Against Fundamentality‐Based Metaphysics

Metaphysical views typically draw some distinction between reality and appearance, endorsing realism about some subject matters and antirealism about others. There are different conceptions of how best to construe antirealist theories. A simple view has it that we are antirealists about a subject matter when we believe that this subject matter fails to obtain. This paper discusses an alternative view, which I will call the fundamentality‐based conception of antirealism. We are antirealists in this sense when we think that the relevant matter fails to be constitutive of fundamental reality. The following discussion will not rely on any particular understanding of fundamental reality, covering conceptions based on grounding, naturalness and truthmaking, to name three salient ones. This paper argues that there are serious issues with fundamentality‐based metaphysics. It will be argued that: (1) the fundamentality‐based approach shapes and restricts our realist and antirealist views in unsatisfying ways, (2) that it is unable to handle the conflicting facts that lie across the envisaged ‘layers’ of the metaphysically structured world, and (3) that the methodological reasons for adopting the fundamentality‐based approach fail. The paper will conclude with a diagnosis of the discussed issues, identifying a common source.     

Transfer of Warrant, Begging the Question and Semantic Externalism

Martin Davies argues that 'limitation principles' block the transfer of warrant from the premises of a certain kind of argument to its conclusion. The class of arguments in question includes Moore's argument for the existence of the external world, and a popular style of argument which starts from two premises that are warranted by first-person authority and semantic externalism respectively, ending with a conclusion that does not, allegedly, admit of a priori justification. I argue that the relevant class of arguments can be shown to be unconvincing without appealing to any limitation principles, by showing that they beg the question against sceptical opponents. Principles limiting the transfer of warrant are not required in order to rebut the claim that first-person authority and semantic externalism are incompatible.     

II—On Modelling Vagueness—and on not Modelling Incommensurability

This paper defines and analyses the concept of a 'ranking problem'. In a ranking problem, a set of objects, each of which possesses some common property P to some degree, are ranked by P-ness. I argue that every eligible answer to a ranking problem can be expressed as a complete and transitive 'is at least as P as' relation. Vagueness is expressed as a multiplicity of eligible rankings. Incommensurability, properly understood, is the absence of a common property P. Trying to analyse incommensurability in the same framework as ranking problems causes unnecessary confusion.     

Vague Singulars,Semantic Indecision,and the Metaphysics of Persons*

Composite materialism, as I will understand it, is the view that human persons are composite material objects. This paper develops and investigates an argument, The Vague Singulars Argument, for the falsity of composite materialism. We shall see that cogent or not, the Vague Singulars Argument has philosophically significant ramifications.     

Semantic Presuppositions in Political Personhood: The Case of Discourse-Theoretic Rationality and Social Externalism

Questions about the mind and those about politics have conventionally found separate treatments in the philosophical literature. This paper proposes that crucial assumptions about the nature of the human person in politics actually turn on a compatible account of mental content. The particular relation that I will focus on here would be one between a discourse-theoretic model of persons in political ontology and social externalism in philosophy of mind. For the former, I’ll concern myself largely with Philip Pettit’s presentation of it and its expression in terms of intentional systems which, I’ll argue, renders itself to a version of social externalism that emerges out of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. An auxiliary consequence of this exercise is the diagnosis of a familiar problem that is associated with the notion of rule-following—I’ll argue that skepticism about rule-following is only tenable when one holds on to an internalist thesis about the individuation of mental content. This objection is dissolved once a theory of understanding is adopted which works with a distinctly externalist account of mental content. Finally, I will take stock of the implications of this exercise in terms of suggesting basic grounds for a philosophically interesting relationship between political ontology and philosophy of mind.

     

Privileged Self–Knowledge and Externalism: A Contextualist Approach

Many people argue that privileged self–knowledge is incompatible with semantic externalism. I develop a contextualist approach to self–knowledge, and examine what this approach should lead us to say about the apparent incompatibility. Though such contextualism compels us to re–think the notion of privilege associated with self–knowledge, it can contain the damage wreaked by the externalist doctrine.     

Externalism,Slow Switching and Privileged Self‐Knowledge1

Recent discussions of externalism about mental content have been dominated by the question whether it undermines the intuitively plausible idea that we have knowledge of the contents of our thoughts. In this article I focus on one main line of reasoning (the so‐called ‘slow switching argument’) for the thesis that externalism and self‐knowledge are incompatible. After criticizing a number of influential responses to the argument, I set out to explain why it fails. It will be claimed that the argument trades on an ambiguity, and that only by incorporating certain controversial assumptions does it stand a chance of establishing its conclusion. Finally, drawing on an analogy with Benacerraf's challenge to Platonism, I shall offer some reasons as to why the slow switching argument fails to reveal the real source of tension between externalism and privileged self‐knowledge.     

Self-knowledge, Externalism, and Skepticism: Brian P. McLaughlin

In recent years, some philosophers have claimed that we can know a priori that certain external world skeptical hypotheses are false on the basis of a priori knowledge that we are in certain kinds of mental states, and a priori knowledge that those mental states are individuated by contingent environmental factors. Appealing to a distinction between weak and strong a priority, I argue that weakly a priori arguments of this sort would beg the question of whether the skeptical hypothesis under assessment is true, and that the prospect of a sound strongly a priori argument of this sort seems dim.
'It still remains a scandal to philosophy... that the existence of things outside of us... must be accepted merely on faith, and that, if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof.'
(Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason)     

Self-knowledge, Externalism and Scepticism: David OwensScepticisms: Descartes and Hume

Contemporary discussion of scepticism focuses on the possibility that most or all of our beliefs might be false. I argue that the hypothesis of massive falsity and the associated 'problem of the external world' are inessential to the scepticisms of Descartes and Hume. What drives Cartesian and Humean scepticism is the demand for certainty: any possibility of error, however local, must be ruled out before we can claim either justified belief or knowledge. Contemporary philosophers have ignored this form of scepticism because they doubt that the demand for certainty can be motivated. But Descartes provides a sound motivation for this demand in the Meditations.     

