A conditional theory of trying

What I shall do in this paper is to propose an analysis of ‘Agent P tries to A’ in terms of a subjunctive conditional, that avoids some of the problems that beset most alternative accounts of trying, which I call ‘referential views’. They are so-named because on these alternative accounts, ‘P tries to A’ entails that there is a trying to A by P, and therefore the expression ‘P’s trying to A’ can occur in the subject of a sentence and be used to refer to a particular, namely an act or event of trying. A conditional account such as mine avoids having to answer questions about those alleged particulars, for example their location and their causal relation to physical actions, or alternatively their identity to physical actions. In brief, the analysis I propose eschews any need to quantify over any sort of trying particulars. I both clarify the proposal and deal with five possible objections to it: (1) metaphysically impossible actions: (2) cases of finking and reverse-cycle finking; (3) the empirical emptiness of preventers and blockers; (4) proximate intentions and trying; and (5) alleged explanatory loss.     

Radical quotation and real repetition

In this essay I argue for a constructivist account of the entities composing the object languages of Davidsonian truth theories and a quotational account of the reference from metalinguistic expressions to interpreted utterances. I claim that ‘radical quotation’ requires an ontology of repeatable events with strong similarities to Derrida's account of iterable events. In part one I summarise Davidson's account of interpretation and Olav Gjelsivk's arguments to the effect that the syntactic individuation of linguistic objects is only workable if interpreters make richer assumptions about semantic properties than Davidson can tolerate. In part two I show that the objectivist account of syntactic objects which Gjelsivk's arguments presuppose is incompatible with one corollary of Davidsonian semantic indeterminacy: namely, the relativity of language to interpretative scheme. In place of this an account of radical interpretation is presented in which a quotational theory of metalinguistic reference furnishes the requisite relativity. In part three I argue that this account requires that particular utterance events must be repeatable to be radically quotable and give reasons why particularity and repeatability are not incompatible.     

Wittgenstein and criteria

An essay to develop some of Wittgenstein's remarks about the notion of ‘criteria’ and to give the concept clarity even at the expense of some features Wittgenstein claimed for it. This effort was made because of the important role ‘criteria’ plays in Wittgenstein's discussions of feelings and mental states, and it is hoped that a defense of ‘criteria’ will make those discussions more coherent. An attempt is made to relate this notion of ‘criteria’ to the definition and expression of mental states, following some of Wittgenstein's suggestions, and to rebut skepticism about other minds.     

A Reader’s Guide to al-Shāfiʿī’s Epistle on Legal Theory (al-Risāla)

Al-Shāfi?ī’s famous Epistle on Legal Theory (al-Risāla) has long been hailed as formative for the discipline of Islamic legal theory (u?ūl al-fiqh), but its structure and the wording of some of its most important passages remain a puzzle. This essay is intended as an aide for the study of the Risāla’s Arabic text. It surveys scholarly disagreements about the work’s significance and structure, and argues that it is best understood as a sequence of three distinct compositions, the second and third having been appended to address issues raised by opponents during discussions about the first. Each ‘book’ makes a separate argument, has its own internal structure, and is distinguished by terminological and stylistic features. Most of the article consists of a detailed analytical outline that spells out what point al-Shāfi?ī is trying to make with each of his concrete legal examples, and shows how they fit together into a sequence of three related but separately organized arguments.     

Wrongness and Reasons

Is the wrongness of an action a reason not to perform it? Of course it is, you may answer. That an action is wrong both explains and justifies not doing it. Yet, there are doubts. Thinking that wrongness is a reason is confused, so an argument by Jonathan Dancy. There can’t be such a reason if ‘?-ing is wrong’ is verdictive, and an all things considered judgment about what (not) to do in a certain situation. Such judgments are based on all the relevant reasons for and against ?-ing. If that ?-ing is wrong, while being an all things considered verdict, would itself be a reason, it would upset the balance of reasons: it would be a further reason which has not yet been considered in reaching the verdict. Hence, the judgment wasn’t ‘all things considered' after all. I show that the argument against wrongness being a reason is unsuccessful, because its main assumption is false. Is main assumption is that a consideration which necessarily does not affect the balance of reasons is not a reason. I also argue that there can be no deontic buck-passing account.     

Right and Wrong Reasons in Folk‐Psychological Explanation

Abstract

Davidson argued that the fact we can have a reason for acting, and yet not be the reason why we act, requires explanation of action in terms of the agent's reasons to be causal. The present paper agrees with Dickenson (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2007) in taking this argument to be an inference to the best explanation. However, its target phenomenon is the very existence of a case in which an agent has more than one reason, but acts exclusively becaue of one reason. Folk psychology appears to allow for this phenomenon. However, appreciation of ‘rationalization’ as a form of contrastive explanation reveals the existence of the Davidsonian possibility to the problematic. Claims that ‘I did it because of R₁, not because of R₂’ are entertained in folk psychology, and may be sincere or insincere. But as reports of conscious practical reasoning, even when sincere, they are not authoritative about the mechanism of motivation.     

