John-Michael Kuczynski

Hume's attempt to show that deduction is the only legitimate form of inference presupposes that enumerative induction is the only non-deductive form of inference. In actuality, enumerative induction is not even a form of inference: all supposed cases of enumerative induction are disguised cases of Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE), so far as they aren't simply cases of mentation of a purely associative kind and, consequently, of a kind that is non-inductive and otherwise non-inferential. The justification for IBE lies in two truths, each analytic, viz. that good explanations eliminate anomalies and, second, that anomaly-elimination is identical with discontinuity-elimination. Given these truisms, along with the empirical data to which even skeptics must grant that we have access, it follows that induction is truth-conducive, a corrollary being that skepticism with regard to the veridicality of our senses is indefensible. Hume's erroneous beliefs about non-deductive inference are consequences of his belief that the world has a digital, as opposed to an analogue, structure--of, in other words, his belief that the spatiotemporal manifold decomposes into minimal units. This belief of his is not only false, but analytically so, and its negation has the consequence--for reasons additional to the one already given---that many forms of skepticism are non-starters. It also has the consequence, later given empirical confirmation by the (apparent) truth of Relativity Theory, that spatiotemporal relations are causal relations. Finally, it has the consequence that, contrary to what Hume argues, there are instances of causation. Additional reinforcemet for this claim is shown to lie in a fact first identified by Kant, viz. that we couldn't even ask whether or not there were instances of causation unless there were in fact such instances. Other, similarly 'transcendental' arguments of Kant's are put forth, sometimes in a modified form, so as to buttress the anti-skeptical positions advocated in thsi paper.

En temps normal, les contrefactuels sont conçus comme produisant des énoncés portant sur des états de choses, mais des états de choses se trouvant dans des mondes simplement possibles ou alternes. Analysés ainsi, il s’avère que presque tous les contrefactuels sont incohérents. Tout contrefactuel analysé de la sorte exige qu’il y ait un monde métaphysiquement (et pas épistémiquement seulement) possible w où les lois sont les mêmes qu’ici, et où la quasi-totalité des faits sont les mêmes qu’ici. (Les différences factuelles sont liées à l’antécédent et au conséquent du contrefactuel.) Mais comme je vais le montrer, cette exigence implique de manière typique la postulation de mondes dont on peut démontrer la nécessaire non-existence au moyen de déductions assez élémentaires. De plus, l’analyse des contrefactuels en termes de mondes possibles est coupable de circularité cachée. Analysés ainsi, les contrefactuels ne peuvent effectivement être compris qu’en termes de lois de la nature (les lois qui s’appliquent ici sont présupposées dans le monde hypothétique — excepté dans le cas atypique où le contrefactuel est également un contre-nomique). Mais il y a un argument répandu voulant que le concept de loi ne puisse pas être défini lui-même, sinon dans les termes de la notion de contrefactuel (une loi est, entre autres, quelque chose qui vient à l’appui des contrefactuels). Je donnerai une analyse purement épistémique des contrefactuels, déclarant que ce sont des propositions pseudo-probabilistes. Je déclarerai également que le type de probabilité en question peut être défini intégralement en termes de ce qui a été le cas (non pas de ce qui aurait été le cas, ni même de ce qui doit être le cas en un sens nomique.) Mon analyse n’est donc coupable d’aucune sorte de circularité.

This volume contains monologues and dialogues in which the most basic questions of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and logic are given clear and cogent answers. Table of Contents: 30 Laws of Logic Different Kinds of Mathematical Functions: A Dialogue Functions, Bijections, and Mapping-relations What is Logic? Outline of a Theory of Knowledge Determinism, Indeterminism, and Personal Freedom A Dialogue Neurosis vs. Psychosis What determines whether one is happy? Compulsive Work Stuttering How men and women are different One learns from adversity, not from failure Does everybody want money? The #1 Rule of Writing Lack of Coordination Mental Illness: The Ultimate Litmus Test The #1 Rule of Business Honesty and Integrity A Dialogue Anger A Dialogue What is Bullshit? A Short Treatise on Causality Part 1: Causality and Continuity Part 2 : Causation and Explanation Part 3: Causation and Counterfactual Truth Part 4: Program-causation Part 5: The four different kinds of causes involved in the development of mental illness Part 6: Singular Causation Obsessions and Compulsions A Dialogue concerning OCD Writing Animated Dialogues as Self-Analysis: A Dialogue Neurotic Anxiety as Rational Fear: A Dialogue Agency Analyticity Anomalous Monism Bullshit Two Kinds of Insanity Ignorance of the Future Justice Proof that Time-Travel is Impossible Rationality vs. Intelligence: A Dialogue

