Author: natesheff

Usually, when we say how things are, we’re talking about non-linguistic bits of the world. “Gemini is a dog” is a sentence about a particular dog; so is “Gemini wants cheese.” Sometimes, though, we do talk about pieces of language. “Why did you say that?” asks for the reasons (psychological or otherwise) for someone else’s…

There are analogies, and there are analogies. Some analogies feature prominently in analogical inference, while others merely function as illustrations of general principles. In these latter cases, the term “analogy” is used loosely, but the former type of case involves analogy in a stricter sense. In analogical inference, or arguing by analogy, analogies function instead…

It’s new as in “most recent,” not new as in “actually recent.” This one is on what we’re doing when we’re doing epistemology. It focuses especially on the internalism/externalism debate, and I’m probably too proud of it.

There is an argument against Kant’s moral philosophy that  just won’t die. I’ve seen it show up in some surprising places: Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, and Patricia Churchland’s Braintrust. I remember a moral philosophy professor repeating it in class once, with approval. These are all smart people but they all level a criticism against Kant that’s based…

A lot of authors write prefaces for their books which acknowledge that they may have made a mistake somewhere in the book. A historian writing a history of Queen Elizabeth’s reign puts their name on hundreds of assertions made in the book, about the queen’s feelings, about important dates, and so on. So, “I’m on…

I haven’t posted on here in a while, but it’s for a mostly good reason: I’ve been waiting for this to go live. I basically couldn’t write until it was up. Now it’s up! I’m free! Please read it.