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Goodness and Reasons: Accentuating the Negative

Crisp, R. — 2008-04-10

This paper concerns the relation between goodness, or value, and practical reasons, and in particular the so-called ‘buck-passing’ account (BPA) of that relation recently offered by T. M. Scanlon, according to which goodness is not reason-providing but merely the higher-order property of possessing lower-order properties that provide reasons to respond in certain ways. The paper begins by briefly describing BPA and the motivation for it, noting that Scanlon now accepts that the lower-order properties in question may be evaluative. He also insists that the BPA is not biconditional (wisely, since otherwise goodness becomes a ‘Cambridge property’), which leaves him with the task of explaining why goodness arises only in a sub-set of cases in which lower-order properties ground reasons. Having rejected two attempts to do this, based on elucidation of the responses and of the reasons, I suggest that Scanlon may claim that goodness arises in, and only in, cases where the lower-order properties are evaluative and that goodness itself provides us with a way of distinguishing the evaluative from the non-evaluative. In other words, he should retain the negative component of BPA, according to which being good is not itself reason-providing, while surrendering the positive, according to which the property of goodness is merely the higher-order property of having lower-order properties that provide reasons to respond.

Desires

McDaniel, K., Bradley, B. — 2008-04-10

It is not at all obvious how best to draw the distinction between conditional and unconditional desires. In this paper we examine extant attempts to analyse conditional desire. From the failures of those attempts, we draw a moral that leads us to the correct account of conditional desires. We then extend the account of conditional desires to an account of all desires. It emerges that desires do not have the structure that they have been thought to have. We attempt to explain the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic desire in light of our account of desire. We show how to use our account to solve Wollheim's paradox of democracy and to save modus ponens. Finally, we extend the account of desire to related phenomena, such as conditional promises, intentions, and commands.

Rule-Following, Explanation-Transcendence, and Private Language

Panjvani, C. — 2008-04-10

I examine what I take to be an important consideration for the later Wittgenstein: the understanding of a rule does not exceed or transcend an understanding of explanations or instructions in the rule. I contend that this consideration plays a central role in the later Wittgenstein's views on rule-following. I first show that it serves as a key premiss in a sceptical argument concerning our ability to follow rules. I then argue that this consideration is vital to Wittgenstein's case against what I describe as a realist view of rules. This realist view requires that our understanding of a rule extend beyond what can be understood from any set of instructions or explanation. For Wittgenstein, because this is to transcend publicly available means of conveying understanding, this realist's understanding is a private understanding. He calls this private source of understanding an ‘intuition’ and the main line of argument against intuition in our understanding of a rule draws, appropriately, on what is called his ‘private language argument’. In this paper, I defend a non-verificationist reading of this argument and its use against the realist so-construed.

Vague Representation

Rayo, A. — 2008-04-10

The goal of this paper is to develop a theory of content for vague language. My proposal is based on the following three theses: (1) language-mastery is not rulebased— it involves a certain kind of decision-making; (2) a theory of content is to be thought of instrumentally—it is a tool for making sense of our linguistic practice; and (3) linguistic contents are only locally defined—they are only defined relative to suitably constrained sets of possibilities.

Truth, Assertion, and the Horizontal: Frege on 'The Essence of Logic'

Taschek, W. W. — 2008-04-10

In the opening to his late essay, ‘Der Gedanke’, Frege asserts without qualification that the word ‘true’ ‘points the way for logic’. But in a short piece from his Nachlass entitled ‘My Basic Logical Insights’, Frege writes that the word ‘true’ makes ‘an unsuccessful attempt to point to the essence of logic’, asserting instead that ‘what really pertains to logic lies not in the word "true" but in the assertoric force with which the sentence is uttered’. Properly understanding what Frege takes to be at issue here is crucial for understanding his conception of logic and, in particular, what he takes to be its normative status vis-à-vis judgement, assertion, and inference. In this paper, I focus my attention on clarifying the latter claim and Frege's motivations for making it, exposing what I take to be a fundamental tension in Frege's conception of logic. Finally, I discuss whether Frege's deployment of the horizontal in his mature Begriffsschrift helps to resolve this tension.

Does Frege Use a Truth-Predicate in his 'Justification' of the Laws of Logic? A Comment on Weiner

Greimann, D. — 2008-04-10

Joan Weiner has recently claimed that Frege neither uses, nor has any need to use, a truth-predicate in his justification of the logical laws. She argues that because of the assimilation of sentences to proper names in his system, Frege does not need to make use of the Quinean device of semantic ascent in order to formulate the logical laws, and that the predicate ‘is the True’, which is used in Frege's justification, is not to be considered as a truth-predicate, because it does not apply to true sentences or true thoughts. The present paper aims to show that Frege needs to use, and does use, a truth-predicate in this context. It is argued, first, that Frege needs to use a truthpredicate in order to show that the truth of the logical laws is evident from the senses of the sentences by means of which they are formulated, and second, that the predicate that he actually uses, ‘is the True’, must be considered as a truth-predicate in the relevant sense, because it can be used and is actually used by Frege to explain the truth-conditions of thoughts. To defend this interpretation, it is discussed whether the explanatory use of ‘is the True’ in Frege's system is compatible with his deflationary analysis of ‘true’. The paper's conclusion is that there is indeed a conflict here; but, from Frege's point of view, this conflict is due merely to the logical imperfection of natural language and does not affect the proper system but only its propaedeutic.

How Tarskian is Frege?

Weiner, J. — 2008-04-10

In ‘Semantic Descent’ I argued that Frege does not have a metatheory in the following sense: the justifications he offers for his basic laws and rules of inference neither employ nor require a truth-predicate or metalinguistic variables. In ‘Does Frege Use a Truth-predicate in his "Justification" of the Laws of Logic?’, Dirk Greimann disputes this. As Greimann interprets Frege, (i) Frege's remarks commit him to giving a metatheoretic justification of the basic laws and rules of his logic, and (ii) Frege actually gives such a justification in the early sections of Grundgesetze—although the truth-predicate that Frege employs is a non-standard one: it is neither a predicate that holds of all and only true sentences nor a predicate that holds of all and only true thoughts. I argue that Greimann's interpretation is not, in the end, true to the text, and that his non-standard view of what is required of a Tarskian truth-predicate is ultimately not viable.

Review: Helen Beebee: Hume on Causation

Kail, P. J. E. — 2008-04-10

Review: Frederick Beiser: Schiller as Philosopher: A Re-Examination

Pugh, D. — 2008-04-10

Review: Jose Luis Bermudez: Thought, Reference, and Experience: Themes from the Philosophy of Gareth Evans

de Gaynesford, M. — 2008-04-10

Review: Akeel Bilgrami: Self-Knowledge and Resentment

Lawlor, K. — 2008-04-10

Review: Roger Crisp: Reasons and the Good

Richardson, H. S. — 2008-04-10

Review: Daniel W. Graham: Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy

Barnes, J. — 2008-04-10

Review: James Harris: Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy

Yaffe, G. — 2008-04-10

Review: Michael Huemer: Ethical Intuitionism

Lemos, N. — 2008-04-10

Review: John V. Kulvicki: On Images: Their Structure and Content

Bantinaki, K. — 2008-04-10

Review: Dominic McIver Lopes: Sight and Sensibility: Evaluating Pictures

Giovannelli, A. — 2008-04-10

Review: Robert J. Matthews: The Measure of Mind: Propositional Attitudes and Their Attribution

Longworth, G. — 2008-04-10

Review: Denis McManus: The Enchantment of Words: Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Marie, M. — 2008-04-10

Review: Hans Radder: The World Observed/The World Conceived

Fales, E. — 2008-04-10

Review: W. Teed Rockwell: Neither Brain nor Ghost: A Nondualist Alternative to the Mind-Brain Identity Theory

Bickle, J. — 2008-04-10

Review: Thomas Sattig: The Language and Reality of Time

Rea, M. — 2008-04-10

Review: George Sher: In Praise of Blame

Watson, G. — 2008-04-10

Review: A. D. Smith: The Problem of Perception

Robinson, H. — 2008-04-10

Review: Karsten R. Stueber: Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk Psychology, and the Human Sciences

Maibom, H. L. — 2008-04-10

Review: Folke Tersman: Moral Disagreement

Majors, B. — 2008-04-10

Review: Judith Thomson and Alex Byrne (eds): Content and Modality: Themes from the Philosophy of Robert Stalnaker

Yagisawa, T. — 2008-04-10

Books Received

2008-04-10

Announcements

2008-04-10