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129Choosing Normative ConceptsOxford University Press. 2017.The concepts we use to value and prescribe are historically contingent, and we could have found ourselves with others. But what does it mean to say that some concepts are better than others for purposes of action-guiding and deliberation? What is it to choose between different normative conceptual frameworks?
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128Forthcoming in Darren Bradley (ed.), Carnap and Contemporary Philosophy. This paper is centered on Carnap’s views on rationality. More specifically, much of the focus is on a puzzle regarding Carnap’s view on rationality that Florian Steinberger has recently discussed. Not only is Steinberger’s discussion of significant intrinsic interest: his discussion also raises general questions about Carnap interpretation. As I have discussed in earlier work, there are two very different ways of interpreti…Read more
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122The liar paradox, expressibility, possible languagesIn J. C. Beall (ed.), Revenge of the Liar: New Essays on the Paradox, Oxford University Press. 2007.Here is the liar paradox. We have a sentence, (L), which somehow says of itself that it is false. Suppose (L) is true. Then things are as (L) says they are. (For it would appear to be a mere platitude that if a sentence is true, then things are as the sentence says they are.) (L) says that (L) is false. So, (L) is false. Since the supposition that (L) is true leads to contradiction, we can assert that (L) is false. But since this is just what (L) says, (L) is then true. (For it would appear to b…Read more
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121Who cares if we’re not fully real? Comments on Kris McDaniel’s The Fragmentation of BeingPhilosophical Studies 179 (10): 3141-3150. 2022.In part of The Fragmentation of Being, Kris McDaniel discusses the possibility that we—persons—are not fully real, and the normative upshot of this. The broader metaphysical context is a view on which different things have different degrees of being and what is discussed is the possibility that persons do not have the maximal degree of being. McDaniel thinks that this has a problematic normative upshot: we would not matter. I do not agree. Here I go through some reasons for thinking that the pos…Read more
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112Book Review. Quantifier Variance and Realism: Essays in Metaontology. Eli Hirsch. (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Review. 2011.
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107Vagueness and Second-Level IndeterminacyIn Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and Clouds: Vaguenesss, its Nature and its Logic, Oxford University Press. 2010.My theme here will be vagueness. But first recall Quine’s arguments for the indeterminacy of translation and the inscrutability of reference. (I will presume these arguments to be familiar.) If Quine is right, then there are radically different acceptable assignments of semantic values to the expressions of any language: different assignments of semantic values that for all that is determined by whatever it is that determines semantic value are all acceptable, and all equally good. Quine even ar…Read more
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106In contemporary debates about ontology, one prominent skeptical view emphasizes the existence of different possible languages for doing ontology. Eli Hirsch, in recent years the most prominent proponent of a view like this, has defended the claim that “many familiar questions about the ontology of physical objects are merely verbal. Nothing is substantively at stake in these questions beyond the correct use of language” and the claim that “quantifier expressions can have different meaning in dif…Read more
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105The Aims of Logical Empiricism As a Philosophy of ScienceActa Analytica 15 (25): 137-59. 2000.According to the received view on logical empiricism, the logical empiricists were involved in the same project as Popper, Lakatos and Kuhn: a project of describing actual scientific method and (with the exception of Kuhn) prescribing methodological rules for scientists. Even authors who seek to show that the logical empiricists were not as simpleminded as widely believed agree with this assumption. I argue that the received view has it wrong.
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91Thin entitiesTheoria 89 (3): 356-365. 2023.Oystein Linnebo's book Thin Objects is partly devoted to defending the view that some objects are “thin” in that their existence does not impose any substantive demands on the world. In this paper, I discuss the concern that the defense relies on there being entities that serve as the referents of predicates. Linnebo thus seems to assume the thinness of those entities. In the course of my discussion, I also discuss what Linnebo says about the role of criteria of identity in his discussion of ref…Read more
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90Schmoughts for Naught? Reply to VermaireJournal of Philosophy 120 (7): 392-398. 2023.In his article "Against Schmought" (The Journal of Philosophy, CXVIII 2021), Matthew Vermaire discusses the central problems I focus on in my book Choosing Normative Concepts (2017). Vermaire defends an attempted solution, or dissolution, of these problems. While there is much in Vermaire’s discussion to admire, I do not think Vermaire’s solution works, and here I explain why. Key to my response is the distinction between employing a concept and reasoning about the concept.
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88Supervaluationism, vagueifiers, and semantic overdeterminationDialectica 55 (4). 2001.Supervaluationism, traditionally conceived, is the conjunction of three theses: Vagueness in a language gives rise to there being a multitude of acceptable assignments of semantic values to some expressions of the language, These assignments correspond to possible completions of the meanings of vague expressions, Truth is truth under all acceptable assignments, and falsity is falsity under all acceptable assignments. Supervaluationism has three chief virtues. It preserves classical logic. It pro…Read more
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87Reply to Beall and PriestAustralasian Journal of Logic 6 94-106. 2008.In my “Deep Inconsistency”, I compared my meaning-inconsistency view on the liar with Graham Priest’s dialetheist view, using my view to help cast doubt on Priest’s arguments for his view. Jc Beall and Priest have recently published a reply to my article. I here respond to their criticisms. In addition, I compare the meaning–inconsistency view with Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap’s revision theory of truth, and discuss how best to deal with the strengthened liar.
