Volume Eight of the project documenting Thomas Jefferson's last years presents 591 documents dated from 1 October 1814 to 31 August 1815. Jefferson is overjoyed by American victories late in the War of 1812 and highly interested in the treaty negotiations that ultimately end the conflict. Following Congress's decision to purchase his library, he oversees the counting, packing, and transportation of his books to Washington. Jefferson uses most of the funds from the sale to pay old debts (...) but spends some of the proceeds on new titles. He resigns from the presidency of the American Philosophical Society, revises draft chapters of Louis H. Girardin's history of Virginia, and advises William Wirt on revolutionary-era Stamp Act resolutions. Jefferson criticizes those who discuss politics from the pulpit, and he drafts a bill to transform the Albemarle Academy into Central College. Monticello visitors Francis W. Gilmer, Francis C. Gray, and George Ticknor describe the mountaintop and its inhabitants, and Gray's visit leads to an exchange with Jefferson about how many generations of white interbreeding it takes to clear Negro blood. Finally, although death takes his nephew Peter Carr and brother Randolph Jefferson, the marriage of his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph is a continuing source of great happiness. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions. (shrink)

Thomas Jefferson is among the most important and controversial of American political thinkers: his influence (libertarian, democratic, participatory, and agrarian-republican) is still felt today. A prolific writer, Jefferson left 18,000 letters, Notes on the State of Virginia, an Autobiography, and numerous other papers. Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball have selected the most important of these for presentation in the Cambridge Texts series: Jefferson's views on topics such as revolution, self-government, the role of women and African-American and Native (...) Americans emerge to give a fascinating insight into a man who owned slaves, yet advocated the abolition of slavery. The texts are supported by a concise introduction, suggestions for further reading and short biographies of key figures, all providing invaluable assistance to the student encountering the breadth and richness of Jefferson's thought for the first time. (shrink)

_Jefferson’s Political Philosophy and the Metaphysics of Utopia_ argues that Jeffersonian republicanism was fundamentally a political philosophy, content-rich and globally applicable. Jefferson’s philosophy is fleshed out and critically analyzed by examining key writings over the years and philosophically important books Jefferson assimilated.

The practice of modern craniomaxillofacial surgery has been defined by emergent technologies allowing for the acquisition, storage, utilization, and transfer of massive amounts of sensitive and identifiable patient data. This alone has thrust providers into an unlikely and unprecedented role as the stewards of vast databases of digital information. This data powers the potent surgical tool of virtual surgical planning, a method by which craniomaxillofacial surgeons plan and simulate procedural outcomes in a digital environment. Further complicating this new terrain is (...) the involvement of third‐party contractors—a necessary presence in bringing raw data to bear in the office, virtual space, and operating room. The individual privileges and responsibilities of patients, providers, and vendors towards data are situated within the most recent U.S. court rulings and regulations. This paper offers guidance for overseeing the safe and responsible transfer to third‐party contractors, and provides suggestions for negotiating the trinary relationship between physicians, their patients, and the vendors offering this transformative technology. (shrink)

Thomas Jefferson had a profoundly advanced educational vision that went hand in hand with his political philosophy - each of which served the goal of human flourishing. His republicanism marked a break with the conservatism of traditional non-representative governments, characterized by birth and wealth and in neglect of the wants and needs of the people. Instead, Jefferson proposed social reforms which would allow people to express themselves freely, dictate their own course in life, and oversee their elected representatives. (...) His educational vision aimed to instantiate a progressive social climate only dreamed of by utopists such as Thomas More, James Harrington and Louis-Sébastian Mercier. This book offers a critical articulation of the philosophy behind Jefferson's thoughts on education. Divided into three parts, chapters include an analysis of his views on elementary and higher education, an investigation of education for both the moral-sense and rational faculty, and an examination of education as lifelong learning. Jefferson's educational rationale was economic, political and philosophical, and his systemic approach to education conveys a systemic, economic approach to living, with strong affinities to Stoicism. Thomas Jefferson's Philosophy of Education will be key reading for philosophers, historians and postgraduate students of education, the history of education and philosophy. (shrink)

