The Fictionalist’s Attitude Problem

According to John Mackie, moral talk is representational (the realists go that bit right) but its metaphysical presuppositions are wildly implausible (the non-cognitivists got that bit right). This is the basis of Mackie’s now famous error theory: that moral judgments are cognitively meaningful but systematically false. Of course, Mackie went on to recommend various substantive moral judgments, and, in the light of his error theory, that has seemed odd to a lot of folk. Richard Joyce has argued that Mackie’s approach can be vindicated by a fictionalist account of moral discourse. And Mark Kalderon has argued that moral fictionalism is attractive quite independently of Mackie’s error-theory. Kalderon argues that the Frege–Geach problem shows that we need moral propositions, but that a fictionalist can and should embrace propositional content together with a non-cognitivist account of acceptance of a moral proposition. Indeed, it is clear that any fictionalist is going to have to postulate more than one kind of acceptance attitude. We argue that this double-approach to acceptance generates a new problem – a descendent of Frege–Geach – which we call the acceptance–transfer problem. Although we develop the problem in the context of Kalderon’s version of non-cognitivist fictionalism, we show that it is not the non-cognitivist aspect of Kalderon’s account that generates the problem. A closely related problem surfaces for the more typical variants of fictionalism according to which accepting a moral proposition is believing some closely related non-moral proposition. Fictionalists of both stripes thus have an attitude problem.

On Birkhoff’s Common Abstraction Problem

In his milestone textbook Lattice Theory, Garrett Birkhoff challenged his readers to develop a ??common abstraction?? that includes Boolean algebras and latticeordered groups as special cases. In this paper, after reviewing the past attempts to solve the problem, we provide our own answer by selecting as common generalization of ${\mathcal{B} \mathcal{A}}$ and ${\mathcal{L} \mathcal{G}}$ their join ${\mathcal{B} \mathcal{A} \vee \mathcal{L} \mathcal{G}}$ in the lattice of subvarieties of ${\mathcal{F} \mathcal{L}}$ (the variety of FL-algebras); we argue that such a solution is optimal under several respects and we give an explicit equational basis for ${\mathcal{B} \mathcal{A} \vee \mathcal{L} \mathcal{G}}$ relative to ${\mathcal{F} \mathcal{L}}$ . Finally, we prove a Holland-type representation theorem for a variety of FL-algebras containing ${\mathcal{B} \mathcal{A} \vee \mathcal{L} \mathcal{G}}$ .     

Benjamin’s Children’s Theater and the Problem of Pure Means

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

The Frege-Geach Problem and Blackburn’s Expressivism

Philosophia - Blackburn has outlined a formal account for moral expressivism, and we argued that the moral Frege-Geach problem can be solved formally by appending two rules for the boo-operator...     

Knowledge and Power in Plato’s Political Thought

Abstract

Plato justifies the concentration and exercise of power for persons endowed with expertise in political governance. This article argues that this justification takes two distinctly different sets of arguments. The first is what I shall call his ‘ideal political philosophy’ described primarily in the Republic as rule by philosopher‐kings wielding absolute authority over their subjects. Their authority stems solely from their comprehension of justice, from which they make political judgements on behalf of their city‐state. I call the second set of arguments Plato’s ‘practical political philosophy’ underlying his later thought, where absolute rule by philosopher‐kings is undermined by the impure character of all political knowledge. Whereas the complete comprehension of justice sanctions the absolute political power of those with this expertise, partial knowledge of justice disallows for such a large investment of power. Plato’s practical political philosophy argues for a mixed theory of governance fusing the institutions of monarchy with democracy in the best practical city‐state. Thus, Plato comes to realize the insurmountable difficulties of his ideal political thought, preferring a more practical political philosophy instead.     

Children’s Knowledge of Ellipsis Constructions in Mandarin Chinese

This study investigated 4-year-old children’s knowledge of the structural constraints on ellipsis constructions in Mandarin Chinese, focusing on the structural difference between verb phrase (VP) ellipsis and null object constructions. In Mandarin Chinese, if the antecedent clause of a VP-ellipsis structure contains an adverbial modifier, this adverbial modifier must be recovered at the elided site in the second clause. However, if the antecedent clause of a null object construction contains an adverbial modifier, the reconstruction of this adverbial modifier at the elided site is not necessary. Two experiments were conducted to examine whether young Mandarin-speaking children are sensitive to this structural difference between the two ellipsis constructions. The results show that children exhibited adult-like performance in both experiments. This is evidence that young Mandarin-speaking children have knowledge of the structural difference between VP-ellipsis and null object constructions with regard to adverbial recovery. We interpreted the findings in conjunction with previous research as evidence that children’s knowledge of the structural constraints on ellipsis constructions is innately specified.     

