Peter Baumann

In this paper I respond to P.D. Magnus’ critique of an earlier paper of mine on Thomas Reid’s theory of common sense. In the earlier paper (The Scottish Pragmatist? The Dilemma of Common Sense and the Pragmatist Way Out, Reid Studies 2, 1999, 47-57) I argued that Reid faces a dilemma between dogmatism and scepticism but that there are also hints in his work towards a pragmatist way out of the problem. P.D. Magnus, in a response to this paper (Reid’s Dilemma and the Uses of Pragmatism, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 2, 2004, 69-72), criticizes me for misidentifying the kind of pragmatism one can find in Reid. In this paper I defend my interpretation of Reid and spell the relevant kind of pragmatism out in more detail.

Are our beliefs mostly true? Donald Davidson has proposed some very interesting arguments in favor of his "extended claim" that most our beliefs must be true. The main aim of this paper is to show that Davidson's arguments are not convincing. The most well known of his arguments is the argument of the "omniscient interpreter". The conceivability of a totally ignorant interpreter, however, shows that this argument fails. Davidson offers two more arguments for his extended claim: one of them based on his holism of the propositional attitudes, the other one based on his externalism of language and thought. Both arguments, however, do not sufficiently support the extended claim. Hence, it must remain open at least whether we live in one of the best possible epistemic worlds.

Hájek has recently presented the following paradox. You are certain that a cable guy will visit you tomorrow between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. but you have no further information about when. And you agree to a bet on whether he will come in the morning interval (8, 12] or in the afternoon interval (12, 4). At first, you have no reason to prefer one possibility rather than the other. But you soon realise that there will definitely be a future time at which you will (rationally) assign higher probability to an afternoon arrival than a morning one, due to time elapsing. You are also sure there may not be a future time at which you will (rationally) assign a higher probability to a morning arrival than an afternoon one. It would therefore appear that you ought to bet on an afternoon arrival. The paradox is based on the apparent incompatibility of the principle of expected utility and principles of diachronic rationality which are prima facie plausible. Hájek concludes that the latter are false, but doesn't provide a clear diagnosis as to why. We endeavour to further our understanding of the paradox by providing such a diagnosis.

We often describe lives (or parts of lives) as meaningful or as not meaningful. It is also common to characterize them as more or less meaningful. Some lives, we tend to think, are more meaningful than others. But how then can one compare lives with respect to how much meaning they contain? Can one? This paper argues that (i) only a notion of rough equality can be used when comparing different lives with respect to their meaning, and that (ii) the relation of being more meaningful is not transitive. It follows that all attempts to rank different lives in terms of meaning can at best lead to partially indeterminate and incomplete rankings. One should also give up on the idea of “maximizing” meaning. I will use Thaddeus Metz’s important recent book “Meaning in Life. An Analytic Study” as a foil for my discussion.

Epistemic contrastivism is the view that knowledge is a ternary relation between a person, a proposition and a set of contrast propositions. This view is in tension with widely shared accounts of practical reasoning: be it the claim that knowledge of the premises is necessary for acceptable practical reasoning based on them or sufficient for the acceptability of the use of the premises in practical reasoning, or be it the claim that there is a looser connection between knowledge and practical reasoning. Given plausible assumptions, epistemic contrastivism implies that we should cut all links between knowledge and practical reasoning. However, the denial of any such link requires additional and independent arguments; if such arguments are lacking, then all the worse for epistemic contrastivism.

For each of the many goals of an agent it is true that the agent wants its realization. Given further very plausible assumptions, one can show that there is no good reason for an agent not to want the realization of all of his goals. However, it seems also true that reaching all of one’s goals would be extremely boring; most human beings would consider such a life not worth living. In this respect, leading a life is like playing some game: A game loses its point if one always easily wins. Human agents not only pursue goals but they also have the second-order desire to lead the life of a goal-pursuer. More precisely, they want to be goal-pursuers such that many but not all of their goals are being realized. I argue here that they have a good reason not to want the realization of all of their goals. Now, all this constitutes an antinomy: Apparently, there are very plausible arguments both for affirming as well as denying that an agent has good reasons not to want the realization of his goals. This antinomy is similar to the preface-paradox about beliefs which has a convincing solution (due to Frank Ramsey). I argue, however, that there is no such solution in the case of goals. This leaves us with the question what a solution could look like.

