Fodor (1983) claims that the modularity of mind (the relatively encapsulated, insulated, special-purpose nature of the psychological mechanisms of perception) helps undermine relativism in various forms. I shall show first, that the modular vision of mind provides insufficient support for the rejection of (most forms of) relativism, and second, that an alternative (‘neural constructivist’) mode...

Most happiness researchers use semantic differential or Likert scales to assess happiness. Such conventionally used scales are susceptible to scale renorming (interpretation of scales differently in different contexts) and can produce a specious relativism effect (e.g., rating a low-income person happier than a high-income person in situations where the low-income person is not happier). Buildi...

Few philosophers have been tempted to be relativists about absolutely everything—although, we are told, there have been some notable exceptions (Protagoras). Many philosophers, however, have been tempted to be relativists about specific domains of discourse, especially about those domains that have a normative character. Gilbert Harman, for example, has defended a relativistic view of morality,...

Few philosophers have been tempted to be relativists about absolutely everything—although, we are told, there have been some notable exceptions (Protagoras). Many philosophers, however, have been tempted to be relativists about specific domains of discourse, especially about those domains that have a normative character. Gilbert Harman, for example, has defended a relativistic view of morality,...

Wright’s Truth and Objectivity seeks to systematise a variety of anti-realist positions. I argue that many objections to the system are avoided by transposing its talk of truth into talk of warrant. However, a problem remains about debates involving ‘direction-of-fit’. Dummett introduced ‘anti-realism’ as a philosophical view informed by mathematical intuitionism. Subsequently, the term has bee...

In the last two decades, there have been numerous calls for a culturally sensitive bioethics. At the same time, bioethicists have become increasingly involved in empirical research, which is a sign of dissatisfaction with the analytic methods of traditional bioethics. In this article, I will argue that although these developments have broadened and enriched the field of bioethics, they can easi...

Here is a simple and inviting picture: the semantic values of sentences, relative to contexts, are sets of possible worlds. These are the truth conditions of assertions of those sentences in contexts. They are thus the contents of assertions, or the objects of attitudes we might take towards such contents. There have been many questions raised about the simple picture. For instance, sets of wor...

Many scholars and activists favor banning illicit businesses, especially given that such businesses constitute a large part of the global economy. But these businesses are commonly operated as if they are subject only to the ethical norms their management chooses to recognize, and as a result they sometimes harm innocent people. This can happen in part because there are no effective legal const...