Hawke Peter, Schoonen Tom
Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Arché, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, UK.
Philos Stud. 2021;178(5):1503-1527. doi: 10.1007/s11098-020-01493-0. Epub 2020 Jun 26.
We examine a prominent naturalistic line on the method of cases (MoC), exemplified by Timothy Williamson and Edouard Machery: MoC is given a fallibilist and non-exceptionalist treatment, accommodating moderate modal skepticism. But Gettier cases are in dispute: Williamson takes them to induce substantive philosophical knowledge; Machery claims that the ambitious use of MoC should be abandoned entirely. We defend an intermediate position. We offer an internal critique of Macherian pessimism about Gettier cases. Most crucially, we argue that Gettier cases needn't exhibit 'disturbing characteristics' that Machery posits to explain why philosophical cases induce dubious judgments. It follows, we show, that Machery's central argument for the effective abandonment of MoC is undermined. Nevertheless, we engineer a restricted variant of the argument-in harmony with Williamsonian ideology-that survives our critique, potentially limiting philosophy's scope for establishing especially ambitious modal theses, despite traditional MoC's utility being partially preserved.
我们考察了关于案例法（MoC）的一种著名的自然主义路线，以蒂莫西·威廉姆森和爱德华·马凯里为代表：案例法被给予了可错论和非例外论的对待，容纳了温和的模态怀疑论。但盖梯尔案例存在争议：威廉姆森认为它们能引出实质性的哲学知识；马凯里则声称应完全摒弃对案例法的过度使用。我们捍卫一种中间立场。我们对马凯里对盖梯尔案例的悲观态度进行了内部批判。最关键的是，我们认为盖梯尔案例不必展现出马凯里所假定的“令人不安的特征”，而马凯里正是用这些特征来解释为什么哲学案例会引发可疑的判断。我们表明，由此可知，马凯里主张有效摒弃案例法的核心论证被削弱了。尽管如此，我们构建了一个与威廉姆森的思想体系相一致的该论证的受限变体，它在我们的批判中幸存下来，这可能会限制哲学在确立特别宏大的模态论题方面的范围，尽管传统案例法的效用得到了部分保留。
