Mark Eli Kalderon

Mark Eli Kalderon argues that morality is a fiction by means of which our emotional attitudes are conveyed. This is an improvement on the standard noncognitivist view, which denies that moral judgement is belief but claims instead that it is the expression of an emotional attitude. Noncognitivists tend to deny that moral sentences even purport to represent moral reality, and so they have developed non-standard semantics for moral discourse. Kalderon's fictionalism shows that noncognitivism can manage without such controversial semantics. His book will be essential reading for anyone working in moral philosophy, and for many others working on meaning and knowledge.

The Frege Geach problem was rst raised by ? (1939: 33•34) and independently by ? (1958, 1960, 1965) and Searle (1962, 1969) and was originally directed at expressivist proposals such as Ayer's (1946: 108) emotivism: It is worth mentioning that ethical terms do not serve only to express feeling. They are calculated also to arouse feeling, and so to stimulate action. . . . In fact we may de ne the meaning of the various ethical words in terms both of the di erent feelings they are ordinarily taken to express, and also the di erent responses which they are calculated to provoke. Ayer's talk of `de ning' the meanings of ethical words suggests that he identi ed the meaning of an ethical word with the attitudes it expresses and provokes. Ayer's emotivism is subject to the Frege Geach problem because it is a form of atomistic reduction. It is atomistic in that it assumes a one•one correlation between the meanings of ethical words and the linguistic actions they perform (such as the expression and provoca• tion of the relevant attitudes). It is a reduction in that it identi es the meaning of an ethical word with attitudes it expresses and provokes. Atomistic reductions face the following dilemma: Suppose that freestanding and embedded occurrences of `wrong' mean the same. The problem is that words can occur in embedded contexts and fail to express the attitudes they do in freestanding contexts. This di culty would be avoided if the atomistic reduction applied only to the meaning of freestanding occurrences. However, if the account applies only to freestanding occurrences, then it is incomplete, for the expressivist would lack an account of the meaning of ethical words in embedded contexts. Furthermore, some guaran• tee must be given that freestanding and embedded occurrences mean the same despite their meanings being di erently determined. For, if freestanding and embedded occurrences dif• fer in meaning, then the expressivist is apparently committed to the invalidity of recognized forms of valid argument (due to the fallacy of equivocation)..

Very often, objects in the scene before us are somehow perceived to be constant or uniform or unchanging in color, shape, size, or position, even while their appearance with respect to these features somehow changes. This is a familiar and pervasive fact about perception, even if it is notoriously difficult to describe accurately let alone adequately account for. These difficulties are not unrelated—how we are inclined to describ the phenomenology of perceptual constancy will affect how we are inclined to accoun for it.

Shoemaker argues that one could not hold both that the qualitative character of colour experience is inherited from the qualitative character of the experienced colour and that there are faultless forms of variation in colour perception. In this paper, I explain what is meant by inheritance and discuss in detail the problematic cases of perceptual variation. In so doing I argue that these claims are in fact consistent, and that the appearance to the contrary is due to an optional and controversial conception of experience that should be rejected

Producing language that other people will be able to understand involves not just having a picture in your mind of the scenario…You have to deploy a shared linguistic system, according to established rules, using lexemes of known meaning, to present that picture to others in a way that will work for them. You have to consider whether there are other ways of viewing the situation at hand. You have to examine the wording you have chosen to see if it has ambiguities or unclarities. You have to put yourself in the place of a person who did not [develop the picture], and you have to ask yourself whether they would understand..

