Pub Date : 2023-11-14DOI: 10.1080/0020174x.2023.2280615
Damiano Costa
Priority monism is the view that the cosmos is the basic concrete entity on which each of its parts depends. Kovacs has recently argued that none of the classical notions of dependence could be used to spell out priority monism. I argue that four notions of dependence – namely rigid existential dependence, generic existential dependence, explanatory dependence, and generalised explanatory dependence – can indeed be used to spell out priority monism and specify the conditions under which this is possible.
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Pub Date : 2023-11-14DOI: 10.1080/0020174x.2023.2278031
Jan Plate
ABSTRACTHigher-order logic, with its type-theoretic apparatus known as the simple theory of types (STT), has increasingly come to be employed in theorising about properties, relations, and states of affairs – or ‘intensional entities’ for short. This paper argues against this employment of STT and offers an alternative: ordinal type theory (OTT). Very roughly, STT and OTT can be regarded as complementary simplifications of the ‘ramified theory of types’ outlined in the Introduction to Principia Mathematica (on a realist reading). While STT, understood as a theory of intensional entities, retains the Fregean division of properties and relations into a multiplicity of categories according to their adicities and ‘input types’ and discards the division of intensional entities into different ‘orders’, OTT takes the opposite approach: it retains the hierarchy of orders (though with some modifications) and discards the categorisation of properties and relations according to their adicities and input types. In contrast to STT, this latter approach avoids intensional counterparts of the Epimenides and related paradoxes. Fundamental intensional entities lie at the base of the proposed hierarchy and are also given a prominent part to play in the individuation of non-fundamental intensional entities.KEYWORDS: Propertiesrelationsstates of affairstype theoryhigher-order metaphysicsfundamentality AcknowledgementsFor valuable discussion of (or related to) material presented in this paper, I am grateful to Andrew Bacon, Kit Fine, Peter Fritz, Jeremy Goodman, Daniel Nolan, Robert Trueman, and Juhani Yli-Vakkuri. Special thanks to Francesco Orilia for detailed comments on an earlier draft. For financial support, I am grateful to the Swiss National Science Foundation (grants 100012_173040 and 100012_192200).Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 I mainly have in mind Williamson (Citation2013), Dorr (Citation2016), Fritz and Goodman (Citation2016), Goodman (Citation2017), Bacon (Citation2019; Citation2020), Dorr, Hawthorne, and Yli-Vakkuri (Citation2021), and Bacon and Dorr (Citationforthcoming). Major influences on this literature include Prior (Citation1971) and Williamson (Citation2003). Skiba (Citation2021) offers a survey. Critical voices include Orilia and Landini (Citation2019), Hofweber (Citation2022), Whittle (Citation2023, 1642–1645), Menzel (Citationforthcoming), and Sider (CitationMS). Also cf. Florio (Citationforthcoming).2 In the literature of higher-order metaphysics, the term ‘state of affairs’ is usually avoided in favour of ‘proposition’. Nonetheless, I shall here speak of states of affairs (or simply ‘states’), as this term goes more naturally together with ‘property’ and ‘relation’, whereas ‘proposition’ connotes something more fine-grained and sentence-like. (Cf., e.g., Dorr [Citation2016, 54n.].)3 A more detailed overview of LFO can be found in Shapiro and Kouri Kissel (Citation2018).4 This not
高阶逻辑,以其被称为简单类型理论(STT)的类型理论工具,越来越多地被用于对性质、关系和事件状态(或简称“内涵实体”)的理论化。本文提出了一种替代方法:序数型理论(OTT)。非常粗略地说,STT和OTT可以被视为《数学原理导论》(关于现实主义阅读)中概述的“分支类型理论”的互补简化。虽然STT被理解为一种内涵实体理论,保留了Fregean根据其复杂度和“输入类型”将属性和关系划分为多种类别,并放弃了将内涵实体划分为不同的“顺序”,但OTT采取了相反的方法:它保留了顺序的层次结构(尽管有一些修改),并根据其复杂度和输入类型放弃了属性和关系的分类。与STT相反,后一种方法避免了埃庇米尼德斯和相关悖论的内涵对应。基本内涵实体位于所提出的层次结构的基础上,并且在非基本内涵实体的个性化中也发挥着突出作用。对于本文中提出的(或相关的)材料的有价值的讨论,我要感谢Andrew Bacon、Kit Fine、Peter Fritz、Jeremy Goodman、Daniel Nolan、Robert Trueman和Juhani Yli-Vakkuri。特别感谢Francesco Orilia对早期草案的详细评论。在资金支持方面,我感谢瑞士国家科学基金会(资助100012_173040和100012_192200)。披露声明作者未报告潜在的利益冲突。注1我主要记得威廉森(Citation2013)、多尔(Citation2016)、弗里茨和古德曼(Citation2016)、古德曼(Citation2017)、培根(Citation2019;Citation2020), Dorr, Hawthorne, and Yli-Vakkuri (Citation2021),以及Bacon and Dorr (citation即将出版)。主要影响这一文献的有Prior (Citation1971)和Williamson (Citation2003)。