Self-knowledge: the Reality of Privileged Access

Paul Snowdon's [2012] ( “How to Think about Phenomenal Self-Knowledge” in A.Coliva, ed., The Self and Self-knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 243-262)  develops a range of careful and interesting criticisms of ideas about the problem of self-knowledge, and about what I interpreted as the broad contribution to it made byWittgenstein's later work, that I presented in Whitehead lectures at Harvard almost twenty years ago. Snowdon questions whether Wittgenstein's characteristic focus upon the linguistic expressions of self-knowledge holds out any real prospect of philosophical progress, and charges that my discussion is guilty in any case of distortion and over-simplification of the 'data', whether conceived as linguistic or otherwise, that set the problem of self-knowledge in the first place. In this paper, I take the opportunity to respond

On the Characterization of Borderline Cases

The chapter takes Schiffer’s central contribution to the study of vagueness to be his treatment of the characterization problem: saying what being a borderline case of a concept expressed by a vague expression consists in. While broadly sympathetic to Schiffer’s approach, the paper takes issue with two aspects of his theory. Schiffer endorses verdict exclusion: the doctrine that a “polar verdict” about a borderline case cannot be an expression of knowledge. This comes at too high a cost: among other things, it conflicts with the entitlement intuition – the intuition that it there will be no point in a sorites sequence at which it is mandatory to return neither of the polar verdicts. The author argues for agnosticism about verdict exclusion (“liberalism”). He also rejects Schiffer’s idea that a special form of belief – vagueness-related partial belief – plays an essential role in characterizing the possession conditions for vague concepts

Assessment-Sensitivity: the Manifestation Challenge

First paragraph: MacFarlane's core project in his deep-reaching, superbly crafted book is the defence of the claim that there is a theoretically respectable, interesting, useful species of relativism about truth—the species he captions by the term,assessment-sensitivity. Assessment-sensitivity contrasts, however, with classic truth relativism—if indeed there is such a thing—in three important respects. First, it is potentially alocalfeature of discourses. MacFarlane, unlike Protagoras, is making no general claim about the metaphysics of truth. So he finesses a broad sweep of traditional concerns about the coherence of truth-relativism, from theTheaetetusonwards, which take it to be a global thesis (so hence, e.g., self-applicable). Second, whereas traditional relative truth is a property of the contents of attitudes, assessment-sensitivity is a characteristic in the first instance of token assertoric utterances—though MacFarlane allows it to apply derivatively to the propositions expressed thereby (which he understands in the usual intuitive way as what are asserted, what are believed, what sustain relations of incompatibility and entailment, and so on).1Finally, MacFarlane's project is harnessed to the task of givingdescriptivelyadequate semantic theories for certain regions of discourse as actually practiced, rather than, at least in the first instance, to any specifically metaphysical controversies. Traditionally, truth-relativism is a player in thenormativedebates about realism and objectivity, one kind of paradigm of anti-realism, alongside and contrasting with non-cognitivism, error-theory, expressivism and the rest—and indeed a paradigm that in the modern (20th century) debates was largely discarded. MacFarlane, as it appears, intends no direct contribution to those debates

Abstraction and Epistemic Entitlement: On the Epistemological Status of Hume's Principle

The abstractionist programme of foundations for classical mathematical theories is, like its traditional logicist ancestors, first and foremost an epistemological project. Its official aim is to demonstrate the possibility of a certain uniform mode of a priori knowledge of the basic laws of arithmetic, real and complex analysis, and set theory (or as much set theory as anyone might soberly suppose to be indeed knowable at all.) It is a further issue whether a successful execution of the abstractionist project for a particular branch of mathematics would amount to a local vindication of logicism in some interesting sense of that term. Traditional logicism aimed to show that mathematical knowledge could be accomplished using only analytic definitions and theses of pure logic and hence is not merely a priori if logic is but is effectively a proper part of logic. Abstractionism, however, adds abstraction principles to the base materials employed in the traditional logicist project—principles that, at least in the central, interesting cases, are neither pure analytic definitions3 nor theses of pure logic as conventionally understood. Thus, whatever significance they may carry for the prospects for logicism, in one or another understanding of that doctrine, the epistemological significance of technically successful abstractionist projects must turn, one would suppose, on the epistemological status of the abstraction principles used, with any demonstration of a priority in particular being dependent on whether those principles can themselves rank as knowable a priori even if they are neither definitions, nor truths of logic, strictly understood. My primary focus here will be to critique this natural thought

Bolzano's Definition of Analytic Propositions

We begin by drawing attention to some drawbacks of what we shall call the Frege-Quine definition of analytic truth. With this we contrast the definition of analytic propositions given by Bolzano in his Wissenschaftslehre.If Bolzano’s definition is viewed, as Bolzano himself almost certainly did not view it, as attempting to capture the notion of analyticity as truth-in-virtue-of-meaning which occupied centre stage during the first half of the last century and which, Quine’s influential assault on it notwithstanding,continues to attract philosophical attention, it runs into some very serious problems. We argue that Bolzano’s central idea can, nevertheless,be used as the basis of a new definition which avoids these problems and possesses definite advantages over the Frege-Quine approach

Talking with Vultures

A Critical Study of Relativism and Monadic Truth, by Herman Cappelen and John Hawthorne. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. vii + 170.Argues that the contextualist account of the content of statements of personal taste offered by Cappelen and Hawthorne is not motivated by the shortcomings of the relativism to which they regard it as the only plausible alternative

Williamsonian Scepticism about the A Priori

We focus on Timothy Williamson’s recent attack on the epistemological significance of the a priori–a posteriori distinction, and offer an explanation of why, fundamentally, it does not succeed. We begin by setting out Williamson’s core argument, and some of the background to it and move to consider two lines of conciliatory response to it—conciliatory in that neither questions the central analogy on which Williamson's argument depends. We claim, setting aside a methodological challenge to which Williamson owes an answer, that no satisfactory such reconciliation is in prospect. Rather, as we then argue, —and it is on this that we base our overall negative assessment of his argument—Williamson’s core analogy is flawed by an oversight. We conclude with some brief reflections on Williamson’s ideas about the imagination as a source of knowledge. Our principal conclusion is only that Williamson’s argument fails to perform as advertised. A constructive case for confidence, to the contrary, that the intuitive contrast between a priori and a posteriori reflects something of fundamental epistemological significance is prefigured in our final section, but will not be elaborated here

Science Denial, Cognitive Command and the Theory-Ladenness of Observation: A Postscript for a Time of ‘Post-Truth’

One worrying aspect of contemporary Western Society is the increasing prevalence of instances of ‘Science Denial’ in popular culture. Examples include both cases where well-attested scientific hypotheses are rejected and conversely, where scientifically discredited ideas are stubbornly retained. The paper raises the question whether the kind of argument for an anti-realist conception of empirical scientific theory considered in my contribution to the inaugural issue of this journal could in principle provide intellectual succour for these trends. The discussion proceeds through an examination of the role of ‘takings for granted’ in all reflective enquiry to the conclusion that a trusting acceptance of the general credibility of informants is a precondition for the exercise of individual epistemic responsibility, and that in that context an acceptance of at least the empirical adequacy, if not the truth, realistically understood, of the teachings of scientists in general is rationally non-optional