Insa Lawler
Biographic Data
| ID | 1176527 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Insa Lawler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Insa |
| FAMILY NAME | Lawler |
| SIGNATURE | LAWLER I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Greensboro |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1250-6020 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
What is philosophical progress
What is it for philosophy to make progress? While various putative forms of philosophical progress have been explored in some depth, this overarching question is rarely addressed explicitly, perhaps because it has been assumed to be intractable or unlikely to have a single, unified answer. In this paper, we aim to show that the question is tractable, that it does admit of a single, unified answer, and that one such answer is plausible. This answe…
Would Disagreement Undermine Progress
In recent years, several philosophers have argued that their discipline makes no progress (or not enough in comparison to the “hard sciences”). A key argument for this pessimistic position appeals to the purported fact that philosophers widely and systematically disagree on most major philosophical issues. In this paper, we take a step back from the debate about progress in philosophy specifically and consider the general question: How (if at all…
Thinking about Progress
Is there progress in philosophy? If so, how much? Philosophers have recently argued for a wide range of answers to these questions, from the view that there is no progress whatsoever to the view that philosophy has provided answers to all the big philosophical questions. However, these views are difficult to compare and evaluate, because they rest on very different assumptions about the conditions under which philosophy would make progress. This …
Scientific Understanding and Representation
Scientific understanding and felicitous legitimate falsehoods
Multi-modal meaning
Humans communicate with different modalities. We offer an account of multi-modal meaning coordination, taking speech-gesture meaning coordination as a prototypical case. We argue that temporal synchrony (plus prosody) does not determine how to coordinate speech meaning and gesture meaning. Challenging cases are asynchrony and broadcasting cases, which are illustrated with empirical data. We propose that a process algebra account satisfies the des…
Philosophical methods under scrutiny
Understanding why, knowing why, and cognitive achievements
Levels of Reasons Why and Answers to Why Questions
According to Skow, correct answers to why questions cite only causes or grounds, but not nonaccidental regularities. Accounts that cite nonaccidental regularities typically confuse second-level reasons with first-level reasons. Only causes and grounds are first-level reasons why. Nonaccidental regularities are second-level reasons why. I first show that Skow’s arguments for the accusation of confusion depend on the independent thesis that only ci…
Scientific understanding and felicitous legitimate falsehoods
Philosophical methods under scrutiny
Understanding why, knowing why, and cognitive achievements
Levels of Reasons Why and Answers to Why Questions
According to Skow, correct answers to why questions cite only causes or grounds, but not nonaccidental regularities. Accounts that cite nonaccidental regularities typically confuse second-level reasons with first-level reasons. Only causes and grounds are first-level reasons why. Nonaccidental regularities are second-level reasons why. I first show that Skow’s arguments for the accusation of confusion depend on the independent thesis that only ci…
Understanding why, knowing why, and cognitive achievements
Levels of Reasons Why and Answers to Why Questions
According to Skow, correct answers to why questions cite only causes or grounds, but not nonaccidental regularities. Accounts that cite nonaccidental regularities typically confuse second-level reasons with first-level reasons. Only causes and grounds are first-level reasons why. Nonaccidental regularities are second-level reasons why. I first show that Skow’s arguments for the accusation of confusion depend on the independent thesis that only ci…
Multi-modal meaning
Humans communicate with different modalities. We offer an account of multi-modal meaning coordination, taking speech-gesture meaning coordination as a prototypical case. We argue that temporal synchrony (plus prosody) does not determine how to coordinate speech meaning and gesture meaning. Challenging cases are asynchrony and broadcasting cases, which are illustrated with empirical data. We propose that a process algebra account satisfies the des…
Philosophical methods under scrutiny
Scientific understanding and felicitous legitimate falsehoods
Thinking about Progress
Is there progress in philosophy? If so, how much? Philosophers have recently argued for a wide range of answers to these questions, from the view that there is no progress whatsoever to the view that philosophy has provided answers to all the big philosophical questions. However, these views are difficult to compare and evaluate, because they rest on very different assumptions about the conditions under which philosophy would make progress. This …
Scientific Understanding and Representation
Would Disagreement Undermine Progress
In recent years, several philosophers have argued that their discipline makes no progress (or not enough in comparison to the “hard sciences”). A key argument for this pessimistic position appeals to the purported fact that philosophers widely and systematically disagree on most major philosophical issues. In this paper, we take a step back from the debate about progress in philosophy specifically and consider the general question: How (if at all…
What is philosophical progress
What is it for philosophy to make progress? While various putative forms of philosophical progress have been explored in some depth, this overarching question is rarely addressed explicitly, perhaps because it has been assumed to be intractable or unlikely to have a single, unified answer. In this paper, we aim to show that the question is tractable, that it does admit of a single, unified answer, and that one such answer is plausible. This answe…
Epistemology (7 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (5 works) · Philosophy of science (5 works) · Metaphysics (3 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (3 works) · Philosophy of language (3 works) · Psychology (3 works) · Argument (complex analysis) (2 works)