Skiba (Citation2021)提供了一项调查。批评声音包括Orilia和Landini (Citation2019), Hofweber (Citation2022), Whittle (Citation2023, 1642-1645), Menzel (citation即将出版)和Sider (CitationMS)。也参见弗洛里奥(即将引用)在高级形而上学的文献中,通常避免使用“事态”这个词,而使用“命题”。尽管如此,我在这里还是要说事件的状态(或简单地说“状态”),因为这个词与“属性”和“关系”更自然地结合在一起,而“命题”则意味着更细粒度和更像句子的东西。(参见,例如,Dorr [Citation2016, 54n.])3关于LFO的更详细概述可以在Shapiro和Kouri Kissel (Citation2018)中找到这个符号遵循Williamson (Citation2013, 221f.),他的符号是Gallin (Citation1975, 68)引入的符号的变体Thiel (Citation2002)简要概述了Behmann与Gödel和Dubislav的通信,并对他的建议进行了有益的讨论。也参见费曼(Citation1984)。在给Behmann的一封信中,Ramsey写道,“函数和参数的层次结构是(类型理论)的一部分,我觉得它几乎无法被质疑”(Mancosu Citation2020, 24)。他没有详细说明他为什么那样想参见Tarski (Citation1935,§4),他提出了一种基于对自然语言表达的“语义范畴”的考虑的STT形式。然而,在他的后记中,他放弃了他先前的观点,并相当严肃地认为,为了表达能力的利益,STT可能需要被放弃最近,巴顿和楚曼(Citation2022)对STT的辩护明确引用了弗雷格的观点,这反过来又引用了楚曼(Citation2021)对“弗雷格现实主义”的辩护。Trueman的中心论点是“假设一个属性可能是一个对象是无稽之谈”(2n.)。在这里,对象被理解为"可以用一个单项来指称的任何事物",而性质则被理解为"可以用一个谓词来指称的任何事物"。在书的后面,当楚门区分“术语-指称”和“谓词-指称”时,相关的指称概念发生了分歧。在关键时刻,Trueman的论证诉诸于这样一个要求:“适用于谓词的指称概念必须允许我们反驳谓词”(第52页)。但是为什么这个要求应该被接受还不是很清楚参见Jones (Citation2018,§4.2)。这一段的其余部分基本上与同一篇论文的3.3节一致。 这与Behmann (Citation1931)的建议也没有太大的关系,在上面的2.2节中已经简要地提到过,即除非谓词可以用原始词汇重写,否则给定对象的谓词是不可预测的。Behmann在他的(Citation1959)中提出了一个更复杂的版本。然而,无论是这个版本还是最初的版本都没有提供一个逃避埃庇米尼德悖论的方法人们很容易设想一种与模糊谓词(如“is bald”或“is a table”)的语义大致相似的方法。这个想法是,即使没有tablehood和秃顶的属性(也就是说,没有与“是一张桌子”和“是秃顶”精确对应的属性),也有一些属性可以说是通过这些谓词的可能的精确来选择的,这足以使它们在语义上不存在缺陷——或者至少足以使它们在语义上不像“是燃素”或“轨道火神”那样有缺陷设R为上述(假设)关系,即λx,y,z∃w((w=y)∧(x=w(z)))。为什么我们在这里考虑这个相对复杂的关系,而不是简单的λx, y, z (x = y (z))在于,后者的关系,如果存在,有一个实体实例化的x, y,和z,在这个秩序,只有在实际上存在一个实例化的y z。它将不是一个“普遍适用”关系,而R,如果存在,会有一个实例化的x, y,和z,在这个订单,回到悖论,设Q为λx∃y(R(y,x,x)∧(y≠∞))的性质,并考虑状态Q(Q)是否成立。我们可以首先注意到Q(Q)是状态∃y(R(y,Q,Q)∧(y≠∞)),如果R=λx,y,z∃w((w=y)∧(x=w(z))),并且给定(S6),它与(*)∃y,w((w=Q)∧(y=w(Q))∧(y≠∞)。(*)由此很容易看出,如果Q(Q)成立,那么它与∞是不同的。然而,R用不包含非逻辑常数或自由变量的项表示∅,∅;Q和Q(Q)也是如此。因此,如果Q(Q)得到,那么它和(S6)是互为必要的,即由(S6)表示它们是同一状态。由于一个状态不能既不同于又相同于,我们可以得出Q(Q)不成立的结论。所以它一定不同于,因为,很容易得到。但由此可以推知(∗),即Q(Q)本身,确实得到了矛盾反对者可能会争辩说我本末倒置了:与其依靠我关于实例化的讨论在语义上没有缺陷的假设来证明层次结构的合理性,我应该在沉迷于实例化的讨论之前建立层次结构。然而,有争议的是,如果有独立的理由认为实例化的讨论是无缺陷的,那么人们可以合法地朝相反的方向前进。实例化概念在构建内涵实体理论时的理论有用性给出了这样一个理由。(同样参见下文第6.1节)44诚然,R的存在性并不是由上述本体论推导出来的。但是为了举例,让我们忽略这一点设x为任意实体,设t为任意表示
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Pub Date : 2023-11-13DOI: 10.1080/0020174x.2023.2278036
Endre Begby
Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
点击放大图片点击缩小图片披露声明作者未发现潜在的利益冲突。
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Pub Date : 2023-11-05DOI: 10.1080/0020174x.2023.2278032
Vera Matarese
ABSTRACTThe replication crisis has spawned discussions on the meaning of replication. In fact, in order to determine whether an experiment fails to replicate, it is necessary to establish what replication is. This is, however, a difficult task, as it is possible to attribute different meanings to it. This paper offers a solution to this problem of ambiguity by engineering a concept of replication that, if compared to other proposals, stands out for being not only broadly applicable but also sufficiently specific. It features a minimal level of operationalism, which would otherwise limit its applicability, while it heavily relies on replication’s specific epistemic functions, which are inter-disciplinary. Another merit is its context sensitivity, which enables it to differentiate instances of replication from non-instances of replication in every scientific discipline according to the discipline’s own standards.KEYWORDS: Replicationambiguityconceptual engineeringresampling account of replicationcontextuality AcknowledgmentsI would like to express my sincere gratitude to Claus Beisbart and Matthias Rolffs from the University of Bern, and to two anonymous reviewers of this journal for reading my paper. Their valuable insights and constructive feedback significantly contributed to the refinement of this paper. I am also indebted to the audience at the reading group in Philosophy of Science at Caltech (California Institute of Technology). Their thoughtful questions and engaging discussions helped me enhance the quality of this work. Furthermore, I extend my heartfelt appreciation to the team of the Group of Materials Research with Neutron and Ion Beams (MRNIB) led by Dr. Jiří Vacík at the Czech Academy of Sciences for their feedback on my project on replicability. Their input, particularly the suggestion of the case of replication for thermal neutron-induced reactions in nuclear physics, significantly enriched the content of this paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 ‘Experiment’ should be understood here as a general term encompassing measurements, studies, and observations. The same is true for the use of ‘experiment’ in the definition of Replication2.2 That replication is an ambiguous term is discussed also in Schmidt (Citation2009): ‘The word replication is used as […] to describe various meanings’ (p. 90); ‘the notion of replication has several meanings and is a very ambiguous term.’ (p. 98). See Leonelli (Citation2018) for a more exhaustive list of meanings of replication.3 See for instance in the abstract, where Machery (Citation2020) states: ‘This article develops a new, general account of replication (“the Resampling Account of replication”)’ (p. 545).4 A factor of an experiment is a controlled independent variable. Levels should be understood as the states, values, or magnitudes that a factor could take. For the case of treatment, for instance, a medication could be given in differen
摘要复制危机引发了对复制意义的讨论。事实上,为了确定一个实验是否不能复制,有必要确定什么是复制。然而,这是一项艰巨的任务,因为它可以赋予不同的含义。本文通过设计一个复制的概念来解决这个模棱两可的问题,如果与其他建议相比,这个概念不仅广泛适用,而且足够具体。它具有最低水平的操作主义,否则将限制其适用性,而它严重依赖于复制的特定认知功能,这是跨学科的。另一个优点是它的上下文敏感性,这使它能够根据学科自己的标准区分每个科学学科中的复制实例和非复制实例。致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢致谢他们宝贵的见解和建设性的反馈对本文的改进做出了重要贡献。我还要感谢加州理工学院科学哲学读书会的听众。他们深思熟虑的问题和积极的讨论帮助我提高了工作的质量。此外,我衷心感谢捷克科学院Jiří Vacík博士领导的中子和离子束材料研究小组(MRNIB)团队对我的可复制性项目的反馈。他们的意见,特别是关于核物理中热中子诱导反应的复制情况的建议,大大丰富了本文的内容。披露声明作者未报告潜在的利益冲突。注1此处的“实验”应理解为包含测量、研究和观察的总称。在定义Replication2.2时使用“实验”也是如此。Schmidt (Citation2009)也讨论了复制是一个模棱两可的术语:“复制这个词被用作[…]来描述各种含义”(第90页);复制的概念有几个含义,是一个非常模糊的术语。(第98页)。参见Leonelli (Citation2018)获得复制的更详尽的含义列表例如,在摘要中,Machery (Citation2020)指出:“这篇文章发展了一种新的,一般的复制解释(“复制的重新采样解释”)”(第545页)实验的一个因素是一个受控的自变量。级别应该被理解为一个因素可能采取的状态、值或大小。例如,就治疗而言,一种药物可以以不同剂量(例如,10、20、50毫克)给予。这三个剂量构成治疗的三个级别例如,从不同人群中重新取样某些实验成分的实验应该算作“扩展”,而不是“复制”。[j] .机械工程学报,2016,(5)事实上,Schmidt暗示通过重新抽样来控制抽样误差的功能仅仅针对参与者的选择(Schmidt Citation2009, 93)在本文中,我对比了运算定义和函数定义。操作定义是那些包含特定特征的定义,说明哪一组过程构成了所定义的概念。功能定义是那些包含特定特征的定义,其中一组认知功能由被定义的概念实现。从这个意义上说,我与Nosek和Errington (Citation2020)中使用的“operational”一致除此之外,物理学家还使用工具和数据生成器,但这两个类别与刚才提到的重叠它更严格,因为Replication1允许重复完全相同的实验,而不需要重新采样,而Replication (RAR)需要重新采样Nosek和Errington (Citation2020)实际上提供了一个关于复制是否成功的中立定义。出于这个原因,他们声称,任何复制的结果都应该增加或减少我们对先前研究声明的信心。在这里,我提供了它们对于成功复制的定义,因为这是前面讨论的其他概念所做的。如果复制是成功的,那么它的结果应该增加(而不是减少)我们声称我们已经复制的信心关于我们如何在定性研究中概念化信度和效度的争论仍然是开放的。人们提出了不同的建议。 参见Altheide and Johnson (Citation1994);古巴和林肯(Citation1981);Kuzel and Like (Citation1991)。关于最近的解释,请参见Franklin和Ballan (Citation2001)。亚里士多德提出的语义歧义测试是试图构建一个包含所有不同含义的概念。如果这是可能的,那么表面上的歧义就会消失。参见斯坦福哲学百科全书(Sennet Citation2016)中的“歧义”条目。
{"title":"A new concept of replication","authors":"Vera Matarese","doi":"10.1080/0020174x.2023.2278032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174x.2023.2278032","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThe replication crisis has spawned discussions on the meaning of replication. In fact, in order to determine whether an experiment fails to replicate, it is necessary to establish what replication is. This is, however, a difficult task, as it is possible to attribute different meanings to it. This paper offers a solution to this problem of ambiguity by engineering a concept of replication that, if compared to other proposals, stands out for being not only broadly applicable but also sufficiently specific. It features a minimal level of operationalism, which would otherwise limit its applicability, while it heavily relies on replication’s specific epistemic functions, which are inter-disciplinary. Another merit is its context sensitivity, which enables it to differentiate instances of replication from non-instances of replication in every scientific discipline according to the discipline’s own standards.KEYWORDS: Replicationambiguityconceptual engineeringresampling account of replicationcontextuality AcknowledgmentsI would like to express my sincere gratitude to Claus Beisbart and Matthias Rolffs from the University of Bern, and to two anonymous reviewers of this journal for reading my paper. Their valuable insights and constructive feedback significantly contributed to the refinement of this paper. I am also indebted to the audience at the reading group in Philosophy of Science at Caltech (California Institute of Technology). Their thoughtful questions and engaging discussions helped me enhance the quality of this work. Furthermore, I extend my heartfelt appreciation to the