Philosophical Analysis: A Defense by Example PDF
Preview Philosophical Analysis: A Defense by Example
PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES Editors: WILFRID SELLARS, University of Pittsburt;h KEITH LEHRER, University of Arizona Board of Consul tint; Editors: JONATHAN BENNETT, Syracuse University ALLAN GIBBARD, University of Michigan ROBERT STALNAKER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology ROBERT G. TURNBULL, Ohio State University VOLUME 39 PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS A Defense by Example Edited by DAVID F. AUSTIN Department of Philosophy. North Carolina State University. U.S.A. KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS DORDRECHT / BOSTON / LONDON Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Philosophical analysis: a defense by example / edited by David F. Austin. p. cm. - (Philosophical studies series; v. 39) Includes index. ISBN-13: 978-1-4020-3150-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-2909-8 DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-2909-8 1. Analysis (Philosophy). 2. Gettier, Edmund L. I. Gettier, Edmund L. II. Austin, David F., 1952- III. Series. B808.5.P48 1987 146' .4--dc 19 87-36757 CIP Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, P.O. Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Kluwer Academic Publishers incorporates the publishing programmes of D. Reidel, Martinus Nijhoff, Dr W. Junk and MTP Press. Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada by Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A. In all other countries, sold and distributed by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands. All Rights Reserved © 1988 by Kluwer Academic Publishers Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1988 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. FOR EDMUND GETI1ER Another day we spoke about a certain physicist who had very little success in his research work. Mostly he attacked problems which offered tremen dous difficulties. He applied penetrating analysis and succeeded only in discovering more and more difficulties. By most of his colleagues he was not rated very highly. Einstein, however, said about him, "I admire this type of man. I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy." -Philipp Frank, 'Einstein's Philosophy of Physics,' Reviews of Modern Physics, 1949 God is in the details. -Shaker proverb, often quoted by Mies van der Rohe TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ix ROBERT C. SLEIGH, JR. / Knowing Edmund Gettier xiii PART I: ORIGINS OF ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY GARETH B. MATTHEWS / A Puzzle in Plato: Theaetetus 189b - 190e 3 TERENCE D. PARSONS / Russell's Early Views on Denotihg 17 PART II: ANALYSES OF BELIEF, KNOWLEDGE AND SENSATION: ANCIENT, MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY RODERICK M. CHISHOLM / An Analysis of Thirteen Epistemic Categories 47 EARL CONEE / Why Solve the Gettier Problem? 55 FRED FELDMAN / Two Questions about Pleasure 59 RICHARD FELDMAN / Having Evidence 83 CARL GINET / The Fourth Condition 105 KEITH LEHRER / Against Simplicity 119 ALVIN PLANTINGA / Chisholmian Intemalism 127 BAS C. VAN FRAASSEN / The Problem of Old Evidence 153 PART ill: ANALYSIS OF MIND AND LANGUAGE HECTOR-NERI CASTANEDA / Negations, Imperatives, Colors, Indexical Properties, Non-existence, and Russell's Paradox 169 THOMAS J. MCKAY / De Re and De Se Belief 207 MARK RICHARD / Taking the Fregean Seriously 219 THOMAS C. RYCKMAN /The Millian Theory of Names and the Problems of Negative Existentials and Non-referring Names 241 EDWARD WIERENGA / Omniscience and Knowledge De Se et De Praesenti 251 Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS PART IV: ANALYSIS OF MODALITIES J. MICHAEL DUNN / The Impossibility of Certain Higher- Order Non-classical Logics with Extensionality 261 G. W. FITCH / The Nature of Singular Propositions 281 MICHAEL JUBIEN / Problems with Possible Worlds 299 DEL RA TZSCH / Quantified Subjunctives, Modality and Natural Law 323 ROBERT STALNAKER/Vague Identity 349 INDEX OF NAMES 361 PREFACE Reports of the death of analytic philosophy are greatly exaggerated. In this volume, essays by twenty one members of that still-healthy tradition are gathered together to honor one of its ablest practitioners on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. It is my privilege and pleasure to say a few words about our friend, teacher and colleague, Edmund Gettier. Even among those who allege the demise of analytic philosophy, the name 'Gettier' is well-known: there are Gettier-style counterexamples and the problem they helped bring to light, the Gettier Problem (a. k. a. 