DOCSLIB.ORG

Conventionalism and Necessity Bin Liu

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Conventionalism and Necessity Bin Liu Conventionalism and Necessity Bin Liu A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of Sydney 2017 This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge, the content of this thesis is my own work. This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes. I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged. Signature Abstract I argue that conventionalism is a promising doctrine by defending it against the following four major objections. (1) Quine’s objection to truth by convention. (2) Quine’s objection regarding the definition of analytic, and regarding the distinction between the analytic and synthetic. (3) The objection from the necessary a posteriori. (4) The contingency problem. Some of the objections apply to analytic propositions, whereas some of them apply to necessary a posteriori propositions. I take Ayer’s doctrine as a typical version of Traditional Conventionalism. I develop my Revised Conventionalism about analytic propositions based on Ayer’s doctrine. The main revisions I argue for include that analytic propositions are a model constructed from our use of language, and that the necessity of analytic propositions can be given up. I take Sidelle’s doctrine as a typical version of Neo-Conventionalism. I develop my Revised Conventionalism about necessary a posteriori propositions based on Sidelle’s view. The main revision I argue for is that purportedly unrestricted necessary a posteriori propositions are only restrictedly necessary. I argue that my Revised Conventionalism can withstand the above four major objections. Conventionalism opens up a new line of thought for resolving philosophical problems. That is, conventionalism proposes explanations by virtue of our use of language, rather than by virtue of objective reality or by the nature of our thought. Given my defence of conventionalism, it follows that we can use the conventionalist line of thought to resolve a wide range of philosophical problems. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Kristie Miller for her great support and helpful comments throughout the writing of this dissertation. I would like to thank Professor Nicholas Smith for his support on related themes and for his helpful instruction in choosing the topic. I would also like to thank Professor David Braddon-Mitchell, Professor David Macarthur, Professor Mark Colyvan and Dr. Michael Duncan for their interest in my work and constructive suggestions. I would also like to thank my colleagues James Norton, Br. Reginald Chua, Naoyuki Kajimoto, Andrew Latham, Shang Lu, Jane Loo, who also provided me with many useful ideas that have made the thesis better. Jared Warren helped to clarify the content of his views via emails Special thanks for Dr. Eran Asoulin, philosopher and linguist, for his help with proofreading the thesis. Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Traditional Conventionalism and Objections to It ....................................... 18 1.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................18 1.1.1. Empiricism .......................................................................................................................................18 1.1.2. Explanation by virtue of language ..........................................................................................19 1.1.3. An advantage of the explanation by virtue of language .................................................21 1.1.4. Stipulation ........................................................................................................................................22 1.2. Ayer’s Traditional Conventionalism ..........................................................................................26 1.2.1. Ayer’s doctrine ................................................................................................................................26 1.2.2. Objection: Analytic propositions are empirical synthetic propositions .................30 1.2.3. Objection: The contingency problem ....................................................................................32 1.2.4. Response: Analytic propositions are rules ..........................................................................32 1.2.5. Problems with Ayer’s solution .................................................................................................34 1.3. My Revised Conventionalism .......................................................................................................36 1.3.1. Analytic propositions as a model ............................................................................................36 1.3.2. Analytic propositions and synthetic propositions ...........................................................38 1.3.3. The independence of experience ............................................................................................40 1.3.4. Analytic propositions and our use of words .......................................................................41 1.3.5. Analytic propositions and conventions ................................................................................42 1.3.6. The necessity of analytic propositions .................................................................................43 1.3.7. The apriority of analytic propositions ..................................................................................49 1.3.8. Analytic propositions as rules ..................................................................................................50 Chapter 2: Quine’s Objections to Traditional Conventionalism ................................... 53 2.