In contemporary works on conditionals, the Ramsey test is a procedure for the evaluation of conditional sentences. There are several versions of the test, all inspired by a footnote by the British philosopher and mathematician Frank Ramsey, in his General Propositions and Causality. However, no study on Ramsey's own account of conditionals has been put forth so far. Furthermore, the footnote seems to cover indicative conditionals only, and this has led to the belief that no account of counterfactuals can be (...) found in Ramsey's work. In this paper, I recover Ramsey's account of counterfactuals and show that it is sketched in the footnote too. The result is a well-developed account of counterfactuals that resembles many contemporary ones. But Ramsey uses the same approach also for other types of conditionals, and this casts doubts on the current criteria for the classification of this type of sentences. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reinterpret success semantics, a theory of mental content, according to which the content of a belief is fixed by the success conditions of some actions based on this belief. After arguing that in its present form, success semantics is vulnerable to decisive objections, I examine the possibilities of salvaging the core of this proposal. More specifically, I propose that the content of some very simple, but very important, mental states, the immediate mental antecedents (...) of action, can be explained in this manner. (shrink)

In “Truth and Probability” Ramsey claimed that the logic of consistency for probability is not a logic of truth. After supporting this claim, he proceeded to explore the possibilities for a logic of truth for probability. An examination of Ramsey's intent reveals that Ramsey was far from being an orthodox Bayesian when it comes to statistical reasoning. The relations between Ramsey's thought and the ideas of Keynes and Peirce are discussed.

In “Truth and Probability” Ramsey claimed that the logic of consistency for probability is not a logic of truth. After supporting this claim, he proceeded to explore the possibilities for a logic of truth for probability. An examination of Ramsey's intent reveals that Ramsey was far from being an orthodox Bayesian when it comes to statistical reasoning. The relations between Ramsey's thought and the ideas of Keynes and Peirce are discussed.

In spite of his tragically short life, Ramsey made extensive contributions in the fields of mathematics, logic, economics and philosophy. In this article we focus on Ramsey's investigations into the notions of belief and judgement, their truth conditions and probability theory. We show that the central role given by Ramsey to belief and action together with his pragmatism allows for a new interpretation of the theories of truth and probability, paving the way for a modern decision theory.

My main intention in this article is to settle the question whether having the ability to \ is, as Ryleans think, necessary for knowing how to \, and to determine the kind of role played by procedural knowledge in knowing how to \ and in acquiring and possessing the ability to \. I shall argue, in a seemingly anti-Rylean fashion, that when it comes to know-hows that are ordinarily categorised as physical skills, or—to be, for the moment, philosophically neutral—as enabling (...) one to possess such skills, it is necessary to have procedural knowledge of how to \ in order to possess those know-hows. However, I shall contend that this knowledge cannot be acquired without acquiring the kind of ability to \ in which having the skill to \ consists. And that having acquired the ability to \ is not only necessary but also sufficient for having acquired procedural knowledge of how to succeed in \-ing. (shrink)

Psychology’s emphasis on empirical investigation has long benefited from conceptual developments taking place in its intellectual community, but also from cognate areas in Philosophy. This paper explores the implications for empirical psychology of a recent conceptual proposal advanced within the philosophy of perception by Bence Nanay. In particular, Nanay proposes that “pragmatic representations”, i.e., perceptual representations of the properties of objects necessary for the successful completion of actions, are the rightful target for a success semantics. A success semantics is, roughly (...) speaking, a theory of contents according to which the truth conditions of representations are to be identified with the success conditions of actions guided by the representations. The problem arises for Nanay’s proposal in that the empirical scrutiny of the contents of a pragmatic representation requires that one first ascertains their content, but it is not at all clear whether this could possibly be done given the non-linguistic character of pragmatic representations on the one hand, and the linguistic character of third-personal verbal data acquired through an heterophenomenological methodology on the other. This and other concerns raise worries about the empirical scrutability of Nanay’s proposal. (shrink)

Pragmatist views inspired by Peirce characterize the content of claims in terms of their practical consequences. The content of a claim is, on these views, determined by what actions are rationally recommended or supported by that claim. In this paper I examine the defeasibility of these relations of rational support. I will argue that such defeasibility introduces a particularist, occasion-sensitive dimension in pragmatist theories of content. More precisely, my conclusion will be that, in the sort of framework naturally derived from (...) Peirce’s pragmatist maxim, grasping conceptual contents is not merely a question of mastering general rules or principles codifying the practical import of claims, but decisively involves being sensitive to surrounding features of the particular situation at hand. (shrink)

The goal of this dissertation is to offer a practice-based account of intentionality. My aim is to examine what sort of practices agents have to engage in so as to count as talking and thinking about the way the world is – that is, what sort of practices count as representational. Representational practices answer to the way the world is: what is correct within such practices depends on the way things are, rather than on the attitudes of agents. An account (...) of representation must explain how such objective standards of correctness are introduced in human practices: one must explain how the world gets to have a say in what is correct in human discursive practices. Roughly, my proposal is that human discursive practices become responsive to the way things are by virtue of involving practical interactions with the world. The outcomes of these interactions depend on the way the world is and the evaluation of such outcomes contributes to determining which moves within the practice count as correct. Due to our practical engagement with the environment, thus, the world gets to constrain discursive practices. In order to flesh out my proposal, I develop a practice-based characterization of intentional or representational content. On this sort of approach, expressing intentional contents is seen as a matter of playing a certain role in relevant practices, rather than as a matter of engaging in some word-world relation. The expression of content, thus, is explained in terms of use. In particular, I adopt an inferentialist perspective, according to which discursive moves express contents because of their role in practices of giving and asking for reasons. I investigate how practical engagement with the environment introduces friction with the world in these practices of giving and asking for reasons. One of the main conclusions reached in the dissertation is that defeasibility is an essential feature of objective representational practices – so that attributions of representational correctness are revisable in an open-ended way. The discussion of defeasible reasoning – and of the way in which defeasibility shapes human representational practices – is a central point of this dissertation. (shrink)

Success semantics is a theory of content that characterizes the truth-conditions of mental representations in terms of the success-conditions of the actions derived from them. Nanay : 151-165, 2013) and Dokic and Engel have revised this theory in order to defend it from the objections that assailed its previous incarnations. I argue that both proposals have seemingly decisive flaws. More specifically, these revised versions of the theory fail to deal adequately with the open-ended possibility of unforeseen obstacles for the success (...) of our actions. I suggest that the problem of ignored obstacles undermines success semantics quite generally, including alternative formulations such as Blackburn’s. (shrink)