Debunking,supervenience, and Hume’s Principle

ABSTRACT

Debunking arguments against both moral and mathematical realism have been pressed, based on the claim that our moral and mathematical beliefs are insensitive to the moral/mathematical facts. In the mathematical case, I argue that the role of Hume’s Principle as a conceptual truth speaks against the debunkers’ claim that it is intelligible to imagine the facts about numbers being otherwise while our evolved responses remain the same. Analogously, I argue, the conceptual supervenience of the moral on the natural speaks presents a difficulty for the debunker’s claim that, had the moral facts been otherwise, our evolved moral beliefs would have remained the same.     

Finitude and Hume’s Principle

The paper formulates and proves a strengthening of Freges Theorem, which states that axioms for second-order arithmetic are derivable in second-order logic from Humes Principle, which itself says that the number of Fs is the same as the number ofGs just in case the Fs and Gs are equinumerous. The improvement consists in restricting this claim to finite concepts, so that nothing is claimed about the circumstances under which infinite concepts have the same number. Finite Humes Principle also suffices for the derivation of axioms for arithmetic and, indeed, is equivalent to a version of them, in the presence of Freges definitions of the primitive expressions of the language of arithmetic. The philosophical significance of this result is also discussed.     

Nonconceptualism,Hume’s Problem,and the Deduction

Lucy Allais seeks to provide a reading of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories which is compatible with a nonconceptualist account of Kant’s theory of intuition. According to her interpretation, the aim of the Deduction is to show that a priori concept application is required for empirical concept application. I argue that once we distinguish the application of the categories from the instantiation of the categories, we see that Allais’s reconstruction of the Deduction cannot provide an answer to Hume’s problem about our entitlement to use a priori concepts when thinking about the objects of empirical intuition. If the Deduction is to provide a response to Hume, Allais’s interpretation must be rejected.     

How to Prove Hume’s Law

Journal of Philosophical Logic - This paper proves a precisification of Hume’s Law—the thesis that one cannot get an ought from an is—as an instance of a more general theorem...     

Response to ‘Somatic Intentionality Bifurcated: A Sellarisan Response to Sachs’s Merleau-Pontyan Account of Intentionality’

ABSTRACT

This article advances a new analysis of stupidity as a distinctive form of cognitive failing. Section 1 outlines some problems in explicating this notion and suggests some desiderata. Section 2 sketches an existing model of stupidity, found in Kant and Flaubert, which serves as a foil for my own view. In Section 3, I introduce my theory: I analyse stupidity as form of conceptual self-hampering, characterised by a specific aetiology and with a range of deleterious effects. In Section 4, I show how this proposal meets the desiderata and I clarify how it diverges from existing accounts. My position is close to a ‘public health approach’, in contrast to the virtue/vice framework employed by Engel or Mulligan.     

Reasons to act and believe: naturalism and rational justification in Hume’s philosophical project

Is Hume a naturalist? Does he regard all or nearly all beliefs and actions as rationally unjustified? In order to settle these questions, it is necessary to examine their key terms (‘naturalism’ and ‘rational justification’) and to understand the character—especially the normative character—of Hume’s philosophical project. This paper argues (i) that Hume is a naturalist—and, in particular, both a moral and an epistemic naturalist—in quite robust ways; and (ii) that Hume can properly regard many actions and beliefs as “rationally justified” in several different senses of that term.     

Naturalism,Experience, and Hume’s ‘Science of Human Nature’

Abstract

A standard interpretation of Hume’s naturalism is that it paved the way for a scientistic and ‘disenchanted’ conception of the world. My aim in this paper is to show that this is a restrictive reading of Hume, and it obscures a different and profitable interpretation of what Humean naturalism amounts to. The standard interpretation implies that Hume’s ‘science of human nature’ was a reductive investigation into our psychology. But, as Hume explains, the subject matter of this science is not restricted to introspectively accessible mental content and incorporates our social nature and interpersonal experience. Illuminating the science of human nature has implications for how we understand what Hume means by ‘experience’ and thus how we understand the context of his epistemological investigations. I examine these in turn and argue overall that Hume’s naturalism and his science of man do not simply anticipate a disenchanted conception of the world.     

Hume’s Principle and Axiom V Reconsidered: Critical Reflections on Frege and His Interpreters

In this paper, I shall discuss several topics related to Frege’s paradigms of second-order abstraction principles and his logicism. The discussion includes a critical examination of some controversial views put forward mainly by Robin Jeshion, Tyler Burge, Crispin Wright, Richard Heck and John MacFarlane. In the introductory section, I try to shed light on the connection between logical abstraction and logical objects. The second section contains a critical appraisal of Frege’s notion of evidence and its interpretation by Jeshion, the introduction of the course-of-values operator and Frege’s attitude towards Axiom V, in the expression of which this operator occurs as the key primitive term. Axiom V says that the course-of-values of the function f is identical with the course-of-values of the function g if and only if f and g are coextensional. In the third section, I intend to show that in Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884) Frege hardly could have construed Hume’s Principle (HP) as a primitive truth of logic and used it as an axiom governing the cardinality operator as a primitive sign. HP expresses that the number of Fs is identical with the number of Gs if and only if F and G are equinumerous. In the fourth section, I argue that Wright falls short of making a convincing case for the alleged analyticity of HP. In the final section, I canvass Heck’s arguments for his contention that Frege knew he could deduce the simplest laws of arithmetic from HP without invoking Axiom V. I argue that they do not carry conviction. I conclude this section by rejecting an interpretation concerning HP suggested by MacFarlane.     

On Smilansky’s Defense of Prepunishment: A Response to Robinson

Philosophia - In a 2010 paper published in this journal, Robinson responded to Smilansky’s argument that compatibilists do not have a principled reason to reject prepunishment. Smilansky...     

Anorexia Nervosa and the Analyst’s Paternal Function: Response to Schoen,Zerbe, and Boulware

To expand upon the commentaries by Schoen, Zerbe, and Boulware (this issue), I clarify my thinking about the entropic body as a defensive structure. I then introduce my own theorizing about the relationship between agency and anorexia nervosa. In agreement with Schoen that these patients relegate their agency to the somatic realm, I highlight the aggressivity of that agency. Amplifying Zerbe’s recognition of the patient’s “father hunger,” I point out the importance of the paternal presence in helping these patients to modulate their aggression and, in the process, develop their agency.