The Epistemic Conception of Vagueness

This chapter challenges Epistemicism. It rebuts Williamson’s arguments for unrestricted Bivalence, based on the Disquotational Scheme for the truth predicate, and Sorensen’s arguments that the idea of a predicate’s being of limited sensitivity is itself incoherent. The chapter nevertheless proposes a broadly epistemic conception of what a definite case of a vague predicate is—namely, a case where at least one of two conflicting verdicts about a vague predication must involve some kind of cognitive shortcoming, and proposes a corresponding notion of a borderline case—one where each of a pair of conflicting verdicts can be unexceptionable—and sides with Epistemicism in rejecting the idea of such cases as truth-value gaps. It is contended that Williamson’s explanation of why we cannot know where the putative sharp cut-offs in Sorites series come at best explains too little, since it has nothing plausible to say about our ignorance throughout a borderline area, nor about vagueness induced by deliberate approximation—‘roughly six feet tall’, ‘about a metre long’.

On Being in a Quandary

This chapter addresses three problems: the problem of formulating a coherent relativism, the Sorites paradox, and a seldom noticed difficulty in the best intuitionistic case for the revision of classical logic. A response to the latter is proposed which, generalized, contributes towards the solution of the other two. The key to this response is a generalized conception of indeterminacy as a specific kind of intellectual bafflement—Quandary. Intuitionistic revisions of classical logic are merited wherever a subject matter is conceived both as liable to generate Quandary and as subject to a broad form of evidential constraint. So motivated, the distinctions enshrined in intuitionistic logic provide both for a satisfying resolution of the Sorites paradox and a coherent outlet for relativistic views about, for example, matters of taste and morals. An important corollary of the discussion is that an epistemic conception of vagueness can be prised apart from the strong metaphysical realism with which its principal supporters have associated it, and acknowledged to harbour an independent insight.

Criticism of language and analysis of law. A pragmatics of normativity and social (de)ontology

One important methodological challenge to normative disciplines like political or legal theory is if the method in question is purely descriptive or can be used to justify norms. Secondly, trying to incorporate ordinary language in the analysis of political concepts, this part utilizes arguments employed in the global justice debate. So, I will divide the paper into three parts: 1. Is the feasibility interpreted as a requirement of normative political theories? Firstly, I clarify the relation between experience and normativity; then I take a look at how the proto-normative and normative structures gained from experience become norms with a “critical” function. Finally, I will (re-)consider the normative feasibility criteria suggested by Hahn and by Räikkä. 2. After building a connection between the epistemic conception of criticism and the conception of politics within Kantian work, I first present Michelle Kosch’s Fichte, but then criticizing Fichte’s argument. Then, as Dworkin’s account of participation in coercion is challenged, I briefly elaborate on a roughly Dworkinian account of political equality. Lastly, I want to look into the relation between technical and ordinary definitions for political concepts, using elements taken by semantic and pragmatic old models, using populism as a case study. 3. In the concluding appendix, the connections between law and linguistic analysis of normative sentences will be examined, under the perspective of the Genoa Legal Realism.

An ecological view on cognitive linguistics: perspectives of applying the principles of cognitive ecology in linguistic researches

The articlediscusses the perspectives of the development and the applicative potential of a recently appeared in cognitive science approach – the cognitive ecology. The approach proposes a new methodology of cognitive research, deeply based on a rather particular epistemic conception. In the article, we consequently examine the concepts of ecology and of cognitive system. The latter is considered from the point of view of different traditions existing on the field of modern cognitive researches. We pay a particular attention to the distributed cognition theory which has introduced the notion of languiging in the scientific context. The term is elaborated in order to denote the subject activities, firstly, linked with the language use and, simultaneously, deeply immerged in the situation of two or more cognitive agents interaction sharped around the understanding. We also present several examples of cognitive researches accomplished on the field of linguistics which share the philosophy of the ecological approach and those results illustrate the productivity of its methodology. In conclusion, we give ourdefinition of what is meant under the notion of cognitive ecology and we propose a draft of what could be a “credo” of the ecological approach in cognitive linguistics.

