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5. Essence and Natural Kinds: When Science Meets Preschooler Intuition1 Sarah-Jane Leslie
978–0–19–954696–1 05-Gendler-Hawthorne-c05-drv Gendler (Typeset by SPi) 108 of 346 February 5, 2013 6:20 OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST PROOF,5/2/2013, SPi 5. Essence and Natural Kinds: When Science Meets Preschooler Intuition1 Sarah-Jane Leslie INTRODUCTION It is common practice in philosophy to “rely on intuitions” in the course of an argument, or sometimes simply to establish a conclusion. One question that is therefore important to settle is: what is the source of these intuitions? Correspondingly: what is their epistemological status? Philosophical discus- sion often proceeds as though these intuitions stem from insight into the nature of things—as though they are born of rational reflection and judicious discernment. If these intuitions do not have some such status, then their role in philosophical theorizing rapidly becomes suspect. We would not, for example, wish to place philosophical weight on intuitions that are in effect the unreflective articulation of inchoate cognitive biases. Developmental psychology has discovered a range of belief sets that emerge in the first few years of life, and which plausibly go beyond the evidence to which the child has had access in that time period. In such cases, it is reasonable to suppose that the belief sets do not derive solely from the child’s rational reflection on her evidence, but rather show something about the way human beings are fundamentally disposed to see the world. (In some cases, the deep-seated dispositions are also shared with non-human animals.) There are many explanations of why we may be fundamentally disposed to see the world in a particular way, only one of which is that metaphysically or scientifically speaking, the world actually is that way. -
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. -
CRITICAL NOTICE Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy
CRITICAL NOTICE Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy Sandra Laugier, Translated by Daniela Ginsberg, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2013, pp. 168, £ 24.50. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-47054-2 (cloth). Reviewed by Derek A. McDougall Originally published in French in the year 2000, the English version of Sandra Laugier’s short book of 10 Chapters plus an Introduction and Conclusion, has a 7 page Preface, 9 pages of Notes, a brief Bibliography and 121 pages of actual text. The reading of Wittgenstein and Austin that she provides is distinctly Cavellian in character. Indeed, Stanley Cavell in a dust-cover quote, remarks that her work is already influential in France and Italy, exciting as it does a new interest in ‘language conceived not only as a cognitive capacity but also as used, and meant, as part of our form of life’. Cavell goes on to say that this new translation is not merely welcome but indispensable, and has at least the capacity to alter prevailing views about the philosophy of language, so affecting what we have come to think of as the ‘analytic-continental divide’. Toril Moi of Duke Uni., in another dust-cover quote, states that Laugier’s reading of Wittgenstein-Austin-Cavell shows how their claim that ‘to speak about language is to speak about the world is an antimetaphysical revolution in philosophy that tranforms our understanding of epistemology and ethics.’ She concludes with the thought that anyone who wishes to understand what ‘ordinary language philosophy’ means today should read this book. This is a large claim to make, and anyone who is inclined to read Wittgenstein and Austin strictly in their own terms, and with their own avowed intentions - where discernible - steadily in view, is almost bound to conclude that it is simply not true. -
The New Theory of Reference: Kripke, Marcus, and Its Origins
THE NEW THEORY OF REFERENCE SYNTHESE LIBRARY STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Managing Editor: JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University Editors: DIRK V AN DALEN, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands DONALD DAVIDSON, University of California, Berkeley THEO A.F. KUIPERS, University ofGroningen, The Netherlands PATRICK SUPPES, Stanford University, California JAN WOLEN-SKI, Jagielionian University, KrakOw, Poland THE NEW THEORY OF REFERENCE: KRIPKE, MARCUS, AND ITS ORIGINS Edited by PAUL W. HUMPHREYS University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, U S.A. and JAMES H. FETZER University of Minnesota, Duluth, MN, US.A . ..... SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS" MEDIA, B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ISBN 978-0-7923-5578-6 ISBN 978-94-011-5250-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-5250-1 Printed on acid-free paper AII Rights Reserved © 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998 No part ofthis publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, inc1uding photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permis sion from the copyright owner. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAUL W. HUMPHREYS and JAMES H. FETZER / Introduction vii PART I: THE APA EXCHANGE 1. QUENTIN SMITH / Marcus, Kripke, and the Origin of the New Theory of Reference 3 2. SCOTT SOAMES / Revisionism about Reference: A Reply to Smith 13 3. QUENTIN SMITH / Marcus and the New Theory of Reference: A Reply to Scott Soames 37 PART II: REPLIES 4. SCOTT SOAMES / More Revisionism about Reference 65 5. -