The history of the National News Council's creation and demise demonstrates that there are well?grounded rationales in social vision between those who supported the concept of the NNC and those who believe its etablishment was ill?founded. This article suggests that the root of the NNC controversy lies in the differences between Madison and Jefferson's perspectives on the place of information in society. Madison and Jefferson's view on press freedom and responsibility may be as important to the debate about (...) the NNC's status as the more frequently cited pragmatic considerations such as the Council's infrastructure or management. The philosophic issues raised here are ethical at base, and should be considered by critics contemplating vehicles for media accountability. (shrink)

What did Thomas Jefferson look like? How did he carry himself? Such questions, reasonable to ask as we look back on a person who lived in an era before photography, are the starting point for this boldly original new work. Maurizio Valsania considers all aspects of Jefferson’s complex conception of "the body," from eighteenth-century clothing and fashion to manners, adornment, posture, gesture, and visual and material culture. Drawing also from the fields of medical science, psychology, and cultural anthropology, (...) the author conjures a vivid and detailed re-creation of the third president as a living, breathing--and pondering--human being. Having situated Jefferson in his own body, Valsania looks at the embodied Jefferson in the world of his fellow humans. Any one of the other people in Jefferson’s society--whether that other person was male or female, free or enslaved, African American or Native American--was a critical counterexample for the eighteenth-century Virginian to define himself against, and Valsania’s explorations here lead to numerous insightful discoveries about race, gender, and structures of power. The first comprehensive exploration of Jefferson’s corporeal world, Jefferson’s Body brings the man vividly to life for the modern reader while deepening our understanding of what it meant to Jefferson to be alive. (shrink)

One of his six introductions to philosophy, widely used by students in Alexandria, Ammonius' lecture on Porphyry was recorded in writing by his students in the commentary translated here. Along with five other types of introductions (three of which are translated in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle volume Elias and David: Introductions to Philosophy with Olympiodorus: Introduction to Logic) it made Greek philosophy more accessible to other cultures. These introductions became standard in Ammonius' school and included a popular set of (...) five or more definitions of philosophy, some of them drawn from commentaries on quite different works. Ammonius' lecture expounded the most celebrated and discussed previous introduction written by Porphyry 200 years earlier, which was devoted to five main technical terms of Aristotle's logic. Ammonius was sympathetic to Porphyry because they both sought to harmonise the views of Plato and Aristotle with each other, arguing in different ways that the two philosophers did not disagree about the nature of universals. Porphyry's introduction was a hugely influential work for centuries after its composition, and this commentary by Ammonius served to maintain its position at the centre of later schools of philosophy. This English translation of Ammonius' work is the latest volume in the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series and makes this philosophical work accessible to a modern readership. The translation is accompanied by an introduction, comprehensive commentary notes, bibliography, glossary of translated terms and a subject index. (shrink)

. Who's Wearing the White Hat? A Review of Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists—a Conservative Manifesto. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 253-259.

I articulate what I refer to as Jefferson’s “land ethic,” drawing primarily from his Notes on the State of Virginia. In the first section, I discuss Jefferson’s conception of the intimate relationship between the natural and political constitution of America and his vindication of both. In the second section, I examine the centrality of the environment in Jefferson’s political vision for America: a landbasedrepublicanism. In the third section, I elaborate Jefferson’s view as to the proper relationship (...) between human beings and their environment by focusing on the form of nature to which he believes human beings most intimately relate: one’s estate. Jefferson’s understanding of the land draws from John Locke’s theory of property, but whereas Locke’s concept of property is closely associated with the economic values that facilitate human destruction of the environment, Jefferson’s environmentalism focuses on the other side of the relation: the ways in which a particular nature—a climate, one’s landholding, the New World in general–can influence human nature and politics. (shrink)

Confidentiality is a cornerstone of the physician-patient relationship. Breaches of confidentiality in the context of genetic testing are of particular concern for a number of reasons. First, genetic testing reveals information not only about a particular patient, but also about his or her family members. Second,genetic testing can label healthy people as “at risk,” subjecting them to possible stigmatization or discrimination by third parties. Third, as genetic testing becomes more widespread and is incorporated into primary care, breaches of confidentiality might (...) inadvertently occur more frequently because primary care providers may not be trained to understand the uniqueness of genetic information. Until now, genetic services have been provided primarily by medical geneticists and genetic counselors. However, with the proliferation of new genetic presymptomatic and carrier tests, primary care physicians are going to become increasingly involved in genetic testing. Currently, little is known about physicians’ attitudes toward disclosure of confidential genetic information to third parties. (shrink)

The map -- The pursuit of happiness -- Yoga: the battlefield of the self -- Meditation: meet your mind -- The pillars of transformation -- The journey -- Now: look -- Dharma: look within -- Connection: look around -- Forgiveness and gratitude: look back -- Goals: look ahead -- Look again.

