Intercultural Pragmatics

ABSTRACTSome pragmatists hold that there are both practical and epistemic reasons to believe. A crucial issue for this view is how epistemic and practical reasons should be weighed against each other to deliver all‐things‐considered verdicts regarding what one ought to believe. According to threshold models, when the strength of practical reasons for belief exceeds a certain threshold, practical reasons become prior to epistemic reasons. These models are affected by a threshold problem: they fail to specify the threshold at which practical reasons take priority. This prevents them from being sufficiently informative and well motivated. This paper proposes a response to the threshold problem. I argue that in most situations there are higher‐order practical reasons for conforming to epistemic reasons. These higher‐order practical reasons in turn determine the threshold. This threshold view yields intuitive verdicts across various cases and provides a clear guide for determining when we should believe for practical rather than epistemic reasons. Moreover, the view can explain why exceeding the threshold triggers the priority of practical reasons over epistemic reasons, and why the threshold is context dependent.

ABSTRACTBacktracking seems centrally problematic to Lewis's counterfactual theory of causation, and others, say, in the structural equation framework. The article focuses on Lewis's backtracking‐related ideas, given their seminal impact. Specifically, I argue for two related theses under indeterminism: (A) A Lewisian sweeping version of the anti‐backtracking rule for causal counterfactuals is untenable due to certain distinctive chance patterns that support corresponding backtracking truths. (B) A special backtracking counterfactual is indispensable for capturing a certain unit structure of some evolutionary sequences, i.e., what I call EPD sequences (where E stands for “evolutionary,” and PD for “path dependent”).

ABSTRACTThe problem of creeping minimalism is the problem of drawing a principled line between expressivism and its rivals. The dominant strategy for solving the problem is explanationism, which tries to distinguish the two camps by looking at their constitutive explanations of claims in which the relevant terms appear in intensional contexts: claims like “Bob believes that murder‐for‐hire is wrong”. The present paper considers two recent and independent attempts to pursue a very distinct strategy, which focuses on claims in which the relevant terms appear in non‐intensional contexts: claims like “Obligation figures in some fundamental laws”. The hope is that expressivists and non‐expressivists will—necessarily—differ in their assessments of at least some such claims. That is, expressivism will leave a characteristic metaphysical residue. While explanationist proposals have received a great deal of critical attention, appeals to metaphysical residue have received virtually none. This paper argues that such appeals fail and that the reasons behind their failure suggest that the problem of creeping minimalism does not have a solution.

ABSTRACTThis paper offers a new formulation of the “Hilbert's Hotel Argument” (HHA) which is superior to existing formulations because it (1) demonstrates that HH is logically impossible in the concrete world, (2) takes into account the need to consider the assumptions of HHA, and (3) offers a reply to an important objection concerning the validity of HHA. In addition, this paper contributes to the discussion by using the new HHA to defend a relevant difference between the past and the future by demonstrating that the HHA applies to the former but not to the latter. Finally, this paper demonstrates the significance of metaphysical arguments such as the HHA for physical cosmology.

ABSTRACTThis paper responds to recent arguments for the outsourcing of parental obligations and shows why such proposals are morally problematic. After outlining why it is impermissible for the parent–child attachment to be outsourced, and prior to Section 4, I explain the meaning of the duty of love. In Section 4, I note the primary motivating intuitions that lead parents to shift their moral obligations. I then discuss the intuition that the decision to shift an obligation of this sort cannot be criticized on moral grounds if children are, in fact, better and more content with their lives. In Section 5, I claim that the duty of love is conditioned by vulnerability and attention, both of which give rise to moral obligations of attachment. In Section 6, I argue that such duties cannot be shifted onto more capable adults because doing so would undermine the parent–child relationship and render it significantly less valuable. In Section 7, I discuss the permissibility of outsourcing certain duties relating to the child's welfare in order to maximize the child's well‐being and argue that the responsibility to maximize the child's well‐being is only outsourceable in terms of extrinsic goods. In Section 8, I remark on a related duty to promise to foster an intimate, affectionate attachment with one's child.