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................53 2.2. The objection to truth by convention .......................................................................................53 2.2.1. Quine’s objection ...........................................................................................................................54 2.2.2. Explicit conventionalism ............................................................................................................57 2.2.3. Implicit conventionalism ............................................................................................................58 2.2.4. Explanatory idleness ....................................................................................................................61 2.2.5. Response to the problem of explanatory idleness ...........................................................62 2.3. The distinction between the analytic and the synthetic ...................................................64 2.3.1. Quine’s objection to the definition of “analytic” ...............................................................65 2.3.2. Grice & Strawson’s on Quine .....................................................................................................66 2.3.3. Quine’s on the analytic and synthetic ...................................................................................68 2.3.4. Sidelle’s on Quine ..........................................................................................................................70 2.3.5. Quine’s objection and Sidelle’s response .............................................................................72 2.3.6. The linguistic and the empirical ..............................................................................................74 2.3.6.1. What is the difference between the linguistic and the empirical? .........................74 2.3.6.2. Quine on the linguistic and the empirical ........................................................................76 2.3.6.3. A difference in degree, not kind ...........................................................................................78 2.3.6.4. The difference between connection and description ..................................................85 2.3.6.5. From analytic vs synthetic to linguistic vs empirical ..................................................89 Chapter 3: The Necessary A Posteriori .................................................................................... 92 3.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................92 3.2. Putnam’s logical necessity .............................................................................................................92 3.2.1. The Twin Earth thought experiment .....................................................................................92 3.2.2. Sociality and indexicality ............................................................................................................95 3.2.3. Putnam’s understanding of meaning ....................................................................................96 3.3. Kripke’s metaphysical possibility ...............................................................................................97 3.3.1. Possible worlds are stipulated .................................................................................................98
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Sport: a Theory of Adjudication
    SPORT: A THEORY OF ADJUDICATION DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Bogdan Ciomaga, M.A. The Ohio State University 2007 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor William Morgan, Adviser Professor Donald Hubin ________________________ Adviser Professor Sarah Fields Graduate Program in Education Copyright by Bogdan Ciomaga 2007 ABSTRACT The main issue discussed in this work is the nature and structure of the process of adjudication, that is, the process by which referees make decisions in sport that possess normative import and force. The current dominant theory of adjudication in sport philosophy is interpretivism, which argues that adjudication is not primarily a matter of mechanically applying the rules of the game, but rather of applying rational principles that put the game in its best light. Most interpretivists are also realists, which means that they hold that the normative standing of adjudicative principles is independent of the beliefs and/or arguments of individuals or communities. A closer look at certain examples of sports and referees decisions supports a different approach to adjudication, called conventionalism, which claims that besides the rules of the game, referees are bound to follow certain conventions established by the athletic community. This conclusion is supported, among other things, by considerations concerning the nature of sport, and especially considerations that take into account the mutual beliefs held by the participants in the game. By following Marmor’s argument that conventions are best seen not as solutions to coordination problems but as constitutive features of autonomous practices like sport, I argue that a conventionalist theory of adjudication in sport has more explanatory force than interpretivist theories.
    [Show full text]
  • Like a Pendulum in Time, the History of the Human Conception of Justice Has
    Rugeles: What is Justice? Rugeles 1 What is Justice? An Investigation of Leo Strauss’s Natural Right Proposition Laura Marino Rugeles, Vancouver Island University (Editor’s note: The Agora editorial committee has awarded Laura Marino Rugeles the Kendall North Award for the best essay in the 2010 issue Agora.) of the The main concern of this essay is Leo Strauss’s presentation of the idea of justice in Natural Right and History. Although Strauss’s project appears to have the character of a historical account rather than a straightforward argumentative work about justice, it is reasonable to presume that the form of his historical reconstruction contains an argument in itself. Stewart Umphrey has said that “Strauss does not say what justice is, nor does he preach justice or cry out for spiritual renewal” (32). Instead, Strauss’s suggested argument is a “carefully considered hypothesis couched in further questions-like Socrates’ hypothesis that virtue is knowledge-and hypotheses of this kind are doctrines in a sense; they tell us where to keep looking” (Umphrey 33). I believe this claim to be fundamentally correct. In fact, Strauss’s work leaves us with projects of investigation that are pivotal to the question of justice. These projects will reveal themselves after a critical examination of Strauss’ historical account. Justice is an idea that each person can understand but hardly all can agree on. In fact, “the disagreement regarding the principles of justice... seems to reveal genuine perplexity aroused by a divination or insufficient grasp of natural right” (Strauss 100). That is indeed one of the most stubborn problems in human history.
