Mind - recent issues

Levity

Horsten, L. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:05 PDT

In this article, the prospects of deflationism about the concept of truth are investigated. A new version of deflationism, called inferential deflationism, is articulated and defended. It is argued that it avoids the pitfalls of earlier deflationist views such as Horwich’s minimalist theory of truth and Field’s version of deflationism.

On 'Average'

Kennedy, C., Stanley, J. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:05 PDT

This article investigates the semantics of sentences that express numerical averages, focusing initially on cases such as ‘The average American has 2.3 children’. Such sentences have been used both by linguists and philosophers to argue for a disjuncture between semantics and ontology. For example, Noam Chomsky and Norbert Hornstein have used them to provide evidence against the hypothesis that natural language semantics includes a reference relation holding between words and objects in the world, whereas metaphysicians such as Joseph Melia and Stephen Yablo have used them to provide evidence that apparent singular reference need not be taken as ontologically committing. We develop a fully general and independently justified compositional semantics in which such constructions are assigned truth conditions that are not ontologically problematic, and show that our analysis is superior to all extant rivals. Our analysis provides evidence that a good semantics yields a sensible ontology. It also reveals that natural language contains genuine singular terms that refer to numbers.

Hume, Causal Realism, and Causal Science

Millican, P. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:05 PDT

The ‘New Hume’ interpretation, which sees Hume as a realist about ‘thick’ Causal powers, has been largely motivated by his evident commitment to causal language and causal science. In this, however, it is fundamentally misguided, failing to recognise how Hume exploits his anti-realist conclusions about (upper-case) Causation precisely to support (lower-case) causal science. When critically examined, none of the standard New Humean arguments — familiar from the work of Wright, Craig, Strawson, Buckle, Kail, and others — retains any significant force against the plain evidence of Hume's; texts. But the most devastating objection comes from Hume's own applications of his analysis of causation, to the questions of ‘the immateriality of the soul’ and ‘liberty and necessity’. These show that the New Hume interpretation has misunderstood the entire purpose of his ‘Chief Argument’, and presented him as advocating some of the very positions he is arguing most strongly against.

Compositionality, Understanding, and Proofs

Pagin, P. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:05 PDT

The principle of semantic compositionality, as Jerry Fodor and Ernie Lepore have emphasized, imposes constraints on theories of meaning that it is hard to meet with psychological or epistemic accounts. Here, I argue that this general tendency is exemplified in Michael Dummett's account of meaning. On that account, the so-called manifestability requirement has the effect that the speaker who understands a sentence s must be able to tell whether or not s satisfies central semantic conditions. This requirement is not met by truth-conditional accounts of meaning. On Dummett's view, it is met by a proof conditional account: understanding amounts to knowledge of what counts as a proof of a sentence. A speaker is supposed always to be capable of deciding whether or not a given object is a proof of a given sentence she understands. This requirement comes into conflict with compositionality. If meaning is compositionally determined, then all you need for understanding a sentence is what you get from combining your understanding of the parts according to the mode of composition. But that knowledge is not always sufficient for recognizing any proof at all of a given sentence. Dummett's proof-theoretic argument to the contrary is mistaken.

Objectivity

Peacocke, C. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Judgement, perception, and other mental states and events have a minimal objectivity in this sense: making the judgement or being in the mental state does not in general thereby make the judgement correct or make the perception veridical. I offer an explanation of this minimal objectivity by developing a form of constitutive transcendental argument. The argument appeals to the proper individuation of the content of judgements and perceptions. In the case of the conceptual content of judgements, concepts are individuated by their fundamental reference rules. Properly developed, this resource can be used against various forms of idealism, and to defend a conception of transcendental arguments that presupposes neither verificationism nor transcendental idealism. The article contrasts its approach with other recent transcendental treatments. It also addresses the relation between its argument and Principles of Significance. I close with a discussion of the right way of handling the extreme generality necessarily involved in transcendental reasoning.

