Moral intuitionism and disagreement

According to moral intuitionism, at least some moral seeming states are justification-conferring. The primary defense of this view currently comes from advocates of the standard account, who take the justification-conferring power of a moral seeming to be determined by its phenomenological credentials alone. However, the standard account is vulnerable to a problem. In brief, the standard account implies that moral knowledge is seriously undermined by those commonplace moral disagreements in which both agents have equally good phenomenological credentials supporting their disputed moral beliefs. However, it is implausible to think that commonplace disagreement seriously undermines moral knowledge, and thus it is implausible to think that the standard account of moral intuitionism is true.     

Negationless intuitionism

The present paper deals with natural intuitionistic semantics for intuitionistic logic within an intuitionistic metamathematics. We show how strong completeness of full first order logic fails. We then consider a negationless semantics à la Henkin for second order intuitionistic logic. By using the theory of lawless sequences we prove that, for such semantics, strong completeness is restorable. We argue that lawless negationless semantics is a suitable framework for a constructive structuralist interpretation of any second order formalizable theory (classical or intuitionistic, contradictory or not).     

Conceptions of truth in intuitionism

Intuitionism's disagreement with classical logic is standardly based on its specific understanding of truth. But different intuitionists have actually explicated the notion of truth in fundamentally different ways. These are considered systematically and separately, and evaluated critically. It is argued that each account faces difficult problems. They all either have implausible consequences or are viciously circular.     

Dummett's intuitionism is not strict finitism

Michael Dummett's anti-realism is founded on the semantics of natural language which, he argues, can only be satisfactorily given in mathematics by intuitionism. It has been objected that an analog of Dummett's argument will collapse intuitionism into strict finitism. My purpose in this paper is to refute this objection, which I argue Dummett does not successfully do. I link the coherence of strict finitism to a view of confirmation — that our actual practical abilities cannot confirm we know what would happen if we could compute impracticably vast problems. But to state his case, the strict finitists have to suppose that we grasp the truth conditions of sentences we can't actually decide. This comprehension must be practically demonstrable, or the analogy with Dummett's argument fails. So, our actual abilities must be capable of confirming that we know what would be the case if actually undecidable sentences were true, contradicting the view of confirmation. I end by considering objections.I especially want to thank Alex George and Philip Kitcher for their help on this paper. I'd also like to thank the members of the Propositional Attitudes Task Force, Jane Braaten, Jay Garfield, Lee Bowie, Murray Kitely and Tom Tymoczko. My thanks also to Peter Godfrey-Smith and the anonymous reviewers of Synthese, one of whom was particularly helpful.     

Validity and Necessity

In this paper I argue against the commonly received view that Kripke’s formal Possible World Semantics (PWS) reflects the adoption of a metaphysical interpretation of the modal operators. I consider in detail Kripke’s three main innovations vis-à-vis Carnap’s PWS: a new view of the worlds, variable domains of quantification, and the adoption of a notion of universal validity. I argue that all these changes are driven by the natural technical development of the model theory and its related notion of validity: they are dictated by merely formal considerations, not interpretive concerns. I conclude that Kripke’s model theoretic semantics does not induce a metaphysical reading of necessity, and is formally adequate independently of the specific interpretation of the modal operators.     

Validity and Interpretation

This paper claims that there is a plausible sense in which validity is a matter of truth preservation relative to interpretations of the sentences that occur in an argument, although it is not the sense one might have in mind. §1 outlines three independent problems: the first is the paradox of the sorites, the second concerns the fallacy of equivocation, and the third arises in connection with the standard treatment of indexicals. §2 elucidates the claim about validity, while §§3–5 show how the three problems outlined can be handled in accordance with it. §6 explains how the claim squares with the traditional idea that validity is related to formality, and in particular with a broadly accepted definition based on that idea, the model-theoretic definition of logical consequence. Unlike other works on the subject, this paper does not focus on necessity. It is not its intention to provide a characterization of necessity that conforms to some ideal of rigour or to some pre-theoretical understanding of validity. What follows can be taken as conditional on the assumption that such a characterization can be provided.     

Meta-Analysis and Construct Validity

It is argued that meta-analysis is a fundamental tool in any construct valida- tion effort. Meta-analytic resuits provide the stable and precise estimates of relationships between variables that are needed for causal modeling and the- ory development. A review of the application of meta-analysis to the area of employment validities is used to show the theoretical and applied benefits this tool can bring to construct validation research. The case is also made that meta-analyses focused on the criterion side of prediction equations would lead to enhanced knowledge of the construct validity of criteria.     

Model Theory and Validity

Synthese - Take a formula of first-order logic which is a logical consequence of some other formulae according to model theory, and in all those formulae replace schematic letters with English...     

Conceptual Complexity and Construct Validity

Despite a century of methodological and conceptual advances in the technology of psychosocial measurement, poor correspondence between indicators and the constructs they are intended to represent remains a limiting factor to the accumulation of scientific knowledge. Longstanding conventions in measurement may contribute to the failure to develop optimal criteria. These conventions include the focus on complex over simple constructs and the use of multi-item measures of disparate content to represent those constructs. Several arguments suggest that such a measurement model compromises the potential for developing measures that accurately reflect psychosocial phenomena. The article concludes with some preliminary suggestions concerning an alternative model that may address this construct validity problem more effectively.     

Validity Concepts in Proof-theoretic Semantics

The standard approach to what I call “proof-theoretic semantics”, which is mainly due to Dummett and Prawitz, attempts to give a semantics of proofs by defining what counts as a valid proof. After a discussion of the general aims of proof-theoretic semantics, this paper investigates in detail various notions of proof-theoretic validity and offers certain improvements of the definitions given by Prawitz. Particular emphasis is placed on the relationship between semantic validity concepts and validity concepts used in normalization theory. It is argued that these two sorts of concepts must be kept strictly apart.     

Research Validity Scales for the NEO-PI-R: Additional Evidence for Reliability and Validity

We examined the reliability and validity of the research validity scales (Schinka, Kinder, & Kremer, 1997) for the NEO-Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R) in a clinical sample. The Negative Presentation Management (NPM) and Positive Presentation Management (PPM) scales were found to have satisfactory internal consistency reliability. Support for the validity of these scales was provided by the pattern of convergent and discriminant correlations with respective Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) validity scales. Finally, PAI profiles of individuals with invalid NPM scores were found to differ significantly from those with valid NPM scores. Comparisons of the invalid profiles with profiles from other clinical samples provided additional support for the use of the NPM scale as a measure of negative impression management.     

Interpreting quantification

Alternative readings of quantification are considered. The absence of an unequivocal translation into ordinary speech is noted. Some examples are cited which, in the opinion of the author, are a result of equivocal readings of quantification, or unnecessarily restrictive readings which obscure its primary function.