Kripke made a good case that “…the phi…” is not semantically ambiguous between referential and attributive meanings. Russell says that “…the phi…” is always to be analyzed attributively. Many semanticists, agreeing with Kripke that “…the phi…” is not ambiguous, have tried to give a Russellian analysis of the referential-attributive distinction: the gross deviations between what is communicated by “…the phi..”, on the one hand, and what Russell’s theory says it literally means, on the other, are chalked up to implicature. This paper shows that, when the phenomenon of implicature is scrutinized, there is overwhelming reason to doubt that a Russellian analysis can succeed. A positive, non-Russellian analysis is proposed: it is shown that, if definite descriptions are treated as referring expressions, it is easy to deal with the referential-attributive distinction. When “…the phi…” is functioning attributively, the definite description is seen as referring to some object described in an understood, antecedent existence claim.

It is clearly explained: *What it is for a statement to be necessarily true, *Why necessity, possibility, existence, and non-existence are properties of propositions (truths and falsehoods), not of objects or states of affairs, *What conditions a class of expressions must meet if the expressions belonging to it jointly constitute a single language, *The significance for meta-linguistic research of the concepts of systematicity and productivity, as Chomsky defines these terms, and the relevance of these concepts to researches into the nature of necessity, *Why Quine's attempt to prove the non-existence of analytic truth is not only false but self-defeating, and, finally, *Why empirical science relies on truths of purely conceptual, non-observational kind to organize the data at its disposal.

In this book, each of the possible positions concerning the relationship between mind and body is clearly explained and thoroughly critiqued. It is concluded that, although mental events are identical with physical events, mentalistic statements are not equivalent with physicalistic statements. It is also shown that the way in which mentalistic statements are non-equivalent with physicalistic statements is deeper than the way in which biological statements are non-equivalent with microphysical statements. In other words, the sense in which mind and body lie on opposite sides of an 'explanatory gap' is much stronger than the sense in which biology and microphysics do so.

It is made clear what discursive knowledge is and how we acquire it, and some age-old skeptical views are shown to be incoherent. It is shown that all knowledge is to some degree inferential. At the same time, it is shown that there are three quite distinct senses in which empirical knowledge can be inferential. It is proved that we have a priori knowledge, and also that knowledge of non-empirical truths is needed to acquire empirical knowledge. Finally, it is clearly explained what prediction is, what explanation is, how the two differ, and how they are similar.

A series of representations must be semantics-driven if the members of that series are to combine into a single thought: where semantics is not operative, there is at most a series of disjoint representations that add up to nothing true or false, and therefore do not constitute a thought at all. A consequence is that there is necessarily a gulf between simulating thought, on the one hand, and actually thinking, on the other. A related point is that a popular doctrine - the so-called 'computational theory of mind' (CTM) - is based on a confusion. CTM is the view that thought-processes consist in 'computations', where a computation is defined as a 'form-driven' operation on symbols. The expression 'form-driven operation' is ambiguous, as it may refer either to syntax-driven operations or to morphology-driven operations. Syntax-driven operations presuppose the existence of operations that are driven by semantic and extra-semantic knowledge. So CTM is false if the terms 'computation' and 'form-driven operation' are taken to refer to syntax-driven operations. Thus, if CTM is to work, those expressions must be taken to refer to morphology-driven operations. CTM therefore fails, given that an operation must be semantics-driven if it is to qualify as a thought. CTM therefore fails on each possible disambiguation of the expressions 'formal operation' and 'computation,' and it is therefore false.

This book answers three questions: (i) What is it for a statement to be analytically true? (ii) What is a priori knowledge? (How does it differ from inherited empirical knowledge? And how does it differ from acquired conceptual (non-empirical) knowledge, such as one's knowledge that not all continuous functions are differentiable?). (iii) Do we have a priori knowledge? It is shown that content-externalism is an 'epistemologicization' of the (logically, not psychologically) innocuous fact that, if a sentence S of natural language expresses a multiply quantified generalization, S also expresses each quantified generalization obtained by permuting the quantifiers in it. It is also shown that, through judicious usage of Kaplan's dthat-operator, the shred of truth in content externalism can be reconciled with the datum that, in virtue of having a given representational content R, a mental state M has causal powers that it would not otherwise have. And it is thereby shown how to reconcile content-externalism, so far as the latter is true, with the legitimacy of individualist approaches to psychology. Finally, it is shown that content-externalism embodies a crude and false conception of the nature of the relationship between the literal meanings of linguistic expressions, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the contents of the thoughts underlying our usage of such expressions. More precisely, content-externalism presupposes that literal meaning and cognitive content are in lockstep with each other; which, it is shown, is not the case and---what is also shown---only appears to be the case because of a failure on the part of semanticists to know where to draw the line between semantics and pragmatics.