Yalcin on 'Might'

Barnett, D. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

On one view about the word ‘might’, to say, sincerely and literally, that it might be that S is to say something about one’s epistemic state (and perhaps also about the epistemic states of those around one). For convenience, I will call this the natural view about ‘might’. On one version of the natural view, to say that it might be that S is to say that what one is certain of is consistent with the proposition that S. Seth Yalcin (2007) has argued that all versions of the natural view are wrong. My aim in this article is to show how at least one version of the natural view escapes Yalcin’s argument.

Meta-agnosticism: Higher Order Epistemic Possibility

Sorensen, R. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

In ‘Epistemic Modals’ (2007), Seth Yalcin proposes Stalnaker-style semantics for epistemic possibility. He is inspired by John MacFarlane’s ingenious defence of relativism, in which claims of epistemic possibility are made rigidly from the perspective of the assessor’s actual stock of information (rather than from the speaker’s knowledge base or that of his audience or community). The innovations of MacFarlane and Yalcin independently reinforce the modal collapse espoused by Jaakko Hintikka in his 1962 epistemic logic (which relied on the implausible KK principle and heavy idealizations). I respond to this new challenge with fresh objections to the underlying S4 equivalence: p p. I also propose counter-analyses of the intriguing data which Yalcin cites in support of his new semantics. A key collateral motivation for this defence of irredundant iterations is to ward off a threat to higher order vagueness.

More on Epistemic Modals

Yalcin, S. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

I respond to comments by David Barnett and Roy Sorensen on my paper ‘Epistemic Modals’.

On Two Reasons for Denying that Bodies Can Outlast Life

LaPorte, J. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Hershenov (2005) gives two interesting, related arguments, which he calls ‘symmetry arguments’, to the effect that a living body or an organism cannot be identical to a corpse, superficial appearances to the contrary. I relate the two arguments briefly and then criticize them for related weaknesses.

Organisms and their Bodies: Response to LaPorte

Hershenov, D. B. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

I argue that a corpse cannot be identified with an earlier living body, because it acquires and retains parts in different ways. Contrary to what Joseph LaPorte maintains, there can be neither one principle of part-assimilation nor a non-disjunctive account of persistence conditions that can establish the identity of a living body and a later corpse.

Ethics Vindicated. Kant's Transcendental Legitimation of Moral Discourse, by Ermanno Bencivenga.

Wenzel, C. H. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

The Possibility of Knowledge, by Quassim Cassam.

Goldberg, S. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Plotinus on Intellect, by Eyjolfur Kjalar Emilsson.

Remes, P. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood, by Simon Evnine.

Baumann, P. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Justice, Democracy and Reasonable Agreement, by Colin Farrelly.

Birnbaum, S. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

In the Name of Phenomenology, by Simon Glendinning.

Drummond, J. J. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge, edited by Adrian Haddock and Fiona Macpherson.

Setiya, K. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Describing Inner Experience? by Russell T. Hulburt and Eric Schwitzgebel.

Fernandez, J. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding, by Mark Johnson.

McMahon, J. A. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Mathematical Knowledge, edited by Mary Leng, Alexander Paseau, and Michael Potter.

Chudnoff, E. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Authority and Estrangement: An Essay on Self-Knowledge, by Richard Moran.

Child, W. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, by Michael Murray.

Mawson, T. J. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Themes from G. E. Moore: New Essays in Epistemology and Ethics, edited by Susana Nuccetelli and Gary Seay.

Dall'Agnol, D. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Theism and Ultimate Explanation: The Necessary Shape of Contingency, by Timothy O'Connor

Koons, R. C. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Error (On Our Predicament When Things Go Wrong), by Nicholas Rescher.

Kantin, H. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context, edited by Don Ross, David Spurrett, Harold Kincaid, and G. Lynn Stephens.

Vierkant, T. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Everyday Aesthetics, by Yuriko Saito.

Carlson, A. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Without Justification, by Jonathan Sutton.

Comesana, J. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry, by Tim Thornton.

