Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

I recently came across the following abstract of a paper on the notorious Liar paradox: The Liar sentence is a singularly important piece of philosophical evidence. It is an instrument for investigating t he metaphysics of expressing truths and falsehoods. And an instrument too for investigating  the varieties of conflict that can give rise to paradox.   It shall serve as perhaps the  most important clue to the  shape of human judgment, as well as to the   nature of the  dependence of judgment upon language use. I don't know what the author of the paper is saying about the sentence "This is a lie," but I am struck by the phrase "piece of philosophical evidence." At law, an utterance is often evidence.  Or a text. But the say that a "sentence" is "evidence" is, fittingly, more abstract.  What does "evidence" mean in that sentence? And is it the same as the usage of "evidence" in the following sentence: "The ...

In some discussions of the logic of induction, one runs into a paradox of the ravens, otherwise known as Hempel's paradox, in recognition of philosopher Carl Gustav Hempel. I'd like to run through it now, if only in an attempt to keep my mind nimble. Hempel asks us to consider the hypothesis (1) all ravens are black. Now, we naturally think that if we can justify this proposition as a matter of induction, we can do so by looking at a lot of ravens, to see if all of them that we can find are black. But we surely don't look at apples, to see if they are some color other than black (say, red or green). Because we implicitly but strongly believe (2) observations of non-ravens are not relevant to verifying a generalization about the look of ravens. But ... Hempel's paradox challenges (2). After all, (1) would seem to be the logical equivalent of (3) All non-black items are non-ravens. So: whenever I see a green apple, I see a non-black item that is a non-raven. Wh...

Last week, in a post about Santayana, I said by way of admitting my own prejudices, "I find reasonable an act of 'will to believe' in a God whose existence I can not prove, as part of my effort to lead a productive and satisfying life on earth." A friend wrote me immediately that he was surprised by this rather modest confession of faith. He said he thought the phrase "whose existence I can not prove" was rather misleading, since it suggests that I may have some evidence of God's existence, though it is evidence inadequate to clear the bar of proof. He thought "for whose existence I have no evidence at all" would be a more frank statement of the epistemological situation. My reply: I do believe that I have evidence that God exists that falls short of proof, so I don't agree that I was cheating with the phrase "whose existence I cannot prove." The evidence is human subjectivity itself, the stream of consciousness. It rem...

An old paradox, named after a game show host, the emcee of "Let's Make a Deal" continuously from 1963 to 1976, and intermittently as revived thereafter. Monty Hall presented contestants with three curtains, often labeled A,B, and C, and asked them to make a choice. They would get whatever gift was behind the curtain they chose. In the story/paradox, Monty tells you that behind one of the curtains is a magnificent new car, the car of your dreams. Behind the other two curtains, not-so-desirable gifts. You tell him: "I pick A, Monty." Monty: "Not so fast! I will now reveal what is behind curtain C." The curtain opens, and there is some worthless gag gift, say a pile of shaving cream. Monty: "Now, you can stay with your choice of A, or you can switch to B." What should you do? The usual first response, and for many people a very powerful intuitive response, is that it doesn't matter what you do. You now have just two curtai...