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Added by: Jamie Collin
Summary: Argues against deflationary conceptions of truth. Deflationism provides a descriptive account of the term 'true', but these claims, argues Gupta, are both very strong and problematic.Gupta, Anil. Do the Paradoxes Pose a Special Problem for Deflationism?2006, In J. C. Beall and Bradley Armour-Garb (eds.), Deflationism and Paradox, Oxford University Press. 133-147.-
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Added by: Jamie Collin
Summary: The Liar and other semantic paradoxes pose a difficult problem for all theories of truth. Any theory that aims to improve our understanding of the concept of truth must, when fully stated, include an account of the paradoxes. Not only deflationism but also its competitors - for instance, correspondence and coherence - must ultimately address the paradoxes. The question that concerns me in this essay is whether it is especially urgent for deflationism to do so. Are the paradoxes a special threat, a special problem, for deflationism? I will argue that they are not.1 Deflationists can leave the paradoxes to the specialists to puzzle over. It is the specialists who will be well served if they keep some insights of deflationism firmly in view.Comment: This would be useful in a course on the nature of truth, or on paradoxes. This is slightly more specialised than 'A Critique of Deflationism' but still good reading material for an advanced undergraduate or graduate course. The paper is not easy, but clear and not very technical.
Gupta, Anil. Truth2001, In Lou Goble (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Philosophical Logic. Blackwell-
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Added by: Franci MangravitiAbstract:
The concept of truth serves in logic not only as an instrument but also as an object of study. Eubulides of Miletus (fl. fourth century BCE), a Megarian logician, discovered the paradox known as ‘the Liar,’ and, ever since his discovery, logicians down the ages - Aristotle and Chrysippus, John Buridan and William Heytesbury, and Alfred Tarski and Saul Kripke, to mention just a few - have tried to understand the puzzling behavior of the concept of truth.
Comment: Can be used in an advanced course on (formal approaches to) truth or the Liar paradox. Familiarity with the semantics of first-order classical logic and transfinite induction is assumed (for the latter, Ch.3 of the Blackwell Guide might be of help - using the Blackwell Guide as a blueprint may also be a way to incorporate this reading in a general advanced course on philosophical logic).
Harman, Elizabeth. Can we harm and benefit in creating?2004,-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: The non-identity problem concerns actions that affect who exists in the future. If such an action is performed, certain people will exist in the future who would not otherwise have existed: they are not identical to any of the people who would have existed if the action had not been performed. Some of these actions seem to be wrong, and they seem to be wrong in virtue of harming the very future individuals whose existence is dependent on their having been performed. The problem arises when it is argued that the actions do not harm these people - because the actions do not make them worse off than they would otherwise be.1 Consider: Radioactive Waste Policy: We are trying to decide whether to adopt a permissive radioactive waste policy. This policy would be less inconvenient to us than our existing practices. If we enact the newly-proposed policy, then we will cause there to be radioactive pollution that will cause illness and suffering. However, the policy will have such significant effects on public policy and industry functioning, that different people will exist in the future depending on whether we enact the policy. Two things should be emphasized. First, the illness and suffering caused will be very serious: deformed babies, children with burns from acid rain, and adults dying young from cancer. Second, the policy will affect who will exist in the future because our present practices invade people's everyday lives, for example by affecting recycling practices in the home; these practices will change if the policy is adopted. Furthermore, whether we adopt the policy will determine which plants are built where, what jobs are available, and what trucks are on the road. These effects will create small differences in everyone's lives which ultimately affect who meets whom and who conceives with whom, or at least when people conceive. This affects who exists in the future.Comment:
Harman, Elizabeth. The potentiality problem2003, Philosophical Studies 114 (1-2):173 - 198.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon Fokt
Abstract: Many people face a problem about potentiality: their moral beliefs appear to dictate inconsistent views about the signifcance of the potentiality to become a healthy adult. Briefy, the problem arises as follows. Consider the following two claims. First, both human babies and cats have moral status, but harms to babies matter more, morally, than similar harms to cats. Second, early human embryos lack moral status. It appears that the first claim can only be true if human babies have more moral status than cats. Among the properties that determine moral status, human babies have no properties other than their potentiality that could explain their having more moral status than cats. So human babies' potentiality to become adult persons must explain their having more moral status than cats. But then potentiality must raise moral status generally. So early human embryos must have some moral status. It appears that the view that must underlie the first claim implies that the second claim is false.Comment:
Harte, Verity. Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics of Structure2002, Oxford University Press-
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, Contributed by: Quentin PharrPublisher’s Note:
This book is an examination of Plato's treatment of the relation between a whole and its parts in a group of Plato's later works: the Theaetetus, Parmenides, Sophist, Philebus, and Timaeus. Plato's discussions of part and whole in these texts fall into two distinct groups: a problematic one in which he explores, without endorsing, a model of composition as identity; and another in which he develops an alternative to this rejected model. Each model is concerned with the nature of composition of a whole from its parts, such that a whole is an individual, rather than a mere collection or heap. According to the problematic model of composition, a whole is identical to its many parts, that is, the relation of many parts to one whole is just the relation of identity. This model is shown to have the paradoxical consequence that the same thing(s) is (or are) both one thing and many things, and for this reason, amongst others, it cannot support an adequate account of composition. According to the alternative model of composition, wholes of parts are contentful structures (or, instances of such structures), whose parts get their identity only in the context of the whole they compose. Plato presents the structure of such wholes as the proper objects of Platonic science: essentially irreducible, intelligible, and normative in character.Comment: This text is perfect for advanced students studying either mereology or ancient philosophical metaphysics. It connects ancient debates on the relations between parts and wholes to modern debates - but, it does not do so at the cost of deviating too much from Plato's texts or the ancient philosophical context. Prior readings of several of Plato's texts are advised, as well as some understanding of recent mereological debates, in order to fully engage with Harte's work.
