Books
- Reasoning and Carroll’s Regress: A Cognitivist View, forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
- Idéographie, Complete French translation of Gottlob Frege’s Begriffsschrift, Paris: Jean Vrin Publisher (1999, reprinted 2019).
Articles
- ‘The Adoption Problem and the Nature of General Belief’ (with Matthew Simpson), forthcoming in Topoi.
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Abstract
The Adoption Problem suggests that it is impossible to rationally choose or adopt new basic logical principles. It aims to refute cognitivist views of accepting logical principles, according to which adopting a logical principle is accepting or coming to believe a general principle or rule, and then applying it in reasoning — on which it is coming to have a belief whose content is a general proposition, and then applying it in reasoning. In this paper, we develop a new solution to the Adoption Problem, inspired by Ramsey’s view of general beliefs as ‘habit[s] of singular belief’ (Ramsey 1929: 148). We argue with Ramsey that beliefs with a general content are special in that they are dispositional states. This feature paves the way for a solution to the Adoption Problem which combines cognitivism with a form of expressivism. - ‘The Epistemology of Logic, Anti-Exceptionalism, and Williamson’s Knowledge-First Epistemology’, forthcoming in the Lauener Library of Analytical Philosophy’s volume in honour of Timothy Williamson.
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Abstract
Anti-exceptionalists about logic, such as Timothy Williamson, argue that the method of justification for logic is abductive, broadly the same as that used for justifying scientific theories. Anti-exceptionalism’s rival, exceptionalism, is often characterised by anti-exceptionalists as the view that logic is a priori, justified through rational intuition or conceptual understanding. I argue that there is much less of a conflict between the two views than is usually thought. This is because they are engaged in different epistemological projects: anti-exceptionalism is a view about the justification of whole logical theories, while exceptionalism is a view about how ordinary reasoners might be justified in believing a handful of basic logical principles. My aim is to show that there is a path between exceptionalism and anti-exceptionalism, a path that leads to an interesting destination. It is also to show that, while Williamson does not take that path, he follows one that has points of contact with it, and which diverges in significant ways from that taken by most anti-exceptionalists. Indeed, I show how features of his knowledge-first epistemology, such as externalism, infallibilism and anti-holism, set him apart from other anti-exceptionalists, who tend to assume internalism, fallibilism and a form of holism. - ‘Externalist versus Internalist Accounts of the Justification of Basic Logical Principles and Carroll’s Regress’, forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Filippo Ferrari et al. (eds), Oxford University Press.
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The paper concerns the relation of logic to deductive reasoning. It explores the interaction between the project of accounting for our justification for using a basic logical principle, such as Modus Ponens, in reasoning, and that of underwriting the idea that such a principle may normatively guide us. In particular, it addresses the question of whether different types of justification — access-internalist or access-externalist — might preclude or favour normative guidance. The paper evaluates and rejects the claim, drawn from recent discussions of Lewis Carroll’s regress, that access-internalism about the justification of basic logical principles is incompatible with normative guidance, and considers externalist accounts of such justification, including one that has not received attention in the context of discussions of Carroll’s regress. - ‘Abominable Conjunctions and Gricean Maxims of Conversation’, forthcoming in the Lauener Library of Analytical Philosophy’s volume in honour of Fred Dretske.
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Abstract
On a Dretske-style sensitivity account of knowledge, the Epistemic Closure Principle for knowledge fails. One upshot is that the account has to countenance the truth of so-called ‘abominable conjunctions’ — conjunctions of the form ‘I know that I have hands and I do not know that I am not a handless brain in a vat’. Dretske (2005) claims that the abomination is merely pragmatic, explainable in terms of Gricean Conversation Principles. I argue that no such Gricean explanation is forthcoming. - ‘The Epistemological Significance of Carroll’s Regress’, forthcoming in The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology (3rd edition), Kurt Sylvan (ed.).
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Carroll’s Regress is often taken to support two claims in the epistemology of logic: that knowing a logical principle is an instance of knowing how rather than an instance of knowing that, and that access-internalism about our justification for basic logical principles is false. I argue that it supports neither. - ‘Logical Knowledge’, forthcoming in The Blackwell Companion to Epistemology (3rd edition), Kurt Sylvan (ed.).
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I examine two apparently opposing views in the epistemology of logic: exceptionalism, whose hallmark is the idea that logic is a priori, and anti-exceptionalism, whose hallmark is the idea that the justification of logical theories is abductive. I also argue that they are less opposed than is usually thought. - ‘Can Truth Relativism Account for the Indeterminacy of Future Contingents?’ (with Anandi Hattiangadi), Synthese 200(3) (2022): 1–23.