Exemplification and Universal Realism

The relation between universal and particular is considered to be the Achilles’ heel of universal realism. However, modern universal realism with facts does not have the difficulties which traditional Platonic universal realism had. Its exemplification relation connecting particulars and universals in atomic facts is very different from Platonic participation. Bradley’s regress argument against the exemplification relation can be refuted in two different ways. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to avoid the assumption of an exemplification relation and thus to go without the Achilles’ heel altogether.     

Heidegger's Gods

The notorious difficulty of Heidegger's post‐Second World War discussions of ‘the gods’, along with scholarly disagreement about the import of those discussions, renders that body of work an unlikely place to look for a substantive theory of religion. The thesis of this article is that, contrary to these appearances, Heidegger's later works do contain clues for developing such a theory. Heidegger's concerns about the category of ‘religion’ are addressed, and two recent attempts to ‘de‐mythologize’ Heidegger's ‘gods’ are examined and criticized. The paper concludes by outlining four substantial contributions that Heidegger's later work makes to a phenomenological account of religion.     

J. S. Mill on Coolie Labour and Voluntary Slavery

This article discusses John Stuart Mill's voluntary slavery argument in On Liberty. The author shows that standard interpretations of the argument rely on the assumption that part of Mill's objection to voluntary slavery is the permanent nature of the decision. However, in correspondence, Mill also objects to voluntary ‘coolie’ labour contracts, which he regards as a form of slavery. This produces difficulties for standard interpretations of the voluntary slavery argument. Finally, the author provides a revised interpretation of Mill's argument to solve this problem.     

Integration,Community, and the Medical Model of Social Injustice

I defend an empirically-oriented approach to the analysis and remediation of social injustice. My springboard for this argument is a debate – principally represented here between Tommie Shelby and Elizabeth Anderson, but with much deeper historical roots and many flowering branches – about whether racial-justice advocacy should prioritise integration (bringing different groups together) or community development (building wealth and political power within the black community). Although I incline toward something closer to Shelby's ‘egalitarian pluralist’ approach over Anderson's single-minded emphasis on integration, many of Shelby's criticisms of integrationism are misguided, and his handling of the empirical literature is profoundly unbalanced. In fact, while both Shelby and Anderson defend the importance of social science to their projects, I'll argue that each takes a decidedly unempirical approach, which ultimately obscures the full extent of our ignorance about what we can and ought to do going forward. A more authentically empirical tack would be more epistemically humble, more holistic, and less organised around what I'll call prematurely formulated ‘Grand Unified Theories of Social Change’. I defend a more ‘diversified experimentalist’ approach, which rigorously tests an array of smaller-scale interventions before trying to replicate and scale up the most promising results.     

What Should A “Gibsonian Neuroscience” Look Like? Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

Ecological psychology has been criticized for ignoring the brain in its theory formation. In recent years, however, a number of researchers have started asking ecologically-inspired questions about the ways in which not only the embodied activity of the organism in its environment, but also the particulars of the organism's nervous system matter. This work has typically appeared in neuroscience journals, thereby potentially escaping the attention of ecological psychologists. The current article introduces a Special Issue of Ecological Psychology that aims to correct this problem. This issue brings together one empirical and six theoretical articles that develop ideas about the contributions of the nervous system to perception-action. We briefly review each of the articles, identify common themes, and point out the surprising variety in theoretical positions. It is hoped that this Special Issue will help guide discussions amongst ecological psychologists and (ecological) neuroscientists as they confront the question “What should a ‘Gibsonian neuroscience’ look like?”     

An Epistemic Argument for Conservatism

‘Epistemic’ arguments for conservatism typically claim that given the limits of human reason, we are better off accepting some particular social practice or institution rather than trying to consciously improve it. I critically examine and defend here one such argument, claiming that there are some domains of social life in which, given the limits of our knowledge and the complexity of the social world, we ought to defer to those institutions that have robustly endured in a wide variety of circumstances in the past while not being correlated with intolerable outcomes. These are domains of social life in which our ignorance of optimal institutions is radical, and there is uncertainty (rather than quantifiable risk) about the costs of error. This is an argument for the preservation of particular institutions, not particular policies or outcomes, and it specifically identifies these with the institutions that John Rawls called ‘the basic structure of society.’ The argument further implies that to the extent that there is any reason to change these institutions, changes should be calculated as far as possible to increase their ‘epistemic power.’     

On the Vicarious Humanity of Christ

In the recent literature there has been a spate of essays, articles and books discussing the question of whether Christ had a ‘fallen’ human nature. This article offers a new argument for the conclusion that Christ had a fallen but not sinful human nature that was ‘healed’ of its fallenness at the moment of assumption by the Word – what we shall call, the vicarious humanity of Christ view. This account concedes to the defender of Christ's ‘fallen’ humanity that his human nature is generated in a fallen state (and immediately cleansed of fallenness in the act of assumption). And it concedes to the defender of Christ's sinlessness the claim that Christ is without sin from the first moment of incarnation. This represents an important via media in the contemporary debate about this vexed christological topic.     

