David Haugen

Michael Dummett's anti-realism can be seen as consisting of two programs: the negative program offers arguments against realism's central thesis that the meaning of a sentence is its bivalent truth condition; the positive program offers an alternative conception of meaning and truth by articulating a verificationist semantics. This work is primarily a study of the negative program. ;A realist about a certain class of statements holds that the members of that class relate to and are made true or false by an objective reality which exists independently of our experience and knowledge of it. Dummett's challenge to realism concerns whether we could understand such statements when their meaning is conceived in this way. I distinguish three strands of the challenge. The first concerns whether we could acquire this conception of the meaning of the statements in question given that it involves states of affairs which cannot in principle be objects of human experience. The second strand focuses on the question whether we could communicate if the meaning of an expression transcends the use that can be made of it. The third challenges the realist to provide an account of what such knowledge of meaning consists in given that this knowledge cannot be manifested by anything the speaker can do or say. ;I consider how four forms of realism respond to Dummett: brute realism, sophisticated realism, naive realism, and critical realism, I argue that the first three responses are inadequate, and thus that if Dummett's challenge can be met, it will be by critical realism. This form of realism advances two main theses: first, that mental states are intrinsically intentional; and second, that theoretical explanation provides a way of arriving at contentful and warranted beliefs about states of affairs that cannot impinge directly on human consciousness. While critical realism has the best chance of overcoming Dummett's arguments, it would be, however, premature to conclude that the challenge has been met, for it is not clear that the doctrine of intrinsic intentionality can be made intelligible

In the "Critique of Teleological Judgment", Kant is concerned with the legitimacy of teleological judgments in the then emerging science of biology. Such judgments explain something by reference to its purpose, for example, the beating of the heart is explained in terms of its role in pumping blood to the rest of the body. McLaughlin's main objective is to provide an adequate interpretation of this part of the Critical philosophy, something he thinks that other Kant scholars have not done. McLaughlin's reconstruction of Kant's argument has three main steps, each of which constitutes a chapter of the book.

Parfit's reductionist theory of personal identity states that a person's persistence through time is just a matter of psychological continuity and connectedness. He uses this theory to argue against the requirement of equal concern: the view that a rational person should be equally concerned about all parts of her future. The argument is that since psychological connectedness is one of grounds of a person's concern for her future and since connectedness is weaker over longer periods, it follows that a person can rationally care less about her more distant future. I argue that Parfit's argument fails because the principles it employs generate counterexamples. I conclude by showing that if Parfit's view is modified so as to avoid these counterexamples, his argument against the requirement dissolves