'the Problem of the Fourth Condition'). Edmund Gettier's original two counterexamples, given in his often cited 'Is Justified True Belief Knowl edge?', are famous, and rightly so. As David Lewis has remarked, "Philosophical theories are never refuted conclusively. (Or hardly ever. Godel and Gettier may have done it.)" 1 Even the Philosophical Lexicon lists the adjective, "getty": the gettier a counterexample is, the more effec tive it is against its target.2 But Ed's work did not stop with the Gettier problem. During the past twelve years, I have heard him refer to 'the Get tier Problem' just thrice, each time with complete detachment, as if it were some other guy whose name was attached to it. Since the aforementioned article comprises a significant portion of his published work,3 one might wonder what he has been up to since then. Despite having published little, Ed is a creative and productive philosopher. Much of the philosophy he writes is done in preparation for graduate seminars or in response to requests for help from students or col leagues; they recognize that he has one of the sharpest, quickest and most insightful critical intellects in contemporary philosophy. In his seminars, he presents original material that is years ahead4 of anything then published on the topic. He rarely repeats material from semester to semester; instead, he presents problems from fresh perspectives with new insights, always illustrating them with examples that make vivid the key points at issue, bringing elegant organization to what has seemed intractably complex. While teaching that 'clarity is not enough', he also makes his students acutely aware that deep conceptual clarity is a prerequisite for progress in philosophy. In Ed, these intellectual qualities are further informed by rare kindness, a ready wit, selflessness and such an utter lack of pretension that the persistently pretentious usually feel compelled to leave for stuffier environs. Not all of the important stuff goes on in office or seminar room. A lot of it takes place in coffee shops, where napkins are his preferred ix x PREFACE medium of inscription. (After a ftrst year's study with him, one grateful graduate student presented Ed with five hundred paper napkins, each im printed with 'Edmund L. Gettier, IlL' And his student Del Ratzsch once suggested, only half jokingly, that Ed's students compile The Collected Napkins of Edmund Gettier.) For over fifteen years, Ed's research has been primarily on the se mantics of propositional attitudes and the metaphysics of modality -- and more generally, wherever the apparatus of possible worlds has shown special promise. His work on the propositional attitudes has been an ex tended investigation into the strengths and weaknesses of a Russellian ap proach, often with an eye on what Ed took to be Wittgenstein's criticisms of that approach.5 His work on modality has focussed on the nature of actuality and the logical and seman tical paradoxes, culminating in a system of Ramified Higher World Theory. All of the essays herein bear directly on the topics that have drawn Ed's singularly acute attention. This volume begins with two papers on problems that concerned Russell. The first, by Gareth Matthews, is on a problem raised by Plato for the theory of judgment -- a problem with which Russell wrestled in developing his most famous theory of definite descriptions -- the problem of false belief about identities. Terry Parsons discusses Russell's earlier attempts to deal with denoting phrases, definite and indefinite, and shows that despite their eventual rejection by Russell, those earlier views have an underappreciated coherence. The papers in Part II deal with a number of topics from traditional eptistemology: the natures of justification, knowledge, sensation. Roder ick Chisholm brings order to the tradition by defining and exhibiting the utility of thirteen epistemic categories. In another appropriately chisholmian study, Alvin Plantinga subjects Chisholm's account of justifi cation to extended criticism. Responding to recent claims that the search for a 'fourth condition' is without value, Earl Co nee gives a sound argu ment for the importance of the Gettier Problem. Carl Ginet surveys and scrutinizes the varieties of counterexample to the justified true belief analy sis of propositional knowledge, and proposes his own most recent solution to the Gettier Problem. Relying on the work of Thomas Reid, Keith Lehrer criticizes an influential argument of Russell's, based on the simplic ity of our belief in material objects and other minds. Richard Feldman shows that the apparently clear notion of 'having evidence' is obscure in ways that matter to some leading theories of jusification; he then presents and defends one clear way of understanding the notion. Fred Feldman states and defends a propositional account of pleasure. Bas van Fraassen criticizes Garber's solution to the problem of old evidence, as it arises in giving a Bayesian account of confirmation, and offers a corrected and more general perspective on the problem. Names, indexicals and demonstratives pose special problems for any theory of the propositional attitudes, and the papers in Part III explore
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