Reply to John Turri

Abstract

In this article I develop Heidegger’s phenomenology of poetry, showing that it may provide grounds for rejecting claims that he lapses into linguistic idealism. Proceeding via an analysis of the three concepts of language operative in the philosopher’s work, I demonstrate how poetic language challenges language’s designative and world‐disclosive functions. The experience with poetic language, which disrupts Dasein’s absorption by emerging out of equipmentality in the mode of the broken tool, brings Dasein to wonder at the world’s existence in such a way that doubt about its reality cannot enter the picture.     

Wittgenstein on Dreaming and Skepticism

In this paper I aim to elucidate Wittgenstein’s claim that the so-called dream argument is senseless. Unlike other interpreters, who understand the sentence “I am dreaming” as contradictory or self-defeating, I intend to elucidate in what sense one should understand it as senseless or, more precisely, as nonsensical. In this sense, I propose to understand the above-mentioned claim in light of Wittgenstein’s criticism of skepticism from the Tractatus logico-philosophicus to his last writings. I intend to show that the words “I am dreaming” are nonsensical in the same sense as the alleged proposition “There are physical objects” or the expression of doubt about the existence of external objects.

     

Thomas Kuhn on the existence of the world

This article argues that Thomas Kuhn's views on the existence of the world have undergone significant change in the course of his philosophical career. In Structure, Kuhn appears to be committed to the existence of the ordinary empirical world as well as the existence of an independent metaphysical world, but realism about the empirical world is abandoned in his later writings. Whereas in Structure the only relative worlds are the scientific worlds inhabited by the practitioners of various paradigms, the later Kuhn puts the non-scientific worlds of particular groups or cultures on the same footing as the paradigm-related scientific worlds. The article shows that, on what Ian Hacking called the “new-world problem”, the later Kuhn has moved to a more radical antirealist position. It is also argued that the earlier and later solutions to the “new-world problem” face insuperable difficulties, which render Kuhn's account of scientific change implausible.     

Foundational beliefs and the structure of justification

I argue that our justification for beliefs about the external physical world need not be constituted by any justified beliefs about perceptual experiences. In this way our justification for beliefs about the physical world may be nondoxastic and this differentiates my proposal from traditional foundationalist theories such as those defended by Laurence BonJour, Richard Fumerton, and Timothy McGrew. On the other hand, it differs from certain non-traditional foundationalist theories such as that defended by James Pryor according to which perceptual experience is sufficient to justify beliefs about the external world. I propose that justification for propositions describing our perceptual experiences partially constitutes any justification we may possess for beliefs concerning the external world. In this way, our justification for beliefs about the physical world may only be inferential since it is grounded in any justification we have for at least one other proposition. This theory occupies an intermediate position between the two aforementioned foundationalist accounts, which allows it to sidestep problems that confront each of them.     

On the Possibility of Skeptical Scenarios

Abstract: It is generally accepted that skeptical scenarios must be possible to raise legitimate skeptical doubt. I argue that if the possibility in question is supposed to be genuine metaphysical possibility, the skeptic's reasoning does not straightforwardly succeed. I first motivate the metaphysical possibility requirement on skeptical scenarios: it's a plausible position that several authors accept and that a family of prominent views—sensitivity, safety, relevant alternatives—are committed to. I argue that plausible constraints in modal epistemology show that justification for believing that certain global skeptical scenarios are metaphysically possible rests on some justified beliefs about the external world, and that this undermines the skeptical argument. While there may still be local skeptical challenges, skeptics cannot appeal to the metaphysical possibility of skeptical scenarios to generate global external world skepticism.     

Sick and Healthy: Benatar on the Logic of Value

Abstract

David Benatar, in Better Never to Have Been, sets out two arguments in support of the view that coming into existence is always a net harm. Remarkably, the first argument seems to imply that coming into existence would be a net harm even if the only bad we experienced in our lives were a ‘single pin-prick’. This argument hinges on a purported asymmetry: that whereas the absence of pains in non-existence is good, the absence of pleasures in non-existence is not bad (rather than bad). It also hinges on the non-badness at issue here being relative (no worse than the presence of pleasures in existence) rather than intrinsic (value neutral). To establish the crucial claim that the non-badness of absent pleasures in non-existence is relative rather than intrinsic, Benatar constructs an analogy involving two people, Sick and Healthy. In this paper, I show the inaptness of the analogy and also provide positive reason to doubt the soundness of the argument as it stands. What emerges from this critical analysis of the analogy is a plausible theory of value at odds with Benatar’s argument as a whole.     

