Online research in philosophy

Let me begin with the standard apology and expression of regret for not being able to comment on all of the intriguing and illuminating themes in Professor Churchland’s paper. I should at least note, though, my enthusiasm for his suggestive discussion of the complexity of all concepts, for his detailed portrayal of the resources of neural network models, and for his attempt to deflate our Cartesian pretensions by focusing on the commonality between human and infrahuman cognition. I restrict my developed remarks to two different topics: First, I have some thoughts about Churchland’s central thesis with respect to the nature of epistemology. Second, I want to say something about the pursuit of epistemology if we follow Churchland’s lead.

Paul Churchland argues that the continuity of human intellectual development provides evidence against folk psychology and traditional epistemology, since these latter find purchase only at the later stages of intellectual development. He supports this contention with an analogy from the history of thermodynamics. Careful attention to the thermodynamics analogy shows that the argument from continuity does not provide independent support for eliminative materialism. The argument also rests upon claims about continuity which do not support the claim that the continuity of intellectual development is evidence for the elimination of folk psychology. Traditional epistemology and folk psychology should not yet be abandoned.

In this paper we examine Lewis's attempts to provide an epistemology of modality and we argue that he fails to provide an account that properly weds his metaphysics with an epistemology that explains the knowledge of modality that both he and his critics grant. We argue that neither the appeals to acceptable paraphrases of ordinary modal discourse nor parallels with Platonistic theories of mathematics suffice. We conclude that no proper epistemology for modal realism has been provided and that one is needed.

Recent work on the philosophy of modality has tended to pass over questions about iterated modalities in favour of constructing ambitious metaphysical theories of possibility and necessity, despite the central importance of iterated modalities to modal logic. Yet there are numerous unresolved but fundamental issues involving iterated modalities: Chandler and Salmon have provided forceful arguments against the widespread assumption that all necessary truths are necessarily necessary, for example. The current paper examines a range of ways in which one might seek to identify limited regions within which some of the most well-known principles featuring iterated modalities may safely be assumed.

The simplest story about modals—might, must, possibly, necessary, have to, can, ought to, presumably, likelier, and the rest—is also the canon: modals are context-dependent quantifiers over a domain of possibilities. Different flavors of modality correspond to quantification over different domains of possibilities. Logical modalities quantify over all the possibilities there are, physical modalities over possibilities compatible with the..

In this paper I argue that noun complement modality cannot be treated as dependent on the meanings of lexical embedding predicates or of abstract performatives. Using two types of complement modalities, I show that their meanings and restrictions remain distinct and invariable regardless of the meanings of their embedding predicates. Then, using embedding predicates that can take both types of modalities, I show that the embedding predicates retain their meanings, regardless of the different modalities of their complements, and they can undergo deletions requiring their identity.

Developmental synesthesia typically involves either the stimulation of one sensory modality which gives rise to an experience in a different modality (when a sound, for example, evokes a colour) or the stimulation of a single sensory modality giving rise to different qualitative aspects of experience (when the sight of a number, for example, evokes a colour). These occurrences seem to support Grice’s (1989) argument that sense modalities cannot be individuated without reference to the introspective-character of experience. This, however, threatens intentionalism which maintains that the qualitative character of experience is exhausted, or fully determined by, its intentional content. Ross (2001) attempts to defuse Grice’s argument by proposing an account that does not appeal to the qualitative character of experience to individuate sense modalities. I argue that his account is unsuccessful.

Abstract: This paper proposes a way to understand Kant's modalities of judgment—problematic, assertoric, and apodeictic—in terms of the location of a judgment in an inference. Other interpretations have tended to understand these modalities of judgment in terms of one or other conventional notion of modality. For example, Mattey (1986) argues that we should take them to be connected to notions of epistemic or doxastic modality. I shall argue that this is wrong, and that these kinds of interpretation of the modality of judgments cannot be reconciled with a key claim made by Kant, namely, that the modality of a judgment does not contribute to its content, and has nothing to do with the matter that is judged. I offer an alternative interpretation based upon Kant's explicating these modalities in terms of the location of a judgment in an inference, whereby the modality of a judgment is determined by the role a judgment plays in a given course of reasoning. If I am right, then Kant in fact presents an intriguing thesis pertaining to the inferential status and potential of all our judgments.

We propose a rigourous criterion for observability and claim it solves three problems that extant accounts of observability, including Van Fraassen's one, do not solve. We also give a rigourous verions of Van Fraassen's own sketchy account of modality without relying on `inflationary metaphycis'.