Jeanne Peijnenburg

A characteristic of contemporary analytic philosophy is its ample use of thought experiments. We formulate two features that can lead one to suspect that a given thought experiment is a poor one. Although these features are especially in evidence within the philosophy of mind, they can, surprisingly enough, also be discerned in some celebrated scientific thought experiments. Yet in the latter case the consequences appear to be less disastrous. We conclude that the use of thought experiments is more successful in science than in philosophy.

A great deal of Anglo-Saxon epistemology is marked by the controversy between foundationalists and anti-foundationalists. The key question is as to how propositions, or beliefs in propositions, are to be justified. Is our body of knowledge sustained by basic beliefs, as foundationalists claim? Or are there no basic beliefs, and is there only mutual support between the elements of the structure, as the anti-foundationalists maintain? The matter is made especially difficult by the fact that no-one knows what precisely epistemic justification is. Foundationalists appear to see justification in terms of transmission: when a proposition justifies another proposition a property is transferred from the one to the other lock, stock and barrel. Anti-foundationalists on the other hand think in terms of emergence: epistemic justification is brought about gradually within a network of propositions as a whole. While transmission can at least be elucidated by a comparison with deductive reasoning, emergence is more difficult to explicate. That is one of the reasons why anti-foundationalist positions are so hard to develop. In this article I show how epistemic justification can emerge in a network of propositions that support one another. I do this by means of a debate that at first sight seems not to have anything to do with the matter, namely the disagreement between the American logician and epistemologist Clarence Irving Lewis and the German-American philosopher of science Hans Reichenbach. This will enable us to establish the phenomenon of fading foundations, which will then yield a mechanism for the emergence of justification.

A major objection to epistemic infinitism is that it seems to make justification impossible. For if there is an infinite chain of reasons, each receiving its justification from its neighbour, then there is no justification to inherit in the first place. Some have argued that the objection arises from misunderstanding the character of justification. Justification is not something that one reason inherits from another; rather it gradually emerges from the chain as a whole. Nowhere however is it made clear what exactly is meant by emergence. The aim of this paper is to fill that lacuna: we describe a detailed procedure for the emergence of justification that enables us to see exactly how justification surfaces from a chain of reasons

Some series can go on indefinitely, others cannot, and epistemologists want to know in which class to place epistemic chains. Is it sensible or nonsensical to speak of a proposition or belief that is justified by another proposition or belief, ad infinitum? In large part the answer depends on what we mean by “justification.” Epistemologists have failed to find a definition on which everybody agrees, and some have even advised us to stop looking altogether. In spite of this, the present essay submits a few candidate definitions. It argues that, although not giving the final word, these candidates tell us something about the possibility of infinite epistemic chains. And it shows that they can short-circuit a debate about doxastic justification

A distinction is made between imagination in the narrow sense and in the broad sense. Narrow imagination is characterised as the ability to "see" pictures in the mind's eye or to "hear" melodies in the head. Broad imagination is taken to be the faculty of creating, either in the strict sense of making something ex nihilo or in the looser sense of seeing patterns in some data. The article focuses on a particular sort of broad imagination, the kind that has to do with creating, not a work of art, a scientific theory or a political vision but one's own life. We shape our lives through our actions, and these actions not only influence our future—a commonplace—but also determine our past, which is a new and more controversial perspective.

We have never entirely agreed with Daniel Cohnitz on the status and rôle of thought experiments. Several years ago, enjoying a splendid lunch together in the city of Ghent, we cheerfully agreed to disagree on the matter; and now that Cohnitz has published his considered opinion of our views, we are glad that we have the opportunity to write a rejoinder and to explicate some of our disagreements. We choose not to deal here with all the issues that Cohnitz raises, but rather to restrict ourselves to three specific points

Various arguments have been put forward to show that Zeno-like paradoxes are still with us. A particularly interesting one involves a cube composed of colored slabs that geometrically decrease in thickness. We first point out that this argument has already been nullified by Paul Benacerraf. Then we show that nevertheless a further problem remains, one that withstands Benacerraf s critique. We explain that the new problem is isomorphic to two other Zeno-like predicaments: a problem described by Alper and Bridger in 1998 and a modified version of the problem that Benardete introduced in 1964. Finally, we present a solution to the three isomorphic problems

