Kevin Scharp

Truth, the Liar, and Relativism

I aim to establish a new connection between two topics. The first is the aletheic paradoxes (that is, the paradoxes affecting truth, of which the liar is merely the most famous).1 Nearly as old as Western philosophy itself, work on the aletheic paradoxes is still vibrant today. Contributions to this topic from analytic philosophy have come in roughly three waves. The first wave is based on Alfred Tarski’s work from the 1930s, which gave truth conditions for formulas of first-order predicate calculus and set the stage for much of what came after. Saul Kripke’s seminal paper from 1975 posed serious problems for applying Tarski’s results to natural language and used new mathematical techniques to address the paradoxes. Kripke’s work also inspired a whole generation of new approaches in the 1980s and early 1990s.2 After something of a lull, the twenty-first century has seen a flurry of new activity—enough to constitute a third wave that is still building.3

Communication and Content: Circumstances and Consequences of the Habermas-Brandom Debate

The recent exchange between Robert Brandom and Jürgen Habermas provides an opportunity to compare and contrast some aspects of their systems. Both present broadly inferential accounts of meaning, according to which the content of an expression is determined by its role in an inferential network. Several problems confront such theories of meaning - one of which threatens the possibility of communication because content is relative to an individuals set of beliefs. Brandom acknowledges this problem and provides a solution to it. The point of this paper is to argue that it arises for Habermass theory as well. I then present several solutions Habermas could adopt and evaluate their feasibility. The result is that Habermas must alter his theory of communicative action by contextualizing the standards for successful communication.

Locke's theory of reflection

from this particular idea. Locke does not mention this issue, but it seems evident that we arrive at all the general ideas we acquire from reflection by abstracting on particular ideas we acquire from reflection. Further, it seems to me that one can explain the difference between succession and duration in terms of the comparisons required to generate them. If Stu compares d1, d2, etc., with respect to space, then he acquires the idea of succession; if he compares them with respect to time, then he arrives at the idea of duration. A number of problems remain. First, the ideas from reflection are simple ideas. It is unclear to me whether my explanations account for this fact. Second, I have not explained how we acquire other ideas from this group (e.g. ideas of pleasure, pain, power, eternity, etc.). I claim that either the account of suggestion or the account of reflection on a train of ideas explains them as well. In particular, the account of suggestion explains how we acquire the ideas of pleasure, pain, existence, unity and power, while the account of reflection on the train of ideas explains how we acquire the ideas of succession, duration, time, eternity and infinity. Third, on Locke’s account, the ideas from this group arise involuntarily. Of course, there is a complicated story to tell about how attention (which can be voluntary) is involved in reflection (which is involuntary), but my explanations of Locke’s metaphors depend on comparison and abstraction, which seem to be voluntary mental operations. Perhaps there is some way to explain how these operations are passively activated, but I will not speculate any further on these matters. A reader who is tempted to reject to these explanations of how we acquire non-sensory ideas on the grounds that they are not supported by the text is a reader who misunderstands the objection and my reply. The objection is that one who proposes an interpretation of Locke’s account of reflection is obligated to show that it can explain how we acquire non-sensory ideas. In my reply, I discharge this obligation. No account of how we acquire nonsensory ideas could possibly be supported by the text because Locke does not discuss this topic. Moreover, I have shown how we acquire such ideas without appeal to anything other than the account of reflection proposed in chapter two, which itself is meets the criteria for an acceptable reconstruction of Locke’s theory of reflection. Objection 8: Obstfeld argues that, for Locke, reflection involves a causal process that is analogous to the one involved in sensation. Instead of a mental process of reflection, she suggests that Locke must be committed to a physical mechanism by which the mind comes to be aware of its own operations. Note that she does not advocate a physical correlate to the mental process of reflection. For Obstfeld, reflection is not a mental process at all. Her account of reflection constitutes an objection to my interpretation. Obstfeld (1983, 52–3). LOCKE’S THEORY OF REFLECTION 53

Pragmatism without Idealism

We believe in the existence of an objective, mind-independent world — much of which is the way it is regardless of human interests, goals, cognitive/perceptual capacities, and research agendas. There would have been fossils, neutrinos, and curvatures in space-time even if no one had been around to theorize about them; Kepler’s laws would have accurately modeled planetary motion even if no one had realized it. To this extent we are ‘realists’. But we also believe that our concepts of objectivity, mind-independence, and cognate notions are shot through with interests, goals, and similarity standards grounded in provincial facts about ourselves. To this extent we are ‘pragmatists’. Such a package, if not examined too closely, appears incoherent: varieties of pragmatism are often claimed to undermine the very objectivity insisted upon by self-avowed realists. But this appearance is illusory.

On the indeterminacy of the meter

In the International System of Units (SI), ‘meter’ is defined in terms of seconds and the speed of light, and ‘second’ is defined in terms of properties of cesium 133 atoms. I show that one consequence of these definitions is that: if there is a minimal length (e.g., Planck length), then the chances that ‘meter’ is completely determinate are only 1 in 21,413,747. Moreover, we have good reason to believe that there is a minimal length. Thus, it is highly probable that ‘meter’ is indeterminate. If the meter is indeterminate, then any unit in the SI system that is defined in terms of the meter is indeterminate as well. This problem affects most of the familiar derived units in SI. As such, it is highly likely that indeterminacy pervades the SI system. The indeterminacy of the meter is compared and contrasted with emerging literature on indeterminacy in measurement locutions (as in Eran Tal’s recent argument that measurement units are vague in certain ways). Moreover, the indeterminacy of the meter has ramifications for the metaphysics of measurement (e.g., problems for widespread assumptions about the nature of conventionality, as in Theodore Sider’s Writing the Book of the World) and the semantics of measurement locutions (e.g., undermining the received view that measurement phrases are absolutely precise as in Christopher Kennedy’s and Louise McNally’s semantics for gradable adjectives). Finally, it is shown how to redefine ‘meter’ and ‘second’ to completely avoid the indeterminacy.

Analytic Pragmatism and Universal LX Vocabulary

In his recent John Locke Lectures – published as Between Saying and Doing – Brandom extends and refines his views on the nature of language and philosophy by developing a position that he calls Analytic Pragmatism. Although Brandom’s project bears on an extraordinarily rich array of different philosophical issues, we focus here on the contention that certain vocabularies have a privileged status within our linguistic practices, and that when adequately understood, the practices in which these vocabularies figure can help furnish us with an account of semantic intentionality. Brandom’s claim is that such vocabularies are privileged because they are a species of what he calls universal LX vocabulary –roughly, vocabulary whose mastery is implicit in any linguistic practice whatsoever. We show that, contrary to Brandom’s claim, logical vocabulary per se fails to satisfy the conditions that must be met for something to count as universal LX vocabulary. Further, we show that exactly analogous considerations undermine his claim that modal vocabulary is universal LX. If our arguments are sound, then, contrary to what Brandom maintains, intentionality cannot be explicated as a “pragmatically mediated semantic phenomenon”, at any rate not of the sort that he proposes.