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87Review of Heather Dyke, Metaphysics and the Representational Fallacy (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (11). 2008.
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84Saving the Differences (review)Philosophical Review 113 (2): 288-292. 2004.The basic elements of this framework were elaborated upon and defended at some length in Wright’s Truth and Objectivity —henceforth, T&O—which was a marvelous book. The present volume of essays, almost all previously published and including some that predate T&O, continues to discuss the same themes, and is, in virtue of the significance of the ideas discussed and the high level of the discussion, likewise a very important work. The collection is divided into five parts: Realism Reconfigured, Re…Read more
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83The Normative PluriverseJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 18 (2). 2020.According to a certain pluralist view in philosophy of mathematics, there are as many mathematical objects as there can coherently be. Recently, Justin Clarke-Doane has explored what consequences the analogous view on normative properties would have. What if there is a normative pluriverse? Here I address this same question. The challenge is best seen as a challenge to an important form of normative realism. I criticize the way Clarke-Doane presents the challenge. An improved challenge is presen…Read more
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83On How Logic Became First-OrderNordic Journal of Philosophical Logic 1 (2): 147-67. 1996.Added by a category editor--not an official abstract. Discusses the history (and reasons for the history) implicit in the title, as well as the author's view on same.
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80Is Hintikka's Logic First-Order?Synthese 131 (3): 371-388. 2002.Jaakko Hintikka has argued that ordinary first-order logic should be replaced byindependence-friendly first-order logic, where essentially branching quantificationcan be represented. One recurring criticism of Hintikka has been that Hintikka'ssupposedly new logic is equivalent to a system of second-order logic, and henceis neither novel nor first-order. A standard reply to this criticism by Hintikka andhis defenders has been to show that given game-theoretic semantics, Hintikka'sbranching quanti…Read more
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73Schiffer on vaguenessPacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (1). 2006.I go through, and criticize, Stephen Schiffer's account of vagueness and the sorites paradox. I discuss his notion of a happy-face solution to a paradox, his appeal to vagueness-related partial belief, his claim that indeterminacy is a psychological notion, and his view that the sorites premise and the inference rule of modus ponens are indeterminate.
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71Book Review. Vagueness in Context. Stewart Shapiro. (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (5). 2006.
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63Realism and Antirealism Edited by William P. Alston Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002, viii + 303 pp (review)Dialogue 44 (4): 786-788. 2005.
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63Edwards on truth pluralismInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 66 (8): 1481-1493. 2023.I critically discuss Douglas Edwards' construal of the debate over truth, and his case for truth pluralism. Toward the end I present a constructive suggestion on Edwards' behalf. This suggestion avoids the problems I have presented, whatever in the end its fate.
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57TruthHistory and Philosophy of Logic 33 (1). 2012.History and Philosophy of Logic, Volume 33, Issue 1, Page 106-108, February 2012
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44Review of Fraser MacBride (ed.), Identity and Modality (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (3). 2007.
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43I elaborate and defend the inconsistency view on vagueness I have earlier argued for in my (2002) and (forthcoming). In rough outline, the view is that the sorites paradox arises because tolerance principles, despite their inconsistency, are meaning-constitutive for vague expressions. Toward the end of the paper I discuss other inconsistency views on vagueness that have been proposed, and compare them to the view I favor.
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42Supervaluationism, Vagueifiers, and Semantic OverdeterminationDialectica 55 (4): 363-378. 2001.Supervaluationism, traditionally conceived, is the conjunction of three theses: Vagueness in a language gives rise to there being a multitude of acceptable assignments of semantic values to some expressions of the language, These assignments correspond to possible completions of the meanings of vague expressions, Truth is truth under all acceptable assignments, and falsity is falsity under all acceptable assignments. Supervaluationism has three chief virtues. It preserves classical logic. It pro…Read more
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33(For colloquium talk in Aarhus, Denmark.).
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22There is a vexed question in the literature on Marx of whether Marx was somehow anti-morality or if on the contrary he was instead defending a particular, perhaps rather radical, conception of morality. This question will be my starting point. But I will have nothing to contribute to the scholarly question of what Marx’s view was. Rather my aim will be this. Whatever in the end is the correct interpretation of Marx, it is undeniable that there are passages in Marx which if taken literally and st…Read more
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20Book Review. The Philosophy of Philosophy. Timothy Williamson. (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (4): 752-4. 2010.
Uppsala, Uppsala County, Sweden