Ted Schick has written three essays on the role of the qualitative content of experience: the earliest essay is titled "Can Fictional Literature Communicate Knowledge?"1; a more recent one is "The Semantic Role of Qualitative Content"2; and his latest essay, the one Ted presented today, is titled "The Epistemic Role of Qualitative Content.3" He sent me a copy of the latter for comment in January 1990 with some other of his published essays. I tried writing something -- but it was (...) nothing substantial. All he got from me were some comments over the phone. I promised to do better. He then sent me a slightly revised version in May. When I got to giving him substantial comment, it was October, and his paper was already accepted for publication. I have now read all of Ted's published writings, and what follows are my comments on Ted's paper in the light of his other writings. (shrink)

Since 1961, there is a tradition at the University of Chicago to give an annual address to the incoming undergraduates on the Aims of Education. Three of these are available on the internet -- the addresses of John Mearsheimer, a political scientist (1997); Robert Pippin, a philosopher (2000); and Andrew Abbott, a sociologist (2002). My judgment is that none of them understands what liberal education is ultimately about. They all emphasize the usefulness of a University of Chicago education in (...) the market-place, and they all think of liberal education -- explicitly so by Mearsheimer -- as amoral. Putting together these two ideas of success and amorality, it is very hard to resist the thought that these professors are pushing and defending an education in sophistry (as understood by Plato). (shrink)

St. Augustine's book, The City of God , suggests the fundamental problem for the philosophy of a liberal education. The basic problem is that there are two cities which beckon our allegiance: the secular city and the city of God. The role of philosophy is to examine critically the arguments of the contending parties and to adjudicate between them. A denominational college, by its nature, proclaims its allegiance to the city of God; so the place of philosophy as adjudicator becomes (...) a problem. (shrink)

Charlie Dunbar Broad is one of the most important philosophers of this century. I know that this may sound like a very irresponsible -- even whimsical -- thing to say; so I better make a strong case for this assertion. Right away, philosophers who share other sympathies may start listing more famous philosophers as prima facie evidence against my apparently rash opinion.

Several months ago, after I volunteered to examine Dmytro Chyzhevs'kyi's works on the history of philosophy in Ukraine, I found myself with a dilemma. The first problem was that I did not possess a first-hand knowledge of Ukrainian literature to conceive independently a history of philosophy in Ukraine to act as a foil against Chyzhevs'kyi's views. The second problem was that my reading of Chyzhevs'kyi resulted in an unmanageable pile of criticism. The result is that what I have to say (...) is both too little and too much: too little because I have no worked out alternative to Chyzhevs'kyi's history; too much because I cannot give an adequate critique in some twenty minutes. With such a dilemma, I follow the standard procedure in limiting myself to one thesis. Simply put, my thesis is that Chyzhevs'kyi has a confused concept of philosoply. But, then, it may be rather that I am confused about Chyzhevs'kyi's clear concept of philosophy. Whatever the case, let me explain why I find his concept of philosophy confusing. (shrink)

Against Subtle Abortion-Supporting Arguments," 1 intending to rebut Joel Feinberg's arguments for the morality of some abortions. 2 For several years now, I have regarded Feinberg's article to be one of the best on the topic, so it surprised me that DeCelles thought he could punch holes in it. In fact DeCelles does not succeed in rebutting Feinberg. One failure is that he misrepresents Feinberg's position. And the position that DeCelles does favor has disadvantages, pointed out by Feinberg, which DeCelles (...) doesn't bother answering. In addition DeCelles introduces irrelevant matters which have the effect of red herrings. My overall impression of.. (shrink)

