Imagining the Ring of Gyges. The Dual Rationality of Thought-Experimenting

In her already classical criticism of thought-experimenting, Kathy Wilkes points to superficialities in the most famous moral-political thought experiments, taking the Ring of Gyges as her central example. Her critics defend the Ring by discussing possible variations in the scenario(s) imagined. I propose here that the debate points to a significant dual structure of thought experiments. Their initial presentation(s) mobilize the immediate, cognitively not very impressive imaginative and refl ective efforts both of the proponent and the listener of the proposal. The further debate, like the one exemplifi ed by Wilkes’s criticisms and some of the answers, appeals to a deeper, more rational variety of imagination and reasoning. I suggest that this duality is typical for moral and political thought experimenting in general, conjecture that it might be extended to the whole area of thought experimenting

Pejoratives and Relevance: Synchronic and Diachronic Issues

The paper considers a possible relevantist treatment, in the spirit of Wilson and Sperber’s work, of pejoratives and argues for three claims concerning them. On the level of synchronic issues it suggests that the negative content of pejoratives, at least in its minimal scope, is the normal part of their lexical meaning, and not a result of extra-semantic enrichment. It thus suggests an evaluative-content approach for the relevantist, in contrast to its neutral-content alternative. On the more general side, it suggests that the relevance theorist owes us a clear story about what kind of material is normally encoded. Concerning the issues of diachronic behavior of pejoratives, the paper suggests primarily the application of relevantist theory of irony, and secondarily some links with theory of metaphor. A relevantist theory of echoic use, and proposed for irony, can be used to understand the appropriation of pejoratives by their original target group, and the reversal of valence that goes with it. There is an interesting parallel between the echoing-cum-reversal processes Wilson and Sperber propose for irony and the repeating-and-reversing process typicall of appropriation of pejoratives. Finally, a brief application of the relevantist understanding of metaphor is proposed as a tool for understanding the genealogy of pejoratives of figurative origin. The dynamics, history and development of pejoratives has not been systematically addressed by philosophical theories of pejoratives: a collaboration with relevance theory might prove a useful strategy

Predicates of Personal Taste: Relativism, Contextualism or Pluralism?

The paper addresses issues of predicates of taste, both gustatory and aesthetic in dialogue with Michael Glanzberg. The first part briefly discusses his view of anaphora in the determination of the semantics of such predicates, and attempts a friendly generalization of his strategy. The second part discusses his contextualism about statements of taste, of the form A is Φ, and then proposes a pluralist alternative. The literature normally confronts contextualism and relativism here, but the pluralist proposal introduces further options. First, it distinguishes first-level and secondlevel, more theoretical, approaches. At the first level it introduces the naïve view option, the naive non-dogmatist experiencer who simply claims that A is Φ and that’s it. On meta-level such an experiencer is simply agnostic about further matters. Then, there is the first-level dogmatist stance, characteristic for people who do sincerely debate the issues, who naively believe they are objectively right. The third option is the tolerant, liberal one: “A is Φ; for me, I mean. How do you find it?” On the meta-level, dogmatic disagreement goes well with value-absolutism, entailing that one of the parties is simply wrong, and with relativism. If one is not dogmatist about taste predicates, one should accept that dogmatist is simply wrong; no faultlessness is present. The liberal stance goes well with contextualism. If one is liberal there is no deep disagreement. So, the idea of faultless disagreement is a myth. But the proposal notes that language is open to all possibilities, there is no single option that is obligatory for all speakers

Reply to Devitt

I agree completely with Devitt, first, that people do immediately understand sentences presented to them, that this understanding goes together with perceiveing the sentence in question (pronounced or written), and that it demands an explanation. Devitt himself stresses the involvement of competence in the process, and I agree. But, if the competence is involved, , why is voice-of-competence view on the wrong track? And the view connects well with findings reported in psycholinguistic literature. Of course, there are several very broad areas that are sufficiently specific to allow for hypothesis of a specialized competence and about which people have intuitions. One is human general understanding of number(s) that is quite specialized, and can be lost, as a consequence of brain damage, without impairment in other areas. The next is our spatial competence, presumably producing our spatial-geometrical intuitions. Coming closer to the domain of philosophy, there are several normative areas, the paradigmatic one being the moral domain (and I guess the aesthetic one). The voice-of-competence view can and should be generalized to all of them

