Stewart Shapiro's Complete Publication List
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Pluralisms About Truth and Logic Nathan Kellen University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected]
University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 8-9-2019 Pluralisms about Truth and Logic Nathan Kellen University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation Kellen, Nathan, "Pluralisms about Truth and Logic" (2019). Doctoral Dissertations. 2263. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/2263 Pluralisms about Truth and Logic Nathan Kellen, PhD University of Connecticut, 2019 Abstract: In this dissertation I analyze two theories, truth pluralism and logical pluralism, as well as the theoretical connections between them, including whether they can be combined into a single, coherent framework. I begin by arguing that truth pluralism is a combination of realist and anti-realist intuitions, and that we should recognize these motivations when categorizing and formulating truth pluralist views. I then introduce logical functionalism, which analyzes logical consequence as a functional concept. I show how one can both build theories from the ground up and analyze existing views within the functionalist framework. One upshot of logical functionalism is a unified account of logical monism, pluralism and nihilism. I conclude with two negative arguments. First, I argue that the most prominent form of logical pluralism faces a serious dilemma: it either must give up on one of the core principles of logical consequence, and thus fail to be a theory of logic at all, or it must give up on pluralism itself. I call this \The Normative Problem for Logical Pluralism", and argue that it is unsolvable for the most prominent form of logical pluralism. Second, I examine an argument given by multiple truth pluralists that purports to show that truth pluralists must also be logical pluralists. -
Crispin WRIGHT: Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics, London: Duckworth 1980
Crispin WRIGHT: Wittgenstein on the Foundations of Mathematics, London: Duckworth 1980. Michael Dummett1 has long been encouraging philosophers of language to take up the task of constructing for natural languages semantics alternative to that originating with Frege. A classical Fregean or 'realist' semantics is characterized by its fascination with truth; for a realist, the understanding of a statement need in some way be analyzed in terms of a knowledge of its truth conditions. Dum mett envisions a likely alternative or 'anti-realist' semantics in the form of a generalization of the intuitionistic critique of classical mathematics. The nub of an antirealist semantics would be verification; the meaning of a statement is to be explained in terms of the conditions under which its assertion would be justi fied. Dummett and, recently, Crispin Wrighe have argued that the meaning-as-use doctrine of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations3 and Remarks on the Foundaticns of Mathematics4, provides the materials for a thoroughgoing anti realism. DummettS believes that the species of anti-realism deriving from Witt genstein is compatible with intuitionism in mathematics, while Wright sees in Wittgenstein an antirealism far surpassing the intuitionistic in its strictures. Wright's Wittgenstein would repudiate any philosophical semantics which pre supposes that linguistic expressions have determinate sense or extension. The austerity of this position derives from an argument for what one might term "the nonobjectivity of sense", an argument which Wright takes as summarizing the conclusions Wittgenstein intended his reader to draw from a consideration of the procedure of following a rule. I To hold that sense is nonobjective is to believe that a shared understanding of an expression in no way enjoins on speakers an adherence to a determinate pattern 1. -
Wittgenstein, Wright, Rorty and Minimalism Author(S): Simon Blackburn Source: Mind , Jan., 1998, Vol
Wittgenstein, Wright, Rorty and Minimalism Author(s): Simon Blackburn Source: Mind , Jan., 1998, Vol. 107, No. 425 (Jan., 1998), pp. 157-181 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2659811 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Oxford University Press and are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Mind This content downloaded from 132.174.255.116 on Mon, 29 Jun 2020 15:38:47 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms SYMPOSIUM: REALISMAND TRUTH Wittgenstein, Wright, Rorty and Minimalism SIMON BLACKBURN 1. Introduction William James said that sometimes detailed philosophical argument is irrelevant. Once a current of thought is really under way, trying to oppose it with argument is like planting a stick in a river to try to alter its course: ''round your obstacle flows the water and 'gets there just the same"' (James 1909, p. 55). He thought pragmatism was such a river. There is a contemporary river that sometimes calls itself pragmatism, although other titles are probably better. At any rate it is the denial of differences, the cel- ebration of the seamless web of language, the soothing away of distinc- tions, whether of primary versus secondary, fact versus value, description versus expression, or of any other significant kind. -
