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  1. The open future, bivalence and assertion.Corine Besson & Anandi Hattiangadi - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 167 (2):251-271.
    It is highly now intuitive that the future is open and the past is closed now—whereas it is unsettled whether there will be a fourth world war, it is settled that there was a first. Recently, it has become increasingly popular to claim that the intuitive openness of the future implies that contingent statements about the future, such as ‘There will be a sea battle tomorrow,’ are non-bivalent (neither true nor false). In this paper, we argue that the non-bivalence of (...)
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  2. Norms, reasons and reasoning: a guide through Lewis Carroll’s regress argument.Corine Besson - 2018 - In Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
    This paper concerns connection between knowing or accepting a logical principle such as Modus Ponens and actions of reasoning involving it. Discussions of this connection typically mention the so-called ‘Lewis Carroll Regress’ and there is near consensus that the regress shows something important about it. Also, although the regress explicitly concerns logic, many philosophers think that it establishes a more general truth, about the structurally similar connection between epistemic or practical principles and actions involving them. This paper’s first aim is (...)
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  3. Knowledge of logical generality and the possibility of deductive reasoning.Corine Besson - 2019 - In Anders Nes & Timothy Hoo Wai Chan (eds.), Inference and Consciousness. London: Routledge. pp. 172-196.
    I address a type of circularity threat that arises for the view that we employ general basic logical principles in deductive reasoning. This type of threat has been used to argue that whatever knowing such principles is, it cannot be a fully cognitive or propositional state, otherwise deductive reasoning would not be possible. I look at two versions of the circularity threat and answer them in a way that both challenges the view that we need to apply general logical principles (...)
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  4. Logical knowledge and ordinary reasoning.Corine Besson - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 158 (1):59-82.
    This paper argues that the prominent accounts of logical knowledge have the consequence that they conflict with ordinary reasoning. On these accounts knowing a logical principle, for instance, is having a disposition to infer according to it. These accounts in particular conflict with so-called ‘reasoned change in view’, where someone does not infer according to a logical principle but revise their views instead. The paper also outlines a propositional account of logical knowledge which does not conflict with ordinary reasoning.
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  5. Empty natural kind terms and dry earth.Corine Besson - 2012 - Erkenntnis 76 (3):403-425.
    This paper considers the problem of assigning meanings to empty natural kind terms. It does so in the context of the Twin-Earth externalist-internalist debate about whether the meanings of natural kind terms are individuated by the external physical environment of the speakers using these terms. The paper clarifies and outlines the different ways in which meanings could be assigned to empty natural kind terms. And it argues that externalists do not have the semantic resources to assign them meanings. The paper (...)
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  6. Assertion and the Future.Corine Besson & Anandi Hattiangadi - 2018 - In Sanford C. Goldberg (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Assertion. Oxford University Press. pp. 481-504.
    It is disputed what norm, if any, governs assertion. We address this question by looking at assertions of future contingents: statements about the future that are neither metaphysically necessary nor metaphysically impossible. Many philosophers think that future contingents are not truth apt, which together with a Truth Norm or a Knowledge Norm of assertion implies that assertions of these future contingents are systematically infelicitous. In this article, we argue that our practice of asserting future contingents is incompatible with the view (...)
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  7. Propositions, Dispositions and Logical Knowledge.Corine Besson - 2010 - In M. Bonelli & A. Longo (eds.), Quid Est Veritas? Essays in Honour of Jonathan Barnes. Bibliopolis.
    This paper considers the question of what knowing a logical rule consists in. I defend the view that knowing a logical rule is having propositional knowledge. Many philosophers reject this view and argue for the alternative view that knowing a logical rule is, at least at the fundamental level, having a disposition to infer according to it. To motivate this dispositionalist view, its defenders often appeal to Carroll’s regress argument in ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’. I show that this (...)
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  8. Externalism, internalism, and logical truth.Corine Besson - 2009 - Review of Symbolic Logic 2 (1):1-29.
    The aim of this paper is to show what sorts of logics are required by externalist and internalist accounts of the meanings of natural kind nouns. These logics give us a new perspective from which to evaluate the respective positions in the externalist-internalist debate about the meanings of such nouns. The two main claims of the paper are the following: first, that adequate logics for internalism and externalism about natural kind nouns are second-order logics; second, that an internalist second-order logic (...)
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  9. Logical Expressivism and Carroll's Regress.Corine Besson - 2019 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 86:35-62.
    In this paper, I address a key argument in favour of logical expressivism, the view that knowing a logical principle such as Modus Ponens is not a cognitive state but a pro-attitude towards drawing certain types of conclusions from certain types of premises. The argument is that logical expressivism is the only view that can take us out of Lewis Carroll's Regress – which suggests that elementary deductive reasoning is impossible. I show that the argument does not hold scrutiny and (...)
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  10.  61
    XIII—Knowing How to Reason Logically.Corine Besson - 2021 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 121 (3):327-353.
