Online research in philosophy

Cohen seeks to rescue the concept of justice from those, among whom he includes Rawls, who think that correct fundamental moral principles are fact-sensitive. Cohen argues instead that any fundamental principles of justice, and fundamental moral principles generally, are fact-insensitive and that any fact-sensitive principles can be traced back to fact-insensitive ones. This paper seeks to clarify the nature of Cohen's argument, and the kind of fact-insensitivity he has in mind. In particular, it distinguishes between internal and external fact-sensitivity – that is, whether facts are referenced in the content of the principle, or must otherwise be the case in order for the principle to apply at all. Cohen himself seems likely to endorse internally fact-sensitive fundamental principles. This leads to a discussion of Cohen's Platonism about moral principles and the extent to which his arguments cover all its rivals. 1.

In this paper, I seek to clarify an aspect of Frege's thought that has been only insufficiently explained in the literature, namely, his notion of logical objects. I adduce some elements of Frege's philosophy that elucidate why he saw extensions as natural candidates for paradigmatic cases of logical objects. Moreover, I argue (against the suggestion of some contemporary scholars, in particular, Wright and Boolos) that Frege could not have taken Hume's Principle instead of Axiom V as a fundamental law of arithmetic. This would be inconsistent with his views on logical objects. Finally, I shall argue that there is a connection between Frege's view on this topic and the famous thesis first formulated in ‘Über Begriff und Gegenstand’ that ‘the concept horse is not a concept’. As far as I know, no due attention has been given to this connection in the scholarly literature so far.

Michael Dummett, following an established line of reasoning, has interpreted Frege as a realist. But his claim that Frege was arguing against a dominant idealism is untenable. While there are passages in Frege's writings that seem to support a realistic interpretation, others are irreconcilable with it. The issue can be resolved only by examining the historical context. Frege's thought is, in fact, related to the philosophy of Hermann Lotze. Frege is best regarded as a transcendental idealist in the Lotze-Kant tradition. His contextual principle is a linguistic version of Kant's principle of the transcendental unity of judgment. By ignoring the historical context Dummett has been led to misinterpret the precise role of the contextual principle in Frege's thought.

It is frequently repeated that the rationality principle is the fundamental principle of economics and it is so much so that the same principle is equivalently designated as the «economic principle»1. However, it is often the doom of fundamental principles that they are so intimately associated with the science itself that those who practice this science rarely take notice of their presence and of their role. Consequently, it is not surprising not to find any entry for "rationality" or for "rationality principle" in virtually any treaties on economy. If rational behaviour is the object of economics like living organism is the object of biology, specific references could hardly be expected in either of these sciences to what is nothing but the affirmation of the very existence of their subject matter.

Frege held that the result of applying a predicate to names lacks reference if any of the names lack reference. We defend the principle against a number of plausible objections. We put forth an account of consequence for a first-order language with identity in which the principle holds.

In a famous footnote in Naming and Necessity, Kripke offered “something like a proof” of the thesis that material things have their material origins essentially (EMO). Although the sketch of a proof Kripke gave was incomplete in important respects, many philosophers have since endeavoured to develop Kripke’s style of argument so that it reaches its intended conclusion.1 In particular, a number of philosophers have attempted to complete Kripke’s argument sketch by appealing to some sort of “sufficiency principle” – a principle that gives sufficient conditions for the identity of objects across possible worlds. These developments of Kripke’s argument face a number of problems, as pointed out by Mackie (1987, 2002), Robertson (1998, 2000) and others.2 Recently, however, Rohrbaugh and deRosset (2004, 2006) have offered a new route to origin essentialism that develops a Kripke-style argument without appeal to a sufficiency principle. While this argument has also not escaped criticism3, the argument suffers from a crucial flaw which has not been noticed. More interesting, though, is that the problem the argument faces is the same problem facing the arguments that appeal to sufficiency principles, and indeed Kripke’s original “proof” – all these arguments over-generalize. This strongly suggests that there is no Kripkestyle route to origin essentialism.