Comments on Sider's Four Dimensionalism
Sally Haslanger MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy [email protected] 12/30/03 Comments on Sider I. Introduction Congratulations to Ted on the APA Prize. Ted’s book Four Dimensionalism is an impressive piece of work, and it is an honor to be included in this session. The book is a paradigm of systematic work in analytic metaphysics. It demonstrates a comprehensive understanding of a variety of debates over time, persistence, material constitution, as well as a sensitivity to background issues concerning methodology in metaphysics. It is a significant accomplishment. I’ll start by giving a very brief summary of Sider’s position and will identify some points on which my own position differs from his. I’ll then raise four issues, viz., how to articulate the 3-dimensionalist view, the trade-offs between Ted’s stage view of persistence and endurance with respect to intrinsic properties, the endurantist’s response to the argument from vagueness, and finally more general questions about what’s at stake in the debate. I don’t believe that anything I say raises insurmountable problems for Sider’s view; and in fact, I’m sure he’s in a better position to defend his view more convincingly than I’m able to defend mine. However, there is plenty worth discussing further. Sider defends what he calls “four dimensionalism,” but we should start by being clear how he understands this position.1 He defines “four dimensionalism” as “an ontology of the material world according to which objects have temporal as well as spatial parts.” (xiii) So the thesis of four-dimensionalism Sider is interested in is a thesis about objects and their parts. -
Knowledge of Logic Is It Possible for Us to Know The
Knowledge of Logic Is it possible for us to know the fundamental truths of logic a priori? This question presupposes another: is it possible for us to know them at all, a priori or a posteriori? In the case of the fundamental truths of logic, there has always seemed to be a difficulty about this, one that may be vaguely glossed as follows (more below): since logic will inevitably be involved in any account of how we might be justified in believing it, how is it possible for us to be justified in our fundamental logical beliefs? In this essay, I aim to explain how we might be justified in our fundamental logical beliefs. If the explanation works, it will explain not merely how we might know logic, but how we might know it a priori. The Problem Stated To keep matters as simple as possible, let us restrict ourselves to propositional logic and let us suppose that we are working within a system in which modus ponens (MPP) is the only underived rule of inference. My question is this: is it so much as possible for us to be justified in supposing that MPP is a valid rule of inference, necessarily truth‐preserving in all its applications?1 I am not at the moment concerned with how we are actually justified, but only with whether it makes sense to suppose that we could be. We need to begin with certain distinctions. Suppose it is a fact about S that, whenever he believes that p and believes that ‘if p, then q’, he is disposed either to believe q or to reject one of the other propositions. -
Review of Crispin Wright "Truth and Objectivity" (Harvard University Press 1993)’, Erkenntnis, 44, 119-23
Müller, Vincent C. (1999), ‘Review of Crispin Wright "Truth and Objectivity" (Harvard University Press 1993)’, Erkenntnis, 44, 119-23. (www.sophia.de) Crispin Wright, Truth and Objectivity, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. & London, © 1992, published 1993, xi+247 pp. $ 29.95 (cloth), $ 14.95 (paper, 1994). This book is a new attempt to clarify what is at issue in the contemporary realism debates and to suggest which form the controversies ought to take. Wright has contributed to the- se debates for quite some time and essentially taken the anti-realist side (witness the papers collected in Realism, Meaning and Truth, 1987, 21993, and the forthcoming Realism, Rules and Objectivity, both Oxford: Basil Blackwell). In Truth and Objectivity however, he takes a step back and sketches a neutral ground upon which both sides could agree in or- der to define their oppositions clearly, thus enabling fruitful discussions. His methodolog- ical suggestion for a realism debate in a given assertoric discourse is that both sides should agree on a “minimal” concept of truth for that discourse and then see whether ascent to a more metaphysically substantial concept of truth is warranted, which would constitute a realism for the discourse in question. If Wright had managed to set the agenda in a way that does justice to both sides, this book would have constituted a major contribution to contemporary epistemology and metaphysics. Wright presents his minimalism as the result of a critique of deflationism about truth, which is said to show “a tendency to inflate under pressure” (13). According to Wright, deflationism amounts to saying that the content of the truth predicate is wholly fixed by the disquotational schema “p” is true if and only if p plus the contention that claiming a sentence to be true is the same as asserting it – in Wright’s terminology: For a linguistic practice, truth registers a norm that does not differ from that of warranted assertibility. -
