Davidson on first‐person authority and externalism

Incompatibilism is the view that privileged knowledge of our own mental states cannot be reconciled with externalism regarding the content of mental states. Davidson has recently developed two arguments that are supposed to disprove incompatibilism and establish the consistency of privileged access and externalism. One argument criticizes incompatibilism for assuming that externalism conflicts with the mind‐body identity theory. Since mental states supervene on neurological events, Davidson argues, they are partly ‘in the head’ and are knowable just by reflection. Another argument rejects incompatibilism by repudiating the object perception model of introspection. Once extemalism is freed from the internalist idea that thoughts take objects which are inner epistemological intermediaries, Davidson maintains, it poses no threat to privileged self‐knowledge. It is argued that neither of these arguments is successful, since both disprove assumptions irrelevant to incompatibilism. Moreover, it is indicated how Davidson would have to go about defending his positive account of privileged self‐knowledge against the principal incompatibilist arguments.     

‘Between the bridge and the brook’

Abstract

That suicide was a damnable sin in Reformation England has been emphasized so far in the historiography of self-killing, but in practice the clergy were equivocal over the question of whether all self-killers were damned. This article re-examines English Protestant beliefs about suicide and salvation from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century. It suggests that clerical statements about the damnableness of suicide need to be understood in the context of the threat posed by Stoic philosophy. Religious writers rejected the notion of noble suicide and reiterated Augustinian theology that premeditated self-killing was a form of murder. However, the harsh rhetoric was mitigated by a number of factors that brought into question the idea that all suicides were destined for Hell. These included changing medical opinion about mental states, evidence of the good character of many suicides, belief in the overpowering influence of demonic forces and basic Christian charity and compassion.     

‘Un-certainty’: working therapeutically with a transgender young person and learning to bear the unknown

Abstract

The rate of referrals to mental health services for children and young people for whom gender dysphoria is the identified clinical issue has increased significantly over the last ten years. Debates around the classifications of gender identity disorder, gender dysphoria or gender incongruence, as well as the involvement of child and adolescent mental health services with this group of children and young people seem to be re-enacting the societal gender binary world view where we see acceptance versus rejection, open-mindedness versus conservative, trans-phobic thinking. In this paper the author will attempt to shed some light on the work with these young people in a clinical setting by reflecting on a year of therapeutic work with a female to male young person. Through the therapist’s reflections upon these binary preconceptions, along with the use of developmental and object relations theory, an in-depth account of the work is given. It is suggested that in some cases the therapist’s capacity to bear the unknown, while gradually observing and mirroring the un-integrated inner self of the patient, can gradually bring the fragments together, even if not in a perfect fit, and that this in turn provides a sense of relief.     

‘Necessity’ and ‘provability’ in the later wittgenstein

I present a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's later philosophy of logic and mathematics. This interpretation, like others, emphasizes Wittgenstein's attempt to reconcile platonistic and constructivistic approaches. But, unlike other interpretations, mine explains that attempt in terms of Wittgenstein's position about the relations between our concepts of necessity and provability. If what I say here is correct, then we can rescue Wittgenstein from the charge of naive relativism. For his relativism extends only to provability, and not to necessity.     

Philosophy and the ‘anteriority complex’

The project of naturalising phenomenology is examined within the larger context of the philosophy of science. Transcendental phenomenology, as defended by Husserl, in opposition to the naturalistic enterprise, reflects a particular way of thinking about philosophy and its relationship to the empirical sciences that stands as an obstacle to the project of naturalisation. This paper develops a critique of a basic assumption made in this conception of philosophy, namely that it is possible to ask and answer questions concerning knowledge in the abstract, prior to and independently of the various investigative contexts which are the immediate concern of practicing scientists. To successfully naturalise phenomenology, we need to abandon this conception of philosophy.     

Responsibility and the ‘Pie Fallacy’

Much of our ordinary thought and talk about responsibility exhibits what I call the ‘pie fallacy’—the fallacy of thinking that there is a fixed amount of responsibility for every outcome, to be distributed among all those, if any, who are responsible for it. The pie fallacy is a fallacy, I argue, because how responsible an agent is for some outcome is fully grounded in facts about the agent, the outcome and the relationships between them; it does not depend, in particular, on how responsible anyone else is for that same outcome. In this paper, I explore how the pie fallacy can arise by considering several different kinds of case in which two or more agents are responsible for the same outcome. I’ll end with some brief remarks on the potential consequences of my arguments for how to think about responsibility in war.

     

On the Alleged Ambiguity of ‘Now’ and ‘Here’

It is argued that, in order to account for examples where the indexicals `now' and `here' do not refer to the time and location of the utterance, we do not have to assume (pace Quentin Smith) that they have different characters (reference-fixing rules), governed by a single metarule or metacharacter. The traditional, the fixed character view is defended: `now' and `here' always refer to the time and location of the utterance. It is shown that when their referent does not correspond to the time and/or location of the utterance, `now' and `here' work in an anaphoric way, inheriting their reference from another noun phrase. The latter may be explicit or implicit in the discourse. It is also shown that `now' and `here' can inherit their reference from a presupposed or tacit reference. In that case, they are coreferential with what will be labeled a `tacit initiator'. This anaphoric interpretation has the merit of fitting within the Kaplanian distinction between pure indexicals (`now', `here', `today', etc.) and demonstratives (`this', `that', `she', etc.).     

