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41. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 1
Keith Simmons Deflationism and the Autonomy of Truth
42. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 1
Kevin Meeker Was Hume a Proper Functionalist?
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Nicholas Wolterstorff has claimed that David Hume hinted at a proper functionalist account that anticipates the epistemology of Alvin Plantinga. In this paper, I shall argue that we should refrain from attributing a proper functionalist epistemology to Hume. I shall first raise doubts as to how one could fit a notion of proper functioning into Hume's descriptive project. Next, I shall argue that adopting a proper functionalist epistemology would undermine some of Hume's most famous claims about causal inferences.
43. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 1
Guido Pincione, Fernando R. Tesón Rational Ignorance and Political Morality
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People frequently advance political proposals in the name of a goal while remaining apparently indifferent to the fact that those proposals, if implemented, would frustrate that goal. Theorists of "deliberative democracy" purport to avoid this difficulty by arguing that deliberation is primarily about moral not empirical issues. We reject this view (the moral turn) and propose a method (The Display Test) to check whether a political utterance is best explained by the rational ignorance hypothesis or by the moral turn: the speaker must be prepared to openly acknowledge the bad consequences of his political position. If he is, the position is genuinely moral; if he is not, the position evinces either rational ignorance or posturing. We introduce deontological notions to explain when the moral turn works and when it does not. We discuss and reject possible replies, in particular the view that a moral-political stance insensitive to consequences relies ona distribution of moral responsibility in evildoing. Finally, we show that even the most plausible candidates for the category of purely moral political proposals are best explained by the rational ignorance/posturing hypothesis, if only because enforcing morality gives rise to complex causal issues.
44. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 1
Jay F. Rosenberg Still Mythic After All Those Years: On Alston’s Latest Defense of the Given
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Wilfrid Sellars' conclusion in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" that "the Given" is a "Myth" quickly elicited philosophical opposition and remains contentious fifty years later. William Alston has challenged that conclusion on several occasions by attempting to devise an acceptable account of perception committed to the givenness of perceived objects. His most recent challenge advances a "Theory of Appearing" which posits irreducible non-conceptual relations, ostensibly overlooked by Sellars, e.g., of "looking red", between the subject and the object perceived, that can playa justificatory role vis-à-vis the corresponding beliefs, e.g., that the object is red. I argue that Alston undermines his positive plausibility arguments by first blurring and then ignoring crucial differencesamong various looks-concepts, and that his own putative "phenomenal" looks-concept demonstrably cannot play the justificatory role that he envisions for it. Both his critique of Sellars' arguments and his own alternative proposal thus fail on all fronts.
45. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 1
Christopher S. Hill Précis of Thought and World: An Austere Portrayal of Truth, Reference, and Semantic Correspondence
46. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 1
Marian David A Substitutional Theory of Truth?
47. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 2
S. L. Hurley Replies
48. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 2
Jeff Jordan Does Skeptical Theism Lead to Moral Skepticism?
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The evidential argument from evil seeks to show that suffering is strong evidence against theism. The core idea of the evidential argument is that we know of innocent beings suffering for no apparent good reason. Perhaps the most common criticism of the evidential argument comes from the camp of skeptical theism, whose lot includes William Alston, Alvin Plantinga, and Stephen Wykstra. According to skeptical theism the limits of human knowledge concerning the realm of goods, evils, and the connections between values, undermines the judgment that what appears as pointless evil really is pointless. For all we know the suffering of an innocent being, though appearing pointless, in fact leads to a greater good. In this paper I argue that no one who accepts the doctrines of skeptical theism has a principled way of avoiding moral skepticism.
49. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 2
G. A. Cohen Luck and Equality: A Reply to Hurley
50. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 2
Hannah Ginsborg Reasons for Belief
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Davidson claims that nothing can count as a reason for a belief except another belief. This claim is challenged by McDowell, who holds that perceptual experiences can count as reasons for beliefs. I argue that McDowell fails to take account of a distinction between two different senses in which something can count as a reason for belief. While a non-doxastic experience can count as a reason for belief in one of the two senses, this is not the sense which is presupposed in Davidson's claim. While I focus on McDowell's view, the argument generalizes to other views which take experiences as reasons for belief.
51. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 2
Athanassius Raftopoulos, Vincent Muller Nonconceptual Demonstrative Reference
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The paper argues that the reference of perceptual demonstratives is fixed in a causal nondescriptive way through the nonconceptual content of perception. That content consists first in spatiotemporal information establishing the existence of a separate persistent object retrieved from a visual scene by the perceptual object segmentation processes that open an object-file for that object. Nonconceptual content also consists in other transducable information, that is, information that is retrieved directly in a bottom-up way from the scene (motion, shape, etc). The non conceptual content of the mental states induced when one uses a perceptual demonstrative constitutes the mode of presentation of the perceptual demonstrative that individuates but does not identify the object of perceptual awareness and allows reference to it. On that account, perceptual demonstratives put us in a de re relationship with objects in the world through the nonconceptual information retrieved directly from the objects in the environment.
52. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 2
S. L. Hurley Précis of Justice, Luck, and Knowledge
53. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 2
Rafael De Clercq Presentism and the Problem of Cross-Time Relations
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Presentism is the view that only present entities exist. Recently, several authors have asked the question whether presentism is able to account for cross-time relations, i.e., roughly, relations between entities existing at different times. In this paper I claim that this question is to be answered in the affirmative. To make this claim plausible, I consider four types of cross-time relation and show how each can be accommodated without difficulty within the metaphysical framework of presentism.
54. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 2
Roy Sorensen Spinning Shadows
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If a spinning sphere casts a shadow, does the shadow also spin? This riddle is the point of departure for an investigation into the nature of shadow movement. A general theory of motion will encompass all moving things, not just physical objects. Ultimately, I argue that round shadows do indeed spin. Shadows are followers of the objects that cast them. Parts of the shadow correspond to parts of the leader, so motion of the caster's parts accounts for motions of the shadow's parts. I conclude with a discussion of how the dynamic aspects of shadows impose subtle constraints on other puzzles about shadows.
55. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 2
Seiriol Morgan Naturalism and Normativity
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Synthetic naturalism is a form of moral realism which holds that we can discover a posteriori that moral properties exist and are natural properties. On this view moral discourse earns the right to be construed realistically because it meets the conditions that license realism about any discourse, that properties it represents as existing pull their weight in empirical explanations of our observations of the world. I argue that naturalism is an inadequate metaphysics of moral value, because parallel arguments to those used by the naturalist to establish the reality of 'moral' properties and their normativity for persons of sympathetic temperament can be constructed, which would equally demonstrate the reality of normatively antagonistic value properties, and their normativity for differently psychologically constituted agents Since moral discourse implicitly denies that there are such diverse and competing normative truths the strategy fails toestablish moral realism.
56. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 2
Finn Spicer Epistemic Intuitions and Epistemic Contextualism
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In this paper I examine the way appeals to pretheoretic intuition are used to support epistemological theses in general and the thesis of epistemic contextualism in particular. After outlining the sceptical puzzle and the contextualist's resolution of that puzzle, I explore the question of whether this solution fits better with our intuitive take on the puzzle than its invariantist rivals. I distinguish two kinds of fit a theory might have with pretheoretic intuitions-accommodation and explanation, and consider whether achieving either kind of fit would be a virtue for a theory. I then examine how contextualism could best claim to accommodate and explain our intuitions, building the best case that I can for contextualism, but concluding that there is no reason to accept contextualism either in the way it accommodates nor the way it explains our intuitions about the sceptical puzzle.
57. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 2
Peter Vallentyne Hurley on Justice and Responsibility
58. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 2
Gary Watson The Problematic Role of Responsibility in Contexts of Distributive Justice
59. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 3
Allan Gibbard Précis of Thinking How to Live
60. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: Volume > 72 > Issue: 3
Allan Gibbard Reply to Critics