On Parfit’s Ontology

Parfit denies that the introduction of reasons into our ontology is costly for his theory. He puts forth two positions to help establish the claim: the Plural Senses View and the Argument from Empty Ontology. I argue that, first, the Plural Senses View for ‘exists’ can be expanded to allow for senses which undermine his ontological claims; second, the Argument from Empty Ontology can be debunked by Platonists. Furthermore, it is difficult to make statements about reasons true unless these statements include reference to objects in reality. These arguments show the instability of Parfit’s claimed metaethical advantages over naturalism.     

On Freedom’s Mystery

Philosophia - This paper argues that Peter van Inwagen’s argument for the mysteriousness of metaphysical freedom does not establish its conclusion. Van Inwagen’s argument involves the...     

On Norton’s dome

Norton’s very simple case of indeterminism in classical mechanics has given rise to a literature critical of his result. I am interested here in posing a new objection different from the ones made to date. The first section of the paper expounds the essence of Norton’s model and my criticism of it. I then propose a specific modification in the absence of gravitational interaction. The final section takes into consideration a surprising consequence for classical mechanics from the new model introduced here.     

On Love’s Robustness

Recently Philip Pettit (2015) has claimed that attachment, virtue, and respect are robust goods. Robust goods require not only the actual provision of certain associated ‘thin’ goods, but also the modally robust provision of these thin goods across a range of counterfactual situations. I focus my attention on Pettit’s account of the robust good of love, which, for Pettit, is the modally robust provision of care. I argue Pettit’s account provides neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for love. In place of Pettit’s account, I suggest an alternative account of love that distinguishes loving dispositions from loving actions.     

On Hans Reichenbach’s inductivism

One of the first to criticize the verifiability theory of meaning embraced by logical empiricists, Reichenbach ties the significance of scientific statements to their predictive character, which offers the condition for their testability. While identifying prediction as the task of scientific knowledge, Reichenbach assigns induction a pivotal role, and regards the theory of knowledge as a theory of prediction based on induction. Reichenbach’s inductivism is grounded on the frequency notion of probability, of which he prompts a more flexible version than that of Richard von Mises. Unlike von Mises, Reichenbach attempts to account for single case probabilities, and entertains a restricted notion of randomness, more suitable for practical purposes. Moreover, Reichenbach developed a theory of induction, absent from von Mises’s perspective, and argued for the justification of induction. This article outlines the main traits of Reichenbach’s inductivism, with special reference to his book Experience and prediction.     

On Recanati’s Mental Files

Abstract

In his book Mental Files (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), Francois Recanati develops a theory of mind and language based on the idea that Fregean senses should be identified with ‘mental files’, mental representations whose primary function is to store information about objects. I discuss three aspects of Recanati’s book. The first concerns his use of acquaintance relations in individuating mental files, and what this means for ‘file dynamics’. The second concerns his comments on a theory that I have elsewhere advocated, the ‘sequenced worlds’ or ‘multi-centered worlds’ theory. The third concerns how the mental file approach handles non-doxastic attitudes like imagining.     

On Axiomatizing Shramko-Wansing’s Logic

This work treats the problem of axiomatizing the truth and falsity consequence relations, ⊨ _t and ⊨ _f , determined via truth and falsity orderings on the trilattice SIXTEEN ₃ (Shramko and Wansing, 2005). The approach is based on a representation of SIXTEEN ₃ as a twist-structure over the two-element Boolean algebra.     

On Reichenbach’s Causal Betweenness

We characterize, by easily verifiable properties, abstract ternary relations isomorphic to the causal betweenness introduced by Hans Reichenbach.     

On Quine’s Translation Argument

Quine's translation argumnent figures centrally in his views on logic. The goal of this paper is to get clear on that argument. It can be interpreted as an argument to the effect that one should never translate somebody’s speech as going against a law of the translator’s logic. Key to this reading of the translation argument is the premise that one should never translate somebody's speech such that their speech is unintelligible. Ultimately, it is my aim to reject this reading. I argue that only a weaker conclusion—one that says “not most of the time” instead of the stronger “never”—should be attributed to Quine. Accordingly, I propose and defend a weaker version of the first premise that better coheres with the weaker conclusion of the translation argument. Instead of the claim that one should never translate somebody’s speech such that their speech is unintelligible I argue that we should only ascribe to Quine the claim that one should not most of the time translate somebody’s speech in a way that makes it unintelligible. I go on to  sum up the results of my discussion and respond to a criticism of my reading.

