Collected Abstracts of papers published in SORITES

Is there vagueness in the world? This is the central question that we are concerned with. Focusing on identity statements around which much of the recent debate has centred, we argue that `vague identity' arises in quantum mechanics in one of two ways. First, quantum particles may be described as individuals, with `entangled' states understood in terms of non-supervenient relations. In this case, the vagueness is ontic but exists at the level of these relations which act as a kind of `veil'. Secondly, the particles can be regarded as non-individuals, where this is understood as a lack of self-identity and given formal expression in terms of quasi-set theory. Here we have ontic vagueness at perhaps the most basic metaphysical level. Our conclusion is that there is genuine vagueness `in the world' but how it is understood depends on the metaphysical package adopted.

The paper is concerned with the validity of the first version of indexical arguments as put forth in «`He': A Study in the Logic of Self-Consciousness» in 1966 and is in defence of the view that logical structure of statements containing personal pronouns alone does not account for personal identity. Castañeda's 1966 analysis does not establish that the S-use characterises some usages of the personal pronoun better than the F-use or the E-use. While the major problem with F-use, which involves de re belief, is its conflict with the doctrine of propositions as transmitted from Frege, Castañeda's rejection of body or E-use is based on common sense. But, the argument against E-use has no persuasive force against physicalism. It is, also, absurd to maintain that persons could speak an actual language or produce actual sentences the logic of which Castañeda claims to study objectively without bodies.

In a recent article, Theodore Sider raises an interesting objection to some of the ontological views of Peter van Inwagen. In van Inwagen's view, all material things are either mereological atoms or living things composed of such mereological atoms. Sider claims that it is possible for there to be worlds at which matter consists of atomless gunk. He argues that the possible existence of atomless gunk undermines van Inwagen's claims (along with any sort of atomism). I argue that the possible existence of atomless gunk does not undermine van Inwagen's position, and that Sider's claims concerning gunk are unwarranted.

Graham Priest's book In Contradiction is a bold defense of the existence of true contradictions. Although Priest's case is impressive, and many of his arguments are correct, his approach is not the only one allowing for true contradictions. As against Priest's, there is at least one contradictorialist approach which establishes a link between true contradictions and degrees of truth. All in all, such an alternative is more conservative, closer to mainstream analytical philosophy. The two approaches differ as regards the floodgate problem. Priest espouses a confinement policy banning contradictions except in a few special domains, particularly those of pure semantics and set-theory (and perhaps arithmetics), whereas the alternative approach admits two negations -- natural or weak negation and strong negation, the latter being classical; accordingly, the alternative approach prohibits any contradiction involving strong negation, thus providing a syntactic test of what contradictions have to be rejected.

The question discussed is whether Quine abolishes the analytic synthetic distinction or changes its nature. It is argued that either the point is trivial and the former is not established or the latter holds: Quine challenges the teaching that analytical statements are exchanged intersubjectively whereas some synthetic statements are private.

In his book Representation and Reality Hilary Putnam raises a number of objections against the semantical conception of truth. According to Putnam two particularly undesirable consequences of the semantical conception of truth are that the equivalences of the form (T) are logically necessary and that the truth of a sentence does not depend on its meaning. In this paper I examine these two objections of Putnam with respect to Carnap's formulation of the semantical conception of truth.

Intention and Foresight in the British Law of Murder

William Irwin

Establishing the mens rea for murder is often a difficult task, which has been made more difficult in British Law by confusions regarding the nature of intention and foresight. While is is correct to claim that foresight is not the same as intention, it is incorrect to maintain that intention is a necessary constituent of the mental element in murder. In response to these confusions, the paper argues for the reinstatement of felony murder or, in lieu of this, for the adoption of ordinary language in the law of murder.

Factual Phenomenalism: A Supervenience Theory

John Bolender

Broadly speaking, phenomenalism is the position that physical facts depend upon sensory facts. Many have thought it to imply that physical statements are translatable into sensory statements. Not surprisingly, the impossibility of such translations led many to abandon phenomenalism in favor of materialism. But this was rash, for if phenomenalism is reformulated as the claim that physical facts supervene upon sensory facts, then translatability is no longer required. Given materialism's failure to account for subjective experience, there has been a revival of property dualism. But property dualism implies indirect realism with its threat of scepticism. Given difficulties with materialism and dualism, philosophers should reconsider phenomenalism.

Seeing Aspects, Seeing Value

Joe Fearn

This paper is a defense of moral realism. It claims that Hume's projectivism and abuse of resultance has led us to gross distortions of non-cognitivist ethics. The analogy of moral properties with secondary properties is noted, before offering a stronger theory of moral realism. This theory recognises moral properties as constituting part of the manifest image, in a way that is satisfactory both ontologically (about what kind of entities moral properties are) and epistemologically (about the grounds to prove their presence.) This involves a rejection of austere, scientific reductionism. This model of moral realism relies on an analogy of moral properties as aspects. Aspect-seeing and moral value perception are argued to be linked, in a discussion of Wittgenstein's account of noticing aspects. Aspect blindness can best explain moral blindness, and bring out the connection with human possession and use of concepts. Moral value perception is a case of coming to see things in a certain light; as seeing human behaviour as HUMAN behaviour. Finally, I go on to argue that seeing is not just a matter of light waves of a certain frequency hitting our retina from an object that we passively see, but is a complex phenomena that can accommodate moral vision.

Frankfurt, Failure, and Finding Fault

V. Alan White

Harry Frankfurt's famous examples of overdetermined moral agents who are nevertheless responsible for their actions and omissions have long been hailed as proofs that the ability and/or opportunity to do otherwise (Principle of Alternative Possibilities -- PAP) is not a necessary condition for moral responsibility. In this paper I use recent clarifications of some of these examples by Frankfurt himself to show that their force relies in part on tacit ceteris paribus assumptions concealing a reliance on PAP that concerns matters of fairness in assessing moral responsibility.

Partially Resolving the Tension between Omniscience and Free Will: A Mathematical Argument

Joseph S. Fulda

Moral theology is given force by punishment and reward, which is, in turn, comprehensible only in the presence of free will. Yet free will has been bedevilled with philosophical difficulties, not least among them the tension between omniscience and autonomy. The paper, building on a theory of temptation and sin published in Mind, gives a partial resolution to that tension using a mathematical argument.

John C. Eccles, How the Self Controls Its Brain. Berlin/New York: Springer, 1994.

In his latest book Eccles claims that his dualism is an empirical theory of the mind, and that he has confirmed it. So this book is an inexorable challenge that materialist have to answer. (p. X) In commenting on this challenge I will not dispute any of Eccles's neurophysiological descriptions of the brain, which make up the larger part of the book, nor will I contest the thesis that the brain at its micro level works quantum mechanically. I will argue that even if all this is true, a non-dualistic interpretation of the facts rests on the better arguments.

After stating various possible interpretations of Frege's principle of substitution, we show that there is no coherent interpretation under which Sengupta's argumentation is valid.

Finally we try to show how Frege's distinction can work in the context of modern mathematics and how modern logic grasps it.