In “The Ascription of Responsibilities and Rights,” H. L. A. Hart introduces two ideas, which he takes to be importantly related: ascriptive sentences and defeasible concepts. Hart's purpose is to dispel certain confusions that he nds in the philosophy of action; but I argue that Hart's ideas are equally pertinent to epistemology. Knowledge is a matter of epistemic authority; and authority is a matter of rights and responsibilities. But Hart's “ascriptivism” has attracted serious criticism and stands in need of (...) clarification, elaboration and even correction. The overall aim of the paper is to present a form of epistemic ascriptivism, in which justification emerges as a defeasible concept in Hart's sense. (shrink)

This paper discusses the first incarnation of what came to be known as the “Frege-Geach” point. The point was made by Peter Geach in his 1960 essay “Ascriptivism”, and developed in “Assertion”, a 1965 piece. Geach’s articles launch a wholesale attack on theories of non-descriptive performances advanced by “some Oxford philosophers” whom he accuses of ignoring “the distinction between calling a thing ‘P’ and predicating ‘P’ of a thing”. One view that Geach specifically targets is H. L. A. Hart’s (...) claim that sentences of the form “X φ-ed” are not primarily descriptive but ascriptive of responsibility for actions. Hart explicitly accepted Geach’s criticism, and disowned his essay. I argue that he was wrong to do so. Perhaps the essay was worth retracting, but not because of Geach’s objections. I begin by restating and refining Geach’s arguments, in order to bring out the flaw he claimed to have detected in the “pattern of philosophising” that he took Hart’s essay to exemplify. I go on to argue that Geach’s original point poses no obstacle either to non-descriptivism in general, or to Hart’s sui generis non-descriptivist claim in particular. (shrink)

In this article I shall present a Meinong-inspired theory of fictional objects. This theory is based on two ideas: fictional objects are mental objects, i.e., they depend for their identity conditions on minded subjects thinking of them; they bear properties in two different ways, i.e., by instantiating properties and by having properties “ascribed” to them. In my perspective, ascription relations hold (at least) between an object, a property and a minded subject. After having presented some data about fictional discourse, I (...) shall defend the thesis that fictional objects are mental objects. Afterwards, I shall introduce ascription relations and I shall outline in detail my theory and a comprehensive ontology of fiction. Finally, I shall define the identity conditions of fictional objects, I shall deal with the aforementioned data and I shall summarize the advantages of my theory over rival theories of fictional objects. (shrink)

Hart’s "Ascription of Responsibility and Rights" is where we find perhaps the first clear pronouncement of defeasibility and the technical introduction of the term. The paper has been criticised, disavowed, and never quite fully redeemed. Its lurid history is now being used as an excuse for dismissing the importance of defeasibility.

This paper investigates the relations between the concepts of moral harm and moral responsibility, arguing for a circularity between the two. On this basis the conceptual soundness of descriptivism, on which consequentialist and non-consequentialist arguments are often grounded, is questioned. In the last section a certain version of ascriptivism is defended: The circularity is relevant in order to understand how a restricted version of ascriptivism may in fact be well founded.

Hart's "Ascription of Responsibility and Rights" is where we find perhaps the first clear pronouncement of defeasibility and the technical introduction of the term. The paper has been criticised, disavowed, and never quite fully redeemed. Its lurid history is now being used as an excuse for dismissing the importance of defeasibility.

This chapter explores the possibility of a closer relationship, defending the position that objects of desire are apprehended as good, not just in the sense that it seems so to the subject, but in the much stronger sense that, ceteris paribus. It also explores the fact that a thing is desired may be taken as good reason for counting it as a prima facie good. The chapter argues that passive willing the sort of willing paradigmatically represented by the phenomenon of (...) desire, over which to do not exert immediate control ought to be viewed as a means, perhaps the chief means, by which to apprehend what is good. It involves examining two theses: first is relatively uncontroversial, and the second thesis is much stronger, people might have in mind were to claim that the will, conceived as a faculty of desire, is naturally oriented towards the good. (shrink)

The notion of human dignity fulfils different normative functions, making demands on heterogeneous resources for justification. After a short summary of Kant’s concept of dignity and its meta-ethica/ content which defines “Kantianism”, we will deal with three problematic aspects of the Kantian concept of dignity and provide a sketch of its reception in the German Constitution. Then we will present an ascriptivistic concept as an alternative to the Kantian one and discuss its limitations.

