According to internalism about rationality, the ir/rationality of a subject depends only on how things appear from her subjective perspective. According to culpabilism, rationality is a normative standard such that violations of rationality are (at least sometimes) blameworthy. According to a classical line of reasoning, culpabilism entails internalism. I argue that, to the contrary, culpabilism entails that internalism is false. The internalist cannot accommodate the possibility of culpable irrationality.

Teleosemantics has an indeterminacy problem. In an earlier publication, I argued that teleosemanticists may afford to be realists about indeterminacy, pointing to the phenomenon of vagueness as a case of really-existing semantic indeterminacy. Here, I continue that project by proposing two criteria of adequacy that a semantically indeterminate theory should meet: a criterion of theoretical adequacy and a criterion of extensional adequacy. I present reasons to think that indeterminate versions of teleosemantics can meet these criteria. I end by discussing vagueness, (...) concluding that it most likely is not the same kind of phenomenon as the semantic indeterminacy afflicting teleosemantics. (shrink)

Merrie Bergmann Philosophical Review 100 :112-115Taking into account pragmatic considerations and recent linguistic and psychological studies, the author forges a new understanding of the relation between metaphoric and literal meaning. The argument is illustrated with analysis of metaphors from literature, philosophy, science, and everyday language.

This thesis offers a teleosemantic account of moral discourse and judgment. It develops a number of views about the function and content of moral judgments and the nature of moral discourse based on Ruth Millikan’s theory of intentional content and the functions of intentional attitudes. Non-cognitivists in meta-ethics have argued that moral judgments are more akin to desires and other motivational attitudes than to descriptive beliefs. I argue that teleosemantics allows us to assign descriptive content to motivational attitudes and hence (...) that even if the non-cognitivist is correct, moral judgments can be said to describe the world. Moreover, given further teleosemantic assumptions, this conclusion has consequences that are both surprising and interesting. First of all, while moral judgments have descriptive content, moral statements do not. The purpose of moral discourse is not to convey beliefs that are true simpliciter, but to convey attitudes that are descriptively correct when tokened by the addressee. Consequently, moral discourse requires speakers to adapt to hearers in order to secure their assent and bring them into "community of judgment" with themselves. Secondly, the descriptive content of a motivational attitude is partly a matter of the subject’s own preferences and circumstances. In particular, the descriptive correctness of a moral judgment is partly a function of the degree to which it is shared with others. Since a moral judgment also motivates the subject to spread it, it has the ability to, in a certain sense, make itself true. If regular descriptive beliefs are supposed to adapt the subject to the world, a moral judgment also has the capacity to adapt the world to the subject. (shrink)

The Commens Papers (http://www.commens.org/papers) publishes preprints, reports, and communications that deal with the philosophy, scientific contributions, and life of C. S. Peirce. The Commens Papers are primarily meant for scholarly products that lack other means of publication, but which the author wishes to bring to the attention of the research community. The papers must meet editorial approval, but they are not fully peer reviewed. -/- The Commens Papers accepts a broad variety of intellectual products in various formats, including: Conference papers, (...) Manuscripts made available for comments and criticism before submission for peer review, Reports of original research, such as archival research, Catalogues or other systematic summaries of (parts of) Peirce’s writings, Reports from scientific meetings Lectures, as text, video, or audio, Posters presented at academic conferences . (shrink)

The thinkers presented in these lectures by Bergman represent a radical departure from objectivism and subjectivism.

This overview of the life and career of Charles S. Peirce identifies the central factors that shaped this seminal American intellect, and describes the dramatic events that turned the final decades of his professional existence into a tragedy. The purpose of this short article is to serve as a first biographical introduction to Peirce.

The two books on which this study is based represent the two branches of linguistic philosophy. One an anthology, the other an original work, they differ also in kind. In Logic and Language A.G.N. Flew has collected and ably prefaced nine essays by British analysts, the earliest of which, Ryle's "Systematically Misleading Expressions," appeared exactly twenty years ago. Nelson Goodman's The Structure of Appearance is a new reconstruction; not to recognize its vigor and impressiveness would be most ungracious even if (...) one rejects as radically as I do this particular Aufbau. Naturally, I shall say more about Goodman's book than about the essays. Yet I shall begin with the latter and say about Ryle's as much as about all the rest together. To justify this strategy I must put my own cards on the table, indicating where I stand on this controversy or near controversy between formalists and antiformalists. To my mind, then, it is gray against gray, not white against black. Both sides agree, and I agree with them, that there is no experience or, if you please, no experiment that decides what is presumably at issue between phenomenalists and realists. In this important sense, both sides agree, and I agree with them, that all philosophical problems are verbal. But in another equally important sense they are not verbal. This sense both formalists and antiformalists have lost or stand in danger of losing if what they do is no better than what they say they do. Now for my reasons for singling out and starting off with the essay that marks Ryle's sober-eyed and reluctant conversion to the linguistic philosophy. It so happens that he there states very aptly a body of doctrine on which both sides could still agree and from which they in fact branched off at about the time the paper was first published. Also, the doubts and dissatisfactions to which he there confessed contain the starting points of the peculiar dialectics by which both formalists and antiformalists may be driven to extremes. Even better than that, I believe I can make use of these hesitancies to lend color to my own argument for a middle position which, as one is tempted to say on such occasions, does justice to both sides. That Ryle himself has in the meantime become a hero of the antiformalists is merely a piquant detail and does not deter me. (shrink)

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A social conception of science -- The pursuit of forms -- Beyond the doctrine of signs -- Structures of mediation -- Signs in action -- Prospects of communication -- From a rhetorical point of view.