ABSTRACTThe artefactual theory of fiction holds that fictional characters are abstract and created artefacts like money and nations. One of its main proponents, Amie Thomasson, holds that fictional characters are ontologically dependent on a particular author or authors (rigid historical dependence) for their origin and on literary works for continued existence (generic constant dependence). While there have been objections to Thomasson's position, both the dependencies are dogmas held among artefactualists and the criticisms haven't yet systematically undermined them. In this paper, I argue against these two dependency claims by citing counterexamples, especially from a Twin Homer case, Fission Fiction case, No Man's Sky, a computer game, where an algorithm creates a character and in another instance, by showing how we humans actually create characters. If my arguments are sound, then a realist like Thomasson has no option to make sense of the data they set up for their theory apart from accepting Everett and Schroeder's theory that fictional characters are ideas. In the light of this, I set up a new criterion for the continued existence of fictional characters wherein they're ideas.

ABSTRACTBy emphasising the role of concepts like social status, power and respect, all relational egalitarians seek to demonstrate that there is more to the political concept of equality than the distribution of goods. While there is a broad consensus on the nature of equality, however, the nature of justice is a matter of internal dispute. The aim of this paper is to disentangle these argumentative threads, building on work in early relational egalitarian scholarship to develop a relational approach to justice, both distinct from the distributive approach to justice and isolated from the relational approach to equality. In doing so, I reveal possible and sometimes surprising alliances between relational egalitarians and other scholars on the nature of justice.

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I argue an authoritative directive can be defeated (i.e., outweighed) by a reason it defeats (i.e., excludes), where it is rational to feel regret for failing to act as the directive demands. This is the case as, first, it is rational to feel regret when one fails to act on a binding reason, and a defeated reason is still binding unless its triggering conditions have been removed; second, an authoritative directive can be defeated by a more weighty reason it excludes if the latter is still binding; and third, there is no general rule preventing a more weighty excluded reason from defeating a directive.

ABSTRACTCarnap's Logical Syntax of Language (1937) contains an unfortunate passage, the ‘Babylon passage’, explaining what it is for a linguistic expression to be about a subject matter. Past criticism has only addressed Carnap's mistaken claim that the occurrence of a denoting term is necessary and sufficient for a linguistic expression to be about the denotatum. But the passage contains further problems: a form‐object confusion due to the ambiguity of ‘lecture’; a use‐mention problem with the word ‘Babylon’; and finally, the fact that its key sentence 𝔖1 is a counterexample to Carnap's own definition of aboutness. These flaws notwithstanding, the passage's ‘non‐formal consideration’ that a statement's truth or falsity should matter to our knowledge about the subject matter's properties, is an important contribution to aboutness theory. This paper discusses all these pros and cons of the passage in depth with a view to their consequences for current work on subject matter.

ABSTRACTTaking inspiration from Hume, I advance a conception of the part of morality concerned with right and wrong, rooted in the actual moral rules established and followed within our society. Elsewhere, I have argued this approach provides a way of thinking about how we are genuinely “bound in a moral way” to keep our moral obligations that it is both ethically attractive and psychologically realistic. Here, I focus on some implications for our evaluation and criticism of actions, which some may initially find peculiar. Sometimes we should judge of an action that it was (unqualifiedly) right, and the result of flawless reasoning by the agent; and yet, we may also have cause to regard that same action as, in other respects, deeply morally deficient. Using Nomy Arpaly's conception of “responsiveness to right‐making moral reasons” as a foil, I argue that this unorthodox implication leads to more subtle and helpful evaluations of actions—especially actions undertaken in the context of wicked social institutions. The conception also encourages us to take a more conflicted, less confident, attitude toward many of our own righteous and rational actions—and perhaps even toward our capacity for living together by moral rules itself.

