Abstract Donald Davidson (1979) holds that quoting is a matter of referring demonstratively. In ‘The Wonder of Signs’, Adrian Haddock (2021) advances an original and challenging argument against this account of quotation. In this paper, I seek to defend Davidson’s account against Haddock’s argument, with an eye to shedding some light on a more fundamental disagreement Haddock has with Davidson.
Donald Davidson(1979)认为引用是一种论证性的指称。在《符号的奇迹》中,阿德里安·哈多克(2021)提出了一个原创的、具有挑战性的论点,反对这种引用的说法。在本文中,我试图为戴维森的说法辩护,反对阿道克的观点,并着眼于阐明阿道克与戴维森之间更根本的分歧。
{"title":"Referring and Articulating: Davidson and Haddock on Quotation","authors":"Zijian Zhu","doi":"10.1093/arisoc/aoad015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoad015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Donald Davidson (1979) holds that quoting is a matter of referring demonstratively. In ‘The Wonder of Signs’, Adrian Haddock (2021) advances an original and challenging argument against this account of quotation. In this paper, I seek to defend Davidson’s account against Haddock’s argument, with an eye to shedding some light on a more fundamental disagreement Haddock has with Davidson.","PeriodicalId":35222,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society","volume":"4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136292624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Graduate Papers from the 2022 Joint Session It is often said that Aristotle takes geometrical objects to be absolutely unmovable and unchangeable. However, Greek geometrical practice does appeal to motion and change, and geometers seem to consider their objects apt to be manipulated. In this paper, I examine if and how Aristotle’s philosophy of geometry can account for the geometers’ practices and way of talking. First, I illustrate three different ways in which Greek geometry appeals to change. Second, I examine Aristotle’s ontology of geometrical objects and argue that although the truth-makers of geometrical statements are in fact unmovable because they are properties of sensible objects, geometers ‘separate them in thought’ and treat them as substances apt to be modified. Finally, I examine whether allowing for the possibility of manipulating these semi-fictional geometrical individuals creates problems for the applicability of geometry. I find that it does not, insofar as one accepts that geometry is not meant to track physical change but merely to study the instantaneous geometrical configuration of sensible bodies, and is thus only applicable at the instant.
{"title":"Geometrical Changes: Change and Motion in Aristotle’s Philosophy of Geometry","authors":"Chiara Martini","doi":"10.1093/arisoc/aoad018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoad018","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Graduate Papers from the 2022 Joint Session It is often said that Aristotle takes geometrical objects to be absolutely unmovable and unchangeable. However, Greek geometrical practice does appeal to motion and change, and geometers seem to consider their objects apt to be manipulated. In this paper, I examine if and how Aristotle’s philosophy of geometry can account for the geometers’ practices and way of talking. First, I illustrate three different ways in which Greek geometry appeals to change. Second, I examine Aristotle’s ontology of geometrical objects and argue that although the truth-makers of geometrical statements are in fact unmovable because they are properties of sensible objects, geometers ‘separate them in thought’ and treat them as substances apt to be modified. Finally, I examine whether allowing for the possibility of manipulating these semi-fictional geometrical individuals creates problems for the applicability of geometry. I find that it does not, insofar as one accepts that geometry is not meant to track physical change but merely to study the instantaneous geometrical configuration of sensible bodies, and is thus only applicable at the instant.","PeriodicalId":35222,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society","volume":"98 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135420318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract It is possible to tease out two questions in connection with the epistemological problem of other minds: (i) How do I know what others think and feel? and (ii) How do I know that others think and feel? Fred Dretske offers a perceptual account of our knowledge of other minds that yields an answer to (i) but not (ii). Quassim Cassam uses Dretske’s perceptual account to show how we can answer both (i) and (ii). In this paper I show how we can use Dretske’s work to understand some work by Stanley Cavell. I suggest that, where Dretske claims that we cannot answer (ii), Cavell holds that (ii) is a question that reflects a misunderstanding of our relations to others. In the place of asking how I can know that others think and feel, Cavell holds that I must acknowledge the other. And at the heart of this acknowledgment is an acceptance of others as separate from me. I must acknowledge the other as an other to me.
