Conceptual Truth Defended

Philosophers often rely on hypothetical scenarios to establish claims about causation, consciousness, knowledge, and the like. Consider e.g. this line of thought: (1) Knowledge is not justified true belief. Just contemplate the scenarios Gettier (1963) puts forth. In the situations Gettier describes, we find a protagonist having a true justified belief that p – but he still does not know that p. This is a paradigmatic instance of what I call scenario-based reasoning. In (1), Gettier’s scenarios are brought up to justify a claim about knowledge. Contemplating the situations Gettier describes is taken to somehow show, first, that this holds true: (2) Someone could be in a Gettier-style situation. Contemplating the Gettier-cases is, secondly, assumed to establish a rather substantial counterfactual conditional, to wit: (3) If someone were in a Gettier-style situation, she would have justified true belief, but she would still lack knowledge. Since (2) and (3) entail that someone could have justified true belief but no knowledge, we may conclude that knowledge cannot be justified true belief. In much the same vein

Reassessing Referential Indeterminacy

Quine and Davidson employ proxy functions to demonstrate that the use of language (behaviouristically conceived) is compatible with indefinitely many radically different reference relations. They also believe that the use of language (behaviouristically conceived) is all that determines reference. From this they infer that reference is indeterminate, i.e. that there are no facts of the matter as to what singular terms designate and what predicates apply to. Yet referential indeterminacy yields rather dire consequences. One thus does wonder whether one can hold on to a Quine-Davidson stance in semantics-cum-metaphysics and still avoid embracing referential indeterminacy. I argue that one can. Anyone adhering to the behaviouristic account pivotal to the Quine-Davidson stance is bound to acknowledge certain facts about verbal behaviour – that some utterances are tied to situations, that some utterances are tied to segments in situations, that some predicates have non-contextualised conditions of application, and that use involves causal dependencies. The restrictions from these facts ensure that only reference relations generated by means of rather exceptional proxy functions are compatible with verbal behaviour. I conclude that this allows one to rebuff the Quine-Davidson argument for the indeterminacy of reference, as it were, from within. I moreover tentatively conclude that the line of thought laid out provides good reason for just about anyone to hold that there are facts about reference after all

Rationalismus

Nimtz C. Rationalismus. In: Jordan S, Nimtz C, eds. Lexikon Philosophie. Hundert Grundbegriffe. Stuttgart: Reclam; 2009: 218-220

Concepts in Philosophy – A Rough Geography

Nimtz C. Concepts in Philosophy – A Rough Geography. In: Langkau J, Nimtz C, eds. New Perspectives on Concepts. Grazer Philosophische Studien. Vol 81. Amsterdam: Rodopi; 2015: 1-11

Geist und Seele

Nimtz C. Geist und Seele. In: Jordan S, Nimtz C, eds. Lexikon Philosophie. Hundert Grundbegriffe. Stuttgart: Reclam; 2009: 101-104

Philosophical Thought Experiments as Exercises in Conceptual Analysis

Nimtz C. Philosophical Thought Experiments as Exercises in Conceptual Analysis. In: Langkau J, Nimtz C, eds. New Perspectives on Concepts. Grazer Philosophische Studien. Vol 81. Amsterdam: Rodopi; 2015: 189-214

Reference, Conceptual Analysis, and the A Priori

Nimtz C. Reference, Conceptual Analysis, and the A Priori. In: Bluhm R, Nimtz C, eds. Ausgewählte Beiträge zu den Sektionen der GAP.5. Fünfter Internationaler Kongress der Gesellschaft für Ana­lytische Philosophie. Paderborn: mentis; 2004: 320-331

Conceptual Truth Defended

Nimtz C. Conceptual Truth Defended. In: Kompa N, Nimtz C, Suhm C, eds. The A Priori and Its Role in Philosophy. Paderborn: mentis; 2009: 137-155

Introduction: The A Priori and its Role in Philosophy

Nimtz C. Introduction: The A Priori and its Role in Philosophy. In: Kompa N, Nimtz C, Suhm C, eds. The A Priori and its Role in Philosophy. Paderborn: mentis; 2009: 9-24

Bedeutung

Nimtz C. Bedeutung. In: Jordan S, Nimtz C, eds. Lexikon Philosophie. Hundert Grundbegriffe. Stuttgart: Reclam; 2009: 49-51