Wayne A. Davis

Probabilistic Theories of Causation

Probabilistic theories of causation have received relatively little attention. This is understandable, perhaps, since presentations are usually rather technical. But the neglect is unfortunate. The basic idea is quite simple, and very attractive. Moreover, competing theories all have serious problems that have been discussed ad nauseam. This paper is a critical exploration of the two main types of probabilistic theory, represented by Suppes (1970) and Cartwright (1979) on the one hand, and Giere (1980) on the other. I shall explain the theories’ appeal, defend them against some outstanding objections, and improve them. Alas, the probabilistic approach is not without serious flaws of its own. These will be presented too.

Are Knowledge Claims Indexical

David Lewis, Stewart Cohen, and Keith DeRose have proposed that sentences of the form “S knows P” are indexical, and therefore differ in truth value from one context to another.1 On their indexical contextualism, the truth value of “S knows P” is determined by whether S meets the epistemic standards of the speaker’s context. I will not be concerned with relational forms of contextualism, according to which the truth value of “S knows P” is determined by the standards of the subject S’s context, regardless of the standards applying to the speaker making the knowledge claim. Relational contextualism is a form of normative relativism. Indexical contextualism is a semantic theory. When the subject is the speaker, as when “S” is the first person pronoun “I,” the two forms of contextualism coincide. But otherwise, they diverge. I critically examine the principal arguments for indexicalism, detail linguistic evidence against it, and suggest a pragmatic alternative.

The varieties of fear

ConclusionI shall conclude with a methodological moral. I have tried to show that there are several fundamentally different kinds of fear. One is a pure propositional attitude, one is partially a bodily state, and one is a relation between a person and a nonpropositional object. Other emotions come in similar varieties, such as hope and happiness, but with significant differences. The state of happiness, for example, does not entail any particular bodily state or feeling. So one lesson is this: it is hard to generalize about “the emotions.” Further detailed, analytical studies of particular emotions are needed before a “general theory of the emotions” can be fruitfully attempted.

A Theory of Saying Reports

I will sketch a semantics of saying reports within the expression theory of meaning I have developed and its extension to indexicals. After summarizing my general theory, I apply it to indexical descriptions like the cat, ideo-reflexive descriptions like the idea of grass or the thought that grass is green, and auto-reflexive descriptions like the word ‘grass’ or the sentence ‘grass is green.’ I argue that ideo-reflexive and auto-reflexive descriptions express specific indexical concepts with presentational determinants. Saying reports are classified as locutionary or illocutionary, and the latter as opaque or transparent. On the semantics I sketch, the locutionary reports are auto-reflexive and the illocutionary are ideo-reflexive. I explain how this theory differs from the familiar views of Frege and Davidson. The final section reviews the limited extent to which pragmatic factors determine the truth conditions of saying reports, and the large variety of non-literal uses. What people mean when they use a saying report commonly differs from what they say. Most if not all of the common forms of implicature can be observed. I argue that Carston’s “pragmatic intrusion” theory and Cappelen & Lepore’s “speech act pluralism” are unfounded.

Irregular Negations: Pragmatic Explicature Theories

I will examine negations that are “irregular” in that they are not used in accordance with standard logical rules. These include scalar-, metalinguistic-, specifying-, and evaluative-implicature denials; presupposition-canceling denials; and contrary affirmations. The principal questions are how their irregular interpretations are related to their regular interpretation, and whether their ambiguity is semantic or pragmatic. I argue here that pragmatic “explicature” (Carston) or “impliciture” (Bach) theories have few advantages over implicature theories (Grice, Horn, Burton-Roberts), and that clear examples of pragmatic explicatures involve indexicality or syntactic ellipsis, which are not involved in irregular negations. I argue against claims that any interpretation can be “pragmatically derived” using either Gricean or Relevance theory. With one class of exceptions, I argue for a semantic ambiguity thesis maintaining that irregular interpretations are idioms that plausibly evolved from generalized conversational implicatures. The exceptions are evaluative-implicature denials, which are still live implicatures.

Pronouns and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics

Different forms of the personal pronouns have different constraints on their interpretations. Chomsky described such differences syntactically, in terms of binding rules. Levinson and Huang propose pragmatic accounts. They describe the differences as differences in implicature, and claim to derive them from the neo-Gricean Q-, I-, and M-principles. Some explanations invoke the disjoint reference presumption (DRP), which Huang and Levinson derive from the I-principle. Following in their footsteps but taking a different path, Ariel proposes pragmatic explanations in terms of her “functional principle,” which makes no reference to implicature, but does take expectations of conjoint or disjoint reference to be fundamental. I first consider these neo-Gricean accounts as synchronic explanations, arguing that they are unsuccessful for a variety of reasons. I conclude by considering whether the pragmatic principles instead explain pronominal differences diachronically. While more plausible, I present evidence that a diachronic account based on neo-Gricean principles is also unsuccessful.

Fundamental Troubles with the Coherence Theory

In evaluating any coherence theory, we must answer two classic questions: (A) What is coherence ? and (B) Can there be several internally coherent but mutually incompatible systems of belief? Given a plausible answer to (A), the answer to (B) must be “Yes.” This dooms any coherence theory of truth. For trivially, there cannot be two incompatible systems of true beliefs. But a “Yes” answer to (B) is a point in favor of coherence theories of justification. For a justified belief need not be true, and it is quite possible for two individuals with incompatible beliefs to both be fully justified in their beliefs. Note that a coherence theory of justification would not entail that there may be incompatible systems of knowledge. For knowledge requires true as well as justified belief. Given two individuals with incompatible but fully justified beliefs, at most one can have knowledge.

Miller on Wanting, Intending, and Being Willing

We may not retract our verdict that Jones is to blame for Smiths death simply because he sincerely avows that he did not mean (i.e., intend) to do it (we may hold him culpable in virtue of negligence, for example); but surely there will be a difference between our judgment of Jones in this case and our judgment of the Mafiosi hit man who successfully meets the terms of his contract in disposing of his victim (p. 340).

On Occurrences of Types in Types

The different occurrences of a word in a sentence cannot be identified with the one word type, nor with its many tokens. What then are occurrences of a word? How can one type occur more than once in another type? Is the conception of ‘structural universals’ that leads to these questions incoherent, as Lewis maintained? I argue against the answer Wetzel suggested, which identifies sentences with functions from numbers to expressions, and propose instead that occurrences of one type in another are subtypes with different relative positions in the whole. Types have subtypes as well as tokens. Occurrences in non-symmetrical types like sequences are individuated by their relative positions in the type. Occurrences in a symmetrical whole have different positions but stand in the same relations to the other components. They are numerically different subtypes that do not differ from each other qualitatively.

Technical flaws in the coherence theory

ConclusionWe have argued that Lehrers definitions of coherence and justification have serious technical defects. As a result, the definition of justification is both too weak and too strong. We have suggested solutions for some of the problems, but others seem irremediable. We would also argue more generally that if coherence is anything like what Lehrers theory says it is, then coherence is neither necessary nor sufficient for justification. While our current objections are directed at the ‘letter’ of Lehrers theory, other criticisms can be aimed at its very ‘spirit’. We would argue that coherence is unnecessary for justification because of the existence of ‘basic beliefs’, those about self-presenting states (‘I have a tingling sensation in my leg’) or self-evident truths (‘All men are men’). Such beliefs may be justified even though there are no other propositions in the subjects acceptance system that makes them more probable than competitors. Coherence is, moreover, insufficient for justification, because it ignores the inferential structure of the subjects acceptance system, and requires no justification of any kind for the subjects acceptance system itself. But we must develop these more fundamental objections on another occasion.