DOCSLIB.ORG

Philosophy Without Intuitions This Page Intentionally Left Blank Philosophy Without Intuitions

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Philosophy Without Intuitions This Page Intentionally Left Blank Philosophy Without Intuitions Philosophy without Intuitions This page intentionally left blank Philosophy without Intuitions Herman Cappelen 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries # Herman Cappelen 2012 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2012 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number: 2012930985 ISBN 978–0–19–964486–5 Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn For Rachel This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgements I was, for a long time, convinced that philosophizing, at least as I had been trained to do it, relied essentially on intuitions and that the absence of a good account of their reliability revealed deep foundational flaws. I managed to partially repress those concerns until I started running a project on philosophical methodology with my colleague Jessica Brown at the Arché Centre at the University of St Andrews. Work on this project convinced me that my earlier concerns were unfounded and that this book was worth writing. I’m particularly grateful to Jessica Brown, Jonathan Ichikawa, Yuri Cath, and to the many PhD students and visitors who contributed to our work. I owe a great debt to my colleagues at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo, where the material was presented in seminars co-taught with Olav Gjelsvik. I also learned a great deal from him in a seminar we gave on Timothy William- son’s The Philosophy of Philosophy.Reflections on that book and conversa- tions with Williamson have shaped my thinking about all issues having to do with philosophical methodology. Along the way, I have profited from discussion with and comments from many people, including Derek Ball, John Bengson, Einar Bøhn, David Chalmers, Stew Cohen, Max Deutsch, Josh Dever, Tamar Gendler, Olav Gjelsvik, Carsten Hansen, John Hawthorne, Torfinn Huvenes, Henry Jackman, Kirk Ludwig, Anna-Sara Malmgren, Jennifer Nagel, Dilip Ninan, Bjørn Ramberg, François Recanati, Marco Ruffino, Jona- than Schaffer, Daniele Sgaravatti, David Sosa, Ernie Sosa, Rachel Sterken, Andreas Stokke, Brian Weatherson, Jonathan Weinberg, Timothy Wil- liamson, and two anonymous referees for Oxford University Press. Early drafts of chapters were presented at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, University of Texas, Austin and Rutgers University. I would like to thank audiences at these events. Those early drafts were significantly improved by detailed comments from Jennifer Nagel, Jonathan Weinberg, and Ernie Sosa. Daniele Sgaravatti provided indispensable help as my research assistant over two years. He and Margot Strohminger also proofread the entire manuscript, correcting many, many errors both of typography and content. viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This is my fourth book project with Peter Momtchiloff as my editor at OUP and I am grateful to him for help and support over these years. My greatest debt is to Rachel, who made writing this book possible. The book is dedicated to her. Contents 1. Intuitions in Philosophy: Overview and Taxonomy 1 Part I. The Argument from ‘Intuition’-Talk Introduction to Part I 25 2. ‘Intuitive’, ‘Intuitively’, ‘Intuition’, and ‘Seem’ in English 29 3. Philosophers’ Use of ‘Intuitive’ (I): A Defective Practice and the Verbal Virus Theory 49 4. Philosophers’ Use of ‘Intuitive’ (II): Some Strategies for Charitable Reinterpretation 61 Appendix to Chapter 4: Williamson on Intuition as Belief or Inclination to Believe 83 5. Philosophers’ Use of ‘Intuitive’ (III): Against the Explaining Away of Intuitions 88 Part II. The Argument from Philosophical Practice Introduction to Part II 95 6. Centrality and Philosophical Practice 98 7. Diagnostics for Intuitiveness 111 8. Case Studies 130 9. Lessons Learned, Replies to Objections, and Comparison to Williamson 188 10. Conceptual Analysis and Intuitions 205 11. A Big Mistake: Experimental Philosophy 219 Concluding Remarks 229 Bibliography 231 Index 239 Detailed Contents 1. Intuitions in Philosophy: Overview and Taxonomy 1 1.1 The role of intuitions in the