Paper (open access)
Abstract
John MacFarlane has recently argued that his brand of truth relativism provides the best solution to the puzzle of future contingents: assertions about the future that express propositions that are metaphysically neither necessary nor impossible. We show that even if we grant all of the metaphysical, semantic and pragmatic assumptions in terms of which MacFarlane sets and aims to solve the puzzle, his truth relativism is not apt to solve the problem. We argue that the theory fails to vindicate the intuition that future contingent propositions are neither true nor false, leaving the theory open to a charge of Reductio, and that these problems cannot be answered while preserving the core tenets of truth relativism. - ‘Knowing How to Reason Logically’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 121(3) (2021): 327–353.
Paper (open access)
Abstract
The paper examines Gilbert Ryle’s claim that ordinary competence with logical principles or rules is a kind of knowing how, where such knowledge is understood as a skill, a multi-track disposition. Ryle argues that this account of ordinary logical competence helps avoid Lewis Carroll’s regress argument (Carroll 1895), which suggests that elementary deductive reasoning might be impossible — indeed, Carroll’s regress is the central motivation for Ryle’s account. I argue that Ryle’s account is inadequate on two counts: it cannot serve to articulate the way ordinary reasoners might exercise their knowledge in reasoning, and it does not do much to help us avoid Carroll’s regress. - ‘Assertions and the Future’ (with Anandi Hattiangadi), in S. Goldberg (ed.) The Oxford Handbook on Assertion, Oxford University Press (2020): 481–504.
- ‘Knowledge of Logical Generality and the Possibility of Deductive Reasoning’, in T. Chang and A. Nes (eds), Inference and Consciousness, London: Routledge (2019): 172–196.
Paper Draft
Abstract
The paper addresses a type of circularity threat that arises for the view that we employ general basic logical principles in deductive reasoning. This threat has been used to argue that whatever knowing such principles is, it cannot be a fully cognitive or propositional state, otherwise deductive reasoning would not be possible. I examine two versions of the circularity threat and answer them in a way that both challenges the view that we need to apply general logical principles in deductive reasoning, and defuses the threat to a cognitivist account of knowing basic logical principles. - ‘Reasons, Norms and Reasoning: A Guide through Lewis Carroll’s Regress Argument’, in D. Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity, Oxford University Press (2018): 505–529.
- ‘The Open Future, Bivalence and Assertion’ (with Anandi Hattiangadi), Philosophical Studies, 167 (2014): 251–271.
Paper Draft
Abstract
It is highly intuitive that future contingents — statements about the future whose truth is not determined by present facts — are neither true nor false. We argue that the non-bivalence of future contingents is in fact at odds with pre-theoretic intuitions about the openness of the future. These intuitions are revealed by pragmatic judgments concerning the correctness and incorrectness of assertions of future contingents. We argue that the pragmatic data, together with a plausible account of assertion, show that in many cases we take future contingents to be true (or false), even though we take the future to be open in relevant respects. - ‘A Note on Logical Truth’, Logique et Analyse 57(227) (2014): 309–331.
Paper PDF
Abstract
Classical logic counts sentences such as ‘Alice is identical with Alice’ as logically true. A standard objection to classical logic is that Alice’s self-identity, for instance, is not a matter of logic because the identity of particular objects is not a matter of logic. For this reason, many philosophers argue that classical logic is not the right logic, and that it should be abandoned in favour of free logic — logic free of existential commitments with respect to singular terms. In most standard free logics, sentences such as ‘Alice is identical with Alice’ are not logically true. This paper argues that this objection from existential commitments is somewhat superficial and that there is a deeper reason why ‘Alice is identical with Alice’ should not be considered a logical truth. Indeed, a key fundamental thought about the nature of logic is that a logical truth is true in virtue of its logical form. The fundamental problem I raise is that a sentence such as ‘Alice is identical with Alice’ appears to not even be true in virtue of its logical form. Thus this paper argues that given that such a sentence is not true in virtue of its logical form, it should not be counted as logically true. It moreover argues, on the same grounds, that even the sentences which free logicians regard as logically true shouldn’t be regarded as logically true. So in this sense free logic is no repair to classical logic. - ‘Logical Knowledge and Ordinary Reasoning’, Philosophical Studies 158 (2012): 59–82.
