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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist, Contributed by: Will Hornett
Abstract: The paper offers the outlines of a response to the often-made suggestion that it is impossible to see how indeterminism could possibly provide us with anything that we might want in the way of freedom, anything that could really amount to control, as opposed merely to an openness in the flow of reality that would constitute the injection of chance, or randomness, into the unfolding of the processes which underlie our activity. It is suggested that the best first move for the libertarian is to make a number of important concessions to the compatibilist. It should be conceded, in particular, that certain sorts of alternative possibilities are neither truly available to real, worldly agents nor required in order that those agents act freely; and it should be admitted also that it is the compatibilist who tends to give the most plausible sorts of analyses of many of the 'can' and 'could have' statements which seem to need to be assertible of those agents we regard as free. But these concessions do not bring compatibilism itself in their wake. The most promising version of libertarianism, it is argued, is based on the idea that agency itself (and not merely some special instances of it which we might designate with the honorific appellation 'free') is inconsistent with determinism. This version of libertarianism, it is claimed, can avoid the objection that indeterminism is as difficult to square with true agential control as determinism can sometimes seem to be.Steward, Helen. Processes, Continuants, and Individuals2013, Mind, Vol. 122(487): 781–812-
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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist, Contributed by: Will Hornett
Abstract: The paper considers and opposes the view that processes are best thought of as continuants, to be differentiated from events mainly by way of the fact that the latter, but not the former, are entities with temporal parts. The motivation for the investigation, though, is not so much the defeat of what is, in any case, a rather implausible claim, as the vindication of some of the ideas and intuitions that the claim is made in order to defend — and the grounding of those ideas and intuitions in a more plausible metaphysics than is provided by the continuant view. It is argued that in addition to a distinction between events (conceived of as count-quantified) and processes (conceived of as mass-quantified) there is room and need for a third category, that of the individual process, which can be illuminatingly compared with the idea of a substance. Individual processes indeed share important metaphysical features with substantial continuants, but they do not lack temporal parts. Instead, it is argued that individual processes share with substantial continuants an important property I call ‘modal robustness in virtue of form’. The paper explains what this property is, and further suggests that the category of individual process, thus understood, might be of considerable value to the philosophy of action.Comment: An important contribution to the debate on processes and events which should be central reading in a metaphysics course dealing with those issues. Steward argues against Stout's view of processes, so this paper should be taught alongside his 'Processes' (1997). Steward also deals with methodological issues in metaphysics and involves a nice elucidation of Wiggins's Conceptual Realism so can be taught as an example of that view. This paper could easily be taught in a senior year metaphysics course. An important contribution to the debate on processes and events which should be central reading in a metaphysics course dealing with those issues. Steward argues against Stout's view of processes, so this paper should be taught alongside his 'Processes' (1997). Steward also deals with methodological issues in metaphysics and involves a nice elucidation of Wiggins's Conceptual Realism so can be taught as an example of that view. This paper could easily be taught in a senior year metaphysics course.
Stock, Kathleen. Resisting Imaginative Resistance2005, Philosophical Quarterly 55: 607-24.-
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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist
Abstract: Recently, philosophers have identified certain fictional propositions with which one does not imaginatively engage, even where one is transparently intended by their authors to do so. One approach to explaining this categorizes it as 'resistance', that is, as deliberate failure to imagine that the relevant propositions are true; the phenomenon has become generally known (misleadingly) as 'the puzzle of imaginative resistance'. I argue that this identification is incorrect, and I dismiss several other explanations. I then propose a better one, that in central cases of imaginative failure, the basis for the failure is the contingent incomprehensibility of the relevant propositions.Comment: The literature on imaginative resistance is a vast one in philosophy of fiction. This gives one response to the problem, and would be a useful text for students to have paired with Gendler's original paper on imaginative resistance.
Stock, Kathleen. Imagining and Fiction: Some Issues2013, Philosophy Compass 8: 887-96-
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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist
Abstract: In this paper, I survey in some depth three issues arising from the connection between imagination and fiction: (i) whether fiction can be defined as such in terms of its prescribing imagining; (ii) whether imagining in response to fiction is de se, or de re, or both; (iii) the phenomenon of 'imaginative resistance' and various explanations for it.Comment: Very introductory text which would be suitable for undergraduates in a philosophy of fiction module.
Stock, Kathleen. Learning from fiction and theories of fictional content2016, Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy (3):69-83.-
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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist
Abstract: In this paper I present an objection to the theory of fictional content known as 'hypothetical intentionalism'. It centres around the fact that certain sentences in fictions can both imply fictional truths and convey testimony, to be believed by the reader. I argue that hypothetical intentionalism cannot easily make sense of this fact; whereas actual author intentionalism (a rival to hypothetical intentionalism) can.Comment: This text would be good as further reading for students who are particularly interested in intentionalism and how things can be true in fiction.