Proof vs Provability: On Brouwer’s Time Problem

Is a mathematical theorem proved because provable, or provable because proved? If Brouwer’s intuitionism is accepted, we’re committed, it seems, to the latter, which is highly problematic. Or so I will argue. This and other consequences of Brouwer’s attempt to found mathematics on the intuition of a move of time have heretofore been insufficiently appreciated. Whereas the mathematical anomalies of intuitionism have received enormous attention, too little time, I’ll try to show, has been devoted to some of the temporal anomalies that Brouwer has invited us to introduce into mathematics.     

Sosa’s Safety Condition and Problem of Philosophical Skepticism

Philosophia - This paper aims to show that Sosa’s theory of knowledge based on safety condition can provide a convincing response to the problem of philosophical skepticism. With regard to...     

Nonconceptualism,Hume’s Problem,and the Deduction

Lucy Allais seeks to provide a reading of the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories which is compatible with a nonconceptualist account of Kant’s theory of intuition. According to her interpretation, the aim of the Deduction is to show that a priori concept application is required for empirical concept application. I argue that once we distinguish the application of the categories from the instantiation of the categories, we see that Allais’s reconstruction of the Deduction cannot provide an answer to Hume’s problem about our entitlement to use a priori concepts when thinking about the objects of empirical intuition. If the Deduction is to provide a response to Hume, Allais’s interpretation must be rejected.     

The Knowledge of People Disappeared During Argentina’s Military Rule

Antonio Ruiz (a pseudonym) is an officer who took part in the Argentine 1976–1983 military rule and disappeared the body of a tortured woman. My aim is to offer an ethnographic account of the embodiment of the knowledge of bodies—the local moral worlds in which the officer Antonio and his wife lived and legitimated state violence by imagining themselves as victims, and Antonio subsequently followed his commander’s order and buried the body of a tortured woman. The armed forces provided soldiers of the armed formal manuals in which political violence was described as an ever-present threat. At home Antonio and his wife exchanged accounts detailing the risk of armed struggle to their fledgling family, with Antonio carrying out commissions of repression as father and husband and not only soldier. The narratives officers constructed and acted upon about themselves as imagined victims linger to this day in contemporary Argentina in the form of the disappeared—the missing thousands who remain unaccounted for, buried in unknown, clandestine graves or drowned alive at sea, with thousands of family members suspended in doubt, unsure where the disappeared might truly be, and whether they live or died.     

Interactions Between Knowledge and Testimony in Children’s Reality-Status Judgments

In 2 studies, we attempted to capture the information-processing abilities underlying children’s reality-status judgments. Forty 5- to 6-year-olds and 53 7- to 8-year-olds heard about novel entities (animals) that varied in their fit with children’s world knowledge. After hearing about each entity, children could either guess reality status immediately or listen to testimony first. Informants varied in their expertise and in their testimony, which either supported or refuted the entities’ existence. Results revealed that children were able to evaluate the fit between the new information and their existing knowledge; this information then governed their decision regarding whether to seek testimony. Testimony had the strongest effect when new information did not conflict with, but was also not representative of, children’s knowledge.     

Knowledge and morality in Kundera’s novel The Farewell Waltz

Studies in East European Thought - The author examines the motives for the behaviour and actions of Dr. Skreta, the main character of Kundera’s novel The Farewell Waltz. The starting point of...     

On Kant’s Knowledge of Leibniz’ Metaphysics—a Reply to Garber

Daniel Garber has put forward an argument that aims to show that Kant’s understanding of Leibniz’ metaphysics should be discounted because he could only have had access to a small and narrow sample of Leibniz’ works from around 1710–1714. In particular, Garber argues that as Kant could not have read Leibniz’ correspondence with Arnauld or his correspondence with Des Bosses he could not have had an adequate conception of Leibniz’ understanding of the relation between substance and body. I will show that Kant could have read some of the Arnauld correspondence and practically all of the Des Bosses correspondence, as well as a number of other related texts that are important for understanding Leibniz’ metaphysics, over a decade before writing the Critique of Pure Reason. Garber’s historical-textual argument for dismissing Kant’s account of Leibniz’ metaphysics is therefore seriously misleading.     

Knowledge, Naturalism, and Cognitive Ethology: Kornblith’s Knowledge and its Place in Nature

This paper explores Kornblith’s proposal in Knowledge and its Place in Nature that knowledge is a natural kind that can be elucidated and understood in scientific terms. Central to Kornblith’s development of this proposal is the claim that there is a single category of unreflective knowledge that is studied by cognitive ethologists and is the proper province of epistemology. This claim is challenged on the grounds that even unreflective knowledge in language-using humans reflects forms of logical reasoning that are in principle unavailable to nonlinguistic animals.