Deflating Compositionality

My approach to the compositionality of meaning is deflationary in two respects. In the first place it shows that there is no need for a Tarski-style truth-theoretic account of it, and thereby avoids the difficult methodological and technical problems that would have to be solved on such an account. And in the second place it shows that compositionality imposes no constraint whatsoever on theories of lexical meaning. On the first of these points I am opposing Davidson and the tradition in semantics that he instigated. On the second point I am opposing Fodor and Lepore who have denounced various accounts of lexical meaning (including the one I favour – the use theory) for not squaring with compositionality. My plan for this paper is to outline the deflationary approach, to sketch its advantages, and to defend it against objections that have been made by Davidson, Fodor and Lepore.     

Introspection and inference

In this paper I develop the idea that, by answering the question whether p, you can answer the question whether you believe that p. In particular, I argue that judging that p is a fallible yet basic guide to whether one believes that p. I go on to defend my view from an important skeptical challenge, according to which my view would make it too easy to reject skeptical hypotheses about our access to our minds. I close by responding to the opposing view on which our beliefs themselves constitute our only source of first-person access to our beliefs.     

Will it be me? Identity,concern and perspective

Self-reflexive or egocentric concern has been taken to present a serious problem for reductionist and eliminativist metaphysical accounts of personal identity. Philosophers have tended to respond in one of three ways: by continuing the search for a metaphysical account of identity that (prudentially if not morally) justifies egocentric concern; by accepting that egocentric concern can hold between persons who are not numerically identical; or by advocating the abandonment of egocentric concern altogether. All these approaches, however, distinguish between metaphysical ‘facts’ and affective responses to them. Exploring a well-known example from Bernard Williams, I argue that egocentric concern presents itself as irreducibly first-personal and as making its own set of numerical personal identity claims on the phenomenal level. Williams' example also points to the need to complicate the first/third person schema by factoring in a further distinction between present-tense and implicitly atemporal perspectives on the self. Once this move is made, we can see that the identity claims figured in first-person present-tense experience and those arrived at through metaphysical deliberation need to be distinguished. We should resist the temptation to privilege one perspective over the other in all instances, or to collapse them into a unitary account of selfhood.     

Introspecting Phenomenal States

This paper defends a novel account of how we introspect phenomenal states, the Demonstrative Attention account (DA). First, I present a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for phenomenal state introspection which are not psychological, but purely metaphysical and semantic. Next, to explain how these conditions can be satisfied, I describe how demonstrative reference to a phenomenal content can be achieved through attention done . This sort of introspective demonstration differs from perceptual demonstration in being non-causal. DA nicely explains key intuitions about phenomenal self-knowledge, makes possible an appealing diagnosis of blindsight cases, and yields a highly plausible view as to the extent of our first-person epistemic privilege. Because these virtues stem from construing phenomenal properties as non-relational features of states, my defense of DA constitutes a challenge to relational construals of phenomenal properties, including functionalism and representationalism. And I provide reason to doubt that they can meet this challenge.     

A nutritionist and an educator in professional horseracing: using reflection to create ‘My process’

The present paper provides the reflective accounts of a practitioner as both a lecturer in further and higher education, and as a performance nutritionist within professional horseracing. Adopting a first-person writing style and through the use of creative non-fictional anecdotes, I share critical accounts ‘in-action’ that shaped my initial teaching philosophy and my introduction to horseracing. These shared events culminate in me questioning my initial approach to performance nutrition within the harsh and challenging sport of horseracing, and despite being contrasting vocations, how ideologies from education can be adopted into the practice of nutrition. I close by reflecting upon my reflections and my initial trepidations, however, go on to conclude that engaging in these processes acted as a tool to think critically, self-assess and develop my own practices.     