This dissertation is a critical assessment of Wilfrid Sellars' Scientific Realism. ;The dissertation has ten chapters, whose topics are as follows: I classify Sellars' position as a variety of Non-Reductive Scientific Materialism. I discuss the Manifest/Scientific Image distinction. I reject the identification of the Manifest Image with a Common Sense Image on the ground that the Common Sense Image recognizes the existence of irreducible absolute processes, while the Manifest Image does not. I discuss the topic of ontological commitment. I propose (...) that we substitute for the Manifest Image a Common Sense Image which has a mixed ontology of events and substances. I focus on the intentionality-body problem. I believe that a large portion of the polemics over intentionality can be accounted for by a failure to demarcate non-conceptual from conceptual intentionality. I locate Sellars' position in current philosophical psychology. Sellars defends both functionalism and introspection. He tries to give a theoretical account of our introspective knowledge of thoughts and sensations on a behavioristic basis. My conclusions are that his argument does not go through, and that perhaps all non-overtly linguistic thoughts are non-conceptual. I offer a transcendental argument for a version of epistemological foundationalism. I clarify the concept of the Given in Sellars. I both defend and criticize his position on the Given. I defend Sellars' argument for the rejection of the Given from William Robinson's attack; but I defend C. I. Lewis' position on the Given from Sellars' attack. I deal with the epistemological and the ontological problems of perception. The conclusion I reach on the epistemological problem is that sensa are given through a phenomenological reduction. The conclusion I reach on the ontological problem is that Sellars is correct in his view that sensa exist as causal mediatory absolute processes in perception. I spell out the implications of my disagreement with Sellars on epistemology. The main implication is that in higher animals there is an evolutionarily endowed intractable representational system. I call this view Animal Realism. (shrink)

Dennis Hutchinson, Master of the New Collegiate Division and Senior Lecturer in Law, delivered the annual "Aims of Education" lecture at Rockefeller Chapel on September 19, 1999. He took this occasion to defend the recent changes in the Core Curriculum, which have reduced the requirement from 21 courses to 18 or 15 (if language requirements are discounted). He did the same on the Milt Rosenberg radio program "Extension 720," on WGN Radio (720 AM), February 18, 1999, at which time he (...) acted as an administrative spokesman with Dan Garber. (shrink)

Milton Friedman's book Capitalism and Freedom (1962) is divided into two parts. In the first part, consisting of the first two chapters, he lays down his two explicit political principles, and in the second part -- the rest of the book -- he allegedly applies these principles to existing society.

Norman Finkelstein, a prominent political scientist specializing in the Palestine-Israel conundrum, on which he has authored five highly praised books, was denied tenure at DePaul University by the President, Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, on June 8, 2007. After examining the particulars of the case, it strikes me as so obviously wrong to deny him tenure that the tenure procedure at DePaul constitutes a reductio ad absurdum of a university system which allows such a thing to happen.

"At this point we are again at the beginning of a philosophical road too long to explore. One hint only: Words like "object" and "objective" are evidently shot through with deep ambiguities, and need to be applied with the greatest care.".

Ted Schick has written three essays on the role of the qualitative content of experience: the earliest essay is titled "Can Fictional Literature Communicate Knowledge?" 1; a more recent one is "The Semantic Role of Qualitative Content" 2; and his latest essay, the one Ted presented today, is titled "The Epistemic Role of Qualitative Content.

John Balz, in "Success 101," has written an accurate account of the recent history of the University of Chicago from a business point of view, and he has concluded correctly that the U of C business is a success. Yet, the whole piece leaves me profoundly dissatisfied. Why? Let me illustrate this with a fairy tale.

While reading philosophical literature, once in a while I come across passages which say that a particular essay or book is very good, and sometimes an additional remark is made that it is neglected. While reading such passages, I say to myself that I should take a look at this essay or book -- but then I forget to do so, or don't remember who or what was mentioned. Well, I have decided to start keeping..

Sense-data, if they exist, could conceivably provide foundations for empirical knowledge. Those who are opposed to empirical foundationalism are therefore also prone to reject sense-data and arguments for their existence, e.g., Rorty, Bonjour; while foundationalists are prone to accept the existence of sense-data, e.g., Russell, Ayer, Broad, Price, Lewis. An exception to this is the position of Roderick Chisholm who accepts empirical foundationalism but rejects the existence of sense-data.