{"title":"<scp>xii</scp>—Knowing and Acknowledging Others","authors":"Anita Avramides","doi":"10.1093/arisoc/aoad017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoad017","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract It is possible to tease out two questions in connection with the epistemological problem of other minds: (i) How do I know what others think and feel? and (ii) How do I know that others think and feel? Fred Dretske offers a perceptual account of our knowledge of other minds that yields an answer to (i) but not (ii). Quassim Cassam uses Dretske’s perceptual account to show how we can answer both (i) and (ii). In this paper I show how we can use Dretske’s work to understand some work by Stanley Cavell. I suggest that, where Dretske claims that we cannot answer (ii), Cavell holds that (ii) is a question that reflects a misunderstanding of our relations to others. In the place of asking how I can know that others think and feel, Cavell holds that I must acknowledge the other. And at the heart of this acknowledgment is an acceptance of others as separate from me. I must acknowledge the other as an other to me.","PeriodicalId":35222,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society","volume":"185 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136375718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Many pressing problems are of the following kind: some collection of actions of multiple people will produce some morally significant outcome (good or bad), but each individual action in the collection seems to make no difference to the outcome. These problems pose theoretical problems (especially for act-consequentialism), and practical problems for agents trying to figure out what they ought to do. Much recent literature on such problems has focused on whether it is possible for each action in such a collection to make such a tiny impact on the world that it makes no expected difference to the outcomes with which we’re concerned. I argue that even if this is impossible, there are cases in which each action makes no difference, not because it has such a tiny effect on the world, but because if it were not performed, a similar action would be. This recognition allows us to connect these problems with discussions of structural injustice.
{"title":"Inefficacy, Pre-emption and Structural Injustice","authors":"Nikhil Venkatesh","doi":"10.1093/arisoc/aoad014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoad014","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Many pressing problems are of the following kind: some collection of actions of multiple people will produce some morally significant outcome (good or bad), but each individual action in the collection seems to make no difference to the outcome. These problems pose theoretical problems (especially for act-consequentialism), and practical problems for agents trying to figure out what they ought to do. Much recent literature on such problems has focused on whether it is possible for each action in such a collection to make such a tiny impact on the world that it makes no expected difference to the outcomes with which we’re concerned. I argue that even if this is impossible, there are cases in which each action makes no difference, not because it has such a tiny effect on the world, but because if it were not performed, a similar action would be. This recognition allows us to connect these problems with discussions of structural injustice.","PeriodicalId":35222,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135306737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason Kant raises a famous question: how is metaphysics possible as a science? Kant posed this question for his predecessors in early modern philosophy. I raise this question anew for the resurgence of metaphysics within analytic philosophy. I begin by dividing the question of the possibility of metaphysics into separate questions about its semantic and epistemic possibility, and translate them into contemporary terms as: (1) Why do terms in metaphysical theories refer? (2) How do we have knowledge in metaphysics? I then argue that the inflationary conception of metaphysics cannot explain the semantic possibility of metaphysics and, consequently, cannot explain its epistemic possibility. I then argue, more briefly, that a deflationary conception cannot satisfactorily answer the Kantian questions either. The critical path alone remains open.
