In this paper we discuss the new Tweety puzzle. The original Tweety puzzle was addressed by approaches in non-monotonic logic, which aim to adequately represent the Tweety case, namely that Tweety is a penguin and, thus, an exceptional bird, which cannot fly, although in general birds can fly. The new Tweety puzzle is intended as a challenge for probabilistic theories of epistemic states. In the first part of the paper we argue against monistic Bayesians, who assume that epistemic states can (...) at any given time be adequately described by a single subjective probability function. We show that monistic Bayesians cannot provide an adequate solution to the new Tweety puzzle, because this requires one to refer to a frequency-based probability function. We conclude that monistic Bayesianism cannot be a fully adequate theory of epistemic states. In the second part we describe an empirical study, which provides support for the thesis that monistic Bayesianism is also inadequate as a descriptive theory of cognitive states. In the final part of the paper we criticize Bayesian approaches in cognitive science, insofar as their monistic tendency cannot adequately address the new Tweety puzzle. We, further, argue against monistic Bayesianism in cognitive science by means of a case study. In this case study we show that Oaksford and Chater’s (2007, 2008) model of conditional inference—contrary to the authors’ theoretical position—has to refer also to a frequency-based probability function. (shrink)

We present a new puzzle about logical truth, necessity, and moral responsibility. We defend one solution to the puzzle. A corollary of our preferred solution is that prominent arguments for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility are invalid.

_Puzzled?!_ seamlessly fuses two traditional approaches to the study of philosophy at the introductory level. It is thematic, examining fundamental issues in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and more. It is also historical, introducing major philosophical arguments that have arisen throughout the history of Western philosophy. But its real innovation lies elsewhere. Each of its twelve chapters begins with a traditional argument of a thoroughly puzzling kind: a valid philosophical argument with highly plausible premises but a surprising conclusion. The remainder (...) of the chapter shows how major innovations in the history of philosophy arise as logical responses to that argument. Written with a light touch, _Puzzled?!_ nevertheless offers a rigorous introduction to the ideas it explores and to the foundations of critical thinking itself. It will serve as effectively as a main or supplementary text in an introduction to critical thinking as it will in Philosophy 101. (shrink)

How is it that a speaker _S_ can at once make it obvious to an audience _A_ that she intends to communicate some proposition _p_, and yet at the same time retain plausible deniability with respect to this intention? The answer is that _S_ can bring it about that _A_ has a high justified credence that ‘_S_ intended _p_’ without putting _A_ in a position to know that ‘_S_ intended _p_’. In order to achieve this _S_ has to exploit a (...) sense in which communication can be lottery-like. After defending this view of deniability I argue that it compares favorably to a rival account recently developed by Dinges and Zakkou (Mind, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzac056, 2023 ). (shrink)

We think of logic as objective. We also think that we are reliable about logic. These views jointly generate a puzzle: How is it that we are reliable about logic? How is it that our logical beliefs match an objective domain of logical fact? This is an instance of a more general challenge to explain our reliability about a priori domains. In this paper, I argue that the nature of this challenge has not been properly understood. I explicate (...) the challenge both in general and for the particular case of logic. I also argue that two seemingly attractive responses – appealing to a faculty of rational insight or to the nature of concept possession – are incapable of answering the challenge. (shrink)

According to a plausible and influential account of perceptual knowledge, the truth-makers of beliefs that constitute perceptual knowledge must feature in the causal explanation of how we acquire those beliefs. However, this account runs into difficulties when it tries to accommodate time perception – specifically perception of order and duration – since the features we are apparently tracking in such perception are not causal. The central aim of the paper is to solve this epistemological puzzle. Two strategies are examined. (...) The first strategy locates the causal truth-makers within the psychological mechanism underlying time perception, thus treating facts about time order and duration as mind-dependent. This strategy, however, is problematic. The second strategy modifies the causal account of perceptual knowledge to include a non-causal component in the explanation of belief-acquisition, namely chronometric explanation. Applying this much more satisfactory approach to perceptual knowledge of time, we can preserve the mind-independence of order and duration, but not that of time's flow. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Quine's views on the epistemology of logic. According to Quine's influential holistic account, logic is central in the “web of belief” that comprises our overall theory of the world. Because of this, revisions to logic would have devastating systematic consequences, and this explains why we are loath to make such revisions. In section1, I clarify this idea and thereby show that Quine actually takes the web of belief to have asymmetrical internal structure. This raises two (...) puzzles. First, as I show in section 2, Quine's mature thoroughly naturalized view has it that logic is simply obvious, and this is explains why we do not typically consider revising it. While Quine presents this naturalized view as a way to make good on his earlier metaphor of centrality in a web of belief, I argue that the resources of Quine's naturalized epistemology cannot adequately explain why we are reluctant to revise logic. And, Quine seems to recognize this point himself. In light of this, I explain in section 3 how Quine can allow that our overall scientific theory has systematic structure in a way that is consistent with his naturalistic strictures. Second, the asymmetrical internal structure of the web of belief seems to be inconsistent with its being a holistic web at all. I defuse this problem in section 4 by showing how Quine distinguishes between structural and confirmational considerations. I close by using this distinction to show how Quine's view can evade Michael Friedman’s criticisms, and allow for important methodological distinctions between areas of the web of belief. (shrink)