A person with one dollar is poor. If a person with n dollars is poor, then so is a person with n + 1 dollars. Therefore, a person with a billion dollars is poor. True premises, valid reasoning, a false a conclusion. This is an instance of the Sorites-paradox. (There are infinitely many such paradoxes. A man with an IQ of 1 is unintelligent. If a man with an IQ of n is unintelligent, so is a man with an IQ of n+1. Therefore a man with an IQ of 200 is unintelligent.) Most attempts to solve this paradox reject some law of classical logic, usually the law of bivalence. I show that this paradox can be solved while holding on to all the laws of classical logic. Given any predicate that generates a Sorites-paradox, significant use of that predicate is actually elliptical for a relational statement: a significant token of "Bob is poor" means that Bob is poor compared to x, for some value of x. Once a value of x is supplied, a definite cutoff line between having and not having the paradox-generating predicate is supplied. This neutralizes the inductive step in the associated Sorites argument, and the would-be paradox is avoided.

Someone afflicted by mental illness is neurotic if he sees his symptoms as symptoms and psychotic if does not. A neurosis is therefore an 'ego-dystonic' mental illness, meaning that the viewpoint embodied in one's symptoms is not the viewpoint of the ego of the afflicted party. And a psychosis is therefore an 'ego-syntonic' illness, meaning that the viewpoint embodied in the symptoms coincides with that of the afflicted party's ego. Whereas ego-syntonic illnesses are unqualifiedly debilitating, ego-dystonic are sometimes adaptive and, within limits, may enhance the subject's ability to deploy his abilities. In this lecture, it is explained why this is so.

It is argued (a) that laws are assurances of protections of rights and (b) that governments are protectors of rights. Lest those assurances be empty and thus not really be assurances at all, laws must be enforced and governments must therefore have the power to coerce. For this reason, the government of a given region tends to have, as Max Weber put it, a "monopoly on power" in that region. And because governments are power-monopolizers, it is tempting to think that the concepts of government and law are to be understood in terms of the concept of power. In actuality, the first two concepts are to be understood primarily in terms of the concept of morality--of rights-protection, to be specific--and only secondarily in terms of the concept of power. Contentions (a) and (b) appear to be inconsistent with obvious facts (e.g. the fact that Pol Pot's regime violated the rights of those over whom it had power). But (a) and (b) are compatible with those facts. This is a consequence of two principles. First, moral requirements have a "dimension of weight," as Dworkin put it, meaning that one moral imperative can be outweighed, without being obliterated, by another moral imperative. Second, sentential operators can have different degrees of scope. "It is hereby assured that" is such an operator. Linguistic surface structure may obfuscate the degree of scope that it has in a given sentence. That fact compatibilizes our analysis with the fact that there are evil laws and evil governments.

In this work, it is made clear: (1) What it is to rationalize and how rationalization is possible; (2) What it is to repress and how repression is possible; (3) How internal conflict is possible, how it is related to anxiety and other affective states, and how internal conflict causes blindness; (4) Why it is that conceptualized self-awareness is repression-resistant (though not repression-proof) and non-conceptualized self-awareness is not repression-resistant; (5) How rationalization is necessary for repression and vice versa; (6) Why rationalization is not in and of itself pathological and why, in addition, rationalization is within limits a biological necessity; (7) Where exactly the cut-off line is between morbid and healthy rationalization; (8) How compartmentalization and repression depend on each other, how they are similar, and how they are different; (9) Why even though mental events are presumably mediated by physical (physiological, neural) events, psychology is not low-resolution physiology; (10) Why, by virtue of being the one discipline whose data are themselves data, the logical structure of the discipline of psychology is unique; (11) Why notwithstanding the last point two points, Dilthey's 'empathy-based' approach to psychology is wrong and why Hempel's narrowly positivistic analysis of psychological explanation is no less wrong, (12) What is involved in reducing one discipline to another; (13) What the differences are between 'access-conscious' (Freud's 'topographical' unconscious) and 'access-unconscious' (Freud's 'dynamic', i.e. repression-based, unconscious); (14) How rationalization is involved in character-remodeling and character-degradation; (15) What it is to sociopathize; (16) What the differences are between the psychopath, the sociopath, and criminal; (17) How criminosis may safeguard (while, it is true, causing some degradation of) one's personality-architecture against forces that would otherwise lead to sociopathogenesis; (18) How Nietzsche's ethical egoism is an oblique way of saying, correctly, that unless one is true to oneself, one's morality is sham-morality and how this prima facie ethical claim is a demonstrably (and demonstrably correct) non-normative, psychological claim; (19) What the relationship is between psychological integrity and moral integrity; (20) Why those lacking psychological integrity can be anything more than 'reflex machines', to use Checkley’s term; (21) What intentions are, why intentions are not identical with desires; (22) Why Davidson's 'interpretivism' is spurious and why the same is true of all forms of functionalism; (23) Why the Computational Theory of Mind is spurious; (24) Why many a psychopath is regarded as a person of merit; (25) Why some alleged solutions to the mind-body problem are non-solutions and what the merits and demerits are of Descartes' conceivability-argument for mind-body dualism.

"Jim would still be alive if he hadn't jumped" means that Jim's death was a consequence of his jumping. "x wouldn't be a triangle if it didn't have three sides" means that x's having a three sides is a consequence its being a triangle. Lewis takes the first sentence to mean that Jim is still alive in some alternative universe where he didn't jump, and he takes the second to mean that x is a non-triangle in every alternative universe where it doesn't have three sides. Why did Lewis have such obviously wrong views? Because, like so many of his contemporaries, he failed to grasp the truth that it is the purpose of the present paper to demonstrate, to wit: No coherent doctrine assumes that statements about possible worlds are anything other than statements about the dependence-relations governing our world. The negation of this proposition has a number of obviously false consequences, for example: all true propositions are necessarily true (there is no modal difference between "2+2=4" and "Socrates was bald"); all modal terms (e.g. "possible," "necessary") are infinitely ambiguous; there is no difference between laws of nature (e.g. "metal expands when heated") and accidental generalizations (e.g. "all of the coins in my pocket are quarters"); and there is no difference between the belief that 1+1=2 and the belief that arithmetic is incomplete. Given that possible worlds are identical with mathematical models, it follows that the concept of model-theoretic entailment is useless in the way of understanding how inferences are drawn or how they should be drawn. Given that the concept of formal-entailment is equally useless in these respects, it follows that philosophers and mathematicians have simply failed to shed any light on the nature of the consequence-relation. Q's being either a formal or a model-theoretic consequence of P is parasitic on its bearing some third, still unidentified relation to P; and until this relation has been identified, the discipline of philosophical logic has yet to begin.

What are laws, and do they necessarily have any basis in morality? The present work argues that laws are governmental assurances of protections of rights and that concepts of law and legal obligation must therefore be understood in moral terms. There are, of course, many immoral laws. But once certain basic truths are taken into account – in particular, that moral principles have a “dimension of weight”, to use an expression of Ronald Dworkin’s, and also that principled relations are not always expressed by perfect statistical concomitances – the existence of iniquitous laws poses no significant threat to a moralistic analysis of law. Special attention is paid to the debate between Ronald Dworkin and H.L.A. Hart. Dworkin’s over-all position is argued to be correct, but issue is taken with his argument for that position. Hart’s analysis is found to be vitiated by an impoverished conception of morality and also of the nature of government. Our analysis of law enables us to answer three questions that, at this juncture of history, are of special importance: Are there international laws? If not, could such laws exist? And if they could exist, would their existence necessarily be desirable? The answers to these questions are, respectively: “no”, “yes”, and “no.” Our analysis of law enables us to hold onto the presumption that so-called legal interpretation is a principled endeavor, and that some legal interpretations are truer to existing laws than others. At the same time, it accommodates the obvious fact that the sense in which a physicist interprets meter-readings, or in which a physician interprets a patient’s symptoms, is different from the sense in which judges interpret the law. So our analysis of law enables us to avoid the extreme views that have thus far dominated debates concerning the nature of legal interpretation. On the one hand, it becomes possible to avoid the cynical view (held by the so-called “legal realists”) that legal interpretation is mere legislation and that no legal interpretation is more correct than any other. On the other hand, it becomes possible to avoid Blackstone’s view (rightly descried by Austin as a “childish fiction”) that judges merely discover, and do not create, the law.