Olav Gjelsvik

This chapter starts with Harry Frankfurt’s pioneering account of bullshit, and goes on to consider Gerald A. Cohen’s criticism of Frankfurt and his alternative view. The chapter maintains, contrary to Cohen, that we should not give up seeing bullshit as a single and unified phenomenon. The thesis it goes on to defend is that bullshitting and its product bullshit are to be characterized by a certain state of mind of the producer, a state of mind that is to be identified by its relation to assertion. But it is not the state of mind Frankfurt suggested (the state of being unconcerned with truth), for which Cohen has provided counterexamples. The state of mind that produces bullshit, it is argued, is the state of not being concerned, as we should be, with knowledge. And that, in its turn, throws an interesting light on what assertion is, and which norm governs it.

This chapter defends an aspect of the standard view that procrastination is doing things later in time than you should and does so by accounting for normative aspects of time discounting and preference reversals as a result of time’s passing. The possible wrongness of the procrastination-relevant preference reversals is traced to fundamental issues about rationality and particularly about the consistency of preferences, both at one time and over time. The wrongness is related to the wrongness of preference inconsistency. The chapter, in dealing with these normative questions, also addresses some issues about internal and external reasons, as this is needed to account for the normative rightness of consistency.

This chapter presents and discusses Donald Davidson's contribution to the debate about what freedom to act is, and the relationship between this contribution and Davidson's causal theory of action. It presents and evaluates issues in accounting for the content of “can x” (where “can” seems to stand for a capacity or an ability) by conditionals with “would do x” in the consequent. The discussion also throws light on the relationship between Davidson's work on the freedom issues and that of predecessors like Moore and Austin.

Sandra Lapointe: Bolzano, Quine, and Logical Truth: According to the standard interpretation, the similarity between Bolzano and Quine comes from the fact that they are both “demarcating logic […] with the help of a set of logical particles which are held constant, while the other non‐logical expressions are freely substituted for each other.” This interpretation assumes that Bolzano and Quine share at least some substantial views about what makes a term a “logical” term. My paper has four parts. First, I give some background to Bolzano's theory, focusing on his views on syntax and form. Second, I show why it is mistaken to assume that Bolzano and Quine mean the same when they speak of logical concepts/words. Third, I discuss Bolzano's views on logical truth and sentences that can be turned into logical truth by putting synonyms for synonyms and compare them to Quine's. I conclude by asking whether Bolzano's theory succeeds where Quine fails. I answer, with a twist, in the affirmative.

ABSTRACT This paper engages in a discussion about a select few of the crucial questions raised by Jon Elster's paper on Enthusiasm and Anger in History. It focusses on enthusiasm and engages in particular with Elster's questions and arguments about whether enthusiasm is an emotion or not. In doing so, I am led to ask some general questions about current theories of emotions in the discipline of psychology and their relationship to common sense psychological notions of emotional types. I argue that we need common sense psychological notions in historical explanations, as shown by Elster's examples, and suggest ways of handling a possible mismatch between common sense psychology and more theoretical approaches in psychology that develop somewhat different classifications of emotions and emotional types. The problem of whether enthusiasm really is an emotion can in this way be dissolved, and we are free to explain the historical events employing the common-sense notions as Elster indeed does.

ABSTRACT This article reports the result of a survey about causal beliefs, normative conceptions and moral evaluations of addicts and addiction in the general population. Specifically, we focused on four issues: To what extent are the normative conceptions of addiction current in the philosophical and scientific literature reflected in laypersons' conception of addiction? How do laypersons rate addicts on perceived responsibility? Which factors influence laypersons' responsibility attributions in the context of addiction? What feelings and attitudes (anger/sympathy/help-giving intentions) do laypersons have toward addicts? We found that, although laypersons seem to assume a weakness view of addiction, their patterns of responsibility attributions vary depending on type of drugs combined with perceived severity of outcome, where the latter even overrides the attributional effects of the actor's perceived control over events. Some explanations of the data are suggested, and various consequences with respect to help-giving behavior, are discussed

This paper analyses and criticizes S. Kripke's celebrated argument against materialist identity‐theories. While criticisms of Kripke in the literature attack one or more of his premisses, an attempt is made here to show that Kripke's conclusion is unjustified even if his premisses are accepted. Kripke's premisses have sufficient independent plausibility to make this strategy interesting. Having stated Kripke's argument, it is pointed out that Kripke must assume that the contents of the Cartesian intuitions are clear and of a kind suited for the type of explanation he favours, while his own result concerning contents in epistemic contexts is precisely that this might not be so when objects or events we thought distinct happen to be identical. The point is that only by assuming that the identity‐theory is false, can Kripke maintain that the Cartesian intuitions express contents which can be explained in his favoured way. But such an assumption is clearly illegitimate when the aim is to establish that the identity‐theory is false. Kripke cannot conclude that the identity‐theory is false because no explanation of epistemic possibilities is produced, since by his own standards no such explanation can be produced if the identity‐theory is true.

In his target article and recent interesting book about addiction and the brain, Marc Lewis claims that the prevalent medical view of addiction as a brain disease or a disorder, is mistaken. In this commentary we critically examine his arguments for this claim. We find these arguments to rest on some problematical and largely undefended assumptions about notions of disease, disorder and the demarcation between them and good health. Even if addiction does seem to differ from some typical brain diseases, we believe contrary to Lewis, that there are still good reasons to maintain its classification as a mental or behavioral disorder.

David Hunter has recently argued that Donald Davidson and Elizabeth Anscombe were in basic agreement about practical knowledge. In this reply, it is my contention that Hunter’s fascinating claim may not be satisfactorily warranted. To throw light on why, a more careful consideration of the role of the notion of practical knowledge in Anscombe’s approach to intentional action is undertaken. The result indicates a possible need to distinguish between what is called ‘practical knowledge’ and ‘ knowledge of what one is doing’, and shows that Hunter’s claim concerning the closeness of Anscombe to Davidson only has plausibility for knowledge of what one is doing. Contrary to an interesting suggestion by Hunter, the paper argues that it is hard to see how Davidson’s position can benefit substantially from making use of the notion of knowledge of what one is doing.

Cappelen and Dever have recently defended the view that indexicals are not essential: They do not signify anything philosophically deep and we do not need indexicals for any important philosophical work. This paper contests their view from the point of view of an account of intentional agency. It argues that we need indexicals essentially when accounting for what it is do something intentionally and, as a consequence, intentional action, and defends a view of intentional action as a possible conclusion of practical reasoning where the indexical is essential for the content of such a conclusion.

This paper inquires into some problems for a thesis about the aim of belief, expressed in normative terms along the lines that we ought to have correct or true beliefs. In particular, the paper aims to disarm the important blind-spot objections to such a view. What these objections seek to establish is that there are pretty simple truths we cannot have beliefs about, and since ought implies can, we ought not to have beliefs about these truths. It follows that there cannot be a correct normative property of the sort indicated that characterizes belief. The paper questions this conclusion without questioning the general thesis that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. It is hoped that the way we disarm the blind-spot objections will exhibit an attractive view on epistemic normativity, as well as a normative property belief might indeed have. It will be the task of another paper to argue that this normative property thus identified characterizes belief essentially.