From Experience to Metaphysics: On Experience‐based Intuitions and their Role in Metaphysics

Metaphysical theories are often counter‐intuitive. But they also often are strongly supported and motivated by intuitions. One way or another, the link between intuitions and metaphysics is a strong and important one, and there is hardly any metaphysical discussion where intuitions do not play a crucial role. In this article, I will be interested in a particular kind of such intuitions, namely those that come, at least partly, from experience. There seems to be a route from experience to metaphysics, and this is the core of my interest here. In order to better understand such ‘arguments from experience’ and the kind of relationship there is between this type of intuitions and metaphysical theories, I shall examine four particular cases where a kind of experience‐based intuition seems to motivate or support a metaphysical theory. At the end of the day, I shall argue that this route is a treacherous one, and that in all of the four cases I shall concentrate on, phenomenological considerations are in fact orthogonal to the allegedly ‘corresponding’ metaphysical claims. An anti‐realist view of metaphysics will emerge.     

Foundations of Mathematics: Metaphysics, Epistemology, Structure

Since virtually every mathematical theory can be interpreted in set theory, the latter is a foundation for mathematics. Whether set theory, as opposed to any of its rivals, is the right foundation for mathematics depends on what a foundation is for. One purpose is philosophical, to provide the metaphysical basis for mathematics. Another is epistemic, to provide the basis of all mathematical knowledge. Another is to serve mathematics, by lending insight into the various fields. Another is to provide an arena for exploring relations and interactions between mathematical fields, their relative strengths, etc. Given the different goals, there is little point to determining a single foundation for all of mathematics.     

Against Stepping Back: A Critique of Contextualist Approaches to the Semantic Paradoxes

A number of philosophers have argued that the key to understanding the semantic paradoxes is to recognize that truth is essentially relative to context. All of these philosophers have been motivated by the idea that once a liar sentence has been uttered we can ‘step back’ and, from the point of view of a different context, judge that the liar sentence is true. This paper argues that this ‘stepping back’ idea is a mistake that results from failing to relativize truth to context in the first place. Moreover, context-relative liar sentences, such as ‘This sentence is not true in any context’ present a paradox even after truth has been relativized to context. Nonetheless, the relativization of truth to context may offer us the means to avoid paradox, if we can justifiably deny that a sentence about a context can be true in the very context it is about.     

Semantic size does not matter: "bigger" words are not recognized faster

Sereno, O'Donnell, and Sereno (2009) reported that words are recognized faster in a lexical decision task when their referents are physically large than when they are small, suggesting that "semantic size" might be an important variable that should be considered in visual word recognition research and modelling. We sought to replicate their size effect, but failed to find a significant latency advantage in lexical decision for "big" words (cf. "small" words), even though we used the same word stimuli as Sereno et al. and had almost three times as many subjects. We also examined existing data from visual word recognition megastudies (e.g., English Lexicon Project) and found that semantic size is not a significant predictor of lexical decision performance after controlling for the standard lexical variables. In summary, the null results from our lab experiment--despite a much larger subject sample size than Sereno et al.--converged with our analysis of megastudy lexical decision performance, leading us to conclude that semantic size does not matter for word recognition. Discussion focuses on why semantic size (unlike some other semantic variables) is unlikely to play a role in lexical decision.     

Irigaray and Lyotard: Birth,Infancy, and Metaphysics

This paper examines the ways in which Luce Irigaray and Jean‐François Lyotard critique western metaphysics by drawing on notions of birth and infancy. It shows how both thinkers position birth as an event of beginning that can be reaffirmed in every act of initiation and recommencement. Irigaray's reading of Diotima's speech from Plato's Symposium is positioned as a key text for this project alongside a number of essays by Lyotard in which he explores the potency of infancy as the condition of philosophy itself. Despite this potency, however, Lyotard suggests that metaphysics is haunted by a melancholia that is inseparable from the limits of thought. I argue that Irigaray is able both to explain why western metaphysics is constitutively melancholic and to offer a shift in perspective that means we are not inevitably condemned to melancholia. The paper concludes that while Lyotard's account of infancy challenges the terms of western metaphysics from within, Irigaray's reassessment of our beginnings in birth offers the possibility of an alternative metaphysical horizon.     

Semantic priming,not repetition priming,is to blame for false hearing

Contextual and sensory information are combined in speech perception. Conflict between the two can lead to false hearing, defined as a high-confidence misidentification of a spoken word. Rogers, Jacoby, and Sommers (Psychology and Aging, 27(1), 33–45, 2012) found that older adults are more susceptible to false hearing than are young adults, using a combination of semantic priming and repetition priming to create context. In this study, the type of context (repetition vs. sematic priming) responsible for false hearing was examined. Older and young adult participants read and listened to a list of paired associates (e.g., ROW–BOAT) and were told to remember the pairs for a later memory test. Following the memory test, participants identified words masked in noise that were preceded by a cue word in the clear. Targets were semantically associated to the cue (e.g., ROW–BOAT), unrelated to the cue (e.g., JAW–PASS), or phonologically related to a semantic associate of the cue (e.g., ROW–GOAT). How often each cue word and its paired associate were presented prior to the memory test was manipulated (0, 3, or 5 times) to test effects of repetition priming. Results showed repetitions had no effect on rates of context-based listening or false hearing. However, repetition did significantly increase sensory information as a basis for metacognitive judgments in young and older adults. This pattern suggests that semantic priming dominates as the basis for false hearing and highlights context and sensory information operating as qualitatively different bases for listening and metacognition.