self-conception of contemporary analytic philosophers: Centrality 2 1.2 Two arguments for Centrality: the Argument from ‘Intuition’-Talk and the Argument from Philosophical Practice 4 1.3 ‘Intuition’ in Centrality 7 1.4 More on how to interpret Centrality 12 1.5 Burning questions for proponents of Centrality: the pessimists, the enthusiasts, and the concerned 17 1.6 Rejection of Centrality: Philosophy without intuitions 18 Part I. The Argument from ‘Intuition’-Talk Introduction to Part I 25 2. ‘Intuitive’, ‘Intuitively’, ‘Intuition’, and ‘Seem’ in English 29 2.1 The adjective ‘intuitive’ and the adverb ‘intuitively’ 30 2.2 ‘Intuitive’ as a hedge 36 2.3 The noun phrase ‘intuition’ 39 2.4 ‘Seem’ and ‘intuitive’ 42 2.5 Taking stock 47 3. Philosophers’ Use of ‘Intuitive’ (I): A Defective Practice and the Verbal Virus Theory 49 3.1 Constructive vs. defective theoretical terms 50 3.2 Problems for ‘intuition’ in philosophy 52 3.3 Disagreement over the theoretical role of intuitions 55 3.4 Are unreflective uses of ‘intuitive’ meaningless? 57 4. Philosophers’ Use of ‘Intuitive’ (II): Some Strategies for Charitable Reinterpretation 61 4.1 First strategy: Simple Removal 63 DETAILED CONTENTS xi 4.2 Second and third strategies: Snap and Pre-Theoretic 65 4.3 The three strategies at work: Some complicated mixed cases 71 4.4 Taking stock 77 4.5 No appeal to special feelings, conceptual competence, or default justificatory status 77 4.6 Back to Centrality and AIT: None of these interpretative strategies are Centrality-supporting 81 Appendix to Chapter 4: Williamson on Intuition as Belief or Inclination to Believe 83 5. Philosophers’ Use of ‘Intuitive’ (III): Against the Explaining Away of Intuitions 88 5.1 The argument against Explain 89 5.2 Is there some intellectually useful activity that’s mistakenly classified as ‘explaining away intuitions’? 92 Part II. The Argument from Philosophical Practice Introduction to Part II 95 6. Centrality and Philosophical Practice 98 6.1 Methodological rationalism 99 6.2 The influence of methodological rationalism 105 7. Diagnostics for Intuitiveness 111 7.1 Features of the intuitive 111 7.2 Some initial qualifications 114 7.3 More on the features of the intuitive 117 7.4 Summary and additional reflections on how to operationalize appeals to intuitions 128 8. Case Studies 130 8.1 Perry on the problem of the essential indexical 132 8.2 Burge on individualism and the mental 139 8.3 Thomson’s violinist in “A Defense of Abortion” 148 8.4 Thomson and Foot on trolley cases 158 8.5 Three epistemology cases: Lotteries, Truetemp, and fake barns 163 8.6 Cappelen and Hawthorne on disagreement, predicates of personal taste, and relativism about truth 175 xii DETAILED CONTENTS 8.7 Bernard Williams on personal identity and the fear of the prospect of torture 179 8.8 Chalmers on zombies 182 8.9 Conclusion 187 9. Lessons Learned, Replies to Objections, and Comparison to Williamson 188 9.1 What cases are: some generalizations 188 9.2 Objections and replies 193 9.3 Williamson on Evidence Neutrality, psychologizing the evidence, and analyticity 200 10. Conceptual Analysis and Intuitions 205 10.1 Hyperbole about intuitions leads to hyperbole about conceptual analysis 205 10.2 Are there any conceptual truths, and, if so, are they philosophically significant? 210 10.3 Conclusion: Centrality as a sectarian thesis 217 11. A Big Mistake: Experimental Philosophy 219 11.1 Experimental philosophy: Positive and negative 219 11.2 The big objection to experimental philosophy: It attacks a practice that doesn’t exist 221 11.3 Experimental philosophy without intuitions? 224 11.4 Experimental philosophy and the expertise defense of traditional philosophy 227 Concluding Remarks 229 Bibliography 231 Index 239 1 Intuitions in Philosophy: Overview and Taxonomy The claim that contemporary analytic philosophers rely extensively on intuitions as evidence is almost universally accepted in current metaphilosophical debates and it figures prominently in our self-conception as analytic philosophers. No matter what area you happen to work in and what views you happen to hold in those areas, you are likely to think that philosophizing requires constructing cases and making intuitive judgments about those cases. A theory of a topic X isn’t adequate unless it correctly predicts