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| Ontic Terms and Ontology ABSTRACT: Terms such as ‘exist’, ‘actual’, etc., (hereafter, “ontic terms”) are recognized as having ontologically “innocent” or non-commissive uses, besides their commissive uses. (E.g., ‘Pegasus exists’ will be true when ‘exist’ is relativized to a world of Greek myth.) In this paper, I identify five different non-commissive uses for ontic terms, and along the way I attempt to define (by a kind of via negativa) the commissive use of an ontic term, focusing on ‘actual’ as my example. The problem, however, is that the resulting definiens for the commissive use of ‘actual’ is itself equivocal between a commissive and a non-commissive reading, and thus I consider other proposals for defining the commissive use, including two proposals from David Lewis. Eventually, however, each proposal is found to be equivocal in the same way—and eventually I argue that it is impossible to define an ontic term unequivocally. However, this is not meant to overshadow that we can understand an ontic term univocally, in certain conversational contexts. I close by applying these observations to criteria of ontological commitment, and Realist/Anti-Realist debates. What the Externalist Cannot Know A Priori ABSTRACT: Several authors have argued that, assuming we have a priori knowledge of our own thought-contents, semantic externalism implies that we can know a priori contingent facts about the empirical world. After presenting the argument, I shall respond by resisting the premise that an externalist can know a priori: If s/he has the concept water, then water exists. In particular, Boghossian’s Dry Earth example illustrates that such thought-experiments do not provide such a priori knowledge. Boghossian himself rejects the Dry Earth experiment, however, since it would mean that externalism is true of empty concepts as well as non-empty concepts. Yet in this paper I advocate for the Dry Earth experiment by defending empty-concept externalism, from criticisms deriving from Boghossian as well as from Jessica Brown. Specifically, I argue that such a view does not preclude an empty concept from having the appropriate form or structure—nor does it imply a priori that a linguistic community is necessary for an empty concept to have a content. ABSTRACT: It is a consequence of Quine's confirmation holism that the logical laws are in principle revisable. Some have worried this is at odds with another dictum in Quine, viz., that any translation which construes speakers as systematically illogical is ipso facto inadequate. In this paper, I try to formulate exactly what the problem is here, and offer a solution to it by (1) disambiguating the term 'logic', and (2) appealing to a Quinean understanding of necessity. The result is that different theses in Quine's philosopy of logic are to be situated within different contexts of inquiry. Infallibilism about Self-Knowledge Philosophical Studies 133; Apr 2007. pp. 411-424. ABSTRACT: Descartes held the view that a subject has infallible beliefs about the contents of her thoughts. Here, I first examine a popular contemporary defense of this claim, given by Burge (1988), and find it lacking. I then offer my own defense, appealing to a minimal version of the language of thought hypothesis. The argument here has the virtue of refraining from any semantic premises; thus, it is congenial to both internalists and externalists about semantics. The argument also illuminates how a subject may have an a priori and privileged access to her own thoughts.
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