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1080Mental propertiesJournal of Philosophy 91 (4): 185-208. 1994.It is argued that, because of scientific essentialism, two currently popular arguments against the mind-body identity thesis -- the multiple-realizability argument and the Nagel-Jackson knowledge argument -- are unsatisfactory as they stand and that their problems are incurable. It is then argued that a refutation of the identity thesis in its full generality can be achieved by weaving together two traditional Cartesian arguments -- the modal argument and the certainty argument. This argument es…Read more
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IntentionalityIn Hans Burkhardt & Barry Smith (eds.), Handbook of metaphysics and ontology, Philosophia Verlag. pp. 400-404. 1991.
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393The self-consciousness argument : Functionalism and the corruption of intentional contentIn Robert C. Koons & George Bealer (eds.), The Waning of Materialism: New Essays, Oxford University Press. 2010.In this chapter I argue that there is such a barrier created by self-conscious intentional states—conscious intentional states that are about one’s own conscious intentional states. As we will see, however, this result is entirely compatible with a scientific theory of mind, and, in fact, there is an elegant non-reductive framework in which just such a theory may be pursued.
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307ConceptIn Jaegwon Kim & Ernest Sosa (eds.), A Companion to Metaphysics, Blackwell. pp. 89-90. 1995.
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2265The incoherence of empiricismAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 66 (1): 99-138. 1992.Radical empiricism is the view that a person's experiences (sensory and introspective), or a person's observations, constitute the person's evidence. This view leads to epistemic self-defeat. There are three arguments, concerning respectively: (1) epistemic starting points; (2) epistemic norms; (3) terms of epistemic appraisal. The source of self-defeat is traced to the fact that empiricism does not count a priori intuition as evidence (where a priori intuition is not a form of belief but rather…Read more
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725An inconsistency in direct reference theoryJournal of Philosophy 101 (11). 2004.Direct reference theory faces serious prima facie counterexamples which must be explained away (e.g., that it is possible to know a priori that Hesperus = Phosphorus). This is done by means of various forms of pragmatic explanation. But when those explanations that provisionally succeed are generalized to deal with analogous prima facie counterexamples concerning the identity of propositions, a fatal dilemma results. Either identity must be treated as a four-place relation (contradicting what ju…Read more
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13698Intuition and the Autonomy of PhilosophyIn Michael DePaul & William Ramsey (eds.), Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 201-240. 1998.The phenomenology of a priori intuition is explored at length (where a priori intuition is taken to be not a form of belief but rather a form of seeming, specifically intellectual as opposed to sensory seeming). Various reductive accounts of intuition are criticized, and Humean empiricism (which, unlike radical empiricism, does admit analyticity intuitions as evidence) is shown to be epistemically self-defeating. This paper also recapitulates the defense of the thesis of the Autonomy and Authori…Read more
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171PropertyIn Robert Audi (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 657-658. 1995.
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1123Materialism and the logical structure of intentionalityIn Howard Robinson (ed.), Objections to Physicalism, Oxford University Press. 1993.After a brief history of Brentano's thesis of intentionality, it is argued that intentionality presents a serious problem for materialism. First, it is shown that, if no general materialist analysis (or reduction) of intentionality is possible, then intentional phenomena would have in common at least one nonphysical property, namely, their intentionality. A general analysis of intentionality is then suggested. Finally, it is argued that any satisfactory general analysis of intentionality must sh…Read more
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280The waning of materialism (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2010.This is a sustained critique of materialism. The contributors offer arguments from conscious experience, rational thought, the interaction of mind and body, and the unity and persisting identity of human persons, and develop a wide range of alternatives.
