On Wright's Argument against Deflationism

I consider Crispin Wright's much discussed 'inflationary' argument against deflationism about truth. I identify a principle apparently involved in it, which I call Wright's principle, and present Wright's argument with the following dilemma. If Wright's principle is sound, the deflationist has a straightforward rejoinder to Wright's argument. If Wright's principle is unsound, the central part of Wright's argument, concerned with how 'true' commutes with the negation operator, is rendered superfluous. I conclude that Wright's argument is either a straightforward failure or completely otiose.     

Wright's Argument from Neutrality

In the first chapter of his book Truth and Objectivity (1992), Crispin Wright puts forward what he regards as 'a fundamental and decisive objection' to deflationism about truth (p. 21). His objection proceeds by an argument to the conclusion that truth and warranted assertibility coincide in normative force and potentially diverge in extension ( I call this the 'argument from neutrality'). This argument has already received some attention. However, I do not believe that it has been fully understood yet. In this short paper, I shall assess the cogency of Wright's objection in some detail. My agenda is as follows. First, I give what I believe to be an adequate rendering of the objection. Secondly, I reveal the real force of the neutrality argument and say thirdly why it does not, as Wright thinks, refute deflationism. Finally, I argue that Wright's insistence that truth is a 'substantial property' is uncongenial to the overall project of his book.     

先验论证

与逻辑和经验这两种众望所归的方法不同,先验方法并非普遍认可的方法(恐怕科学家就不承认或者认为不需要),而是部分哲学家推崇的特殊方法.先验方法所以特别值得一谈,是因为它是专属于哲学的方法,它是对思想和知识基础进行反思的主要技术,往往称为先验论证.如果知识基础不成问题,不需要反思,先验方法就没有用处.可是,事实上知识基础的问题层出不穷,因此,反思的知识就成为一种必要的特殊知识.     

病理诊断中的思维特点浅议

1　客体的图像性及主客体交错性病理诊断是病理医生对病变组织进行肉眼观察及 /或制成切片进行镜下观察 (主要的 )以判断病变部位、病变性质 ,即医生进行观察的对象是病理切片(在这里暂称显微图像 )。也就是医生在思维时以显微图像信息为主要依据进行认识理解、分析综合 ,是思维的第一客体。但病理诊断思维的对象不只是显微图像 ,还有病史、症状、体征等临床资料 ,因而思维的客体是集中各种信息于一体的患者。诚然 ,在分析显微图像时 ,病理医生是思维的主体 ,对显微图像材料详细分析、综合、判断。但再多的显微图像也只是病变发展过程中的瞬…     

On an Argument for Humility

Considerations upon the nature of properties and laws have led some philosophers to claim that the correct epistemic attitude with regards to the intrinsic properties of particulars is scepticism. I examine one particularly clear version of this line of argument, and contend that a serious form of scepticism is not established. However, I argue that the theories of properties and laws underlying the argument have unwanted metaphysical implications. These provide a stronger reason to jettison the analyses. I end by sketching an alternative view that avoids these difficulties.     

Douven On Putnam's Model-Theoretic Argument

The model-theoretic argument, which Putnam employs to argue againstmetaphysical realism, has faced serious objections of many realist opponents.Igor Douven in his recent paper offers a new interpretation of the model-theoreticargument, which avoids the previous objections. The purpose of this paper is toshow that Douven's reconstruction of Putnam's argument is not successful, andhence that the realist objections still stand.     

On the Issues of Transcendental Argument

The transcendental approach initiated by Immanuel Kant and Peter Strawson has been the most representative contemporary exponent of this line of thinking. Barry Stroud understands this form of transcendental argument as relying on an empirical “verification principle” and hence he rejects it as unnecessary. Nevertheless, Stroud’s view is only warranted to a certain extent. In some non-empirical objective spheres, including concepts and propositions as regards general metaphysics, moral metaphysics and philosophy of religion, the transcendental approach is still necessary. In terms of quality, transcendental approach belongs to “conceptual argumentation,” which differs from experience and logic with the fundamental characteristic of setting up a theoretical antecedent before further inquiry at the level of doctrine, i.e., concepts.     

On the Argument from Divine Arbitrariness

William Rowe in his Can God be Free? (2004) argues that God, if there is a God, necessarily chooses the best. Combined with the premise that there is no best act of creation, this provides an a priori argument for atheism. Rowe assumes that necessarily God is a ??morally unsurpassable?? being, and it is for that reason that God chooses the best. In this article I drop that assumption and I consider a successor to Rowe??s argument, the Argument from Arbitrariness, based on the premise that God does not act arbitrarily. My chief conclusion will be that this argument fails because, for all we know, there can be non-arbitrary divine choices even if there is no best act of creation.     

On the Cognitive Argument for Cost-Benefit Analysis

In a number of writings, Cass Sunstein has argued that we should use cost-benefit analysis as our primary approach to risk management, because cost-benefit analysis corrects for the cognitive biases that mar our thinking about risk. The paper critically evaluates this ‘cognitive argument for cost-benefit analysis’ and finds it wanting. Once we make distinctions between different cognitive errors and between different aspects of cost-benefit analysis, it becomes apparent that there are really two cognitive arguments, neither of which is successful as arguments for cost-benefit analysis as a whole. One argument shows that the analysis aspect of cost-benefit analysis is warranted because it corrects for false beliefs about the magnitudes of risk and for the neglect of some costs. While this is a sound argument, it does not provide an argument for other aspects of cost-benefit analysis. The second argument purports to show that commensurating and monetizing the values of the effects of regulation is warranted because it corrects for the use of widely diverging values of a statistical life. This argument fails because the use of widely diverging values of a statistical life is not a cognitive error: It is neither precluded by considerations of instrumental rationality, nor by the requirement of treating like cases alike.     

On an Insufficient Argument Against Sufficient Reason

In one of its versions, the principle of sufficient reason maintains that every true proposition has a sufficient reason for its truth. Recently, a number of philosophers have argued against the principle on the ground that there are propositions such as the conjunction of all truths that are 'too big' to have a sufficient reason. The task of this article is to show that such maximal propositions pose no threat to the principle. According to what is perhaps the most 'popular' version of the principle to sufficient reason (PSR), every true proposition has a sufficient reason why it is true. Peter van Inwagen formulates the principle as follows: 'for every truth, for everything that is so, there is a sufficient reason for its being true or being so.' Like many contemporary philosophers, however, he rejects the principle. My purpose here is to show that the main philosophical argument against PSR rests on a mistaken assumption. There is also a 'scientific' argument against PSR that turns on considerations of quantum indeterminacy; but that argument lies beyond the scope of this discussion.