Nathaniel Goldberg

Donald Davidson contributed more deeply to our understanding of language, thought, and reality than perhaps any other recent philosopher. His discussions of skepticism are sometimes seen as peripheral to those contributions. As I read him, Davidson argued against three skeptical worries. First, beliefs are true or false relative to a conceptual scheme. Second, beliefs generally are false. Third, other minds and an external world do not exist. Call those worries ‘conceptual relativism’, ‘falsidicalism’, and ‘solipsism’, respectively. I investigate how Davidson’s arguments are connected. I then show that those connections are so systematic that Davidson ultimately offers a single, master argument with two premises. Premise one is that I think. Premise two is an application of his account of radical interpretation. Focusing on the systematicity of Davidson’s anti-skeptical arguments demonstrates that discussions of skepticism were more central to his views than often appreciated and shines fresh light on his project overall.

That theme is that effects should be spatiotemporally local to their causes, and so electromagnetic and strong nuclear forces in particular cannot act at a distance. Lange’s key step in arguing for spatiotemporal locality is to argue that fields produced by these forces are ontologically real, contacting the objects causing, and affected by, those fields. In the process of his argument, Lange discusses classical, special-relativistic, and quantum mechanics, as well as metaphysical topics such as realism and causality. Lange also provides a sociological critique of the sometimes inconsistent, sometimes dismissive, attitudes of some scientists and textbooks toward questions of realism. Lange generally succeeds in convincing the reader that such questions are relevant to both philosophy and physics.

Kant makes two claims in the Critique of Pure Reason that anticipate concerns of twentieth-century philosophy of science. The first, that the understanding and sensibility are constitutive of knowledge, while reason is responsible for transcendental illusion, amounts to his solution to Karl Popper’s “problem” of demarcating science from pseudoscience. The second, that besides these constitutive roles of the understanding and sensibility, reason is itself needed to discover new empirical knowledge, anticipates Hans Reichenbach’s distinction between the “contexts” of justification and discovery. Unlike Reichenbach, however, who thinks that there can be a “logic” only of justification, Kant provides what amounts to a logic of discovery. Though Kant’s broader concerns are not Popper’s or Reichenbach’s, using theirs as framing devices reveals two otherwise unnoticed things about the Critique of Pure Reason. First, besides its general epistemological and metaphysical aims, the Critique lays groundwork for the twentieth century’s specialized field of the philosophy of science. Second, Kant’s solution to the demarcation problem contradicts his logic of discovery, so in this instance the Critique is too ambitious.

Buzaglo offers a systematic account of nonarbitrary concept expansion in mathematics. Roughly, such expansion involves taking a concept, based upon its rules of application, to apply to objects beyond its intended domain. Buzaglo’s book is directed primarily at philosophers of mathematics, though it should equally interest philosophers of science and philosophers of language and logic. It should also interest logicians and mathematicians. Though Buzaglo does not always fully rebut opposing views, he is clear that his book is meant to lay the groundwork for a continuing research program. Graduate students and professional philosophers would profit from the book.

Wonder Woman's co‐creator William Marston believed that sexual bondage was key to achieving a peaceful society. Though Marston intended Wonder Woman to provide an alternative to the masculinity of the superheroes of his day, Marston's vision remains relevant today. The behavior and attitude of Marston's Wonder Woman anticipated contemporary feminist philosophers' contributions to the ethics of care. There is also an underlying ethics of care in Wonder Woman's role as what Marston calls a "Love Leader", and that combination of kink and care is itself reflected in contemporary BDSM. Marston's stated goal in his academic writing was to promote "a new code of conduct, based on love supremacy". Marston's comic‐book creation, Wonder Woman, fit his depiction of an ideal Love Leader: a sexually alluring and powerful, yet loving, mistress whose feminine charms would make women and men submit to her authority.

Ernest Lepore and Kirk Ludwig correctly observe that Donald Davidson’s account of radical interpretation is in tension with his Swampman thought experiment. Nonetheless, I argue, they fail to see the extent of Davidson’s tension—and so do not handle it adequately—because they fail to appreciate that the thought experiment pits two incompatible response-dependent accounts of meaning against one another. I take an account of meaning to be response-dependent just in case it links the meaning of terms in an a priori manner to the responses that a suitable subject under suitable conditions could or did have to those terms. That Davidson proposes two such accounts is deeply problematic for his program. After explaining the sense in which Davidson endorses two incompatible response-dependent accounts of meaning, I use that explanation to resolve the tension myself.

Yes, Roya, a 2016 graphic novel written by C. Spike Trotman and illustrated by Emilee Denich, depicts Roya, a woman of color who writes and illustrates a comic strip; Joe, a white man who gave up his career after meeting Roya, who now publishes under his name; and Wylie, a young white man starting in the profession. Roya completely dominates Joe’s career, making it hers. She also partly dominates Wylie’s, acting as his mentor. Roya dominates Joe and Wylie personally too. She is their sexual dominant, and they are her submissives. Professionally and personally, moreover, Joe and Wylie each submit to Roya consensually. Further, though Roya both writes and illustrates her comic strip, often writer and illustrator differ. The former, creating the story, dominates the latter, illustrating the story after the fact – as Trotman and Denich themselves did consensually via a contract when creating their graphic novel. Hence Yes, Roya highlights domination and submission in comics creation and in sex. More than that, the graphic novel also presents both kinds of domination and submission as ethical. Because Aristotle, Kant, and Mill are the most influential ethicists in the Western tradition, this chapter investigates how each could accommodate such professional and personal dominant/submissive relationships in their philosophy.

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen may be the most acclaimed graphic novel of the twentieth century. This chapter examines how it explores two metaphysical questions: What is the nature of time? Does free will exist? Moore and Gibbons explore these questions together, illuminating connections between time and free will through connections between the graphic novel’s form and content. The chapter introduces three views of the nature of time: presentism, the view that only the present exists; growing-universe theory, the view that only the present and past exist; and eternalism, the view that past, present, and future exist. Because of Moore and Gibbons’ distinct use of images and words within the visual structure and their depiction of a character who is simultaneously aware of past, present, and future events, the chapter deduces that the operative view in Watchmen is eternalism. After discussing three views of the existence of free will, the chapter then argues that eternalism entails that people could not have acted otherwise than they actually acted. Hence the operative view in Watchmen is either determinism, according to which no one has free will because no one could have done otherwise, or compatibilism, according to which people can have free will because having it merely requires having acted. The chapter concludes that the operative view is compatibilism. Finally it responds to the objection that compatibilism is mistaken. If no one could have done otherwise, then determinism must be true.

Marks individually or in combination constitute images that represent objects. How do those images represent those objects? Marks vary in style, both between and within images. Images also vary in style. How do those styles relate to each other and to the objects that those images represent? Referencing a diverse range of images, we answer the first question with a response-dependence theory of image representation derived from Mark Johnston, differentiating Lockean primary qualities of marks from secondary qualities of images. We answer the second question with a perceptual theory of style derived from Paul Grice, differentiating physical style from image style, and representing conventionally from representing conversationally.