Alex Murphy

Sometimes, our scientific advances demonstrate that our ordinary ways of talking about the world are misguided. Other times, however, they simply give us more detail as to what makes our everyday talk true. Unfortunately, it’s not always clear which of the two cases we’re in. Spurred on by the empirical successes of scientific theory, we’re often tempted to privilege our scientific ways of talking, treating our everyday talk as convenient but false. Bernard Williams labelled this temptation scientism and warned against it throughout his work, especially in Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline. Unfortunately, many who share Williams’ suspicions are often tempted to overreact, ignoring the fact that sometimes science does prove our intuitive conceptions incorrect. In this paper, I propose a concrete framework for sailing between these two temptations. I suggest that we focus on how scientific advances reveal the indeterminacy of our ordinary language. Once we accept that, we can, by reflecting on what we want them to do, go on to mould our words in a way that accommodates the relevant scientific advance. This allows us to heed Williams’ warning, whilst acknowledging how scientific advances can change our view of reality. As a case study, I’ll discuss an exchange between Arthur Eddington and Susan Stebbing on the significance of the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom for our conception of ordinary objects. The major consequence of this proposal is that to answer the question, we must consider not just empirical theory but also our ways of living, and what we want from our everyday thought. This, indeed, is another major lesson from Williams. For in essence, my proposal is that to answer this question we must practice philosophy as a humanistic discipline as Williams suggests we do. The importance of reflecting on how our concepts serve our lives is a well-recognised part of Williams’ moral philosophy. My proposal demonstrates that the idea applies to our ordinary language concepts more broadly.

The objects we interact with in virtual reality – virtual objects – raise metaphysical questions. The most central of these questions is whether virtual objects really exist, that is, whether we ought to be realists about such objects. The most prominent realist metaphysics of virtual objects is David Chalmers’ virtual digitalism – the view that virtual objects are digital objects. I propose an alternative realist account – virtual perceptibilism. On this view virtual objects are pure perceptibilia. They are public objects, like rainbows, whose existence and intrinsic nature is dependent on us as perceivers. I contrast perceptibilism with digitalism, showing the superiority of the former. As such, I demonstrate that virtual perceptibilism is the best virtual realism on offer, leaving aside the question of whether perceptibilism is superior to irrealist accounts.

Moral error theorists often respond to the epistemic companions in guilt strategy by adopting the Disparity Response: reject the putative parity between moral and epistemic reasons and claim that though the former are irreducibly normative, the latter aren’t. I argue such a response fails. Expanding on Das’ Australas J Philos 95:58–69, work I present a master argument against Disparity Responses: the arguments moral error theorists use to advance their conceptual claim apply in the epistemic domain also. This prohibits the error theorist from adopting epistemic reductionism. I use Jonas Olson’s work as exemplary of moral error theory. I demonstrate that Olson’s argument that the rhetorical authority of moral claims is best explained by the error theorist’s conceptual claim applies equally in the epistemic case. Olson attempts to avoid this by claiming that epistemic claims are reducible to claims about whether our doxastic attitudes live up to their functions. There are two problems with Olson’s argument. Firstly, functional reasons are a species of a common genus – standards reasons – and since Olson’s authority argument against moral reductionism applies to standards reasons, it applies to functional reasons. Secondly, Olson’s claim that we cannot also cast moral reasons as functional is under-supported. I suggest that there is plausible evidence that we can and undermine his arguments against this claim. I do not argue that the epistemic companions in guilt strategy demonstrates the falsity of moral error theory. Rather, I argue that the Disparity Response to the epistemic companions in guilt strategy fails.