intuitive responses to X-relevant cases. This assumption also underlies the entire experimental-philosophy movement: if philosophers don’t rely on intui- tions, why would anyone do experiments to check on intuitions? Our alleged reliance on the intuitive makes many philosophers who don’t work in metaphilosophy concerned about their own discipline: they are unsure what intuitions are and whether they can carry the evidential weight we allegedly assign to them. The goal of this book is to argue that this concern is unwarranted since the claim is false: it is not true that philosophers rely extensively (or even a little bit) on intuitions as evidence.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Implicit Bias and Inattentional Blindness Megan Netherland Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected]
    Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2017 Implicit Bias and Inattentional Blindness Megan Netherland Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Arts and Humanities Commons Recommended Citation Netherland, Megan, "Implicit Bias and Inattentional Blindness" (2017). LSU Master's Theses. 4502. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/4502 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IMPLICIT BIAS AND INATTENTIONAL BLINDNESS A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art in The Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies by Megan Rose Netherland B.A., Liberal Studies, Armstrong State University, 2015 May 2017 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………… iii INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………….. 1 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTING IMPLICIT BIAS: A CRITIQUE OF TAMAR GENDLER’S ALIEFS…………………………………………...………………………………….... 4 1.1 An Opening Story…………………………………………………………. 4 1.2 Implicit Associations and Bias……………………………………………. 7 1.3 Introducing Alief………………………………………………………….. 10 1.4 Tenacious ABs and Conflicting Beliefs…………………………………... 13 1.5 John Hope Franklin at the Cosmos Club………………………………….. 15 2. PERSPECTIVALISM AND EPISTEMOLOGIES OF IGNORANCE: THINKING IMPLICIT BIAS NEGATIVELY………………………………………………….… 21 2.1 Feminist Standpoint Theory and Perspectivalism………………………… 24 2.2 Epistemologies of Ignorance and Negative Implicit Bias………………… 31 3.
    [Show full text]
  • Knowledge As a Mental State Forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Epistemology
    Jennifer Nagel – September 28, 2011 Knowledge as a mental state Forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Epistemology ABSTRACT: In the philosophical literature on mental states, the paradigmatic examples of mental states are beliefs, desires, intentions, and phenomenal states such as being in pain. The corresponding list in the psychological literature on mental state attribution incluDes one further member: the state of knowledge. This article examines the reasons why developmental, comparative anD social psychologists have classifieD knowleDge as a mental state, while most recent philosophers--with the notable exception of Timothy Williamson-- have not. The disagreement is traced back to a difference in how each side unDerstanDs the relationship between the concepts of knowledge anD belief, concepts which are unDerstooD in both Disciplines to be closely linkeD. Psychologists anD philosophers other than Williamson have generally have disagreed about which of the pair is prior and which is derivative. The rival claims of priority are examineD both in the light of philosophical arguments by Williamson anD others, anD in the light of empirical work on mental state attribution. One striking feature of research into mental state ascription or ‘mindreading’ is the extent to which it has involved cooperation between psychology and philosophy. Contemporary empirical work on mindreading is often traced back to a 1978 target article in comparative psychology, an article which raised the question of whether chimpanzees attribute mental states to themselves and others (Premack & Woodruff, 1978). Three of the most influential responses published with that article were written by philosophers, each of whom drew attention to the importance of probing the capacity to represent states of ignorance and false belief (Bennett, 1978; Dennett, 1978; Harman, 1978).