{"title":"<scp>ix</scp>—How Is Metaphysics Possible?","authors":"Nicholas F Stang","doi":"10.1093/arisoc/aoad013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoad013","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason Kant raises a famous question: how is metaphysics possible as a science? Kant posed this question for his predecessors in early modern philosophy. I raise this question anew for the resurgence of metaphysics within analytic philosophy. I begin by dividing the question of the possibility of metaphysics into separate questions about its semantic and epistemic possibility, and translate them into contemporary terms as: (1) Why do terms in metaphysical theories refer? (2) How do we have knowledge in metaphysics? I then argue that the inflationary conception of metaphysics cannot explain the semantic possibility of metaphysics and, consequently, cannot explain its epistemic possibility. I then argue, more briefly, that a deflationary conception cannot satisfactorily answer the Kantian questions either. The critical path alone remains open.","PeriodicalId":35222,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society","volume":"434 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135733573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract One of Octavia Butler’s common sites of exploration concerns the impact of parenting on her main characters. She appeared to locate reproduction and child-rearing as parts of human life with great potentials for transformed futures. From a perspective of intergenerational survival, that hope appears perfectly reasonable. In this letter to Butler, I put the goal of intergenerational survival into question as an existential mandate by querying its relationship to gestative capture. Gestative capture here refers to the ready capacity to reduce an existent to immanence via their abilities to gestate ‘human’ or ‘human-like’ progeny. The conversation this letter stages with Butler and her work, which is only possible because of how clearly Butler understood gestative capture and how much she built it into her stories, asks the questions: What is ‘transcendence’ for Black women who can bear children? How ought we to imagine intergenerational survival? And when, if ever, should we put down ‘survival at all costs’ commitments?
{"title":"XIII—Dear Octavia Butler","authors":"Kristie Dotson","doi":"10.1093/arisoc/aoad011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoad011","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract One of Octavia Butler’s common sites of exploration concerns the impact of parenting on her main characters. She appeared to locate reproduction and child-rearing as parts of human life with great potentials for transformed futures. From a perspective of intergenerational survival, that hope appears perfectly reasonable. In this letter to Butler, I put the goal of intergenerational survival into question as an existential mandate by querying its relationship to gestative capture. Gestative capture here refers to the ready capacity to reduce an existent to immanence via their abilities to gestate ‘human’ or ‘human-like’ progeny. The conversation this letter stages with Butler and her work, which is only possible because of how clearly Butler understood gestative capture and how much she built it into her stories, asks the questions: What is ‘transcendence’ for Black women who can bear children? How ought we to imagine intergenerational survival? And when, if ever, should we put down ‘survival at all costs’ commitments?","PeriodicalId":35222,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135826527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In A Confection of Refutation (Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya), the twelfth-century philosopher and poet Śrīharṣa addresses a version of Meno’s paradox. This version of the paradox was well known in first millennium South Asia through the writings of two earlier Sanskrit philosophers, Śabarasvāmin (4th–5th century ce) and Śaṃkara (8th century ce). Both these thinkers proposed a solution to the paradox. I show how Śrīharṣa rejects this solution, and splits the old paradox into two new ones: the paradox of triviality and the paradox of incoherence. I argue that these paradoxes are connected to Śrīharṣa’s broader pessimism about the possibility of successful rational inquiry into certain philosophical questions.
