Tsung-Hsing HO ABSTRACT: A popular evidentialist argument against pragmatism is based on reason internalism: the view that a normative reason for one to φ must be able to guide one in normative deliberation whether to φ. In the case of belief, this argument maintains that, when deliberating whether to believe p, one must deliberate whether p is true. Since pragmatic …
Read More »ON CONTEXTS, HINGES, AND IMPOSSIBLE MISTAKES (pages 507-516)
Anna BONCOMPAGNI ABSTRACT: In this commentary on Nuno Venturinha’s Description of Situations, after highlighting what in my view are the most significant and innovative features of his work, I focus on Venturinha’s infallibilist approach to knowledge. This topic allows for a wider discussion concerning the pragmatist aspects of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy. I discuss this in three steps: first, by …
Read More »REPLIES TO CRITICS (pages 527-542)
Nuno VENTURINHA ABSTRACT: This text brings together replies to three commentaries on my Description of Situations: An Essay in Contextualist Epistemology (Springer, 2018) written by Modesto Gómez-Alonso, Anna Boncompagni and Marcin Lewiński. Download PDF
Read More »DOES METAPHILOSOPHICALLY PRAGMATIST ANTI-SKEPTICISM WORK? (pages 391-398)
Scott AIKIN ABSTRACT: Michael Hannon has recently given “a new apraxia” argument against skepticism. Hannon’s case is that skepticism depends on a theory of knowledge that makes the concept “useless and uninteresting.” Three arguments rebutting Hannon’s metaphilosophical pragmatism are given that show that the concept of knowledge that makes skepticism plausible is both interesting and useful. Download PDF
Read More »BELIEVING AND ACTING: VOLUNTARY CONTROL AND THE PRAGMATIC THEORY OF BELIEF (pages 495-513)
Brian HEDDEN ABSTRACT: I argue that an attractive theory about the metaphysics of belief – the pragmatic, interpretationist theory endorsed by Stalnaker, Lewis, and Dennett, among others – implies that agents have a novel form of voluntary control over their beliefs. According to the pragmatic picture, what it is to have a given belief is in part for that belief to …
Read More »