team of the Group of Materials Research with Neutron and Ion Beams (MRNIB) led by Dr. Jiří Vacík at the Czech Academy of Sciences for their feedback on my project on replicability. Their input, particularly the suggestion of the case of replication for thermal neutron-induced reactions in nuclear physics, significantly enriched the content of this paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 ‘Experiment’ should be understood here as a general term encompassing measurements, studies, and observations. The same is true for the use of ‘experiment’ in the definition of Replication2.2 That replication is an ambiguous term is discussed also in Schmidt (Citation2009): ‘The word replication is used as […] to describe various meanings’ (p. 90); ‘the notion of replication has several meanings and is a very ambiguous term.’ (p. 98). See Leonelli (Citation2018) for a more exhaustive list of meanings of replication.3 See for instance in the abstract, where Machery (Citation2020) states: ‘This article develops a new, general account of replication (“the Resampling Account of replication”)’ (p. 545).4 A factor of an experiment is a controlled independent variable. Levels should be understood as the states, values, or magnitudes that a factor could take. For the case of treatment, for instance, a medication could be given in differen","PeriodicalId":47504,"journal":{"name":"Inquiry-An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135725495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-25DOI: 10.1080/0020174x.2023.2272355
Amie L. Thomasson
Claims about what is necessary or possible play a central role in debates in metaphysics and elsewhere in philosophy. But how can we understand such claims, and how can we come to know which are true? Modal discourse has long presented formidable ontological, epistemological, and methodological problems - problems that arise or are exacerbated by assuming that modal talk aims to describe or track special features of this world, or other possible worlds. Norms and Necessity aims to revive a non-descriptivist approach to modality, holding that the function of modal discourse is not to describe or track anything, but rather to convey norms or rules (and what follows from them) in the useful form of indicatives. The book develops this ‘modal normativist’ approach, showing how it avoids the most serious objections that have kept similar approaches off the table for the past several decades (including the Frege-Geach problem, and problems of accounting for de re and a posteriori necessities). It also shows how a careful development of the normativist approach can help avoid or resolve the classic ontological, epistemological, and methodological problems of modality, as part of an overall deflationary approach to metaphysics.
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Pub Date : 2023-10-24DOI: 10.1080/0020174x.2023.2271616
Amie L. Thomasson
ABSTRACTThe critics in this volume raise several important challenges to the modal normativist position developed in Norms and Necessity, including whether the relation I claim holds between semantic rules and necessity claims generates spurious claims of metaphysical necessity, whether the view is circular (implicitly relying on a more 'robust' form of modal realism), and whether it conflicts with truth-conditional semantics. They also raise probing questions about how it compares to other views of modality, including a Lewisian view and an essentialist view. In these replies, I respond to these challenges in ways that precisify the relevant understanding of ‘semantic rules' and the forms they can take, that make clearer the direction of explanation in modal normativism in ways that show the view doesn't rely on a more ‘robust’ form of modal realism, and that give reason for thinking that there is actually no conflict between modal normativism and truth-conditional semantics. I also aim to give a fuller assessment of how it compares to other approaches to modality, including an essentialist approach.KEYWORDS: Modal normativism; essentialism; possible worlds; truth-conditional semantics; modal realism AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Kristie Miller, Rohan Sud, Jamie Dreier, Boris Kment, and David Plunkett for their helpful comments on prior versions of these replies.