    [Show full text]
  • An Introduction to Philosophy
    An Introduction to Philosophy W. Russ Payne Bellevue College Copyright (cc by nc 4.0) 2015 W. Russ Payne Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document with attribution under the terms of Creative Commons: Attribution Noncommercial 4.0 International or any later version of this license. A copy of the license is found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 1 Contents Introduction ………………………………………………. 3 Chapter 1: What Philosophy Is ………………………….. 5 Chapter 2: How to do Philosophy ………………….……. 11 Chapter 3: Ancient Philosophy ………………….………. 23 Chapter 4: Rationalism ………….………………….……. 38 Chapter 5: Empiricism …………………………………… 50 Chapter 6: Philosophy of Science ………………….…..… 58 Chapter 7: Philosophy of Mind …………………….……. 72 Chapter 8: Love and Happiness …………………….……. 79 Chapter 9: Meta Ethics …………………………………… 94 Chapter 10: Right Action ……………………...…………. 108 Chapter 11: Social Justice …………………………...…… 120 2 Introduction The goal of this text is to present philosophy to newcomers as a living discipline with historical roots. While a few early chapters are historically organized, my goal in the historical chapters is to trace a developmental progression of thought that introduces basic philosophical methods and frames issues that remain relevant today. Later chapters are topically organized. These include philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, areas where philosophy has shown dramatic recent progress. This text concludes with four chapters on ethics, broadly construed. I cover traditional theories of right action in the third of these. Students are first invited first to think about what is good for themselves and their relationships in a chapter of love and happiness. Next a few meta-ethical issues are considered; namely, whether they are moral truths and if so what makes them so.
    [Show full text]
  • Overview the Varieties of Conventionalism
    Cambridge University Press 0521826195 - Conventionalism Yemima Ben-Menahem Excerpt More information 1 Overview The Varieties of Conventionalism This book recounts the hitherto untold story of conventionalism. The profound impact conventionalism has had on seminal developments in both the science and the philosophy of the twentieth century is revealed through analysis of the writings of Poincar´e,Duhem, Carnap, Wittgen- stein, and Quine on the subject, and by examining the debate over con- ventionalism in the context of the theory of relativity and the foundations of mathematics. I trace the evolution of conventionalism from Poincar´e’s modest but precise initial conception through a number of extravagant extrapolations, all of which, I show, eventually collapsed under the weight of the problems they generated. My focus, however, is not history but anal- ysis. The literature is replete with ambiguity as to what the meaning of ‘convention’ is, misunderstandings about the aims of conventionalism, and conflation of conventionalism with other philosophical positions, such as instrumentalism and relativism. The most serious confusion per- tains to the notion of truth by convention typically associated with conven- tionalism. A central theme of this book is that conventionalism does not purport to base truth on convention, but rather, seeks to forestall the conflation of truth and convention. Much of twentieth-century philosophy was characterized by engage- ment in determining the limits of meaning and countering the tendency to ascribe meaning to meaningless expressions. Conventionalism, cor- rectly understood, is motivated by a desire to mitigate deceptive ascription of truth. To the conventionalist, the very idea of truth by convention is as incongruous as that of meaningful nonsense.
    [Show full text]
  • Poincare Conventions Relations
    Conventions and Relations in Poincaré’s Philosophy of Science ∗∗∗ Stathis Psillos Dept of Philosophy and History of Science University of Athens, Greece & Rotman Institute of Philosophy & Dept of Philosophy, University of Western Ontario, Canada e-mail: [email protected] 1. Introduction Henri Poincare’s La Science et l’ Hypothése was translated into English in 1905. One of the first reviews—published already in 1905—was by Bertrand Russell. After praising Poincaré for his “power of co-ordinating the whole domain of mathematics and physics in a single system of ideas” (1905, 412), Russell—in this short by pointed review—put forward the two main interpretations of Poincaré’s thought that subsequently became standard. Poincaré was a conventionalist and a structuralist. According to Russell, Poincaré argued that geometry is wholly conventional and that the principles of mechanics are definitions. He rather quickly dismissed this view by taking the line that conventions are merely hypotheses which have been willingly withdrawn from empirical testing and claimed that they were not really necessary qua a different epistemic category. 1 Interestingly, he spent more time explaining that for Poincaré “science teaches us, not about things in themselves, but about their relations” (1905, 412). As Russell understood Poincaré’s main thesis, “if a really exists, a statement about a has no meaning unless it asserts a relation to a b which also really exists” (1905, 417). His prime disagreement with Poincaré was that he took that statements about qualities of real things are not devoid of meaning but simply unknowable. But apart from that, Russell endorsed this relationist reading of Poincaré and made two important points.
    [Show full text]
  • What Is Conventionalism About Moral Rights and Duties?
