-
1Where was I?In Douglas R. Hofstadter & Daniel Clement Dennett (eds.), The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, Basic Books. pp. 232-40. 1981.This piece continues the story line of “Where Am I?” by Dan Dennett. I am inclined to locate myself at the location of my point of view. In my fantasy stories, points of view can be far away from a brain inside a flesh-and-blood body. Points of view can also move discontinuously from one location to another.
-
52Causation and IntelligibilityPhilosophy 69 (267). 1994.Hume, in "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding", holds (1) that all causal reasoning is based on experience and (2) that causal reasoning is based on nothing but experience. (1) does not imply (2), and Hume's good reasons for (1) are not good reasons for (2). This essay accepts (1) and argues against (2). A priori reasoning plays a role in causal inference. Familiar examples from Hume and from classroom examples of sudden disappearances and radical changes do not show otherwise. A priori ca…Read more
-
488The problem of the many, many composition questions, and naive mereologyNoûs 27 (2): 219-228. 1993.Naive mereology studies ordinary, common-sense beliefs about part and whole. Some of the speculations in this article on naive mereology do not bear directly on Peter van Inwagen's "Material Beings". The other topics, (1) and (2), both do. (1) Here is an example of Peter Unger's "Problem of the Many". How can a table be a collection of atoms when many collections of atoms have equally strong claims to be that table? Van Inwagen invokes fuzzy sets to solve this problem. I claim that an alternativ…Read more
-
36The Fallacy of Begging the Question: A Reply to BarkerDialogue 16 (3): 485-498. 1977.According to John A Barker, whether an argument begs the question is purely a matter of logical form. According to me, it is also a matter of epistemic conditions; some arguments which beg the question in some contexts need not beg the question in every context. I point out difficulties in Barker's treatment and defend my own views against some of his criticisms. In the concluding section, "Alleged difficulties with disjunctive syllogism," I defend the validity of disjunctive syllogism against t…Read more
-
21Causation and IntelligibilityPhilosophy 69 (267): 55-67. 1994.I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition which admits of no exception, that the knowledge of this relation is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori, but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other.
-
58McTaggart on TimePhilosophy 43 (166). 1968.McTaggart argues that the A series, which orders events with reference to past, present, and future, involves an inescapable contradiction. The significant difference between the earlier version of his argument (Mind, 1908) and the version in The Nature of Existence, Volume II, Chapter 33 (1927), has often gone unnoticed. His arguments are all invalid; the conclusion can be rejected without rejecting any premiss. It is therefore unnecessary to adopt any philosophical thesis about time (e.g., tha…Read more
-
41Volume and solidityAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 45 (3). 1967.This Article does not have an abstract
-
Topological Trees: G H von Wright's Theory of Possible WorldsIn TImothy Childers (ed.), The Logica Yearbook, Acadamy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. 1998.In several works on modality, G. H. von Wright presents tree structures to explain possible worlds. Worlds that might have developed from an earlier world are possible relative to it. Actually possible worlds are possible relative to the world as it actually was at some point. Many logically consistent worlds are not actually possible. Transitions from node to node in a tree structure are probabilistic. Probabilities are often more useful than similarities between worlds in treating counterfactu…Read more
-
80Illusions and sense-dataMidwest Studies in Philosophy 6 (1): 371-385. 1981.Examples of sensory illusion show the failure of the attempt of traditional sense-datum theory to account for something's phenomenally appearing to be F by postulating the existence of a sense-datum that is actually F. the Muller-Lyer Illusion cannot be explained by postulating two sensibly presented lines that actually have the lengths the physical lines appear to have. Illusions due to color contrast cannot be explained by postulating sense-data that actually have the colors the physical sampl…Read more
-
249The primary objects of perceptionMind 85 (April): 189-208. 1976.The primary objects of hearing are sounds: everything we hear we hear by hearing a sound. (This claim differs from Berkeley’s that we hear only sounds and from Aristotle’s that we only hear sounds.) Colored regions are primary objects of sight, and pressure resistant regions are primary objects of perception by touch. By definition, the primary objects of perception are physical. The properties of the primary objects of perception are exactly the properties sense-datum theories attribute to se…Read more
-
28The asymmetry of the by-relationMind 93 (371): 410-411. 1984.Sam signaled a turn by extending his arm out the window. Difficulties in explaining the asymmetry of the by-relation in such examples by reference to acceptable and unacceptable counterfactual conditionals are explored by Hugh McCann in "The Trouble with Level-Generation" ("Mind", October 1982). I refine and defend the following alternative account of one-way dependence of y on x: not only is x necessary for y, but something else, independent from x, is also necessary for y; but there is nothing…Read more
-
48Borderline LogicAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 12 (1): 29-39. 1975.To accommodate vague statements and predicates, I propose an infinite-valued, non-truth-functional interpretation of logic on which the tautologies are exactly the tautologies of classical two-valued logic. iI introduce a determinacy operator, analogous to the necessity operator in alethic modal logic, to allow the definition of first-order and higher-order borderline cases. On the interpretation proposed for determinacy, every statement corresponding to a theorem of modal system T is a logical …Read more
-
5Pre‐Phenomenal Adjustments and the Müller‐Lyer IllusionPacific Philosophical Quarterly 65 (2): 199-201. 2017.
