José L. Zalabardo

This introduction introduces three central themes of the chapters in the collection: the relationship between Wittgenstein's account of representation and Russell's theories of judgment, the role of objects in the tractarian system and Wittgenstein's philosophical method. It argues that some central aspects of the tractarian theory of representation should be understood as a modification of Russell's ideas on judgment. It then discusses the role of Frege's context principle in Wittgenstein's ideas.

The chapter focuses on a family of inferences that are intuitively incapable of producing knowledge of their conclusions, although they appear to satisfy sufficient conditions for inferential knowledge postulated by plausible epistemological theories. They include Moorean inferences and inductive bootstrapping inferences. The chapter provides an account of why these inferences are not capable of producing knowledge. The chapter argues that the reason why these inferences fail to produce knowledge of their conclusions is that inferential knowledge requires that the subject is more likely to believe the premises of the inference if the conclusion is true than if it is false. The chapter ends by comparing the treatment of these cases that emerges from the approach that the chapter recommends with the position advocated by Sherrilyn Roush in her recent book, _Tracking Truth_ (2005).

I outline a pragmatist account of the meaning grounds of interpretations. Interpretations, on this approach, have the meaning they have by virtue of the fact that their acceptance is regulated by a procedure that incorporates the Principle of Charity. I argue that pragmatism is not incompatible with thinking of interpretations as representational or fact-stating. I then argue that the pragmatist account sustains a strategy for supporting the recommendation to interpret charitably. This is so even though pragmatism doesn’t entail a lower bound to the reliability of Charity.

I argue that a target of the rule-following considerations is the thought that there are mental episodes in which a consciously accessible item guides me in my decision to respond in a certain way when I follow a rule. I contend that Wittgenstein’s position on this issue invokes a distinction between a literal and a symbolic reading of the claim that these processes of guidance take place. In the literal sense he rejects the claim, but in the symbolic sense he sees nothing wrong with it. I consider some arguments that Wittgenstein deploys against the literal sense of the claim.

To the sceptic's contention that I don't know that I have hands because I don't know that there is an external world, the Moorean replies that I know that there is an external world because I know that I have hands. Crispin Wright has argued that the Moorean move is illegitimate, and has tried to block it by limiting the applicability of the principle of the transmission of knowledge by inference—the principle that recognising the validity of an inference from known premises generates knowledge of the conclusion. I argue that, in the presence of some plausible assumptions, blocking the Moorean move does not require limiting the applicability of the transmission principle. Then I argue against Jim Pryor's contention that the Moorean argument transmits evidential support from its premises to its conclusion.

The book defends a pragmatist account of the meaning grounds of central semantic discourses—ascriptions of truth, of propositional attitudes, and of meanings. On a pragmatist account, what makes the sentences of these discourses have the meanings they have is the procedures that regulate their acceptance and rejection. The application of the pragmatist template to ethical discourse is also explored. The pragmatist approach is presented as an alternative to representationalist accounts of the meaning grounds of declarative sentences, according to which a sentence has the meaning it has as a result of links with the bits of the world that it purports to represent. The book develops a version of the open-question argument to support the claim that the meaning grounds of the discourses it focuses on cannot receive representationalist accounts. It is generally assumed that a declarative sentence cannot perform the function of representing the world unless it has a representationalist meaning ground. The book rejects this assumption, arguing that sentences with pragmatist meaning grounds can represent the world in exactly the same sense in which sentences with representationalist meaning grounds do. This requires that there are states of affairs that the target sentences represent as obtaining, and the book develops an account of the nature of the states of affairs that can play this role for sentences with pragmatist meaning grounds. The book ends by developing the suggestion that the meaning grounds of all our representational discourses might be ultimately pragmatist.

Information theoretic semantics proposes to construe predicate reference in terms of nomological relations between distal properties and properties of representational mental events. Research on the model has largely concentrated on the problem of choosing the nomological relation in terms of which distal properties are to be singled out. I argue that, in addition to this, an information theoretic account has to provide a specification of which properties of representational mental events will play a role in determining reference, qua bearers of nomological relations. I contend that this task poses a serious additional challenge to the viability of the model

El presente volumen recoge seis ensayos publicados originalmente en inglés en revistas especializadas y volúmenes colectivos a lo largo de la última década. Tratan de las consecuencias de desarrollos recientes en el análisis del conocimiento para la evaluación de los argumentos escépticos tradicionales. Los argumentos escépticos pretenden mostrar que es imposible conocer el mundo. Forman parte de la tradición filosófica occidental desde la antigüedad, y han tenido una influencia importantísima en el desarrollo de la filosofía desde entonces hasta nuestros días. Sin embargo, los principales argumentos escépticos parecen descansar sobre premisas acerca de la naturaleza del conocimiento que han sido puestas en tela de juicio en la epistemología actual. Esto se debe sobre todo a los análisis externistas del conocimiento, que conciben la formación de creencias como un fenómeno natural y el conocimiento como una característica objetiva de este fenómeno. Muchos epistemólogos contemporáneos piensan que si el externismo es verdadero los argumentos escépticos carecen de valor. Los trabajos recogidos aquí consideran diversos aspectos de esta situación, estudiando en detalle la interacción entre principios externistas específicos y las líneas argumentativas principales del escepticismo.

