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Displaying: 1-9 of 9 documents


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1. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Jörgen Sjögren, Christian Bennet The Viability of Social Constructivism as a Philosophy of Mathematics
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Attempts have been made to analyse features in mathematics within a social constructivist context. In this paper we critically examine some of those attempts recently made with focus on problems of the objectivity, ontology, necessity, and atemporality of mathematics. Our conclusion is that these attempts fare no better than traditional alternatives, and that they, furthermore, create new problems of their own.
2. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Georg Spielthenner On Practical Reasoning under Ignorance
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The purpose of this paper is to present an account of practical reasoning under ignorance—i.e., reasoning under conditions where the available information is so uninformative that we cannot assign probabilities to the outcomes of our options. The account shows that such reasoning need not rely on implausible principles (e.g. the maximin principle), but can nevertheless be logically valid. Put differently, I attempt to show that we can reason in a logically correct manner even if we do not know what the outcomes of our options are or how likely these outcomes are. The proposed approach is applicable to unidimensional and multidimensionalpractical reasoning, and it is therefore useful for analysing real-life decision problems found in a wide variety of choice situations. Its application requires only that an agent has some basic knowledge of propositional logic. To achieve the aim of the article, I first outline when practical reasoning can be said to be logically valid. Section 2 applies the approach to unidimensional reasoning and Section 3 shows how an agent can build up n-dimensional reasoning under ignorance in a logically correct way.
3. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Dan Zeman Experiencer Phrases, Predicates of Personal Taste and Relativism: On Cappelen and Hawthorne’s Critique of the Operator Argument
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In the debate between relativism and contextualism about various expressions, the Operator Argument, initially proposed by Kaplan (1989), has been taken to support relativism. However, one widespread reaction against the argument has taken the form of arguing against one assumption made by Kaplan: namely, that certain natural language expressions are best treated as sentential operators. Focusing on the only extant version of the Operator Argument proposed in connection to predicates of personal taste such as “tasty” and experiencer phrases such as “for Anna” (that of Kölbel (2009)), in this paper I investigate whetherthe reasons offered by Cappelen and Hawthorne (2009) against various assumptions of the argument failing in the case of modal, temporal, locationaland precisional expressions transfer to the case of experiencer phrases to undercut support for relativism about predicates of personal taste. My aim is to show that they don’t. Thus, I first show that their considerations against experiencer phrases such as “for Anna” being sentential operators are not decisive. Second, I show that even if granting that such experiencer phrases are not sentential operators, a suitably modified version of the Operator Argument can be defended from the objections they raise.
4. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Vasilis Tsompanidis The Structure of Propositions and Cross-linguistic Syntactic Variability
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In Jeffrey King’s theory of structured propositions, propositional structure mirrors the syntactic structure of natural language sentences that express it. I provide cases where this claim individuates propositions too finely across languages. Crucially, King’s paradigmatic proposition-fact ^that Dara swims^ cannot be believed by a monolingual Greek speaker, due to Greek syntax requiring an obligatory article in front of proper names. King’s two possible replies are: (i) to try to streamline the syntax of Greek and English; or (ii) to insist that English speakers can believe propositions inexpressible in Greek. I argue that the former option entails giving up a neo-Russelian framework, and the latter makes King’s account arbitrary or trivial. I conclude that the mirroring claim is untenable.
5. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Chen Bo Kripke’s Semantic Argument against Descriptivism Reconsidered
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There are two problematic assumptions in Kripke’s semantic argument against descriptivism. Assumption 1 is that the referential relation of a name to an object is only an objective or metaphysical relation between language and the world; it has nothing to do with the understanding of the name by our linguistic community. Assumption 2 is that descriptivism has to hold that, if name a has its meaning and the meaning is given by one description or a cluster of descriptions, the description(s) should supply a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for determining what a designates; and that it is possible for us to find out such a setof conditions. Emphasizing the sociality, intentionality, conventionality and historicity of language and meaning, this paper rejects Assumption 1, and argues that Assumption 2 is an unfair interpretation of descriptivism, and it is not necessary for descriptivists to hold Assumption 2. This paper finally concludes that Kripke’s semantic argument against descriptivism fails.
6. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Marco Maestrello An Argument for a Quasi-Dretskian Approach to Causal Explanation
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In this paper I will present Jaegwon Kim’s causal explanatory exclusion principle as described in Explanatory Exclusion and the Problem of Mental Causation (1995) and Fred Dretske’s version of the two explananda strategy as depicted in Mental Events as Structuring Causes of Behaviour (1993). I will attempt to demonstrate that Dretske’s theory is not flawless in its assumptions but that it nevertheless demands a close look in so far as it provides us with a valuable theory for explaining certain events.
7. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Tian-Qun Pan The Logical Structure of Hope
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When a person hopes something, this means that he or she hopes some proposition will be true. Thus, hope is a type of modality on propositions. Hope logic is the study of the logical structure among propositions with hope modalities. Rational hope is deductively enclosed, consistent, self-affirmed, etc. These properties can be regarded as axioms of hope logic. An important property of hope is that hope is not necessarily true, but it is hoped that that hope is true. This is a property particular to hope, and it can be regarded as ‘the hope axiom’. Using possible world semantics, different hope logic systems, which are sound and complete with respect to their frames, can be obtained by selecting different hope axioms.
8. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Michael Devitt Unresponsive Bach
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My paper, “Good and Bad Bach”, describes Bach’s position on the semantics-pragmatics issue and then makes four objections. The first objection is to Bach’s austere notion of what-is-said. The other three are to Bach’s conservative methodology for deciding what is “semantic”. I object to his “Modified Occam’s Razor”; to his “correspondence” principle that I describe as “the tyranny of syntax”; and to his application of his notion of standardization. Bach’s “Reply to Michael Devitt on Meaning and Reference” is very disappointing. He fails even to mention my objections to his positions on what-is-said and standardization. And he makes hardly any serious attempt to address my objections to his Modified Occam’s Razor and the tyranny of syntax. All my objections still stand.
9. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 13 > Issue: 3
Table of Contents of Vol. XIII
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