The Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy: Program History
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Putting Reasons in Their Place José Ángel Gascón
Document generated on 09/29/2021 9:19 a.m. Informal Logic Putting Reasons in their Place José Ángel Gascón Volume 40, Number 4, 2020 Article abstract Hilary Kornblith has criticised reasons-based approaches to epistemic URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1075226ar justification on the basis of psychological research that shows that reflection is DOI: https://doi.org/10.22329/il.v40i4.6070 unreliable. Human beings, it seems, are not very good at identifying our own cognitive processes and the causes of our beliefs. In this article I defend a See table of contents conception of reasons that takes those empirical findings into account and can avoid Kornblith’s objections. Reasons, according to this account, are not to be identified with the causes of our beliefs and are useful first and foremost in Publisher(s) argumentation instead of reflection. Informal Logic ISSN 0824-2577 (print) 2293-734X (digital) Explore this journal Cite this article Gascón, J. (2020). Putting Reasons in their Place. Informal Logic, 40(4), 587–604. https://doi.org/10.22329/il.v40i4.6070 Copyright (c), 2020 José Ángel Gascón This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ Putting Reasons in their Place JOSÉ ÁNGEL GASCÓN Department of Philosophy Universidad Católica del Maule Talca, Chile [email protected] Abstract: Hilary Kornblith has Résumé: Hilary Kornblith a critiqué criticised reasons-based approaches to les approches raisonnées de la justifi- epistemic justification on the basis of cation épistémique en se basant sur psychological research that shows that des recherches psychologiques qui reflection is unreliable. -
Ernest Sosa and Virtuously Begging the Question
University of Windsor Scholarship at UWindsor OSSA Conference Archive OSSA 9 May 18th, 9:00 AM - May 21st, 5:00 PM Ernest Sosa and virtuously begging the question Michael Walschots University of Windsor Scott F. Aikin Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ossaarchive Part of the Philosophy Commons Walschots, Michael and Aikin, Scott F., "Ernest Sosa and virtuously begging the question" (2011). OSSA Conference Archive. 38. https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ossaarchive/OSSA9/papersandcommentaries/38 This Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Conferences and Conference Proceedings at Scholarship at UWindsor. It has been accepted for inclusion in OSSA Conference Archive by an authorized conference organizer of Scholarship at UWindsor. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Ernest Sosa and virtuously begging the question MICHAEL WALSCHOTS Department of Philosophy University of Windsor 401 Sunset Ave. Windsor, ON N9P 3B4 Canada [email protected] ABSTRACT: This paper discusses the notion of epistemic circularity, supposedly different from logical circu- larity, and evaluates Ernest Sosa’s claim that this specific kind of circular reasoning is virtuous rather than vicious. I attempt to determine whether or not the conditions said to make epistemic circularity a permissible instance of begging the question could make other instances of circular reasoning equally permissible. KEYWORDS: begging the question, circular reasoning, Ernest Sosa, epistemic circularity, petitio principii, reliabilism. 1. INTRODUCTION In 1986, William Alston introduced the idea of ‘epistemic circularity’, which involves assuming the reliability of a given source of belief during the process of proving the reli- ability of that same source. -
1 on Reasonable Hope Dana Howard Prepared for the Political Theory
On Reasonable Hope Dana Howard Prepared for the Political Theory Workshop Ohio State University Abstract: John Rawls has argued that one of the aims of a theory of justice is to offer us reasonable hope for a just future. But what makes hope reasonable? And is it misguided to think that reasonable hope is a proper aim of political philosophy? In this paper, I trace the development of Rawls’s conception of reasonable hope by looking more closely at his treatment of Immanuel Kant’s conceptions of Reasonable Faith and of philosophy as Apologia. The idea of reasonable hope goes beyond the weaker kind of “reconciliation” put forward by Rousseau’s account of a conjectural history. It is one thing to believe, with Rousseau, that our deep natures are not incompatible with the possibility of a just society. It is something further to harbor any hope for this in the future. I argue that this temporal aspect, which is built into what Kant and Rawls mean by reasonable hope, is a useful approach to the practice of political philosophy. An approach that takes the need for reasonable hope seriously is one that moves political theorizing from a more passive framework of theoretical imagination toward a more active one that entails political anticipation. 1 John Rawls asserts that political philosophy ought to be realistically utopian; that is, it ought to extend what we ordinarily take to be “the limits of practical political possibility.”1 On his view, a realistic utopia makes us aware of certain available political and social alternatives that we may have previously thought impossible given our non-ideal circumstances. -