SEMANTIC EXTERNALISM AND A PRIORI SELF‐KNOWLEDGE

The argument known as the ‘McKinsey Recipe’ tries to establish the incompatibility of semantic externalism (about natural kind concepts in particular) and a priori self‐knowledge about thoughts and concepts by deriving from the conjunction of these theses an absurd conclusion, such as that we could know a priori that water exists. One reply to this argument is to distinguish two different readings of ‘natural kind concept’: (i) a concept which in fact denotes a natural kind, and (ii) a concept which aims to denote a natural kind. Paul Boghossian has argued, using a Dry Earth scenario, that this response fails, claiming that the externalist cannot make sense of a concept aiming, but failing, to denote a natural kind. In this paper I argue that Boghossian’s argument is flawed. Borrowing machinery from two‐dimensional semantics, using the notion of ‘considering a possible world as actual’, I claim that we can give a determinate answer to Boghossian’s question: which concept would ‘water’ express on Dry Earth?¹     

Compositionality and sandbag semantics

It is a common view that radical contextualism about linguistic meaning is incompatible with a compositional explanation of linguistic comprehension. Recently, some philosophers of language have proposed theories of ‘pragmatic’ compositionality challenging this assumption. This paper takes a close look at a prominent proposal of this kind due to François Recanati. The objective is to give a plausible formulation of the view. The major results are threefold. First, a basic distinction that contextualists make between mandatory and optional pragmatic processes needs to be revised. Second, the pragmatic theory can with stand a Davidsonian objection only by rejecting the importance of a distinction between primitive and non-primitive semantic items. Thirdly, however, the theory is now open to a worry about how it should be understood: either the theory consists in a very broad functionalist generalization about communication, which makes it explanatorily inert, or it boils down to a highly particularist view about linguistic meaning. Finally, I argue that Recanati’s notion of ‘occasion meaning’ is problematic and suggest replacing it with the notion of speaker meaning, which is explanatorily more basic.     

Take If from Me: The Epistemological Status of Testimony

Testimony consists in imparting information without supplying evidence or argument to back one's claims. To what extent does testimony convey epistemic warrant? C. J. A. Coady argues, on Davidsonian grounds, that (1) most testimony is true, hence (2) most testimony supplies warrant sufficient for knowledge. I appeal to Grice's maxims to undermine Coady's argument and to show that the matter is more complicated and context‐sensitive than is standardly rocognized. Informative exchanges take place within networks of shared, tacit assumptions that affect the scope and strength of our claims, and the level of warrant required for their responsible assertion. The maxims explain why different levels of warrant are transferred in different contexts.     

PERMUTATIONS AND FOSTER PROBLEMS: TWO PUZZLES OR ONE?

How are permutation arguments for the inscrutability of reference to be formulated in the context of a Davidsonian truth‐theoretic semantics? Davidson (1979 ) takes these arguments to establish that there are no grounds for favouring a reference scheme that assigns London to ‘Londres’, rather than one that assigns Sydney to that name. We shall see, however, that it is far from clear whether permutation arguments work when set out in the context of the kind of truth‐theoretic semantics which Davidson favours. The principle required to make the argument work allows us to resurrect Foster problems against the Davidsonian position. The Foster problems and the permutation inscrutability problems stand or fall together: they are one puzzle, not two. ¹ 1 Thanks are due to all with whom I have discussed this work. I have benefited in particular from conversations from Crispin Wright and Richard Heck, and from the comments of an anonymous referee for Ratio.
     

The role of removal and elimination in Nietzsche’s model of self-cultivation

ABSTRACT

In this paper I call into question the commonplace assumption in Anglophone Nietzsche scholarship that ideal psychological self-cultivation comes about solely by means of the sublimation of all of one's drives. While the psychological incorporation of one’s drives and instincts plays a crucial role in promoting what Nietzsche considers a higher self, I argue that some degree of removal and elimination of particular drives and instincts could be, perhaps necessarily is, involved in ideal cases. Yet I will suggest that we should not think of these cases as constituting ‘repressions’. I will seek to offer a better characterization of the discussions of productive removal and elimination in Nietzsche’s texts, and consider how they fit in his model of self-cultivation. Nietzsche’s texts demonstrate a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which certain kinds of removal and elimination can lead to greater integration for the would-be exemplary individual. My reading, I argue, helps to better understand the instances in the texts where Nietzsche valorizes the removal of particular drives and instincts.     

Priming Effects and Free Will

Abstract

I argue that the empirical literature on priming effects does not warrant nor suggest the conclusion, drawn by prominent psychologists such as J. A. Bargh, that we have no free will or less free will than we might think. I focus on a particular experiment by Bargh – the ‘elderly’ stereotype case in which subjects that have been primed with words that remind them of the stereotype of the elderly walk on average slower out of the experiment’s room than control subjects – and I show that we cannot say that subjects cannot help walking slower or that they are not free in doing do. I then illustrate how these cases can be reconciled and normalized within a Davidsonian theory of action to show that, in walking slower, subjects are acting intentionally. My argument applies across various experiments, including those of goal priming. In the final section I argue that the only cases in which priming effects are efficacious are so-called Buridan cases.