Facts,values, and policies: a comment on Howard H. Kendler (2002)

In a recent article, Howard H. Kendler (2002) criticized Kenneth B. Clark and the other social scientists who worked in Brown v. Board of Education for polluting their science with value judgments. This article argues that Kendler's critique is misguided because it conflates a policy judgment with a value judgment. In addition, Kendler inconsistently applied his own standard of objectivity when he examined in the social science used in Brown.     

Interpretation,Reasons, and Facts

Donald Davidson argues that his interpretivist approach to meaning shows that accounting for the intentionality and objectivity of thought does not require an appeal, as John McDowell has urged it does, to a specifically rational relation between mind and world. Moreover, Davidson claims that the idea of such a relation is unintelligible. This paper takes issue with these claims. It shows, first, that interpretivism, contra Davidson's express view, does not depend essentially upon an appeal to a causal relation between events in the world and speakers' beliefs. Second, it shows that interpretivism essentially, if implicitly, depends upon interpreters' appealing to facts taken in in perception, and that such facts are suited to provide a rational connection between mind and world. The paper then argues that none of Davidson's legitimate epistemological arguments tell against the idea that experience, in the form of the propositional contents of perception, can play a role in doxastic economy. Finally, it argues that granting experience such a role is consistent with Davidson's coherentist slogan that nothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except another belief.     

Facts,Ends, and Normative Reasons

This paper is about the relationship between two widely accepted and apparently conflicting claims about how we should understand the notion of ‘reason giving’ invoked in theorising about reasons for action. According to the first claim, reasons are given by facts about the situation of agents. According to the second claim, reasons are given by ends. I argue that the apparent conflict between these two claims is less deep than is generally recognised.     

Truthmaking, Recombination, and Facts Ontology

The idea of truthmakers is important for doing serious metaphysics, since a truthmaker principle can give us important guidance in finding out what we would like to include into our ontology. Recently, David Lewis has argued against Armstrong’s argument that a plausible truthmaker principle requires us to accept facts. I would like to take a close look at the argument. I will argue in detail that the Humean principle of recombination on which Lewis relies is not plausible (independently of the issue of facts). Then I will show that the right truthmaker principle that vindicates facts is superior to the modified truthmaker principle that Lewis has proposed. This will lead into the topic of being and existence. It turns out that truthmaking and facts are plausible, well suited for one another, and very coherent with a plausible conception of being.     

Fission,Fusion and Intrinsic Facts1

Closest‐continuer or best‐candidate accounts of persistence seem deeply unsatisfactory, but it is hard to say why. the standard criticism is that such accounts violate the ‘only a and b’ rule, but this criticism merely highlights a feature of the accounts without explaining why the feature is unacceptable. Another concern is that such accounts violate some principle about the supervenience of persistence facts upon local or intrinsic facts. But, again, we do not seem to have an independent justification for this supervenience claim. Instead, I argue that closest continuer accounts are committed to unexplained correlations between distinct existences, and that this is their fundamental flaw. We can have independent justification for rejecting such correlations, but what the justification is depends upon much broader issues in ontology. There is no one‐size‐fits all objection to closest‐continuer accounts of persistence.     

Facts and Truth-making

This essay is a reflection on the idea of truth-making and its applications. I respond to a critique of my 1986 paper on truth-making and discuss some key principles at play in the Truth-maker Program as it has emerged over the past 25 years, paying special attention to negative and general truths. I maintain my opposition to negative and general facts, but give an improved account of how to do without them. In the end, I accept Truth-maker Maximalism and a weakened form of Truth-maker Necessitarianism, reject the assumption that truth-makers must be entities, and urge that the idea of a truth-maker be broadened and loosened so that it applies to anti-realistic as well as realistic truths.     

Nuclear Waste: Facts,Fears, and Attitudes1

This study examined the effects of a television documentary about the safety of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in the Northwest of England upon public attitudes. In a study of 805 respondents from four districts in the Southwest of England, we assessed attitudes and beliefs both before and after the documentary about Sellafield. Results indicated a significant attitude change in a more antinuclear direction. Respondents who had seen or heard about the events at Sellafield tended to be more antinuclear after the broadcast. Finally, respondents living close to the existing nuclear power stations in the Southwest of England tended to see the events at Sellafield as less serious than the remaining respondents. Furthermore, this difference in perceived seriousness between respondents living near a nuclear power station and the remaining respondents was much more pronounced in ratings of the environmental risks of the local nuclear power stations in Southwest England.