    Katharina Nieswandt What Is Conventionalism about Moral Rights and Duties? Abstract A powerful objection against moral conventionalism says that it gives the wrong reasons for individual rights and duties. The reason why I must not break my promise to you, for example, should lie in the damage to you—rather than to the practice of promising or to all other participants in that practice. Common targets of this objection include the theories of Hobbes, Gauthier, Hooker, Binmore, and Rawls. I argue that: (1) The conventionalism of these theories is superfi- cial. (2) Genuinely conventionalist theories are not vulnerable to the ob- jection. (3) Genuine moral conventionalism is independently plausible. Key Words practice view • promises • rule-consequentialism • contractarianism • John Rawls • G.E.M. Anscombe Publication & Download Australasian Journal of Philosophy http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2018.1425306 Acknowledgements I am deeply indebted to Ulf Hlobil for multiple readings of this paper in its various stages. I am furthermore grateful to editor Stephen Hetherington and three anonymous reviewers, whose feedback greatly improved the final version. For additional feedback, I'd like to thank participants at multiple work- shops; in particular Oded Na’aman, Jorah Dannenberg, Nico Cornell, and Michael Goodhart. Final Draft, January 2018 Nieswandt, What Is Conventionalism about Moral Rights and Duties? 1 Introduction ‘Conventionalist’ or ‘practice views’ of morality are a large and diverse group. Contractarians (Hobbes or Gauthier), rule-consequentialists (Hooker), Neo-Aristotelians (Anscombe or Foot), evolutionary ethicists (Binmore), and Rawls are commonly regarded as conventionalists; many treatments also include Hume (e.g. Kolodny and Wallace [2003: sec.
    [Show full text]
  • A Guide to Kant's Psychologism Via Locke, Berkeley, Hume, And
    5 From Hume to Kant via Wittgenstein Hume’s thesis that associative psychology is the cement of the universe so far as our consciousness of the natural and human worlds is concerned was a gauntlet thrown down before theorists of mind of his and subse- quent eras. It reduces all non-linguistic human conception, judgments, and inferences to processes fully as affect-driven and devoid of proposi- tional or other logical structure as presumably drive non-human animal intelligences and govern both human and animal passions. In so doing, it effectively cuts the ground from under all claims of human exception- alism since the universe represented by the human psyche becomes, in all fundamentals, no different from that of animal psyches generally. The challenge facing Hume’s opponents, then, was to show that associa- tive psychology suffices in neither regard, and so to identify what makes human intelligence psychologically unique—or at least more exceptional than Hume would have it. The Humean challenge is two-sided. The first is the claim considered in the previous chapter that the explanatory power of associative psychol- ogy has been grossly underestimated, being nothing less than the cement of every creature’s representational universe, humans included. The sec- ond, which I shall explore now, is his thesis that conscious mind by itself is incapable of supporting any other kind of representation. This relates particularly to propositional thought, its logic, and the languages that are its vehicle: any representation that depends on these is not a mental rep- resentation at all—a consciousness with dedicated neural correlates—but something else entirely.
    [Show full text]
  • Democracy and Scientific Method in Thomas Hobbes
    Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2014 The A rP iori Nature of the Political: Democracy and Scientific ethoM d in Thomas Hobbes Patrick Craig Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Craig, P. (2014). The A rP iori Nature of the Political: Democracy and Scientific eM thod in Thomas Hobbes (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/438 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE A PRIORI NATURE OF THE POLITICAL: DEMOCRACY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN THOMAS HOBBES A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Patrick Craig December 2014 Copyright by Patrick Craig 2014 THE A PRIORI NATURE OF THE POLITICAL: DEMOCRACY AND SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN THOMAS HOBBES By Patrick Craig Approved October 3, 2014 ________________________________ ________________________________ Daniel Selcer Fred Evans Associate Professor of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) ________________________________ ________________________________ James Swindal Douglas Jesseph Professor of Philosophy Professor of Philosophy
    [Show full text]
  • Carnap's Conventionalism
    CARNAP'S CONVENTIONALISM: LOGIC, SCIENCE, AND TOLERANCE Noah Friedman-Biglin A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews 2014 Full metadata for this item is available in St Andrews Research Repository at: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/6334 This item is protected by original copyright This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence Carnap's Conventionalism: Logic, Science, and Tolerance Noah Friedman-Biglin This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews December 16th, 2013 Declarations Candidate's Declarations: I, Noah Friedman-Biglin, hereby certify that this thesis, which is approximately 75,000 words in length, has been written by me, that it is the record of work carried out by me and that it has not been submitted in any previous applica- tion for a higher degree. I was admitted as a research student in September, 2009 and as a candidate for this degree in May, 2010; the higher study for which this is a record was carried out in the University of St Andrews between 2009 and 2013. Date: 16 December, 2013 Signature: Supervisor's Declaration: I hereby certify that the candidate has fulfilled the conditions of the Resolution and Regulations appropriate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Uni- versity of St Andrews and that the candidate is qualified to submit this thesis in application for that degree. Date: 16 December, 2013 Signature: Permission for Electronic Thesis Publication: In submitting this thesis to the University of St Andrews I understand that I am giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the work not being affected thereby.