    [Show full text]
  • CVII: 2 (February 2000), Pp
    TAMAR SZABÓ GENDLER July 2014 Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences · Yale University · P.O. Box 208365 · New Haven, CT 06520-8365 E-mail: [email protected] · Office telephone: 203.432.4444 ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT 2006- Yale University Academic Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy (F2012-present) Professor of Philosophy (F2006-F2012); Professor of Psychology (F2009-present); Professor of Humanities (S2007-present); Professor of Cognitive Science (F2006-present) Administrative Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Sum2014-present) Deputy Provost, Humanities and Initiatives (F2013-Sum2014) Chair, Department of Philosophy (Sum2010-Sum2013) Chair, Cognitive Science Program (F2006-Sum2010) 2003-2006 Cornell University Academic Associate Professor of Philosophy (with tenure) (F2003-S2006) Administrative Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Philosophy (F2004-S2006) Co-Director, Program in Cognitive Studies (F2004-S2006) 1997-2003 Syracuse University Academic Associate Professor of Philosophy (with tenure) (F2002-S2003) Assistant Professor of Philosophy (tenure-track) (F1999-S2002) Allen and Anita Sutton Distinguished Faculty Fellow (F1997-S1999) Administrative Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Philosophy (F2001-S2003) 1996-1997 Yale University Academic Lecturer (F1996-S1997) EDUCATION 1990-1996 Harvard University. PhD (Philosophy), August 1996. Dissertation title: ‘Imaginary Exceptions: On the Powers and Limits of Thought Experiment’ Advisors: Robert Nozick, Derek Parfit, Hilary Putnam 1989-1990 University of California
    [Show full text]
  • Herman Cappelen
    CSMN & IFIKK GEORG MORGENSTIERNES HUS HERMAN UNIVERSITY OF OSLO [email protected] CAPPELEN PRIMARY POSITIONS CHAIR PROFESSORSHIP, PHILOSOPHY 2020- University of Hong Kong PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2015-2020 University of Oslo PROFESSOR AND ARCHÉ CHAIR 2007 – 2015 University of St Andrews CUF LECTURER, FELLOW AND TUTOR IN PHILOSOPHY 2006-2007 Somerville College and University of Oxford ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY 2003 – 2005 Vassar College, New York ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY 1996 – 2003 Vassar College, New York LONG-TERM AFFILIATED POSITIONS PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY (0.2 TIME) 2015-2020 University of St Andrews RESEARCH DIRECTOR, CSMN AT OSLO 2007 – 2017 University of Oslo 1 QUALIFICATIONS PhD In Philosophy. 1996 University of California, Berkeley Dissertation: “The Metaphysics of Words and the Semantics of Quotation”. Advisors: C. Chihara, S. Neale, and J. Searle BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. 1989 Balliol College, Oxford MAJOR RESEARCH GRANTS • ConsciousBrainConcepts – 16 million NOK (PI: J. Storm, with collaborators from medicine, philosophy and psychology) (2019- 2022) • Toppforsk for Conceptual Engineering, 25 million NOK (with Øystein Linnebo and Camilla Serck-Hanssen and Rachel Sterken). (2016-21) • CSMN, Phase II: approximately 60 million NOK over 5 years from the Norwegian Research Council (with 7 other applicants). • Rethinking Mind and Meaning: £250,000 from AHRC (PI: Juan Gomez).(2014-16) • Intuitions and Philosophical Methodology: £990.000 from AHRC (PI: Jessica Brown) (2008-12) • Contextualism and Relativism: £990.000, from AHRC (PI: Crispin Wright).(2007-10) • CSMN Phase I: approximately 60 million (NOK) over 5 years from the Norwegian Research Council (with 7 other applicants).( 2007-12) • Shared Content: Awarded 4.5 million (NOK), from The Norwegian Research Council.