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 This builds on work I undertake more thoroughly in my more recent work on modal discourse (2023), which is intended as a further development of the work of Norms and Necessity, making use of work in systemic functional linguistics. Readers interested in developments after my (2020) may find that paper relevant.2 I come closest to discussing these issues in sections 5.2 and 5.3 of Norms and Necessity, though there is nothing exactly like Miller’s objection considered there.3 The easy ontological approach combines with modal normativism to give us simple realism about modal facts, properties, and possible worlds (see my 2020a, Chapter 6).4 See my (Citation2015, 156–157) for the fuller argument that such attempted ‘explanations’ would only be dormitive virtue explanations. Of course, from the normativist point of view, failure to provide explanatory truthmakers is no shortcoming – for it is a central part of the normativist approach that basic modal claims, as non-descriptive, don’t need truthmakers to ‘explain’ what ‘makes’ them true.5 See, e.g. Norms and Necessity, Chapter 8.6 Note that Miller seems open to the idea that such rules are incomplete and renegotiable, but this seems in tension with the requirement that we consider all possible scenarios in order to get the ‘correct’ statement of the rules.7 Though one may need additional introduction constraints to ensure that the worlds are complete and maximal etc. See Steinberg (Citation2013) and my discussion in my (2020a, 132–137).8 See Hal
{"title":"Norms and necessity: replies to critics","authors":"Amie L. Thomasson","doi":"10.1080/0020174x.2023.2271616","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174x.2023.2271616","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThe critics in this volume raise several important challenges to the modal normativist position developed in Norms and Necessity, including whether the relation I claim holds between semantic rules and necessity claims generates spurious claims of metaphysical necessity, whether the view is circular (implicitly relying on a more 'robust' form of modal realism), and whether it conflicts with truth-conditional semantics. They also raise probing questions about how it compares to other views of modality, including a Lewisian view and an essentialist view. In these replies, I respond to these challenges in ways that precisify the relevant understanding of ‘semantic rules' and the forms they can take, that make clearer the direction of explanation in modal normativism in ways that show the view doesn't rely on a more ‘robust’ form of modal realism, and that give reason for thinking that there is actually no conflict between modal normativism and truth-conditional semantics. I also aim to give a fuller assessment of how it compares to other approaches to modality, including an essentialist approach.KEYWORDS: Modal normativism; essentialism; possible worlds; truth-conditional semantics; modal realism AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Kristie Miller, Rohan Sud, Jamie Dreier, Boris Kment, and David Plunkett for their helpful comments on prior versions of these replies.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 This builds on work I undertake more thoroughly in my more recent work on modal discourse (2023), which is intended as a further development of the work of Norms and Necessity, making use of work in systemic functional linguistics. Readers interested in developments after my (2020) may find that paper relevant.2 I come closest to discussing these issues in sections 5.2 and 5.3 of Norms and Necessity, though there is nothing exactly like Miller’s objection considered there.3 The easy ontological approach combines with modal normativism to give us simple realism about modal facts, properties, and possible worlds (see my 2020a, Chapter 6).4 See my (Citation2015, 156–157) for the fuller argument that such attempted ‘explanations’ would only be dormitive virtue explanations. Of course, from the normativist point of view, failure to provide explanatory truthmakers is no shortcoming – for it is a central part of the normativist approach that basic modal claims, as non-descriptive, don’t need truthmakers to ‘explain’ what ‘makes’ them true.5 See, e.g. Norms and Necessity, Chapter 8.6 Note that Miller seems open to the idea that such rules are incomplete and renegotiable, but this seems in tension with the requirement that we consider all possible scenarios in order to get the ‘correct’ statement of the rules.7 Though one may need additional introduction constraints to ensure that the worlds are complete and maximal etc. See Steinberg (Citation2013) and my discussion in my (2020a, 132–137).8 See Hal","PeriodicalId":47504,"journal":{"name":"Inquiry-An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135315712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-20DOI: 10.1080/0020174x.2023.2269197