Logica dimostrativa

Most claims for the falsification of the Law of the Excluded Middle (LEM) rest on confusion or can be circumvented. A few of them, however, cannot. I concentrate on two of those, (a) cases involving conflicting criteria(border line cases) and (b) cases imposed by quantum discontinuity(no real state admitted between any two consecutive states). Nevertheless, despite the authenticity of both, closer analysis reveals these two modes of violating LEM to be direct opposites

In (a) LEM fails in the relation between language and the world, and not in the world when viewed independently of this relation; in (b) LEM fails in the world itself, if at all. In (a) LEM fails because the Law of Non-Contradiction fails first (mutually exclusive classifications are equally warranted). But in (b) LEM fails because The Law of Non-Contradiction holds and not otherwise

Finally, ‘a statement is neither true nor false’ and ‘two contradictory assertions are both false’ should be equivalent ways of expressing LEM’s failure. However in (a) one can express LEM’s failure by means of the former expression but not the latter, whereas, on the contrary, in (b) one can express LEM’s failure by means of the latter expression but not the former. These two statements of LEM’s violation are not equivalent. I attribute their non-equivalence to the fact that in cases (a) LEM fails in a semantic sense, while in cases (b) it fails in an ontological sense     

Critical Notices

Abstract

I argue that a practice can only be taken to be one of apparent rule following if it contains a practice of policing moves within the practice. So the existence of an apparently rule‐governed practice entails the existence of, what I call, a policing practice. I then argue that this entailment cannot be reconciled with a non‐factualist construal of the policing practice. Thus non‐factualism about the policing practice is false. Factualism about the policing practice entails realism about rules. So I conclude that we ought to be realists about rules. Finally I distinguish a position which I call ultra‐realism about rules and note that this too is a casualty of the view developed here.     

Impartial Morality and Practical Deliberation as First‐Personal

Bernard Williams questioned whether impartial morality “can allow for the importance of individual character and personal relations in moral experience.” Underlying his position is a distinction between factual and practical deliberation. While factual deliberation is about the world and brings in a standpoint that is impartial, practical deliberation is, he claims, radically first‐personal; it “involves an I that [is] intimately the I of my desires.” While it may be thought that Williams's claim implies an unpalatable Humean subjectivism, the present article argues that this does not follow: That first‐person practical deliberation is directed both by the “I of my desires” and by the world. Drawing on Peter Winch's argument against the universalizability of moral judgments and D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, the article argues that practical deliberations involve discovering value in the world, but that what is revealed about the world depends constitutively on the first‐person deliberations and decisions of particular agents.     

Three indications for the existence of God in causal metaphysics

With the emergence of modern physics a conflict became apparent between the Principle of Sufficient Cause and the Principle of Physical Causal Closure. Though these principles are not logically incompatible, they could no longer be considered to be both true; one of them had to be false. The present paper makes use of this seldom noticed conflict to argue on the basis of considerations of comparative rationality for the truth of causal statements that have at least some degree of philosophico-theological relevance and can be taken to indicate (not prove) the existence of God. The paper’s comparatively modest aim is to establish belief in the existence of God as a rational metaphysical option, not as a rational obligation. In its final section, enriched causal considerations lead to an indication (not proof) of God as that which guarantees the unified continuance of the physical world.     

A Butterfly Dream in a Brain in a Vat

Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream story can be read as a skeptical response to the Cartesian Cogito, ergo sum solution, for it presents I exist as fundamentally unprovable, on the grounds that the notion about “I” that it is guaranteed to refer to something existing, which Descartes seems to assume, is unwarranted. The modern anti-skepticism of Hilary Putnam employs a different strategy, which seeks to derive the existence of the world not from some “indubitable” truth such as the existence of myself, but from the meaning of some particular assertion I make. In this paper, I argue, however, that Putnam’s argument fails to deliver on the promise of showing the self-refuting nature of the skeptical hypothesis, as it relies on a double use of “I”, a fallacy of equivocation, reflecting an unsolved tension between the argument’s general premise, which is rather Zhuangzian in spirit, and his unwitting adoption of that unwarranted notion about “I”. I try to show further that the skepticism in Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream not only can be used to refute the proofs of the existence of the empirical I, but also is effective against accounts concerning the existence of the transcendental I.     