Semantical Paradox* Tyler Burge
4 Semantical Paradox* Tyler Burge Frege remarked that the goal of all sciences is truth, but that it falls to logic to discern the laws of truth. Perceiving that the task of determining these laws went beyond Frege’s conception of it, Tarski enlarged the jurisdiction of logic, establishing semantics as truth’s lawyer.1 At the core of Tarski’s theory of truth and validity was a diagnosis of the Liar paradox according to which natural language was hopelessly infected with contradiction. Tarski construed himself as treating the disease by replacing ordinary discourse with a sanitized, artificial construction. But those interested in natural language have been dissatisfied with this medication. The best ground for dis satisfaction is that the notion of a natural language’s harboring contradictions is based on an illegitimate assimilation of natural language to a semantical system. According to that assimilation, part of the nature of a “language” is a set of postulates that purport to be true by virtue of their meaning or are at least partially constitutive of that “language”. Tarski thought that he had identified just such postulates in natural language as spawning inconsistency. But postulates are contained in theories that are promoted by people. Natural languages per se do not postulate or Tyler Burge, “Semantical Paradox", reprinted from The Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979), 169-98. Copyright © 1979 The Journal of Philosophy. Reprinted by permission of the Editor of The Journal of Philosophy and the author. * I am grateful to Robert L. Martin for several helpful discussions; to Herbert Enderton for proving the consistency (relative to that of arithmetic) of an extension of Construction C3; to Charles Parsons for stimulating exchanges back in 1973 and 1974; and to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for its support. -
Realism for Realistic People
Realism for Realistic People Author(s): Hasok Chang Source: Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 9, No. 1 (2018) 31-34. Published by: The University of Toronto DOI: 10.4245/sponge.v9i1.27002 EDITORIALOFFICES Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology Room 316 Victoria College, 91 Charles Street West Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1K7 [email protected] Published online at jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/SpontaneousGenerations ISSN 1913 0465 Founded in 2006, Spontaneous Generations is an online academic journal published by graduate students at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto. There is no subscription or membership fee. Spontaneous Generations provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Focused Discussion Invited Paper Realism for Realistic People* Hasok Chang† Why should anyone care about the seemingly interminable philosophical debate concerning scientific realism? Shouldn’t we simply let go of it,in the spirit of Arthur Fine’s “natural ontological attitude” (NOA) (Fine 1986, chs. 7-8)? To a large extent I follow Fine, especially in relation to the endless arguments surrounding realist attempts to show that the impossible is somehow possible, that empirical science can really attain assured knowledge about what goes beyond experience. It is time to face the fact that we cannot know whether we have got the objective Truth about the World (even if such a formulation is meaningful). Realists go astray by persisting in trying to find a way around this fact, as do anti-realists in engaging with that obsession. -
Contrastivism Surveyed
Contrastivism Surveyed (Forthcoming in Nous) Jonathan Schaffer Joshua Knobe ANU-RSSS Yale University Suppose that Ann says, “Keith knows that the bank will be open tomorrow.” Her audience may well agree. Her knowledge ascription may seem true. But now suppose that Ben—in a different context—also says “Keith knows that the bank will be open tomorrow.” His audience may well disagree. His knowledge ascription may seem false. Indeed, a number of philosophers have claimed that people’s intuitions about knowledge ascriptions are context sensitive, in the sense that the very same knowledge ascription can seem true in one conversational context but false in another. This purported fact about people’s intuitions serves as one of the main pieces of evidence for epistemic contextualism, which is (roughly speaking) the view that the truth conditions of a knowledge attribution can differ from one conversational context to another. Opponents of contextualism have replied by trying to explain these purported intuitions in other ways. For instance, they have proposed that these purported intuitions may be explained via shifts in what is at stake for the subject, pragmatic shifts in what is assertible, or performance shifts in our liability to error. Yet a recent series of empirical studies threatens to undermine this whole debate. These studies presented ordinary people with precisely the sorts of cases that have been discussed in the contextualism literature and gave them an opportunity to say whether they agreed or disagreed with the relevant knowledge attributions. Strikingly, the results suggest that people simply do not have the intuitions they were purported to have. -