Often, regret implies the wish not to have performed certain actions. In this article I claim that this wish can to some extent be fulfilled: it is possible, in a sense, to influence the character of actions that have already been performed. This possibility arises from combining a first person perspective with an outlook on actions as expressions of tendencies, where tendencies are identified on the basis of a number of actions. The idea is specified within the framework of Carnapian reduction sentences, but this technique is in no sense mandatory: it can be formulated in other vocabularies as well

From 1929 onwards, C. I. Lewis defended the foundationalist claim that judgements of the form 'x is probable' only make sense if one assumes there to be a ground y that is certain (where x and y may be beliefs, propositions, or events). Without this assumption, Lewis argues, the probability of x could not be anything other than zero. Hans Reichenbach repeatedly contested Lewis's idea, calling it "a remnant of rationalism". The last move in this debate was a challenge by Lewis, defying Reichenbach to produce a regress of probability values that yields a number other than zero. Reichenbach never took up the challenge, but we will meet it on his behalf, as it were. By presenting a series converging to a limit, we demonstrate that x can have a definite and computable probability, even if its justification consists of an infinite number of steps. Next we show the invalidity of a recent riposte of foundationalists that this limit of the series can be the ground of justification. Finally we discuss the question where justification can come from if not from a ground

Kuipers' model of action explanation is compared, first with that of Anscombe, and then with models in the post-Anscombian tradition. Whereas Kuipers and Anscombe differ on the question of the first-person view, the difference with post-Anscombian writers concerns the so-called intentional statement. Kuipers criticizes the models of both Hempel and von Wright for their lack of an intentional statement. Kuipers' own model seems immune to this criticism, since it contains no less than two intentional statements, a "specific" and an "unspecific" one. I argue that, contrary to appearances, it is not so immune. The call for intentional statements is in fact a call for intentions that are irreducible to beliefs and desires. Kuipers' intentional statements, however, are about intentions that can be so reduced.

The meaning of mental terms and the status of mental entities are core issues in contemporary philosophy of mind. It is argued that the old Reichenbachian distinction between abstracta and illata might shed new light on these issues. First, it suggests that beliefs, desires and other pro-attitudes that make up the higher mental life are not all equally substantial or real. Second, it conceives the elements of the lower mental life as entities that are inferred from concrete, observable events. As a consequence, it might teach us two lessons: first, to see reliefs in the higher mental map, and second, to acknowledge that qualia are probabilistically inferred rather than directly experienced

It is widely held that the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, introduced by Zeno of Elea around 460 B.C., was solved by mathematical advances in the nineteenth century. The techniques of Weierstrass, Dedekind and Cantor made it clear, according to this view, that Achilles’ difficulty in traversing an infinite number of intervals while trying to catch up with the tortoise does not involve a contradiction, let alone a logical absurdity. Yet ever since the nineteenth century there have been dissidents claiming that the apparatus of Weierstrass et al. has not resolved the paradox, and that serious problems remain. It seems that these claims have received unexpected support from recent developments in mathematical physics. This support has however remained largely unnoticed by historians of philosophy, presumably because the relevant debates are cast in mathematical-technical terms that are only accessible to people with the relevant training. That is unfortunate, since the debates in question might well profit from input by philosophers in general and historians of philosophy in particular. Below we will first recall the Achilles paradox, and describe the way in which nineteenth century mathematics supposedly solved it. Then we discuss recent work that contests this solution, reiterating the dissident dogma that no mathematical approach whatsoever can even come close to solving the original Achilles. We shall argue that this dissatisfaction with a mathematical solution is inadequate as it stands, but that it can perhaps be reformulated in the light of new developments in mathematical physics.

It is argued that the recent revival of theakrasia problem in the philosophy of mind is adirect, albeit unforeseen result of the debate onaction explanation in the philosophy of science. Asolution of the problem is put forward that takesaccount of the intimate links between the problem ofakrasia and this debate. This solution is basedon the idea that beliefs and desires have degrees ofstrength, and it suggests a way of giving a precisemeaning to that idea. Finally, it is pointed out thatthe solution captures certain intuitions of bothSocrates and Aristotle.