What makes an event count as an action? Typical answers appeal to the way in which the event was produced: e.g., perhaps an arm movement is an action when caused by mental states (in particular ways), but not when caused in other ways. I argue that this type of answer, which I call "productionism", is methodologically and substantially mistaken. In particular, productionist answers to this question tend to be either individualistic or foundationalist, or both, without explicit defence. Instead, I offer (...) an externalist, anti-foundationalist account of what makes an event count as an action, which he calls neo-ascriptivism, after the work of H.L.A. Hart. Specifically, I argue that our practices of attributing moral responsibility to each other are at least partly constitutive of events as actions. (shrink)

Starting from Brentano’s classical characterization of intentionality, we review the radical enactivist proposal about basic cognition and show that the underlying assumption that stripping teleosemantics of its representationalist commitments results in no explanatory loss is unwarranted. Significant features of basic cognition are lost, or so we argue, with the RECtification of teleosemantics that are retrieved by means of an alternative dubbed metaphysically non-committal content-ascriptivism.

Republican theorists have paid little attention to the normative problems of secession conflicts. So far, there is no such thing as a democratic republican theory of right of secession ; nor any comprehensive analysis of current TRS has ever been undertaken from a democratic republican point of view. This article tries to fill this second gap as a first step in order to fill that first one. In doing so, it shows how secession conflicts pose threats for two core democratic (...) republican values: freedom and inclusion. The threats are, concretely, those of exclusion, blackmailing minorities, arbitrary permanent majorities, and instability. The article also shows how, due to their respective pro-unionist or pro-secessionist biases, no current TRS seems to be able to handle those threats; and briefly outlines how a democratic republican TRS, based on a non-unilateralist logic, could be developed. (shrink)

We argue that work on norms provides a way to move beyond debates between proponents of individualist and structuralist approaches to bias, oppression, and injustice. We briefly map out the geography of that debate before presenting Charlotte Witt’s view, showing how her position, and the normative ascriptivism at its heart, seamlessly connects individuals to the social reality they inhabit. We then describe recent empirical work on the psychology of norms and locate the notions of informal institutions and soft structures (...) with respect to it. Finally, we argue that the empirical resources enrich Witt’s ascriptivism, and that the resulting picture shows theorists need not, indeed should not, choose between either the individualist or structuralist camp. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Chalmers and Jackson’s defence of the a priori entailment thesis, that is, the claim that microphysical truths a priori entail ordinary non-phenomenal truths such as ‘water covers 60% of the Earth surface’, which they use as a premise for an argument against the possibility of a reductive explanation of consciousness. Their argument relies on a certain view about the possession conditions of macroscopic concepts such as WATER, known as ascriptivism. In the paper I distinguish (...) two versions of ascriptivism: reductive versus non-reductive ascriptivism. According to reductive ascriptivism, competent users of a concept have the ability to infer truths involving such concept from lower-level truths, whereas according to non-reductive ascriptivism, all that is required in order to be a competent user of a concept is to be able to infer truths involving that concept from other truths, which need not be lower-level truths. I argue, first, that the a priori entailment thesis is committed to reductive ascriptivism, and secondly, that reductive ascriptivism is problematic because it trivializes the notion of a priori knowledge. Therefore, I conclude that Chalmers and Jackson have not presented a convincing case for the claim that microphysical truths entail ordinary non-phenomenal truths a priori, especially when we understand this claim in the sense that is relevant for their argument against the possibility of a reductive explanation of consciousness. (shrink)

According to Lynne Rudder Baker’s Practical Realism, we know that we have beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes independent of any scientific investigation. Propositional attitudes are an indispensable part of our everyday conception of the world and not in need of scientific validation. This paper asks what is the nature of the attitudes such that we may know them so well from a commonsense perspective. I argue for a self-ascriptivist view, on which we have propositional attitudes in virtue of ascribing (...) them to ourselves. On this view, propositional attitudes are derived representational states, deriving their contents and their attitude types from our self-ascriptions. (shrink)

Abstract In slogan form, the thesis of this paper is that beliefs are self-verifying fictions: We make them up, but in so doing, they come to exist, and so the fiction of belief is in fact true. This picture of belief emerges from a combination of three independently motivated views: (1) a phenomenal intentionalist picture of intentionality, on which phenomenal consciousness is the basis of intentionality; (2) what I will call a “self-ascriptivist” picture of derived representation, on which non-fundamental representational (...) features are a matter of our ascribing contents to ourselves or our mental states or contents; and (3) a representationalist picture of the attitudes, on which the attitude components of mental states (e.g., the “belief” bit of a belief that P) are represented contents. This paper outlines and motivates the view of beliefs as self-verifying fictions, compares the view to alternative views of belief, and contrasts beliefs on the resulting picture to other belief-like mental states. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences seem to in some sense have singular contents. For example, a perceptual experience of a dog as fluffy seems to represent some particular dog as being fluffy. There are important phenomenological, intuitive, and semantic considerations for thinking that perceptual experiences represent singular contents, but there are also important phenomenological, epistemic, and metaphysical considerations for thinking that they do not. This paper proposes a two-tier picture of the content of singular perceptual experiences that is based on phenomenal intentionality theories (...) of intentionality combined with self-ascriptivism about derived representation, a combination of views that allows mental states to have two types of contents: phenomenal contents and derived contents. On the proposed picture, singular perceptual experiences represent singular phenomenal contents, which do not involve worldly objects, as well as singular derived contents, which do involve worldly objects. This picture accommodates and reconciles the considerations for and against thinking that perceptual experiences have singular contents. (shrink)