Perring, C. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Aiming at Truth, by Nicholas Unwin.

Grimm, S. R. — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:06 PDT

Books Received

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:07 PDT

Announcements

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:07 PDT

Philosophy ConferencePM@100: Logic from 1910 to 192721-24 May 2010Bertrand Russell Research CentreMcMaster UniversityHamilton, OntarioCanada

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:56:07 PDT

Knowledge and Presuppositions

Blome-Tillmann, M. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:10 PDT

The paper explicates a new way to model the context-sensitivity of ‘knows’, namely a way that suggests a close connection between the content of ‘knows’ in a context C and what is pragmatically presupposed in C. After explicating my new approach in the first half of the paper and arguing that it is explanatorily superior to standard accounts of epistemic contextualism, the paper points, in its second half, to some interesting new features of the emerging account, such as its compatibility with the intuitions of Moorean dogmatists. Finally, the paper shows that the account defended is not subject to the most prominent and familiar philosophical objections to epistemic contextualism discussed in the recent literature.

Modalism and Logical Pluralism

Bueno, O., Shalkowski, S. A. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:10 PDT

Logical pluralism is the view according to which there is more than one relation of logical consequence, even within a given language. A recent articulation of this view has been developed in terms of quantification over different cases: classical logic emerges from consistent and complete cases; constructive logic from consistent and incomplete cases, and paraconsistent logic from inconsistent and complete cases. We argue that this formulation causes pluralism to collapse into either logical nihilism or logical universalism. In its place, we propose a modalist account of logical pluralism that is independently well motivated and that avoids these collapses.

Dispositions, Abilities to Act, and Free Will: The New Dispositionalism

Clarke, R. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

This paper examines recent attempts to revive a classic compatibilist position on free will, according to which having an ability to perform a certain action is having a certain disposition. Since having unmanifested dispositions is compatible with determinism, having unexercised abilities to act, it is held, is likewise compatible. Here it is argued that although there is a kind of capacity to act possession of which is a matter of having a disposition, the new dispositionalism leaves unresolved the main points of dispute concerning free will.

Rationality, Normativity, and Transparency

Bridges, J. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Although in everyday life and thought we take for granted that there are norms of rationality, their existence presents severe philosophical problems. Kolodny (2005) is thus moved to deny that rationality is normative. But this denial is not itself unproblematic, and I argue that Kolodny's defence of it—particularly his Transparency Account, which aims to explain why rationality appears to be normative even though it is not—is unsuccessful.

Reply to Bridges

Kolodny, N. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Bridges (2009) argues that the ‘Transparency Account’ (TA) of Kolodny 2005 has a hidden flaw. The TA does not, after all, account for the fact that (1) in our ordinary, engaged thought and talk about rationality; we believe that, when it would be irrational of one of us to refuse to A, he has, because of this, conclusive reason to A. My reply is that this was the point. For reasons given in Kolodny 2005, (1) is false. The aim of the TA is to o.er an interpretation of our engaged thought and talk that is compatible with the falsity of (1) and that helps to explain why, when reflecting on our thought and talk, we are so prone to misrepresent what it involves. After making these points, I consider alternative senses in which rationality might be, or be taken by us to be, ‘normative’ and conclude that these alternatives have little bearing on the TA.

Assertion, Context, and Epistemic Accessibility

Hawthorne, J., Magidor, O. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

In his seminal paper ‘Assertion’, Robert Stalnaker distinguishes between the semantic content of a sentence on an occasion of use and the content asserted by an utterance of that sentence on that occasion. While in general the assertoric content of an utterance is simply its semantic content, the mechanisms of conversation sometimes force the two apart. Of special interest in this connection is one of the principles governing assertoric content in the framework, one according to which the asserted content ought to be identical at each world in the context set (the Uniformity principle).

In this paper, we present a problem for Stalnaker's meta-semantic framework, by challenging the plausibility of the Uniformity principle. We argue that the interaction of the framework with facts about epistemic accessibility—in particular, failures of epistemic transparency—cause problems for the Uniformity principle and thus for Stalnaker's framework more generally.

On Hawthorne and Magidor on Assertion, Context, and Epistemic Accessibility

Stalnaker, R. C. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Hawthorne and Magidor's criticisms of the model of presupposition and assertion that I have used and defended are all based on a rejection of some transparency or introspection of assumptions about speaker presupposition. This response to those criticisms aims first to clarify, and then to defend, the required transparency assumptions. It is argued, first, that if the assumptions are properly understood, some prima facie problems for them do not apply, second, that rejecting the assumptions has intuitively implausible consequences, and third, that the ‘margin of error’ argument against the principle of positive introspection has a false premiss. The paper concludes with a response to a criticism of what Hawthorne and Magidor call ‘the uniformity principle’ that is used in the model to explain some pragmatic phenomena.

The Conjunction and Disjunction Theses

Jago, M. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Rodriguez-Pereyra (2006) argues for the disjunction thesis but against the conjunction thesis. I argue that accepting the disjunction thesis undermines his argument against the conjunction thesis.

Disjunctions, Conjunctions, and their Truthmakers

Lopez de Sa, D. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (2006) argues against attempts to preserve the entailment principle (or a restriction of it) while avoiding the explosion of truthmakers for necessities and truthmaker triviality. In doing so, he both defends the disjunction thesis—if something makes true a disjunctive truth, then it makes true one of its disjuncts—, and rejects the conjunction thesis—if something makes tue a conjunctive truth, then it makes true each of its conjuncts. In my discussion, I provide plausible counterexamples to the disjunction thesis, and contend that Rodriguez-Pereyra's general defence of it fails. Then I defend the conjunction thesis from Rodriguez-Pereyra's case against it.

The Disjunction and Conjunction Theses

Rodriguez-Pereyra, G. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

This paper is a response to replies by Dan López de Sa and Mark Jago to my ‘Truthmaking, Entailment, and the Conjuction Thesis’. In that paper, my main aim was to argue against the Entailment Principle by arguing against the Conjunction Thesis, which is entailed by the Entailment Principle. In the course of so doing, although not essential for my project in that paper, I defended the Disjunction Thesis. López de Sa has objected both to my defence of the Disjunction Thesis and my case against the Conjunction Thesis. I shall show that his objections are unfounded and based on serious misunderstandings of my position, what the relevant debate is, and some fundamental notions of Truthmaker Theory.

Jago argues that accepting the Disjunction Thesis and rejecting the Conjunction Thesis is hard to maintain. But I show that Jago has not shown that accepting the Disjunction Thesis while rejecting the Conjunction Thesis is impossible or even hard to maintain. Jago believes that, to accept the Disjunction Thesis while rejecting the Conjunction Thesis, one needs to reject his axiom (T₃), which says that all the truthmakers for are truthmakers for

. I argue that there are reasons to reject such a principle, and the version of it that says that what makes true makes

true.

Review: Stephen Boulter: The Rediscovery of Common Sense Philosophy

Preti, C. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Review: Thom Brooks: Hegel's Political Philosophy: A Systematic Reading of the Philosophy of Right

Tunick, M. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Review: Rosalind Carey: Russell and Wittgenstein on the Nature of Judgement

Beaney, M. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Review: Ursula Coope: Time for Aristotle: Physics IV.10-14

Roark, T. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Review: Paul Crowther: Defining Art, Creating the Canon

Zinkin, M. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Review: R. A. Du: Answering for Crime

Tadros, V. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Review: Owen Flanagan: The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World

Hasker, W. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Review: Wolfram Hinzen: An Essay on Names and Truth

Paul, I., Stainton, R. J. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Review: Axel Honneth: Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea

Sayers, S. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Review: Jennifer Lackey: Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge

Faulkner, P. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Review: Robin Le Poidevin: The Images of Time: An Essay on Temporal Representation

Hoerl, C. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Review: Jerrold Levinson: Contemplating Art: Essays in Aesthetics

Schellekens, E. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:11 PDT

Review: Hallvard Lillehammer: Companions in Guilt: Arguments for Ethical Objectivity

Cuneo, T. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:12 PDT

Review: Geoffrey Lloyd: Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unity and Diversity of the Human Mind

Cooper, R. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:12 PDT

Review: Penelope Maddy: Second Philosophy

Stroud, B. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:12 PDT

Review: Bradley Monton: Images of Empiricism: Essays on Science and Stances, with a Reply from Bas C. van Fraassen

Douven, I. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:12 PDT

Review: Jesse J. Prinz: The Emotional Construction of Morals

Joyce, R. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:12 PDT

Review: Bernard Reginster: The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism

Janaway, C. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:12 PDT

Review: Robert C. Richardson: Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology

Walter, S. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:12 PDT

Review: Christopher Shields: Aristotle

Gregoric, P. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:12 PDT

Review: Kathleen Stock: Philosophers on Music: Experience, Meaning, and Work

Iseminger, G. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:12 PDT

Review: Robert Wicks: Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant on Judgment

Zuckert, R. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:12 PDT

Review: Christopher Woodard: Reasons, Patterns, and Cooperation

Mulgan, T. — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:12 PDT

Books Received

Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:12 PDT

Announcements

Thu, 14 May 2009 07:51:12 PDT

No Good Fit: Why the Fitting Attitude Analysis of Value Fails

Bykvist, K. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Understanding value in terms of fitting attitudes is all the rage these days. According to this fitting attitude analysis of value (FA-analysis for short) what is good is what it is fitting to favour in some sense. Many aspects of the FA-analysis have been discussed. In particular, a lot of discussion has been concerned with the wrong-reason objection: it can be fitting to have an attitude towards something for reasons that have nothing to do with the value the thing has in itself. Much less attention has been paid to the problem of identifying the relevant attitudes in virtue of which value is supposed to be defined. An old complaint, however, is that the FA-analysis is bound to be circular, because the fitting attitude is best seen as an evaluative judgement or an evaluative experience. In this paper, I am arguing that the challenge to find a non-circular account is deepened by the fact that on many popular non-evaluative understandings of favouring, there are good states of a.airs that it is never fitting to favour, because it is logically impossible or irrational to favour them. I will also show that the remaining candidate of favouring, ‘imaginative emotional feeling’, will generate a new version of the wrong-reason objection if it is put to use in the FAaccount. I shall conclude that the prospects of finding a non-circular FA-analysis look bleak.

Against Content Normativity

Gluer, K., Wikforss, A. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

As meaning's claim to normativity has grown increasingly suspect the normativity thesis has shifted to mental content. In this paper, we distinguish two versions of content normativism: ‘CE normativism’, according to which it is essential to content that certain ‘oughts’ can be derived from it, and ‘CD normativism’, according to which content is determined by norms in the first place. We argue that neither type of normativism withstands scrutiny. CE normativism appeals to the fact that there is an essential connection between content and correctness conditions. But, we argue, this fact is by itself normatively innocent, and attempts to add a normative dimension via the normativity of belief ultimately fail. CD normativism, in turn, falls prey to the ‘dilemma of regress and idleness’: the appeal to rules either leads to some form of regress of rules, or the notion of rule-following is reduced to an idle label. We conclude by suggesting that our arguments do not support naturalism: it is a mistake to assume that normativism and naturalism are our only options.

Necessities and Necessary Truths: A Prolegomenon to the Use of Modal Logic in the Analysis of Intensional Notions

Halbach, V., Welch, P. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

In philosophical logic necessity is usually conceived as a sentential operator rather than as a predicate. An intensional sentential operator does not allow one to express quantified statements such as ‘There are necessary a posteriori propositions’ or ‘All laws of physics are necessary’ in first-order logic in a straightforward way, while they are readily formalized if necessity is formalized by a predicate. Replacing the operator conception of necessity by the predicate conception, however, causes various problems and forces one to reject many philosophical accounts involving necessity that are based on the use of operator modal logic. We argue that the expressive power of the predicate account can be restored if a truth predicate is added to the language of first-order modal logic, because the predicate ‘is necessary’ can then be replaced by ‘is necessarily true’. We prove a result showing that this substitution is technically feasible. To this end we provide partial possible-worlds semantics for the language with a predicate of necessity and perform the reduction of necessities to necessary truths. The technique applies also to many other intensional notions that have been analysed by means of modal operators.

Identity and Indiscernibility

Hawley, K. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Putative counterexamples to the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles (PII) are notoriously inconclusive. I establish ground rules for debate in this area, offer a new response to such counterexamples for friends of the PII, but then argue that no response is entirely satisfactory. Finally, I undermine some positive arguments for PII.

Rigidity and Essentiality: Reply to Gomez-Torrente

Ahmed, A. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Mario Gómez-Torrente (2006) says that whilst theoretical identifications (e.g. ‘All lightning is electrical discharge’) do not entail their own necessitations, they do entail the necessitation of a weaker statement. And he claims that this weaker entailment serves Kripke's purposes as well as the stronger one would have. I argue that this is false. Section 1 says what the weaker entailment is; section 2 says why it matters. Section 3 argues that the entailment identified at section 1 does not meet the purpose identified at section 2. Section 4 rejects two possible objections. The aim is to illustrate (not establish) the general claim that those ‘modal facts’ that are not entirely speculative are quite useless.

Essentiality and Theoretical Identifications: Reply to Ahmed

Gomez-Torrente, M. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

In reply to Arif Ahmed, I argue that the apparatus of essentiality and qualified and unqualified possibilist identifications, developed in my paper ‘Rigidity and Essentiality’, can be used to provide a flawless reconstruction of several Kripkean ideas about the semantics of typical natural kind predicates, the essence of natural kinds, the contingency of usual descriptive identifications, and the arguments against psychophysical identity theories.

Erratum to Mind, vol. 117, number 468

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Review: John Bishop: Believing by Faith: An Essay in the Epistemology and Ethics of Religious Belief

Poston, T. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Review: Craig Bourne: A Future for Presentism

Dowe, P. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Review: T. A. Cavanaugh: Double Effect Reasoning: Doing Good and Avoiding Evil

Ellis, A. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Review: Rachel Cooper: Psychiatry and Philosophy of Science

Bortolotti, L. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Review: Paul W. Franks: All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism

Dudley, W. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Review: Miranda Fricker: Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing

Kusch, M. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Review: Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi: The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science

Toribio, J. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Review: Daniel D. Hutto: Wittgenstein and the End of Philosophy: Neither Theory nor Therapy

Koethe, J. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Review: P. J. E. Kail: Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy

Loeb, L. E. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Review: Peter Kivy: The Performance of Reading: An Essay in the Philosophy of Literature

Ribeiro, A. C. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:37 PST

Review: Brian Leiter and Neil Sinhababu: Nietzsche and Morality

Katsafanas, P. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:38 PST

Review: Robert B. Louden: The World We Want

Gaukroger, S. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:38 PST

Review: Tim Maudlin: The Metaphysics Within Physics

Lange, M. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:38 PST

Review: David Pears: Paradox and Platitude in Wittgenstein's Philosophy

Ahmed, A. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:38 PST

Review: Aaron Ridley: Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Nietzsche on Art

Wicks, R. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:38 PST

Review: Sydney Shoemaker: Physical Realization

Gibb, S. C. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:38 PST

Review: Charles Travis: Thought's Footing: A Theme in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

Miller, A. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:38 PST

Review: Margaret Urban Walker: Moral Repair

Bennett, C. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:38 PST

Review: Jonathan A. Waskan: Models and Cognition

Jago, M. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:38 PST

Review: David Wong: Natural Moralities

Bloomfield, P. — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:38 PST

Books Received

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:38 PST

Announcements

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:24:38 PST