    [Show full text]
  • Belief in Psyontology Cumstances (Ross & Schroeder, 2014; Schwitzgebel, 2015)
    Philosophers’ volume 20, no. 11 ow are full and partial belief related in psychology’s ontology? Imprint april 2020 H Credence-first philosophers think partial belief is more funda- mental. For example, Lockeans say that to believe P is just to have high credence in P. Whereas categorical-first philosophers make full beliefs fundamental instead. Having credence x in P might just amount to having a categorical belief that P’s probability is x, for example. Work in cognitive psychology supports a different view, however. In humans, beliefs come in both coarse and fine kinds, with neither BELIEF IN more fundamental than the other. Epistemologists who focus on one kind to the exclusion of the other, or who treat one as central and the other as an afterthought, risk toiling at a fiction. This conclusion is necessarily tentative. For one thing, the empir- PSYONTOLOGY ical work is nascent and ongoing, its results subject to revision. But more than that, it’s sometimes unclear what the present results tell us about the ontological and epistemological questions of interest to philosophers. Still, a prima facie case can be made. And making it is an essential step in bringing our best science to bear on what is, at least in part, an empirical question. 1. Background Jonathan Weisberg 1.1 Why Monism? Why think one kind of belief is more fundamental than the other? It’s not just that Anglophone philosophers use ‘belief’ for both kinds, so University of Toronto they must really be the same thing deep down.1 It’s rather what causes us to use ‘belief’ for both attitudes.
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophy Without Intuitions, by Herman Cappelen
    546 Book Reviews Philosophy without Intuitions, by Herman Cappelen. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 242 pp. BIBLID [0873-626X (2012) 33; pp. 546-553] Metaphilosophy is a frustrating field. Since philosophy includes such diverse areas – struggling with what we can know, should do, and can hope – and in all these areas developed radically different approaches, it seems almost impossible to provide an interesting and adequate metaphilosophical outlook. Unless one characterizes at a rather abstract level what all these different approaches in those different areas have in common (which is likely to result in something pretty uninteresting), one will end up with a metaphilosophy that will at best be adequate for a rather small pocket of philosophy. That is not only because philosophy is such a salad bowl of areas and approaches, but also because metaphilosophy is itself philosophy. In order to say something interesting about philosophy as a discipline, one will have to say something interesting about first-order philoso- phy, too; presumably about metaphysics (What is the nature of the objects of philosophical inquiry?), epistemology (How can we know about the objects of philosophical inquiry?), and philosophy of science (How do our methods reflect our epistemic access?). Given the prominent perception of at least some of analytic philosophy as being either concerned with language (‘linguistic turn’), or else the mind (‘cognitive turn’), the philosophies of those areas will probably have to be addressed too, along with meta-ethics, if one intends to include practical philosophy in one’s metaphilosophical account. This fact exponentially increases the dilemma for the metaphilosopher: either one keeps one’s first-order philosophical commitments low, and ends up with nothing very interesting to say, or one takes up a stance on all this, and ends up with a metaphilosophy that might at best be ade- quate for what oneself and one’s closest colleagues are doing when engaged in philosophy, but probably inadequate for most of what is going on in the discipline.
    [Show full text]
  • Michael S. Brownstein Curriculum Vitae 7 June 2018 180 Carlton
    Curriculum Vitae for Michael Brownstein Michael S. Brownstein Curriculum Vitae 7 June 2018 180 Carlton Avenue #1 524 W. 59th Street Brooklyn, NY 11205 Room NB 8.63 (917) 658-2684 New York, NY 10019 [email protected] www.michaelsbrownstein.com ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT 2018-present Associate Professor of Philosophy John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) 2014-2018 Assistant Professor of Philosophy John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) 2015 Short Term Visiting Professor Deep Springs College 2014-2015 Visiting Scholar American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2014-2015 Fellow American Council of Learned Societies 2009-2014 Assistant Professor of Philosophy New Jersey Institute of Technology 2008-2009 Adjunct Assistant Lecturer St. John’s University EDUCATION 2009 Ph.D, Philosophy, Penn State University Dissertation: “Practical Sense and Social Action” Doctoral minor in Social Thought 2004 BA summa cum laude, Philosophy, Columbia University Departmental honors in philosophy, Phi Beta Kappa 1998-2000 Deep Springs College AREAS OF RESEARCH SPECIALIZATION AND TEACHING COMPETENCE Areas of Research Specialization Philosophy of cognitive science and psychology Areas of Teaching Competence Philosophy of science; Philosophy of mind; Philosophy of action; Ethics; Philosophy of social science; Moral psychology 1 Curriculum Vitae for Michael Brownstein PUBLICATIONS Monographs Brownstein, M. 2018. The Implicit Mind: Cognitive Architecture, the Self, and Ethics. Oxford University Press. Edited Volumes Brownstein, M. and Saul, J. (Eds). 2016. Implicit Bias and Philosophy: Volume 1, Metaphysics and Epistemology. Oxford University Press. Brownstein, M. and Saul, J. (Eds). 2016. Implicit Bias and Philosophy: Volume 2, Moral Responsibility, Structural Injustice, and Ethics. Oxford University Press. Journal Articles Brownstein, M.
