Gilbert Harman

2013 ◽  
pp. 62-65
Keyword(s):  
Gilbert Harman

Phenomenology and De Re Interpretation: A Critique of Brandom's Reading of Hegel

2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 30-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Houlgate
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Reference Dependence ◽  
De Re ◽  
Philosophical Text ◽  
De Dicto ◽  
Gilbert Harman ◽  
Made In

At first sight Robert Brandom's two essays on Hegel in his book Tales of the Mighty Dead appear barely to be about Hegel at all. The first essay on holism and idealism, for example, talks of ‘sense dependence’ and ‘reference dependence’, and even invokes a point in logic made by Gilbert Harman (TMD 191-2, 194). Scarcely normal fare for the average commentator on Hegel. Brandom himself is acutely conscious of the impression his work on Hegel (and on the other philosophers discussed in Tales of the Mighty Dead) might have on his readers. ‘I am aware’, he writes, ’that the relations between the stories told here and my own philosophical views [ … ] may seem to some particularly problematic’ (TMD 90). In the section of his book called ‘Pretexts’, however, Brandom provides a subtle defence of his approach and makes it clear that he is by no means simply ‘foisting’ his ideas on the helpless dead (TMD 91; see also 389). He does so by distinguishing between two different modes of interpretation: de dicto and de re.Brandom states that interpretation of a philosophical text seeks to establish the claims made in it and to determine what follows from them. This task, however, presupposes a ‘context’ of interpretation (TMD 95).When a text is given a de dicto interpretation, the context is supplied by the author's own commitments. The aim is thus to determine what the author himself would have said in response to questions of clarification, given those commitments (TMD 99).

The Indispensability of Character

Philosophy ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel J. Kupperman
Keyword(s):  
Character Traits ◽  
Target Character ◽  
Virtuous Character ◽  
Soft Target ◽  
Gilbert Harman

Gilbert Harman has argued that it does not make sense to ascribe character traits to people. The notion of morally virtuous character becomes particularly suspect.How plausible this is depends on how broad character traits would have to be. Views of character as entirely invariant behavioural tendencies offer a soft target. This paper explores a view that is a less easy target: character traits as specific to kinds of situation, and as involving probabilities or real possibilities. Such ascriptions are not undermined by Harman's arguments, and it remains plausible that the agent's character often is indispensable in explanation of behaviour. Character is indispensable also as processes of control that impose reliability where it really matters.

Sturgeon's Defence of Moral Realism

Dialogue ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan K. Jobe
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Scientific Explanation ◽  
Negative Answer ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Human Conduct ◽  
Moral Explanations ◽  
Moral Quality ◽  
Moral Qualities ◽  
Gilbert Harman

Can a moral principle be tested and confirmed empirically? Can the fact that an event exhibits a moral quality play a role in explaining why a person observes the event as having that quality? Gilbert Harman, in attempting to point to a radical difference between scientific and moral facts, has endorsed a negative answer to these questions. With Harman's discussion in mind, Nicholas Sturgeon takes the affirmative side in his “Moral Explanations,” a potentially influential essay that is now beginning to appear in the textbook anthologies. Sturgeon rounds out his defence of moral realism by further arguing that moral qualities of persons can play an essential role in the scientific explanation of human conduct. Finally, he attempts to enhance the appeal of moral realism by arguing for the plausibility of its compatibility with physicalism. While granting that Sturgeon's discussion is challenging and instructive I shall try to show that on all points mentioned here Sturgeon has failed to make a good case.

scholarly journals Are We Playing a Moral Lottery? Moral Disagreement from a Metasemantic Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sinan Dogramaci
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Content Determination ◽  
Sharon Street ◽  
Gilbert Harman

If someone disagrees with my moral views, or more generally if I’m in a group of n people who all disagree with each other, but I don’t have any special evidence or basis for my epistemic superiority, then it’s at best a 1-in-n chance that my views are correct. The skeptical threat from disagreement is thus a kind of moral lottery, to adapt a similar metaphor from Sharon Street. Her own genealogical debunking argument, as I discuss, relies on a premise of such disagreement among evolutionary counterparts.In this paper, I resist the threat from disagreement by showing that, on some of the most influential and most attractive theories of content determination, the premise of moral disagreement cannot serve any skeptical or revisionary purposes. I examine and criticize attempts, made by Gilbert Harman and Sharon Street, to argue from disagreement to relativism by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that, within certain constraints, maximizes the attribution to us of true beliefs. And I examine and criticize Robert Williams’s attempt to show there is moral disagreement by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that instead maximizes the attribution to us of rationality. My overall aim is to defend commonsense moral realism via a careful look at the theory of content and concepts.