Some of Herder's most striking ideas stemmed from his early evaluation of German literary publicity, which to his mind stood in stark contrast to conditions in the sociable world. Such a predicament bespeaks the importance of considering the relationship between printed text and lived sociability in the Enlightenment. By charting the heady twists and turns in his intellectual development from 1765 to 1769, this essay treats the young Herder in what for him became an aesthetically charged field between the two. (...) The public which he came to envision would be manifest to the senses, at least to the extent that it might be by the reader of print, but it also amounted to a surrogate for the more tangibly sensual experience of face-to-face community. (shrink)

This Article reinterprets the period from 1935 to 1973 as a “long exception” to the sustained pattern of legal hostility to labor organizing in the United States. While the National Labor Relations Act and the broader New Deal were once regarded as secure solutions to the “labor question” in America, in retrospect they only offered a partial, temporary, and extraordinary respite from state and corporate opposition to the collective interests of working people. The decades from the thirties through the seventies (...) witnessed the rise and fall of union density as well as the fall and rise of inequality that stands out in contrast to the rest of American history since the industrial revolution. However, because of the extraordinary circumstances of that era, the New Deal serves as a poor historical metaphor for those interested in labor’s revival. The circumstances that created the New Deal are unlikely to be repeated, thus the future of labor organizing and the law will look more like the deep and difficult past of American history prior to the 1930s than like the “modern” age of organizing and collective bargaining. (shrink)

In 1969 Stanley Cavell's Must We Mean What We Say? revolutionized philosophy of ordinary language, aesthetics, ethics, tragedy, literature, music, art criticism, and modernism. This volume of new essays offers a multi-faceted exploration of Cavell's first and most important book, fifty years after its publication. The key subjects which animate Cavell's book are explored in detail: ordinary language, aesthetics, modernism, skepticism, forms of life, philosophy and literature, tragedy and the self, the questions of voice and audience, jazz and sound, Wittgenstein, (...) Austin, Beckett, Kierkegaard, Shakespeare. The essays make Cavell's complex style and sometimes difficult thought accessible to a new generation of students and scholars. They offer a way into Cavell's unique philosophical voice, conveying its seminal importance as an intellectual intervention in American thought and culture, and showing how its philosophical radicality remains of lasting significance for contemporary philosophy, American philosophy, literary studies, and cultural studies. (shrink)

From the start, Americans were wrestling with the proper connections between "private and public felicity." On its face, the first line of the First Amendment to the Constitution seems to settle the issue: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Thomas Jefferson declared that this provision "buil[t] a wall of separation between church and state." While the proscription against meddling with religion originally applied only to the national government, the Fourteenth (...) Amendment extended the Constitution—and, in theory, Jefferson's wall—to the state governments. But the Constitution is just the start of the story. America's boisterous, protean religious life sends waves of fervor breaking against Jefferson's wall. Religious fervor provokes moralistic attitudes that filter through American politics. This paper examines the reach of this moralizing effect with a glance at two very unlikely—that is, apparently secular—policy domains: health care and jails. (shrink)

The chapter presents a brief case study, in which we can observe the impact of Pierre Hadot's ideas on Martin O’Hagan, a person not far removed from us in terms of space, time, and aspirations. Hadot's concept of “Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWL)” could provide an option for a person who, excluded from and/or disillusioned by Academic philosophy, still felt the need to search for answers to a few centrally important questions that had direct impact on his life. (...) Even the characteristic that has returned like a Leitmotif throughout this chapter — analytic philosophy's tendency to ignore the so‐called Big Questions, such as that of the meaning of life — can be illuminated by means of Kuhn's theories. The author hopes that the interest in Hadot's concept of PWL will contribute to the rehabilitation of philosophy as it was before its takeover by Academic philosophy. (shrink)

This introductory chapter of Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and Moderns — Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot talks about the life of Pierre Hadot. The author's memories of his close friendship with Pierre Hadot are presented. In the 1970s, Hadot began to accord more and more importance to the idea of spiritual exercises, that is, philosophical practices intended to transform the practitioner's way of looking at the world and consequently his or her way of being. These exercises, (...) involving not just the intellect or reason, but all of a human being's faculties, including emotion and imagination, had the same goal as all ancient philosophy: reducing human suffering and increasing happiness, by teaching people to detach themselves from their particular, egocentric, individualistic viewpoints and become aware of their belonging, as integral component parts, to the Whole constituted by the entire cosmos. (shrink)

