John Doris and Jesse Prinz have a nice review of Anthony Appiah's book Experiments in Ethics over at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
The review focuses on Appiah's discussion of character and of ethical intuitions and then concludes with a suggestion that 'empirical work demands a reconstruction of morality.'
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L. B. Puntel is known for his magnum opus 'structure and being' (2006). Here are some papers in English and German that can be regarded as preliminary research for 'structure and being'.
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Soames sketches a `least common denominator' view of meaning, on which what is we literally assert can vary pretty widely from what our words literally mean. Good paper.
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Any scientifically-minded Phil. of Language might want to take a look at this. Daniel Everett, a field linguist, argues that at least one natural language lacks recursion (among many other things), thus undermining Chomsky's Universal Grammar.
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John Turri's new paper, forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Turri argues for the existence of a priori knowledge of propositions which neither are nor appear to be necessarily true.
Read more »And you thought substance dualism was buried decades ago. Lycan, renowned physicalist, is here to say that no convincing argument against substance dualism has ever been made. Forthcoming in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Get it while its hot.
Read more »Sider has a draft of his logic book up on his website (all 367 pages).
Read more »Ross discusses, and rejects, views which attempt to undermine the importance of ethical questions. Interestingly, Ross argues that, even if we have no reason to disbelieve these views, we still have reason to reject them.
Read more »Schroeder discusses a problem with the fact that ethical theories apparently tell us, not only what we ought to do, but why we ought to do it.
Read more »Very nice, short bio of Roderick Chisholm. Makes me even more sad that I never had a chance to meet him.
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A fun paper by Ted Sider arguing, from vagueness, that a certain conception of Hell is inconsistent with attributes that God is traditionally thought to have.
Read more »George Mavrodes gives an interesting review of a book of atheist testimonies, including an unfinished essay by the late David Lewis on Hell. Also discusses the Abraham-(not)-sacrificing-Isaac story, and Feldman's piece on religious disagreements.
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Scott Soames discusses Frege's and Russell's (confused) attempts to solve the problem he calls "the unity of the proposition". He then attempts to get at the heart of the problem, and sketch a solution. This paper was especially interesting for me because (i) I had to read it for class, and (ii) Soames's solution is very similar to a solution I developed in response to a problem for platonism in the philosophy of mathematics.
Read more »From Certain Doubts; here is the abstract:
"Infinitists argue that their view outshines foundationalism because infinitism can, whereas foundationalism cannot, explain two of epistemic justification’s crucial features: it comes in degrees and it can be complete. I present four different ways that foundationalists could make sense of those two features of justification, thereby undermining the case for infinitism."
This paper expands upon the discussion of the paradox of hallucination in 'Factive phenomenal characters. I explore similarities and differences between hallucination, inversion, and singularity. The central point is to build a theory of phenomenal concepts congenial to "broad" phenomenality, modifying Chalmers's approach in 'The content and epistemology of phenomenal belief' by incorporating two sorts of cognitive imperfection: imprecision, and error.
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New paper by Mark Schroeder expanding on chapter seven of Slaves of the Passions. To be presented at the Madison Metaethics workshop in 3 weeks.
Read more »I address an intuition commonly endorsed by metaphysicians, that there must be a fundamental layer
of reality, i.e., that chains of ontological dependence must terminate: there cannot be turtles all the
way down. I discuss applications of this intuition with reference to Bradley’s regress, composition,
realism about the mental and the cosmological argument. I discuss some arguments for the intui-
tion, but argue that they are unconvincing.