Self-Knowledge and the ‘Inner Eye’

Mutual perceptual knowledge is a prevalent feature of our everyday lives, yet appears to be exceptionally difficult to characterise in an acceptable way. This paper argues for a renewed understanding of Stephen Schiffer's iterative approach to mutual knowledge, according to which mutual knowledge requires an infinite number of overlapping, embedded mental states. It is argued that the charge of ‘psychological implausibility’ that normally accompanies discussion of this approach can be offset by identifying mutual knowledge, not with the infinite iterations themselves, but with the finite base which Schiffer proves is capable of generating those iterations. An understanding of this finite base as a primitive, relational property holding between two or more people, allows us to understand the iterations as an implicit and ‘harmless’ intrapersonal feature of what is an interpersonal phenomenon. The paper concludes by relating the account to joint attention in infant interaction.     

Hilbert's ‘Verunglückter Beweis’, the first epsilon theorem,and consistency proofs

In the 1920s, Ackermann and von Neumann, in pursuit of Hilbert's programme, were working on consistency proofs for arithmetical systems. One proposed method of giving such proofs is Hilbert's epsilon-substitution method. There was, however, a second approach which was not reflected in the publications of the Hilbert school in the 1920s, and which is a direct precursor of Hilbert's first epsilon theorem and a certain ‘general consistency result’ due to Bernays. An analysis of the form of this so-called ‘failed proof’ sheds further light on an interpretation of Hilbert's programme as an instrumentalist enterprise with the aim of showing that whenever a ‘real’ proposition can be proved by ‘ideal’ means, it can also be proved by ‘real’, finitary means.     

Eliminativism and the ambiguity of ‘belief’

It has recently been claimed (1) that mental states such as beliefs are theoretical entities and (2) that they are therefore, in principle, subject to theoretical elimination if intentional psychology were to be supplanted by a psychology not employing mentalistic notions. Debate over these two issues is seriously hampered by the fact that the key terms theoretical and belief are ambiguous. This article argues that there is only one sense of theoretical that is of use to the eliminativist, and in this sense some kinds of belief (dispositional states, infra-conscious states and the Freudian unconscious) are indeed theoretical and hence possible candidates for elimination, while others (consciously occurring thoughts like judgements and perceptualGestalten) are not theoretical and hence not candidates for elimination.     

Moral responsibility and the ‘ignorant scientist’

The question whether a scientist can be responsible for an outcome of her work which she does not foresee, and so is ignorant of, is addressed. It is argued that ignorance can be a ground for the attribution of responsibility, on condition that there are general principles, rules or norms, that the subject should be aware of. It is maintained that there are such rules which inform the practice of science as a social institution.     

Estrangement,Nature and ‘the Flesh’

In this paper I address the question of what it is to be alienated from nature. The focus is alienation in the sense of estrangement, a ‘being cut off from’ a wider world. That we are so estranged is a claim associated with ecological critique of contemporary society. But what is it to be estranged from nature given that everything we are, do and produce, always remains within a wider nature? I explore the possibility that this might be understood with reference to Merleau-Ponty’s notion of ‘flesh’. I set the scene for this with some discussion of Honneth’s recent account of reification as a ‘distorted praxis’ and then, drawing upon Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception and especially his later ontology of flesh, develop the idea of estrangement from the natural world as an inadequate participation in a ‘primordial’ perceptual relation. This idea of estrangement brings together various elements of ecological critique. However, I argue that although this idea of estrangement might inform and help to articulate such a critique, it cannot be the sole concern of an environmental political philosophy: other kinds of alienation within the humanised environmental context need to be considered too.     

Wind Power Planning Controversies and the Construction of ‘Expert’ and ‘Lay’ Knowledges

UK and Scottish planning policies include commitments to reflect the views of the public. However, this case study of one planning application for a wind farm in rural Scotland highlights the limited role played by lay knowledge within planning processes. The planning application process had two separate stages which structured the roles of lay and expert knowledge differently. Local objectors were able to influence the early planning application stage. However, this resulted in an appeals process (public inquiry) which was beyond the influence of lay people, and within which lay knowledge played only a marginal role. The early planning application stage enabled a wider range of knowledges to be relevant, perhaps even allowing lay knowledge to sideline expert knowledge. Within the inquiry such roles were reversed. Witnesses who could not back up their evidence with ‘reliable’ data or scientific reasoning were discredited as illegitimate and as having little to contribute to the inquiry process. Thus the inquiry constructed boundaries between expert and lay knowledge, in ways which diminished the role that lay knowledge might play. Whilst the construction of expert knowledge at the public inquiry played a central role in marginalising lay knowledge, it was central to all sides of the argument; the role of expert knowledge was reinforced by both the opposition group and the developers. Therefore, it is not only policy-makers and planning officials, but also lay people who act as though expert and lay knowledge can be clearly distinguished from one another.