Charles Whitney correctly reports that I believe that the greatest problems facing humanity are the nuclear threat and overpopulation. Both situations can lead -- one directly and the other indirectly -- to massive self-destruction. But he apparently contends that these problems exist as a result of political policies, and that they require a political solution. And by this token, he thinks, the greater problem for humanity is political organization. He goes on to lament that we, as a people, have been (...) unable to work democratically to solve these problems. He writes: "I am suggesting that overpopulation and the nuclear threat are to a significant degree functions of the fact that people are prevented from associating as equals in more than local ways -- and of people's belief that they can't associate effectively.". (shrink)

Most readers of Sellars' philosophy learn about a Manifest-Scientific Image distinction, and because apparently nothing significant hinges on what at first sight seems just a neologistic labeling of a familiar distinction, it is henceforth wrongly associated with a pre-systematic commonsense/scientific framework distinction. The Manifest Image is not identical to the commonsense framework; nor is the Scientific Image identical to the scientific framework. In this paper I will concern myself only with arguing that the Manifest Image is not identical to the (...) commonsense framework. (shrink)

My paper is a reaction to the articles in the newsletter Inquiry, and additional articles by others, especially Mark Weinstein, the Acting Director of the Institute for Critical Thinking at Montclair State College. Weinstein and his colleagues are engaged in a most ambitious program, as they put it, of educational reform through critical thinking across the disciplines. Without doubt, the ideologue of this school is Weinstein, and it is on his writings that I have concentrated.

I know that it is difficult for some students to distinguish the truth of premises from the validity of an argument. They think that a valid argument has all true statements, and an invalid one a false premise. Clearly, the teaching of validity requires introducing the idea of an argument form, for it is the form which is the vehicle of validity, not what is put in the form. An argument form does not contain statements (but statement forms), so there (...) is nothing in the form to be true or false. Yet the form has the property of validity, which is the property of truth preservation. This is to say that a valid form will never allow the premise forms to be filled with true statements and the conclusion form to be filled with a false statement. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars wrote: all awareness of sorts, resemblances, facts, etc., in short, all awareness of abstract entities -- indeed, all awareness even of particulars ~ is a linguistic affair. 1 This passage from Sellars' famous essay, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" has caused, I suspect, some philosophers to view Sellars as committed to linguistic idealism -the view that all awareness is linguistically mediated.

This paper examines the idea of objective phenomenology, or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of conscious experiences that doesn’t require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration. My central thesis is that structural facts about experience—facts that characterize purely how conscious experiences are structured—are objective phenomenal facts. I begin by precisifying the idea of objective phenomenology and diagnosing what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective. Then I defend the view that structural facts about experience are (...) objective. I also argue that structural facts about experience, despite being objective, nevertheless still give rise to an explanatory gap. (shrink)

Some accounts of moral responsibility hold that an agent's responsibility is completely determined by some aspect of the agent's mental life at the time of action. For example, some hold that an agent is responsible if and only if there is an appropriate mesh among the agent's particular psychological elements. It is often objected that the particular features of the agent's mental life to which these theorists appeal (such as a particular structure or mesh) are not necessary for responsibility. This (...) is because there appear to be cases in which an agent acts at an earlier time which causes her to lack the appropriate psychological features at some later time and yet, intuitively, she is responsible at that later .. (shrink)

Perception is riddled with cases of reliable misperception. These are cases in which a perceptual state is tokened inaccurately any time it is tokened under normal conditions. On the face of it, this fact causes trouble for theories that provide an analysis of perceptual content in non-semantic, non-intentional, and non-phenomenal terms, such as those found in Millikan (1984), Fodor (1990), Neander (2017), and Schellenberg (2018). I show how such theories can be extended so that they cover such cases without giving (...) up their core commitments. (shrink)

We are all familiar with the phenomenon of a proposition seeming true. Many think that these seeming states can yield justified beliefs. Very few have seriously explored what these seeming states are. I argue that seeming states are not plausibly analyzed in terms of beliefs, partial beliefs, attractions to believe, or inclinations to believe. Given that the main candidates for analyzing seeming states are unsatisfactory, I argue for a brute view of seemings that treats seeming states as irreducible propositional attitudes.

