The works by Graham Priest that I'm most familiar with are those of the 1980’s. I understand they belong to the logical part of his writing, as presented by the organizers of the “Towards Graham Priest” meeting at Szczecin University on 20 June, 2012. Myself, I read Priest’s works to be imprecise, to say the least. Thelack of precision is to be traced particularly in his interpretations of Alfred Tarski’s heritage. This applies to Tarski’s main points, namely: semantically closedlanguages, the T-scheme, and the appreciation of natural language. The strange thing about it is that Priest does not mind other people expressing views opposite to his own, but admits he cannot determine which contradictions are true and gives only vague indications about how to judge the criticisms.

The paper is an attempt to answer the question: what kind of philosophical theory of perception may warrant the claim that one can perceive contradictions, that is, undergo visual or other experiences with contradictory contents? Apparently, the conception of perceptual experience endorsed by Graham Priest makes it intelligible that one can truly experience contradictions. Moreover, as we try to argue, Priest’s insistence that one can perceive contradictions is to some extent defensible on the ground of a version of direct realism which identifies content of perception with its object, and underlines holistic character of perceptual experience.

In my paper I argue that a successful theory of vagueness should be able to account for faultless (aka permissible) disagreement concerning borderline cases.Firstly, I claim that out of the traditional (semantic, noncontextual) conceptions of vagueness the best equipped to account for faultless disagreement areparaconsistent solutions (such as Hyde’s subvaluationism and Priest’s dialetheism). One worry concerning dialetheism is that it seems to allow not only for faultless disagreements between different speakers, but also for such ‘disagreements’ between the given speaker and himself. Another worry, at least for some people, is that subvaluationism and dialetheism account for faultless disagreements by allowing contradictions. Next, I go on to argue that contextual conceptions, which are free from this latter worry, are equally well able to account for such disagreements. To this aim I offer a new account of the usage of personal taste predicates and suggest that we model the usage of all vague predicates on them. The idea is that in clear cases “a is F” means “a is F simpliciter”, whereas in borderline cases it means “a is F-to-me”. Since the boundary between borderline and nonborderline cases depends on context, my solution weds content-contextualism with truth-contextualism.

Ishtiyaque Haji develops and supports the view that alternative possibilities are a requirement on many morally-relevant facets of our lives. I argue that the main argument he offers for his view fails due primarily to two things. First, Haji employs a Jackson-type case to support a claim that such cases fail to support. Second, Haji offers no reason to think that we must understand the 'can' in certain of his important principles as alethic. These troubles vex the insightful support Haji offers for his many, wide-ranging conclusions.

In Towards Non-Being Graham Priest proposes an informative criterion of identity across possible worlds. Roughly, the criterion says that whenever two objects satisfy the very same qualitative characteristics in every possible world they are identical. But Priest also maintains that there are qualitatively indiscernible possible worlds. It is argued in the paper that for this reason he should allow the existence of two numerically different but qualitatively identical objects, and that is in tension with the criterion of transworld identity he has proposed. Thus Priest should reject either his criterion of transworld identity, or the thesis of possibleexistence of qualitatively indiscernible worlds.

Instrumentalists about need believe that all needs are instrumental, i.e., ontologically dependent upon ends, goals, or purposes. Absolutists view some needs as non-instrumental. The aims of this article are: clearly to characterize the instrumentalism/absolutism debate that is of concern (mainly §1); to establish that both positions have recent and current adherents (mainly §1); to bring what is, in comparison with prior literature, a relatively high level of precision to the debate, employing some hitherto neglected, but important, insights (passim); to show, on grounds not previously to the fore in the literature, that insofar as instrumentalism’s advocates have provided arguments for the position, these are unsound (§2); to argue against instrumentalism using a new dilemma concerning whether ‘end’, ‘goal’, and ‘purpose’ are interpreted in a mentalistic manner (§3); to elucidate the implications of the needs/need-satisfiers and preconditions/means distinctions for the debate (§4).

The central and probably most controversial point concerning the psychologism — anti-psychologism debate is the problem of Frege’s alleged influence on the change in Husserl’s views. Contemporary thinkers investigating the early period of Husserl’s philosophy (between 1891—1895) have attempted to show that the opinion that Frege’s doctrine had a traumatic influence on Husserl’s views is not justified. This paper, which tries to maintain a balance between strictly philosophical argumentation and narrowly understood historical argumentation, suggests an alternative solution. By appealing to Frege’s works (known by Husserl) published before 1894, the locus of psychologism will be determined. Afterwards, I will present Husserl’s and Frege’s views on the elucidation procedure and the distinction between calculus and ‘lingua characteristica’. By discussing Husserl’s works from 1894-1897, I will show that his standpoint changed dramatically as he entered into the anti-psychological program, involving a new theory of concepts, judgment, and the so-called ‘pure Fregean flavour’ — a new account of logical content.

It is difficult to develop a coherent conception of time on the basis of our experience of time. The philosophical analysis of our experience of time is a central topic in phenomenology. So one might expect phenomenology to deliver a contribution to the solution of the most challenging puzzles of the philosophy of time. This paper deals with some methodological issues related to such an expectation. It opposes two main conceptions of the role of phenomenology in the philosophy of time. On the first conception phenomenology draws conclusions about the nature of time from the description of the qualitative features of our experience of time. On the second conception, phenomenology determines what we are rationally entitled to believe about the nature of time on the basis of the way we experience time. It is argued that if one aims at integrating different approaches in one’s philosophical conception of time, then it is the second conception one ought to choose.

In his latest book, Liberalism without Perfection (2011), Jonathan Quong argues against liberal perfectionism and defends Rawlsian political liberalism. In the course of his argumentation he presents us with a judgmental account of paternalism and the buck-passing account of truth in political philosophy. The aim of this paper is to critique both of those elements in Quong’s argumentation. I will first present the judgmental account of paternalism and then demonstrate that it will place impossible demands on us, insofar as paternalism is a prima facie wrong and we have a duty to reduce wrongness in the world. I will then turn to the buck-passing account of truth; after introducing it, I show that it will generate uncertain results for political philosophy, making it an unsatisfactory solution for the political liberal making truth claims in political philosophy.

Traditionally formulated, the problem of free will cannot be solved. We may nevertheless be justifiably confident that we have free will. The traditional formulation makes a solution impossible by juxtaposing contradictory objective and subjective accounts of whether there is free will, between which accounts there is no third way to choose. However, the objective stance inherently denies the conditions under which free will is possible, namely that there are subjects, and is thus question-begging. It gives us no good reason for our not having free will without our also accepting that there are no subjects. As subjects we may not deny that there are subjects, and that as subjects we have good reason, through our experience of free will, to hold that we have free will. The problem of free will is a footnote to how there may be subjects. In order to understand what free will is we need to look at how it is experienced, that is, at the phenomenology of free will.