Jack Woods

How Expressivists Can and Should Explain Inconsistency

We argue that several difficulties facing expressivist solutions to the Frege-Geach problem are paralleled by almost exactly analogous problems facing realist semantic theories. We show that by adopting a variation on a prominent realist solution, the expressivist brings her account of logical consequence closer to philosophical orthodoxy. Our discussion also demonstrates that a standard objection to expressivism is based on a misinterpretation of the Frege-Geach problem and that the expressivist can appeal to a wide range of attitudinal conflicts in her semantic theorizing—far wider than Mark Schroeder, for example, allows in his recent work.

Emptying a Paradox of Ground

Sometimes a fact can play a role in a grounding explanation, but the particular content of that fact make no difference to the explanation—any fact would do in its place. I call these facts vacuous grounds. I show that applying the distinction between-vacuous grounds allows us to give a principled solution to Kit Fine and Stephen Kramer’s paradox of (reflexive) ground. This paradox shows that on minimal assumptions about grounding and minimal assumptions about logic, we can show that grounding is reflexive, contra the intuitive character of grounds. I argue that we should never have accepted that grounding is irreflexive in the first place; the intuitions that support the irreflexive intuition plausibly only require that grounding be non-vacuously irreflexive. Fine and Kramer’s paradox relies, essentially, on a case of vacuous grounding and is thus no problem for this account.

Assertion, denial, content, and (logical) form

I discuss Greg Restall’s attempt to generate an account of logical consequence from the incoherence of certain packages of assertions and denials. I take up his justification of the cut rule and argue that, in order to avoid counterexamples to cut, he needs, at least, to introduce a notion of logical form. I then suggest a few problems that will arise for his account if a notion of logical form is assumed. I close by sketching what I take to be the most natural minimal way of distinguishing content and form and suggest further problems arising for this route.

Impassioned Belief, by Michael Ridge

their content vindicates or debunks our view of them as truth-apt and fact-stating. Despite these concerns, I think that Price’s view, as presented and clarified in this volume, has many merits and much to teach those interested in expressivist quasirealism, representation, and truth. Among many other things, I believe that Price’s distinction between i-representation and e-representation contributes greatly to solving what Jamie Dreier [2004] calls ‘the problem of creeping minimalism’ for distinguishing the positions of expressivist quasi-realists from those of robust realists. I suspect, moreover, that the resulting solution will put a great deal of pressure on non-reductive realists who think that they can reject expressivist quasi-realism without incurring any substantial metaphysical commitments (e.g. Parfit [2011]).