Studies the doctrine of providence of the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry of Tyre. Following a survey of Hellenistic theories of fate and providence, the doctrine of destiny ex hupotheseos, developed on the basis of Plato’s dialogues, is examined : according to it, our acts are free, but their consequences are necessary. As an integral part of Middle Platonic philosophy, this theory was probably transmitted to Late Antiquity by Porphyry. We then move on to examine Porphyry’s treatise On what depends on us, (...) which contains an interpretation of Plato’s Myth of Er, and develops the doctrine of the twofold choice of lives. Nemesius and Proclus react, each in his own way, against the individualism of Porphyry’s approach. In conclusion, the theory of fate and providence in Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy is briefly examined. (shrink)

Perhaps the most difficult part of the famous inscription from Heraclea is the opening section of the extant text, where from a given form of procedure it is required to determine the subject matter. A solution of this puzzling problem, which I proposed some months ago, has recently been made the subject of an interesting article in this journal by Dr. E. G. Hardy. Mr. Hardy has long been engaged in this field, and has rendered much useful service. In this (...) article, however, he seems to be interested in my views chiefly in their relation to his own theory. This is apparent in his agreements with me. For example, one aim of my study was to identify the professiones of Cicero's letters ad Att. xiii. 33, 1, and ad Fam. xvi. 23, 1, with those provided for in the first section of the inscription. It appeared that the returns mentioned by Cicero were registrations of property, that they were to be made yearly, and that they had their prototype in the annual property census of Egypt. It also seemed clear that Caesar's recensus populi of 46 was modelled on the Egyptian kατ' oίkíαm άπoγραφήiKíαν. With these preliminary conclusions Mr. Hardy is not unwilling to agree. He even goes so far as to say that I have made a good case for ‘a new system of professiones somehow relating to property and introduced in 46.’ He thinks too that the settlement of the frumentations as a part of a more comprehensive legislative scheme would be most appropriate. So far so good, but when it comes to the vital point of admitting a connection between these matters and vv. 1–19 of the Tablet he draws back as if from some fatal step. (shrink)

ABSTRACT According to a prominent objection, deflationist theories of truth can’t account for the explanatory connection between true belief and successful action [Putnam 1978]. Canonical responses to the objection show how to reformulate truth-involving explanations of particular successful actions, so as to omit any mention of truth [Horwich 1998]. According to recent critics, though, the canonical strategy misses the point. The deflated paraphrases lack the generality or explanatory robustness of the original explanatory appeals to truth [Kitcher 2002; Lynch 2009; Gamester (...) 2018]. This article diagnoses the canonical response’s failure and shows how deflationists can make sense of appeals to truth in explaining practical success, in all of their generality and robustness, without construing truth as a substantial property. (shrink)

Orthodox semantics for natural language modals give rise to two puzzles for their interactions with disjunction: Ross’s puzzle and the puzzle of free choice permission. It is widely assumed that each puzzle can be explained in terms of the licensing of ‘Diversity’ inferences: from the truth of a possibility or necessity modal with an embedded disjunction, hearers infer that each disjunct is compatible with the relevant set of worlds. I argue that Diversity inferences are too weak to explain the full (...) range of data. Instead, I argue, modals with embedded disjunctions license ‘Independence’ inferences: from the truth of a modal with an embedded disjunction, hearers infer that each disjunct is an independent alternative among the relevant set of worlds. I then develop a bilateral inquisitive semantics for modals that predicts the validity of these Independence inferences. My account vindicates common intuitions about both Ross’s puzzle and the puzzle of free choice permission, and explains the full range of data. (shrink)

We might suppose it is not only instrumentally valuable for beliefs to be true, but that it is intrinsically valuable – truth makes a non-derivative, positive contribution to a belief's overall value. Some intrinsic goods are better than others, though, and this article considers the question of how good truth is, compared to other intrinsic goods. I argue that truth is the worst of all intrinsic goods; every other intrinsic good is better than it. I also suggest the best explanation (...) for truth's inferiority is that it is not really an intrinsic good at all. It is intrinsically neutral. (shrink)