Haslanger, Sally. Persistence Through Time2003, In Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics. Oxford University Press, 315-354.-
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Added by: Nick Novelli
Introduction: Things change: objects come into existence, last for a while, go out of existence, move through space, change their parts, change their qualities, change in their relations to things. All this would seem to be uncontroversial. But philosophical attention to any of these phenomena can generate perplexity and has resulted in a number of long-standing puzzles. One of the most famous puzzles about change threatens to demonstrate that nothing can persist through time, that all existence is momentary at best. Let's use the term 'alteration' for the sort of change that occurs when a persisting object changes its properties.Comment: A good overview of the philosophical issues involved in persistence through time. Would be a good preliminary material in a philosophy of time course. Or, since this is a fundamental philosophical problem, could be used in an introduction to philosophy course as a more clear alternative or supplement to ancient sources.
Haslanger, Sally. Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?2000, Nous 34(1): 31-55.-
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Added by: Carl Fox
Abstract: This paper proposes social constructionist accounts of gender and race. The focus of the inquiry--inquiry aiming to provide resources for feminist and antiracist projects--are the social positions of those marked for privilege or subordination by observed or imagined features assumed to be relevant to reproductive function, or geographical origins. I develop these ideas and propose that other gendered and racialized phenomena are usefully demarcated and explained by reference to these social positions. In doing so, I address the concern that attempts to define race or gender are misguided because they either assume a false commonality or marginalize some members of the group in question.Comment: Seminal reading for modules on gender or race.
Hawkins, Jennifer. The subjective intuition2010, Philosophical Studies 148 (1):61 - 68-
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Lizzy Ventham
Abstract: Theories of well-being are typically divided into subjective and objective. Subjective theories are those which make facts about a person’s welfare depend on facts about her actual or hypothetical mental states. I am interested in what motivates this approach to the theory of welfare. The contemporary view is that subjectivism is devoted to honoring the evaluative perspective of the individual, but this is both a misleading account of the motivations behind subjectivism, and a vision that dooms subjective theories to failure. I suggest that we need to revisit and reinstate certain features of traditional hedonism, in particular the idea that felt experience plays a role that no theory of welfare can afford to ignore. I then offer a sketch of a theory that is subjective in my preferred sense and avoids the worst sins of hedonism as well as the problems generated by the contemporary constraints of subjective theorists.Comment: I use this text whenever I'm teaching on well-being, including to introductory first year classes. Hawkins gives a nuanced account of what it means for theories of well-being to be objective vs subjective, and gives a range of helpful examples. She offers objections to a number of views and offers her own theory that avoids these objections.
Hawley, Katherine. How Things Persist2004, Hawley, Katherine (2001). How Things Persist. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.-
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Added by: Christopher MastermanPublisher’s Note:
How do things persist? Are material objects spread out through time just as they are spread out through space? Or is temporal persistence quite different from spatial extension? This key question lies at the heart of any metaphysical exploration of the material world, and it plays a crucial part in debates about personal identity and survival. This book explores and compares three theories of persistence — endurance, perdurance, and stage theories — investigating the ways in which they attempt to account for the world around us. Having provided valuable clarification of its two main rivals, the book concludes by advocating stage theory. Such a basic issue about the nature of the physical world naturally has close ties with other central philosophical problems. This book includes discussions of change and parthood, of how we refer to material objects at different times, of the doctrine of Humean supervenience, and of the modal features of material things. In particular, it contains new accounts of the nature of worldly vagueness, and of what binds material things together over time, distinguishing the career of a natural object from an arbitrary sequence of events. Each chapter concludes with a reflection about the impact of these metaphysical debates upon questions about our personal identity and survival.
Comment: A modern classic, perfect for any introductory class on metaphysics which covers the metaphysics of material objects, particularly the nature change, their mereology, the possibility of vague objects, and modal properties of objects.
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Gupta, Anil. A Critique of Deflationism
1993, Philosophical Topics 21: 57-81.
Comment: This would be very useful in a course on the nature of truth, or any course in which deflationary conceptions of truth are relevant. The paper is not technical and provides a good account of deflationism about truth. This would be suitable for undergraduates or graduates.