This paper presents a puzzle about moral responsibility. The problem is based upon the indeterminacy of relevant reference classes as applied to action. After discussing and rejecting a very tempting response I propose moral contextualism instead, that is, the idea that the truth value of judgments of the form S is morally responsible for x depends on and varies with the context of the attributor who makes that judgment. Even if this reply should not do all the expected work it (...) is a first step. (shrink)

Critical comments on Guido Melchior’s book, Knowing and Checking: An Epistemological Investigation (2019). In the second part of his book, Melchior aims to employ his sensitivity account of the epistemic concept of checking to explain well-known puzzle cases about knowing. My comments focus on Melchior’s explanation of knowledge-closure puzzles, as exemplified by Dretske’s zebra case. I raise three critical points about the explanation Melchior proposes for puzzles of this type.

The philosophy of science has produced numerous accounts of how scientific facts are generated, from very specific facilitators of belief, such as neo-Kantian constitutive principles, to global frameworks, such as Kuhnian paradigms. I consider a recent addition to this canon: van Fraassen’s notion of an epistemic stance—a collection of attitudes and policies governing the generation of factual beliefs—and his commitment to voluntarism in this context: the idea that contrary stances and sets of beliefs are rationally permissible. I argue that while (...) scientific inquiry inevitably favours a high degree of consensus in our choices of stance, there is no parallel constraint in the case of philosophical inquiry, such as that concerned with how scientific knowledge should be interpreted. This leads, in the latter case, to a fundamental and apparently irresolvable mystery at the heart of stance voluntarism, regarding the grounds for choosing basic epistemic stances. (shrink)

This article argues that there can be epistemic dilemmas: situations in which one faces conflicting epistemic requirements with the result that whatever one does, one is doomed to do wrong from the epistemic point of view. Accepting this view, I argue, may enable us to solve several epistemological puzzles.

The many definitions of sophistry at the beginning of Plato’s Sophist have puzzled scholars just as much as they puzzled the dialogue’s main speakers: the Visitor from Elea and Theaetetus. The aim of this paper is to give an account of that puzzlement. This puzzlement, it is argued, stems not from a logical or epistemological problem, but from the metaphysical problem that, given the multiplicity of accounts, the interlocutors do not know what the sophist essentially is. It transpires (...) that, in order to properly account for this puzzle, one must jettison the traditional view of Plato’s method of division, on which divisions must be exclusive and mark out relations of essential predication. It is then shown on independent grounds that, although Platonic division in the Sophist must express predication relations and be transitive, it need not be dichotomous, exclusive, or express relations of essential predication. Once the requirements of exclusivity and essential predication are dropped, it is possible to make sense of the reasons that the Visitor from Elea and Theaetetus are puzzled. Moreover, with this in hand, it is possible to see Plato making an important methodological point in the dialogue: division on its own without any norms does not necessarily lead to the discovery of essences. (shrink)

According to one-level physicalism, reality is exhausted by fundamental physical entities and properties. This position is sometimes defended on the basis of the truthmaker view of ontological commitment. Accordingly, physicalists can affirm higher-level truths without ontologically committing to any higher-level properties or states of affairs; fundamental physical states of affairs serve as truthmakers of all truths that have truthmakers, and a physicalist’s ontology should consist of nothing but the fundamental physical states of affairs and their constituents. In this paper, I (...) raise a problem for one-level physicalists who defend their views by appealing to the truthmaker view of ontological commitment. I argue that the truthmaker view faces certain puzzles the solutions of which clash with the main tenets of one-level physicalism. I conclude that either truthmaking is not a good guide to ontological commitment or one-level physicalism cannot be defended on the basis of the truthmaker view. (shrink)

Propositional attitude ascribing sentences seem to give rise to failures of substitution. Is this phenomena best accounted for semantically, by constructing a semantics for propositional attitude ascribing sentences that invalidates the Substitution Principle, or pragmatically? In this paper I argue against semantic accounts of such phenomena. I argue that any semantic theory that respects all our apparent substitution failure intuitions will entail that the noun-phrase position outside the scope of the attitude verb is not open to substitution salva veritate, which (...) is counter-intuitive. (shrink)

