Papers by Amie L . Thomasson
Handling De Re and A Posteriori Modal Claims
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jul 23, 2020
This chapter aims to show how the modal normativist approach may accommodate the Kripkean idea th... more This chapter aims to show how the modal normativist approach may accommodate the Kripkean idea that there are certain de re necessities (apparently attributing modal properties to individuals) and necessary truths that can only be known a posteriori. It begins by arguing, contrary to Putnam and others who defend purely causal theories of reference, that we do have reason to think that names and natural kind terms are governed by certain semantic rules, even if these rules are conditionalized and revisable. It goes on to show how the rules we need to accept in any case enable us to see even de re and a posteriori necessities as object-language reflections of semantic rules and their consequences. Modal normativists can thus account for de re and a posteriori necessities as long as they allow that the semantic rules may be conditionalized, schematic, and world-deferential.
What Can Phenomenology Bring to Ontology?
Res philosophica, 2019
Norms and modality
Routledge eBooks, Dec 29, 2020
Analyticity and Conceptual Content
Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 1, 2007
This chapter defends the idea that there are analytic entailments among our sentences against two... more This chapter defends the idea that there are analytic entailments among our sentences against two sorts of prominent objections. In response to Quine's rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, it suggests that analytic interrelations may be understood as grounded in (tacit, collective) legislations of the rules of use for our terms. Against objections based on a Kripkean approach to reference, it argues that those inclined to causal theories should accept a hybrid theory of reference in order to overcome both the qua problem and the problem of singular nonexistence claims. This hybrid theory acknowledges that our general and singular nominative terms have determinate reference only to the extent that they are associated with frame-level conceptual content, in the form of application and coapplication conditions that fix the category of entity to be referred to. This minimal conceptual content can underpin the analytic entailments discussed in Chapter 1.
Parsimony and Ontological Commitment
Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 1, 2007
If we don't need ordinary objects in our causal explanations, it is often held, Occam's r... more If we don't need ordinary objects in our causal explanations, it is often held, Occam's razor enjoins us to eliminate them. This chapter examines these arguments from parsimony, suggesting first that Occam's razor does not generalize to cases in which there are analytic entailments between existence claims. Moreover, it is argued that eliminativists, such as van Inwagen and Merricks who seek to paraphrase claims, for example, about baseballs in terms of claims about atoms arranged baseballwise, don't really offer a more parsimonious theory, since their paraphrased claims may be pleonastically transformed into claims that are explicitly committed to ordinary objects. This provides the basis for an argument for the existence of ordinary objects, and against Quine's criterion of ontological commitment. In closing, this chapter considers whether this also entails commitment to extraordinary objects, and whether more severe forms of eliminativism can do better.
In The Significance of Consciousness, Charles Siewert proposes a novel understanding of conscious... more In The Significance of Consciousness, Charles Siewert proposes a novel understanding of consciousness by arguing against higher-order views of consciousness and rejecting the traditional taxonomy of the mental into qualitative and intentional aspects. I discuss two puzzles that arise from these changes: first, how to account for first-person knowledge of our conscious states while denying that these are typically accompanied by higher-order states directed towards them; second, how to understand his claim that phenomenal features are intentional features without either risking consciousness neglect or retreating to a more traditional understanding of the relation between qualitative and intentional character. Thinking of theories that defend phenomenal consciousness might bring to mind Kantian inner-awareness pictures of a mind constantly aware of its own contents, or contemporary 'qualia freaks' who would preserve consciousness by arguing for the irreducibility of sensory 'raw feels' such as that of seeing a red tomato. Thinking of theories that defend a distinctive first-person knowledge of our conscious states might call to mind Cartesian views of mental states as infallibly known by their possessors. Charles Siewert aims to change all that in The Significance of Consciousness by developing and defending a new
Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 6, 2005
Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then s... more Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.
Realism and Human Kinds
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Nov 1, 2003
It is often noted that institutional objects and artifacts depend on human beliefs and intentions... more It is often noted that institutional objects and artifacts depend on human beliefs and intentions and so fail to meet the realist paradigm of mind‐independent objects. In this paper I draw out exactly in what ways the thesis of mind‐independence fails, and show that it has some surprising consequences. For the specific forms of mind‐dependence involved entail that we have certain forms of epistemic privilege with regard to our own institutional and artifactual kinds, protecting us from certain possibilities of ignorance and error; they also demonstrate that not all cases of reference to these kinds can proceed along a purely causal model. As a result, realist views in ontology, epistemology, and semantics that were developed with natural scientific kinds in mind cannot fully apply to the kinds of the social and human sciences. In closing I consider some wider consequences of these results for social science and philosophy.