在A Confection of Refutation (Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya)一书中,这位十二世纪的哲学家和诗人Śrīharṣa讲述了一个版本的Meno悖论。这个悖论的版本在公元一千年前的南亚通过两位早期的梵语哲学家Śabarasvāmin(公元4 - 5世纪)和Śaṃkara(公元8世纪)的著作而广为人知。这两位思想家都提出了解决这个悖论的方法。我展示了Śrīharṣa如何拒绝这种解决方案,并将旧的悖论分解为两个新的悖论:琐碎的悖论和不连贯的悖论。我认为,这些悖论与Śrīharṣa对成功理性探究某些哲学问题的可能性的更广泛的悲观主义有关。
{"title":"xi —Śrīharṣa on Two Paradoxes of Inquiry","authors":"Nilanjan Das","doi":"10.1093/arisoc/aoad010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoad010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In A Confection of Refutation (Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya), the twelfth-century philosopher and poet Śrīharṣa addresses a version of Meno’s paradox. This version of the paradox was well known in first millennium South Asia through the writings of two earlier Sanskrit philosophers, Śabarasvāmin (4th–5th century ce) and Śaṃkara (8th century ce). Both these thinkers proposed a solution to the paradox. I show how Śrīharṣa rejects this solution, and splits the old paradox into two new ones: the paradox of triviality and the paradox of incoherence. I argue that these paradoxes are connected to Śrīharṣa’s broader pessimism about the possibility of successful rational inquiry into certain philosophical questions.","PeriodicalId":35222,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46339868","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In what follows, I attempt to reconstruct Fichte’s and Hegel’s reasons for developing at almost the same time two very different conceptions of a rational economic order. Whereas Hegel, on the basis of his objective notion of reason, would recommend that a rational state, founded on the notion of right, should include a strictly confined, socially embedded market economy, Fichte, on the basis of his subjective notion of reason, thought instead that the very same state must adopt an economic order that might well be described as a ‘planned economy’. Throughout the article I discuss whether it is the stark differences in their methodological premisses or their very different ideas about the individual freedom to be institutionalized in the economic sphere that helps us understand their respective notions of a rational economy.
{"title":"XIV—Hegel and Fichte: Two Early Critiques of Capitalism","authors":"Axel Honneth","doi":"10.1093/arisoc/aoad016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoad016","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In what follows, I attempt to reconstruct Fichte’s and Hegel’s reasons for developing at almost the same time two very different conceptions of a rational economic order. Whereas Hegel, on the basis of his objective notion of reason, would recommend that a rational state, founded on the notion of right, should include a strictly confined, socially embedded market economy, Fichte, on the basis of his subjective notion of reason, thought instead that the very same state must adopt an economic order that might well be described as a ‘planned economy’. Throughout the article I discuss whether it is the stark differences in their methodological premisses or their very different ideas about the individual freedom to be institutionalized in the economic sphere that helps us understand their respective notions of a rational economy.","PeriodicalId":35222,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135830312","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
It is sometimes claimed that each of us has a special ‘first-person perspective’ on our own mind. It is also sometimes claimed that each of us confronts questions about what to do from a distinctively ‘agent-centred’ standpoint. This essay argues that the analogies between these claims are not just superficial, but point to the importance, in both cases, of a representational structure that sets ‘first-person’ awareness apart from external or ‘third-person’ awareness. I describe this structure and show its importance in clarifying some well-known claims about the importance of the agent’s standpoint in ethics.
{"title":"X—Ethics and the First-Person Perspective","authors":"M. Boyle","doi":"10.1093/arisoc/aoad012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoad012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 It is sometimes claimed that each of us has a special ‘first-person perspective’ on our own mind. It is also sometimes claimed that each of us confronts questions about what to do from a distinctively ‘agent-centred’ standpoint. This essay argues that the analogies between these claims are not just superficial, but point to the importance, in both cases, of a representational structure that sets ‘first-person’ awareness apart from external or ‘third-person’ awareness. I describe this structure and show its importance in clarifying some well-known claims about the importance of the agent’s standpoint in ethics.","PeriodicalId":35222,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45525737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Quine maintained that philosophical and scientific theorizing should be conducted in an untyped language, which has just one style of variables and quantifiers. By contrast, typed languages, such as those advocated by Frege and Russell, include multiple styles of variables and matching kinds of quantification. Which form should our theories take? In this article, I argue that expressivity does not favour typed languages over untyped ones.
{"title":"VI—On Type Distinctions and Expressivity","authors":"Salvatore Florio","doi":"10.1093/arisoc/aoad007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/arisoc/aoad007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Quine maintained that philosophical and scientific theorizing should be conducted in an untyped language, which has just one style of variables and quantifiers. By contrast, typed languages, such as those advocated by Frege and Russell, include multiple styles of variables and matching kinds of quantification. Which form should our theories take? In this article, I argue that expressivity does not favour typed languages over untyped ones.","PeriodicalId":35222,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47664036","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}