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63A Strawsonian Objection to Russell’s Theory of DescriptionsAnalysis 53 (4). 1993.One of Strawson's objections to Russell's theory of descriptions is that what are intuitively natural and correct utterances of sentences involving incomplete descriptions come out false by RTD. Russellians have responded, not by challenging Strawson's view that these uses are natural and correct, but by embellishing RTD to accommodate these uses. I pursue an alternative line of attack: I argue that there are circumstances in which "we" would find utterances of such sentences unnatural and impro…Read more
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292Anti-luminosity: Four unsuccessful strategiesAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (4): 659-673. 2009.In Knowledge and Its Limits Timothy Williamson argues against the luminosity of phenomenal states in general by way of arguing against the luminosity of feeling cold, that is, against the view that if one feels cold, one is at least in a position to know that one does. In this paper I consider four strategies that emerge from his discussion, and argue that none succeeds.
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62Knowing by way of tracking and epistemic closureAnalysis 75 (2): 217-223. 2015.Tracking accounts of knowledge were originally motivated by putative counter-examples to epistemic closure. But, as is now well known, these early accounts have many highly counterintuitive consequences. In this note, I motivate a tracking-based account which respects closure but which resolves many of the familiar problems for earlier tracking account along the way.
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154Contingent Identity in Counterpart TheoryAnalysis 50 (3): 163-166. 1990.A slight modification to the translation scheme for David Lewis's counterpart theory I put forward in 'An Alternative Translation Scheme for Counterpart Theory' (Analysis 49.3 (1989)) is proposed. The motivation for this change is that it makes for a more plausible account of contingent identity. In particular, contingent identity is accommodated without admitting the contingency of self-identity.
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260A counterfactual analysis of causationMind 106 (422): 263-277. 1997.On David Lewis's original analysis of causation, c causes e only if c is linked to e by a chain of distinct events such that each event in the chain (counter-factually) depends on the former one. But this requirement precludes the possibility of late pre-emptive causation, of causation by fragile events, and of indeterministic causation. Lewis proposes three different strategies for accommodating these three kinds of cases, but none of these turn out to be satisfactory. I offer a single analysis…Read more
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141The KK-Principle, Margins for Error, and SafetyErkenntnis 76 (1): 121-136. 2012.This paper considers, and rejects, three strategies aimed at showing that the KK-principle fails even in most favourable circumstances (all emerging from Williamson’s Knowledge and its Limits ). The case against the final strategy provides positive grounds for thinking that the principle should hold good in such situations
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108Noordhof on probabilistic causationMind 109 (434): 309-313. 2000.In a recent article, Paul Noordhof (1999) has put forward an intriguing account of causation intended to work under the assumption of indeterminism. I am going to present four problems for the account, three which challenge the necessity of the conditions he specifies, and one which challenges their joint-sufficiency.
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161How Believing Can Fail to Be KnowingTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 21 (2): 185-194. 2006.This paper defends a simple, externalist account of knowledge, incorporating familiar conditions mentioned in the literature, and responds to Timothy Williamson’s charge that any such analysis is futile because knowledge is semantically un-analyzable. The response, in short, is that even though such an account may not offer a reductive analysis of knowledge-by way of more basic, non-circular concepts-it still has an explanatory advantage over Williamson’s own position: it explains how belief can…Read more
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73Bach on Behalf of RussellAnalysis 55 (4). 1995.An utterance of a sentence involving an incomplete (definite) description, ‘the F’, where the context—even taking the speaker’s intentions into account—does not determine a unique F, would be unintelligible. But an utterance (in the same context) of the corresponding Russellian paraphrase would not be unintelligible. So I urged in ‘A Strawsonian objection to Russell’s theory of descriptions’ (ANALYSIS 53, 1993, pp. 209-12). I compared an utterance of (1) The table is covered with books. with an …Read more
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216Williamson’s Argument Against the KK-Principle 157The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 1. 2005.Timothy Williamson (2000 ch. 5) presents a reductio against the luminosity of knowing, against, that is, the so-called KK-principle: if one knows p, then one knows (or is at least in a position to know) that one knows p.1 I do not endorse the principle, but I do not think Williamson’s argument succeeds in refuting it. My aim here is to show that the KK-principle is not the most obvious culprit behind the contradiction Williamson derives.
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48The Ambiguity Thesis Versus Kripke's Defence of RussellMind and Language 11 (4): 371-387. 1996.In his influential paper 'Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference', Kripke defends Russell's theory of descriptions against the charge that the existence of referential and attributive uses of descriptions reflects a semantic ambiguity. He presents a purely defensive argument to show that Russell's theory is not refuted by the referential usage and a number of methodological considerations which apparently tell in favour of Russell's unitary theory over an ambiguity theory. In this paper, I p…Read more
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51Sortal modal logic and counterpart theoryAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (4). 1998.This Article does not have an abstract
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189Kripkean Counterpart TheoryPolish Journal of Philosophy 2 (2): 89-106. 2008.David Lewis’s counterpart-theoretic semantics for quantified modal logic is motivated originally by worries about identifying objects across possible worlds; the counterpart relation is grounded more cautiously on comparative similarity. The possibility of contingent identity is an unsought -- and in some eyes, unwelcome -- consequence of this approach. In this paper I motivate a Kripkean counterpart theory by way of defending the prior, pre-theoretical, coherence of contingent directness. Conti…Read more
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Bilkent UniversityRegular Faculty
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |