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Acta Analytica
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.367  Number of Followers: 6  Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)ISSN (Print) 1874-6349 - ISSN (Online) 0353-5150 Published by Springer-Verlag  [2468 journals]
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- Do the Standards of Rationality Depend on Resource Context'
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Abstract: People sometimes knowingly undermine the achievement of their own goals by, e.g., playing the lottery or borrowing from loan sharks. Are these agents acting irrationally' The standard answer is “yes.” But, in a recent award-winning paper, Jennifer Morton argues “no.” On her view, the norms of practical reasoning an agent ought to follow depend on that agent’s resource context (roughly, how rich or poor they are). If Morton is correct, the orthodox view that the same norms of practical rationality apply to all agents needs revision. I argue that Morton’s arguments fail on empirical and philosophical grounds. What’s at stake' If Morton is correct, poverty relief agencies ought to re-design their incentives so resource-scarce agents can rationally respond to them. If I’m correct, resource-scarce agents do act irrationally in the cases under discussion, and we shouldn’t be shy about saying so. Instead of declaring them rational, we should try to understand the causes of their irrational behavior and help them better succeed by their own lights.
PubDate: 2023-06-01
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- The Gruesome Truth About Semantic Dispositionalism
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Abstract: The resemblance is plain to see between Kripke’s Wittgenstein introducing bizarre rules such as quaddition (in illustrating the sceptical paradox against theories of meaning) and Goodman’s introducing the equally bizarre grue (in generating the new riddle of induction). But the two sorts of bizarre cases also differ in interesting respects. For those familiar with Goodman’s case, this similarity sparks a strong temptation to enlist to the meaning sceptic’s cause key elements of Goodman’s new riddle, which are missing from Kripke’s case. In this essay, I characterize a natural way of doing just this, which targets dispositionalist solutions to the sceptical paradox. I also show that, despite initial appearances, this new objection to dispositionalism (the symmetry problem) is not nearly as worrisome as originally thought. The solution offered on behalf of semantic dispositionalists does require a trade-off, though, from the severe form of indeterminacy advanced by the meaning sceptic to a much milder thesis.
PubDate: 2023-06-01
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- On the Cardinality Argument Against Quidditism
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Abstract: Robert Black argues against quidditism on the grounds that the quidditist is either committed to proper-class many possible worlds and proper-class many possible fundamental properties or must adopt an unacceptably arbitrary restriction on the number of possible fundamental properties. In this paper, I examine Black’s cardinality argument against quidditism and argue that quidditists and non-quidditists alike have reason to reject a key premise of that argument. While it may be the case that the quidditist is committed to nomically indiscernible possible worlds that mark distinctions that make no difference to the physicist, it does not appear that the cardinality of the class of possible worlds or the class of possible fundamental properties postulated by the quidditist is any more problematic than that postulated by the non-quidditist.
PubDate: 2023-06-01
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- Consciousness, Neuroscience, and Physicalism: Pessimism About Optimistic
Induction-
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Abstract: Nowadays, physicalism is arguably the received view on the nature of mental states. Among the arguments that have been provided in its favour, the inductive one seems to play a pivotal role in the debate. Leveraging the past success of materialistic science, the physicalist argues that a materialistic account of consciousness will eventually be provided, hence that physicalism is true. This article aims at evaluating whether this strategy can provide support for physicalism. According to the standard objection raised against the inductive line of reasoning, the argument would beg the question by assuming some sort of metaphysical uniformity between consciousness and the rest of the natural domain. Here, I concede that there is a way to avoid this criticism. However, I argue that the argument still fails to support physicalism due to a structural problem of justification transmission.
PubDate: 2023-06-01
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- Some Remarks on the Notion of Paradox
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Abstract: This paper argues that the traditional characterization of the notion of paradox — an apparently valid argument with apparently true premises and an apparently false conclusion — is too narrow; there are paradoxes that do not satisfy it. After discussing, and discarding, some alternatives, an outline of a new characterization of the notion of paradox is presented. A paradox is found to be an apparently valid argument such that, apparently, it does not present the kind of commitment to the conclusion that should be implied by an acceptance of the truth of the premises and the validity of the argument.
PubDate: 2023-06-01
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- Relationism and the Problem of Order
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Abstract: Relationism holds that objects entirely depend on relations or that they must be eliminated in favour of the latter. In this article, I raise a problem for relationism. I argue that relationism cannot account for the order in which non-symmetrical relations apply to their relata. In Section 1, I introduce some concepts in the ontology of relations and define relationism. In Section 2, I present the Problem of Order for non-symmetrical relations, after distinguishing it from the Problem of Differential Application. I also examine four main existing strategies to solve it. In Section 3, I develop my argument. The first step consists in arguing that—among those strategies—relationism can only accept directionalism. The second step consists in arguing that directionalism is affected by a serious problem: the Problem of Converses. I also show that relationists who embrace directionalism cannot solve this problem. In Section 4, I introduce and rebut several strategies on behalf of relationists to cope with my argument. In Section 5, I briefly draw some conclusions.
PubDate: 2023-06-01
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- Musical Types and Musical Flexibility
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Abstract: A central motivation for the type-token model of music works is its ability to explain musical multiplicity—the fact that musical works are capable of having multiple performances through which they can be experienced and which cannot be individually identified with the works themselves. The type-token model explains multiplicity by identifying musical works with structural types and taking performances to be tokens of those types. In this paper, I argue that musical works are flexible in ways which permit performances which are tokens of distinct structural types to be performances of the same musical work. And I argue that various attempts to reconcile the type-token model with musical flexibility are ultimately unsuccessful.
PubDate: 2023-06-01
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- Bradley’s Relation Regress and the Inadequacy of the Relata-Specific
Answer-
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Abstract: F. H. Bradley’s relation regress poses a difficult problem for metaphysics of relations. In this paper, we reconstruct this regress argument systematically and make its presuppositions explicit in order to see where the possibility of its solution or resolution lies. We show that it cannot be answered by claiming that it is not vicious. Neither is one of the most promising resolutions, the relata-specific answer adequate in its present form. It attempts to explain adherence (relating), which is a crucial component of the explanandum of Bradley’s relation regress, in terms of specific adherence of a relational trope to its relata. Nevertheless, since we do not know the consequences and constituents of a trope adhering to its specific relata, it remains unclear what specific adherence is. It is left as a constitutively inexplicable primitive. The relata-specific answer only asserts against Bradley. This negative conclusion highlights the need for a metaphysical account of the constitution of the holding of adherence.
PubDate: 2023-06-01
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- Common Ground and Charity in Conflict
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Abstract: Few critics of the received view in metaphysics that ontological disputes are generally substantive have stirred as much response as those that have developed Carnapian arguments turning on considerations of language and interpretation. The arguments from deflationists like Thomasson (2009, 2014) and Neo-Fregeans like Hale and Wright (2009), focus on features of actual language use, others like those from Hirsch (2002, 2009) focus on interpretation. In this paper, I offer a novel challenge to the latter sort of argument. I argue that through their use of the principle of charity, they have unacceptable consequences beyond the ontology room: the best accounts of some natural language phenomena—most importantly, presupposition—cannot be maintained.
PubDate: 2023-06-01
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- Why Be Rational'
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Abstract: The question ‘Why be rational'’ could be calling into question a commitment to respond to the requirements of subjective rationality, or could be calling into question a commitment to respond to objective reasons. I examine the question in this second sense, placing it in the mouth of the arationalist — an individual who has not ruled out the possibility of not acting or believing on the basis of objective reasons. In evaluating responses to the arationalist’s question, I consider the replies of three philosophers, where these exemplify a shared conceptual strategy: to claim that reasons-responsiveness is self-justifying. I argue that each reply fails, and that the overall strategy is not only dialectically ineffective against the arationalist but is also ineffective even for the goal of reassuring those already committed to reasons-responsiveness. The question ‘Why be rational'’ is yet to be answered, and so a commitment to respond to objective reasons is ungrounded.
PubDate: 2023-06-01
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- Correction to: Carroll’s Regress Times Three
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PubDate: 2023-05-10
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- Entity Realism Meets Perspectivism
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Abstract: Relying on the notion of “overlapping perspectives,” this paper argues that entity realism and perspectivism are complementary. According to entity realism, it is justified to maintain a positive attitude toward the existence of unobservable entities with which multiple experimental interactions are possible. Perspectivism also explains that our beliefs about these entities are bounded by historically contingent theoretical and instrumental perspectives. The argument of the paper is developed through a discussion of Ronald Giere’s versions of realism: entity realism, constructive realism, and perspectival realism.
PubDate: 2023-05-03
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- A Challenge for Indexical Reliabilism
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Abstract: The new evil demon problem amounts to a difficult challenge for the externalist about epistemic justification. Many solutions to the problem have been proffered in the almost 40 years since its first appearance in the literature. Among the more promising responses is indexical reliabilism, a combination of two versions of actual world reliabilism where “actual” denotes either the world of utterance or a rigidly determined actual world. This paper does three things. First, it attempts to clarify indexical reliabilism and how it purports to solve the new evil demon problem. Second, it attempts to mitigate some of the prominent criticism that has been leveled against the theory. Third, it poses an explanatory challenge for the theory which remains even after all of the premises supporting indexical reliabilism are accepted. The conclusion is that indexical reliabilism is not tenable until a linguistic mechanism for the use of “actually reliable” has been offered that explains how the theory avoids collapsing into a two-concepts response to the new evil demon problem.
PubDate: 2023-04-25
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- Deduction, Abduction, and Creativity
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Abstract: In a discussion of Sherlock Holmes’ “science of deduction” and the related “method of exclusion,” I show that Holmes’ claim that his inferences are deductive makes sense, if we consider his theoretical presuppositions. So, it is more accurate to say that he tries to reduce abduction to deduction than that he confuses them. His theoretical framework, albeit inadequate as a theory of empirical reasoning, can be seen as a basic model of classical (symbolic) AI. The main problems of this approach are surveyed, and abduction is brought into play as both a better characterization of Holmes’ inferences and a better guide for building AI systems. This is a good background for raising the question of creativity because, according to Peirce, it relates to abduction in a substantial way. Is Sherlock Holmes creative' Can machines be creative' An affirmative answer to the second question might be given by a “logic of discovery” but the problem remains that inventing such a logic already presupposes creativity.
PubDate: 2023-04-19
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- The Subset View of Realization and the Part-Whole Problem
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Abstract: According to the subset view of realization, a property realizes another if the causal powers of the latter are a subset of those of the former. Against this view, some authors (in particular, Kevin Morris and Paul Audi) have argued that it has an untenable consequence that realizing properties are less fundamental than the properties they realize, because the subset view characterizes realized properties as parts (subsets) of their realizers whereas it is generally true that a part is prior to its whole. This paper defends the subset view from this “part-whole” objection, by arguing that if we compare individual powers of realizer and realizee with particular attention to their manifestation conditions, it turns out that each power of a realizee is grounded in some power of its realizer. This grounding relation between powers, I shall argue, allows subset theorists to explain why a realizer is more fundamental than its realizee, even while having the latter as a part.
PubDate: 2023-04-15
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- Avoiding Strawson’s Crude Opposition: How to Straddle the
Participant and Objective Stances-
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Abstract: Commentators on P.F. Strawson’s reactive attitudes emphasize the opposition between the participant and objective attitudes. This tendency overlooks Strawson’s attempt to mitigate what he saw as “a crude opposition” between these two perspectives. Strawson called attention to phenomena involving the “half-suspension” of reactive attitudes, or the “straddling” of the objective and participant stances in order to diminish this crudity. This has been largely ignored in the literature, and as a result, the phenomena that Strawson mentions are poorly understood. Drawing on the work in the philosophy of emotion by Amélie Rorty and a multidimensional account of the reactive attitudes, we provide a framework to explain how such a half-suspension is possible and highlight some of its more prominent features.
PubDate: 2023-04-06
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- ACT-Endorsing Libertarianism, Constitutive Luck, and Basic Moral
Responsibility-
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Abstract: Because an agent’s constitutive luck may seem to preclude free will, it may seem to preclude moral responsibility. An agent is basically morally responsible for performing action A at time t only if there is another possible world with the same past up to t and the same laws of nature in which the agent does not perform A at t. A compatibilist can solve the constitutive luck problem for moral responsibility without worrying about basic moral responsibility. According to compatibilism, if determinism is true, then agents can be morally responsible for performing actions without being basically morally responsible for performing them. But a libertarian who thinks agents can be basically morally responsible for what they do must explain how basic moral responsibility is possible. ACT-endorsing libertarianism can both solve the constitutive luck problem for moral responsibility and explain how agents can be basically morally responsible for what they do.
PubDate: 2023-04-04
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- What is Existence' A Matter of Co(n)text
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Abstract: In this paper, we present some experimental findings whose best explanation, first of all, provides a positive answer to a philosophical question in ontology as to whether, in the overall domain of beings, there are fictional characters (ficta) over and above concrete individuals. Moreover, since such findings arise out of different comparisons between fictional characters and concrete individuals on the one hand and fictional characters again and non-items that do not belong at all to such an overall domain on the other hand, they also suggest that ficta are allowed as inhabiting a particular subrealm of that domain distinct from the one inhabited by concrete individuals, as previous findings in cognitive psychology had suggested.
PubDate: 2023-04-01
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- Taming Holism: an Inferentialist Account of Communication
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Abstract: Robert Brandom’s inferentialism notoriously entails meaning holism, which has often been seen as unacceptable because it seems to make communication impossible. This paper aims to improve Brandom’s conception of communication as “navigation-across-perspectives” to reconcile meaning holism and the possibility of communication. The conception proposed here entails keeping track of speakers’ own and the other’s scores of commitments and entitlements. I argue that the whole of commonly endorsed inferences in each practice should determine the contents of utterances and those of the commitments of the participants. The local norm defined by such inferences is holistic and can make sense of each other’s commitments. Contents or meaning can be primarily determined at the level of each practice, not that of an individual, the whole community, or the objective world.
PubDate: 2023-03-25
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- Carroll’s Regress Times Three
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Abstract: I show that in our theoretical representations of argument, vicious infinite regresses of self-reference may arise with respect to each of the three usual, informal criteria of argument cogency: the premises are to be relevant, sufficient, and acceptable. They arise needlessly, by confusing a cogency criterion with argument content. The three types of regress all are structurally similar to Lewis Carroll’s famous regress, which involves quantitative extravagance with no explanatory power. Most attention is devoted to the sufficiency criterion, including its relation to the view au courant that inferring necessarily involves the thinker taking her premises to support her conclusion. I contend that this view is mistaken and likewise that arguments make no such assumption or inference claim as that the premises support the conclusion. The core of the positive alternative model I propose is that there is commitment to, but not claiming, the proposition that the premises support the conclusion.
PubDate: 2023-03-06
DOI: 10.1007/s12136-023-00548-1
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