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

Is meaning fraught with ought?

According to Normativism, what an expression means has immediate implications for how a subject should or may (not) employ that expression. Many view this thesis as imposing substantive constraints upon theories of linguistic meaning. In this paper, I shall not consider that view; instead, I shall address the prior issue of whether or not one should accept Normativism. Against certain recent prominent lines of attack common to a number of different anti-Normativist discussions, I shall defend both the Normativist thesis and an attempt to appeal to a certain platitude in its support

Marine Corps Manpower Team

This document represents the best opinion of CNA at the time of issue

Meaning and Understanding

Explores the central role in Wittgenstein's later work of his opposition to a 'mechanistic' conception of understanding. Offers a diagnosis of Kripke's skeptical paradox on this basis

Radical interpretation and decision theory

This paper takes issue with an influential interpretationist argument for physicalism about intentionality based on the possibility of radical interpretation. The interpretationist defends the physicalist thesis that the intentional truths supervene on the physical truths by arguing that it is possible for a radical interpreter, who knows all of the physical truths, to work out the intentional truths about what an arbitrary agent believes, desires, and means without recourse to any further empirical information. One of the most compelling arguments for the possibility of radical interpretation, associated most closely with David Lewis and Donald Davidson, gives a central role to decision theoretic representation theorems, which demonstrate that if an agent’s preferences satisfy certain constraints, it is possible to deduce probability and utility functions that represent her beliefs and desires. We argue that an interpretationist who wants to rely on existing representation theorems in defence of the possibility of radical interpretation faces a trilemma, each horn of which is incompatible with the possibility of radical interpretation

Logical Disagreement

In this chapter we explore the topic of logical disagreement. Though disagreement in general has attracted widespread philosophical interest, both in epistemology and philosophy of language, the general issues surrounding disagreement have only rarely been applied to logical disagreement in particular. Here, we develop some of the fascinating semantic and epistemological puzzles to which logical disagreement gives rise. In particular, after distinguishing between different types of logical disagreement, we explore some connections between logical disagreements and deep disagreements over fundamental epistemic principles; we discuss several semantic puzzles that arise on various accounts of the meanings of logical terms; we investigate how such disagreements relate to Kripke’s so-called “Adoption Problem”; and we probe epistemological puzzles that arise from disagreements about logic in the light of central principles from the peer disagreement literature

The importance of concepts

Words change meaning over time. Some meaning shift is accompanied by a corresponding change in subject matter; some meaning shift is not. In this paper I argue that an account of linguistic meaning can accommodate the first kind of case, but that a theory of concepts is required to accommodate the second. Where there is stability of subject matter through linguistic change, it is concepts that provide the stability. The stability provided by concepts allows for genuine disagreement and ameliorative change in the context of conceptual engineering