Problems of Vagueness
Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 1, 2007
Unger's sorites-style argument against ordinary objects relies on the vagueness of the associ... more Unger's sorites-style argument against ordinary objects relies on the vagueness of the associated terms. While standard solutions to the problems of vagueness are often accused of being ad hoc, this chapter argues that the above view of reference provides an understanding of the source of vagueness that suggests that supervaluational solutions and Tye's indeterminist solution are entirely suitable and not ad hoc. Others reject ordinary objects given worries that these objects would have to be vague, since ontic vagueness is often considered incoherent. This chapter also addresses Horgan's and Evans' reasons for rejecting ontic vagueness, arguing that the kind of vagueness in the world that we must posit to accept ordinary objects is a kind of anodyne vagueness that explains the vagueness in the world in terms of vagueness in our representations, but that even serious ontological vagueness does not present the difficulties it is thought to.
Problems of Rivalry with Science
Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 1, 2007
The divergence between the world descriptions provided by physical science and by common sense ha... more The divergence between the world descriptions provided by physical science and by common sense has led to some of the oldest and most persistent arguments for eliminating ordinary objects. Some (inspired by Eddington) allege that there is a conflict between common sense and physical science, while others (such as Sellars) hold that there is rivalry between the scientific and manifest images, as each purports to offer the true and complete description of the world. This chapter addresses these two claims in turn, arguing that both at bottom rely on the idea that a generic, category-neutral use of “thing” can be made sense of. If, as has been argued in previous chapters, we reject that idea, then neither claims of a conflict nor a rivalry between the two can be sustained.
Phenomenology and the Development of Analytic Philosophy
Southern Journal of Philosophy, Mar 1, 2002
... Husserl was the first modern philosopher to formulate this method of determining sameness o... more ... Husserl was the first modern philosopher to formulate this method of determining sameness of category in terms of congruous replacement, and difference in category in terms of the nonsense that results from mutual substitution (Simons 1995, 120). ...
Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 6, 2005
An account of the source of first-person knowledge is essential not just for phenomenology, but f... more An account of the source of first-person knowledge is essential not just for phenomenology, but for anyone who takes seriously the apparent evidence that we each have a distinctive access to knowing what we experience. One standard way to account for the source of first-person knowledge is by appeal to a kind of inner observation of the passing contents of one's own mind, and phenomenology is often thought to rely on introspection. I argue, however, that Husserl's method of phenomenological reduction was designed precisely to find a route to knowledge of the structures of consciousness that was independent of any appeal to observation of one's own mental states. The goals of this essay are to explicate Husserl's method of phenomenological reduction in contemporary terms that (1) show its distance from all inner-observation accounts, (2) exhibit its kinship to and historical influence on outer-observation accounts of selfknowledge popularized by Sellars, and (3) demonstrate that a contemporary 'cognitive transformation' view based on Husserl's method may provide a viable contribution to contemporary debates about the source of self-knowledge. There must be some means of first-person access to experience if phenomenology, or any study like it, is to be possible at all.¹ For phenomenology is supposed to provide the basis for a first-person study of the mind, and thus requires some first-person way of acquiring knowledge about mental state types, their contents, and so on. If there is not, then the only possible means of acquiring knowledge of the mind will involve third-person access via external behavioral or physiological studies. Anyone who thinks that phenomenological descriptions have some role to play in philosophy of mind thus owes an account of how such distinctive first-person knowledge can be acquired. But an account of the source and possibility of a kind of first-person knowledge about our own experiences is not just a theoretic need for those engaged in phenomenology or Portions of this paper draw on work in my (2003) 'Introspection and Phenomenological Method', Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2: 239-54. Thanks to Kluwer Academic Publishers for kind permission to use this material. ¹ It does not necessarily, however, require that this first-person access yield infallible beliefs about our own experience. This is a separate issue, and clearly phenomenology, like so many other studies, could provide knowledge even if it is not an infallible source of knowledge. Nor does it require that we have first-person knowledge of all of our own mental states. There may be limits to the scope of such knowledge without it failing to provide useful information in those cases in which it is present.
