Philosophy

Our ordinary concepts of meaning and content are notoriously undefined and vague. A philosophical examination of these notions should, therefore, not be expected to capture all the aspects we usually associate with them. Meaning should be rather understood as a theoretical notion whose merit depends on the explanatory value of a specific theory. This of course should not be taken to imply that there are no general criteria to judge the success of a particular theory of meaning.

In this paper, I will discuss Searle's main argument for the first person perspective in regard to meaning and intentionality. He claims that Quine's and Davidson's arguments for the indeterminacy of meaning and inscrutability of reference should be understood as a reductio ad absurdum of the third person methodology. I will defend the third person perspective by reevaluating the claims for the inscrutability thesis.

ABSTRACT In this article I will challenge a received orthodoxy in the philosophy of social science by showing that Collingwood was right in insisting that reenactment is epistemically central for historical explanations of individual agency.

2. Abstract It has become something of a consensus among philosophers of history that historians, in contrast to natural scientists, explain in a narrative fashion. Unfortunately, philosophers of history have not said much about how it is that narratives have explanatory power. They do, however, maintain that a narrative's explanatory power is sui generis and independent of our empathetic or reenactive capacities and of our knowledge of law-like generalizations.

This article develops a constitutive account of self-knowledgethat is able to avoid certain shortcomings of the standard response to the perceived prima facieincompatibility between privileged self-knowledge and externalism. It argues that ifone conceives of linguistic action as voluntary behavior in a minimal sense, one cannot conceive ofbelief content to be externalistically constituted without simultaneously assuming that the agent hasknowledge of his beliefs.

Judging from the contemporary debate in the philosophy of history, philosophers seem to think of history as an important but also as a very peculiar discipline. They cannot make up their minds on how exactly to describe the epistemic status of historical knowledge or how exactly to situate history among human activities ranging from the arts to the natural sciences.

Abstract This article will discuss the difficulties of providing a plausible account of rule following in the social realm. It will show that the cognitive model of rule following is not suited for this task. Nevertheless, revealing the inadequacy of the cognitive model does not justify the wholesale dismissal of understanding human practices as rule-following practices, as social theorists like Bourdieu or Dreyfus have argued. Instead it will be shown that rule-following behavior is best understood as being based on a set of complex dispositions.

Abstract This essay will argue systematically and from a historical perspective that there is something to be said for the traditional claim that the human and natural sciences are distinct epistemic practices. Yet, in light of recent developments in contemporary philosophy of science, one has to be rather careful in utilizing the distinction between understanding and explanation for this purpose. One can only recognize the epistemic distinctiveness of the human sciences by recognizing the epistemic centrality of reenactive empathy for our ...

Résumé/Abstract Soulevant le problème de l'anomalie du mental, le problème de l'externalisme sémantique, et le problème de l'incompatibilité des explications causales et du principe de l'harmonie des objets physiques, l'A. présente les ouvrages de D. Davidson et W. Child (1), de F. Dretske et RG Millikan (2), de LR Baker et T. Burge (3), consacrés: 1) à la survenance et à la pertinence causale des qualités mentales, 2) à l'intentionnalité et à la téléofonctionnalité, 3) au physicalisme et à l'autonomie des explications psychologiques

In the last twenty-five years, researchers have started to recognize infants' capacity for joint attention as an important milestone not only for the acquisition of linguistic competence but also for the general ability to relate to each other as minded creatures and as a central step in the development of our capacity for social cognition (Moore & Dunham, 1995; Eilan et al., 2005). Interestingly, in focusing on the phenomenon of joint attention, various authors have started to challenge the basic presuppositions of the so-called theory of mind debate ...

Ordinary language and scientific discourse are filled with linguistic expressions for dispositional properties such as soluble, elastic, reliable, and humorous. We characterize objects in all domains physical objects as well as human persons with the help of dispositional expressions. Hence, the concept of a disposition has historically and systematically played a central role in different areas of philosophy ranging from metaphysics to ethics. The contributions of this volume analyze the ancient foundations of ...

Abstract This essay challenges King's argument for the claim that social relations have to be conceived of as primary and main ontological category for an adequate analysis of the social realm. The author shows that King's arguments do not succeed in fully replacing the categories of agency and structure that are pervasive in contemporary social theory. At most, King succeeds in delineating a neglected area of social theory, something that should be taken into account in addition to structure and agency.

Abstract This essay will defend a causal conception of action explanations in terms of an agent's reasons by delineating a metaphysical and epistemic framework that allows us to view folk psychology as providing us with causal and autonomous explanatory strategies of accounting for individual agency. At the same time, I will calm philosophical concerns about the issue of causal deviance that have been at the center of the recent debates between causalist and noncausalist interpretations of action explanations. For that purpose, it is ...

abstract This essay develops a new account of the phenomenon of imaginative resistance. Imaginative resistance is best conceived of as a limited phenomenon. It occurs when we try to engage imaginatively with different moral worlds that are insufficiently articulated so that they do not allow us either to quarantine our imaginative engagement from our normal moral attitudes or to agree with the expressed moral judgment from the perspective of moral deliberation. Imaginative resistance thus reveals the central epistemic importance that ...

Abstract: Contemporary philosophers of history and interpretation theorists very often deny the thesis of intentional realism, because they reject intentionalism or the thesis that an agent's or author's intentions are relevant for the interpretive practice of the human sciences. I will defend intentional realism by showing why it is wrong to whole-heartedly reject intentionalism and by clarifying the logical relation between intentionalism and intentional realism. I will do so by discussing the two central arguments against intentionalism; the ...

Abstract This article will defend the centrality of empathy and simulation for our understanding of individual agency within the conceptual framework of folk psychology. It will situate this defense in the context of recent developments in the theory of mind debate. Moreover, the article will critically discuss narrativist conceptions of social cognition that conceive of themselves as alternatives to both simulation and theory theory.

Michael Slote's book Moral Sentimentalism constitutes a powerful, thoughtful, and thought-provoking defense of a sentimentalist position in normative ethics and in metaethics. While Slote is inspired by Hume, in developing his position, he takes his cues from contemporary research in developmental and social psychology, which emphasizes a close relation between our empathic capacities and our prosocial and altruistic motivation. In discussing Slote's book, I will therefore pay particular attention to exploring the various aspects of ...