Our goal here is to help identify the contextualist’s most worthy competitor to relativism. Recently, some philosophers of language and linguists have argued that, while there are contextualist-friendly semantic theories of deontic modals that fit with the relativist’s challenge data, the best such theories are not Lewis-Kratzer-style semantic theories. If correct, this would be important: It would show that the theory that has for many years enjoyed the status of the default view of modals in English and other languages is (...) in need of revision. Here we defend the default view by showing how a Kratzer-style semantics is able to make available readings of the relevant utterances that fit with the pretheoretical judgments opponents purport it cannot fully capture. Having established this, we turn to considering the more theoretical grounds proponents have offered for preferring their rival contextualist views. Here the question is to what extent such grounds favor semantic over what Korta and Perry call “near-side pragmatic” explanations of our judgments. In particular, we argue that our favored readings figure in near-side pragmatic explanations of those judgments that possess the methodological and theoretical advantages of systematicity and unity at least as well as, if not to a greater extent than, those of opponents who argue for their revised semantic theories on the basis of these advantages. (shrink)

Autobiographical memories typically give rise either to memory reports (“I remember going swimming”) or to first person past-tense judgements (“I went swimming”). This article focuses on first person past-tense judgements that are (epistemically) based on autobiographical memories. Some of these judgements have the IEM property of being immune to error through misidentification. This article offers an account of when and why first person past-tense judgements have the IEM property.

This chapter suggests that descriptive epidemiological studies like the Global Burden of Disease Study can usefully be divided into four tasks: describing individuals’ health states over time, assessing their health states under a range of counterfactual scenarios, summarizing the information collected, and then packaging it for presentation. The authors show that each of these tasks raises important and challenging ethical questions. They comment on some of the philosophical issues involved in measuring health states, attributing causes to health outcomes, choosing the (...) counterfactual against which to assess causes, aggregating and summarizing complex information across multiple domains, discounting, age-weighting, handling fetal deaths, measuring health inequalities, representing uncertainty, and assessing personal responsibility for health outcomes. (shrink)

One strategy for blocking Chalmers's overall case against physicalism has been to deny his claim that showing that phenomenal properties are in some sense physical requires an a priori entailment of the phenomenal truths from the physical ones. Here I avoid this well-trodden ground and argue instead that an a priori entailment of the phenomenal truths from the physical ones does not require an analysis in the Jackson/Chalmers sense. This is to sever the dualist's link between conceptual analysis and a (...) priori entailment by showing that the lack of the former does not imply the absence of the latter. Moreover, given the role of the argument from conceptual analysis in Chalmers's overall case for dualism, undermining that argument effectively undermines that case as a whole in a way that, I'll argue, undermining the conceivability arguments as stand-alone arguments does not. (shrink)

Volume 20, Issue 9, September 2020, Page 39-41.

The contributions in the first part Re-modelling logic of this volume take account of formal logic in the theory of rational argumentation.

Stephen Finlay’s proposed methodology for defending the central theses of his impressive Confusion of Tongues is an underexplored aspect of this work.1 1 His official methodology is analytic : A reduction of normative to non-normative vocabulary. Here, I argue that taking this official line at face-value forces the reader to conclude that the reductions at the heart of that book cannot be correct. In contrast, a philosophical methodology that does not proceed via analyses would better support those reductions, then understood (...) as non-analytic. As we’ll see below, there are independent, empirical reasons to reject a philosophical methodology that proceeds via analyses. I conclude that there is a method for the study of ethical language that better serves Finlay’s primary philosophical aims. The lesson, though, is generalizable: Given the array of normative and meta-normative theories, we want a semantics for normative discourse to be capable of expressing, we should expect that the more plausible such views will not be defended via analyses. (shrink)

In this paper, the authors try to clarify the relations between Meinong’s and Russell's thoughts on the ontological ideas of existence. The Meinongian theory on non-existent objects does not in itself violate the principle of non-contradiction, since the problem that this hypothesis offers to the theory of definite descriptions is not so much a logical problem as an ontological problem. To demonstrate this we will establish what we believe are the two main theses basic to the theory of descriptions: the (...) epistemological thesis and logical thesis. (shrink)

Les principaux problèmes que Bultmann a posés au plan de l’exégèse historique des textes évangéliques étaient commandés par des positions théologiques et continuent pour ce motif à interroger les théologiens catholiques, qui parfois le rejettent dans le camp tantôt du scientisme tantôt du dogmatisme.Contre la théologie libérale des « vies de Jésus », il élève une double protestation, d’ordre christologique : il revendique le caractère historique de la foi chrétienne, et historique : il prend au sérieux la visée eschatologique de (...) la prédication de Jésus. Marquée en ses origines par un rationalisme dogmatique, l’exégèse historico-critique travaille à son tour la théologie, l’oblige à assumer sa propre historicité et à sortir ainsi de son propre positivisme dogmatique.Réservant – à juste titre – à la foi de dire le sens de la Croix, Bultmann semble séparer le fait et le sens et mettre l’historiographie et la théologie en rapport contradictoire de double vérité. Nous savons mieux aujourd’hui qu’il n’y a de faits qu’interprétés ; la foi atteint la vérité historique des faits, mais doit renoncer à demander de les établir « scientifiquement » à une historiographie censée « objectivement neutre ». En soutenant que le sens de la Croix relève d’une décision de foi, Bultmann nous rappelle utilement, ainsi que l’a reconnu R. Marlé, qu’on ne peut jamais évacuer le skandalon de la foi.The principal problems that Bultmann presented as regards the historical exegesis of evangelical texts were guided by theological positions and continued, for this reason, to question Catholic theologians, who sometimes put him in the camp of scientism and sometimes in that of dogmatism.Against the liberal theology of the “lives of Jesus”, he raised a double protest : of a christological nature and of a historical nature . Marked in its origins by dogmatic rationalism, historical-critical exegesis works in its turn on theology, obliges it to assume its own historicity and this to escape from its own dogmatic positivism.Allowing faith – and for good reason – to decide the meaning of the Cross, Bultmann seems to separate the fact and the meaning and to put historiography and theology in contradictory rapport of a double truth. We know better today that there are only interpreted facts ; faith attains the historical truth of facts, but must renounce the demand to establish them “scientifically” to a historiography believed to the “objectively neutral”. In holding that the meaning of the Cross depends on a decision of faith, Bultmann helpfully reminds us, as R. Marlé recognized, that one can never escape the skandalon of faith. (shrink)

Genealogía y lógica de la ratio imperial romana -- Racionalización ética judía y religión de salvación cristiana -- La revolución teológica de Pablo y sus consecuencias -- Teología política imperial y militancia cristiana -- La teología trinitaria y el destino de la teología imperial -- Hilario, Ambrosio y el camino del catolicismo en Occidente -- Mal y salvación: Augstín de Hipona.

This paper addresses two related questions. First, what is involved in giving a distinctively realist and naturalist construal of an area of discourse, that is, in so much as stating a distinctively realist and naturalist position about, for example, content or value? I defend a condition that guarantees the realism and naturalism of any position satisfying it, at least in the case of positions on content, but perhaps in other cases as well. Second, what sorts of considerations render a distinctively (...) realist and naturalist position more plausible than its irrealist and non-naturalist rivals? The answer here focuses again on theories of content and is wholly negative. I argue that the standard array of arguments offered in support of realist and naturalist theories in fact provide equal support for a host of irrealist and non-naturalist ones. Taken together, these considerations reveal an important gap in the recent philosophical literature on content. The challenge to proponents of putatively realist and naturalist theories is to insure that those theories so much as state distinctively realist and naturalist positions and then to identify arguments that support what is distinctively realist and naturalist about them. (shrink)

Central question of this essay is, whether it is possible to relate specific aspects of the organization of sensorimotor systems to specific aspects of the behaviour. The role of the auditory system as part of a system for vocalization or as part of a system for prey localization and the different roles of the trigeminal system in the feeding behaviour of different birds are considered. The ascending sensory systems seem to possess a comparable organization in the various species. Also the (...) descending motor pathways from archistriatum and paleostriatal complex seem to be basically similar. Behavioural specialization may be expressed particularly in the organization of the intratelencephalic circuits and thus in the involvement of specific regions of neostriatum and hyperstriatum ventrale. In discussions on cerebralisation it will be necessary to take such differences in intratelencephalic organization into account. (shrink)