Ulvi Doguoglu

Undoubtedly, emotions sometimes thwart our epistemic endeavours. But do they also contribute to epistemic success? The thesis that emotions 'skew the epistemic landscape', as Peter Goldie puts it in this volume, has long been discussed in epistemology. Recently, however, philosophers have called for a systematic reassessment of the epistemic relevance of emotions. The resulting debate at the interface between epistemology, theory of emotions and cognitive science examines emotions in a wide range offunctions. These include motivating inquiry, establishing relevance, as well as providing access to facts, beliefs and non-propositional aspects ofknowledge. This volume is the first collection focusing on the claim that we cannot but account for emotions if we are to understand the processes and evaluations related to empirical knowledge. All essays are specifically written for this collection by leading researchers in this relatively new and developing field, bringing together work from backgrounds such as pragmatism and scepticism, cognitive theories of emotions and cognitive science, Caitesian epistemology and virtue epistemology.

It seems natural to think that one of the businesses of the philosophy of language is to provide an explanation of the understanding of language. It is the aim of the present essay to show that and why this is not so. Instead, I shall hold that both meaning and understanding go beyond the scope of traditional philosophy of language. Philosophers widely agree today that the meaning of linguistic expressions is to be explained by recourse to the use of words and sentences; an explanation of this use does not only take recourse to linguistic but to any kind of human practices, and according to Wittgenstein these in turn can neither be fully described from outside these practices nor can they be theoretically captured once and for all. On the account suggested here a model of understanding in general yields a model of the content of linguistic expressions. Such a model of understanding calls for a renewal of philosophy as well as a recasting of philosophical argument and procedure. To sketch this project I shall review Putnam's struggle for an adequate theory of meaning and reference. In trying to disconnect understanding from meaning as far as psychological aspects are concerned, Putnam catches a "problem of reference." A comparable problem finds reflection in Kripke's influential reading of Wittgenstein on rules and private language. In both cases the problem grows from an inadequate use of two central notions, namely objectivity and subjectivity. An alternative reading of Wittgenstein along the lines of McDowell and later Putnam allows a new, pragmatic view on understanding, its subjects, and its objects.

When are the meanings of two utterances the same? And how, if at all, could we determine this sameness? In this paper I take a look at the contextualist answer of Hilary Putnam and Charles Travis. One characteristic trait of Hilary Putnam's conception of meaning is what he calls 'semantic externalism' and what I shall label 'public semantics' to avoid confusion with the topological or what I call 'locational' connotation of externalism in other contexts:1 the meaning of a word and the full meaning/sense of a sentence or utterance are not determined by some private mental state(s) of the speaker but are determined by the use of words on an occasion or in a saying. According to Hilary Putnam and Charles Travis (both elaborating on Wittgenstein's discussions in his Philosophical Investigations), the varieties of such situational uses or occasions, the varieties of public semantics, can themselves not be described or determined once and for all. It is therefore not possible to reduce or absorb each and every pragmatic aspect into semantics. That means that semantics is essentially open and questions as to the sameness of meaning or sense of utterances cannot be answered independently of a pragmatic approach. Travis extends this diagnosis in his most recent book {Unshadowed Thought) to thought, beliefs and attitudes: no one thought, attitude or belief can be individuated independently of relevant situational aspects, these including, among others, acts in accord with, say, an attitude on some occasion or other. The approach pursued here claims that pragmatics is in either of these areas unavoidable and genuine. It cannot be explained away or be re-absorbed into semantics or epistemology.2 This has important consequences for what it means to do philosophy, as can be seen in Putnam's arguments as to the unintelligibility of various philosophical positions.