Epistemic Normativity, Argumentation, and Fallacies

In Biro and Siegel (1992) we argued that a theory of argumentation mustfully engage the normativity of judgments about arguments, and we developedsuch a theory. In this paper we further develop and defend our theory.     

Epistemic Side Constraints and the Structure of Epistemic Normativity

In this paper, I develop the notion of an epistemic side constraint in order to overcome one of the main challenges to a goal‐based approach to the structure of epistemic normativity. I argue that the rationale for such side constraints can be found in the work of John Locke and that his argument is best understood as the epistemic analog to David Gauthier's argument as to the rationality of being moral.     

Epistemic Normativity and Cognitive Agency

On the assumption that genuinely normative demands concern things connected in some way to our agency, i.e. what we exercise in doing things with or for reasons, epistemologists face an important question: are there genuine epistemic norms governing belief, and if so where in the vicinity of belief are we to find the requisite cognitive agency? Extant accounts of cognitive agency tend to focus on belief itself or the event of belief‐formation to answer this question, to the exclusion of the activity of maintaining a system of beliefs. This paper argues that a full account of epistemic normativity will need to make sense of this activity as a core locus of cognitive agency. This idea is used to motivate the conclusion that one important and often overlooked kind of epistemic norms is the kind of norms governing the various cognitive activities by which we check, sustain, and adjust our belief systems.     

The Sources of Political Normativity: the Case for Instrumental and Epistemic Normativity in Political Realism

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - This article argues that political realists have at least two strategies to provide distinctively political normative judgements that have nothing to do with...     

Property Dualism,Epistemic Normativity and the Limits of Naturalism*

This paper examines some consequences of the (quasi‐)epiphenomenalism implied by a property dualistic view of phenomenal consciousness. The focus is upon the variation of phenomenal content over time. A thought‐experiment is constructed to support two claims. The weaker claim exhibits an incompatibility which arises in certain logically possible situations between a conscious subject’s epistemic norms and the requirement that one be aware of one’s conscious experience. This could be interpreted as providing some epistemic grounds for the postulation of bridging laws between the physical/functional and phenomenal domains. The stronger claim has it that the ontology of property dualism is not properly able to account for the certainty I have of being phenomenally conscious. The problem is viewed as resulting from the neglect of the intensional context involved in a proper representation of the argument for property dualism. It is argued that only a transcendental move can do justice to this certainty I have.     

The Normativity of Meaning: Guidance and Justification

Abstract

The thesis that meaning is normative has come under much scrutiny of late. However, there are aspects of the view that have received comparatively little critical attention which centre on meaning’s capacity to guide and justify linguistic action. Call such a view ‘justification normativity’ (JN). I outline Zalabardo’s (1997) account of JN and his corresponding argument against reductive-naturalistic meaning-factualism and argue that the argument presents a genuine challenge to account for the guiding role of meaning in linguistic action. I then present a proposal regarding how this challenge may be met. This proposal is then compared to recent work by Ginsborg (2011; 2012), who has outlined an alternative view of the normativity of meaning that explicitly rejects the idea that meanings guide and justify linguistic use. I outline how Ginsborg utilises this notion of normativity in order to provide a positive account of what it is to mean something by an expression which is intended to serve as a response to Kripke’s semantic sceptic. Finally, I argue that Ginsborg’s response to the sceptic is unsatisfactory, and that, insofar as it is able to preserve our intuitive view of meaning’s capacity to guide linguistic action, my proposal is to be preferred.     

Inferentialism and the Normativity of Meaning

There may be various reasons for claiming that meaning is normative, and additionally, very different senses attached to the claim. However, all such claims have faced fierce resistance from those philosophers who insist that meaning is not normative in any nontrivial sense of the word. In this paper I sketch one particular approach to meaning claiming its normativity and defend it against the anti-normativist critique: namely the approach of Brandomian inferentialism. However, my defense is not restricted to inferentialism in any narrow sense for it encompasses a much broader spectrum of approaches to meaning, connected with the Wittgensteinian and especially Sellarsian view of language as an essentially rule-governed enterprise; and indeed I refrain from claiming that the version of inferentialism I present here is in every detail the version developed by Brandom.     

Identification,Meaning, and the Normativity of Social Roles

Abstract: We are all familiar with the way in which social roles, such as mother, father, professor, club football coach, citizen, and so on, confront us with clusters of duties that purport to bind us. Though we generally experience these role‐duties as normatively binding, we might question this. What reason do role‐occupants have for conforming to the duties that define their roles? I argue that the agent who identifies with her role thereby has a weighty and important justificatory reason for conforming to the role's defining duties: namely, the identifying agent realizes the fundamental goods of meaning and self‐determination by doing so. This is an important normative ground of role‐duties because it, unlike the grounds of natural duty or voluntary assumption, ensures that the duties it grounds are not alien impositions but rather are elements of the identifying agent's wellbeing. I also argue that role‐identification provides a reason that shares many of the characteristics of a moral reason, and I argue that role‐identification in tandem with the principle of fair play grounds a moral duty to conform to one's role‐duties.     