What does it mean to be a person? And in what way is this connected to our finitude, i.e. to the properly human aspect of our existence? By analyzing some of the core features of our form of life (personal identity, self-consciousness, freedom, autonomy, responsibility), Michael Quante answers these questions arguing that it is possible to be a person and lead an authentically human life only within social relationships of recognition: only in these relationships, it is possible to know oneself (...) and act autonomously and responsibly. Through a close examination of the philosophies of Fichte and Hegel, on the one hand, and of the most recent debates on analytical ethics, on the other, Quante thus lays the foundations for a pragmatistic anthropology, that is, for a conception focused on the active nature of human existence. The volume is a revised version of the Lectures given by Michael Quante in 2017 at the PhD Course in Philosophy at the University of Padova. (shrink)

Like being able to drive a car, being autonomous is a socially attributed, claimed, and contested status. Normative debates about criteria for autonomy (and what autonomy entitles one to) are best understood, not as debates about what autonomy, at core, really is, but rather as debates about the relative merits of various possible packages of thresholds, entitlements, regulations, values, and institutions. Within different “regimes” of autonomy, different criteria for (degrees of) autonomy become authoritative. Neoliberal, solidaristic, and perfectionist regimes entail conflicting (...) understandings of what gets you autonomy and what autonomy gets you—for example, in relation to policies regarding physician-assisted suicide or financial support for senior citizens. In light of this, justifying a particular understanding of autonomy is inseparable from the task of arguing for the context-specific merits of a regime of autonomy as a whole and in relation to other ethical and political commitments. (shrink)

According to an idea which is widespread among philosophers, linguistic entities derive their intentionality from the intentionality of mental entities by virtue of some relation between them. Typically, it is some kind of intention on the speaker’s part – e.g., an intention to produce in the hearer a belief with a certain content – that is supposed to endow words with content. This paper argues that the concept of the derivation of content from one entity to another, if understood realistically, (...) is flawed: derived intentionality, I will argue, is merely ascribed intentionality, not a real property of its possessor. Irrealistic-ascriptivist senses are suggested for the ideas of content derivation, of original intentionality, and of the mind as the source of linguistic intentionality. Thus, endorsing the idea that mental intentionality is the source of non-mental intentionality need not tempt one to intentional realism. In an intentional irrealistic framework, what forms of intentionality are original and what are derived is a deeply contingent matter, determined by our practice of content ascription. But while intentional irrealism accommodates all those ideas, this paper defends “content-derivation irrealism” but not thoroughgoing intentional irrealism – the idea that there is real original intentionality is not ruled out. Still, assuming that some entities possess real intentionality, what can make them endow intentionality upon other entities is also our practice of content ascription. (shrink)

[full article, abstract in English; only abstract in Lithuanian] This paper proposes a new pragmatic interpretation of the Frege–Geach problem and presents a possible solution using a model of ascriptive legal language. The first section includes the definition of the Frege–Geach problem. In the second section, I analyze the content of Geach’s critical argument against prescriptivism in ethics. I discuss what Geach means by ascriptivism, why he mixes it with prescriptivism, and why a particular article by Herbert Hart became (...) the subject of criticism by Geach. The third section proposes a possible solution to the Frege–Geach problem based on the explication of the assertoric force of ascriptive legal utterances and the performativity of legal language. (shrink)

Leading one's life as a person is an essential feature of our human existence which is constitutively characterized by finiteness, sociality and vulnerability. Within the framework of a pragmatistic anthropology central features of our being persons (i.e. personal identity, self-consciousness, freedom, autonomy and responsibility) are made explicit in this study. The such unfolded conception is anthropological in the sense of being restricted to the human life-form. The explication is pragmatistic in a double sense: Firstly, action is taken as a complex (...) and not reducible basic feature; secondly, the study is committed to the pragmatistic model of justification. Leading one's life as a human person, this is the study's central thesis, is realized in constellations of recognition (intersubjective or institutionally framed). These can be made explicit as basic grammar of our evaluative Praxis within an ascriptivist framework. (shrink)

