Papers by Martin Montminy

On the Moral Problems Raised by the Existence of Personites
Mind, Jun 22, 2024
According to the worm theory, persons are (maximal) aggregates of person-stages existing at diffe... more According to the worm theory, persons are (maximal) aggregates of person-stages existing at different times. Personites, on the other hand, are non-maximal aggregates of stages that are very much like persons. Their existence appears to make instances of prudential self-sacrifice morally problematic: the personites that exist at the time of the sacrifice but not at the time of the reward seem not to receive future compensation for their sacrifice. Instances of punishment appear to give rise to a similar problem. We argue that these impressions arise from a mistaken assumption about the primary bearers of properties such as suffering, receiving compensation (in the future) and having (previously) committed a crime. According to the worm theory, stages, rather than persons or personites, possess these properties. Persons and personites have these properties only derivatively. As we show, once this clarification and related ones are made, the apparent moral problems raised by the existence of personites dissolve.
Disputatio
I argue that pace Quine, indeterminacy of translation affects observation sentences. I illustrate... more I argue that pace Quine, indeterminacy of translation affects observation sentences. I illustrate this indeterminacy with examples and show how it is tied to the indeterminacy affecting the analytical status of observation categoricals. I propose my own construal of the thesis of indeterminacy of translation, according to which indeterminacy is based on the inextricability of meaning and belief. I explain why this construal should be favored over Quine’s.
Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy
W. V. Quine is commonly read as holding that there are no analytic truths and no a priori truths.... more W. V. Quine is commonly read as holding that there are no analytic truths and no a priori truths. I argue that this is a misreading. Quine’s view is that no sentence is determinately analytic or determinately a priori. I show that my reading is better supported by Quine’s arguments and general remarks about meaning and analyticity. I then briefly reexamine the debate between Quine and Carnap about analyticity, and show that the nature of their disagreement is different than what it is usually thought to be.

Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology, 2003
Quine's negative theses about meaning and analyticity are well known, but he also defends a posit... more Quine's negative theses about meaning and analyticity are well known, but he also defends a positive account of these notions. I explain what his negative and positive views are, and argue that Quine's positive account of meaning entails that two of his most famous doctrines, namely the claim that there are no analytic statements and the indeterminacy of translation thesis, are false. But I show that the falsity of these doctrines doesn't affect his criticisms of traditional conceptions of meaning. This is because the class of analytic statements that his account of meaning enables us to isolate is of no philosophical interest, and because we can hold that translation is determined without admitting that meaning is. In this paper, I will argue that two of Quine's most famous doctrines, namely the claim that there are no analytic statements and the indeterminacy of translation thesis, are false. However, unlike the usual critic of Quine, I will raise my objections from within Quine's own perspective. This means that if I am right, Quine's views about analyticity and translation are not consistent. However, as I will show, we can hold that there are analytic statements and that translation is determined and still embrace Quine's criticisms of traditional conceptions of meaning. But before I can defend this claim, a considerable amount of exegetical work will be needed.

© ,--' Martin Montminy <www.philosophersimprint.org/--'--)/> S &!&./# 0.12103 4/!& ... more © ,--' Martin Montminy <www.philosophersimprint.org/--'--)/> S &!&./# 0.12103 4/!& .&0&(2#+ /.5$&6 that contextualists cannot consistently maintain their advertised neutrality between skepticism and anti-skepticism. This spells trouble for contextualism, since part of this view’s appeal is that it avoids taking sides in the seemingly intractable debate about skepticism. The skeptic’s knowledge denial is plausible, since it seems correct to deny knowledge to a subject who cannot eliminate possibilities of error; yet in everyday contexts, we readily attribute knowledge to subjects who have acquired their beliefs on the basis of fallible evidence. Contextualism proposes to have it both ways. On this view, the truth conditions of a knowledge claim depend in part on the epistemic standards that are in place in the conversational context. The skeptic’s knowledge denial made in the skeptical context is true, since such a context involves epistemic standards that are impossibl...

Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 2021
I consider three challenges to the traditional view according to which moral responsibility invol... more I consider three challenges to the traditional view according to which moral responsibility involves an epistemic condition in addition to a freedom condition. The first challenge holds that if a person performs an action A freely, then she thereby knows that she is doing A. The epistemic condition is thus built into the freedom condition. The second challenge contends that no epistemic condition is required for moral responsibility, since a person may be blameworthy for an action that she did not know was wrong. The third challenge invokes the quality of will view. On this view, a person is blameworthy for a wrong action just in case the action manifests a bad quality of will. The blameworthy person need not satisfy an additional epistemic condition. I will argue that contrary to appearances, none of these challenges succeeds. Hence, moral responsibility does require a non-superfluous epistemic condition.