Biohistorical Naturalism and The Symbol "God"

This article has two parts, as the title suggests. The first sketches what I call biohistorical naturalism, a naturalistic position in which it is emphasized that the historicocultural development of our humanity, particularly our becoming linguistic/symbolical beings, is as central to our humanness as the biological evolutionary development that preceded (and continues to accompany) it. Apart from such a biohistorical emphasis (or its equivalent), naturalistic positions cannot give adequate accounts of human religiousness. The second part suggests that, although it would not be consistent with biohistorical naturalism to continue thinking of God in the traditional supernaturalistic way as "the Creator," it would be quite appropriate to understand God as the ongoing creativity (of truly novel realities) manifest in the long history of the universe, particularly in the evolution of life on Earth.     

Two Kinds of Self-Knowledge

I argue that a variety of influential accounts of self-knowledge are flawed by the assumption that all immediate, authoritative knowledge of our own present mental states is of one basic kind. I claim, on the contrary, that a satisfactory account of self-knowledge must recognize at least two fundamentally different kinds of self-knowledge: an active kind through which we know our own judgments, and a passive kind through which we know our sensations. I show that the former kind of self-knowledge is in an important sense fundamental, since it is intimately connected with the very capacity for rational reflection, and since it must be present in any creature that understands the first-person pronoun. Moreover, I suggest that these thoughts about self-knowledge have a Kantian provenance.     

DAVIDSON AND FIRST-PERSON AUTHORITY: PARATAXIS AND SELF-EXPRESSION

Donald Davidson's explanation of first-person authority turns on an ingenious account of speakers' knowledge of meaning. It nonetheless suffers from a structural defect and yields, at best, expressive know-how for speakers. I argue that an expressivist strand already latent in Davidson's paratactic treatment of the semantics of belief attribution can be exploited to repair the defect, and so to yield a plausible account of first-person authority.     

The Greatest Priority for Genetic Counseling: Effectively Meeting Our Clients’ Needs 2014 NSGC Natalie Weissberger Paul National Achievement Award

Receipt of the 2014 Natalie Weissberger Paul (NWP) National Achievement Award was a highlight of my career. Thank you to all who nominated me for this prestigious NSGC recognition. I am humbled to join past NWP award winners many of whom are admired mentors, treasured colleagues and friends. I would like to express what a privilege it is to honor Natalie Weissberger Paul for whom this award is named. Twenty-nine years ago I co-edited a volume of the Birth Defects Original Article Series with Natalie summarizing a conference co-funded by the March of Dimes and NSGC (Biesecker et al., 1987). Natalie demonstrated her devotion to children with special needs through her work at the March of Dimes. As such I believe she would concur with the focus of my remarks on the partners in our work: our clients.     

Reid on Fictional Objects and the Way of Ideas

I argue that Reid adopts a form of Meinongianism about fictional objects because of, not in spite of, his common sense philosophy. According to 'the way of ideas', thoughts take representational states as their immediate intentional objects. In contrast, Reid endorses a direct theory of conception and a heady thesis of first-person privileged access to the contents of our thoughts. He claims that thoughts about centaurs are thoughts of nonexistent objects, not thoughts about mental intermediaries, adverbial states or general concepts. In part this is because of the common sense semantics he adopts for fictional-object terms. I show that it is reasonable for Reid to endorse Meinongianism, given his epistemological priorities, for he took the way of ideas to imply that his view about first-person privileged access to our mental contents was false.     

Biology and Awe: Psychology's Critical Juncture

Psychology stands at a crossroads. Even more than in the time of Rollo May, psychology faces a dilemma of alarming moral and scientific proportions. On the one hand, psychology is about to become a "biologism." This is a discipline-led by the high tech, consumerist model for living-that emphasizes measurement, materialism, and efficiency. On the other hand, psychology still has a chance-mainly through humanistic and depth orientations-to be a vibrant discipline. The question is, will we take this path to become the "queen of the sciences," as Nietzsche put it, or will we jeopardize 5,000 years of arts and humanities, centuries of depth analyses, and decades of awe-inspired practice. In this article, which echoes the spirit of my great friend and mentor, Rollo May, as well as my new book, Rediscovery of Awe, I will outline the stakes in this dilemma, the players involved-from biopsychology to humanism-and an alternative, conciliatory vision that I call "awe-based" psychology. The dilemma we face today is whether we will approach our subject matter with a sense of the magnificence and mystery of living (awe) or whether we will persist in making mole-hills of mountains, as Rollo once put it, and succumb to the glib, the well-packaged, and the instrumental; whether we will find the terms and resources to reflect life's profundity; or whether we will skirt its edges, resort to the commercial, and bow to the expedient. I will illustrate further how this dilemma need not be solved by an "us-them," "either-or" mentality but can be addressed dialectically with practical as well as visionary implications for our profession. Finally, I will summarize a few of these implications, both for our practices and contemporary lives.     