Ecological accounts of responsible agency claim that moral feedback is essential to the reasons-responsiveness of agents. In this paper, we discuss McGeer’s scaffolded reasons-responsiveness account in the light of two concerns. The first is that some agents may be less attuned to feedback from their social environment but are nevertheless morally responsible agents – for example, autistic people. The second is that moral audiences can actually work to undermine reasons-responsiveness if they espouse the wrong values. We argue that McGeer’s account (...) can be modified to handle both problems. Once we understand the specific roles that moral feedback plays for recognizing and acting on moral reasons, we can see that autistics frequently do rely on such feedback, although it often needs to be more explicit. Furthermore, although McGeer is correct to highlight the importance of moral feedback, audience sensitivity is not all that matters to reasons-responsiveness; it needs to be tempered by a consistent application of moral rules. Agents also need to make sure that they choose their moral audiences carefully, paying special attention to receiving feedback from audiences which may be adversely affected by their actions. (shrink)

Several of the contributions to the Lynch et al. Special issue make the claim that conversation-analytic research into epistemics is ‘routinely crafted at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail, and what that detail may show us’. Here, we seek to address the inappositeness of this critique by tracing precisely how it is that recognizable actions emerge from distinct practices of interaction. We begin by reviewing some of the foundational tenets of conversation-analytic theory and method – including the relationship (...) between position and composition, and the making of collections – as these appear to be primary sources of confusion for many of the contributors to the Lynch et al. Special Issue. We then target some of the specific arguments presented in the Special Issue, including the alleged ‘over-hearer’s’ writing of metrics, the provision of so-called ‘alternative’ analyses and the supposed ‘crafting’ of generalizations in epistemics research. In addition, in light of Lynch’s more general assertion that conversation analysis has recently been experiencing a ‘rapprochement’ with what he disparagingly refers to as the ‘juggernaut’ of linguistics, we discuss the specific expertise that linguists have to offer in analyzing particular sorts of interactional detail. The article as a whole thus illustrates that, rather than being produced ‘at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail’, conversation-analytic findings – including its work in epistemics – are unambiguously anchored in such detail. We conclude by offering our comments as to the link between CA and linguistics more generally, arguing that this relationship has long proven to be – and indeed continues to be – a mutually beneficial one. (shrink)

This article seeks to show that the views on time and eternity of Plotinus and Boethius are analogous to those implied by the block-time perspective in contemporary philosophy of time, as implied by the mathematical physics of Einstein and Minkowski. Both Einstein and Boethius utilized their theories of time and eternity with the practical goal of providing consolation to persons in distress; this practice of consolatio is compared to Pierre Hadot’s studies of the “Look from Above”, of the importance of (...) concentrating on the present moment, and his emphasis on ancient philosophy as providing therapy for the soul, instead of mere abstract speculation for its own sake. In the first part of the article, Einstein’s views are compared with those of Plotinus, and with the elucidation of Plotinus’ views provided in the Arabic Theology of Aristotle. The second part of the article studies Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, which, contrary to recent interpretations, is indeed a genuine consolation rather than a parody thereof. The Consolation shows how the study of the Neoplatonic philosophical curriculum can lead the student along the path to salvation, by awakening and elaborating his innate ideas. To illustrate this doctrine, a passage from the little-known PseudoBoethian treatise De diis et praesensionibus is studied. Finally, after a survey of Boethius’ view on fate and providence, and Aristotle’s theory of future contingents, I study Boethius’ three main arguments in favor of the reconcilability of divine omniscience and human free will: the distinction between absolute and conditional necessity, the principle that the nature of knowledge is determined by the knower, and finally the doctrine that God lives in an eternal present, seeing past, present, and future simultaneously. This last view, developed primarily from Plotinus, is once again argued to be analogous to that advocated by contemporary block-time theorists on the basis of Eisteinian relativity. God’s supratemporal vision introduces no necessity into contingent events. Ultimate, objective reality, for Boethius as for Plotinus and Einstein, is atemporal, and our idea that there is a conflict between human free will and divine omniscience derives from a kind of optical illusion, caused by the fact that we cannot help but think in terms of temporality. (shrink)