Ordinarily, the order in which some objects are attached to a scale does not affect the total weight measured by the scale. This principle is shown to fail in certain cases involving infinitely many objects. In these cases, we can produce any desired reading of the scale merely by changing the order in which a fixed collection of objects are attached to the scale. This puzzling phenomenon brings out the metaphysical significance of a theorem about infinite series that is well (...) known by mathematicians but has so far eluded philosophical scrutiny. (shrink)

In this paper I undertake to resolve a main pragmatic puzzle triggered by Bank-type cases. After accepting ‘sanitized’ intuitions about Truth-Values, as reflected in x-phi experiments, the pragmatic puzzle about whether the husband is inconsistent remains, and if he isn’t, which intuitively is the case, how are we to explain it. The context in such cases is pragmatic, with awareness of high risks, and the treatment I propose is pragmatic as well, but not Gricean. I offer a new Pragmatics whose (...) main tools are Steering Thrust and Posting. It focuses on what I call Action-Directed Pragmatics. An overall view of Pragmatics centers on the primary resort to Sayability rather than to Truth-Values, and to the Pragmatic phenomenon of co-present operative norm-types, which can conflict in some cases vis-à-vis particular actions and about what subjects can say. The very satisfactory explanation of the above puzzle that I offer is in such terms. In particular, attention is focused on the phenomenon of Negative-Polarity Pragmatic Functors. (shrink)

In discussion of the "Principle of Identity" in the Treatise Hume presents a puzzle about identity - not a puzzle for semantics, like Frege's, but a puzzle for a theory of representation. In this essay I am less concerned with issues of Hume interpretation and more concerned with the puzzle itself.

Two thought experiments are provided which elicit whatappear to be opposing judgments about the demands of morality.One Unger-inspired thought experiment suggests that a personmust give up four decades of earnings just to save a singlelife. The other evokes the contrary intuition that onedoesn't have to labor forty years without compensation inorder to prevent the death of an individual. However,considerations of consistency do not demand that weabandon one of our intuitive responses. This is becausethere is a morally significant difference between thetwo (...) burdens that the people suffer in the respectivethought experiments. The difference is a result of humanpsychology being such that it is easier to bear theaftermath of an event that renders one's earlier effortsfutile than it is to suffer identical efforts goingunrewarded in the future. A conclusion that can bedrawn from this temporal asymmetry is that while moralityis not quite as demanding as Unger and many consequentialistsmaintain, it is much more demanding than many of their opponents realize. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that Radfords real question is not the conceptual one, as it is usually taken, but the causal one, and show that Waltons account, which treats Radfords puzzle as the conceptual question, is not a satisfactory solution to it. I will also argue that contrary to what Walton claims, the causal question is not only important, but also closely related to the conceptual and normative questions. What matters is not that Walton has not solved Radfords (...) puzzle per se, but that he has not recognized the importance of this puzzle. While doing this, I will suggest a revision to the cognitive theory of emotion. (shrink)

This work explores some ways in which logics for defeasible reasoning can be applied to questions in epistemology. It's naturally thought of as developing four applications: The first is concerned with simple epistemic rules, such as "If you perceives that X, then you ought to believe that X" and "If you have outstanding testimony that X, then you ought to believe that X." Anyone who thinks that such rules have a place in our accounts of epistemic normativity must explain what (...) happens in cases where they come into conflict —such as one where you perceive a red object and are told that it is blue. The literature has gone in two directions: The first suggests that rules have built-in unless-clauses specifying the circumstances under which they fail to apply; the second that rules do not specify what attitudes you ought to have, but only what counts in favor or against having those attitudes. I express these two different ideas in a defeasible logic framework and demonstrate that there's a clear sense in which they are equivalent. The second application uses a defeasible logic to solve an important puzzle about epistemic rationality, involving higher-order evidence, or, roughly, evidence about our capacities for evaluating evidence. My solution has some affinities with the so-called conflicting-ideals view. The third application, then, is a characterization of this view in logical terms: I suggest that it should be thought of as an unconventional metaepistemological view, according to which epistemic requirements are not exceptionless, but defeasible and governed by a comparatively weak logic. Finally, the fourth application is in the burgeoning debate about the epistemic significance of disagreement. The intuitive conciliatory views say, roughly, that you ought to become less confident in your take on some question X, if you learn that an epistemic equal disagrees with you about X. I propose to think of conciliationism as a defeasible reasoning policy, develop a mathematically precise model of it, and use it to solve one of the most pressing problems for conciliatory views: Given that there are disagreements about these views themselves, they can self-defeat and issue inconsistent recommendations. (shrink)

