James Cargile (2010). Logical Form. In T. J. Smiley, Jonathan Lear & Alex Oliver (eds.), The Force of Argument: Essays in Honor of Timothy Smiley. Routledge.
Russell famously argued that Resemblance Nominalism leads to a vicious infinite regress in attempting to avoid admitting universals. Saying that a number of things are white only in that they resemble a particular white thing leaves a number of resemblances to that white thing, each of them constituting the holding of the same relation to the paradigm, qualifying that resemblance relation as a universal. Trying to dismiss that new universal by appeal to resemblances between those first resemblances only leads to (...) a new universal of resemblance, and so on. It is argued here that this does not arise for a properly formulated resemblance theory, which only requires one complex relation among the many particulars we deal with, a complex relation which is not multiply instantiated and thus not a universal. (shrink)
One skeptical strategy against A's claim to know that P is to hold that it is logically possible for someone to have the same "base" (a term needing explaining) for P as A does in spite of its not being true that P. Philosophical replies have focussed on showing that these are not genuine possibilities. Whether they are can be an interesting question of metaphysics, but it is argued in this paper that this metaphysical discussion is not the proper focus (...) for an assessment of skepticism. Even if there are the odd logical possibilities, they do not suffice to warrant skeptical doubts. Rather, there has to be good reason to think that there is a genuine chance of the alleged possibility obtaining. This requirement cannot be satisfied generically, and that is what is wrong with generic skepticism. (shrink)
No one doubts that philosophers have discussed at length ‘the problem of induction’, but it would also be generally recognized that there would be disagreement as to precisely what that problem is. Rather than tackle the formulation problem, I will borrow from a popular text: Our existence as well as science itself is based on the principle of induction that tells us to reason from past frequencies to future likelihoods, from the limited known of the past and present to the (...) unknown of the past, present, and future ... But though inductive probability is psychologically inescapable, we have trouble providing a rational justification for it. We might say, then, that there is such a practice as induction, and a problem associated with it is that of justifying engaging in it. We engage in reasoning from things we know about the past and present to conclusions about the past, present and future. We can't resist doing this but we have trouble finding a rational justification for doing so. This problem suggests a generalization. We engage in reasoning, reaching new conclusions. It would be hard to resist engaging in this practice. How do we provide a rational justification for it? (shrink)
These are not just tricks or puzzles, but are intimately connected with some of the liveliest and most basic philosophical disputes about logical form, ...
