Aune, Bruce - An Empiricist Epistemology Ch 4 "Properties And Concepts"

05/25/2007

Unpublished Manuscript

Author begins chapter with a discussion of the three leading theories of properties. Properties can be considered a feature of an object, such as 'red' or 'spherical'. There are theories promoted by David Armstrong that claim that properties exist in some universal sense and that objects partake in the existence of them-- similarity exists therefore between objects with similar properties by virtue of their sharing the same property. There are 'trope' theorists like Donald Williams or Keith Campbell (and possibly Aristotle) who claim that each property is unique, but share a similarity that is more-or-less similar, depending on the context, object, etc. The final theory that author prefers is a conceptual theory (Kant, Frege), the theory that a property of an object is a concept that the object falls under.

Author has two main criticisms of the first two theories. The first theory (Armstrong's A-theory) fails because it must include the object itself that has been stripped of all its properties, thus a 'bare particular'. If that wasn't bad enough, it seems that if properties exist, they too must have properties that distinguish them, which means that properties have 'bare particulars' too.

The second theory (trope theories) fail because we need to distinguish between all the different tropes out there, which means that each trope itself is made up of further tropes, and so on (pg 132-3).

Both theories fail, author suggests, because they have an incorrect view of predication as ascribing a property to an object. Author returns to the theory of properties he likes, the Fregean F-theory. In this theory, properties 'fall under' the concept of an object. Thus an object is red because the object itself is red, not because it has the property of redness. One upshot of this theory is that the concepts of an object can be used in propositions without much mutation. What is a concept? A concept is something associated with the thing it conceptualizes, and someone has a concept when she can use at the right times and in the right places. (pg 145)

One problem for the Fregean theory is that we are unclear what the 'falling under' relation actually is. For this, author uses the Sellarsian suggestion of distributive singular terms as a way to sort objects under concepts-- a token of a type that is distributed. There are some criticisms of Distributive Singular Terms (DSTs) that author deals with:

1) Not all lions are tawny. Response: that's fine, just restrict the DSTs to typical or ideal examples

2) DSTs sometimes are true due to their distribution, not due to the properties the objects have: 'the grizzly is found in North America'-- no one grizzly is all over North America. Response: those aren't DSTs!

Author makes sure to agree with Sellars that the concept 'red' and the word 'red' are expressing the same thing too. 'The concept "red"' is used as a DST to distribute to all proper times when 'the concept red' is employed.

Author revises the Fregean version of concepts being the connectors between predicates and objects. Now, predicates directly describe objects, or directly classify objects, without 'conceptual mediation'. This would be much like demonstratives or names. The problem now is where predicates get their conceptual function? Author: by usage (pg 154-5).

The next step is dealing with propositions. Author uses a Sellarsian 'distributive' treatment for propositions: propositions are similar because they distribute to, ultimately, beliefs about their proper usage. (pg 158-9)

This is an immensely fast-paced and difficult chapter that is the bulk of the sorting out between concepts, predicates, properties and propositions.

Aune, Bruce - An Empiricist Epistemology Ch 3 "Empiricism and the A Priori"

05/18/2007

Unpublished Manuscript

In this chapter author gives a positive account of analyticity and how it might work in relation to so-called propositional attitudes. The primary aim is to show that cases of supposed a priori knowledge are just cases of analyticity in language or in concepts.

The chapter begins with a brief survey of the origins of analytic truths as conceived by Kant. For Kant, an analytic truth (similar to Leibniz) is a truth where the predicate being ascribed to the object is already contained in the concept of the object itself. Author considers Kant's work to be acceptable, but only applicable to a limited class of judgments. (pg 82) Frege attempted to build on Kant by claiming that an analytic truth is a truth derivable only from general logical laws and definitions.

Frege and other empiricist philosophers were generally considered to be refuted by Quine in his paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism". Author describes the problem was that we cannot use the idea of synonymy without using 'analytic', and vice versa. The two are involved in a vicious circle of definition. Further, any attempt at lining up all the sentences containing supposedly synonymous terms will contain the term 'analytic'. Quine later retreated from his earlier attack and admitted that there was some common-sense appeal to analyticity. He gives a rough definition: something is analytic for a native speaker S if S learns the truth of P by learning the usage of one or more of the words in P. This truth must be deductively closed-- so the steps to analyticity must 'count as analytic in turn'. (pg 88) But still, as with Kant, Quine relegates analytic truths to logic ones and linguistic tautologies.

Author describes his version of analytic truth as one developed from Carnap's, which consists of the specification of a formal language-system that has semantic rules and definitions. Author uses the example of specifying how 'if...then' applies, a usage that is separate from common usage. Once these specifications are considered, then the supposed counterexamples to modus ponens and modus tollens are clarified and dismissed (pg 97-98).

