Charles R. Pigden

Negative truths from positive facts

According to the truthmaker theory that we favour, all contingent truths are made true by existing facts or states of affairs. But if that is so, then it appears that we must accept the existence of the negative facts that are required to make negative truths (such as ‘There is no hippopotamus in the room.’) true. We deny the existence of negative facts, show how negative truths are made true by positive facts, point out where the (reluctant) advocates of negative facts (Russell, Armstrong, et al.) went wrong, and demonstrate the superiority of our solution to the alternatives.

Pythagorean powers or a challenge to platonism

The Quine/Putnam indispensability argument is regarded by many as the chief argument for the existence of platonic objects. We argue that this argument cannot establish what its proponents intend. The form of our argument is simple. Suppose indispensability to science is the only good reason for believing in the existence of platonic objects. Either the dispensability of mathematical objects to science can be demonstrated and, hence, there is no good reason for believing in the existence of platonic objects, or their dispensability cannot be demonstrated and, hence, there is no good reason for believing in the existence of mathematical objects which are genuinely platonic. Therefore, indispensability, whether true or false, does not support platonism. ! Mathematical platonists claim that at least some of the objects which are the subject matter of pure mathematics (e.g. numbers, sets, groups) actually exist. Furthermore, they claim that these objects differ radically from the concrete objects (trees, cats, stars, molecules) which inhabit the material world. ! We take the standard platonistic position to include the claim that platonic objects lack spatio-temporal location and causal powers. Many (perhaps most) mathematical platonists subscribe to this view.1 But some who call themselves (or might be called) mathematical platonists eschew the standard position.2 They maintain that mathematical objects do possess location and causality, although they retain some similarity to the kinds of things that Plato had in mind. We do not intend to enter into a terminological dispute as to which party of platonists truly deserves the name. Perhaps the people we shall call non-standard platonists are closer to the original Plato. After all, Plato himself was notoriously equivocal about the causal status of his Forms. However that may be, we take the majority (or perhaps the Anglo-American) view to be the standard view. On this 1

Hume on motivation and virtue

Preface and Acknowledgements Series Editors Preface Notes on the Contributors A Note on References to Hume and Locke Introduction C.Pigden Expressivism, Motivation Internalism, and Hume R.Joyce Is Hume Inconsistent? - Motivation and Morals N.Lo If Not Non-Cognitivism, Then What? C.Pigden The Motivation Argument for Non-cognitivism M.Smith Experiences of Value G.Oddie Hume and the Debate on Motivating Reasons C.Sandis Against all Reason: Scepticism about the Instrumental Norm S.Finlay Why Internalists about Reasons Should be Humeans about Motivation K.Hurtig Humean Sources of Normativity H.Pauer-Studer Two Kinds of Normativity L.Russell What Kind of Virtue-Theorist is Hume? C.Swanton Kinds of Virtue Theorist: A Response to Christine Swanton A.Baier Reply to Annette Baier C.Swanton Hume on Justice R.Hursthouse Consolidated Bibliography Index

If not non-cognitivism, then what?

According to Michael Smith, the big issue in metaethics (what he calls “The Moral Problem”) is how to accept the seemingly true premises of Hume’s Motivation Argument while fending off its non-cognitivist conclusion, a conclusion that Smith takes to be both repugnant and false (Smith, 1994, The Moral Problem, henceforward MP). This presupposes two claims: (A) that Hume was arguing for non-cognitivism; and (B) that the Motivation Argument (as construed by non-cognitivists) is a good one, so good indeed that it can only be evaded by some very fancy footwork. I shall argue that both claims are false. Hume was not arguing for non-cognitivism since he was not a non-cognitivist. For Hume, moral properties are akin to secondary qualities, a view he derived from his sometime hero Francis Hutcheson. “Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compar’d to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind” (T, 3.1.1.26/469). We don’t attribute to Hume a non-cognitive theory of colors. Why then should we attribute to him a non-cognitivist theory of vice and virtue? Thus the non-cognitivist argument that has been extracted from Hume’s work is not the argument that he intended. But whether he intended it or not, the non-cognitivist argument is a failure. So too is the argument he actually advanced. Hume fails to show what he intended to show, that our moral distinctions are derived from a moral sense.

Spread Worlds, Plenitude and Modal Realism: A Problem for David Lewis

In his metaphysical summa of 1986, The Plurality of Worlds, David Lewis famously defends a doctrine he calls ‘modal realism’, the idea that to account for the fact that some things are possible and some things are necessary we must postulate an infinity possible worlds, concrete entities like our own universe, but cut off from us in space and time. Possible worlds are required to account for the facts of modality without assuming that modality is primitive – that there are irreducibly modal facts. We argue that on one reading, Lewis’s theory licenses us to assume maverick possible worlds which spread through logical space gobbling up all the rest. Because they exclude alternatives, these worlds result in contradictions, since different spread worlds are incompatible with one another. Plainly Lewis’s theory must be amended to exclude these excluders. But, we maintain, this cannot be done without bringing in modal primitives. And once we admit modal primitives, bang goes the rationale for Lewis’s modal realism.

Bertrand Russell : Meta-ethical pioneer

Bertrand Russell was a meta-ethical pioneer, the original inventor of both emotivism and the error theory. Why, having abandoned emotivism for the error theory, did he switch back to emotivism in the 1920s? Perhaps he did not relish the thought that as a moralist he was a professional hypocrite. In addition, Russells version of the error theory suffers from severe defects. He commits the naturalistic fallacy and runs afoul of his own and Moores arguments against subjectivism. These defects could be repaired, but only by abandoning Russells semantics.Russell preferred to revert to emotivism.

A ‘Sensible Knave’? Hume, Jane Austen and Mr Elliot

Our theme in this issue is Women, Literature and Philosophy. My paper will, I hope, be ontopic, since it deals with what I take to be one woman’s literary response to a philosophical problem. The woman is Jane Austen, the problem is the rationality of Hume’s ‘sensible knave’, and Austen’s response is to deepen the problem. Despite his enthusiasm for virtue, Hume reluctantly concedes in the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals that injustice can be a rational strategy for ‘sensible knaves’, intelligent but selfish agents who feel no aversion towards thoughts of villainy or baseness. Austen agrees, but adds that absent considerations of a future state, other vices besides injustice can be rationally indulged with tolerable prospects of worldly happiness. Austen’s creation Mr Elliot is just such an agent – sensible and knavish but not technically ‘unjust’. Despite and partly because of his vices – ingratitude, avarice and duplicity – he manages to be both successful and reasonably happy. Hume’s sensible knave is a sort of refined eighteenth-century Thrasymachus who figures in the conclusion of the EPM. Since the knave lacks the usual sentiments that

Book Reviews : J. Alberto Coffa, The Semantic Tradition from Carnap to Kant: To the Vienna Station, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991. Pp. 445.

In the second part of the book, Livingston sets out to give evidence for his claim that literary studies can be of &dquo;genuine cognitive value&dquo; (p. 51) to philosophy and the social sciences. In chapter 3, he criticizes sociobiological, behaviorist, and supernatural reductions of agency, through discussion of Theodore Dreiser’s novels. Livingston is able to show that Dreiser was confused, and in so doing to show that reductive accounts of agency are inconsistent with certain commonsense beliefs. But his discussion progresses little beyond this point. He concludes with an interesting suggestion: that &dquo;in