Stock, Kathleen. Only imagine: fiction, interpretation and imagination2017, Oxford: Oxford University Press-
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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist
Abstract: In the first half of this book, I offer a theory of fictional content or, as it is sometimes known, 'fictional truth'.The theory of fictional content I argue for is 'extreme intentionalism'. The basic idea - very roughly, in ways which are made precise in the book - is that the fictional content of a particular text is equivalent to exactly what the author of the text intended the reader to imagine. The second half of the book is concerned with showing how extreme intentionalism and the lessons learnt from it can illuminate cognate questions in the philosophy of fiction and imagination. For instance, I argue, my position helps us to explain how fiction can provide us with reliable testimony; it helps explain the phenomenon of imaginative resistance; and it fits with, and so supports, a persuasive theory of the nature of fiction itself. In my final chapter, I show how attending to intentionalist practices of interpreting fictional content can illuminate the nature of propositional imagining itself.Comment: This book would be good to read chapter by chapter in a module which focussed exclusively on it, perhaps with supplemantary readings which relate to the topic of each chapter. It would be a good for a third year module.
Stock, Kathleen. Fantasy, imagination, and film2009, British Journal of Aesthetics 49 (4):357-369.-
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag Uidhir
Abstract: In his article 'Fantasy, Imagination and the Screen' , Roger Scruton offers an account of fantasy, arguing that it is directed away from reality in some important sense, and that cinema is its natural representational medium. I address certain problems with Scruton's basic account, thereby producing a signifi cantly amended version, though one that owes a great debt to his. I explain why, as he says, much fantasy is signifi cantly directed away from reality; and conclude with some brief remarks about.Comment:
Stojanovic, Isidora. What is Said, Linguistic Meaning, and Directly Referential Expressions2006, Philosophy Compass 1 (4):373-397.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Thomas Hodgson
Abstract: Philosophers of language distinguish among the lexical or linguistic meaning of the sentence uttered, what is said by an utterance of the sentence, and speaker's meaning, or what is conveyed by the speaker to her audience. In most views, what is said is the semantic or truth-conditional content of the utterance, and is irreducible either to the linguistic meaning or to the speaker's meaning. I will show that those views account badly for people's intuitions on what is said. I will also argue that no distinguished level of what is said is required, and that the notion of linguistic meaning is the best placed to play the role of what is said. This relies on two points. First, our intuitions on what is said cannot be detached from the ways in which we talk about what is said, and from the semantics of speech reports and indirect discourse in general. Second, besides what is said, there is an equally important notion of what what-is-said is said about, or that about which the speaker is talking. These are, then, the three main ingredients needed for the theory of what is said: linguistic meaning, what is talked about, and a semantic account of reported speechComment:
Sznajder, Marta. Janina Hosiasson-Lindenbaum on Analogical Reasoning: New Sources2022, Erkenntnis 89(4): 1349–1365.-
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Added by: Viviane FairbankAbstract:
Janina Hosiasson-Lindenbaum is a known figure in philosophy of probability of the 1930s. A previously unpublished manuscript fills in the blanks in the full picture of her work on inductive reasoning by analogy, until now only accessible through a single publication. In this paper, I present Hosiasson’s work on analogical reasoning, bringing together her early publications that were never translated from Polish, and the recently discovered unpublished work. I then show how her late work relates to Rudolf Carnap’s approach to “analogy by similarity” developed in the 1960s. Hosiasson turns out to be a predecessor of the line of research that models analogical influence as inductive relevance. A translation of Hosiasson’s manuscript concludes the paper.
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Sznajder, Marta. Inductive Logic as Explication: The Evolution of Carnap’s Notion of Logical Probability2018, The Monist 101(4): 417–440.-
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Added by: Viviane FairbankAbstract:
According to a popular interpretation, Carnap’s interpretation of probability had evolved from a logical towards a subjective conception. However Carnap himself insisted that his basic philosophical view of probability was always the same. I address this apparent clash between Carnap's self-identification and the subsequent interpretations of his work. Following its original intentions, I reconstruct inductive logic as an explication. The emerging picture is of a versatile linguistic framework, whose main function is not the discovery of objective logical relations in the object language, but the stipulation of conceptual possibilities. Within this representation, I map out the changes that the project went through. Seen from such an explication-based perspective, inductive logic becomes quite hard to categorize using the standard labels.
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Steward, Helen. The Truth in Compatibilism and the Truth of Libertarianism
2009, Philosophical Explorations 12 (2):167 – 179.
Comment: Steward's paper is an innovative response to a classic problem for libertarianism in the free will debate. It should be taught in any Free Will module which deals with libertarianism and luck.