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On What There Actually Is
This is currently set to be the second chapter of my dissertation. Here, I argue that a negative existential such as 'Pegasus does not exist' is satisfied in the actual world by an actual object created in the imagination. (However, I deny that this object is the idea of Pegasus.) As one objection, the view apparently implies that Pegasus exists after all. I argue in reply that 'actual' is ambiguous between a noncommissive and a commissive reading--so that one can consistently say Pegasus is an actual object of the imagination which is not actual in the way that tables and chairs are. Nonetheless, I claim that there can be no extensionally adequate, non-circular disambiguation of 'actual,' though a speaker can implicitly understand which reading is intended in a context. The chapter ends by applying these considerations to a new criterion of ontological commitment.
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.
Quine and Logical Truth Erkenntnis
68.1;
Jan 2008. pp. 103-112
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.
Bonus: An
Exchange on Logical Form between myself and William
G. Lycan