Renée Jorgensen
ABSTRACTThis article considers a particular explanation (offered in Chapter 7 of Begby 2021) for the persistence of prejudicial stereotypes: that pluralistic ignorance can motivate individuals to act according to the roles they prescribe – even if no individual in a community either believes or endorses the stereotype – and moreover this can make it rational for subsequent generations to acquire prejudiced beliefs. I begin by surveying a few different ways that ‘vestigial social practices’ can persist despite being privately disavowed by most or all members of a community. Noting that many of them are transparently compatible with not believing that the persistent practice is appropriate, I argue that rational consideration of relevant alternative explanations precludes treating others’ behaviour as a kind of testimonial evidence for such prejudicial beliefs. But while it is doubtful that social dynamics provide grounds for rationally acquiring prejudice, it is likely that they explain actual acquisition of prejudice. So when evaluating whether a society is prejudiced, Begby is right that we must look beyond the private thoughts of its individual members. We should attend to the stabilising forces of social expectations, as well as how past prejudice shaped our material environment to reproduce stereotype-conforming social outcomes.KEYWORDS: Stereotypessocial normsrationality of prejudice Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Haslanger (Citation2019, 11–13), drawing on McGeer (Citation2007) and others, suggests that the social aspects of agency in fact go much deeper, providing the foundational scaffolding for human cognition and learning. Rather than considering individual agency as prior to social interaction and predicting how others will act, McGeer argues that when we attribute beliefs or predict behaviour we are partly ‘giving ourselves over to the task of producing comprehensible patterns of well-behaved agency in ourselves and others’ (Citation2007, 149). On this picture, social coordination has a regulative and shaping role on individual agency.2 In some cases, participants are perfectly aware that few people privately endorse the norm, but still rationally expect to face second-order enforcement – penalties for either violating the norm or failing to penalize others’ violations – and so the behavioural pattern remains stable until they can be credibly assured safety from penalization. Very likely Begby is right that many vestigial norms actually persist in part through pluralistic ignorance, precisely because we are actually still invested in many of the norms we publicly disavow – including many gender norms. For excellent discussion of how the interconnectedness of a wide array of social scripts can make it very difficult to in fact cognitively move on from socially embedded role-based expectations, see Bicchieri and McNally (Citation2016).3 For Bicchieri, this is the feature that d
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Pub Date : 2023-10-18DOI: 10.1080/0020174x.2023.2267089
Grace Paterson
In speech act theory, we say there has been successful uptake of a speech act when a hearer has understood what the speaker was trying to say to them. I argue that it is possible to be understood without having what you say taken seriously. For a speech act to be without defect, then, hearers must not only take up the speech act, but also be open to responding to it in appropriate ways. I call this kind of openness receptivity and argue that it should be analysed as a kind of responsiveness to reasons. A receptive hearer takes the speaker's speech act as appropriately reason giving, while an unreceptive hearer does not. This analysis reveals subtle forms of communicative breakdown that bear similarities to phenomena such as illocutionary silencing and distortion but are both posterior to, and compatible with, uptake. The analysis also helps us understand how illocutionary acts give rise to specific perlocutionary effects by way of the hearer's practical reasoning.