Reply to Snježana Prijić-Samaržija and Petar Bojanić

Foucault’s philosophy and history of science(s) offer contradictory suggestions. His history of science is erudite, challenging, interesting, uncovering new and rich analogies between various disciplines. But his philosophy of science fosters problematic extreme anti-realism combined with elements of strong relativism. The style is rich in ambiguous, even dark pronouncements, often sounding bombastic („end of man”). In the paper I develop the hypothesis that there are two opposing pressures coming all the way from the early structuralist model (and the structuralist tradition) which I sketch briefly. On the one hand, structuralist approach is good for suggesting organizational principles, on the other bad in excluding issues of truth, explanatory potential of theories, and even their empirical adequacy. It has proved quite poor in offering explanatory tools on meta-level. If the pressure of evidence is ,not seen as the prime mover (or at least a crucially important mover) of scientific change, and if change has nothing to do with the search for more adequate picture then the seduction of the power-model, with its political potential, becomes very strong. It is ubiquitous in continental philosophy of 20th century. I am afraid that the two components of structuralist heritage have been yielding a very mixed result: bad philosophy of science disfiguring the history of science. The interesting and challenging material from the latter is used for very dubious generalizations in the former

Reply to Georges Rey

I agree with Rey that concepts can yield analytic falsities. Both Rey and I have been discussing empirical concepts, mostly kind concepts that are to some extent adequate, but contain some inadequate elements in their accepted definitions.The second kind are superstitious terms and empirical kind concepts, like the full- blown astrological ones, or concepts characterizing professions (or similar features) ascribing to them magic powers. They usually concern human-social kinds, ascribing to them characteristics or powers in a problematic manner (for example, “witch” ascribes inexistent powers, and also bad character due to the witch-nature of the targeted person). Propositions analytic in such concepts are both false and a priori. The third kind encompasses positive and negative descriptive-evaluative terms and corresponding thick concepts, that are not empty, but that ascribe positive or negative features to members of a presumed social kind (or group) just in virtue of their belonging to the kind. The most common example in nowadays languages are on the negative side, namely slurs (pejoratives); nowadays rather rare positive counterparts are misplaced laudatives. Again, typical propositions analytic in such concepts are false, and knowable in virtue of being competent in the respective language

Precis of the Theoretical Part of A Word Which Bears a Sword

Pejoratives are negative terms for alleged social kinds: ethnic, gender, racial, and other. They manage to refer the way kind-terms do, relatively independently of false elements contained in their senses. This proposal, presented in the book, is called the Negative Hybrid Social Kind Term theory, or NHSKT theory, for short. The theory treats the content of pejoratives as unitary, in analogy with unitary thick concepts: both neutral-cum-negative properties (vices) ascribed and negative prescriptions voiced are part of the semantics preferably with some truth-conditional impact, and even the expression of attitudes is part of the semantic potential, although not necessarily the truth conditional one. Pejoratives are thus directly analogue to laudatives, and in matters of reference close to non-evaluative, e.g. superstitious social kind terms (names of zodiacal signs, or terms like “magician”). A pejorative sentence typically expresses more than one proposition and pragmatic context selects the relevant one. Some propositions expressed can be non-offensive and true, other, more typical, are offensive and false. Pejoratives are typically face attacking devices, although they might have other relevant uses. The Negative Hybrid Social Kind Term proposal thus fi ts quite well with leading theories of (im-)politeness, which can offer a fi ne account of their typical pragmatics

Intuitions: Epistemology and Metaphysics of Language

The paper addresses the issues about grammatical intuitions in a programmatic sketch. The first part deals with epistemology of such intuitions and defends a moderate Voice-of-competence view in discussion with Michael Devitt, the ordinarist, who sees them as products of general intelligence or Central Processing Unit. The second part deals with the problem for their validity and offers a compromise solution: linguistic intuitions are valid because their object the standard linguistic entities, are production -and response-dependent. Competence does dictate what is correct, and what is not, the order of determination goes from the internal to the external, or external-seeming language items. An external token string has linguistic properties because it would be interpreted as having them by the normal language-hearer and would be produced by a process that would form it respecting the nature of these properties. The solution is briefly situated on the map of general response-dependentism