The obscure content of hallucination

Michael Tye (2009) proposed a way of understanding the content of hallucinatory experiences. Somewhat independently, Mark Johnston (2004) provided us with elements to think about the content of hallucination. In this paper, their views are compared and evaluated. Both their theories present intricate combinations of conjunctivist and disjunctivist strategies to account for perceptual content. An alternative view (called “the epistemic conception of hallucination”), which develops a radically disjunctivist account, is considered and rejected. Finally, the paper raises some metaphysical difficulties that seem to threaten any conjunctivist theory and to lead the debate to a dilemma: strong disjunctivists cannot explain the subjective indistinguishability between veridical and hallucinatory experiences, whereas conjunctivists cannot explain what veridical and hallucinatory experiences have in common. This dilemma is left here as an open challenge.

More open borders for those left behind

Including the interests of those migrants leave behind in debates about migration and justice is a strategy which theorists who are sceptical of open borders have made use of, most notably in brain drain critiques of emigration. In rejecting this view, and in invoking an epistemic conception of liberalism, I claim that not only can the interests of those left behind be appealed to by defenders of more open borders. For at least two reasons such interests should be included. First, more open borders have a unique role to play in addressing the interests of those left behind via the transformative economic effects of remittances and the state signalling mechanism that migrant and remittance flows provide, both for wealthier states as they dispense foreign aid and for poorer states as they implement national development programmes. Second, more open borders are also compelling for those who are sceptical of immigration insofar as they help them identify the obligations of justice they may owe to the world’s poor and how these are best discharged; obligations whose fulfilment lessens the pressure to migrate from poorer to wealthier states over the long term.

Does Dewey Have an “epistemic argument” for Democracy?

The analysis and defence of democracy on the grounds of its epistemic powers is now a well-established, if contentious, area of theoretical and empirical research. This article reconstructs a distinctive and systematic epistemic account of democracy from Dewey’s writings. Running like a thread through this account is a critical analysis of the distortion of hierarchy and class division on social knowledge, which Dewey believes democracy can counteract. The article goes on to argue that Dewey’s account has the resources to defuse at least some important forms of the broader charges of instrumentalism and depoliticization that are directed at the epistemic project. The gloomy conviction of the stratified character of capitalist societies and the conflictual character of their politics shapes Dewey’s view of political agency, and this article outlines how this epistemic conception of democracy is deployed as a critical standard for judging and transforming existing political forms but also serves as a line of defence for democratic political forms against violent and authoritarian alternatives.

The Modalities of Judgment

This chapter is an exposition of Frege’s theory of modality before adopting the sense/reference distinction. The background for understanding this theory is Kant’s conception of judgment and of the classification of judgments in the Table of Judgments. Frege agrees with Kant that modality is not an aspect of content. However, Frege’s discovery of modern quantificational logic leads him to reject Kant’s theory of logically significant structure. Moreover, Frege insists on a sharp distinction between judging and assuming, which leads him to reject Kant’s position that modalities mark distinct types of judgment. As a result, modality has no logical significance. Frege takes discourse in which we seem to ascribe necessity or possibility to contents to effect various sorts of implicature, and his accounts of these implicatures provides a reductionist and epistemic conception of modality.

Ways of Meaning and Knowing Moral Realities

This chapter examines some of the important and distinctive features of Mark Platts’ views on morality and on the kind of knowledge and understanding human beings have of it. In his Ways of Meaning, Platts sought ‘to present and discuss…the most important recent contributions to the philosophy of language’. The most important recent contributions to that subject through the 1970s were Donald Davidson’s elaborations of the idea of a theory of meaning for a particular language. This chapter considers Platts’ defence of the theory that he calls a form of ‘realism’, It considers specifically his ‘realist’ or ‘objectivist’ account of evaluative thought that stresses its direct connection with the non-‘epistemic’ conception of meaning and understanding from which it is derived.

Improperly Obtained Evidence and the Epistemic Conception of the Trial

This article criticises H. L. Ho’s argument that the exclusion of improperly obtained evidence can best be understood in terms of a ‘political’ rather than ‘epistemic’ conception of the criminal trial. It argues that an epistemic conception of the trial, as an institution primarily concerned with arriving at accurate verdicts on the part of an independent and impartial fact-finder, is an important element of the rule of law. The court also has a duty to uphold other elements of the rule of law. The rule of law should be seen as concerned with upholding moral and political rights, including those of victims as well as defendants. The ‘vindication principle’, requiring decisions on exclusion of evidence to take account of both these sets of rights, is defended as being consistent with this understanding of the rule of law and with the epistemic conception of the trial.