Idealization is a necessity. Stripping away levels of complexity makes questions tractable, focuses our attention, and lets us develop comprehensible, testable models. Applying such models, however, requires care and attention to how the idealizations incorporated into their development affect their predictions. In epistemology, we tend to focus on idealizations concerning individual agents' capacities, such as memory, mathematical ability, and so on, when addressing this concern. By contrast, this dissertation focuses on social idealizations, particularly those pertaining to salient social categories like (...) race, sex, and gender. In Chapter II, Privilege and Superiority, we begin with standpoint epistemology, one of the earliest efforts to grapple with the ways that social structures affect our epistemic lives. I argue that, if we interpret standpoint epistemologists' claims as hypotheses about the ways that our social positions affect access to evidence, we can fruitfully employ recent developments in evidence logic to study the consequences. I lay the groundwork for this project, developing a model based on neighborhood semantics for modal logic. Adapting this framework to standpoint epistemology helps to clarify the meaning of terms like "epistemic privilege" and "superior knowledge" and to elucidate the differences between various accounts of standpoint epistemology. I also address a longstanding criticism of these views: Longino's (1990) bias paradox, which suggests that there is no objective position from which to judge the goodness of a particular standpoint. Chapter III, Evidence in a Non-Ideal World, turns to the broader social context, looking at how ideology affects the availability of evidence. Throughout the chapter, I take the formation, justification, and maintenance of racist, sexist, and otherwise oppressive beliefs as a central case. I argue that these beliefs are, at least sometimes, formed as a result of evidential distortion, a structural feature of our epistemic contexts that skews readily available evidence in favor of dominant ideologies. Because they are formed this way, such beliefs will appear justified on prominent accounts of justification, both internalist and externalist. As a result, epistemic norms that fail to account for such non-ideal conditions will deliver verdicts that are not only counter-intuitive, but also morally unpalatable. This, I argue, reveals a kind of structural epistemic injustice, especially where oppressive ideology is involved and suggests the need for epistemic norms that are sensitive to agents' social contexts. Much of the discussion in Chapters II and III depends on social categories like race and gender, arguing that they have a distinctive influence on our epistemic lives. In Chapter IV, I Know You Are, But What Am I?, my co-author and I focus on social categories themselves, distinguishing between self-identity, social identity, and social role. We self-identify as gay or straight, men or women, couch-potatoes or gym rats. Sometimes, these identities affect our social roles---the way we are perceived and treated by others---and sometimes they do not. This relationship between our internal identities and our preferred public perceptions begs for explanation. On our account, this relationship is captured by what we refer to as 'social identity'---roughly, internal identities made available to others. We argue that this account of social identity plays an illuminating role in structural explanation of discrimination and individual behavior, dissolves puzzles surrounding the phenomenon of 'passing', and explains certain moral and political obligations toward individuals. (shrink)

Using a variant of Schiffer’s puzzle regarding de re belief, I recently presented a new argument against the so-called Naive Russellian theory, consisting of the following theses: ( \(NR_{1}\) ) The propositions we say and believe are Russellian propositions, i.e., structured propositions consisting of the objects, properties, and relations our thoughts and speech acts are about; ( \(NR_{2}\) ) Names (and other singular terms) are directly referential terms, i.e., the propositional content of a name is just its referent; ( \(NR_{3}\) (...) ) A sentence of the form ‘_A_ believes/disbelieves that _S_’ is true in a context _c_ if and only if the referent of _A_ in _c_ believes/disbelieves the proposition expressed by _S_ in _c_. In this paper, I will argue that my variant of Schiffer’s puzzle is not only a problem for the Naive Russellian theory, but for every theory of belief ascriptions entailing ( \(NR_{3}\) ). Such theories are also called _relational analyses of belief ascriptions_. Here the main alternative to a Neo-Russellian theory, consisting of ( \(NR_{1}\) ) and ( \(NR_{2}\) ), is a Fregean theory, according to which the propositions we say and believe are Fregean propositions, i.e., structured propositions consisting of ways the objects, properties, and relations our thoughts and speech acts are about are presented to the speaker or agent. I will argue that such variants of the relational analysis are committed to principles very similar to the principles used by my Schiffer puzzle. Concluding, I will discuss Fregean and Neo-Russellian alternatives to the relational analysis, and I will argue that, although there are Neo-Russellian alternatives to the relational analysis which provide a solution to my variant of Schiffer’s puzzle, there seem to be no such Fregean alternatives. (shrink)

Any philosophical method that treats the analysis of the meaning of a sentence or expression in terms of a decomposition into a set of conceptually basic constituent parts must do some theoretical work to explain the puzzles of intensionality. This is because intensional phenomena appear to violate the principle of compositionality, and the assumption of compositionality is the principal justification for thinking that an analysis will reveal the real semantical import of a sentence or expression through a method of (...) decomposition. Accordingly, a natural strategy for dealing with intensionality is to argue that it is really just an isolable, aberrant class of linguistic phenomena that poses no general threat to the thesis that meaning is basically compositional. On the other hand, the later Mohists give us good reason to reject this view. What we learn from them is that there may be basic limitations in any analytical technique that presupposes that meaning is perspicuously represented only when it has been fully decomposed into its constituent parts. The purpose of this paper is to (a) explain why the Mohists found the issue of intensionality to be so important in their investigations of language, and (b) defend the view that Mohist insights reveal basic limitations in any technique of analysis that is uncritically applied with a decompositional approach in mind, as are those that are often pursued in the West in the context of more general epistemological and metaphysical programs. (shrink)