    In this paper, I examine Gilbert Ryle’s claim that ordinary competence with logical principles or rules is a kind of knowing how, where such knowledge is understood as a skill, a multi-track disposition. Ryle argues that his account of ordinary logical competence helps avoid Lewis Carroll’s famous regress argument (Carroll 1895), which suggests that elementary deductive reasoning might be impossible. Indeed, Carroll’s regress is the central motivation for Ryle’s account. I argue that this account is inadequate on two counts: it (...)
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  11. Rigidity, natural kind terms and metasemantics.Corine Besson - 2010 - In Helen Beebee & Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (eds.), The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds. New York: Routledge. pp. 25--44.
    A paradigmatic case of rigidity for singular terms is that of proper names. And it would seem that a paradigmatic case of rigidity for general terms is that of natural kind terms. However, many philosophers think that rigidity cannot be extended from singular terms to general terms. The reason for this is that rigidity appears to become trivial when such terms are considered: natural kind terms come out as rigid, but so do all other general terms, and in particular all (...)
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  12. Logical knowledge and Gettier cases.Corine Besson - 2009 - Philosophical Quarterly 59 (234):1-19.
    Knowledge of the basic rules of logic is often thought to be distinctive, for it seems to be a case of non-inferential a priori knowledge. Many philosophers take its source to be different from those of other types of knowledge, such as knowledge of empirical facts. The most prominent account of knowledge of the basic rules of logic takes this source to be the understanding of logical expressions or concepts. On this account, what explains why such knowledge is distinctive is (...)
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  13. Understanding the Logical Constants and Dispositions.Corine Besson - 2009 - The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 5:1-24.
    Many philosophers claim that understanding a logical constant (e.g. ‘if, then’) fundamentally consists in having dispositions to infer according to the logical rules (e.g. Modus Ponens) that fix its meaning. This paper argues that such dispositionalist accounts give us the wrong picture of what understanding a logical constant consists in. The objection here is that they give an account of understanding a logical constant which is inconsistent with what seem to be adequate manifestations of such understanding. I then outline an (...)
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  14. Assessment Sensitivity about Future Contingents, Vindication and Self-Refutation.Corine Besson & Anandi Hattiangadi - manuscript
    John MacFarlane has recently argued that his brand of truth relativism – Assessment Sensitivity – provides the best solution to the puzzle of future contingents: statements about the future that are metaphysically neither necessary nor impossible. In this paper, we show that even if we grant all of the metaphysical, semantic and pragmatic assumptions in terms of which MacFarlane sets and solves the puzzle, Assessment Sensitivity is ultimately self-refuting.
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  15. A Note on Logical Truth.Corine Besson - 2014 - Logique Et Analyse 57 (227):309-331.
    Classical logic counts sentences such as ‘Alice is identical with Alice’ as logically true. A standard objection to classical logic is that Alice’s self-identity, for instance, is not a matter of logic because the identity of particular objects is not a matter of logic. For this reason, many philosophers argue that classical logic is not the right logic, and that it should be abandoned in favour of free logic — logic free of existential commitments with respect to singular terms. In (...)
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  16.  49
    Can truth relativism account for the indeterminacy of future contingents?Corine Besson & Anandi Hattiangadi - 2022 - Synthese 200 (3):1-23.
    John MacFarlane has recently argued that his brand of truth relativism provides the best solution to the puzzle of future contingents: assertions about the future that express propositions that are metaphysically neither necessary nor impossible. In this paper, we show that even if we grant all of the metaphysical, semantic and pragmatic assumptions in terms of which MacFarlane sets and aims to solve the puzzle, his truth relativism is not apt to solve the problem of future contingents. We argue that (...)
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  17. Abominable Conjunctions and Gricean Conversation.Corine Besson - 2016 - In M. Frauchiger & W. K. Essler (eds.), Themes from Dretske, Lauener Library of Analytical Philosophy. De Gruyter.
    On Fred Dretske’s account of knowledge, the Epistemic Closure Principle for knowledge is not valid. Dretske takes this to be a virtue since the account is thus able to saves ordinary knowledge from skepticism. On it, you may know that you have hands, although you do not know that you are not a handless brain in a vat. As a correlate, the account also has to countenance the existence of what has come to be known as ‘abominable conjunctions’ – conjunctions (...)
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  18. Meaning, Modality and Mind: Essays Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Naming and Necessity.Corine Besson, Anandi Hattiangadi & Romina Padro (eds.) - forthcoming - Oxford University Press.
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  19. Trenton Merricks Propositions. [REVIEW]Corine Besson - 2016 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2016.
  20. ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’: Lewis Carroll's Paradox of Inference. [REVIEW]Corine Besson - 2018 - History and Philosophy of Logic 39 (1):96-98.
    This double issue of the Carrollian, the journal of the Lewis Carroll Society, is entirely devoted to Lewis Carroll's famous short paper published in the journal Mind in 1895 under the title ‘What...
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