Author lastly turns to the problems with necessary truths that Kripke has shown. One example is the origin claim: an item cannot have it's origins in a different hunk of matter than it does now. (pg 112-) Author goes about showing what the proof for this would be. Assuming that 'distinctness' is defined properly; author claims this Kripkean claim can be considered analytic.

Lastly, author considers psychological states, which are not the same as propositions. If propositions can be analytic, can psycholgical states like beliefs? Author review the classical notion of propositions as expressing the sense of a sentence, with words having conceptual content. With the theory of names being rigid designators this classical notion is undone. Author discusses the ramifications of this failure and also discusses conceptualism, which says that propositional attitudes have 'contents' rather than 'objects'. Using this method at least, the empiricist can have analyticity in psychological states.

Aune, Bruce - An Empiricist Epistemology Ch 2 "A Priori Knowledge and the Claims of Rationalism"

05/11/2007

Unpublished Manuscript

This chapter is devoted to giving doubts to the anti-empiricist rationalist philosophies that claim support of a priori knowledge like "nothing can be green or yellow at the same time" or 'not (P and not P)'.

Author wants to distinguish between a priori knowledge and analytic knowledge. At issue here is whether commonly thought of a priori claims (not necessary identity and contingent a priori claims made by Kripke, by the way) can be proved or verified. The proof would be possible given a combination of axioms and inference. But now we are given to another question: what axioms do we use? Here the rationalist believes the axioms used are knowable by direct intuition. Author complicates this picture by showing that axioms are superfluous because they are derivable from rules, and further that the claim that anything is knowable by direct intuition is dubious (pg 46-). The contrary view is the empiricist's, whose standard claims are that the rules of inference are underwritten by convention that aims at preserving truth using 'semantical rules' (pg 42, top).

Author discusses that it is true that sometimes things are immediately apprehendable; but these things are like recognizing faces, or my own hand. Author does not believe that recognizing that things are of a given kind is as intuitive. For instance, we need to recognize the appropriate application conditions of modus ponens before we can use it in inference. Without taking a situation (or set of propositions) to be an instance where modus ponens properly applies, we can easily go wrong. Author uses two examples of moral and geometrical cases.

Author then takes on the standard cases that make up the rationalist backbone. E.g., the law of non-contradiction is complicated by non-self-referential liar-like-paradoxes. The law of the excluded middle is complicated by supposedly vague predicates 'is bald', 'has a beard', 'is a tree/sapling', 'is a child/adult'. Author also discusses 'nothing can be both red and green all over at the same time' and indicates that this happens to be more a matter of physiology than a property of the world, as an exercise, change 'red/green' to 'yellow/green' and you can have 'yellowish-green' and 'greenish-yellow'.

Lastly, author reviews the more modern cases of Kripkean necessary identity and contingent a priori. He claims these can possibly be shown to be analytic, and he will try to do so in the next chapter.

Aune, Bruce - An Empiricist Epistemology Ch 1 "Knowledge and Analysis"

05/04/2007

Unpublished Manuscript

The author has introduced in the preface how he intends to do some work of defending the empiricist notion of the analytic (or at least Carnap's version of it) against Quine's assaults.

The first chapter is devoted to sorting out some of the different senses of knowledge, how the different senses sometimes work in everyday language, and then to give a 'rational reconstruction' of two senses of knowledge.

Author first points out the various disagreements regarding the actual method to employ when trying to answer the question 'what is knowledge?' Is it an analysis that points to necessary and sufficient conditions? Is it conceptual analysis that tries to capture all (or most of) our intuitions? Is it trying to identify a property that is true of us when we know something? This last approach seems to be taken by Chisholm's followers, which assumes that such a property exists, even before we can find one. Author reviews the rejection of 'essential properties' talk, e.g. the famous critique given by Wittgenstein regarding a 'game', and so on. Given the difficulty since the Gettier examples to show a property of knowledge, it is unlikely to be located.

Author review the Gettier cases and points out that if we have two senses of knowledge, one being an ancient traditional approach of 'rational certainty' and the other as one that is based on inconclusive evidence, the Gettier cases only refute the later cases, not the former. One reply to the Gettier cases for inconclusive knowledge is Lewis' contextualism. Contextualism is a positive account that says that a subject S knows P when S has eliminated all relevant alternatives to P that are reasonable to consider given the context that S is in. Author points out that his major problem with this theory is that it requires relevant alternatives to P to be eliminated, but sometimes there are none.

Author proposes to avoid Gettier-like counterexamples by having access to the evidence that makes the proposition true. This 'making-true' concept author wants to keep elementary enough to avoid endorsing Armstrong's elaborate notions of 'truth-makers'.

At the end of the chapter, author gives his rational reconstruction of inconclusive or imperfect knowledge: S has imperfect knowledge of P in a context C only when (i) P is true, (ii) S has the information that P, (iii) The evidence for P is high enough in C to be considered adequate, (iv) S has evidential access to a sufficient truth-maker for P.