The skeptical puzzle consists of three allegedly incompatible claims: S knows that O, S doesn’t know that ~U, and the claim that knowledge is closed under the known entailment. I consider several famous instances of the puzzle and conclude that in all of those cases the presupposition that O entails ~U is false. I also consider two possible ways for trying to make it true and argue that both strategies ultimate fail. I conclude that this result at least completely discredits (...) any solution that denies the principle of epistemic closure. At most, denying that O entails ~U can itself be seen as a novel solution to the puzzle, preferred to any other solution: it accommodates both non-skeptical and skeptical intuitions but does not require us to give up the principle of closure, embrace contextualism or subject-sensitive invariantism, or deny any commonly accepted principle of epistemology or logic. (shrink)

My conclusion will be that, more often than we might have thought, suspension of judgment is the epistemically proper attitude. It follows that in such cases we lack reasonable belief and so, at least on standard conceptions, knowledge. This is a kind of contingent real-world skepticism that has not received the attention it deserves. I hope that this paper will help to bring this issue to life.

In virtue of what are we responsible for our beliefs? I argue that doxastic responsibility has a crucial social component: part of being responsible for our beliefs is being responsible to others. I suggest that this responsibility is a form of answerability with two distinct dimensions: an individual and an interpersonal dimension. While most views hold that the individual dimension is grounded in some form of control that we can exercise over our beliefs, I contend that we are answerable for (...) our beliefs as long as they reflect our evaluative commitments and dispositions, or are products of our reasoning, where this does not amount to a form of control. I next argue that answerability has a second, largely neglected dimension: the interpersonal dimension, which is grounded in what I call our relations of doxastic dependence. As social creatures, we depend on one another in our capacity as believers. We depend on one another as believers not only in epistemic ways, but also in practical ways, because our beliefs inform and motivate our actions, and allow us to participate in shared practical goals. Depending on one another in these ways is an unavoidable part of cooperating in the shared project of pursuing epistemic and practical success, and it makes us vulnerable to both epistemic and moral harm. It is because of this, I argue, that answerability has interpersonal normative force upon us: we are subject to legitimate expectations associated with participating in relations of doxastic dependence. (shrink)

A famous puzzle called “Grandmother Paradox” is used to argue against the feasibility of traveling backward in time because of the logical and nomological problems such travel involves, and not only because we don’t have the technology to make it reality. The same kind of problems would be encountered in leaping forward in time and then returning to the time of departure. We argue that a similar family of problems also arise in our having foreknowledge of the future without (...) making any time travel. We point to the mysterious consequences of having access to a being, say a machine or a psychic, that can have infallible knowledge of the future and conveys this foreknowledge to human beings truthfully, without any lies or distortions. The cause of these mysterious consequences is the fact that such machines or psychics will raise logical and nomological complications reminiscent of the ones we encounter in time travel scenarios, and that is a strong reason why infallible foretellers cannot exist. We conclude that we can have foreknowledge of the future, in principle, only within certain narrow limits, if at all. (shrink)

The purpose of this talk is to reassert the philosophical significance that the DEL notion of an announcement may have, by (1) drawing an epistemologically motivated double distinction a. between "assertions" and "announcements" on the one hand, b. "public" and "private announcements" on the other hand, by (2) bringing it to bear on two "Moorean Puzzles" - Moore's Paradox and Moore's Proof - that we propose to revisit, thereby (3) contributing to grounding the logic of announcements in the philosophy (...) of knowledge. (shrink)

This article discusses some continuous limit cases of Susan Haack’s crossword puzzle metaphor for the coherent development and foundation of science. The main objective of this discussion is to build a bridge between Haack’s foundherentism and the epistemological framework of objective cognitive constructivism, including its key metaphor of objects as tokens for eigen-solutions. The historical development of chemical affinity tables is used to illustrate our arguments.

Medieval Modal Logic & Science uses modal reasoning in a new way to fortify the relationships between science, ethics, and politics. Robert C. Trundle accomplishes this by analyzing the role of modal logic in the work of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, then applying these themes to contemporary issues. He incorporates Augustine's ideas involving thought and consciousness, and Aquinas's reasoning to a First Cause. The author also deals with Augustine's ties to Aristotelian modalities of thought regarding science and logic, (...) reassessing the commonly held belief in Augustine's Platonism to not be a mistake as much as a simplistic view of his philosophy. Trundle links contemporary issues in epistemology, morality, theology, and logic, making several useful connections between ancient and medieval studies in modal logic and modern concerns. These applications of modal theory illuminate many puzzles in the works of Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Whitehead, and Kuhn. (shrink)

Abstract: I argue that the solution to the Red Hat Problem, a puzzle derived from interactive epistemic logic, requires S5. Interactive epis- temic logic is set out in formal terms, and an attempt to solve the red hat puzzle is made in K, K, and K, each of which fails, showing that a stronger system, K is required.