This conference is, in part, an expression of respect for Joseph Raz and his work from which we have all learned much. I thought it apt, then, to talk about Raz's (2001) views about respect as developed in chapter four of Value, Respect, and Attachment. Raz describes his views as having a Kantian origin. This might raise the eyebrow of some neo•Kantians or anyone inclined to interpret Kant as a formalist or as a constructivist. Nevertheless, I believe that Raz's views and Kant's, properly interpreted and developed, have more in common than even Raz suspects. To bring this out, I will take up three questions that Raz raises concerning Kant's doctrine

Jimmy expresses sympathy for Scanlon’s contractualism but wonders whether it might be better developed in the context of a Humean expressivism. Jimmy presses this point, in part, by observing that much of what Scanlon wants to say about moral and normative discourse, such as their logical discipline and apparent truth-aptitude, can be accommodated by the expressivist. If all that Scanlon wants to say about moral and normative discourse can be accommodated by the expressivist then what content can be given to his denial of expressivism, to his commitment to a cognitive understanding of moral judgment and judgments of reasons? The appearance of a genuine dispute between Scanlon and the expressivist can seem to slip quietly out of view. In this reply I will focus in detail on one strand of Scanlon’s thought that raises difficulties for the expressivist model that Jimmy favors. The point is to emphasize that there is indeed a genuine dispute between Scanlon and the expressivist and to suggest, tentatively, that Scanlon’s contractualism might require its present cognitive development.

As standardly conceived, an illusion is an experience of an object o appearing F where o is not in fact F. Paradigm examples of color illusion, however, do not fit this pattern. A diagnosis of this uncovers different sense of appearance talk that is the basis of a dilemma for the standard conception. The dilemma is only a challenge. But if the challenge cannot be met, then any conception of experience, such as representationalism, that is committed to the standard conception is false. Perhaps surprisingly, naïve realism provides a better account of color illusion.An apparence ymaad by som Magyk. Chaucer

In his 1904 letter to G.F. Stout, Cook Wilson distinguishes objective and sub- jective conceptions of appearance, and provides a diagnosis for the modern acceptance of the subjective conception in terms of a confused misdescrip- tion of the objective appearances that perceptual experience affords. More- over, Cook Wilson links subjective appearances with idealism, the suggestion being that perceptual appearances must be objective if they are to afford us with something akin to proof of a world without the mind.

Sight is a capacity, and seeing is its exercise. Reflection on the sense in which sight is for the sake of seeing reveals distinct relations of dependence between sight and seeing, the capacity and its exercise. Moreover, these relations of dependence in turn reveal the nature of our perceptual capacities and their exercise. Specifically, if sight is for the sake of seeing, then sight will depend, in a certain sense, upon seeing, in a manner inconsistent with experiential monism. Thus reflection on the power of perception forms the basis of an argument for experiential pluralism.

The first main idea is that standard noncognitivism is a syndrome of three logically distinct claims. Standard noncognitivists claim that moral judgment is not belief or any other cognitive attitude but is, rather, a noncogntive attitude more akin to desire; that this noncognitive attitude is expressed by our public moral utterances; and, hence, that our public moral utterances lack a distinctively moral subject matter and so are not answerable to the moral facts. Notice, however, that these are logically distinct claims—the first is a psychological claim, the second and third, positive and negative semantic claims, respectively. We can regiment the familiar technical vocabulary as follow.

One cannot give too many or too frequent warnings against this laxity, or even mean cast of mind, which seeks its principle among empirical motives and laws; for, human reason in its weariness gladly rests on this pillow and in a dream of sweet illusions (which allow it to embrace a cloud instead of Juno) it substitutes for a morality a bastard patched up from limbs of quite diverse ancestry, which looks like whatever one wants to see in it but not like virtue for him who has once seen virtue in her true form.

This essay explores the commitments of modal structuralism. The precise nature of the modal-structuralist analysis obscures an unclarity of its import. As usually presented, modal structuralism is a form of anti-platonism. I defend an interpretation of modal structuralism that, far from being a form of anti-platonism, is itself a platonist analysis: The metaphysically significant distinction between (i) primitive modality and (ii) the natural numbers (objectually understood) is genuine, but the arithmetic facts just are facts about possible progressions. If correct, modal structuralism is best understood not as an alternative to, but as a species of, platonism.