An Extended Lewis/Stalnaker Semantics and the New Problem of Counterpossibles

Abstract

Closest-possible-world analyses of counterfactuals suffer from what has been called the ‘problem of counterpossibles’: some counterfactuals with metaphysically impossible antecedents seem plainly false, but the proposed analyses imply that they are all (vacuously) true. One alleged solution to this problem is the addition of impossible worlds. In this paper, I argue that the closest possible or impossible world analyses that have recently been suggested suffer from the ‘new problem of counterpossibles’: the proposed analyses imply that some plainly true counterpossibles (viz., ‘counterlogicals’) are false. After motivating and presenting the ‘new problem’, I give reasons to think that the most plausible objection to my argument is not compelling.     

The Role of the Self in False Memory Creation

Summary

People will create false memories of childhood experiences. In this article, the research that demonstrates the creation of false memories is first described. Three processes that may be involved in memory creation are then outlined. First, individuals must accept a suggested event as plausible. Second, they construct an image and narrative of the false event. Third, they incorrectly attribute the source of the event to personal memory rather than external suggestion. We argue that the self plays a role in each of these processes. In addition, because memories are important components of the self, when memories change, the self changes as well.     

The Other Game: A Journey into the World of Warcraft

ABSTRACT

Many people today live out significant aspects of their internal lives online, in a digital world. Rather than analyze these worlds as mere metaphors for real life, it has become increasingly important for psychotherapists to be willing to participate in these worlds as they are described during the clinical hour. It is necessary to work within a paradox: An online fantasy world takes away from living life in the outer world; the world online offers the safety necessary to help the patient approach living his life in any world. This article explores a case in which I learn to work within the parameters of an online gaming experience—World of Warcraft?—to help a patient integrate split-off aspects of himself as he develops the capacity to own his desires. In this case, the game functioned as an “Eden project” (Hollis, 1998, p. 33), an earnest, if severely constricted, search for paradise lost. This article illustrates what was found—not Eden, but true Otherness.     

Magical agents,global induction,and the internalism/externalism debate

Externalism is the view that facts about one's history or past in the external world that bear on the acquisition of one's responsibility-grounding psychological elements are pertinent to whether one's actions are free and, hence, pertinent to whether one can be morally responsible for them. Internalism is the thesis that the conditions of moral responsibility can be specified independently of facts about how the person acquired her responsibility-grounding psychological elements. In this paper we defend a position that navigates between externalism and internalism: moral responsibility does not require that one have a past but it does require that one not have certain kinds of past.     

The skeptical paradox and the indispensability of knowledge-beliefs

Some philosophers understand epistemological skepticism as merely presenting a paradox to be solved, a paradox given rise to by some apparently forceful arguments. I argue that such a view needs to be justified, and that the best way to do so is to show that we cannot help seeing skepticism as obviously false. The obviousness (to us) of the falsity of skepticism is, I suggest, explained by the fact that we cannot live without knowledge-beliefs (a knowledge-belief about the world is a belief that a person or a group of people know that p, where p is an empirical proposition about the world). I then go on to argue for the indispensability of knowledge-beliefs. The first line of argument appeals to the practical aspects of our employment of the concept of knowledge, and the second line of argument draws on some Davidsonian ideas concerning understanding and massive agreement.     

Can relativism be reconciled with realism and causalism?

This paper deals with two fundamental assumptions of the Strong programme in the sociology of knowledge and the theoretical (im) possibility of their co‐existence with the general relativist tendency of this programme. The first assumption is the realist thesis introduced into the Strong programme through the materialist presupposition that sense experience is reliable and humans are able to learn about the regularities of the non‐social world in order to survive. The second assumption is the causal principle. Arguments developed in this paper lead to the conclusion that neither realism nor causalism can be reconciled with relativism. In both cases inconsistency is brought about by a tension between scientific perspective and relativism, between an external approach aiming at objective, universal, and causal explanation of what is studied, on the one hand, and the internal, relativist and reflexive, hermeneutical understanding of the human, on the other hand. The belief that the sociology of knowledge can be at the same time scientific, like the natural sciences, and relativist, like certain philosophies but not the natural sciences, is not sufficiently justified in the Strong programme.