André Gallois

II–Andre Gallois

I discuss Steve Yablo’s defence of Carnap’s distinction between internal and external questions. In the first section I set out what I take that distinction, as Carnap draws it, to be, and spell out a central motivation Carnap has for invoking it. In the second section I endorse, and augment, Yablo’s response to Quine’s arguments against Carnap. In the third section I say why Carnap’s application of the distinction between internal and external questions runs into trouble. In the fourth section I spell out what I take to be Yablo’s version of Carnap. In the last I say why that version is especially vulnerable to the objection raised in the second.

Deflationary Self Knowledge

As a number of philosophers have observed, our knowledge of what is passing through our own minds appears to be quite different to our knowledge of other things. I do not, it seems, need to accumulate evidence in order to know what psychological states I am in. 1 Without relying on evidence I am able to effortlessly attribute to myself beliefs, desires, intentions, hopes, fears, and a host of other psychological states. The distinctive knowledge we have of our own psychological states is sometimes labeled privileged access. If ’privileged access’ means knowledge that is not evidentially based we certainly seem to have privileged access to some psychological states including those exhibiting intentionality.2 Nevertheless, some have questioned whether we do enjoy privileged access to our intentional states. One reason for doing so derives from the findings of psychologists. The time honored thesis that we have privileged access to our own psychological states is threatened by such findings (see especially Nesbitt and Wilson, 1977). Moreover, there is threat to privileged access from a different direction. It comes from a philosophical thesis commonly referred to as externalism. Externalism is the view that the content of an intentional state such as a belief is fixed by the environment external to the believer. Some externalists deny that externalism conflicts with privileged access. Donald Davidson and Tyler Burge in particular have developed what might be called a minimalist account of privileged access which, they would claim, reconciles privileged access with externalism. An interesting feature of their account is that it suggests a defense of privileged access in the light of the psychological findings mentioned above. However, that is a topic for another paper. Here I will confine myself to assessing the Davidson Burge account of privileged access, and its implications for the relationship between privileged access and externalism.

Emotion and Imagination, by Adam Morton

with the result that angle measure and similarity of figures are lost, but collinearity and parallelism remain. The subject called analysis situs in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and topology in the twentieth and twenty-first, allows bendings and stretchings, so that straightness is lost and all that are left are certain ‘positional’ properties. (An example of a ‘positional’ problem, the oldest famous problem belonging at the distinctively topological level, is the Seven Bridges of K€ onigsberg.) Maudlin’s usage of ‘submetrical’, never precisely defined, tends to insinuate that it is a defect of topology that it treats only topological positional properties, and not other properties pertaining to levels below the metrical, intermediate between it and the topological. I have complained that more attention ought to be given to word-histories, but I must say that the historical interpretations that are given in the work, mainly at the beginning, cannot be trusted. Student readers need to be warned against two, especially. It is asserted [16] that Newton would not have recognized irrational or negative numbers. This shows that Maudlin has not read even the first few pages of the Universal Arithmetick. For there Newton rejects Euclid’s definition of number as a multiplicity of units, allowing only whole numbers; he insists that any ratio of magnitudes such as lengths may be considered a number, explicitly pointing out that this includes ‘surds’ as the ratios of incommensurables; and a bit later he discusses negative numbers, indicating that, to represent them geometrically one must take account of direction. Later [227], Euclid’s second postulate, ‘to extend a given finite straight line continuously in a straight line’, is misquoted, omitting the word ‘finite’, and then it is argued that, since an infinite line can’t be further extended, Euclid cannot be asserting the existence of an extension, but only its uniqueness if it exists; whereas ancient commentators already complained that Euclid needs a uniqueness assumption that no postulate explicitly acknowledges. Given the predominantly negative tone of the foregoing remarks, let me close by reiterating my opening statement that to a large extent the evaluation of the book must await the appearance of its sequel.

Is Knowing Having the Right to be Sure

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the normative analysis and the concept of justification, which arguably is also a normative concept. The chapter reviews the question of “Why is knowing having the fight to be sure, rather than the fight to believe?” The main reason for identifying it with having the fight to be sure for an individual is to believe that in a situation free from Gettier features, one must have the fight to be sure. Moreover, in order to have the fight to be sure, one must be in a situation free of Gettier features. An individual will be completely justified in forming a belief in many situations that are not Gettier-free. So, if individuals exercise their fight to believe only in Gettier-free situations, they will fail to form completely justified beliefs.

The Indubitability of the Cogito

Why does Descartes give some propositions, most notably cogito, a privileged epistemic status? In the first part of the paper I consider, and reject, the standard account of the indubitability of cogito championed by, among others, Hintikka, Ayer, Slezak, and Frankfurt. After examining what I call the Cartesian regress, I invoke the fiction of a self-blind individual, close to the one originally introduced by Shoemaker, to give an alternative account of the indubitability of cogito. I argue that Descartes initially needs to exempt the self-attribution of thought from the scope of Cartesian doubt, because an individual who is self-blind, and, so, cannot self-attribute thoughts, cannot treat propositions about the external world as dubitable.

Is global scepticism self-refuting?

My concern is with a version of scepticism which, following a number of philosophers, I will entitle global scepticism. According to global scepticism no one is to any degree justified in holding any belief. Global scepticism is a live option, and has at least one compelling argument in its favour1 Nevertheless, ones first reaction to global scepticism is likely to be that it is self-refuting. The issue I will be discussing here is whether global scepticism is self-refuting. In the first section I consider arguments to the conclusion that global scepticism is self-refuting, and argue that the global sceptic need take only one of them seriously. In the next I examine a global sceptics reply to the argument in question, and a response to that reply available to the anti-sceptic. What emerges is an apparent impasse. The global sceptic has a response to each reply that the anti-sceptic makes in support of the anti-sceptics original argument. However, it seems that the anti-sceptic is able to effectively reply to each of the global sceptics responses. In the last section I develop an argument to show that global scepticism is self-refuting which breaks the deadlock between the global sceptic and anti-sceptic.