-
32Causal Dependence and MultiplicityPhilosophy 60 (232): 215-230. 1985.In "Causes and "If P, Even If X, still Q," Philosophy 57 (July 1982), Ted Honderich cites my "The Direction of Causation and the Direction of Conditionship," journal of Philosophy 73 (April 22, 1976) as an example of an account of causal priority that lacks the proper character. After emending Honderich's description of the proper character, I argue that my attempt to account for one-way causation in terms of one-way causal conditionship does not totally lack it. Rather than emphasize the singul…Read more
-
52If P, Then Q: Conditionals and the Foundations of ReasoningRoutledge. 1989.This new edition includes three new chapters, updating the book to take into account developments in the field over the past fifteen years.
-
164Begging the QuestionAnalysis 32 (6): 197-199. 1972.A primary purpose of argument is to increase the degree of reasonable confidence that one has in the truth of the conclusion. A question begging argument fails this purpose because it violates what W. E. Johnson called an epistemic condition of inference. Although an argument of the sort characterized by Robert Hoffman in his response (Analysis 32.2, Dec 71) to Richard Robinson (Analysis 31.4, March 71) begs the question in all circumstances, we usually understand the charge that an argument is …Read more
-
116Determinates vs. determinablesStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.Everything red is colored, and all squares are polygons. A square is distinguished from other polygons by being four-sided, equilateral, and equiangular. What distinguishes red things from other colored things? This has been understood as a conceptual rather than scientific question. Theories of wavelengths and reflectance and sensory processing are not considered. Given just our ordinary understanding of color, it seems that what differentiates red from other colors is only redness itself. The …Read more
-
3Temporal Parts. Temporal Portions, and Temporal Slices: An Exercise in Naive MereologyActa Analytica 15 21-33. 2000.Naive mereology studies ordinary conceptions of part and whole. Parts, unlike portions, have objective boundaries and many things, such as dances and sermons have temporal parts. In order to deal with Mark Heller's claim that temporal parts "are ontologically no more or less basic than the wholes that they compose," we retell the story of Laplace's Genius, here named "Swifty." Although Swifty processes lots of information very quickly, his conceptual repertoire need not extend beyond fundamental…Read more
-
50Can there be one-way causal conditionship?Synthese 76 (3). 1988.I defend my attempt to explain causal priority by means of one-way causal conditionship by answering an argument by J. A. Cover about Charles'' law. Then I attempt to say what makes a philosophical analysis a counterfactual analysis, so I can understand Cover''s claim that my account is at its base a counterfactual one. Finally I examine Cover''s discussion of my contention that necessary for in the circumstances is nontransitive.
-
37The Inductive Support of Inductive Rules: Themes from Max BlackDialectica 44 (1‐2): 23-41. 1990.Overall, Max Black's defense of the inductive support of inductive rules succeeds. Circularity is best explained in terms of epistemic conditions of inference. When an inference is circular, another inference token of the same type may, because of a difference of surrounding circumstances, not be circular. Black's inductive arguments in support of inductive rules fit this pattern: a token circular in some circumstances may be noncircular in other circumstances.
-
255Contraries and subcontrariesNoûs 2 (1): 95-96. 1968.If two statements are contraries if and only if they cannot both be true, but can both be false, then some corresponding A and E categorical statements are not contraries, even on the presupposition that something exists which satisfies the subject term. For some such statements are necessarily true and thus cannot be false. There is a similar problem with subcontraries.
-
55The Direction of Causation and the Direction of TimeMidwest Studies in Philosophy 9 (1): 53-75. 1984.I revise J L Mackie's first account of casual direction by replacing his notion of "fixity" by a newly defined notion of "sufficing" that is designed to accommodate indeterminism. Keeping Mackie's distinction between casual order and casual direction, I then consider another revision that replaces "fixity" with "one-way conditionship". In response to the charge that all such accounts of casual priority beg the question by making an unjustified appeal to temporal priority, i maintain that one-way…Read more
Durham, North Carolina, United States of America