Frank Jackson has a new objectivist and representationalist account of the content of colour-experience. I raise several objections both against the account itself and, primarily, against how he tries to support it. He argues that the new account enables us to see what is wrong with the so-called Opacity Puzzle. This alleged puzzle is an argument in which a seemingly implausible conclusion is derived from three premises of which seem plausible to an representationalist. Jackson.

_Knowing Reality_ is a guided introduction to metaphysics and epistemology. Each of the book’s twelve chapters contains extended excerpts from influential historical and contemporary philosophers, as well as a guided exposition of their views and their locations within the logical space of the issues at play. Topics are introduced through engaging thought experiments, with relevant philosophical puzzles sprinkled throughout. Complex issues are explained using down-to-earth examples, with illustrations provided to connect with readers and assist them in understanding the (...) sophisticated concepts under discussion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Seeking Nature’s Logic: Natural Philosophy in the Scottish EnvironmentFrancesca di PoppaDavid B. Wilson. Seeking Nature’s Logic: Natural Philosophy in the Scottish Environment. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Pp. xvi + 344. Cloth, $55.00.This book promises to tell “the untold story of the principal historical path from Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein” (xii). It is an ambitious promise. In explaining the influence of Reid’s philosophy (...) on how Scottish scientists addressed phenomena such as light, heat, electricity, etc., Wilson addresses the exquisitely “Scottish” flavor of the contributions of Joseph Black, John Anderson, John Robinson, Dugald Stewart, Joseph Boscovitch, and several others. While the alleged goal is projected toward late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century discoveries, the discussion never loses sight of its historical context, by stressing the importance of theological consideration in scientific arguments (e.g. Robinson’s critique of Laplacian mechanics as an “atheistic perversion” of Newtonian gravity), and by tracing the influence of past philosophers on Scottish eighteenth-century science.Wilson begins with a survey of major seventeenth-century philosophers, from Descartes to Leibniz, who influenced later developments. But some of his remarks are problematic. For example, he asserts that in Descartes’ discussion of empty space, “the implication was that even God could not conceive of void space” (11–12). Considering Descartes’ attitude toward divine omnipotence, and his position that God created “necessary truths” (e.g. in his correspondence with Mersenne), at the very least this claim needs to be argued for, rather than simply stated.Likewise, Wilson’s attempt to trace each scientist’s attitude to a major figure from the past is not always successful. For example, in chapter 4 Wilson argues, persuasively, that Reidian epistemology influenced Robinson’s attitudes toward certain hypotheses. But then he claims that Black “represented the realism of Newton’s Query 31,” as opposed to Robinson’s “Reidian skepticism” (157). This claim is puzzling. Wilson nicely explains how Query 31 of Newton’s Opticks, with its defense of the notion of real attractive and repulsive forces and its sections on scientific reasoning, influenced Black. Wilson also shows that Robinson was somewhat critical of Newton. But the disagreements discussed do not concern issues of realism versus skepticism. Wilson himself shows that Robinson agreed with some of Black’s realist positions. In fact, Wilson writes that Robinson approved of Newton’s notion of attraction, which is argued for extensively in Newton’s Query 31.One of the most important debates discussed by Wilson concerns the nature of heat and light. After Newton, scientists were supposed to avoid “wild hypotheses,” for fear of being derided as Descartes was for his theory of vortices. Merely describing experienced regularities, however, rather than finding explanatory causes, seemed insufficient. Wilson emphasizes Reid’s influence in restoring the epistemic status of inductive experimental knowledge in a post-Humean world, and shows the ambivalence of post-Reidian scientists toward hypotheses. A good example is his chapter 4 discussion of Robinson’s attitude toward heat. After rejecting the two main alternatives (heat as vibratory motion of the particles of bodies, and heat as a fluid whose particles are in continual vibratory motion) because both are inconsistent with experimental evidence, Robinson recommends considering heat as a “cause” in the “constant conjunction” sense, because its nature and mechanism are not known. However, Wilson quotes passages from notebooks in which Robinson endorses a form of the fluid theory of heat. Robinson also approved of Stahl’s phlogiston theory, and agreed with Black’s “negative weight” solution to the problem that bodies gain weight when [End Page 501] phlogiston leaves them (a solution that Black abandoned after learning of Lavoisier’s, Priestley’s, and Scheele’s work). While a realist about phlogiston, however, Robinson criticized Black’s identification of phlogiston with Newtonian aether: Robinson’s criticism is described as a “Reid-like” argument against the abuse of analogies in natural philosophy. As can be seen from this and other discussions, Reid’s warnings against the abuse of conjectures and analogies were not always consistently applied.Despite offering an informative overview of the contributions of Scottish natural philosophers, the information in the book is somewhat poorly... (shrink)