Kripke's puzzle is an old and familiar story. It was put forward in Kripke's 'A puzzle about Belief.'[1979] But even today it still has such a charm that people are drawn to it time and time again. In this paper I shall use his puzzle as the stepping stone for developing a new description theory of proper names. Kripke tries to defend his direct reference theory against the charge that it cannot explain the role of proper names in an epistemic context (such as belief, thought, etc.). There are many famous puzzles involving substitution salva veritate for different names of the same referent, and the description theory can easily dissolve them by suggesting that different names have different senses. These puzzles were considered to be defeating the direct reference theory of proper names. Kripke thus tries to demonstrate a similar puzzle that does not involve different names, and thus does not involve different senses. Using his principle of disquotation and principle of translation,1 Kripke presents a puzzle which involves a Frenchman Pierre who is attributed the following set of beliefs: (1) Pierre believes that London is pretty. (2) Pierre believes that London is not pretty. According to Kripke, the two belief reports attribute a contradiction to Pierre, even though Pierre himself cannot be interpreted as being inconsistent.2 Kripke also discusses another puzzle which invokes only the principle of disquotation and no translation is involved. This is the example of Peter’s two beliefs concerning the politician/musician Paderewski. In this case, we get a similar set of contradictory belief reports: (3) Peter believes that Paderewski has musical talent. (4) Peter believes that Paderewski has no musical talent.

A traditional argument is often used against Mill's theory of names (the meaning of a name is exhausted by its referent). Mill's theory implies transparency of proper names (coreferring proper names are substitutable salva veritate); but examples like Frege's and Quine's show that proper names are not transparent in belief contexts. This could be thought to be a reductio ad absurdum of Mill's theory. In " A puzzle about Belief" (1979; 1988) Kripke builds up an argument which aims to show that the same problems, given by the principle of transparency of proper names, can also be generated without the use of that principle, but with some weaker and more general principles, which seem to be difficult to reject. (see Donellan) Therefore, the traditional argument against Mill's theory does not work. If you want to reject Mill's theory with some reductio ad absurdum, you should reject two very intuitive and apparently valid principles. The well known puzzle is based on the assumption that our speaker is normal non omniscient, sincere, reflective and not conceptually confused. The two principles used are the Disquotational Principle (DP) and the Translation Principle (TP).

In 'A Puzzle about Belief' Saul Kripke appeals to a principle of disquotation that allows us to infer a person's beliefs from the sentences to which she assents (in certain conditions). Kripke relies on this principle in constructing some famous puzzle cases, which he uses to defend the Millian view that the sole semantic function of a proper name is to refer to its bearer. The examples are meant to undermine the anti-Millian objection, grounded in traditional Frege-cases, that truth-value is not always maintained when co-referential names are intersubstituted in belief reports. I argue here that our disquotational practice is sensitive to certain shifts in conversational context, and it is only if we overlook these shifts - if we 'misdisquote' - that we can draw the conclusions Kripke wants to draw from his examples. In the wake of this conclusion, I provide a 'contextualist' treatment of Kripke's puzzle cases. I show how this treatment is motivated by certain norms of rationality, and I defend these norms against an intriguing 'anti-Cartesian' theory of mind. Throughout the paper, I develop the larger implications that my treatment of Kripke's argument has for the semantic theory of names and belief reports, and, more generally, for our picture of the relation between linguistic behaviour and our states of mind.

In this article I offer a three-pronged defense of Millian theories, all of which share the rough idea that all there is to a proper name is its referent, so it has no additional sense. I first give what I believe to be the first correct analysis of Kripke’s puzzle and its anti-Fregean lessons. The main lesson is that the Fregean’s arguments against Millianism and for the existence of semantically relevant senses (that is, individuative elements of propositions or belief contents that are sensitive to our varying personal conceptions of the referents of those elements) are viciously circular. Thus, the Fregean must give new arguments for her central claims. Second, I offer an original, positive argument for the Millian idea that the thoughts that Cicero was bald and that Tully was bald are identical. Incredibly, the argument appeals to nothing but highly intuitive, pre-theoretical principles regarding folk psychological usage—traditionally the source of Fregean intuitions. Third, I examine one of the most important recent papers on Kripke’s puzzle, that by David Sosa (1996). Sosa claims to have found a way to turn the tables on Kripke’s puzzle by using it to argue against Millian theories. I argue that Sosa’s argument on behalf of the Fregean is question-begging. I conclude that Millian theories can be seriously defended without any use of theoretical constructs such as guises or Russellian propositions, and Fregeans need to start over arguing for their theory’s central claims.