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2Spinoza, Thoughtful Teleology, and the Causal Significance of ContentIn Olli Koistinen & J. I. Biro (eds.), Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes, Oxford University Press. pp. 182--209. 2002.
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5Rationalism in the Philosophy of Donald DavidsonIn Alan Nelson (ed.), A Companion to Rationalism, Blackwell. 2005.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Rationalism and the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction A priori Principles I: Davidson on Causation and the Mental Constitutive Principles and Classical Rationalism Classical Rationalism or Kantian Transcendentalism? The Refutation of (Transcendental) Idealism Rationalism Full‐Blown.
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40All Facts Great and SmallProtoSociology 11 18-40. 1998.I examine the arguments Donald Davidson has offered through the years concerning the ontological bona fides of facts. In “Truth and Meaning”, Davidson uses the so-called “slingshot” argument to the effect that if true sentences refer, then they are all coreferential. Through a detailed examination of the assumptions underlying this argument, I show that, while it is effective as part of a reductio of bottom-up, reference based semantics, it has no tendency to establish the truth of its negative …Read more
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23Unconventional Linguistic Normativity: Maybe Not So Deranged After AllPhilosophia 51 (3): 1425-1443. 2023.This paper argues that Donald Davidson’s infamous denial in “A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs” that there is any such thing as a language, though it may not be fully supported by the arguments given for it in that paper, is nonetheless entailed by his semantic views generally, according to which the literal, linguistic meaning of a speaker’s words on an occasion is determined by how the speaker intended to be understood. In favor of this view, and thus against conventional languages, the paper the…Read more
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10Is this a Truth-Maker which I See Before Me? Comments on Eli Chudnoff's IntuitionFlorida Philosophical Review 16 (1): 94-104. 2016.This paper is a result of remarks delivered at the 2014 conference of the Florida Philosophical Association during a book symposium on Elijah Chudnoff's Intuition.
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28Reflections on Davidsonian Semantic PublicityProtoSociology 34 73-97. 2017.The topic of the present essay is the proper understanding of Donald Davidson’s version of the publicity requirement for the determinants of linguistic meaning. On the understanding I promote, the requirement is very strict indeed. My narrow aim is to show how such a strict conception of the publicity requirement can be maintained despite the evident need for interpreters to go beyond what is public on that conception in the process of constructing Davidsonian theories of meaning. Towards that a…Read more
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19Intrinsic Value and Overcoming Feinberg's Benefit PrinciplePublic Affairs Quarterly 8 (2): 125-140. 1994.
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149Biological function, selection, and reductionBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (1): 69-82. 1997.It is widely assumed that selection history accounts of function can support a fully reductive naturalization of functional properties. I argue that this assumption is false. A problem with the alternative causal role account of function in this context is that it invokes the teleological notion of a goal in analysing real function. The selection history account, if it is to have reductive status, must not do the same. But attention to certain cases of selection history in biology, specifically …Read more
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119Sellarsian Behaviorism, Davidsonian Interpretivism, and First Person Authority (review)Philosophia 42 (2): 1-24. 2014.Roughly, behaviorist accounts of self-knowledge hold that first persons acquire knowledge of their own minds in just the same way other persons do: by means of behavioral evidence. One obvious problem for such accounts is that the fail to explain the great asymmetry between the authority of first person as opposed to other person attributions of thoughts and other mental states and events. Another is that the means of acquisition seems so different: other persons must infer my mental contents fr…Read more
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The necessity of receptivity : Exploring a unified account of Kantian sensibility and understandingIn Rebecca Kukla (ed.), Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant's Critical Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. 2006.
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49Lawrence Sklar, theory and truth: philosophical critique within foundational scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 33 (3): 583-587. 2002.
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39Taking back the excitement : construing "theoretical concepts" so as to avoid the threat of underdeterminationIn Gerhard Preyer (ed.), Donald Davidson on truth, meaning, and the mental, Oxford University Press. pp. 269. 2012.
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110Interpreting Davidson’s Omniscient InterpreterCanadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (3): 335-374. 1995.Donald Davidson infamously claims that belief is in its nature veridical, and that skepticism is for this reason fundamentally incoherent. To those who take the issue of external world skepticism seriously, Davidson's arguments may seem to involve a conjuring trick. In particular, his invocation of an ‘omniscient interpreter’, whose intelligibility supposedly ensures that our beliefs must be largely true, has the air of incense and lantern-rubbing about it. Davidson's claim has received consider…Read more
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330Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in SpinozaPhilosophical Review 107 (4): 603. 1998.In this book, Della Rocca traces out the conceptual links between key concepts and principles of Spinoza's system bearing on representation and the mind-body problem. In the course of doing so, he presents and defends a number of new, interesting theses about Spinoza's thought on these matters. The arguments are presented with impressive clarity and in great detail. All in all, the book is a significant contribution to the literature on Spinoza's metaphysics and epistemology, and should be read …Read more
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24Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes's MeditationsIntellectual History Review 20 (2): 277-279. 2010.No abstract
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19The Dialectical Illusion of a Vicious BootstrapIn Olsson Erik (ed.), The Epistemology of Keith Lehrer, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 195--216. 2003.
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107Interpretation, reasons, and factsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 46 (3): 346-376. 2003.Donald Davidson argues that his interpretivist approach to meaning shows that accounting for the intentionality and objectivity of thought does not require an appeal, as John McDowell has urged it does, to a specifically rational relation between mind and world. Moreover, Davidson claims that the idea of such a relation is unintelligible. This paper takes issue with these claims. It shows, first, that interpretivism, contra Davidson's express view, does not depend essentially upon an appeal to a…Read more
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58A Spinozistic Deduction of the Kantian Concept of a Natural EndPhilo 14 (2): 176-200. 2011.Kant distinguishes “natural ends” as exhibiting a part-whole reciprocal causal structure in virtue of which we can only conceive them as having been caused through a conception, as if by intelligent design. Here, I put pressure on Kant’s position by arguing that his view of what individuates and makes cognizable material bodies of any kind is inadequate and needs supplementation. Drawing on Spinoza, I further urge that the needed supplement is precisely the whole-part reciprocal causal structure…Read more
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37Review: Guyer, Knowledge, Reason, and Taste: Kant's Response to Hume (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (9). 2008.
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33Erratum to: Sellarsian Behaviorism, Davidsonian Interpretivism, and First Person AuthorityPhilosophia 42 (2): 457-457. 2014.