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A context-shifting example involves a putatively non-ambiguous, non-elliptical, non-indexical declarative sentence, some distinct utterances of which differ in truth value despite sameness of place, time, surrounding objects, and other physical factors. Charles Travis has spawned a large literature by arguing that such examples undermine compositional truth-conditional semantics. After explaining...
Some content externalists claim that if C is a theoretical concept and “C” expresses C, then the content of C in a community at a time is determined by how some members of the community at the time—call them “experts”—understand C or use “C”. Thus, when non-expert Chauncey utters “C”, the content of the concept he expresses does not depend entirely on his intrinsic physical properties, contra the...
According to a seminal paper by Barsalou (Frames, fields, and contrasts, 1992), frames are attribute-value-matrices for representing exemplars or concepts. Frames have been used as a tool for reconstructing scientific concepts as well as conceptual change within scientific revolutions (Andersen and Nersessian, in Philos Sci 67:224–241, 2000; Chen and Barker, in Philos Sci 67:208–223, 2000; Chen, in...
When discussing knowledge, two relations are of interest: justified doxastic accessibility $$S$$ S (for all the agent is justified in believing in $$x$$ x , she is in $$y$$ y ) and justification equivalence $$E$$ E (the agent would have in $$y$$ y exactly the same justified beliefs that she has in $$x$$ x ). Speaking of compatibility with the agent’s...
The paper outlines an interpretation of one of the most important and original contributions of David Hilbert’s monograph Foundations of Geometry (1899), namely his internal arithmetization of geometry. It is claimed that Hilbert’s profound interest in the problem of the introduction of numbers into geometry responded to certain epistemological aims and methodological concerns that were fundamental...
It has been an open question whether or not we can define a belief revision operation that is distinct from simple belief expansion using paraconsistent logic. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of meeting the challenge of defining a belief revision operation using the resources made available by the study of dynamic epistemic logic in the presence of paraconsistent logic. We will show...
Huw Price has argued that on an interventionist account of cause the distinction is perspectival, and the claim prompted some interesting responses from interventionists and in particular an exchange with Woodward that raises questions about what it means to say that one or another structure is perspectival. I’ll introduce his reasons for claiming that the distinction between cause and effect on an...
This paper explains how the notion of justification transmission can be used to ground a notion of knowledge transmission. It then explains how transmission theories can characterise schoolteacher cases, which have prominently been presented as counterexamples to transmission theories.
Vann McGee has argued against solutions to the liar paradox that simply restrict the scope of the T sentences as little as possible. This argument is often taken to disprove Paul Horwich’s preferred solution to the liar paradox for his Minimal Theory of truth (MT). I argue that Horwich’s theory is different enough from the theory McGee criticized that these criticisms do not apply to Horwich’s theory...
There is a line of reasoning in metaepistemology that is congenial to naturalism and hard to resist, yet ultimately misguided: that knowledge might be a natural kind, and that this would undermine the use of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge. In this paper, I first bring out various problems with Hilary Kornblith’s argument from the causal–explanatory indispensability of knowledge to...
This paper studies a generalization of rational choice theory. I briefly review the motivations that Helzner gives for his conditional choice construction (2013). Then, I focus on the important class of conditional choice functions with vacuous second tiers. This class is interesting for both formal and philosophical reasons. I argue that this class makes explicit one of conditional choice’s normative...
This paper offers a detailed criticism of different versions of modal scepticism proposed by Van Inwagen and Hawke, and, against these views, attempts to vindicate our reliance on thought experiments in philosophy. More than one different meaning of “modal scepticism” will be distinguished. Focusing mainly on Hawke’s more detailed view I argue that none of these versions of modal scepticism is compelling,...
Does vagueness underlie the mass/count distinction? My answer is no. I motivate this answer in two ways. First, I argue against Chierchia’s (Synthese 174:99–149, 2010) recent attempt to explain the distinction in terms of vagueness. Second, I give a more general argument that no such account will succeed.
In this paper I provide a theory of the speech act of assertion according to which assertion is a species of joint action. In doing so I rely on a theory of joint action developed in more detail elsewhere. Here we need to distinguish between the genus, joint action, and an important species of joint action, namely, what I call joint epistemic action. In the case of the latter, but not necessarily...
In The Explanatory Dispensability of Idealizations, Sam Baron suggests a possible strategy enabling the indispensability argument to break the symmetry between mathematical claims and idealization assumptions in scientific models. Baron’s distinction between mathematical and non-mathematical idealization, I claim, is in need of a more compelling criterion, because in scientific models idealization...
In ‘The varieties of indispensability arguments’ Marco Panza and Andrea Sereni argue that, for any clear notion of indispensability, either there is no conclusive argument for the thesis that mathematics is indispensable to science, or the notion of indispensability at hand does not support mathematical realism. In this paper, I shall not object to this main thesis directly. I shall instead try to...
Recent advancements in the brain sciences have enabled researchers to determine, with increasing accuracy, patterns and locations of neural activation associated with various psychological functions. These techniques have revived a longstanding debate regarding the relation between the mind and the brain: while many authors claim that neuroscientific data can be employed to advance theories of higher...
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