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. -
The Epistemology of Testimony
Pergamon Stud. His. Phil. Sci., Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 1-31, 1998 0 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0039-3681/98 $19.004-0.00 The Epistemology of Testimony Peter Lipton * 1. Introduction Is there anything you know entirely off your own bat? Your knowledge depends pervasively on the word of others. Knowledge of events before you were born or outside your immediate neighborhood are the obvious cases, but your epistemic dependence on testimony goes far deeper that this. Mundane beliefs-such as that the earth is round or that you think with your brain-almost invariably depend on testimony, and even quite personal facts-such as your birthday or the identity of your biological parents--can only be known with the help of others. Science is no refuge from the ubiquity of testimony. At least most of the theories that a scientist accepts, she accepts because of what others say. The same goes for almost all the data, since she didn’t perform those experiments herself. Even in those experiments she did perform, she relied on testimony hand over fist: just think of all those labels on the chemicals. Even her personal observations may have depended on testimony, if observation is theory-laden, since those theories with which it is laden were themselves accepted on testimony. Even if observation were not theory-laden, the testimony-ladenness of knowledge should be beyond dispute. We live in a sea of assertions and little if any of our knowledge would exist without it. If the role of testimony in knowledge is so vast, why is its role in the history of epistemology so slight? Why doesn’t the philosophical canon sparkle with titles such as Meditations on Testimony, A Treatise Concerning Human Testimony, and Language, Truth and Testimony? The answer is unclear. -
Some Variations on Themes from Wright Dorit Bar-On, UNC-Chapel Hill 1
Expression, Truth, and Reality: Some Variations on Themes from Wright Dorit Bar-On, UNC-Chapel Hill 1. Introduction: Expressivism as an ‘Anti-Realist Paradigm’ Expressivism, broadly construed, is the view that the function of utterances in a given area of discourse is to give expression to our sentiments or other (non-cognitive) mental states or attitudes, rather than report or describe some range of facts. This view naturally seems an attractive option wherever it is suspected that there may not be a domain of facts for the given discourse to be describing. Familiarly, to avoid commitment to ethical facts, the ethical expressivist suggests that ethical utterances (e.g., “Gratuitous torture is wrong”, “What John did was morally good”) do not serve to ascribe ethical properties to objects, actions, persons, or states of affairs. Instead, they simply function to give voice to certain of our sentiments (or ‘pro/con’ attitudes). Along similar lines, philosophers have entertained versions of expressivism about the aesthetic, the modal, the mental, what is funny, even about theoretical science and knowledge ascriptions.1 In several of his writings, Crispin Wright lists expressivism among the chief ‘anti-realist paradigms’ and not a successful one at that. Insofar as expressivism purports to allow us to avoid unwanted ontological commitments, its success depends on denying – implausibly – that the relevant discourses “really deal in truth-evaluable contents”. Yet Wright thinks that these discourses do possess truth-evaluability, since they exhibit all the relevant ‘assertoric trappings’, which, on the ‘minimalist’ conception Wright develops in Truth and Objectivity, suffice for truth- aptitude and truth.2 If it were indeed true that expressivism, in every case, required denying truth- evaluability, then Wright would be correct to declare the expressivist move ultimately a ‘faux pas’ (Wright 1988: 34). -
Confluence: Online Journal of World Philosophies, Volume 4