Crítica (México D. F. En línea), 2003
Davidson claims that a creature that has spent its entire life in isolation cannot have thoughts.... more Davidson claims that a creature that has spent its entire life in isolation cannot have thoughts. His two reasons for this claim are that (i) interaction with another creature (what he calls "triangulation") is required to locate the cause of the creature's responses, and that (ii) linguistic communication is necessary to acquire the concept of objective truth, which is itself required in order to have thoughts. I argue that, at best, these two reasons imply that in order to have thoughts a creature must be capableof participating in triangulation, not that it must have already participated in triangulation. I then argue that triangulation doesn't solve the ambiguity problem; that is, it doesn't entail that a being's thoughts and utterances are about distal objects rather than proximal patterns of stimulation. Fortunately, ambiguity, like other forms of indeterminacy, doesn't entail that we cannot have thoughts.
Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2016
ABSTRACT:Moral responsibility, I argue, requires agents to do what is within their abilities to a... more ABSTRACT:Moral responsibility, I argue, requires agents to do what is within their abilities to act morally. This means that an agent is to blame just in case his wrongdoing is due to an underperformance, that is, to a failure to do what he can to act morally. I defend this account by considering a skeptical argument about responsibility put forth by Gideon Rosen and by Michael Zimmerman. I explain why the epistemic condition they endorse is inadequate and why my alternative epistemic condition, which directly follows from my general condition on culpability, should be preferred. I then defend my view against potential criticisms.

According to a popular objection against epistemic contextualism, contextualists who endorse the ... more According to a popular objection against epistemic contextualism, contextualists who endorse the factivity of knowledge, the principle of epistemic closure and the knowledge norm of assertion cannot coherently defend their theory without abandoning their response to skepticism. After examining and criticizing three responses to this objection, we offer our own solution. First, we question the assumption that contextualists ought to be interpreted as asserting the content of their theory. Second, we argue that contextualists need not hold that high epistemic standards govern contexts in which they defend their theory. In recent works, several authors have challenged the coherence of epistemic contextualism. 1 They hold that assuming the factivity of knowledge and epistemic closure, the contextualist cannot coherently assert, or know, the content of her theory. After presenting the objection in section 1, we will examine three responses we deem unsatisfactory in section 2, and then put forward our own solution in sections 3 and 4. In a nutshell, our solution rejects the idea that the contextualist should be construed as asserting that her theory is true. We also argue that the contextualist framework does not entail that high epistemic standards are in place in a context in which contextualism is presented. Let 'K(S, h)' stand for 'S knows that h,' where S is a contextualist and 'h' denotes the proposition that S has hands. According to contextualism, there are ordinary, low-standards, contexts (hereafter C L ) in which 'K(S, h)' is true. Now, contextualism holds that there is no such thing as knowing that p, simpliciter. On this view, in uttering 'K(S, h)' in C L , S asserts that she knows that h relative to low epistemic standards. 2 In other words, we have (1) K L (S, h), 1 See, among others, Brueckner (2004), Brendel (2005), Wright (2005), and Jäger (2012). 2 This notation is meant to be neutral between two linguistic accounts, one according to which the predicate 'know' is context-sensitive and designates a binary relation (between a person and a proposition) corresponding to different epistemic standards in different contexts, and another that holds that 'know' designates a ternary relation between a subject, a proposition and (context-dependent) epistemic standards.

Indeterminacy, Incompleteness, Indecision, and Other Semantic Phenomena
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 2011
This paper explores the relationships between Davidson's indeterminacy of interpretation thes... more This paper explores the relationships between Davidson's indeterminacy of interpretation thesis and two semantic properties of sentences that have come to be recognized recently, namely semantic incompleteness and semantic indecision. More specifically, I will examine what the indeterminacy thesis entails for sentences of the form ‘By sentence S (or word w), agent A means that m’ and ‘Agent A believes that p.’ My primary goal is to shed light on the indeterminacy thesis and its consequences. I will distinguish two kinds of indeterminacy that have very different sources and very different consequences. But this does not purport to be an exhaustive study: there may well be other forms of indeterminacy that this paper does not address.I will first explain the phenomena of semantic incompleteness and semantic indecision, and then explore their relationships with the indeterminacy thesis.
ou.edu
Contextualism about vagueness holds that the content of vague predicates is context sensitive. I ... more Contextualism about vagueness holds that the content of vague predicates is context sensitive. I contrast this view with a similar view called nonindexical contextualism, and explain why my brand of contextualism should be preferred to it. I then defend contextualism against three objections that have been recently raised against it. I show that these objections are actually more damaging to rival views than to contextualism itself.
Two Indeterminacies
The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1997
... See also J. Bennett, Linguistic Behaviour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), § 78... more ... See also J. Bennett, Linguistic Behaviour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), § 78, and R. Kirk, Translation Determined (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), chap. ... 19 . Many passages in the Principia indicate that Newton was a substantivist. ...

