There is relatively little comprehensive treatment of Heidegger’s theory of essences despite his ubiquitous use of essences. It is commonplace in contemporary analytic philosophy to view essences as the ground for true de re modal claims. I argue that Heidegger offers an account of essences that can best be understood as a type of relative essentialism. Relative essentialism is the view that more than one being can occupy the same space at the same time and those beings have distinct sets (...) of de re modal truths about them. Heidegger’s account of essences allows for true de re modal claims about a wide variety of things including scientific and cultural entities. At the same time, Heidegger rejects absolute essentialism: the view that there is one privilege collection of beings whose natures determine the truth values of de re modal claims about them. Relative essentialism is distinguished from contextual essentialism. (shrink)

Davidson, truth, and triangulation -- Davidson applied -- Half truths -- Heidegger's analytic of Dasein -- Dasein and truth -- Truthful intersections -- Primitive disclosive alethism.

The contemporary debate about truth is polarized between deflationists and those who offer robust accounts of truth. I present a theory of truth called ‘Primitive Disclosive Alethism’ that occupies the middle ground between these two extremes. Contrary to deflationist claims, truth has a nature beyond its merely linguistic, expressive function. Truth is objective and non-epistemic, yet cannot be characterized in terms of correspondence. Primitive Disclosive Alethism offers a metaphysically satisfying explanation of our correspondence intuitions, while explaining why the concept of (...) truth is an undefined primitive. The theory also explains why the T-schema offers the clearest expression of what makes a sentence true. I distinguish this theory from the Identity Theory of Truth which equates true propositions with facts. (shrink)

Recent literature comparing the works of Heidegger and Davidson suggests that one of the main differences between these two thinkers is that the latter lacks any notion of non-linguistic interpretation and understanding; the only way of making sense of a domain of entities for Davidson is theory. I argue against this common perspective and show that Davidson is committed to a primitive, pre-conceptual form of understanding that is socially mediated. This primitive form of understanding is essential to the functioning of (...) what Davidson calls 'primitive triangulation'. Properly understood, primitive triangulation shares many structural features with Dasein's comportment. (shrink)

This is essay is a critical response to Zhang Longxi's argument that Taoist philosophy is susceptible to Derrida's arguments against logocentrism. I present two main arguments. First, I argue that Zhang fails to provide sufficient evidence that would show Taoism is logocentric. Moreover, even if Zhang could provide support for such a claim there cannot be a general deconstructive argument against logocentrism. Derrida's arguments against logocentrism work from within a specific text. The second argument offers reasons for believing Taoism is (...) decidedly not logocentric because it lacks, among other things, the phonocentrism Derrida was intent on criticising. The 'presence' mentioned in Taoist literature is antithetical to the Platonic notion of Forms; it is not the presence of unchanging ideas in a rational mind. Zhuangzi and Plato do not share the similarities attributed to them by Zhang. (shrink)

This paper critically evaluates the arguments advanced by Hubert Dreyfus in his debate with John McDowell regarding the nature of skilled coping. The paper argues that there are significant methodological shortcomings in Dreyfus’ position. The paper examines these methodological limitations and attempts to clarify the problems by re-framing the issues in terms of intentionality, and the specific intentional structures that may or may not be present in skilled coping. The paper attempts to show that the difficulties facing Dreyfus arise from (...) his implicit adherence to a final myth of the mental. The last myth of the mental is the belief thatmental coping is fundamentally different than embodied coping because the former is characterized by mindedness while the latter is not. Dreyfus characterizes the mental as constituted by a kind of interiority while everyday expertise or embodied coping is characterized by exteriority to the exclusion of any type of interiority. I undermine this Cartesian assumption in Dreyfus’ position by showing that the criteria and phenomenological descriptions he uses to characterize embodied coping apply equally to mental coping. (shrink)

This paper attempts to motivate skepticism about the reality of mathematical objects. The aim of the paper is not to provide a general critique of mathematical realism, but to demonstrate the insufficiency of the arguments advanced by Michael Resnik. I argue that Resnik’s use of the concept of immanent truth is inconsistent with the treatment of mathematical objects as ontologically and epistemically continuous with the objects posited by the natural sciences. In addition, Resnik’s structuralist program, and his denial of relational (...) properties, is incompatible with a realist metaphysics about mathematical objects. (shrink)

This paper attempts to motivate skepticism about the reality of mathematical objects. The aim of the paper is not to provide a general critique of mathematical realism, but to demonstrate the insufficiency of the arguments advanced by Michael Resnik. I argue that Resnik's use of the concept of immanent truth is inconsistent with the treatment of mathematical objects as ontologically and epistemically continuous with the objects posited by the natural sciences. In addition, Resnik's structuralist program, and his denial of relational (...) properties, is incompatible with a realist metaphysics about mathematical objects. (shrink)

Donald Davidson assigns truth a central role in his theory of meaning but he also makes truth a guiding methodological principle in metaphysics. Truth is inexorably connected to belief and meaning, and no one of these concepts has theoretical priority over the others. I argue that there is a methodological circularity in Davidson’s account of how the world contributes to the truth of our beliefs and utterances. The difficulty for Davidson is in providing an account of how speakers share a (...) common world while denying an ontologically privileged domain of entities and further claiming that being supervenes on truth. I suggest that the Heideggerian notion of disclosedness offers one solution. (shrink)