This is a discussion of the state of discussion on pragmatic reasons for belief.

This book brings together an international group of scholars to discuss the ramifications of Heidegger's Black Notebooks for philosophy and the humanities. In contrast to both those who seek to exonerate Heidegger and those who simply condemn him, they urge careful reading and rereading of his work to turn Heideggerian thought against itself.

For Kant, knowledge involves certainty. If “certainty” requires that the grounds for a given propositional attitude guarantee its truth, then this is an infallibilist view of epistemic justification. Such a view says you can’t have epistemic justification for an attitude unless the attitude is also true. Here I want to defend an alternative fallibilist interpretation. Even if a subject has grounds that would be sufficient for knowledge if the proposition were true, the proposition might not be true. And so there (...) is sometimes still rational room for doubt. The goal of this paper is to present four different models of what “certainty” amounts to, for Kant, each of which is compatible with fallibilism. (shrink)

In his 1978 paper “Mathematical Explanation”, Mark Steiner attempts to modernize the Aristotelian idea that to explain a mathematical statement is to deduce it from the essence of entities figuring in the statement, by replacing talk of essences with talk of “characterizing properties”. The language Steiner uses is reminiscent of language used for proofs deemed “pure”, such as Selberg and Erdős’ elementary proofs of the prime number theorem avoiding the complex analysis of earlier proofs. Hilbert characterized pure proofs as those (...) that use only “means that are suggested by the content of the theorem”, a characterization we have elsewhere called “topical purity”. In this paper we will examine the connection between Steiner’s account of mathematical explanation and topical purity. Are Steiner-explanatory proofs necessarily topically pure? Are topically pure proofs necessarily Steiner-explanatory? Answers to these questions will shed light on the general question of the relation between purity and explanatory power. (shrink)

The aim of the Analytic of Concepts is to derive and deduce a set of pure concepts of the understanding, the categories, which play a central role in Kant’s explanation of the possibility of synthetic a priori cognition and judgment. This chapter is structured around two questions. First, what is a pure concept of the understanding? Second, what is involved in a deduction of a pure concept of the understanding? In answering the first, we focus on how the categories differ (...) from the pure forms of sensibility and examine whether they are known only to be the pure forms of human thinking or rather the forms of discursive cognition as such. In answering the second, we draw a distinction between the application and the exemplification of the categories and use it to identify different ways of understanding Kant’s project in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. These questions connect because the answer to the first determines how we should understand the kind of entitlement which is to be established in the Deduction. (shrink)

While many aspects of cognition have been shown to be shared between humans and non-human animals, there remains controversy regarding whether the capacity to mentally time travel is a uniquely human one. In this paper, we argue that there are four ways of representing when some event happened: four kinds of temporal representation. Distinguishing these four kinds of temporal representation has five benefits. First, it puts us in a position to determine the particular benefits these distinct temporal representations afford an (...) organism. Second, it provides the conceptual resources to foster a discussion about which of these representations is necessary for an organism to count as having the capacity to mentally time travel. Third, it enables us to distinguish stricter from more liberal views of mental time travel that differ regarding which kind(s) of temporal representation is taken to be necessary for mental time travel. Fourth, it allows us to determine the benefits of taking a stricter or more liberal view of mental time travel. Finally, it ensures that disagreement about whether some species can mentally time travel is not merely the product of unrecognised disagreement about which temporal representation is necessary for mental time travel. We argue for a more liberal view, on the grounds that it allows us to view mental time travel as an evolutionarily continuous phenomenon, and to recognise that differences in the ways that organisms mentally time travel might reflect different temporal representations, or combinations thereof, that they employ. Our ultimate aim, however, is to create the conceptual framework for further discussion regarding what sorts of temporal representations are required for mental time travel. (shrink)