    [Show full text]
  • Program Has Been Assembled by Program Chairs Tania Lombrozo and Tony Chemero
    35th Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology June 12-14, Indiana University 2009 Bloomington 35th Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Preface Welcome to the campus of Indiana University for the 35th annual meeting of the Society for Philosophy & Psychology. An excellent program has been assembled by program chairs Tania Lombrozo and Tony Chemero. There are several special events beginning with Thursday’s pre-conference workshop on “Animal Neuroethics”, co-organized by Martha Farah, Adam Shriver, and Colin Allen. On Friday evening is the poster madness session, strictly enforced one-minute mini-talks by all poster presenters—always a lot of fun! Evening poster sessions are on Friday and Saturday and there will be hors d’œuvres and a cash bar at each. An open discussion of diversity and the SPP has been organized at lunch time (bring your own) on Saturday, June 13th, by Anne Jacobson, that will be attended by Virginia Valian, whose work on diversity is highly regarded. The future of SPP depends on the work of many volunteers, and also on your participation. Please plan to attend the business meeting on Sunday, where the agenda will cover various issues affecting the future of the Society. (You may pre-order a box lunch for $10 at the registration desk before Friday 12:30 p.m. otherwise you must bring your own.) Later that evening we hope you will join us for the reception and banquet following the Presidential Address. The reception and banquet are in IU’s Art Museum (designed by I.M.
    [Show full text]
  • Nonsense and Illusions of Thought 4
    NONSENSE AND ILLUSIONS OF THOUGHT1 Herman Cappelen Arché/University of St Andrews and CSMN/University of Oslo Note that this is the penultimate version of the paper published in Philosophical Perspectives, 2013 This paper addresses four issues: 1. What is nonsense? 2. Is nonsense possible? 3. Is nonsense actual? 4. Why do the answers to (1)-(3) matter, if at all? These are my answers: 1. A sentence (or an utterance of one) is nonsense if it fails to have or express content (more on ‘express’, ‘have’, and ‘content’ below). This is a version of a view that can be found in Carnap (1959), Ayer (1936), and, maybe, the early Wittgenstein (1922). The notion I propose abstracts away from their favored (but wrong) theories of what meaning is. It is a notion of nonsense that can be appealed to by all semantic frameworks and all theories of what content is, but structurally it is just like e.g. Carnap’s. Nonsense, as I construe it, is accompanied by illusions of thought (and I think that was part of Carnap’s conception as well). 2. Yes. In particular, I examine three arguments for the impossibility of illusion of thought (which on my construal accompanies linguistic nonsense) and they are all unsound. 3. There might be a lot of nonsense, both in ordinary and theoretical speech. In particular, it is likely that much of contemporary philosophy consists of nonsense. Empirical work is required to determine just how much. 4. The struggle to avoid nonsense (and achieve meaningfulness) is at least as 1 Thanks to Paul Boghossian, Jessica Brown, Josh Dever, Olav Gjelsvik, John Hawthorne, Tom Hodgson, Margot Strohminger, and Åsa Wikforss for helpful discussions of the issues discussed in this paper.