Mizpah of Benjamin

In this article I discuss the question of how to speak of the body in theology after Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of Christianity as nihilistic. A purely theoretical and a-historic approach, such as could be found in much doctrinal theology as well as philosophy after Descartes, runs the risk of objectifying the body through its representations of it. The phenomenological approach to embodiment would instead help theology to avoid treating the body as a thing and instead as a communicative and expressive medium for relationships with divinity as well as other human beings. A critical theological somatology after Nietzsche would have to speak of the body through genealogical accounts of the traces of the body in biblical and theological texts as well as in religious practices such as prayer, liturgy and hymns with the aim of correlating this theological tradition with the articulations and configurations of embodiment today.     

Mythos and Mental Illness: Psychopathy, Fantasy, and Contemporary Moral Life

Medical accounts of the absence of conscience are intriguing for the way they seem disposed to drift away from the ideal of scientific objectivity and towards fictional representations of the subject. I examine here several contemporary accounts of psychopathy by Robert Hare and Paul Babiak. I first note how they locate the truth about their subject in fiction, then go on to contend that their accounts ought to be thought of as a "mythos," for they betray a telling uncertainty about where "fact" ends and "fantasy" begins, as well as the means of distinguishing mental health from mental illness in regard to some social roles.     

Social Externalism and First-Person Authority

Social Externalism is the thesis that many of our thoughts are individuated in part by the linguistic and social practices of the thinker’s community. After defending Social Externalism and arguing for its broad application, I turn to the kind of defeasible first-person authority that we have over our own thoughts. Then, I present and refute an argument that uses first-person authority to disprove Social Externalism. Finally, I argue briefly that Social Externalism—far from being incompatible with first-person authority—provides a check on first-personal pronouncements and thus saves first-person authority from being simply a matter of social convention and from collapsing into the subjectivity of “what seems right is right.”

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Interpreting our emotions

This essay looks at the important, but often neglected, contribution that self-interpretation makes to emotional self-knowledge. We engage in acts of self-interpretation when (A) we try to understand what it is that we are feeling, or, relatedly, what it is that we ought to be feeling. On such occasions, we draw upon social and personal narratives as well as on the emotional conceptual repertoires at our disposal. We also engage in acts of self-interpretation when (B) we try to ascertain the meaning or significance of an emotion, treating it as a datum, or piece of evidence, upon which to make inferences or further Interpretations. Although we often seem to have first-person privileged access to our mental states, the third-person strategy of self-interpretation can be a valuable source of self-knowledge. I focus here upon the role that self-interpretation plays in providing us with knowledge about our emotional experiences.     

What's Formal about Formal Indication? Heidegger's Method in Sein und Zeit 1

Against the background of a recent exchange between Cristina Lafont and Hubert Dreyfus, I argue that Heidegger's method of “formal indication” is at the heart of his attempt in Sein und Zeit to answer “the ontological question of the being of the ‘sum’” (SZ, p. 46). This method works reflexively, by picking out certain essential features of one's first-person singular being at the outset of its investigation that are implicit in the question “what is it to be the entity I am?” On the basis of these features, various further a priori, ontological structures (care and temporality) that constitute one as a first-person singular entity then become accessible. Formal indication is thus formal in two senses: it officially designates or signals certain first-person singular phenomena as the topic of investigation, and it picks out features which define the ontological form of the entity in question. It is thereby the method by which a legitimately transcendental account of our being may be begun to be generated by each of us from out of our factical, immanent existence.