현상적 지향성 이론(phenomenal intentionality theory)은 주체(subject)의 현상적 상태를 통해 주체의 지향적 상태를 설명하는 이론이다. 현상적 지향성 이론의 한 가지 문제는 모든 지향적 상태가 고유한 현상적 상태를 동반하는 것은 아니라는 점이다. 멘델로비치(A. Mendelovici)는 이러한 문제를 해결하기 위해 이른바 ‘자기귀속주의(self-ascriptivism)’를 제안한다. 자기귀속주의에 따르면, 주체는 그가 가지는 현상적 상태가 무엇을 의미하는지 생각하는 성향을 가지고, 이러한 성향을 통해 다양한 지향적 상태들이 일어난다. 하지만 자기귀속주의는 주체의 지향적 상태를 그것에 관한 주체의 반성적인 생각을 통해 설명한다는 점에서 근본적으로 잘못되었다. 다른 한편 후설(E. Husserl)의 현상학에 근거하여 이러한 (...) 문제를 일으키지 않는 현상적 지향성 이론을 전개할 수 있다. 이러한 이론에 따르면, 주체가 가지는 현상적 상태는 주체가 아직 가지지 않는 이러저러한 현상적 상태들에 대한 기대를 일으키고, 이러한 기대를 통해 다양한 지향적 상태들이 일어난다. 그리고 이러한 기대는 이러저러한 현상적 상태들이 일어나면 만족하고 그렇지 않으면 실망하는 성향이다. 이러한 현상적 지향성 이론은 자기귀속주의에 있는 문제를 일으키지 않는다. 나아가 그것은 감각적이거나 감정적인 현상들로부터 구별되는 새로운 종류의 인식적 현상(cognitive phenomenology)을 필요로 하지 않는다. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary debate about the nature of expertise often conflates having expertise with either the individual possession of competences or a certain role ascription. In contrast to this, the paper attempts to demonstrate how different dimensions of expertise ascription are inextricably interwoven. As a result, a balanced account of expertise will be proposed that more accurately determines the closer relationship between the expert’s dispositions, their manifestations and the expert’s function. This finally results in an advanced understanding of expertise that views (...) someone as an expert only if she is undefeatedly disposed to fulfill a contextually salient service function adequately at the moment of assessment. (shrink)

The paper is a critical discussion of Sneddon’s recent proposal to revive ascriptivism in philosophy of action. Despite his declarations, Sneddon fails in his central task of giving an account of the distinction between actions and mre happenings. His failure is due to three major problems. First, the account is based on a misconceived methodology of “type” necessary and “token” sufficient conditions. Second, the “type” necessary condition he proposed is so weak that the connection that obtains between action and (...) responsibility also obtains between action and lack of responsibility. Third, neither the idea of responsibility nor the idea of defeating conditions is elucidated sufficiently to play any role in understanding what it is to be an action. (shrink)

This anthology consists of forty-nine of Geach’s previously published papers on logic. He opens his Preface by writing: "I bring together here almost all my English articles that I have previously published and have not already collected or cannibalized in other books." It contains his first published paper "Designation and Truth" from Analysis 1947-48 as well as his elegant sketch of a decidable entailment system in the 1970 Philosophical Review. For the most part he has made only stylistic changes and (...) added some notes. So, he claims: "all articles appear without substantial change." However, he admits that he divided his "Quantification Theory and the Problem of Identifying Objects of Reference" from the now classic 1963 volume of Acta Philosophica Fennica. He divided it because he wanted to separate his strong advocacy of a substitution interpretation of the quantifiers from some views on quotation marks, about which he is less than certain. The papers are not in mere chronological order. They are organized by topic within chapters entitled: Historical Essays, Traditional Logic, Theory of Reference and Syntax, Intentionality, Quotation and Semantics, Set Theory, Identity Theory, Assertion, Imperatives and Practical Reasoning, and Logic in Metaphysics and Theology. The chapter titles are a fair guide to content. But note the following. Two lucid papers defending von Wright’s notion of entailment are in the Intentionality chapter. The essay "Ascriptivism" in the Assertion chapter is relevant to discussions of free will because he argues: "to ascribe an act to agent is a causal description of the act" and he urges a search for a non-Humean analysis of causality. The essays in the last chapter are: "Nominalism," "Some problems about time," and "God’s relation to the world.". (shrink)

This volume is based on papers presented at a conference on defeasibility in ethics, epistemology, law, and logic that took place at the Goethe University in Frankfurt in 2010. The subtitle (“Knowledge, Agency, Responsibility, and the Law”) better reflects the content than does the title of the original conference. None of the papers focuses directly or primarily on defeasible reasoning in logic, though a few touch on this indirectly. Nor are the papers evenly split among the topics. Six are primarily (...) about epistemology, four about responsibility, and one each focuses on agency and the law. (shrink)