Waldomiro José Silva Filho1 Marcos Antonio Alves2
Presentation Editorial / Editorial PRESENTATION Waldomiro José Silva Filho 1 Marcos Antonio Alves 2 It is with great happiness and honor that we present this special issue of Trans/Form/Ação: Unesp journal of philosophy in honor of Ernest Sosa. One of the most influential voices in the contemporary philosophy, Ernest Sosa was born in Cárdenas, Cuba, on June 17, 1940. He earned his Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) and Master of Arts (M.A.) from the University of Miami and his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) from the University of Pittsburgh in 1964. Since 2007, he has been Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. There is no doubt that Sosa is responsible for one of the revolution in Epistemology that will mark the history of philosophy. However, he also opened new paths in several central issues of philosophy, such as Metaphysics, Philosophy of Language and Philosophy of Mind. In 2020, the world philosophical community on all continents joined with his close friends and family to celebrate Ernie’s 80th birthday. Dozens of publications, books, journals, and webinars were held, even amidst the humanitarian devastation of the pandemic. The journal Trans/Form/Ação 1 Full Professor at the Philosophy Department of Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Salvador, BA – Brazil. Researcher of the CNPq, Brazil. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0874-9599 E-mail: [email protected] 2 Editor da Trans/Form/Ação: Unesp journal of Philosophy. Professor at the Philosophy Department of and Coordinator of Post Graduation Program in Philosophy – São Paulo State University (UNESP), Marília, SP – Brazil. -
Philosophy in Biology and Medicine: Biological Individuality and Fetal Parthood, Part I
Oslo, Norway July 7–12, 2019 ISHP SS B BOOK OF ABSTRACTS 2 Index 11 Keynote lectures 17 Diverse format sessions 47 Traditional sessions 367 Individual papers 637 Mixed media and poster presentations A Aaby, Bendik Hellem, 369 Barbosa, Thiago Pinto, 82 Abbott, Jessica, 298 Barker, Matthew, 149 Abir-Am, Pnina Geraldine, 370 Barragán, Carlos Andrés, 391 D’Abramo, Flavio, 371 Battran, Martin, 158 Abrams, Marshall, 372 Bausman, William, 129, 135 Acerbi, Alberto, 156 Baxter, Janella, 56, 57 Ackert, Lloyd, 185 Bayir, Saliha, 536 Agiriano, Arantza Etxeberria, 374 Beasley, Charles, 392 Ahn, Soohyun, 148 Bechtel, William, 259 El Aichouchi, Adil, 375 Bedau, Mark, 393 Airoldi, Giorgio, 376 Ben-Shachar, Erela Teharlev, 395 Allchin, Douglas, 377 Beneduce, Chiara, 396 Allen, Gar, 328 Berry, Dominic, 56, 58 Almeida, Maria Strecht, 377 Bertoldi, Nicola, 397 Amann, Bernd, 40 Betzler, Riana, 398 Andersen, Holly, 19, 20 Bich, Leonardo, 41 Anderson, Gemma, 28 LeBihan, Soazig, 358 Angleraux, Caroline, 378 Birch, Jonathan, 22 Ankeny, Rachel A., 225 Bix, Amy Sue, 399 Anker, Peder, 230 Blais, Cédric, 401 Ardura, Adrian Cerda, 380 Blancke, Stefaan, 609 Armstrong-Ingram, Tiernan, 381 Blell, Mwenza, 488 Arnet, Evan, 383 Blute, Marion, 59, 62 Artiga, Marc, 383 Bognon-Küss, Cécilia, 23 Atanasova, Nina, 20, 21 Bokulich, Alisa, 616 Au, Yin Chung, 384 Bollhagen, Andrew, 402 DesAutels, Lane, 386 Bondarenko, Olesya, 403 Aylward, Alex, 109 Bonilla, Jorge Armando Romo, 404 B Baccelliere, Gabriel Vallejos, 387 Bonnin, Thomas, 405 Baedke, Jan, 49, 50 Boon, Mieke, 235 Baetu, -
CV, Paul Horwich, March 2017
Curriculum Vitae Paul Horwich Department of Philosophy 212 998 8320 (tel) New York University 212 995 4178 (fax) 5 Washington Place [email protected] New York, NY 10003 EDUCATION Cornell University (Philosophy) Ph.D. 1975 Cornell University (Philosophy) M.A. 1973 Yale University (Physics and Philosophy) M.A. 1969 Oxford University (Physics) B.A. 1968 TITLE OF DOCTORAL THESIS: The Metric and Topology of Time. EMPLOYMENT Spring 2007 Visiting Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Tokyo Fall 2006 Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris 2005–present Professor, Department of Philosophy, New York University 2000–2005 Kornblith Distinguished Professor, Philosophy Program, Graduate Center of the City University of New York Spring 1998 Visiting Professor of Philosophy, University of Sydney 1994–2000 Professor, Department of Philosophy, University College London Fall 1994 Associate Research Director, Institute d'Histoire et Philosophie des Sciences et Technique, CNRS, Paris 1987–1994 Professor, Department of Linguistics And Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1980–1987 Associate Professor of Philosophy, MIT Fall 1978 Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of California at Los Angeles 1973–1980 Assistant Professor of Philosophy, MIT CV, Paul Horwich, March 2017 GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS 2008–9 Guggenheim Fellowship Spring 2007 Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science 2007 U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship Fall 1988 U.S. National Science Foundation -