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1059Fine-Grained Type-Free IntensionalityIn Gennero Chierchia, Barbara H. Partee & Raymond Turner (eds.), Properties, Types, and Meaning, Volume 1, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 177-230. 1989.Commonplace syntactic constructions in natural language seem to generate ontological commitments to a dazzling array of metaphysical categories - aggregations, sets, ordered n-tuples, possible worlds, intensional entities, ideal objects, species, intensive and extensive quantities, stuffs, situations, states, courses of events, nonexistent objects, intentional and discourse objects, general objects, plural objects, variable objects, arbitrary objects, vague kinds and concepts, fuzzy sets, and so…Read more
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1791The philosophical limits of scientific essentialismPhilosophical Perspectives 1 289-365. 1987.Scientific essentialism is the view that some necessities can be known only with the aid of empirical science. The thesis of the paper is that scientific essentialism does not extend to the central questions of philosophy and that these questions can be answered a priori. The argument is that the evidence required for the defense of scientific essentialism is reliable only if the intuitions required by philosophy to answer its central questions is also reliable. Included is an outline of a modal…Read more
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1539A solution to Frege's puzzlePhilosophical Perspectives 7 17-60. 1993.This paper provides a new approach to a family of outstanding logical and semantical puzzles, the most famous being Frege's puzzle. The three main reductionist theories of propositions (the possible-worlds theory, the propositional-function theory, the propositional-complex theory) are shown to be vulnerable to Benacerraf-style problems, difficulties involving modality, and other problems. The nonreductionist algebraic theory avoids these problems and allows us to identify the elusive nondescrip…Read more
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558Toward a New Theory of ContentIn R. Casati, B. Smith & G. White (eds.), Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences: Proceedings of the 16th International Wittgenstein Symposium (Kirchberg Am Wechsel, Austria 1993), Holder-pichler-tempsky. pp. 179-92. 1994.The purpose of this paper is to lay out the algebraic approach to propositions and then to show how it can be implemented in new solutions to Frege's puzzle and a variety of related puzzles about content.
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1650AnalyticityIn Edward Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Genealogy to Iqbal, Routledge. pp. 234-9. 1998.
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809Property theory: The Type-Free Approach v. the Church ApproachJournal of Philosophical Logic 23 (2). 1994.In a lengthy review article, C. Anthony Anderson criticizes the approach to property theory developed in Quality and Concept (1982). That approach is first-order, type-free, and broadly Russellian. Anderson favors Alonzo Church’s higher-order, type-theoretic, broadly Fregean approach. His worries concern the way in which the theory of intensional entities is developed. It is shown that the worries can be handled within the approach developed in the book but they remain serious obstacles for the …Read more
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850On the identification of properties and propositional functionsLinguistics and Philosophy 12 (1). 1989.Arguments are given against the thesis that properties and propositional functions are identical. The first shows that the familiar extensional treatment of propositional functions -- that, for all x, if f(x) = g(x), then f = g -- must be abandoned. Second, given the usual assumptions of propositional-function semantics, various propositional functions (e.g., constant functions) are shown not to be properties. Third, novel examples are given to show that, if properties were identified with propo…Read more
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576Intuition and Modal ErrorIn Quentin Smith (ed.), Epistemology: new essays, Oxford University Press. 2008.Modal intuitions are not only the primary source of modal knowledge but also the primary source of modal error. An explanation of how modal error arises — and, in particular, how erroneous modal intuitions arise — is an essential part of a comprehensive theory of knowledge and evidence. This chapter begins with a summary of certain preliminaries: the phenomenology of intuitions, their fallibility, the nature of concept-understanding and its relationship to the reliability of intuitions, and so f…Read more
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1053UniversalsJournal of Philosophy 90 (1): 5-32. 1993.Presented here is an argument for the existence of universals. Like Church's translation- test argument, the argument turns on considerations from intensional logic. But whereas Church's argument turns on the fine-grained informational content of intensional sentences, this argument turns on the distinctive logical features of 'that'-clauses embedded within modal contexts. And unlike Church's argument, this argument applies against truth-conditions nominalism and also against conceptualism and i…Read more
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644Completeness in the theory of properties, relations, and propositionsJournal of Symbolic Logic 48 (2): 415-426. 1983.Higher-order theories of properties, relations, and propositions are known to be essentially incomplete relative to their standard notions of validity. It turns out that the first-order theory of PRPs that results when first-order logic is supplemented with a generalized intensional abstraction operation is complete. The construction involves the development of an intensional algebraic semantic method that does not appeal to possible worlds, but rather takes PRPs as primitive entities. This allo…Read more