    [Show full text]
  • Naturalism, Conventionalism and Forms of Life: Wittgenstein and the “Cratylus”
    Nordic Wittgenstein Review 4 (No 2) 2015 Paul Livingston pmliving @ unm.edu Naturalism, Conventionalism and Forms of Life: Wittgenstein and the “Cratylus” Abstract I consider Plato’s argument, in the dialogue Cratylus, against both of two opposed views of the “correctness of names.” The first is a conventionalist view, according to which this relationship is arbitrary, the product of a free inaugural decision made at the moment of the first institution of names. The second is a naturalist view, according to which the correctness of names is initially fixed and subsequently maintained by some kind of natural assignment, rooted in the things themselves. I argue that: 1) Plato’s critical challenge to both views anticipates considerations introduced by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations’ consideration of rules and rule-following; 2) Understanding Plato’s appeal to the “form” [eidos] of a thing in resolving the problems of both views helps to explicate Wittgenstein’s own appeal to “forms of life” as the “given” ground of linguistic practice; and 3) We should not understand the grounding of language in form-of-life either as a (conventionalist) basis in the plural practices of different communities, or as a biological/anthropological basis in the specific nature of the human organism. Rather, it points to an autonomous dimension of form, which articulates the relationship between language and life as it relates to the possibility of truth. 7 Paul Livingston CC-BY 1. Introduction There are substantial and central commonalities of purpose between Plato’s appeals to what he calls the idea or form [eidos] and the late Wittgenstein’s own elliptically specified concept of (a) form of life [Lebensform].
    [Show full text]
  • Reconsidering Carnap's Logic of Science
    Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 12-9-2013 12:00 AM The Methodological Roles of Tolerance and Conventionalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics: Reconsidering Carnap's Logic of Science Emerson P. Doyle The University of Western Ontario Supervisor John L. Bell The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Philosophy A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Emerson P. Doyle 2013 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Logic and Foundations of Mathematics Commons Recommended Citation Doyle, Emerson P., "The Methodological Roles of Tolerance and Conventionalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics: Reconsidering Carnap's Logic of Science" (2013). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 1757. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/1757 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Methodological Roles of Tolerance and Conventionalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics: Reconsidering Carnap's Logic of Science (Thesis Format: Monograph) by Emerson P. Doyle Graduate Program in Philosophy A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada c Emerson P. Doyle 2013 Abstract This dissertation makes two primary contributions. The first three chapters de- velop an interpretation of Carnap's Meta-Philosophical Program which places stress upon his methodological analysis of the sciences over and above the Principle of Tol- erance.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Conventionalism About What? Where Duhem
    Conventionalism About What? Where Duhem and Poincaré Part Ways (forthcoming in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science) Milena Ivanova Munich Center for Mathematical philosophy [email protected] Abstract This paper examines whether, and in what contexts, Duhem’s and Poincaré’s views can be regarded as conventionalist or structural realist. After analysing the three different contexts in which conventionalism is attributed to them – in the context of the aim of science, the underdetermination problem and the epistemological status of certain principles – I show that neither Duhem’s nor Poincaré’s arguments can be regarded as conventionalist. I argue that Duhem and Poincaré offer different solutions to the problem of theory choice, differ in their stances towards scientific knowledge and the status of scientific principles, making their epistemological claims substantially different. Keywords: Conventionalism, neo-Kantianism, Structural Realism, Theory Choice, Underdetermination 1. Introduction Pierre Duhem’s and Henri Poincaré's philosophy of science, and especially their stance towards scientific theories, has caused significant debates in the philosophy of science literature. However, a unified and coherent understanding of their views is still to be given. Many regard Duhem and Poincaré as conventionalists (Ben- Menahem (2006), Reichenbach (1958), Popper (1959), Sklar (1974)), others regard them as instrumentalists (Laudan (1968), Stanford (2006)). More recently Duhem and Poincaré have been considered as the founders of structural realism (Giedymin (1982), Worrall (1989), Gower (2000)). However, none of these interpretations provide a fully coherent understanding of the motivations Duhem and Poincaré have in developing their conventionalism and its relevance to their general philosophy of science and especially with their alleged structural realism.
    [Show full text]