According to reliabilist conceptions of knowledge, knowledge implies reliable true belief. Since reliability is an irreducibly probabilistic notion, one's view of knowledge also depends on one's view of probability. If one believes that all probability is subjective probability, knowledge becomes a relativized concept: knowledge is relative to a given body of beliefs of a given person at a given time. Since such a relativized conception of knowledge is extremely implausible and since reliabilism seems to capture at least part of the truth, one should rather give up a purely subjective view of probability.

There is a sceptical puzzle according to which knowledge appears to license an unacceptable kind of dogmatism. Here is a version of the corresponding sceptical argument: (1) If a subject S knows a proposition p, then it is OK for S to ignore all evidence against p as misleading; (2) It is never OK for any subject to ignore any evidence against their beliefs as misleading; (3) Hence, nobody knows anything.I distinguish between different versions of the puzzle (mainly a ‘permissibility’ version and a ‘closure’ version) and offer a solution for one version (the permissibility version) of the problem. No matter how much a subject knows, knowledge never gives one a license to ignore evidence against a proposition. Premise (1) of the argument is false and the puzzle can thus be resolved.

Human dignity seems very important to us. At the same time, the concept ‘human dignity’ is extraordinarily elusive. A good way to approach the questions “What is it?” and “Why is it important?” is to raise another question first: In virtue of what do human beings have human dignity? Speciesism – the idea that human beings have a particular dignity because they are humans – does not seem very convincing. A better answer says that human beings have dignity because and insofar as they are persons. I discuss several versions of this idea as well as several objections against it. The most promising line of analysis says that human beings cannot survive psychologically without a very basic form a recognition and respect by others. The idea that humans have a special dignity is the idea that they owe each other this kind of respect. All this also suggests that human dignity is inherently social. Non-social beings do not have dignity – nor do they lack it. It is because we are social animals of a certain kind that we have dignity – not so much because we are rational animals.

Is knowledge necessary or sufficient or both necessary and sufficient for acceptable practical reasoning and rational action? Several authors (e.g., Williamson, Hawthorne, and Stanley) have recently argued that the answer to these questions is positive. In this paper I present several objections against this view (both in its basic form as well in more developed forms). I also offer a sketch of an alternative view: What matters for the acceptability of practical reasoning in at least many cases (and in all the cases discussed by the defenders of a strong link between knowledge and practical reasoning) is not so much knowledge but expected utility.

Are there moral truths? Are (at least some) moral statements or beliefs „true“ or „false“ in the sense of a correspondence theory of truth? Are there moral facts that make those statements or beliefs true or false? In this paper I propose an argument against the idea that moral sentences and beliefs have truth-conditions in that sense. The argument focuses on the semantic and epistemic status of those beliefs and sentences. I also argue that all this does not lead to a subjectivist interpretation of morality.

In his recent book Moral Skepticisms Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues in great detail for contrastivism with respect to justified moral belief and moral knowledge. I raise three questions concerning this view. First, how would Sinnott-Armstrong account for constraints on admissible contrast classes? Secondly, how would he deal with notorious problems concerning relevant reference classes? Finally, how can he account for basic features of moral agency? It turns out that the last problem is the most serious one for his account.

Are we free? What does "freedom" mean here? In the following, I shall only focus with freedom of action. My main thesis is that there is not just one basic type of free action but more. Philosophers, however, tend to assume that there is just one way to act freely. Hence, a more detailed analysis of free action is being called for. I will distinguish between different kinds of free action and discuss the relations between them. The analysis of different types of coercion will lead to a different view on freedom – a view which stresses the many faces of free action.