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521The logical status of mindMidwest Studies in Philosophy 10 (1): 231-74. 1986.It is argued that the distinction between the mental and the nonmental is at bottom logical. The paper begins by sketching and defending a theory of intensional logic in which the notion of logically and metaphysically basic relations (called connections) can be defined. This notion is then employed in an analysis of intentionality: a connection is intentional iff it can contingently connect some individual to some proposition or concept independently of whether it connects the individual to som…Read more
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1968A priori knowledge and the scope of philosophyPhilosophical Studies 81 (2-3): 121-142. 1996.This paper provides a defense of two traditional theses: the Autonomy of Philosophy and the Authority of Philosophy. The first step is a defense of the evidential status of intuitions (intellectual seemings). Rival views (such as radical empiricism), which reject the evidential status of intuitions, are shown to be epistemically self-defeating. It is then argued that the only way to explain the evidential status of intuitions is to invoke modal reliabilism. This theory requires that intuitions h…Read more
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384Remarks on classical analysisJournal of Philosophy 80 (11): 711-712. 1983.Abstract of a paper to be presented in an APA symposium on Classical Analysis, December 30, 1983, commenting on a paper by Ernest Sosa.
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475Predication and matterSynthese 31 (3-4). 1975.First, given criteria for identifying universals and particulars, it is shown that stuffs appear to qualify as neither. Second, the standard solutions to the logico-linguistic problem of mass terms are examined and evidence is presented in favor of the view that mass terms are straightforward singular terms and, relatedly, that stuffs indeed belong to a metaphysical category distinct from the categories of universal and particular. Finally, a new theory of the copula is offered: 'The cue is cold…Read more
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516Mental causationPhilosophical Perspectives 21 (1). 2007.Suppose that, for every event, whether mental or physical, there is some physical event causally sufficient for it. Suppose, moreover, that physical reductionism in its various forms fails—that mental properties cannot be reduced to physical properties and mental events cannot be reduced to physical events. In this case, how could there be mental causation? More specifically, how could mental events cause other mental events, physical events, and intentional actions? The primary goal of this pap…Read more
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362Foundations without SetsAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 18 (4). 1981.The dominant school of logic, semantics, and the foundation of mathematics construct its theories within the framework of set theory. There are three strategies by means of which a member of this school might attempt to justify his ontology of sets. One strategy is to show that sets are already included in the naturalistic part of our everyday ontology. If they are, then one may assume that whatever justifies the everyday ontology justifies the ontology of sets. Another strategy is to show that …Read more
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4The rejection of the identity thesisIn The Mind-Body Problem: A Guide to the Current Debate, Blackwell. 1994.In this paper, the arguments against the mind-body identity thesis from the author’s [1994] paper, “Mental Properties,” are presented but in significantly more detail. It is shown that, because of scientific essentialism, two currently popular arguments against the identity thesis -- the multiple-realizability argument and the Nagel-Jackson knowledge argument -- are unsatisfactory as they stand and that their problems are incurable. It is then shown that a refutation of the identity thesis in it…Read more
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2204A theory of concepts and concepts possessionPhilosophical Issues 9 261-301. 1998.The paper begins with an argument against eliminativism with respect to the propositional attitudes. There follows an argument that concepts are sui generis ante rem entities. A nonreductionist view of concepts and propositions is then sketched. This provides the background for a theory of concept possession, which forms the bulk of the paper. The central idea is that concept possession is to be analyzed in terms of a certain kind of pattern of reliability in one’s intuitions regarding the behav…Read more
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34The A PrioriIn John Greco & Ernest Sosa (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, Blackwell. 2017.In the history of epistemology, discussions of the a priori have been bound up with discussions of necessity and analyticity, often in confusing ways. Disentangling these confusions is an essential step in the study of the a priori. This will be the aim of my introductory remarks. The goal of the remainder of the paper will then be to try to develop a unified account of the a priori, dealing with the notions of intuition and a priori evidence, the question of why intuitions qualify as evidence, …Read more
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Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
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Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |