Kurt Norlin

The semantics Vann McGee gives for his 1989 conditional logic is based on Stalnaker’s 1968 semantics but replaces the familiar concept of truth at a world with the novel concept of truth under a hypothesis. Developed here is a semantics of the standard type, in which sentences are true at worlds, only with additional constraints imposed on the accessibility relation and the selection function. McGee conditionals of the form A ⇒ X are translated into Stalnaker conditionals of the form \A > X. An interpretation of the semantics is provided, and a few implications for the theory of indicative conditionals and their probabilities are noted.

I give a semantics for a logic with two pairs of doxastic modals and an indicative conditional connective that all nest without restriction. Sentences are evaluated as accepted, rejected, or neither. Certainty is the necessity-like modality of acceptance. Inferences may proceed from premises that are certain, or merely accepted, or a mix of both. This semantic setup yields some striking results. Notably, the existence of inferences that preserve certainty but not acceptance very directly implies both failure of modus ponens for the indicative conditional in the logic of acceptance and failure of the deduction theorem for the material conditional in the logic of certainty. The latter failure dissolves, in the logic of certainty, the much - discussed tension between modus ponens and the law of import-export.

Most of us value the legacy of the Enlightenment, but today we often worry about the conceptual and temporal stability of its core ideals. Griswold presents Smith as having something to say to these concerns, particularly in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which, according to Griswold in chapter 1, is not an exercise in detached philosophical analysis but a piece of rhetoric designed for moral influence on the reader. Smith means, by treating virtue in the manner of a theater critic discussing drama, to help his readers realize and sustain an Enlightenment model of the virtuous life.

The focus of this dissertation is a kind of moral theory variously called sentimentalism, moral sense theory, or ideal observer ethics. That these labels all name a single theory-type is part of what I try to show. Beyond the identity claim, however, I wish to work out an example of this kind of view, using as inspiration Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments . ;In the opening chapter, I give some motivation for moral sense theory, explaining how it treats moral values by analogy with secondary qualities such as color. In Chapter 2, I review the historical career of the color analogy and the views it has inspired. In Chapter 3, I present and defend an interpretation of Smith, contrasting his ideas with those of Francis Hutcheson and especially David Hume. I also show why a misunderstanding of ideal observer theory underlies the common view that Smith's impartial spectator is very different from Roderick Firth's ideal observer. Having reconstructed Smith's moral theory, I then consider, in Chapter 4, what our current best understanding of human nature can tell us about the plausibility of this theory. Here I draw on considerations of survival fitness and also on contemporary psychological investigation by such people as Lawrence Kohlberg, Carol Gilligan, and C. Daniel Batson. My conclusion is that the verdict on Smith's theory is equivocal. ;Within the framework of an ideal observer theory, there are objective facts about morality just as there are objective facts about color. However, it may be that in the end there is no point in asking whether Smith's view, judged from the outside, is a true account of the nature of morality. In the last chapter, I discuss the sense in which a choice of moral theory might have a pragmatic basis, and I consider how sentimentalist/ideal-observer moral theory fares when judged by a pragmatic standard