That Wittgenstein in the Tractatus likens logic to geometry has been noticed; however, the extent and force of the analogy he develops between logical form and a broadly Kantian account of geometry has not been sufficiently appreciated. In this paper, I trace Wittgenstein's analogy in detail by looking closely at the relevant texts. I then suggest that we regard the fact that Wittgenstein develops his account of logical form by analogy with a Kantian account of geometry as evidence (...) for the bold thesis that Wittgenstein belongs within a Kantian epistemological tradition. Finally, I supply two small pieces of the interpretive puzzle needed to support the larger thesis: first, evidence that Wittgenstein's concern with logical form involves a crucial epistemological component; second, a sketch of how Wittgenstein's account of logical and mathematical knowledge can be viewed as continuing a Kantian tradition. (shrink)

Cover -- Half Title Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Original Title Page -- Original Copyright Page -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Probability And Possibility For Choice -- 1 Introductory -- 2 A Theory About Personal Power -- 3 A Criticism Of Keynes -- 4 Some More Theories About Personal Power -- 5 An Analogy Between Two Kinds Of Possibility -- 3 Probability And Natural Powers -- 1 Introductory -- 2 The Relation Between Epistemic (...) And Natural Possibility -- 3 A Criticism Of The Doctrine That 'Probable' Is Ambiguous -- 4 A Comparison Of Possibility With Probability -- 4 Some Unobservable Properties -- 1 Introductory -- 2 Certainty, Necessity And Hume -- 3 Epistemology And Determinism -- 4 An Analysis Proposed And Defended -- 5 Power And Law -- 5 Some Puzzles About Potentiality -- 1 Introductory -- 2 The idea of a 'circumstance' -- 3 The Distinction Between Intrinsic And Extrinsic Properties -- 4 The Refutation Of Actualism -- 5 The Refutation Of The Theory That 'All Power Is Conditional' -- 6 The Powers Of People Andthe Powers Of Things -- 1 Introductory -- 2 The Distinction Between Natural And Personal Power -- 3 The Refutation Of Ryle's Dispositionalist Account Of Human Capacities -- 7 IFS And Cans -- 1 Introductory -- 2 The Refutation Of The Theory That All Personal Power is Conditional -- 3 A Refutation Of The Orthodox Account Of 'I Can', As Equivalent To A Conditional Statement -- 4 A Contradiction In Dispositionalism -- 5 Further Objections To The Orthodox View -- 6 The Verification Of 'I Can': More About Trying -- 8 Deliberation, Freedom And Meaning -- 1 Introductory -- 2 More About Possibility And The Context Of Deliberation -- And About The Relation Between Power And Will -- 3 On Not Being Able To Help It: A: Discussion Of The Relationship Between Power And Responsibility -- 4 On The Meaning Of Words Like 'Can'. (shrink)

We examine the paradox of the surprise examination using dynamic epistemic logic. This logic contains means of expressing epistemic facts as well as the effects of learning new facts, and is therefore a natural framework for representing the puzzle. We discuss a number of different interpretations of the puzzle in this context, and show how the failure of principle of success, that states that sentences, when learned, remain to be true and come to be believed, plays a central role in (...) understanding the puzzle. (shrink)

Several logical puzzles, riddles and problems are defined based on the notion of games in informative contexts. Hintikka argues that epistemology or the theory of knowledge must be considered from the notion of information. So, knowledge cannot just be based on the notions of belief and justification. The present proposal will focus on the logical structure of information, and not only on the quantification of information as suggested by Claude A. Shannon. In many cases, the information bits, (...) although seemingly or factually contradictory, are quite relevant. The paraconsistent systems of logic offer a formalization of reasoning that can support certain contradictions. The well-known “Bar-Hillel–Carnap Paradox” causes embarrassment when it concludes that the informational content of a contradiction would be maximum, opposing the traditional notion that the semantic information must be true, and that contradictions are necessarily false. (shrink)

Gillian Russell: Quine on the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction: This paper examines several of Quine's arguments against the analytic/synthetic distinction: the main arguments from “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and several arguments against truth in virtue of meaning from “Truth by Convention” and “Carnap on Logical Truth.” It proposes a particular interpretation of the Circularity Argument that helps to make sense of several related puzzles concerning it, and endorses some of the epistemological lessons of the Argument from Confirmation Holism, but (...) it argues that these don't have the consequences for analyticity and necessity that Quine takes them to have. Finally, I argue that Quine's arguments against truth in virtue of meaning should not make us skeptics about it, but they really are useful for getting clearer about what kind of property truth in virtue of meaning must be. (shrink)