Putnam's Theory of Natural Kinds and Their Names Is Not The
PUTNAM’S THEORY OF NATURAL KINDS AND THEIR NAMES IS NOT THE SAME AS KRIPKE’S IAN HACKING Collège de France Abstract Philosophers have been referring to the “Kripke–Putnam” theory of natural- kind terms for over 30 years. Although there is one common starting point, the two philosophers began with different motivations and presuppositions, and developed in different ways. Putnam’s publications on the topic evolved over the decades, certainly clarifying and probably modifying his analysis, while Kripke published nothing after 1980. The result is two very different theories about natural kinds and their names. Both accept that the meaning of a natural- kind term is not given by a description or defining properties, but is specified by its referents. From then on, Putnam rejected even the label, causal theory of reference, preferring to say historical, or collective. He called his own approach indexical. His account of substance identity stops short a number of objections that were later raised, such as what is called the qua problem. He came to reject the thought that water is necessarily H2O, and to denounce the idea of metaphysical necessity that goes beyond physical necessity. Essences never had a role in his analysis; there is no sense in which he was an essentialist. He thought of hidden structures as the usual determinant of natural kinds, but always insisted that what counts as a natural kind is relative to interests. “Natural kind” itself is itself an importantly theoretical concept, he argued. The paper also notes that Putnam says a great deal about what natural kinds are, while Kripke did not. -
Robert Klee and the Latest Face of Scientific Realism P. Kyle Stanford
Pergamon Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci., Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 367–375, 1999 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0039-3681/99 $ - see front matter Essay Review Preaching to the Choir? Robert Klee and the Latest Face of Scientific Realism P. Kyle Stanford* Robert Klee, Introduction to the Philosophy of Science: Cutting Nature at its Seams (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), xi ϩ 258 pp., ISBN 0- 19-5106113, paperback. Perhaps the most important point to make about Robert Klee’s recent Introduc- tion to the Philosophy of Science: Cutting Nature at its Seams is that we need many more books like it: it is an engaging, accessible and comprehensive introduc- tory text in the philosophy of science which manages to avoid sailing over the head of the beginner philosophy student without talking down to the working pro- fessional. I suspect that many teachers of the philosophy of science will, along with their students, find something in this book to stimulate their own thinking about the subject. Despite its many strengths, however, the book’s central strategy of argument is, as we shall see, compromised by a fundamental weakness. One particularly impressive feature of the text is its effective use of immunology as a case study. Klee’s first chapter presents the basics of immunological science, and it serves him well as a constant source of illustration throughout the text. As Klee notes, this pedagogical strategy avoids the traditional exclusive focus on the (sometimes idiosyncratic) features of physics. Far more importantly, however, it avoids the classic philosopher’s mistake of testing accounts of science against a high-school textbook reconstruction of scientific activity, rather than the sophisticated, complex, richly detailed and messy business in which real science consists. -
Veritism, Values, Epistemic Norms (Rysiew)
late-stage version 1 Veritism, Values, Epistemic Norms PATRICK RYSIEW 1. Introduction Stephen Grimm observes that “[a]mong contemporary epistemologists, perhaps the most prominent way to make sense of our epistemic evaluations is in teleological terms” (Grimm 2009, 243). Specifically, many epistemologists take it that what has fundamental value in the epistemic domain is truth -- or, more properly, true belief. From this, the teleological account of epistemic appraisal to which Grimm refers naturally follows: other epistemic goods besides true belief -- justification, evidence, reasons, and so on -- have epistemic value because they are appropriately related to that telos.1 (There is, of course, significant disagreement as to what the appropriate such relation is, exactly.) Such a truth-oriented approach to understanding epistemic value and assessments is a core theme of Epistemology and Cognition, and indeed of Alvin Goldman’s epistemological writings as a whole. Thus, in the former work, we’re told that “[t]he central epistemological concepts of appraisal…invoke true belief as their ultimate aim” (1986, 3), that “true belief is a prime determinant of intellectual value” (ibid., 98), and that the appropriate criteria of epistemic rightness are all truth-linked (ibid., 116). In later works, the same underlying idea, now dubbed ‘veritism’, is defended: “the cardinal [epistemic] value, or underlying motif, is something like true, or accurate belief” (2012, 52); and various intellectual virtues (2002) and public institutions and practices