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The paper argues that the prominent accounts of logical knowledge have the consequence that they conflict with ordinary reasoning. On these accounts, knowing a logical principle is having a disposition to infer according to it. Such accounts in particular conflict with so-called ‘reasoned change in view’, where someone does not infer according to a logical principle but revises their views instead. The paper also outlines a propositional account of logical knowledge which does not conflict with ordinary reasoning. - ‘Empty Natural Kind Terms and Dry Earth’, Erkenntnis 76 (2012): 403–425.
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This paper considers the problem of assigning meanings to empty natural kind terms. It does so in the context of the Twin-Earth externalist–internalist debate about whether the meanings of natural kind terms are individuated by the external physical environment of the speakers using these terms. The paper clarifies and outlines the different ways in which meanings could be assigned to empty natural kind terms. And it argues that externalists do not have the semantic resources to assign them meanings. The paper ends on a sceptical note concerning the fruitfulness of using the Twin-Earth setting in debates about the semantics of empty natural kind terms. - ‘Rigidity, Natural Kind Terms and Metasemantics’, in The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds, H. Beebee and N. Sabbarton-Leary (eds.), Routledge USA (2010): 25–44.
- ‘Understanding the Logical Constants and Dispositions to Infer’, in The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 5, B. Armour-Garb et al. (eds) (2010): 1–24.
Paper (open access)
Abstract
Many philosophers claim that understanding a logical constant (e.g. ‘if, then’) fundamentally consists in having dispositions to infer according to the logical rules (e.g. Modus Ponens) that fix its meaning. This paper argues that such dispositionalist accounts give us the wrong picture of what understanding a logical constant consists in. The objection here is that they give an account of understanding a logical constant which is inconsistent with what seem to be adequate manifestations of such understanding. I then outline an alternative account according to which understanding a logical constant is not to be understood dispositionally, but propositionally. I argue that this account is not inconsistent with intuitively correct manifestations of understanding the logical constants. - ‘Propositions, Dispositions and Logical Knowledge’, in Quid Est Veritas? Essays in Honour of Jonathan Barnes, A. Longo and M. Bonelli (eds), Napoli: Bibliopolis (2010): 233–268.
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Abstract
This paper considers the question of what knowing a logical rule consists in. I defend the view that knowing a logical rule is having propositional knowledge. Many philosophers reject this view and argue for the alternative view that knowing a logical rule is, at least at the fundamental level, having a disposition to infer according to it. To motivate this dispositionalist view, its defenders often appeal to Carroll’s regress argument in ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles’. I show that this dispositionalist view, and the regress that supposedly motivates it, operate with the wrong picture of what is involved in knowing a logical rule. In particular I show that it gives us the wrong picture of the relation between knowing a logical rule and actions of inferring according to it, as well as of the way in which knowing a logical rule might be a priori. - ‘Externalism, Internalism and Logical Truth’, The Review of Symbolic Logic, 2 (2009): 1–29.
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The aim of the paper is to show what sorts of logics are required by externalist and internalist accounts of the meanings of natural kind nouns. The two main claims are: first, that adequate logics for internalism and externalism about natural kind nouns are second-order logics; second, that an internalist second-order logic is a free logic — a second-order logic free of existential commitments for natural kind nouns — while an externalist second-order logic is not. These logics give us a new perspective from which to evaluate the respective positions in the externalist–internalist debate about the meanings of such nouns. - ‘Logical Knowledge and Gettier Cases’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 59, 234 (2009): 1–19.
Paper Draft
Abstract
Knowledge of the basic rules of logic is often thought to be distinctive, for it seems to be a case of non-inferential a priori knowledge. Many philosophers take its source to be different from those of other types of knowledge, such as knowledge of empirical facts. The most prominent account of knowledge of the basic rules of logic takes this source to be the understanding of logical expressions or concepts: what explains why such knowledge is distinctive is that it is grounded in semantic or conceptual understanding. I show that this cannot be the correct account of knowledge of the basic rules of logic, because it is open to Gettier-style counter-examples.
Book Reviews
- Abeles, F. & Moktefi, A. (eds), The Carrollian: The Lewis Carroll Journal, Special double issue on ‘“What the Tortoise Said to Achilles”: Lewis Carroll’s Paradox of Inference’ (2016), History and Philosophy of Logic 39(1) (2018): 96–98.
- Trenton Merrick, Propositions, Oxford University Press (2015), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (12/4/2016).