Myles Brand. Introduction: defining “causes.”The nature of causation, edited and with an introduction by Myles Brand, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, and London, 1976, pp. 1–44. - Ernest Nagel. The logical character of scientific laws. The nature of causation, edited and with an introduction by Myles Brand, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, and London, 1976, pp. 77–110. (Reprinted from XL 262(11), pp. 47–78.) - Roderick M. Chisholm. Law statements and counterfactual inference. A reprint of XXI 86. The nature of causation, edited and with an introduction by Myles Brand, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, and London, 1976, pp. 111–121. - Nelson Goodman. The problem of counterfactual conditionals. A reprint of XII 139. The nature of causation, edited and with an introduction by Myles Brand, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, and London, 1976, pp. 123–149. - Robert Stalnaker. A theory of conditionals. The nature of causation, edited and with an introduction by Myles Brand, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, and London, 1976, pp. 151–166. (Reprinted from Studies in logical theory, edited by Nicholas Rescher, American philosophical quarterly monograph series, no. 2, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1968, pp. 98–112; also reprinted in Causation and conditionals, edited by Ernest Sosa, Oxford readings in philosophy, Oxford University Press, London etc. 1975, pp. 165–179.) - Arthur Burks. The logic of causal propositions. A reprint of XVI 277. The nature of causation, edited and with an introduction by Myles Brand, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, and London, 1976, pp. 255–276. - J. L. Mackie. Causes and conditions. The nature of causation, edited and with an introduction by Myles Brand, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, and London, 1976, pp. 307–344. (Reprinted from American philosophical quarterly, vol. 2 (1965), pp. 245–264.) - Donald Davidson. Causal relations. The nature of causation, edited and with an introduction by Myles Brand, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, and London, 1976, pp. 353–367. (Reprinted from The journal of philosophy, vol. 64 (1967), pp. 691–703; also reprinted in The logic of grammar, edited by Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman, Dickenson Publishing Company, Inc., Encino and Belmont, Calif., 1975, pp. 246–254.)

1982 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 470-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Donald Davidson ◽  
Logical Theory ◽  
Ernest Sosa ◽  
University Of Illinois ◽  
Nelson Goodman ◽  
Counterfactual Conditionals ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Nicholas Rescher ◽  
Scientific Laws ◽  
Gilbert Harman

scholarly journals Théorie du raisonnement et perspective de la première personne

2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josée Brunet
Keyword(s):  
Gilbert Harman

Partant de l’hypothèse qu’une théorie adéquate du raisonnement devrait être en mesure de répondre à la question de savoir comment les aspects processuel (psychologique) et inférentiel (logique) d’un raisonnement sont liés entre eux, l’objectif de cet article est de déterminer comment Gilbert Harman conçoit cet aspect processuel, et si sa théorie permet d’expliquer de manière adéquate la relation entre ces deux aspects. J’examine d’abord quelle fonction il reconnaît aux notions d’implication et d’inconsistance, et montre ensuite que si le processus dans lequel s’engage celui qui raisonne peut être conçu à la manière d’Harman, c’est-à-dire à la 3e personne, il doit aussi être conçu du point de vue de l’agent qui raisonne, c’est-à-dire à la 1re personne. Après avoir discuté des limites inhérentes au fait de concevoir l’aspect processuel du raisonnement d’un point de vue essentiellement externe, à la 3e personne, j’identifie quelques conséquences que fait apparaître la perspective de la 1re personne, dans le but de montrer pourquoi une théorie adéquate du raisonnement ne peut en faire l’économie.

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