The fallacy fallacy is either the misdiagnosis of fallacy or the supposition that the conclusion of a fallacy must be a falsehood. This paper explores the relevance of these and related errors of reasoning for the appraisal of arguments, especially within virtue theories of argumentation. In particular, the fallacy fallacy exemplifies the Owl of Minerva problem, whereby tools devised to understand a norm make possible new ways of violating the norm. Fallacies are such tools and so are vices. Hence a (...) similar problem arises with argumentative vices. Fortunately, both instances of the problem have a common remedy. (shrink)

Public reason in practice and theory -- False starts: unsuccessful justifications of public reason -- Respect for persons as a constraint on coercion -- Higher-order unanimity escape clause -- Civic friendship as a constraint on reasons for decision -- Public reason and (same-sex) marriage.

Some have it that wholes are, somehow, identical to their parts. This doctrine is as alluring as it is puzzling. But in this paper, I show that the doctrine is inconsistent with two widely accepted theses. Something has to go.

This chapter addresses an ambiguity in some of the literature on rational peer disagreement about the use of the term 'rational'. In the literature 'rational' is used to describe a variety of normative statuses related to reasons, justification, and reasoning. This chapter focuses most closely on the upshot of peer disagreement for what is rationally required of parties to a peer disagreement. This follows recent work in theoretical reason which treats rationality as a system of requirements among an agent's mental (...) states. It is argued that peer disagreement has either no, or a very limited, affect on what rationality requires of an agent in a given circumstance. This is in part because of difficulties generated by a novel example of evidence of evidence of p being evidence against p. This example calls into question the mechanisms whereby peer disagreement might affect what is rationally required of an agent. The chapter also reevaluates the importance of actual peer disagreement against the backdrop of prior expectations about whether disagreement is believed to be likely, arguing that peer disagreement is most likely to change what is rationally required of an agent when it is believed to be unlikely. (shrink)

Towards the unconditioned: Kant, Epicurus and Glückseligkeit -- Arendt and the time of the pardon -- Kant, evil, and the unconditioned -- Judgment after Derrida.

The norm of monogamy is pervasive, having remained widespread, in most Western cultures at least, in spite of increasing tolerance toward more diverse relationship types. It is also puzzling. People willingly, and often with gusto, adhere to it, yet it is also, prima facie at least, highly restrictive. Being in a monogamous relationship means agreeing to give up certain sorts of valuable interactions and relationships with other people and to severely restrict one’s opportunities for sex and love. It is this (...) restrictiveness which has led for calls among some philosophers for the justification of the norm, and some have argued that it cannot be justified. John McMurtry, for example, writing in 1972, compared monogamy to private property and argued that it serves the capitalist order (McMurtry 1972, 596–97). More recently, Harry Chalmers (2019) has argued that monogamy is morally impermissible. In this chapter we argue that rather than justify the norm, we ought to explain and understand its pervasiveness. Not everyone who follows the norm is doing so blindly, irrationally, or immorally. Indeed, many people are monogamous because being monogamous supports their needs and best enables them to flourish. We suggest that the human need for trust and attachment could underlie many people’s desires for monogamy and, therefore, explain monogamy’s pervasiveness. Focusing on the human need for trust and attachment security can also help us to understand why sexual infidelity can feel like such a betrayal. It can make sense to mutually agree to exclusivity in relationships, in spite of the apparent restrictions this brings. In a sense, not all restrictions are restrictive, because holding ourselves to limits on our behavior can in fact help us to invest in and experience the things we value most. (shrink)

Many say that ontological disputes are defective because they are unimportant or without substance. In this paper, we defend ontological disputes from the charge, with a special focus on disputes over the existence of composite objects. Disputes over the existence of composite objects, we argue, have a number of substantive implications across a variety of topics in metaphysics, science, philosophical theology, philosophy of mind, and ethics. Since the disputes over the existence of composite objects have these substantive implications, they are (...) themselves substantive. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.