Tomasz Jarmużek, On the Sea-Battle Tomorrow That May Not Happen. A Logical and Philosophical Analysis of the Master Argument (Berno: Peter Lang, 2019), ss. 262

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The Bishop’s Church: Berkeley’s Master Argument and the Paradox of Knowability

We can find in the passages that set out the Master Argument a precursor to the paradox of knowability. That paradox shows that if all truths are knowable, all truths are known. Similarly, Berkeley might be read as proposing that if all sensible objects are (distinctly) conceivable, then all sensible objects are conceived.

Kant’s Case for Transcendental Idealism and Empirical Realism

The foundational structure of, and Kant’s arguments for his transcendental idealism and empirical realism are analyzed. Special attention is paid to the ‘master argument’ in the Transcendental Aesthetic for the thesis that space and time are transcendentally ideal and nothing but forms of sensibility. A reconstruction of the master argument is provided, and each of its premises is examined in detail, including the especially important premise that we have an a priori intuition of space and time.

The Very Idea of Truth by Convention

This chapter answers various influential arguments against truth by convention, in general, and logical conventionalism, in particular. The first argument discussed claims that the contingency of our linguistic conventions is incompatible with the necessity of logical truth. The second claims that while conventions can be used to determine the content of a sentence, they cannot possibly make that content be the case (I call this “the master argument” against conventionalism, because of its influence). The third argument discussed is Quine’s famous argument against logical conventionalism. The fourth is a variation on Quinean themes, related to the later Wittgenstein’s radical conventionalism and Dummett’s discussions of Wittgenstein’s views. The fifth and final objection is Williamson’s argument against understanding-assent links. The chapter’s discussion shows that each of these arguments against conventionalism has decisive failings.

Plato’s Master Argument for a Two-Kind Ontology in the Sophist: A New Reading of the Final Argument of the Gigantomachia Passage (249b5–249c9)

In this paper I defend a new reading of the final argument of the Gigantomachia passage of Plato’s Sophist (249b5–249c9), according to which it is an argument for a two-kind ontology, based on the distinction between the changing beings and the unchanging beings. This argument, I urge, is addressed not only to Platonists but to all philosophers – with one exception. My reading is based on the claim that this argument does not rely on the view that nous requires unchangeable objects – what I call the traditional reading – but on the view that nous itself is unchanging. The difference between the traditional reading and my reading is that on the former, Plato’s argument relies on a distinctive epistemological assumption, whereas on the latter, Plato’s argument is free from any such commitments. If the argument of this paper is along the right lines, then this implies that this argument has a much more far-reaching scope than critics have usually assumed. It also invites us to reconsider Plato’s approach to the question of being in the Sophist.

Conceptual Engineering

This chapter develops and defends the Master Argument for Conceptual Engineering: (1) If W is a word that has a meaning M, then there are many similar meanings, M1,M2,...,Mn, W could have. (2) We have no good reason to think that the meaning that W ended up with is the best meaning W could have: there will typically be indefinitely many alternative meanings that would be better meanings for W. (3) When we speak, think, and theorize it’s important to make sure our words have as good meanings as possible. (4) As a corollary: when doing philosophy, we should try to find good meanings for core philosophical terms and they will typically not be the meanings those words as a matter of fact have. (5) So no matter what topic a philosopher is concerned with, she should assess and ameliorate the meanings of central terms. I respond to seven objections to this argument.

What kind of evaluative states are emotions? The attitudinal theory vs. the perceptual theory of emotions

This paper argues that Deonna and Teroni's attitudinal theory of emotions faces two serious problems. The first is that their master argument fails to establish the central tenet of the theory, namely, that the formal objects of emotions do not feature in the content of emotions. The second is that the attitudinal theory itself is vulnerable to a dilemma. By pointing out these problems, our paper provides indirect support to the main competitor of the attitudinal theory, namely, the perceptual theory of emotions.

The legitimacy of the European human rights regime – a view from the United Kingdom

The purpose of the present article is threefold. First, my ambition is to improve the analytical framework that is used to assess the legitimacy of the European Court of Human Rights. The Court’s authority can neither be established nor refuted by a single master-argument. Instead, what we need is a careful balancing exercise and this piece aims to set out the main elements of the justificatory equation. Second, using this framework, I intend to put forward the outline of a coherent critique of the European human rights regime. Third, I hope that my article is able to shed light on why it is natural to expect more vocal criticism from the United Kingdom than from most other member states of the Council of Europe.

Willing Belief

In Unbelievable Errors, Bart Streumer offers resourceful arguments against each of non-reductive realism, reductive realism, and non-cognitivism, in order to motivate his version of the normative error theory, according to which normative predicates ascribe properties that do not exist. In this contribution, I argue that none of the steps of this master argument succeed, and that Streumer’s arguments leave puzzles about what it means to ascribe a property at all.

Chrysippus’ counterargument against the Master Argument: a reappraisal

It is widely held that as a nego suppositum, Chrysippus’ response to Diodorus Cronus’ Master Argument is that the impossible “this man has died” follows from the possible “Dio has died”. A principal claim of this article is that Chrysippus was not actually committed, against Diodorus, to the tenet that there are deductions and conditionals whereby from the possible the impossible follows. I argue that this is most likely part of a Chrysippean exemplum fictum of a real dialectical discussion and it merely reflects a Chrysippean dialectical strategy, a merely instrumental agreement (συγχώρησις) with Diodorus on the admissibility of some single-premised arguments. As historical evidence for my conjecture I highlight two key passages by Sextus Empiricus which help to understand that Chrysippus’ real tenet was an ancient implicational counterpart of a deictic version of the Identity-Elimination Rule, whereas most likely, according to Diodorus the identitarian major premiss of this rule is redundant, so that it must be eliminated.