In his review of Williams' Ethics and the limits of philosophy, Hart eloquently formulated an apprehension that still haunts much of contemporary jurisprudence: if the moral 'I must' has to be 'seen as coming not from outside, but from what is most deeply inside us [...] the fear is that this will not be enough.' I argue that this fear is the byproduct of the dualist outlook within which Hart - and a significant part of contemporary legal theory - is (...) confined: because of his bald naturalist premisses, Hart could not conceive of moral objectivity except in terms presupposing an order of Reason resolutely distinct from the 'natural' world. In view of the heavy metaphysical assumptions needed to sustain such a rationalist outlook, Hart surrendered instead to a cautious agnosticism. This paper proceeds in two steps. A first it seeks to debunk this dualist outlook by engaging with the kind of 'non-bald' naturalism advocated in different ways by both McDowell and Blackburn. Subsequently considering contemporary efforts to draw a middle way between ethical skepticism and metaphysical rationalism, this paper draws on the pragmatic elements emerging from the confrontation between Habermas and Rawls. Together with the critique of 'physicalist' naturalism, I take these pragmatist insights to be key to conquering a traditional reluctance when it comes to accounting for law's axiological dimension. (shrink)

Suppose you are to answer the following two questions: (1) Does the sentence "God exists" express a proposition? (2) If so, then is that proposition true or false? If you say no to the first question, then you may be classified as a noncognitivist with regard to God talk . If you say yes to it, thereby allowing that the given sentence does express a proposition, then you are a cognitivist with regard to God talk . (Let us henceforth abbreviate (...) these expressions, simply using the terms "cognitivist" and "noncognitivist".) All theists, atheists, and agnostics are cognitivists, so the second question applies to them: is the proposition that God exists true or false? You are a theist if and only if you say that the proposition is true or probably true, you are an atheist if and only if you say that it is false or probably false, and you are an agnostic if and only if you understand what the proposition is, but resist giving either answer, and support your resistance by saying, "The evidence is insufficient" (or words to that effect). (shrink)

There are two ways that we might respond to the underdetermination of theory by data. One response, which we can call the agnostic response, is to suspend judgment: "Where scientific standards cannot guide us, we should believe nothing". Another response, which we can call the fideist response, is to believe whatever we would like to believe: "If science cannot speak to the question, then we may believe anything without science ever contradicting us". C.S. Peirce recognized these options and suggested evading (...) the dilemma. It is a Logical Maxim, he suggests, that there could be no genuine underdetermination. This is no longer a viable option in the wake of developments in modern physics, so we must face the dilemma head on. The agnostic and fideist responses to underdetermination represent fundamentally different epistemic viewpoints. Nevertheless, the choice between them is not an unresolvable struggle between incommensurable worldviews. There are legitimate considerations tugging in each direction. Given the balance of these considerations, there should be a modest presumption of agnosticism. This may conflict with Peirce's Logical Maxim, but it preserves all that we can preserve of the Peircean motivation. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers of biology have debated the status of the evolutionary process: is it deterministic or indeterministic? I argue that there is insufficient reason to favor one side of the debate over the other, and that a more philosophically defensible position argues neither for the determinacy nor for the indeterminacy of the evolutionary process. In other words, I maintain that the appropriate stand to take towards the question of the determinism of the evolutionary process is agnosticism. I then suggest that (...) an examination of the phenomenon of developmental noise might yield a solution to the problem. (shrink)

Within certain philosophical debates, most notably those concerning the limits of our knowledge, agnosticism seems a plausible, and potentially the right, stance to take. Yet, in order to qualify as a proper stance, and not just the refusal to adopt any, agnosticism must be shown to be in opposition to both endorsement and denial and to be answerable to future evidence. This paper explicates and defends the thesis that agnosticism may indeed define such a third stance that is weaker than (...) scepticism and hence offers a genuine alternative to realism and anti-realism about our cognitive limits. (shrink)

This book contains Volumes 1 and 2 of the original works.