Midterm paper

Due at the end of the day on Wednesday 21 December, via email. (If you’d like more time than this, get in touch with me and we’ll make arrangements.)

The assignment

Below you’ll find a selection of passages from some of the papers we’ve read. Choose one of these passages and explain as best you can, in a paper of 1000–1500 words, what’s going on in it.

  • You should explain just what the author is saying in the quoted passage (taking care to explain any unfamiliar or technical terminology) and why they say it, including what role the passage is playing in the author’s larger argument.
  • If, in order to make sense of a passage, you need to introduce or refer to other aspects of the author’s position, or to some aspect of the position the author is criticizing, then you should do so. You should also raise critical questions about the author’s position, insofar as you need to do so to defend or motivate aspects of your interpretation. But you should not attempt to introduce or explain aspects of the author’s position that don’t bear upon the interpretation of the passage – all such discussion is irrelevant to the task you’re being asked to carry out.
    • To emphasize: this paper is an exercise in critical exposition – the goal is to demonstrate an understanding of the structure of a particular philosophical argument and an ability to make the relevant ideas clear in your own writing. Do not simply summarize the paper your chosen passage is from. Everything you say should bear directly on the interpretation of the passage itself. Each of the passages below is rich enough that one can easily spend several pages explaining its significance, and that’s what I’d like you to do.

Feel free to make use of the course notes, etc., to help you make sense of the material you’re discussing.

The passages

  • The connection between the obtaining of the causal-historical relation and the content that allegedly results is not supposed to itself be a causal connection: the view is not that the obtaining of such a relation somehow infuses the symbol with content that is realized or embodied in some form other than the bare symbol itself, and which might then be accessible to the believer. … Rather the claim is and must be that the existence of the appropriate causal-historical relation constitutes the symbol’s having a certain content, so that the content is realized only in the entire complex situation that includes the obtaining of the relation, but not in any of its components by themselves – and in particular not in the symbol alone. (BonJour, In Defense of Pure Reason, p. 168)
  • If what appears to be a Euclidean triangle is found by measurement not to have angles totalling 180 degrees, we do not say that we have met with an instance which invalidates the mathematical proposition that the sum of the three angles of a Euclidean triangle is 180 degrees. We say that we have measured wrongly, or, more probably, that the triangle we have been measuring is not Euclidean. And this is our procedure in every case in which a mathematical truth might appear to be confuted. We always preserve its validity by adopting some other explanation of the occurrence. (Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, p. 76)
  • It is one thing to define ‘contonktion-forming sign’ and quite another to define ‘tonk’. We may say, for instance, that a contonktion-forming sign is one which, when placed between any two sentences P and Q, forms a sentence which may be inferred from P and from which Q may be inferred; or we may define it as one which, when placed between any two sentences P and Q, forms a sentence which is true if P is true and false if Q is false (and therefore, of course, both true and false if P is true and Q false). Each of these tells us something that could be meant by saying that ‘tonk’ is a contonktion-forming sign; neither of them tells us what ‘tonk’ means; and both imply that a sentence formed by placing a contonktion-forming sign between two other sentences already has a meaning. (Prior, “Conjunction and Contonktion Revisited”, pp. 191–2)
  • In the adoption of the very conventions (I)–(III) etc. whereby logic itself is set up, however, a difficulty remains to be faced. Each of these conventions is general, announcing the truth of every one of an infinity of statements conforming to a certain description; derivation of the truth of any specific statement from the general convention thus requires a logical inference, and this involves us in an infinite regress. E.g., in deriving (6) from (3) and (5) on the authority of (II) we infer, from the general announcement (II) and the specific premiss that (3) and (5) are true statements, the conclusion that … (6) is to be true. (Quine, “Truth by Convention”, p. 120)
  • The process of assigning [this sentence] the value True is simply part of what fixes its meaning. Had I assigned it the value False, the sentence would then have had a different meaning. … In this sense, then, the sentence’s truth value is arbitrary and conventional. Doesn’t it follow, then, that Implicit Definition entails Conventionalism? … Not at all. All that is involved in the thesis of Implicit Definition is the claim that the conventional assignment of truth to a sentence determines what claim that sentence expresses (if any); such a view is entirely silent about what (if anything) determines the truth of the claim that is thereby expressed – a fortiori, it is silent about whether our conventions determine it. (Boghossian, “Analyticity Reconsidered”, pp. 379–80)

Final paper

Due at the end of the day on Tuesday 28 February, via email. (If you’d like more time than this, get in touch with me and we’ll make arrangements.)

