December 2, 2008 – 2:47 pm
Here are two quotes from the first few pages in the new reader Experimental Philosophy edited by Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols.
Of course, the most salient difference is just the fact that experimental philosophers conduct experiments and conceptual analysts do not. Thus, the conceptual analyst might write, “In this case, one would surely say…,” while [...]
August 28, 2008 – 10:36 am
Consider the following theses.
(A) For any person P, P exists iff P is alive.
(B) For any person P, P is alive iff P is not dead.
(C) Whether or not some person is dead is vague.
(D) Whether or not someone exists is not vague.
On the face of it, these four theses seem to be incompatible. If [...]
Dan Korman just posted a nice little discussion on Hawthorne’s objection to common sense ontology here. I don’t dispute anything Korman says, but this has inspired to test drive another response to this kind of argument that I’ve been kicking around for awhile.
Here’s the quote from Hawthorne that Korman uses.
“Barring a kind of anti-realism that [...]
Here’s a puzzle that Joan Weiner raises for supervaluationism from a recent PPQ paper. The basic idea is that supervaluationism is alleged to be in tension with perfectly acceptable scientific methodology. Here’s a quote from the paper that summarizes the point.
This much is certainly true; we want to know whether minoxidil (Rogaine) can prevent or [...]
SUNY-Fredonia’s own, Neil Feit, has a book coming out this summer.
OUP has a description - plus some nice blurbs from Andy Egan and John Perry on their website. I’m pasting all of that below.
Description
Philosophers typically suppose that the contents of our beliefs and other cognitive attitudes are propositions-things that might be true or [...]
Here’s one standard way to formulate the skeptical paradox.
I know that I have hands.
I don’t know I’m not a brain-in-a-vat.
If I don’t know that I’m not a brain-in-a-vat, then I don’t know that I have hands.
These three sentences cannot all be true, and yet each one seems plausible. Here are the standard replies.
The Standard Replies
Option [...]
In a previous post I presented an argument from Jubien aimed at direct reference theory that relied on mereological essentialism. Here is the post. Below is the argument again so you don’t have to click away.
Michael Jubien’s Argument Against Direct Reference
If Direct Reference theory is true, then ‘Venus’ in ‘Venus could have had different parts’ [...]
This seems like a very quick and hasty objection to direct reference theory from Michael Jubien, but it’s interesting. Direct Reference Theory recall is the thesis that the meaning of a name is the thing to which it refers (and nothing more).
From the present perspective [direct reference] cannot be right. It is an indisputable modal [...]
You’ve gotta love it when a car commercial picks up on the semantic/pragmatic confusion that sometimes goes with the logical connective ‘and’…
I’ve been writing about Weak Substantivalism. Here are the two previous posts.
1. Two Kinds of Substantivalism2. They Are There: Some Consequences for Weak Substantivalism
In the second post, I promised to post about some more counter-intuitive consequences of weak substantivalism. Here they are.
More Counter-Intuitive Consequences for Weak SubstantivalismSuppose we have an Andy-shaped bag of turnips. Suppose [...]