Gilbert Harman

This chapter asks whether there is a notion of truth that applies to nonindexical sentences of English and, if there is, how that is to be explained. After showing that the liar paradox casts doubt on an attempt at capturing the meaning of ‘true’, the chapter proposes a novel notion that does seem to apply to nonindexical sentences of English—that of what the author calls _default implication_. Using this notion of default implication, the chapter recasts the initial attempt at capturing the meaning of ‘true’ and shows that this is not plagued by the consequences of the liar paradox.

This chapter explores the complex nature of moral reasoning as an activity people engage in that can lead to a change in one’s moral view. The particular model of change (whether construed as a normative model or as a descriptive model) is that of reflective equilibrium in which one attempts to find a balance between conservatism and coherence; between minimizing changes in one’s view and reducing negative coherence on one hand, and enhancing positive coherence of one’s view on the other. The chapter proceeds to discuss various dimensions of such reasoned change in moral view, including the role for perceptions, feelings, and sensations, in addition to beliefs, desires, and intentions.

Moral psychology is central to modern virtue ethics, whose proponents have claimed greater psychological realism as a theoretical advantage. Yet much empirical research in personality and social psychology appears to unsettle familiar notions of character, prompting critics to advance skeptical views of character as portrayed in philosophical virtue ethics. In response, some defenders of virtue ethics have acknowledged the importance of incorporating the empirical literature into philosophical conceptions of character. This chapter moves the discussion forward by exploring avenues available to, and difficulties faced by, an empirically sensitive psychology of character. It considers virtue-ethical ideals of practical rationality, as well as certain basic moral norms, in light of the picture of human cognition now emerging in the cognitive sciences. The chapter interprets some of the classic psychological experiments as evidence that morally consequential behavior is pervasively influenced by cognitive processes resistant to intentional direction and at best insensitive to personal, reflectively endorsed moral norms, if not contrary to them. Lastly, on the basis of this understanding, the chapter surveys the prospects for using empirical findings to seek remedies for such adverse influences on moral thinking and behavior.

Reasoning can be characterized along three dimensions: (1) practical/theoretical, (2) internal/external, and (3) conscious/unconscious. This chapter is concerned with internal reasoning. Although some theorists think that reasoning is always purely deductive, formal theories of deduction, probability theory, and utility theory must be distinguished from theories about how people do or ought to reason. The moral principles people accept often contain morally loaded terms and people often defend their moral views with general principles that they do not generally accept. A classical deductive theory of concepts as having necessary and sufficient conditions cannot be taken for granted. In contrast with the classical deductive model of reasoning, ordinary moral reasoning appears to aim at improving the overall coherence of one's view and get closer to a “reflective equilibrium”. Unfortunately, such reasoning is fragile.

This chapter considers whether there is a naive or folk logic of ordinary language, a set of principles that plays the same role in our understanding and use of language as, say, the principles naive physics play in our understanding of the everyday world. A distinction is made between true logical and nonlogical principles: the truth of the former is a matter of their form, while the truth of the latter is a matter of their content. It is argued that logical principles can inform a reasoner about the acceptability of an argument's structure but not how the argument is to be assembled or even whether the argument's conclusion should warrant a change in belief state. It is also argued that a (loose) logic of ordinary language embodies our commonsense knowledge about language and how we use it to reason and speak fluidly about what is known in the world and what is said about the world.

A proper understanding of intentionality is crucial to the study of a number of topics in cognitive science, including perception, imagery, and consciousness. The term itself, intentionality, can be misleading, in suggesting intentional action, doing something intentionally, with a certain aim or purpose. In cognitive science, the term is used in a different, more technical sense. Intentionality involves reference or aboutness or some similar relation to something having what the scholastics of the Middle Ages called intentional inexistence.

Originally published in 1990. This study argues that scepticism is an intelligible view and that the issue scepticism raises is whether or not certain sceptical hypotheses are as plausible as the ordinary views we accept. It discusses psychological concepts, definitions of knowledge, belief and hypothetic inference (inference to the best explanation). Starting from ‘Is skepticism a problem for epistemology’, the book takes us through the argument for the possibility of scepticism, including looking at sense data and considering memory and perception.