I discuss the idea that the objects of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus are propertyless bare particulars, an idea defended by Leonard Goddard and Brenda Judge in their monograph, The Metaphysics of the Tractatus. I present the difficulties that Goddard and Judge raise for this construal concerning the idea that Tractarian objects have natures that determine their possibilities of combination, and I assess the solution they propose. I offer an alternative construal of the notion with which these difficulties can be overcome.

David Lewis has argued that we cannot identify the fundamental properties. It is generally accepted that we can resist Lewis's conclusion if we are prepared to accept a structuralist account of fundamental properties, according to which their causal/nomological role is essential to their identity. I argue, to the contrary, that a structuralist construal of fundamental properties does not sustain a successful independent strategy for resisting Lewis's conclusion. The structuralist can vindicate our ability to identify fundamental properties only if she accepts epistemic principles that suffice for blocking Lewis's conclusion even if fundamental properties are not construed along structuralist lines.

I argue that our procedures for determining whether ascriptions of a predicate represent things as being a certain way are ultimately pragmatic. Pragmatic procedures are not subject to validation by the referential procedure – determining whether there is a property playing the role of its referent. Predicates can represent even if we can't provide an independent identification of its referent. For these predicates, the speakers’ knowledge of how they represent objects as being would have to be construed in terms of the ascription practices they associate with the predicates. The same approach can be applied to semantic predicates, such as ‘is representational’ or ‘refers to’. They can be treated as representational even if we can't provide an independent identification of their referents. The availability of this position undermines accounts of the referents of semantic predicates in naturalistic terms.

Standard definitions of logical consequence for formal languages are atomistic. They take as their starting point a range of possible assignments of semantic values to the extralogical atomic constituents of the language, each of which generates a unique truth value for each sentence. In modal logic, these possible assignments of semantic values are generated by Kripke-style models involving possible worlds and an accessibility relation. In first-order logic, they involve the standard structures of model theory, as sets of objects from which the extralogical symbols of the language receive their denotations. I argue that there is an alternative, holistic, approach to the task of defining logical consequence for a formal language. It specifies necessary and sufficient conditions for an assignment of truth values to all the sentences of the language to be compatible with the intended interpretation of its logical constants. It achieves this without invoking possible assignments of semantic values to the extralogical atomic constituents of the language, or the formal resources that are employed to generate these. I show how this approach can be successfully applied to modal propositional logic and to first-order logic, modal as well as nonmodal. I show that the holistic definitions of logical consequence that I supply for these languages are equivalent to the standard atomistic definitions.

I consider the problem of reflective knowledge faced by views that treat sensitivity as a sufficient condition for knowledge, or as a major ingredient of the concept, as in the analysis I advance in Scepticism and Reliable Belief. I present the problem as concerning the correct analysis of SATs — beliefs to the effect that one of my current beliefs is true. I suggest that a plausible analysis of SATs should treat them as neither true nor false when they ascribe truth to a non-existent belief. I argue that the problem is inescapable if we construe SATs as ascribing the property of truth to a belief. Deflationism manages to avoid the problem of reflective knowledge, but it does so by violating alethic priority — the principle that our account of representation must be built on our account of truth. I argue that we can avoid the problem of reflective knowledge while preserving alethic priority with a pragmatist account of truth — according to which truth is explicated in terms of the rules that govern the practice of assessing judgments and related items as true or false.

The paper deals with the interpretation of Wittgenstein's views on the power of occurrent mental states to sort objects or states of affairs as in accord or in conflict with them, as presented in the rule-following passages of the Philosophical Investigations. I shall argue first that the readings advanced by Saul Kripke and John McDowell fail to provide a satisfactory construal of Wittgenstein's treatment of a platonist account of this phenomenon, according to which the sorting power of occurrent mental states is to be explained by reference to the mind's ability to grasp universals. I contend that the argument that Kripke extracts from Wittgenstein's discussion doesn't succeed in undermining the platonist position. Then I argue that McDowell's reading exhibits a more serious shortcoming: the position that he ascribes to Wittgenstein is indistinguishable from the platonist account. Then I put forward a proposal as to how to articulate the relationship between Wittgenstein's views and the platonist position