers the question of what knowing a logical rule consists in. I defend the view that knowing a logical rule is having propositional knowledge. Many philosophers reject this view and argue for the alternative view that knowing a logical rule is, at least at the fundamental level, having a disposition to infer according to it. To motivate this dispositionalist view, its defenders often appeal to Carroll’s regress argument in ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’. I show that this dispositionalist view, and the regress that supposedly motivates it, operate with the wrong picture of what is involved in knowing a logical rule. In particular I show that it gives us the wrong picture of the relation between knowing a logical rule and actions of inferring according to it, as well as of the way in which knowing a logical rule might be a priori