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I distinguish two possible families of semantics of the open future: Linearism, according to which future tense sentences are evaluated with respect to a unique possible future history, and Universalism, according to which future tense sentences are evaluated universally quantifying on the histories passing through the moment of evaluation. An argument in favour of Linearism is based on the fact future tense does not exhibit scope interactions with negation. Todd (2020, 2021) defends Universalism against this argument proposing an error theory, according to which the speakers engaged in non‐philosophical conversations implicitly assume a linearist semantics of the future. In this paper, I show that an error theory is not needed for defending Universalism and that the scopelessness of negation can have another explanation. The absence of a wide‐scope reading of negation characterises many other linguistic constructions: counterfactuals, vague predicates, generics and plural definite descriptions. My main thesis is that, their considerable differences aside, these constructions have something in common: they are true when the predicate applies to the members of a set, false when the predicate does not apply to the members of the set and indeterminate in the intermediate cases. When negation interacts with such constructions tends to take the narrow scope reading only. I review two types of explanations for this behaviour, one semantic and the other pragmatic. Since this explanation for the scopelessness of negation is at least as good as that of Linearism, I conclude that the argument against Universalism is ineffective.

ABSTRACTAccording to the Theory of the Second Best, in non‐ideal circumstances, approximating ideals might be suboptimal (with respect to a specific interpretation of what “approximating an ideal” means). In this paper, I argue that the formal model underlying the Theory can apply to problems in epistemology. Two applications are discussed: First, in some circumstances, second‐best problems arise in Bayesian settings. Second, the division of epistemic labor can be subject to second‐best problems. These results matter. They allow us to evaluate the claim, made by many philosophers, that second‐best problems have import in epistemology (and the specific conditions under which the Theory finds applications). They also allow us to see that talk of “approximating an ideal” is ambiguous, and to clarify the conditions in which approximating an epistemic ideal might be beneficial.

ABSTRACTAccording to the dogmatism puzzle, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then she is entitled to be dogmatic about p, and so disregard any evidence against p, for she knows that (or is in a position to know that) that evidence is misleading. But this seems clearly problematically dogmatic. The standard solution to the dogmatism puzzle involves appealing to the view that acquiring new evidence (even misleading evidence) can undermine one's knowledge that p. That is why one cannot rightly disregard any future evidence against p. This solution to the dogmatism puzzle has come to be called “the defeat solution.” Maria Lasonen‐Aarnio has recently argued, however, that the defeat solution leaves unsolved a partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle, where some subject acquires weak misleading evidence against p, but, since it is weak, it does not rob her of knowledge that p. Lasonen‐Aarnio argues that solving this partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle requires those who endorse the defeasibility of knowledge to either go dogmatist or reject an extremely plausible principle that she calls “Entitlement” (roughly, for any S and any e, if S knows that evidence e is misleading, then S can rightly disregard e). In this paper, however, I argue that defeasibilists face no such challenge from any version of the dogmatism puzzle, since the dogmatism puzzle, in both its original and partial defeat form, rests on an assumption that we have very good reason to think is mistaken. Specifically, the assumption that, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then S knows (or is in a position to know) that any evidence against p is misleading. I further argue that rejecting this assumption also yields a neat solution to the dogmatism puzzle involving intention originally proposed by Saul Kripke and recently adapted by R.E. Fraser.

ABSTRACTTo give a good account of deductive inference, we need to recognise two new relations, one in the realm of contents, the other in the psychological realm of mental action. When these new relations are properly coordinated, they can supply an account of what it is for a thinker to be making a deductive inference. The account endorses the condition that in deductive reasoning, a thinker must take the premises to support the conclusion. The account is distinguished from the positions of Broome, Ryle, and Wright.

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we identify and explain three kinds of bedrock in moral thought. The term “bedrock,” as introduced by Wittgenstein in §217 of the Philosophical Investigations, stands for the end of a chain of reasoning. We affirm that some chains of moral reasoning do indeed end with certainty. However, different kinds of certainties in morality work in different ways. In the course of systematizing the different types of certainties, we argue that present accounts of certainties in morality do not reflect their diversity. Our analysis yields three types of moral certainty: quasi‐undoubtable certain propositions, certain propositions, and transcendental certainties. We show that the first two types can, at least to some extent, be intelligibly doubted. Therefore, they do not possess the characteristics that would classify them as bedrock in the strictest sense. Transcendental certainties cannot likewise be doubted because they are rules that enable moral thinking. Thus, deviating from them is unintelligible. We shall argue that all three types reflect ways in which moral language games come to an end, while only one, transcendental certainties, displays the characteristic of being solid bedrock.