Concrete Possible Worlds (Final)
CONCRETE POSSIBLE WORLDS Phillip Bricker 1. INTRODUCTION. Open a book or article of contemporary analytic philosophy, and you are likely to find talk of possible worlds therein. This applies not only to analytic metaphysics, but to areas as diverse as philosophy of language, philosophy of science, epistemology, and ethics. Philosophers agree, for the most part, that possible worlds talk is extremely useful for explicating concepts and formulating theories. They disagree, however, over its proper interpretation. In this chapter, I discuss the view, championed by David Lewis, that philosophers’ talk of possible worlds is the literal truth.1 There exists a plurality of worlds. One of these is our world, the actual world, the physical universe that contains us and all our surroundings. The others are merely possible worlds containing merely possible beings, such as flying pigs and talking donkeys. But the other worlds are no less real or concrete for being merely possible. Fantastic? Yes! What could motivate a philosopher to believe such a tale? I start, as is customary, with modality.2 Truths about the world divide into two sorts: categorical and modal. Categorical truths describe how things are, what is actually the case. Modal truths describe how things could or must be, what is possibly or 1 The fullest statement of Lewis’s theory of possible worlds is contained in his magnum opus, Lewis (1986), On the Plurality of Worlds. Lewis’s view is sometimes called “modal realism.” 2 Historically, it was the attempt to provide semantics for modal logic that catapulted possible worlds to the forefront of analytic philosophy. -
Kripke's Naming and Necessity: Lecture II
Kripke’s Naming and Necessity: Lecture II PHIL 83104 October 12, 2011 1. Varieties of descriptivism (end of Lecture I) ....................................................................1 2. Kripke’s arguments against descriptivism (71-90) ...........................................................2 2.1. The modal argument (48-49, 71-77) 2.1.1. Rigidified descriptions 2.1.2. Wide-scoping descriptions 2.2. The semantic argument (78-85) 2.3. The epistemic argument (86-87) 3. Kripke’s alternative picture of reference (91-97) ..............................................................5 4. Identity sentences and the necessary a posteriori (97-105) ..............................................7 4.1. The necessity of identity 4.2. A prioricity and qualitatively identical situations 4.3. Some sources of skepticism about Kripke’s claim 4.3.1. Contingent identities? 4.3.2. The illusion of contingency 4.3.3. Millianism about names 1. VARIETIES OF DESCRIPTIVISM (END OF LECTURE I) We’ve already seen two distinctions Kripke makes between different versions of descriptivism: • The distinction between descriptivist views which let a single description do the work, and those which rely on a cluster of descriptions • The distinctiopn between views according to which a description gives the meaning of a name, and those according to which it merely fixes the reference of the name Here Kripke introduces a third distinction: between circular and non-circular descriptivist views. This distinction is not like the others; it is less a distinction between varieties of descriptivism than a constraint on descriptivist views. What exactly is this constraint? Suppose we identified the meaning of the name “Aristotle” with the meaning of the description “the person called ‘Aristotle’” or “the referent of ‘Aristotle.’” These would be examples of descriptivist views which fail to meet the non-circularity condition, since to determine what object satisfies the description, we must first know which object is the referent of the name in question. -
David Lewis's Place in Analytic Philosophy Scott Soames by The
David Lewis’s Place in Analytic Philosophy Scott Soames By the early 1970s, and continuing through 2001, David Lewis and Saul Kripke had taken over W.V.O. Quine’s leadership in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophical logic in the English-speaking world. Quine, in turn, had inherited his position in the early 1950s from Rudolf Carnap, who had been the leading logical positivist -- first in Europe, and, after 1935, in America. A renegade positivist himself, Quine eschewed apriority, necessity, and analyticity, while (for a time) adopting a holistic version of verificationism. Like Carnap, he placed philosophical logic and the philosophy of science at the center of philosophy. While not entirely avoiding metaphysics and epistemology, he tried to “naturalize” both. By contrast, Lewis and Kripke embraced the modalities Quine rejected.1 They also had no sympathy for his early verificationism, or his twin flights from intension and intention. As for philosophy of science, it was transforming itself into specialized philosophies of the several sciences, and did not lend itself to unified treatment. Although Lewis had deep interests in scientific issues, and was commendably realist about science in general, science itself was not the center of own distinctive approach to philosophy. Despite similarities in their opposition to Quine, the differences between Lewis and Kripke were large – especially in the semantics and metaphysics of modality. They also had different philosophical styles. Whereas Lewis was a wide-ranging thinker who pieced together a systematic philosophical world view, Kripke gave little thought to system, focusing instead on a few central topics. There is, therefore, no conflict between the two on many of the issues on which Kripke was silent. -
Anarchism and Analytic Philosophy
CHAPTER 12 Anarchism and Analytic Philosophy Paul McLaughlin The Problem In order to discuss the relationship between “anarchism” and “analytic phi losophy,” I open with a statement of what I take these concepts to mean— or, rather, what I take the associated phenomena to be. Put bluntly, I take both phenomena to be both real and ideal. Thus, anarchism as such can be un derstood as both political movement (henceforth “Anarchism”) and political theory (henceforth “anarchism”). Similarly, analytic philosophy as such can be understood as both intellectual tradition (henceforth “Analytic Philosophy,” or “AP” for short) and theoretical procedure (henceforth “analytic philosophy” or “ap” for short). Interesting questions can be asked about the relationship be tween Anarchism and anarchism.1 However, in this chapter I have nothing to say about Anarchism: doing so would contribute little (if anything) to our un derstanding of the relationship between anarchism as such and analytic phi losophy as such. As for the relationship between AP and ap, this will be taken up below, since it informs our understanding of the relationship between an archism and analytic philosophy as such. In this chapter, in other words, I discuss the relationship between anar chism (a specific political theory) and both AP (a specific intellectual tradi tion) and ap (a specific theoretical procedure). There is little to be said about the relationship between either AP or ap and Anarchism (a specific political movement) so this political movement is left out of the subsequent account. But what I hope to demonstrate with respect to the relationship between an archism and AP is that such a relationship exists, however limited, and that it may be of some interest from a strictly historical point of view. -
38 Saul Kripke (1940– )
38 Saul Kripke (1940– ) DAVID SOSA Life Kripke once said, “People used to talk about concepts more, and now they talk about words more. Sometimes I think it’s better to talk about concepts.” In fact, Kripke himself has said important things, and developed and deployed significant conceptual resources, about both words and concepts. Saul Aaron Kripke was born in Bay Shore, New York. His mother Dorothy was a teacher and father Myer a rabbi. The family soon moved to Omaha, Nebraska where Kripke spent most of his childhood. He was a child prodigy, learning Hebrew on his own at the age of 6 and reading all of Shakespeare in the fourth grade. But it was in math- ematics that he exhibited the greatest precocity: he derived results in algebra – intui- tively, without the benefit of algebraic notation – in fourth grade and taught himself geometry and calculus by the end of elementary school. By the time he was in high school, Kripke’s work in mathematical logic was so advanced that he presented some of it at a professional mathematics conference. Around the time he published his first article, “A Completeness Theorem in Modal Logic,” Kripke was on his way to Harvard, from which he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1962. But during his years at Harvard, Kripke’s interests already began to shift to philosophy. In 1963 Kripke was appointed to the Harvard Society of Fellows and later to posi- tions as lecturer at Princeton University (1965, 1966) and back at Harvard (1966–8). Finally, he was appointed Associate Professor at Rockefeller University in 1968 and pro- moted to Professor in 1972. -
Accepting a Logic, Accepting a Theory
1 To appear in Romina Padró and Yale Weiss (eds.), Saul Kripke on Modal Logic. New York: Springer. Accepting a Logic, Accepting a Theory Timothy Williamson Abstract: This chapter responds to Saul Kripke’s critique of the idea of adopting an alternative logic. It defends an anti-exceptionalist view of logic, on which coming to accept a new logic is a special case of coming to accept a new scientific theory. The approach is illustrated in detail by debates on quantified modal logic. A distinction between folk logic and scientific logic is modelled on the distinction between folk physics and scientific physics. The importance of not confusing logic with metalogic in applying this distinction is emphasized. Defeasible inferential dispositions are shown to play a major role in theory acceptance in logic and mathematics as well as in natural and social science. Like beliefs, such dispositions are malleable in response to evidence, though not simply at will. Consideration is given to the Quinean objection that accepting an alternative logic involves changing the subject rather than denying the doctrine. The objection is shown to depend on neglect of the social dimension of meaning determination, akin to the descriptivism about proper names and natural kind terms criticized by Kripke and Putnam. Normal standards of interpretation indicate that disputes between classical and non-classical logicians are genuine disagreements. Keywords: Modal logic, intuitionistic logic, alternative logics, Kripke, Quine, Dummett, Putnam Author affiliation: Oxford University, U.K. Email: [email protected] 2 1. Introduction I first encountered Saul Kripke in my first term as an undergraduate at Oxford University, studying mathematics and philosophy, when he gave the 1973 John Locke Lectures (later published as Kripke 2013). -
An Interview with Donald Davidson
An interview with Donald Davidson Donald Davidson is an analytic philosopher in the tradition of Wittgenstein and Quine, and his formulations of action, truth and communicative interaction have generated considerable debate in philosophical circles around the world. The following "interview" actually took place over two continents and several years. It's merely a part of what must now be literally hundreds of hours of taped conversations between Professor Davidson and myself. I hope that what follows will give you a flavor of Donald Davidson, the person, as well as the philosopher. I begin with some of the first tapes he and I made, beginning in Venice, spring of 1988, continuing in San Marino, in spring of 1990, and in St Louis, in winter of 1991, concerning his induction into academia. With some insight into how Professor Davidson came to the profession, a reader might look anew at some of his philosophical writings; as well as get a sense of how the careerism unfortunately so integral to academic life today was so alien to the generation of philosophers Davidson is a member of. The very last part of this interview is from more recent tapes and represents Professor Davidson's effort to try to make his philosophical ideas available to a more general audience. Lepore: Tell me a bit about the early days. Davidson: I was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 6, 1917 to Clarence ("Davie") Herbert Davidson and Grace Cordelia Anthony. My mother's father's name was "Anthony" but her mother had married twice and by coincidence both her husbands were named "Anthony". -
“Private Language Argument” According to Kripke
Wittgenstein according to Kripke 1 WITTGENSTEIN´S “PRIVATE LANGUAGE ARGUMENT” ACCORDING TO KRIPKE Bachelor Degree Project in Philosophy 15 ECTS Spring Term 2012 Kenny Nilsson Supervisor: Oskar Macgregor Examiner: Paavo Pylkkänen Wittgenstein according to Kripke 2 Title: Wittgenstein´s “private language argument” according to Kripke Submitted by Kenny Nilsson to the University of Skövde as a final year project towards the degree of B.Sc. in the School of Humanities and Informatics. The project has been supervised by Oskar Macgregor. Date: 2012-06-18 I hereby certify that all material in this final year project which is not my own work has been identified and that no work is included for which a degree has already been conferred on me. Signature: ___________________________________________ Wittgenstein according to Kripke 3 Abstract Wittgenstein was a very important philosopher of the early twentieth century. One of his most important points was that which has been known as the Private Language Argument. This argument was given a new interpretation by Saul Kripke in 1982, which stirred up much debate. This essay investigates Kripke´s so called “skeptical challenge” and his “skeptical solution” to that challenge. To further enlighten the subject this essay also discusses a critique to Kripke´s interpretation, provided by the main critics, Baker and Hacker (1984). The conclusion of the essay is that Kripke´s theory takes up some interesting and important issues, although there are some serious flaws in Kripke´s solution that needs to be addressed if the solution is to be taken seriously. Keywords: Wittgenstein, private language, Kripke, language games RUNNING HEAD: Wittgenstein according to Kripke Wittgenstein according to Kripke 4 Table of contents Abstract 3 1.