Articles, 2005
J’examine la thèse défendue par Donald Davidson selon laquelle un être ne peut avoir des pensées ... more J’examine la thèse défendue par Donald Davidson selon laquelle un être ne peut avoir des pensées que s’il a été en communication linguistique avec quelqu’un d’autre par le passé. Cette thèse, que j’appelle « l’interprétationnisme radical », dérive de la thèseAselon laquelle il est nécessaire d’avoir les concepts de croyance et de vérité objective pour avoir des croyances, et de la thèseBvoulant que la communication linguistique soit requise pour l’acquisition du concept de vérité objective. En réponse àA, je préconise un point de vuecontextualiste, selon lequel les normes d’attribution de croyances dépendent du contexte conversationnel. Le contextualisme entraîne non pas queAest fausse, mais qu’elle doit être relative à un contexte. Je montre par ailleurs que contrairement à ce qu’affirmeB, l’interaction (linguistique) avec autrui n’est pas nécessaire pour acquérir le concept de vérité objective. Je conclus que les arguments de Davidson soutiennent au mieux l’interprétationnismemodé...

Metaphilosophy, 2008
Despite all the critical scrutiny they have received recently, contextualist views in philosophy ... more Despite all the critical scrutiny they have received recently, contextualist views in philosophy are still not well understood. Neither contextualists nor their opponents have been entirely clear about what contextualist theses amount to and what they are based on. I show that there are actually two kinds of contextualist view that rest on two very different semantic phenomena, namely semantic incompleteness and semantic indeterminacy. I explain how contextualist approaches can be used to dissolve certain debates in philosophy. According to such approaches, the same philosophical thesis can be correctly endorsed in some contexts and correctly denied in others: it is thus pointless to seek a context-independent solution to debates about this thesis. My purpose is not to defend particular contextualist theses, but to lay out the general framework on which they rest: this allows us to see more clearly the similarities and differences among contextualist views defended in various areas of philosophy.
Semantic Content, Truth Conditions and Context
Linguistics and Philosophy, 2006
Dialectica, 2012
I defend a contextualist account of bare epistemic modal claims against recent objections. I argu... more I defend a contextualist account of bare epistemic modal claims against recent objections. I argue that in uttering a sentence of the form 'It might be that p,' a speaker is performing two speech acts. First, she is (directly) asserting that in view of the knowledge possessed by some relevant group, it might be that p. The content of this first speech act is accounted for by the contextualist view. But the speaker's utterance also generates an indirect speech act that consists in a weak suggestive that p. Since this second speech act is typically the main point of a bare epistemic modal utterance, our (negative or positive) responses to the utterance actually target this second speech act. I show how this two-speech-act account can explain the data recently adduced against contextualism.

Analytic Philosophy, 2015
Causal contextualism holds that sentences of the form 'c causes e' have contextsensitive truth-co... more Causal contextualism holds that sentences of the form 'c causes e' have contextsensitive truth-conditions. We consider four arguments invoked by Jonathan Schaffer in favor of this view. First, he argues that his brand of contextualism helps solve puzzles about transitivity. Second, he contends that how one describes the relata of the causal relation sometimes affects the truth of one's claim. Third, Schaffer invokes the phenomenon of contrastive focus to conclude that causal statements implicitly designate salient alternatives to the cause and effect. Fourth, he claims that the appropriateness of a causal statement depends on what is contextually taken for granted or made salient. We show that causal invariantism can explain these linguistic data at least as well as contextualism. We then argue that pace Schaffer, some causal sentences are always correct and can never be plausibly denied, regardless of the context.

Mind, Jun 22, 2024
According to the worm theory, persons are (maximal) aggregates of person-stages existing at diffe... more According to the worm theory, persons are (maximal) aggregates of person-stages existing at different times. Personites, on the other hand, are non-maximal aggregates of stages that are very much like persons. Their existence appears to make instances of prudential self-sacrifice morally problematic: the personites that exist at the time of the sacrifice but not at the time of the reward seem not to receive future compensation for their sacrifice. Instances of punishment appear to give rise to a similar problem. We argue that these impressions arise from a mistaken assumption about the primary bearers of properties such as suffering, receiving compensation (in the future) and having (previously) committed a crime. According to the worm theory, stages, rather than persons or personites, possess these properties. Persons and personites have these properties only derivatively. As we show, once this clarification and related ones are made, the apparent moral problems raised by the existence of personites dissolve.
Context and communication: A defense of intentionalism
... 36 References kerman, Jonas, 2009. A plea for pragmatics. Synthese 170, 155 167. Austin, JL, ... more ... 36 References kerman, Jonas, 2009. A plea for pragmatics. Synthese 170, 155 167. Austin, JL, 1962. ... References. Åkerman, 2009Jonas Åkerman, A plea for pragmatics, Synthese 170 (2009), pp. 155167. Full Text via CrossRef | View Record in Scopus | Cited By in Scopus (1). ...
What use is Morgan's Canon?
Philosophical Psychology, 2005
Uploads
Papers by Martin Montminy