Correction to: The Sources of Political Normativity: the Case for Instrumental and Epistemic Normativity in Political Realism

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice -     

Brandom on the Normativity of Meaning

Brandom's "inferentialism"–his theory that an expression's or state's contentfulness consists in its use or occurrence being governed by inferential norms–proves dubiously compatible with his own deflationary approach to underwriting the objectivity of intentional content (an approach that is one of the theory's essential presuppositions). This is because a deflationist argument, adapted from the case of truth to that of correct inference , undermines the key criterion of adequacy Brandom employs in motivating inferentialism. Once that constraint is abandoned, furthermore, Brandom is left vulnerable to the charge that his inferential norms are unavailable to play the meaning-constituting role he claims for them. Yet Brandom's account of meaning tacitly intertwines inferentialism with a separate explanatory project, one that in explaining the pragmatic significance of meaning-attributions does yield a convincing construal of the claim that the concept of meaning is a normative one.     

Deontic vs. Nondeontic Conceptions of Epistemic Justification

Theories of epistemic justification are usually described as belonging to either deontological or nondeontological categories of justification with the former construing the concept of justification as involving the fulfillment of epistemic duty. Despite being the dominant view among traditional epistemologists, the deontological conception has been subjected to severe criticisms in the current literature for failing, among others, to do justice to the (alleged) truth-conducive character of epistemic justification. In this paper I set out to show that there is something deeply unsatisfying about the way these different conceptions of justification are usually introduced and contrasted with each other leaving it unclear just what it is that renders a particular conception deontological. In particular I look at Alston's treatment of the issue, and show that his reasons for rejecting the deontological conception involve question-begging assumptions demonstrating, at best, the possibility of its divergence from truth-conductive justification. Far from being able to settle the issue one way or another, the arguments, I shall suggest actually seem to show some sort of tolerant pluralism in justification theory to be a live option. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

意义的非事实论与规范性——规则遵循问题的语义分析

规则遵循悖论(the rule-following paradox)及其相关问题源于维特根斯坦的《哲学研究》,它是后期维特根斯坦论述语言的运用及其意义方面的一个重要议题。克里普克在《维特根斯坦论规则和私人语言》中对该问题进行了系统阐释并提出了怀疑论解决方案。在这一解决方案中,他暂且接受意义归因中语义事实的缺失和怀疑论论证的结论,同时拒绝扩展这种论证而导致彻底的意义怀疑论。     

Skookumchuck,Kiidk'yaas,Gibbard: normativity,meaning, and idealization (critical notice of Allan Gibbard Meaning and Normativity)

Gibbard argues that ‘meaning is normative’. He explains the claim with an account of the normative which bases it on the process of planning, taken in part as issuing instructions to oneself. It seems to entail that the right kind of plans make norms. One ought to continue adding with plus rather than quus in a Kripkenstein horror story. I focus on Gibbard's characterization of normativity: it is not what one might expect. The main purpose of this review article is to present the way of understanding normativity that makes most sense of what he says, and which makes some otherwise implausible assertions defensible and perhaps even true. I give reasons for thinking that Gibbard's understanding of normativity-through-plans cannot do the work he wants it to. I also argue that he is onto something right, and it opens interesting new questions.     

Perspectivity,Intersubjectivity, Normativity: On Malpas’s Place and Experience

ABSTRACT

The publication of the revised edition of Jeff Malpas’s Place and Experience in 2018 gives the opportunity to reconsider this book (originally published in 1999) and the debates that it originally sparked. In this article, I focus on Malpas’s characterization of space as subjective, allocentric, and objective and I approach them in conjunction with other notions and considerations that, I suggest, are useful to expand and complement Malpas’s central theses. I approach the concept of subjective space in conjunction with the notion of coenaesthesis and with Heidegger’s notion of mineness (Jemeinigkeit); the concept of allocentric space by addressing Malpas’s critique of Nagel’s notion of detachment; and the concept of objective space through a discussion of the issue of perspective in light of Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Leibniz’s notion of ‘géométral’ (geometrized projection). These analyses pave the way for a discussion of some possible normative implications of the conception of place and subjectivity that emerges from Malpas’s Place and Experience against the background of Heidegger’s thought, and particularly in relation to Heidegger’s notion of dwelling (Wohnen).     

On the Normativity of Intentions

Suppose you intend now to φ at some future time t. However, when t has come you do not φ. Something has gone wrong. This failing is not just a causal but also a normative failing. This raises the question how to characterize this failing. I discuss three alternative views. On the first view, the fact that you do not execute your intention to φ is blameworthy only if the balance of reasons pointed to φ-ing. The fact that you intended to φ does not add to the reasons for φ-ing at t. On the second view, the fact that you do not execute your intention to φ is blameworthy because you violate a requirement of rationality. Both these views have in common that they deny that intending to φ at t creates a reason to φ at t. The third alternative, the one I defend, claims that you often create reasons to φ by intending to φ.     

On Three Dogmas of Normativity

Ruth Chang argues against three dogmas of normativity. Her argument, as least about the first two, is defensible, but defensible on a naturalistic account of normativity that she may not find congenial.