Donald Davidson assigns truth a central role in his theory of meaning but he also makes truth a guiding methodological principle in metaphysics. Truth is inexorably connected to belief and meaning, and no one of these concepts has theoretical priority over the others. I argue that there is a methodological circularity in Davidson’s account of how the world contributes to the truth of our beliefs and utterances. The difficulty for Davidson is in providing an account of how speakers share a (...) common world while denying an ontologically privileged domain of entities and further claiming that being supervenes on truth. I suggest that the Heideggerian notion of disclosedness offers one solution. (shrink)

Donald Davidson assigns truth a central role in his theory of meaning but he also makes truth a guiding methodological principle in metaphysics. Truth is inexorably connected to belief and meaning, and no one of these concepts has theoretical priority over the others. I argue that there is a methodological circularity in Davidson’s account of how the world contributes to the truth of our beliefs and utterances. The difficulty for Davidson is in providing an account of how speakers share a (...) common world while denying an ontologically privileged domain of entities and further claiming that being supervenes on truth. I suggest that the Heideggerian notion of disclosedness offers one solution. (shrink)

The dissertation examines Davidson and Heidegger's rejections of correspondence truth, as well as their claims that truth is theoretically primitive. Truth is primitive in the sense that it cannot be reduced to, nor defined in terms of, some other more theoretically basic concepts, such as those offered in correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic accounts of truth. The fact that truth cannot be defined in terms of more basic concepts does not mean that there are not important and meaningful things to say (...) about truth; Davidson and Heidegger's agreement that there is more to say about truth distinguishes them from minimalist approaches to truth. Davidson and Heidegger make explicit truth's conceptual relationship to other important areas of inquiry such as language, subjectivity, and ontology. The dissertation claims that the two philosophers agree, despite radically different background texts and methodologies, on the fundamental relationship between self, other, and world. The dissertation moves beyond mere comparison by showing that Davidson's own position commits him to a Heideggerian treatment of truth, or something like it. I argue that understanding the similarities and supplemental arguments offered by each philosopher leads to a better overall account of truth than that offered by each philosopher individually. Moreover, I argue that although Heidegger and Davidson offer primarily transcendental arguments, their theories can accommodate naturalistic theories of language and concept acquisition. (shrink)

This paper offers a deconstructive analysis of the work of Mitra Gholamain and Keith Oatley. The authors’ treatment of fiction as a simulation of psychic reality can be inverted; psychic reality is already constituted by non-literal narrative elements. I offer empirical considerations drawn from current psychological literature. The relationship between readers’ psychology and works of narrativefiction is a constitutive structural similarity, rather than simply a psychological process of simulation.

Relative essentialism is the novel metaphysical theory that there can be multiple objects occupying the same space at the same time each with its own de re modal truths. Relative essentialism is motivated by Davidson’s semantics and his denial that nature itself is divided into a privileged domain of objects. Relative essentialism was first presented by Samuel C. Wheeler. I argue that Wheeler’s approach to the Davidsonian program needs to be elaborated in terms of various types of preconceptual intentional relations. (...) This elaboration is already largely implicit in Davidson’s own later work and in Wheeler’s relaunching of Davidsonian metaphysics. More specifically, I argue that relative essentialism is ultimately founded not on predication narrowly construed but on intentionality broadly construed. Following Wheeler’s suggestion, comparisons are made between relative essentialism and work within the phenomenological tradition. (shrink)

Alethic pluralists argue truth is a metaphysically robust higher-order property that is multiply realized by a set of diverse and domain-specific subvening alethic properties. The higher-order truth property legitimizes mixed inferences and accounts for a univocal truth predicate. Absent of this higher-order property, pluralists lack an account of the validity of mixed inferences and an adequate semantics for the truth predicate and thereby appear forced to abandon the central tenets of alethic pluralism. I argue the use of many-valued logics to (...) support pluralism fails to address the pluralist’s metaphysical problem regarding mixed inferences and mixed truth functional connectives. The high degree of heterogeneity of the alethic realizers challenges the plausibility of a single higher-order functional property. A functional property with such a heterogeneous base cannot be projectable at a theoretically significant level. The problem with mixed inferences and truth functions is but one symptom of the deeper projectability problem. (shrink)

Davidson’s 1974 argument denying the possibility of incommensurable conceptual schemes is widely interpreted as entailing a denial of metaphysical pluralism. Speakers may group objects differently or have different beliefs about the world, but there is just one world. I argue there is tension arising from three aspects of Davidson’s philosophy: the 1974 argument against conceptual schemes; Davidson’s more recent emphasis on primitive triangulation as a necessary condition for thought and language; and Davidson’s semantic approach to metaphysics, what he calls ‘the (...) method of truth in metaphysics’. After elucidating the tension, I argue the tension can be resolved while preserving at least two major tenets of Davidson’s philosophy: conceptual schemes do not carve an uninterpreted reality into different worlds and truth is objective and non-epistemic. I argue Davidson is implicitly committed to a plurality of worlds. (shrink)