Already a subscriber? - Login here
Not yet a subscriber? - Subscribe here

Browse by:



Displaying: 1-20 of 48 documents


articles
1. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Theodore J. Everett Antiskeptical Conditionals
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Empirical knowledge exists in the form of antiskeptical conditionals, which are propositions like [if I am not undetectably deceived, then I am holding a pen]. Such conditionals, despite their trivial appearance, have the same essential content as the categorical propositions that we usually discuss, and can serve the same functions in science and practical reasoning. This paper sketches out two versions of a general response to skepticism that employs these conditionals. The first says that our ordinary knowledge attributions can safely be replaced by statements using antiskeptical conditionals, which provides a way around the standard sort of skeptical argument while accepting its soundness with respect to the usual targets. The second analyzes the objects of our ordinary knowledge attributions as antiskeptical conditionals, which allows us to refute, not just evade, the skeptic's argument. Both versions compare favorably to the best-knowncurrent approaches to skepticism, including semantic contextualism.
2. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Derk Pereboom Kant on Transcendental Freedom
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Transcendental freedom consists in the power of agents to produce actions without being causally determined by antecedent conditions, nor by their natures, in exercising this power. Kant contends that we cannot establish whether we are actually or even possibly free in this sense. He claims only that our conception of being transcendentally free involves no inconsistency, but that as a result the belief that we have this freedom meets a pertinent standard of minimal credibility. For the rest, its justification depends on practical reasons. I argue that this belief satisfies an appropriately revised standard of minimal credibility, but that the practical reasons Kant adduces for it are subject to scrious challenge.
3. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Robert Pasnau A Theory of Secondary Qualities
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
The secondary qualities are those qualities of objects that bear a certain relation to our sensory powers: roughly, they are those qualities that we can readily detect only through a certain distinctive phenomenal experience. Contrary to what is sometimes supposed, there is nothing about the world itself (independent of our minds) that determines the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. Instead, a theory of the secondary qualities must be grounded in facts about how we conceive of these qualities, and ultimately in facts about human perception.
4. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Elizabeth Fricker Second-Hand Knowledge
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
5. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Roger Crisp Hedonism Reconsidered
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
This paper is a plea for hedonism to be taken more seriously. It begins by charting hedonism's decline, and suggests that this is a result of two major objections: the claim that hedonism is the 'philosophy of swine', reducing all value to a single common denominator, and Nozick's 'experience machine' objection. There follows some elucidation of the nature of hedonism, and of enjoyment in particular. Two types of theory of enjoyment are outlined-intemalism, according to which enjoyment has some special 'feeling tone'. and externalism, according to which enjoyment is any kind of experience to which we take some special attitude, such as that of desire. lnternalism-the traditional view--is defended against current externalist orthodoxy. The paper ends with responses to the philosophy of swine and the experience machine objections.
6. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Jordi Fernández Schopenhauer’s Pessimism
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
My purpose in this essay is to clarify and evaluate Arthur Schopenhauer's grounds for the view that happiness is impossible. I shall distinguish two of his arguments for that view and argue that both of them are unsound. Both arguments involve premises grounded on a problematic view, namely, that desires have no objects. What makes this view problematic is that, in each of the two arguments, it conflicts with Schopenhauer's grounds for other premises in the argument. I shall then propose a way of fixing both arguments. The solution involves substituting the view that desires have no objects with the view that we have a desire to have desires. The latter view, I shall argue, can do the grounding work that the former does in Schopenhauer's arguments but, unlike it, the view that we desire to desire is consistent with Schopenhauer's grounds for the rest of premises in those arguments.
7. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Daniel Nolan Selfless Desires
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
David Lewis's unified theory of the contents of de se and de dicto attitudes faces a problem. Whether or not it is adequate for representing beliefs, it misrepresents the content of many of our desires, which rank possible outcomes in which the agent with the desire does not exist. These desires are shown to playa role in the rational explanation of action, and recognising them is important in our understanding of ourselves.
8. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Richard Fumerton Direct Realism, Introspection, and Cognitive Science
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
book symposium
9. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Tim Maudlin Précis of Truth and Paradox
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
articles
10. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Nuel Belnap Prosentence, Revision, Truth, and Paradox
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
11. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Hartry Field Maudlin’s Truth and Paradox
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
12. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Anil Gupta Remarks on a Foundationalist Theory of Truth
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
13. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Tim Maudlin Replies
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
14. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Recent Publications
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
15. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 3
Acknowledgments
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
articles
16. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Nick Zangwill Daydreams and Anarchy: A Defense of Anomalous Mental Causation
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
Must mental properties figure in psychological causal laws if they are causally efficacious? And do those psychological causal laws give the essence of mental properties? Contrary to the prevailing consensus, I argue that, on the usual conception of laws that is in play in these debates, there are in fact lawless causally efficacious properties both in and out of the philosophy of mind. I argue that this makes a great difference to the philosophical relevance of empirical psychology. I begin by making the case that revolutions and hurricanes are lawless phenomena, before arguing for a similar thesis about creativity, love, courage, dreams, daydreams, and musings. Furthermore, the empirical research on thesc phenomena suggests that the philosophical issues may be independent of what empirical psychology can tell us.
17. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Jason Bridges Davidson’s Transcendental Externalism
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
One of the chief aims of Donald Davidson' s later work was to show that participation in a certain causal nexus involving two creatures and a shared environment-Davidson calls this nexus "triangulation"-is a metaphysically necessary condition for the acquisition of thought. This doctrine, I suggest, is aptly regarded as a form of what I call transcendental externalism. I extract two arguments for the transcendental-extemalist doctrine from Davidson's writings, and argue that neither succeeds. A central interpretive claim is that the arguments are primarily funded by a particular conception of the nature of non-human animal life. This conception turns out to be insupportable. The failure of Davidson's arguments presses the question of whether we could ever hope to arrive atfar-reaching claims about the conditions for thought if we deny, as does Davidson, the legitimacy of the naturalistic project in the philosophy of mind.
18. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Keith Derose “Bamboozled by Our Own Words”: Semantic Blindness and Some Arguments Against Contextualism
view |  rights & permissions | cited by
19. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Scott Campbell The Conception of a Person as a Series of Mental Events
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
It is argued that those who accept the psychological criterion of personal identity, such as Parfit and Shoemaker, should accept what I call the 'series' view of a person, according to which a person is a unified aggregate of mental events and states. As well as defending this view against objections, I argue that it allows the psychological theorist to avoid the two lives objection which the 'animalist' theorists have raised against it, an objection which causes great difficulties for the conception of a person that most psychological theorists favour, the constitution view. It is also argued that the series view allows that people can body swap and teleport, which the constitution view-which takes a person to be a physical object (but a distinct physical object from the human being)-has great trouble with.
20. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 73 > Issue: 2
Risto Vilkko, Jaakko Hintikka Existence and Predication from Aristotle to Frege
abstract | view |  rights & permissions | cited by
One of the characteristic features of contemporary logic is that it incorporates the Frege-Russell thesis according to which verbs for being are multiply ambiguous. This thesis was not accepted before the nineteenth century. In Aristotle existence could not serve alone as a predicate term. However, it could be a part of the force of the predicate term, depending on the context. For Kant existence could not even be a part of the force of the predicate term. Hence, after Kant, existence was left homeless. It found a home in the algebra of logic in which the operators corresponding to universal and particular judgments were treated as duals, and universal Judgments were taken to be relative to some universe of discourse. Because of the duality, existential quantifier expressions came to express existence. The orphaned notion of existence thus found a new home in the existential quantifier.