     

On Kim’s exclusion principle

In this paper we explore Jaegwon Kim’s principle of explanatory exclusion. Kim’s support for the principle is clarified and we critically evaluate several versions of the dual explananda response authors have offered to undermine it. We argue that none of the standard versions of the dual explananda reply are entirely successful and propose an alternative approach that reveals a deep tension in Kim’s metaphysics. We argue that Kim can only retain the principle of explanatory exclusion if he abandons his longstanding critique of nonreductive physicalism.     

On Luo Congyan’s Ethics

Luo Congyan put forward the idea that benevolence is the substance while righteousness is its function, which placed the intrinsic value of human beings on a more fundamental position and affirmed the unity of benevolent principle and universal norms from the perspective of the relationship between substance and function. The unity of benevolence and righteousness involves the connection between value and norms, and the latter relate to the relationship between morality and law in the broader sense. On the basis of the idea of using both benevolence and righteousness, Luo Congyan examined the relationship between morality and law. Corresponding to the emphasis on the role of both law and political power, Luo Congyan concerned himself with how to establish rational interpersonal relationships in various ways. Furthermore, Luo Congyan emphasized the significance of behavior in everyday life, while he affirmed that the universal principle should be followed. In this way, he developed the earlier Confucian thought. Translated from Studies in Ethics by Xiao Mo     

On Tichy’s determiners and Zalta’s abstract objects

It is not a common practice to postulate meaning entities treated as objects of some kind. The paper demonstrates two ways of introducing meaning-objects in two logics of natural language, Tichy’s Transparent Intensional Logic and Zalta’s Intensional Logic of Abstract Objects. Tichy’s theory belongs to the Fregean line of thinking, with what he calls ‘constructions’ as Fregean senses, and ‘determiners’ as object-like meaning entities constructed by the senses. Zalta’s theory belongs to Meinongian logics and he postulates a rich realm of abstract Meinongian objects to play the role of meanings. The paper analyses the mechanisms of reference in both conceptions and it offers a comparison of the mediating meaning-objects and the framework designed to expose this mediation in both theories. An attempt is made to expose how the treatment of the meaning entities depends upon the theory of meaning which is assumed.     

On Simmel’s conception of philosophy

Over the past few decades, the work of Georg Simmel (1858–1918) has again become of interest. Its reception, however, has been fairly one-sided and selective, mostly because Simmel’s philosophy has been bypassed in favor of his sociological contributions. This article examines Simmel’s explicit reflections on the nature of philosophy. Simmel defines philosophy through three aspects which, according to him, are common to all philosophical schools. First, philosophical reasoning implies the effort to think without preconditions. Second, Simmel maintains that in contrast to other sciences, only philosophy is oriented toward constructing a general view of the world. Third, Simmel claims that philosophical work worthy of the name creates a sphere of a typical way of being in relation to world, a third sphere that is between the personal and the objective. According to Simmel, what has made philosophy’s eminent figures great is that they have advanced a type of thinking and developed it into a particularly interesting form, and this type can still correspond with the way we experience the world. It is significant that these three aspects through which Simmel defines philosophical activity emphasize the forms of questioning, not the contents or objects of thought. Still, he thinks that an interaction with concrete examples is always required in order to make philosophy a meaningful activity. This stance is reflected in the wide variety of topics studied by Simmel himself. In his last works Simmel began to emphasize another aspect of philosophy, its nature as a living movement of thought related to fundamental human limitedness: just as life itself ceaselessly reaches beyond its present form, so philosophy constantly strives to overcome the preconditions of thinking.

On Habermas’s Critique of Husserl

Over four decades, Habermas has put to paper many critical remarks on Husserl’s work as occasion has demanded. These scattered critical engagements nonetheless do add up to a coherent (if contestable) position regarding the project of transcendental phenomenology. This essay provides a comprehensive reconstruction of the arguments Habermas makes and offers a critical assessment of them. With an eye in particular to the theme of intersubjectivity (a theme of fundamental interest to both thinkers), it is argued that Habermas’s arguments do indeed show up deficiencies in Husserlian phenomenology and yet that they do not succeed in proving that we must abandon the methods and tasks of phenomenological research. On the contrary, it is argued that phenomenological methods may well be needed in order to investigate certain philosophical questions that Habermas’s theory of communication has thus far only partially addressed.     

On Tarski’s Axiomatization of Mereology

Studia Logica - It is shown how Tarski’s 1929 axiomatization of mereology secures the reflexivity of the ‘part of’ relation. This is done with a fusion-abstraction principle that...