"Understanding Madness?" Ratio 2 (1989): 1-19

The foreword to my book Donald Davidson, written especially for the Japanese (1996) translation. In it, I deal with Davidson's triangulation argument about the objectivity of content, and also with the debate over the alleged epiphenomenalism of the mental in Davidson's philosophy of mind.

I argue for the thesis (UL) that there are certain logical abilities that any rational creature must have. Opposition to UL comes from naturalized epistemologists who hold that it is a purely empirical question which logical abilities a rational creature has. I provide arguments that any creatures meeting certain conditions - plausible necessary conditions on rationality - must have certain specific logical concepts and be able to use them in certain specific ways. For example, I argue that any creature able to grasp theories must have a concept of conjunction subject to the usual introduction and elimination rules. I also deal with disjunction, conditionality and negation. These cases are not intended to be exhaustive of universal logical abilities. Finally, I put UL to work in showing how it could be used to define a notion of logical obviousness that would be well suited to certain contexts - e.g. radical translation and epistemic logic - in which a concept of obviousness is often invoked.

I argue that it is not ideally rational to believe that some of one’s current beliefs are false, despite the impressive inductive evidence concerning others and our former selves. One’s own current beliefs represent a commitment which would be undermined by taking some of them to be false. The nature of this commitment is examined in the light of Nagel’s distinction between subjective and objective points of view. Finally, I suggest how we might acknowledge our fallibility consistently with this special attitude to our own beliefs.

I bring together social ontology and social epistemology by considering social entities ("epistemic unities") that are constituted by the holding of epistemic relations between their members. In particular, I focus on the relation of taking someone as an expert. Among the types of structures examined are ones with a single expert and one or more nonexperts who may or may not know of each other's situation; and ones with more than one expert, including cases in which the relation between the experts is hierarchical and cases in which it is symmetrical. These structures model a variety of social situations which can thus be given a unified treatment. Among the cases I discuss are persons, which I argue are multiple-expert unities of persons at times. Taking a person as a social unity like this offers a clear sense in which some groups can also be person-like.

The paper attempts to shed light on Frege's views on the relation of logic to truth by looking at several passages in which he compares it to the relation of ethics to the good and aesthetics to the beautiful. It turns out that Frege makes four distinct points by means of these comparisons only one of which both concerns truth and makes use of distinctive features of ethics and aesthetics. This point is that logic is about reaching truth in the way that ethics is about reaching the good and aesthetics the beautiful. I then sketch how Frege can plausibly maintain this view about logic. (A more detailed version of Frege's positive view is given in my unpublished "Frege on the Relations Between Logic and Thought.")

The thesis of the paper is that persons are similar to a kind of group: multiple-expert epistemic unities (MEUs). MEUs are groups in which there are multiple experts on whom other members of the group model their opinion. An example would be a group of children playing Telephone. Any child nearer the source is an ‘expert’ for any child further away. I argue that, with certain important qualifications, it is both rational and necessary for persons to treat their future selves as experts (i.e. to satisfy Bas Van Fraassen’s Principle of Reflection). This makes a person a kind of MEU.

" Is There Anything It is Like to Be Something?" Metaphilosophy 39 (2008) (forthcoming)

In this paper, I examine the notion of what it is like to be a certain kind of creature, a common trope of contemporary philosophy. This notion is to be distinguished from the idea of what it is like to have some kind of experience. I propose four ways of understanding what it is like to be something. 1) Minimally. “There is something it is like to be an F” is just a pleonastic transformation of “F’s have conscious experience.” This proposal is inadequate to allow the notion of what it is like to be an F to play any significant philosophical role. 2) Primitively. What it is like to be an F is just a kind of ontological hum that accompanies existence as an F. On this view, it is false that there is anything it is like to be an F. 3) Extrapolatively. What it is like to be an F is somehow extrapolated from the “what it is like”s of the kinds of experience of an F. 4) Aggregatively. What it is like to be an F is simply the aggregate of the “what it is like”s of the kinds of experience of an F. These last two approaches are the most promising but run into various epistemological and ontological problems. I conclude that there is no analysis of what it is like to be an F that is at once clear and such that, on that analysis, there is indeed something it is like to be a certain kind of creature.

Reflection tells us to treat our future selves as experts: other things being equal, if we learnt what their beliefs were, we should adopt them now. It has typically been defended by arguments that rely on considerations of diachronic coherence. I offer two different arguments for Reflection. 1) In general, our beliefs get better over time and it is essential to being a person that we believe this. 2) Satisfying Reflection is a necessary condition of engaging in temporally-structured goal-directed behavior. 1) shows Reflection to be rational, 2) shows it to be necessary. The relations between these arguments is further explored.

"Frege on the Relations Between Logic and Thought"

"'Every Proposition Asserts Itself to be True': A Buridanian Solution to the Liar Paradox?"

In this paper, I try to understand what Buridan means when he suggests that “every proposition, by its very form, signifies or asserts itself to be true.” I show how one way of construing this claim - that every proposition is in fact a conjunction one conjunct of which asserts the truth of the whole conjunction - does lead to a resolution of the Liar paradox, as Buridan says, and moreover is not vulnerable to the criticism on the basis of which Buridan came to reject this view. However, I go on to argue that the view causes Truth-Teller worries when applied to non-Liar propositions. In effect, the Liar and the Truth-Teller are non-paradoxical when conjoined to each other, but not when left alone or conjoined to non-paradoxical propositions.

"Old Evidence Again"

"The Philosophical Basis of Midrashic Interpretation"

A reading of Martial 7.35

"How is UM Implicated in the Janitors' Strike?"

Concerns the recent (Feb-May '06) strike by custodial workers at UM. Argues that although these workers were employed by a sub-contractor of the university, UNICCO, the university was nonetheless morally implicated in the strike.

"The Striking Janitors and the Free Market"

Argues that the market does not have to be the determining factor in setting people's wages.

"Not 'Let 'em vote' but 'Let 'em Choose'"

One of the main points of contention during the strike was the workers' demand to be allowed to unionize via a majority card check recognition process, rather than an NLRB-run election. UNICCO, their employer, and the university were insisting on an election, demonizing the workers' (and union's) insistence on card check as anti-democratic. I explain the short-comings of NLRB elections and why they do not promote genuine choice on the part of the workers.