-
1900The Role of Imagination in PerceptionSouth African Journal of Philosophy 15 (4): 133-138. 1996.This article is an explication and defense of Kant’s view that ‘imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself’ (Critique of Pure Reason, A120, fn.). Imagination comes into perception at a far more basic level than Strawson allows, and it is required for the constitution of intuitions (= sense experiences) out of sense impressions. It also plays an important part in explaining how it is possible for intuitions to have intentional contents. These functions do not involve the applicati…Read more
-
1108Objectivism versus RealismPhilosophical Forum 42 (1): 79-104. 2011.Realism about affirmations of a given type is the view that these affirmations are to be understood as assertions that attempt to describe a largely independent reality, and that they are correct if and only if they manage to do so (regardless of whether they can be known to be correct). Objectivisim about affirmations of a given type is the view that they are subject to adequate, non-arbitrary standards of correctness, and that there are a significant number of non-trivial affirmations of this …Read more
-
450How to Be a Normative ExpressivistPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (1): 182-207. 2009.Expressivism can make space for normative objectivity by treating normative stances as pro or con attitudes that can be correct or incorrect. And it can answer the logical challenges that bedevil it by treating a simple normative assertion not merely as an expression of a normative stance, but as an expression of the endorsement of a proposition that is true if and only if that normative stance is correct. Although this position has superficial similarities to normative realism, it does full jus…Read more
-
426Facts and Truth-MakingTopoi 29 (2): 137-145. 2010.This essay is a reflection on the idea of truth-making and its applications. I respond to a critique of my 1986 paper on truth-making and discuss some key principles at play in the Truth-maker Program as it has emerged over the past 25 years, paying special attention to negative and general truths. I maintain my opposition to negative and general facts, but give an improved account of how to do without them. In the end, I accept Truth-maker Maximalism and a weakened form of Truth-maker Necessita…Read more
-
378Making Sense of Kant’s SchematismPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (4): 777-797. 1995.In this paper I advance an account of Kant’s Schematism according to which a schema in general is a pattern of imaginative synthesis that explains how intuitions have the content required for them to fall under a concept corresponding to the schema. An empirical schema is a pattern of imaginative synthesis that is responsive to the qualities of the sensations involved in the intuition which it synthesizes. A transcendental schema, in contrast, is not responsive to the particular qualities of the…Read more
-
287Objective ReasonsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 45 (4): 533-563. 2007.In order to establish that judgments about practical reasons can be objective, it is necessary to show that the applicable standards provide an adequate account of truth and error. This in turn requires that these standards yield an extensive set of substantive, publicly accessible judgments that are presumptively true. This output requirement is not satisfied by the standards of universalizability, consistency, coherence, and caution alone. But it is satisfied if we supplement them with the pri…Read more
-
255Intentionality and NormativitySouth African Journal of Philosophy 17 (2): 142-151. 1998.The intentionality of virtually all thought that is distinctive of human beings is linguistically based and constitutively normative. As Robert Brandom claims in Making It Explicit, this normativity is best understood as having roots in social practice. But Brandom is wrong to insist that all intentionality is normative (thus denying intentionality to nonhuman, nonlinguistic animals). For even the simple social practices that ground the most primate norms presuppose robust nonnormative intention…Read more
-
198Indexical Reference and the Ontology of BeliefSouth African Journal of Philosophy 1 65-74. 1982.According to the propositional view of belief, a belief situation involves a believer’s standing in the relation of belief to a proposition. It is argued that the propositional view has unacceptable implications concerning the identity conditions of belief situations involving beliefs with indexical contents, especially where such beliefs are held over a period of time during which background circumstances change. After a critical discussion of Perry’s alternative to the propositional view, a ve…Read more
-
195Reasons in ActionPhilosophical Papers 42 (3). 2013.When an agent performs an action because she takes something as a reason to do so, does she take it as a normative reason for the action or as an explanatory reason? In Reasons Without Rationalism, Setiya criticizes the normative view and advances a version of the explanatory view. This paper advances a version of the normative view and shows that it is not subject to Setiya's criticisms. It also shows that Setiya's explanatory account is subject to two fatal flaws, viz., that it raises question…Read more
-
128On the Semantics of Simple and Complex Demonstratives in EnglishSouthern Journal of Philosophy 39 (4): 487-505. 2001.According to a straightforward, conservative account of English demonstratives, simple and complex demonstratives are referring expressions belonging to the same semantic category (but they could be understood as either terms or quantifiers); the denotation of a complex demonstrative “dF” (if it has one) must satisfy the nominal “F” in “dF”; and both simple and complex demonstratives function as rigid designators. According to a recent alternative advanced by Lepore and Ludgwig, simple and compl…Read more
-
92Facts as TruthmakersThe Monist 69 (2): 177-188. 1986.Facts, I am pleased to observe, are back in fashion. For some time now they have had staunch friends in the American Midwest, and these days they are embraced as far afield as Sydney and San Francisco. But what are facts, and what facts are there? My answer to the first part of this question, which I shall not pursue further, is the same as Russell’s and the early Wittgenstein’s: Facts are what constitute the objective world, and what make true sentences and thoughts true and false sentences and…Read more
-
88Capitalist Exploitation, Self-Ownership, and EqualityPhilosophical Forum 32 (3). 2001.Traditional Marxists hold that capitalist modes of production are unjustly exploitative. In 'Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality' G. A. Cohen argues that this ``exploitation charge'' commits traditional Marxists to the thesis that people own themselves (``self-ownership''). If so, then traditional Marxism is vulnerable to a libertarian challenge to its commitment to equality. Cohen, therefore, recommends that Marxists abandon the exploitation charge. This paper undermines Cohen's case for the a…Read more
-
87Sensibility and Understanding in Perceptual JudgmentsSouth African Journal of Philosophy 18 (4): 356-369. 1999.The main aim of this paper is to work toward an account of how sensibility and understanding combine in perceptual judgments, with the emphasis on the role of sensibility in both the justification of such judgments and the explanation of how it is possible for them to apply to an objective world. I argue that in themselves sensory intuitions function as (animal level) beliefs about the environment, and that these beliefs have the status of perceptual judgments to the extent to which they are emb…Read more
-
81Content and Causation in PerceptionPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (4): 767-785. 1994.In order to perceive something, one must have a sense experience which it causes and which has a content that fits it appropriately. But veridical hallucinations show that more is required, viz., that the experience must also be caused by the object of perception in the right sort of way. The best account of what this amounts to is that the object causes the experience by means of a “reliable mechanism,” i.e., a causal mechanism which is generally apt to connect objects to experiences with conte…Read more
-
73Stalnaker on InquiryJournal of Philosophical Logic 16 (3): 229-272. 1987.This article is an extended critical study of Robert C. Stalnaker, 'Inquiry' (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984).
