Online research in philosophy

In this paper I will first present and defend Molnar's way of setting out the problem of finding truthmakers for negative propositions. Secondly, I will reply to two objections to what in my view is the most promising general approach to the problem of negatives. Finally, I will present and defend Cheyne and Pidgen's specific proposal that falls under that general promising approach.

Machine generated contents note: Preface and Acknowledgements * Series Editor's Preface * Notes on the Contributors * A Note on References to Hume and Locke * Introduction; C.Pigden * Expressivism, Motivation Internalism, and Hume; R.Joyce * Is Hume Inconsistent? -- Motivation and Morals; N.Lo * If Not Non-Cognitivism, Then What?; C.Pigden * The Motivation Argument for Non-cognitivism; M.Smith * Experiences of Value; G.Oddie * Hume and the Debate on Motivating Reasons; C.Sandis * Against all Reason: Scepticism about the Instrumental Norm; S.Finlay * Why Internalists about Reasons Should be Humeans about Motivation; K.Hurtig * Humean Sources of Normativity; H.Pauer-Studer * Two Kinds of Normativity; L.Russell * What Kind of Virtue-Theorist is Hume?; C.Swanton * Kinds of Virtue Theorist: A Response to Christine Swanton; A.Baier * Reply to Annette Baier; C.Swanton * Hume on Justice; R.Hursthouse * Consolidated Bibliography * Index Preface and Acknowledgements * Series Editor's Preface * Notes on the Contributors * A Note on References to Hume and Locke * Introduction; C.Pigden * Expressivism, Motivation Internalism, and Hume; R.Joyce * Is Hume Inconsistent? -- Motivation and Morals; N.Lo * If Not Non-Cognitivism, Then What?; C.Pigden * The Motivation Argument for Non-cognitivism; M.Smith * Experiences of Value; G.Oddie * Hume and the Debate on Motivating Reasons; C.Sandis * Against all Reason: Scepticism about the Instrumental Norm; S.Finlay * Why Internalists about Reasons Should be Humeans about Motivation; K.Hurtig * Humean Sources of Normativity; H.Pauer-Studer * Two Kinds of Normativity; L.Russell * What Kind of Virtue-Theorist is Hume?; C.Swanton * Kinds of Virtue Theorist: A Response to Christine Swanton; A.Baier * Reply to Annette Baier; C.Swanton * Hume on Justice; R.Hursthouse * Consolidated Bibliography * Index.

This paper responds to Colin Cheyne's new anti-platonist argument according to which knowledge of existential claims—claims of the form such-tmd-so exist—requires a caused connection with the given such-and-so. If his arguments succeed then nobody can know, or even justifiably believe, that acausal entities exist, in which case (standard) platonism is untenable. I argue that Cheyne's anti-platonist argument fails.

Charles Pigden has argued for a logical Is/Ought gap on the grounds of the conservativeness of logic. I offer a counter-example which shows that Pigden’s argument is unsound and that there need be no logical gap between Is-premises and an Ought-conclusion. My counter-example is an argument which is logically valid, has only Is-premises and an Ought-conclusion, does not purport to violate the conservativeness of logic, and does not rely on controversial assumptions about Aristotelian biology or 'institutional facts.'.

According to the truthmaker theory that we favour, all contingent truths are made true by existing facts or states of affairs. But if that is so, then it appears that we must accept the existence of the negative facts that are required to make negative truths (such as 'There is no hippopotamus in the room.') true. We deny the existence of negative facts, show how negative truths are made true by positive facts, point out where the (reluctant) advocates of negative facts (Russell, Armstrong, et al.) went wrong, and demonstrate the superiority of our solution to the alternatives.

I argue that Colin Cheyne and Charles Pigden's recent attempt to find truthmakers for negative truths fails. Though Cheyne and Pigden are correct in their treatment of some of the truths they set out to find truthmakers for (such as 'There is no hippopotamus in S223' and 'Theatetus is not flying') they over-generalize when they apply the same treatment to 'There are no unicorns'. In my view, this difficulty is ineliminable: not every truth has a truthmaker.