Two papers from late summer
Fri 05 Sep 2014 09:38 AM
In the waning days of summer, before the semester started, I finished up two draft papers. I neglected to actually link to them however, an oversight which I now remedy.
How to be a realist about natural kinds
Abstract: Laura Franklin-Hall argues for a nuanced anti-realism about natural kinds. In the course of her argument, she considers the accounts offered by Richard Boyd and me to be alternative anti-realist views. But Boyd and I are both avowed realists about natural kinds. There is an important presupposition hidden in the way that Franklin-Hall poses the problem, namely that a real natural kind must be natural simpliciter. Boyd and I take naturalness to be a relation between a kind and a domain and, because we do not accept a presupposition of the question, are neither realists nor anti-realists in Franklin-Hall's sense. Nevertheless, there is another important sense in which domain-specificity is compatible with realism.
What kind of is-ought gap is there and what kind ought there be?
with Jon Mandle
Abstract: Some philosophers think that there is a gap between is and ought which necessarily makes normative enquiry a different kind of thing than empirical science. We argue that there is no categorical answer as to whether there is or is not. The question of an is-ought gap is practical and strategic matter rather than a logical one, and it might be answered in different ways for different questions or at different times.