-
68Why Proper Names are Rigid DesignatorsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (3): 519-536. 1990.
-
58Sense Experiences and Their Contents: A Defense of the Propositional AccountInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 33 (2): 215-30. 1990.A number of philosophers are committed to the view that sense experiences, in so far as they have contents, have propositional contents, but this is more often tacitly accepted than argued for in the literature. This paper explains the propositional account and presents a basic case in support of it in a simple and straightforward way which does not involve commitment to any specific philosophical theory of perception
-
57Toward Global DemocracyThe Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 13 91-99. 2007.
-
53The Projection Strategy and the Truth Conditions of Conditional StatementsMind 98 (390): 179-205. 1989.Drawing on Stalnaker’s projection strategy, a revised version of the Ramsey test, and Dudman’s account of the evaluation of projective conditionals (e.g., “If Hitler invades England, Germany will win the war” and “If Hitler had invaded England, Germany would have won the war”), I offer a novel truth-conditional account of the semantics of a range of English conditionals. This account resolves some key puzzles in the philosophical literature about semantic differences between maximally similar co…Read more
-
50Against the Power of Force: Reflections on the Meaning of MoodMind 95 (379): 361-372. 1986.According to a common account, grammatical mood is merely a conventional indicator of force with no semantic significance. Focusing on indicatives, interrogatives and imperatives, I advance two reasons to reject this “force treatment” of mood. First, it can be shown that the mood of a subordinate clause can have semantic significance that affects the sense of a sentence in which it is embedded—which the force treatment cannot accommodate. Second, the speech acts of asserting, asking and ordering…Read more
-
46Thought and LanguageSouth African Journal of Philosophy 21 (3): 200-218. 2002.This article defends the view that nonlinguistic animals could be capable of thought (in the sense in which the mere possession of beliefs and desires is sufficient for thought). It is easy to identify flaws in Davidson's arguments for the thesis that thought depends upon language if one is open to the idea that some nonlinguistic animals have beliefs. It is, however, necessary to do more than this if one wishes to engage with the deeper challenge underlying Davidson's reasoning, viz., that of p…Read more
-
44How Demonstratives DenoteSouthern Journal of Philosophy 22 (1): 91-104. 1984.Focusing on the simple demonstrative ‘that’ and demonstrative expressions of the form ‘that F,’ this paper reviews four accounts of what determines the denotations of demonstratives—the description theory, according to which the work is done by a proper definite description associated with the demonstrative; the causal theory, according to which it is done by a non-deviant causal chain connecting the object and the demonstrative; the demonstration theory, according to which it is done by a demon…Read more
-
43Perception and Objective KnowledgeIn The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Charlottesville: Philosophy Documentation Center. pp. 29-38. 2000.McDowell and Putnam are right to insist that objective knowledge is possible only because we are open to the world in perception, but neither of them offers an adequate account of the relationship between perception and perceptual judgments (which are at the core of our most fundamental knowledge of the world). This paper, intended as a contribution to the development of a sophisticated commonsense realism, proposes an account in terms of which perceptions acquire the status of perceptual judgme…Read more
-
40Elementary Formal Semantics for English Tense and AspectPhilosophical Papers 21 (3): 215-241. 1992.This paper presents an approach to the elementary temporal semantics of the English tense system, the atoms of which are the present tense, the past tense, the progressive auxiliary, the perfective auxiliary, and the modal will as used for the future. It offers accounts of the forms of temporal semantics of core verb phrases of different categories and of the atoms of the tense system, using machinery that that yields appropriate compositional accounts of the temporal semantics of compound, tens…Read more
-
37Against the Careerist Conception of Well-BeingPhilosophical Forum 31 (1). 2000.According to “the careerist conception of well-being,” a worthwhile life must involve the realization of a life plan that the agent has freely, consciously, and reflectively chosen from a position of self-knowledge and realistic foresight about her like future circumstances; that it includes the setting of short-, medium, and long-term challenges based on that overall plan, and ongoing success at meeting these challenges. This conception of well-being expresses a live philosophical position, but…Read more
Indiana University
PhD, 1980
Raleigh, North Carolina, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
History of Western Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
History of Western Philosophy |