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Pub Date : 2023-10-18DOI: 10.1080/0020174x.2023.2253275
Alexios Stamatiadis-Bréhier
ABSTRACTIn this paper I revisit an important response to the Moral Twin Earth (MTE) challenge: The Common Functional Role strategy (CFR). I argue that CFR is open to a revenge problem. MTE-cases allegedly show that two linguistic communities can be in genuine disagreement even when they are regulated by distinct families of properties. CFR provides a way to reconcile the intuition that the two communities are in genuine disagreement with the claim that the use of moral terms by both communities is causally regulated by different families of properties. This is done by identifying a functional role that those families of properties both fulfill. Still, even if CFR is successful, its proponents need to face a serious revenge problem. Roughly, it could be that the families of properties that regulate each community are equally perfect realizers of the relevant higher-order functional state. I suggest that the proponent of CFR faces a dilemma: either CFR has controversial implications about first-order moral theory, or CFR needs to be coupled with substantive and parochial empirical/metaphysical assumptions to avoid those implications.KEYWORDS: Moral Twin Earthcommon functional rolemoral functionalismmoral disagreementmoral realism AcknowledgementsFor written comments on previous drafts I thank Pekka Väyrynen and several anonymous reviewers from Inquiry and other journals (especially Analytic Philosophy, the Journal of Value Inquiry, and the Australasian Journal of Philosophy). I also want to thank audiences from the PG Seminar at the University of Leeds, and the Philosophy and Political Theory Seminar at Panteion University. A distant precursor of this paper was written during my time as an undergraduate at the University of Athens at Stelios Virvidakis's Metaethics seminar (whom I thank for comments and encouragement).Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Causal metasemantics are typically used by naturalists (for a recent account of moral naturalism see Stamatiadis-Bréhier Citation2022). This explains why, historically, MTE cases have naturalist versions of moral realism as their target. But such metasemantics can also be used by anti-naturalist moral realists. For example, Adams’s (Citation1999) supernaturalist moral realism has a structurally identical metasemantics to Boyd’s.2 Someone might be hesitant in combining deontology with Boyd’s moral realism (although see sec. 4). Still, note that we can construct an equally powerful MTE case involving different moral theories (e.g. Freiman [Citation2014] appeals to virtue ethics).3 For the rest of this paper, I will use the phrase “Earthlings are regulated by some properties” as a shorthand for saying that the use of their terms is regulated by these properties.4 For dialectical reasons, I will grant this controversial assumption (cf. Plunkett and Sundell Citation2013). At any rate, the same argument could be presented (by adding further epicycles)
{"title":"The revenge of Moral Twin Earth","authors":"Alexios Stamatiadis-Bréhier","doi":"10.1080/0020174x.2023.2253275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174x.2023.2253275","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTIn this paper I revisit an important response to the Moral Twin Earth (MTE) challenge: The Common Functional Role strategy (CFR). I argue that CFR is open to a revenge problem. MTE-cases allegedly show that two linguistic communities can be in genuine disagreement even when they are regulated by distinct families of properties. CFR provides a way to reconcile the intuition that the two communities are in genuine disagreement with the claim that the use of moral terms by both communities is causally regulated by different families of properties. This is done by identifying a functional role that those families of properties both fulfill. Still, even if CFR is successful, its proponents need to face a serious revenge problem. Roughly, it could be that the families of properties that regulate each community are equally perfect realizers of the relevant higher-order functional state. I suggest that the proponent of CFR faces a dilemma: either CFR has controversial implications about first-order moral theory, or CFR needs to be coupled with substantive and parochial empirical/metaphysical assumptions to avoid those implications.KEYWORDS: Moral Twin Earthcommon functional rolemoral functionalismmoral disagreementmoral realism AcknowledgementsFor written comments on previous drafts I thank Pekka Väyrynen and several anonymous reviewers from Inquiry and other journals (especially Analytic Philosophy, the Journal of Value Inquiry, and the Australasian Journal of Philosophy). I also want to thank audiences from the PG Seminar at the University of Leeds, and the Philosophy and Political Theory Seminar at Panteion University. A distant precursor of this paper was written during my time as an undergraduate at the University of Athens at Stelios Virvidakis's Metaethics seminar (whom I thank for comments and encouragement).Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Causal metasemantics are typically used by naturalists (for a recent account of moral naturalism see Stamatiadis-Bréhier Citation2022). This explains why, historically, MTE cases have naturalist versions of moral realism as their target. But such metasemantics can also be used by anti-naturalist moral realists. For example, Adams’s (Citation1999) supernaturalist moral realism has a structurally identical metasemantics to Boyd’s.2 Someone might be hesitant in combining deontology with Boyd’s moral realism (although see sec. 4). Still, note that we can construct an equally powerful MTE case involving different moral theories (e.g. Freiman [Citation2014] appeals to virtue ethics).3 For the rest of this paper, I will use the phrase “Earthlings are regulated by some properties” as a shorthand for saying that the use of their terms is regulated by these properties.4 For dialectical reasons, I will grant this controversial assumption (cf. Plunkett and Sundell Citation2013). At any rate, the same argument could be presented (by adding further epicycles)","PeriodicalId":47504,"journal":{"name":"Inquiry-An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135889284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-18DOI: 10.1080/0020174x.2023.2269261
M. Giulia Napolitano
In his book, Prejudice, Endre Begby offers a novel and engaging account of the epistemology of prejudice which challenges some of the standard assumptions that have so far guided the recent discussion on the topic. One of Begby's central arguments against the standard view of prejudice, according to which a prejudiced person necessarily displays an epistemically culpable resistance to counterevidence, is that, qua stereotype judgments, prejudices can be flexible and rationally maintained upon encountering many disconfirming instances. By expanding on Begby's analysis, I argue that, given the variety of truth conditions for true generic statements, the generic form of stereotype judgements can sometimes make prejudice extremely resistant to encounters with statistical facts about the distribution of the property among members of a certain group. At the same time, I argue that a more careful consideration of the generic form of stereotypes also allows us to recognize that evidence about how many members of the kind instantiate a property is not the only type of evidence which could disconfirm a prejudice. Evidence of no explanatory relation between a kind and a property should also have a direct effect on a prejudicial belief. For this reason, things may not look as dim for the standard view of prejudice in assessing paradigmatic instances of prejudicial beliefs as irrationally resistant to evidence.
{"title":"Prejudice, generics, and resistance to evidence","authors":"M. Giulia Napolitano","doi":"10.1080/0020174x.2023.2269261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174x.2023.2269261","url":null,"abstract":"In his book, Prejudice, Endre Begby offers a novel and engaging account of the epistemology of prejudice which challenges some of the standard assumptions that have so far guided the recent discussion on the topic. One of Begby's central arguments against the standard view of prejudice, according to which a prejudiced person necessarily displays an epistemically culpable resistance to counterevidence, is that, qua stereotype judgments, prejudices can be flexible and rationally maintained upon encountering many disconfirming instances. By expanding on Begby's analysis, I argue that, given the variety of truth conditions for true generic statements, the generic form of stereotype judgements can sometimes make prejudice extremely resistant to encounters with statistical facts about the distribution of the property among members of a certain group. At the same time, I argue that a more careful consideration of the generic form of stereotypes also allows us to recognize that evidence about how many members of the kind instantiate a property is not the only type of evidence which could disconfirm a prejudice. Evidence of no explanatory relation between a kind and a property should also have a direct effect on a prejudicial belief. For this reason, things may not look as dim for the standard view of prejudice in assessing paradigmatic instances of prejudicial beliefs as irrationally resistant to evidence.","PeriodicalId":47504,"journal":{"name":"Inquiry-An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135889129","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}