The assignment

You have two options:

  1. Below you’ll find a selection of passages from some of the papers we’ve read. Choose one of these passages and explain as best you can, in a paper of 1500–2000 words, what’s going on in it.
    • You should explain just what the author is saying in the quoted passage (taking care to explain any unfamiliar or technical terminology) and why they say it, including what role the passage is playing in the author’s larger argument. You should also spend at least some time evaluating the author’s argument as you’ve laid it out. (Note: you were not asked to do this in the midterm paper; this is a new requirement.)
    • If, in order to make sense of a passage, you need to introduce or refer to other aspects of the author’s position, or to some aspect of the position the author is criticizing, then you should do so. You should also raise critical questions about the author’s position, insofar as you need to do so to defend or motivate aspects of your interpretation. But you should not attempt to introduce or explain aspects of the author’s position that don’t bear upon the interpretation of the passage – all such discussion is irrelevant to the task you’re being asked to carry out.
      • To emphasize: this paper is an exercise in critical exposition – the goal is to demonstrate an understanding of the structure of a particular philosophical argument and an ability to make the relevant ideas clear in your own writing. Do not simply summarize the paper your chosen passage is from.
  2. Develop an argument on a topic of your own choosing (though see the below caveats), and present that argument in a paper of 1500–2000 words.
    • Caveat 1: Your argument must be responsive to at least one of the readings from the course, and you must, in the course of your argument, demonstrate your understanding of some argument from that reading. (You might, for instance, give your own argument against a thesis that’s relied on by some author, but if you do so, you must also explain what role, exactly, that thesis plays in the theorist’s own argument.)
    • Caveat 2: If you’d like to work on a topic of your own choosing, I must approve the topic. You can send an email explaining what you’d like to write about, or we can set up a short meeting.

If you choose the first of these options, you may (but are not required to) complete the assignment by revising and expanding your midterm paper, taking into account my feedback.

Regardless of which option you choose, you should feel free to make use of the course notes, etc., to help you make sense of the material you’re discussing.

The passages

  • The connection between the obtaining of the causal-historical relation and the content that allegedly results is not supposed to itself be a causal connection: the view is not that the obtaining of such a relation somehow infuses the symbol with content that is realized or embodied in some form other than the bare symbol itself, and which might then be accessible to the believer. … Rather the claim is and must be that the existence of the appropriate causal-historical relation constitutes the symbol’s having a certain content, so that the content is realized only in the entire complex situation that includes the obtaining of the relation, but not in any of its components by themselves – and in particular not in the symbol alone. (BonJour, In Defense of Pure Reason, p. 168)
  • If what appears to be a Euclidean triangle is found by measurement not to have angles totalling 180 degrees, we do not say that we have met with an instance which invalidates the mathematical proposition that the sum of the three angles of a Euclidean triangle is 180 degrees. We say that we have measured wrongly, or, more probably, that the triangle we have been measuring is not Euclidean. And this is our procedure in every case in which a mathematical truth might appear to be confuted. We always preserve its validity by adopting some other explanation of the occurrence. (Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, p. 76)
  • It is one thing to define ‘contonktion-forming sign’ and quite another to define ‘tonk’. We may say, for instance, that a contonktion-forming sign is one which, when placed between any two sentences P and Q, forms a sentence which may be inferred from P and from which Q may be inferred; or we may define it as one which, when placed between any two sentences P and Q, forms a sentence which is true if P is true and false if Q is false (and therefore, of course, both true and false if P is true and Q false). Each of these tells us something that could be meant by saying that ‘tonk’ is a contonktion-forming sign; neither of them tells us what ‘tonk’ means; and both imply that a sentence formed by placing a contonktion-forming sign between two other sentences already has a meaning. (Prior, “Conjunction and Contonktion Revisited”, pp. 191–2)
  • In the adoption of the very conventions (I)–(III) etc. whereby logic itself is set up, however, a difficulty remains to be faced. Each of these conventions is general, announcing the truth of every one of an infinity of statements conforming to a certain description; derivation of the truth of any specific statement from the general convention thus requires a logical inference, and this involves us in an infinite regress. E.g., in deriving (6) from (3) and (5) on the authority of (II) we infer, from the general announcement (II) and the specific premiss that (3) and (5) are true statements, the conclusion that … (6) is to be true. (Quine, “Truth by Convention”, p. 120)
  • The process of assigning [this sentence] the value True is simply part of what fixes its meaning. Had I assigned it the value False, the sentence would then have had a different meaning. … In this sense, then, the sentence’s truth value is arbitrary and conventional. Doesn’t it follow, then, that Implicit Definition entails Conventionalism? … Not at all. All that is involved in the thesis of Implicit Definition is the claim that the conventional assignment of truth to a sentence determines what claim that sentence expresses (if any); such a view is entirely silent about what (if anything) determines the truth of the claim that is thereby expressed – a fortiori, it is silent about whether our conventions determine it. (Boghossian, “Analyticity Reconsidered”, pp. 379–80)
  • You don’t ever want the possession conditions for a concept to foreclose on the possible falsity of some particular set of claims about the world, if you can possibly avoid it. You want the possessor of the concept to be able coherently to ask whether there is anything that falls under it, and you want people to be able to disagree about whether there is. If in a certain range of cases, however, it is logically impossible to hold the governing theory at arm’s length then, in those cases, obviously, it can hardly be a requirement that one do so. But in all those cases where it is possible, it ought to be done. (Boghossian, “Epistemic Analyticity: A Defense”, pp. 31–2)
  • One could just stipulate that the term ‘absolute necessity’ is to cover mathematical necessity but not physical necessity. But then the question of the previous paragraph becomes: what are the grounds for thinking that it is absolute necessity so defined rather than, say logical necessity or physical necessity, that is epistemologically relevant? Alternatively, one could try to somehow build it into the definition of ‘absolute necessity’ that the epistemological problem can’t arise for absolutely necessary truths; but then the question is, why suppose that mathematical claims unlike claims of basic physics are ‘absolutely necessary’ in this sense. (Field, Realism, Mathematics and Modality, p. 236)