In this paper, I will discuss some examples of the so-called contrary-to-duty paradox, a well-known puzzle in deontic logic. A contrary-to-duty obligation is an obligation telling us what ought to be the case if something forbidden is true, for example: ‘If she is guilty, she should confess’. Contrary-to-duty obligations are important in our moral and legal thinking. Therefore, we want to be able to find an adequate symbolisation of such obligations in some logical system, a task that has turned (...) out to be difficult. This is shown by the so-called contrary-to-duty paradox. I will investigate and evaluate one kind of solution to this problem that has been suggested in the literature, which I will call the ‘counterfactual solution’. I will use some recent systems that combine not only counterfactual logic and deontic logic, but also temporal logic, in my analysis of the paradox. I will argue that the counterfactual solution has many attractive features and that it can give a fairly satisfactory answer to some examples of the contrary-to-duty paradox, but that it nevertheless has some serious problems. The conclusion is that, notwithstanding the many attractive features of the solution, there seem to be other approaches to the paradox that are more promising. (shrink)

The aim of the series Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, of which this is the first volume, is to take up anew the challenge of considering the ...

Robin Le Poidevin (2007) claims that we do form perceptual beliefs regarding order and duration based on our perception of events, but neither order nor duration are by themselves objects of perception. Temporal properties are discernible only when one first perceives their bearers, and temporal relations are discernible only when one first perceives their relata. The epistemic issue remains as to whether or not our perceptual beliefs about order and duration are formed on the causal basis of an event’s objective (...) order and duration. Le Poidevin raises this issue in the form of an epistemological puzzle of time perception, from which he derives the claim that the order and duration of events do not causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them. Since his view is motivated by a causal truthmaker principle for grounding knowledge, it also holds that perceptual beliefs about temporal features must be caused by the features themselves in order to count as knowledge. Given these theoretical commitments, there is a puzzle concerning how such perceptual beliefs could constitute knowledge of temporal properties. In response to Le Poidevin, I argue for an account according to which order and duration are objects of perception, causally contribute to our perceptual beliefs about them, and such beliefs are capable of counting as knowledge. I conclude by showing that, on my alternative account, the epistemological puzzle dissolves and his own solution to it fails. (shrink)

The most puzzling and intriguing aspect of intuitionism as a philosophy of mathematics is its claim that classical deductive reasoning in mathematics is illegitimate. The two most well-known proponents of this position are L. E. J. Brouwer and Michael Dummett. Both of their criticisms of the use of classical logic in mathematics have, by and large, been taken to depend on the thesis that the principle of bivalence does not apply to mathematical statements; and the difference between these criticisms is (...) taken to consist in their grounds for this thesis. Brouwer bases this thesis on an account of the nature of mathematics: it is an activity of mental construction essentially independent of language. Dummett, in contrast, bases the thesis on his anti-realist view of the nature of meaning. ;My first principal argument in this essay shows that the conception of anti-realism just outlined is problematic as a reading of Dummett. To begin with, Dummett explicitly rejects, not only the evidentiary restrictions of this conception, but also, more seriously, the use of specific epistemological theses in a philosophical account of meaning. Moreover, I give an alternative account of anti-realism, consisting of alternative interpretations of the manifestation requirement and of the rejection of realist truth conditions, that do not rely on an epistemology of meaning, and hence, a fortiori, not on evidential restrictions. ;My second principal argument in this essay consists of drawing a consequence of this conception of anti-realism, namely, that the failure of bivalence cannot, by itself, support a cogent criticism of classical logic. The basic reason is that, given my view of anti-realism, the claim that the legitimacy of applying classical reasoning to a class of statements depends on whether bivalence applies to that class already implies that the system of deductive reasoning applying to these statements is non-classical. Hence an argument against classical logic based on this claim is question-begging. ;Finally, I conclude by showing that Dummett's criticism of classical reasoning, as reconstructed by my third argument, fails. (shrink)

Moralising is a venerable last resort strategy. The ancient Melians presented the Athenian generals with a splendid example when in a particularly tight corner. In our Western philosophical tradition moral rhetoric is often couched in the form of reasons for action either external to preference and desire (eg. Kant) or internal to the agent''s calculus of desire (e.g., Hume, Gauthier). A third tradition dismisses such rhetoric as the last recourse of the weak (e.g., Aristotle, Nietzsche) whereas a fourth calls for (...) an examination of the social context (e.g., Socrates, Marx, Wittgenstein, Habermas). This paper reports on an experiment which throws some empirical light on these debates and offers a surprising twist to the interpretation of the Melians'' plea. (shrink)