    [Show full text]
  • Conceptual Engineering the Master Argument
    OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/12/2019, SPi 7 Conceptual Engineering The Master Argument Herman Cappelen I call the activity of assessing and developing improvements of our representational devices ‘conceptual engineering’.¹ The aim of this chapter is to present an argument for why conceptual engineering is important for all parts of philosophy (and, more gener- ally, all inquiry). Section I of the chapter provides some background and defines key terms. Section II presents the argument. Section III responds to seven objections. The replies also serve to develop the argument and clarify what conceptual engineering is. I. Background and Explanation of Central Terms If we use ‘conceptual engineering’ as I suggested above, that is, to mean the project of assessing and developing improvements of our representational devices, then if you think ‘concepts’ are the core representational devices, conceptual engineering amounts to the following: It is the project of assessing and then ameliorating our concepts.² For example: • An epistemological conceptual engineer will, in an ameliorative spirit, assess epistemic concepts. • A conceptual engineer in moral philosophy will, in an ameliorative spirit, assess moral concepts. • A metaphysical ameliorator will, in an ameliorative spirit, assess metaphysical concepts. • A semantic ameliorator will, in an ameliorative spirit, assess semantic concepts. This normative project contrasts with a descriptive one. The descriptivist aims to describe the concepts we have—to describe our epistemic, moral, metaphysical, semantic, and so on, concepts. One important strand in the history of philosophy ¹ It can also include the activity of trying to implement the proposed improvements (for more on this, see Cappelen and Plunkett’s Introduction to this volume).
    [Show full text]
  • The Lack of Women in Philosophy: Psychological and Structural Barriers and the Moral Dimension of Epistemic Responsibility Katherine Cooklin, Ph.D
    The Lack of Women in Philosophy: Psychological and Structural Barriers and the Moral Dimension of Epistemic Responsibility Katherine Cooklin, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania 1. Introduction In the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, the field of philosophy employs fewer women in fulltime tenured posts than any other humanities field in academia [Beebee and Saul 2011, Goddard 2008, Norlock 2006]. The gender inequity in the field of philosophy is well known, and many have speculated that it is due to the masculinist, aggressive style of argumentation for which philosophy is known. Due to enculturated gendered traits of cooperation and conciliation, women may find this style of argumentation foreign and unappealing. Given that many more women begin as philosophy students than those that finish as permanent full time faculty, this speculation may indeed identify one of the barriers that have kept women out of philosophy. However, there are perhaps more pervasive and inimical barriers to women. One such barrier may be implicit bias. Research on racist attitudes and behavior has shown that implicit or nonconscious biases against African Americans negatively affect behavior toward them. This is true even for individuals who score low on measurements of explicit racial biases. Moreover, those who think of themselves as objectively egalitarian are often most blind to their own racist behavior. Another barrier that may be operative is stereotype threat, which causes those associated with negative stereotypes to underperform. The nature of this paper is both descriptive and normative. First I will identify the evidence for implicit bias and stereotype threat relevant to gender inequity within philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Locke on Knowledge of Existence
    LOCKE STUDIES Vol. 16 https://doi.org/10.5206/ls.2016.660 | ISSN: 1476-0290 Originally published: 2016 Published online: 10 FEBRUARY 2018 © Locke Studies, 2016 Locke on Knowledge of Existence NATHAN ROCKWOOD (VIRGINIA TECH) Recommended citation: Rockwood, Nathan. “Locke on Knowledge of Existence.” Locke Studies 16 (2016): 41-68. https://doi.org/10.5206/ls.2016.660 For more information about this article: https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/locke/article/view/660 Locke Studies is published by The John Locke Society. This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and shared under the original license. LOCKE ON KNOWLEDGE OF EXISTENCE NATHAN ROCKWOOD §1. The Standard Objection The standard objection to Locke’s epistemology is that his conception of knowledge inevitably leads to skepticism about external objects. 1 One reason for this complaint is that Locke defines knowledge as the perception of a relation between ideas, but perceiving relations between ideas does not seem like the kind of thing that can give us knowledge that tables and chairs exist. Thus Locke’s general definition of knowledge seems to be woefully inadequate for explaining knowledge of external objects. However, this interpretation and subsequent criticism ignore a special category of knowledge Locke calls ‘real knowledge’, which is Locke’s own account of how we can have knowledge of the real world. Rather than evaluating whether Locke’s definition of knowledge in general can get us knowledge of external objects, we should instead focus our attention on whether Locke’s account of real knowledge can explain how we have knowledge of external objects.
    [Show full text]