Two Recent Self-Referential Arguments

Sceptical Overkill: On Two Recent Arguments Against Scepticism

This paper is a discussion of a recent attempt by Crispin Wright (Wright 1991; page references to this work unless stated) to force at least some varieties of external world scepticism to succumb to a "head-on, rational response", contrary to well-known expressions of pessimism by, for example, Sir Peter Strawson and Barry Stroud. The varieties of scepticism in question are those that involve p...

Transformations between Self-Referential Sets

Self-Referential Definition of Orthogonality

There has for longer been an interest in finding equivalent conditions which define inner product spaces, and the respective literature is considerable, see for instance Amir, which lists 350 such results. Here, in this tradition, an alternative definition of orthogonality is presented which does not make use of any inner product. This definition, in the spirit of the recently developed non-wel...

Two Conceivability Arguments Compared

The conclusion of this argument (hereafter ZA) entails the falsity of physicalism because, technical details aside, physicalism is or entails the thesis that every psychological truth is entailed by some physical truth. If it is possible that I have a zombie duplicate however, then it is possible that the physical truths are as they are and some psychological truth is different. Hence 3 entails...

Two Arguments against Realism

Over the last 20 years or so, Hilary Putnam has developed a series of arguments which use basic theorems of model theory to undermine semantic realism. Here, I discuss two generalizations of these arguments. The first employs some new forms of model theory to generate substantially stronger conclusions than Putnam’s original arguments generated. The second illustrates a method for replacing the...