That Jefferson execrated Plato in an 1814 letter to friend John Adams. In it, he expresses an unsympathetic, hostile view of Plato’s Republic, and the reasons are several. Nonetheless, Plato’s views on what makes government fundamentally sound are, at base, remarkably similar to Jefferson’s both in substance and sentiment, so much so that it is inconceivable to think that Plato’s Republic had little effect on Jefferson’s political thinking. That makes his execration of Plato difficult to understand. This (...) paper is an attempt to show that Jefferson, despite the tenor of his letter to Adams, had much more than a dilettante’s grasp of the political content of Plato’s major work. Jefferson was very likely quite familiar with the work, since his own political philosophy assimilates key substratal Platonic political principles of good, stable governing. His disavowal of the work and execration of Plato, then, is due to a constellation of other factors: Adams’s feelings toward Plato, Jefferson’s views on the corruptions of Jesus’s teachings, his deep-dyed detestation of metempiricism, his view that Plato was an unoriginal thinker, and strong disagreement with Plato’s means to instantiate substratal political principles. (shrink)

Working with interactional data, one sometimes observes that a type of behavior seems to be produced a great deal by one category of persons and not all that much by another category. But when put to the test of a straightforward count, the observation does not hold up: Category X does not after all do this thing significantly more often than Category Y does. It may then be that the apparent skewing of the behavior’s distribution across categories is the result (...) of selective observation; noticing with greater frequency those cases which conformed to some biased notion held by the observer of how these categories behave. But there seems to be another possibility. It may be that the observation has located, but only roughly and partially described, a complex of behaviors which the observation can then be seen to reflect, refer to, or constitute a ‘gloss’ for. (shrink)

To teach information literacy, many colleges and universities use a version of TILT (the Texas Information Tutorial) or Searchpath, a modification of TILT by Western Michigan University. This paper describes our experience customizing Searchpath for Kutztown University’s Rohrbach Library, including the impetus behind the project, the process of customizing Searchpath, the project pilot, collaborative efforts, and challenges encountered. The authors also discuss the decision to select Searchpath rather than TILT, how Kutztown’s version of tutorial is currently being used, and future (...) plans for the product, along with suggestions to those considering Searchpath for their libraries. (shrink)

Spontaneous eye blink rate has been linked to attention and memory, specifically working memory. sEBR is also related to striatal dopamine activity with schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease showing increases and decreases, respectively, in sEBR. A weakness of past studies of sEBR and WM is that correlations have been reported using blink rates taken at baseline either before or after performance of the tasks used to assess WM. The goal of the present study was to understand how fluctuations in sEBR during (...) different phases of a visual WM task predict task accuracy. In two experiments, with recordings of sEBR collected inside and outside of a magnetic resonance imaging bore, we observed sEBR to be positively correlated with WM task accuracy during the WM delay period. We also found task-related modulation of sEBR, including higher sEBR during the delay period compared to rest, and lower sEBR during task phases that place demands on visual attention. These results provide further evidence that sEBR could be an important predictor of WM task performance with the changes during the delay period suggesting a role in WM maintenance. The relationship of sEBR to DA activity and WM maintenance is discussed. (shrink)

This article proposes a way of opening up the concept of genius to renewed understanding by analysing it in relation to the ‘others’ that are represented by melancholy, imposture and the reader. Discussions where genius is defined oppositionally are contrasted with those where such others are integral to the account of the phenomenon. The argument is based on a reading of three of the founding texts of the literature on genius, Aristotle's Problemata XXX, 1, Plato's Ion and Kant's Critique of (...) Judgement. (shrink)

According to strong pluralist theories of truth, ‘true’ designates different properties depending on which sentences it’s applied to. An influential objection to strong pluralism claims it can’t make sense of logically complex sentences whose components have different truth-properties. For example, if ‘true’ designates correspondents for ‘Tabby is a cat’, and it designates coherence for ‘Tabby is beautiful’, what does it designate for ‘Tabby is a beautiful cat’ (Tappolet 1997)? Will Gamester (2019) has proposed a novel pluralist theory meant to avoid (...) the problem. The theory construes ‘true’ as designating a different property for each possible logical structure, and he has challenged monists to identify shortcomings of the theory in virtue of its pluralism. This paper answers Gamester’s challenge and identifies three such shortcomings. (1) The theory can’t make sense of the idea that all true conjunctions share the property of having true conjuncts, in virtue of which they are true. (2) The theory imposes unmotivated syntactic constraints on the language in which the theory of truth is formulated. (3) Avoiding the second shortcoming requires arbitrary choices among equally good candidates for “the” logical form of sentences and hence the designation of ‘true’ as applied to them. (shrink)