Real Natures and Familiar Objects
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Mar 1, 2007
Handling Existence Questions
Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 1, 2007
This chapter investigates what is involved in asking general ontological questions such as: “what... more This chapter investigates what is involved in asking general ontological questions such as: “what exists?” and “how many things are there?” It is argued that well-formed existence and counting questions are “specific” existence questions that specify a certain category or sort of entity enquired about. Purely “generic” existence and counting questions (asking about “anything whatsoever”, where “thing” is not used sortally) are ill-formed unanswerable questions. This gives us reason to think that quantificational claims likewise presuppose certain categories of entity quantified over. It also suggests that many of the questions driving ontological debates are based on pseudo-questions, and does so without subscribing to anti-realism or quantifier variance. The chapter closes by considering whether we can revive a form of universal quantification by way of a “covering” use of “thing” that generalizes over a range of category-specific terms.
Ontological Advantages
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jul 23, 2020
This chapter aims to make clear the ontological consequences of adopting a modal normativist posi... more This chapter aims to make clear the ontological consequences of adopting a modal normativist position. By combining normativism with the easy approach to ontology, we can see that modal normativism gives us a form of simple realism, according to which there are modal facts, properties, and even possible worlds, in the only sense that has sense. Such entities are not, however, “posited” as truthmakers that are supposed to “explain” what “makes our modal claims true.” But although the normativist accepts that there are modal facts and properties, the view also brings ontological advantages, avoiding ontological problems that plague traditional realist views, including placement problems and the grounding problem. The normativist view is also compared here to the forms of “classificatory conventionalism” advocated by Ross Cameron and Theodore Sider.
Do Easy Arguments Give us Problematic Ontological Commitments?
Oxford University Press eBooks, Nov 28, 2014
Truthmakers and Easy Ontology
Oxford University Press eBooks, Dec 21, 2020
Sympathy has been growing for the idea that existence questions can be answered by ‘easy’ argumen... more Sympathy has been growing for the idea that existence questions can be answered by ‘easy’ arguments. But some have suggested that an important project remains for ontology: not determining what exists, but rather what makes true those claims we accept. The question addressed here is: If we accept the easy approach to ontology, can we legitimately take on the truthmaker project? There are two versions of this project: one has the goal of giving a uniquely true statement of what the fundamental entities are, while the other takes it merely as a constraint on metaphysics to give some good account of what the truthmakers are for claims we accept. I will argue that, if we truly take on board some of the basic theses of easy ontology, we should have serious reservations about both of these projects.
Modal Knowledge and Modal Methodology
Routledge eBooks, Jan 26, 2023
Ontological Advantages
Norms and Necessity
This chapter aims to make clear the ontological consequences of adopting a modal normativist posi... more This chapter aims to make clear the ontological consequences of adopting a modal normativist position. By combining normativism with the easy approach to ontology, we can see that modal normativism gives us a form of simple realism, according to which there are modal facts, properties, and even possible worlds, in the only sense that has sense. Such entities are not, however, “posited” as truthmakers that are supposed to “explain” what “makes our modal claims true.” But although the normativist accepts that there are modal facts and properties, the view also brings ontological advantages, avoiding ontological problems that plague traditional realist views, including placement problems and the grounding problem. The normativist view is also compared here to the forms of “classificatory conventionalism” advocated by Ross Cameron and Theodore Sider.
The Meaning of Modal Discourse
Norms and Necessity
The goal of this chapter is to make it clear how the modal normativist account can avoid the noto... more The goal of this chapter is to make it clear how the modal normativist account can avoid the notorious “Frege-Geach” or “embedding” problem that has long threatened non-descriptive views of all kinds. While Chapter 2 identifies an alternative function for modal discourse, we cannot take this to be a matter of identifying the meaning of modal terms. For modal claims may be embedded in conditionals, negations, etc., in which case they are not serving their characteristic function, and yet must be thought to have the same meaning. To meet this problem, this chapter gives the meaning of modal terms in terms of their inferential role—which is constant even in embedded contexts—and shows how this meaning is related to the function of modal terms. The chapter also aims to show how the modal normativist account can avoid the classic objections to modal conventionalism.
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Papers by Amie L . Thomasson