Symposium: »Is Reason a Neutral Tool in Comparative Philosophy?« A Manifesto for Re:emergent Philosophy Abstract Is Reason a Neutral Tool in Comparative Philosophy? In his answer to the symposium’s question, Jonardon Ganeri develops a »Manifesto for [a] Re:emergent Philosophy.« Tracking changes in the under- standing of ›comparative philosophy,‹ he sketches how today’s world of academic philosophy seems to be set to enter an »age of re:emer- gence« in which world philosophies will (and can) be studied through modes of global participation. In their responses, the symposium’s discussants tease out implications of this Manifesto for different is- sues: While Mustafa Abu Sway suggests that comparative philosophy be understood as an intra-philosophical dialogue, whose aim depends on its participants, Paul Boghossian questions whether there can be conflicting, yet equally valid, ways of arriving at justified beliefs about the world. For her part, Georgina Stewart draws out the simila- rities between Ganeri’s understanding of comparative philosophy and the ethical stance involved in studying Maori science. In his Reply, Ganeri fleshes out his understanding of a pluralistic realism. Only an epistemic culture, which is open to a plurality of epistemic stances, he contends, can propel polycentric modes of knowledge production. Keywords Comparative philosophy, intellectual decolonization, intra-philoso- phical dialogue, relativism, Indigenous philosophies, Jonardon Ga- neri, Mustafa Abu Sway, Paul Boghossian, Georgina Stewart. Insofar as »comparative philosophy« is a branch of philosophy reason must be instrumental in its pursuit, given that philosophy is the em- ployment of the human capacity for reasoned thought to »understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term«. -
REVIEW ESSAY a Very Bad Argument
097291-Stolzenberg.qxd 9/17/2008 8:49 PM Page 1 REVIEW ESSAY A Very Bad Argument Gabriel Stolzenberg Paul Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 135 pp., £15.99/€25.30/$24.95. ISBN 0–19928–718–X. This slim book by the philosopher, Paul Boghossian, is a many-pronged attack on relativism and constructivism, especially social constructivism, as seen from an objectivist perspective that he attempts to justify by appeals to logic and common sense. He wishes to defend the privileged status of science against those who hold that all belief systems are ‘equally valid’. There is a wealth of interesting material. I recommend especially the criti- cism of Wittgenstein on the logic of the Azande and of Richard Rorty on the dispute between Galileo and Cardinal Bellarmine. They remind us not to be too quick to conclude that two belief systems are incommensurable. Other philosophers whose seemingly constructivist or relativist views are criticized include Nelson Goodman and Hilary Putnam on the description- dependence of facts, Thomas Kuhn on incommensurability in science, and Pierre Duhem on the underdetermination of theory by evidence. Doubts about the Success of the Project Although Boghossian seems confident that he has refuted relativism and constructivism, I don’t see that he has refuted either. Indeed, most of his attacks are directed against the wrong targets. This is a predictable conse- quence of his tacit assumption that he can learn how things appear from another perspective merely by observing, from his own perspective, how they appear to appear from the other one. -
David Lewis on Persistence1 Katherine Hawley University of St Andrews
David Lewis on Persistence1 Katherine Hawley University of St Andrews David Lewis takes a clear stance on persistence: Next, persistence through time. I take the view that nothing endures identically through time. (Except universals, if such there be; their loci would coincide with relations of qualitative match, would indeed constitute these relations, so they would commit no violations of Humean Supervenience.) Persisting particulars consist of temporal parts, united by various kinds of continuity. To the extent that the continuity is spatiotemporal and qualitative, of course it supervenes upon the arrangement of qualities. But the continuity that often matters most is causal continuity: the thing stays more or less the same because of the way its later temporal parts depend causally for their existence and character on the ones just before. So the spatiotemporal boundaries of persisting things, for example people, can supervene on the arrangement of qualities, provided that causation does. (Lewis, 1986b, xiii) To persist is to exist at more than one time, to transcend the momentary. How do things achieve this? We might answer with talk of thermodynamic stability, molecular bonds, photosynthesis, the porcupine’s spines, German manufacturing standards, legal protection of ancient monuments, or the uncanny ability of children to extract care from their parents. In Lewis’s terms, such answers explain the existence of spatiotemporal and qualitative continuities over time in causal terms, by reference either to the causal mechanisms which directly underpin such continuities, or to their preconditions and external circumstances. Explanations may differ according to the kind of object in question: German washing machines and yew trees are both long- lasting, relative to other types of appliance or tree respectively, but the reasons for their longevity are quite different.