Gary Ebbs Research Articles

Review of Gary Ebbs, Carnap, Quine, and Putnam on Methods of Inquiry

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Variety of evidence in multimessenger astronomy

The confirmation of models in multimessenger astronomy requires variety of evidence. Variety of evidence (VoE) should be understood as an eliminative epistemic principle: where multiple and heterogenous types of evidence converge upon model assumptions or predictions, confidence in the representational accuracy of that model and/or its assumptions is made stronger than if sources of evidence were homogenous. Varied evidence increases confidence indirectly by providing grounds upon which to eliminate under-supported alternatives. I discuss the role VoE reasoning plays in multimessenger astronomy, emphasizing the oft-neglected constraint of chronological evidential support to capture the importance of time series and timescales in astronomy. I then show that in a key case, the convergence of varied types of empirical observations lends confirmatory support to the kilonova model of neutron star mergers.11I would like to thank Elisabeth Lloyd, Gary Ebbs, Kirk Ludwig, Lydia Patton, William Vanderburgh, Suzanne Kawamleh, Dan Li, Ryan O'Loughlin, Steve Mischler, and David McCarty for their invaluable feedback and support on earlier drafts of this work.

Quine against Lewis (and Carnap) on Truth by Convention

AbstractMany commentators now view Quine's ‘Truth by Convention’ as a flawed criticism of Carnap. Gary Ebbs argued recently that Quine never intended Carnap as his target. Quine's criticisms were part of his attempt to work out his own scientific naturalism. I agree that Carnap was not Quine's target but object that Quine's criticisms were wholly internal to his own philosophy. Instead, I argue that C.I. Lewis held the kind of truth‐by‐convention thesis that Quine rejects. This, however, leaves Carnap out of the picture. I then show how Quine came to see the earlier criticisms as also having force against Carnap.

Was Davidson's Project a Carnapian Explication of Meaning?

There are two main interpretive positions on Davidson’s project in the theory of meaning. The Replacement Theory holds that Davidson aimed to replace the theory of meaning with the theory of truth on the grounds that meaning is too unclear a notion for systematic theorizing. The Traditional Pursuit Theory, in contrast, holds that Davidson aimed to pursue the traditional project with a clever bit of indirection, exploiting the recursive structure of a truth theory to reveal compositional semantic structure and placing constraints on it sufficient for its canonical assignments of truth conditions to be used for interpretation. This paper responds to a recent defense of a sophisticated version of the Replacement Theory by Gary Ebbs according to which Davidson was engaged in a Carnapian explication of meaning, intending to preserve only aspects of the usage of ‘means’ most important to us. I argue the Explication Interpretation cannot be sustained in the face of a detailed look at the passages that principally motivate it in “Truth and Meaning” when we take into account their local context, their context in the paper as a whole, and the context of that paper in Davidson’s contemporaneous work, and later work which tries to improve the formulations which he advanced in his early papers.

Debating Self-Knowledge, by Anthony Brueckner and Gary Ebbs

This volume brings together thirteen essays that centre on a single question: do semantic externalism and anti-individualism generate coherent and powerful sceptical threats to self-knowledge? The ...

Truth and Words, by Gary Ebbs.

Truth and Words, by Gary Ebbs.

GARY EBBS'S TRUTH AND WORDS

GARY EBBS'S <i>TRUTH AND WORDS</i>

Scepticism about self-knowledge redux

I would like to take another stab at defending the coherence of scepticism about self-knowledge. A possible world in which I inhabit Twin Earth is, in Gary Ebbs's phrase, a subjectively equivalent world for me, in the sense that if I were on Twin Earth, I would receive the same sensory stimulation that I actually receive, though the Twin Earth environment is different from what I actually take my environment to be.1 Accordingly, on Twin Earth, my sincere utterances of the sentence ‘There is water in the basement’ express the thought that there is twin-water in the basement, rather than the thought that there is water in the basement. One might maintain that without empirical investigation of my environment, I do not know that I am not in a world in which I inhabit Twin Earth (or in some other subjectively equivalent world). Thus, in the absence of empirical investigation:

Temporal Externalsm, Natural Kind Terms, and Scientifically Ignorant Communities

Temporal externalism (TE) is the thesis (defended by Jackman (1999)) that the contents of some of an indvidual's thoughts and utterances at time t may be determined by linguistic developments subsequent to t. TE has received little discussion so far, Brown (2000) and Stoneham (2002) being exceptions. I defend TE by arguing that it solves several related problems concerning the extension of natural kind terms in scientifically ignorant communities. Gary Ebbs (2000) argues that no theory can reconcile our ordinary, practical judgments of sameness of extension over time with the claim that linguistic usage determines word extensions. I argue that Ebbs shows at most that no theory other than TE can effect this reconciliation. Furthermore, while Ebbs' argument undermines Jessica Brown's solutions to two closely related problems about natural kind term extensions (Brown 1998), TE can solve both problems without difficulty. Some criticisms of TE are briefly addressed as well.

Why scepticism about self-knowledge is self-undermining

Journal Article Why scepticism about self-knowledge is self-undermining Get access Gary Ebbs Gary Ebbs University of IllinoisUrbana-Champaign Urbana, IL 61820, USAgaryebbs@uiuc.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Analysis, Volume 65, Issue 3, July 2005, Pages 237–244, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/65.3.237 Published: 01 July 2005

Review of Rule-Following and Realism, by Gary Ebbs

Review of Rule-Following and Realism, by Gary Ebbs

Hilary Putnam: pragmatism and realism

Taking Pragmatism Seriously R.A. Putnam, Wellesley College, USA Realism with a Metaphysical Skull John Haldane, University of St Andrews Putnam and Pragmatist Theory of Truth Nicholar Rescher, University of Pittsburgh Pragmatism and Legal Reasoning Richard Warner, Chicago-Kent College of Law Truth and Trans-Theoretical Terms Gary Ebbs, University of Illinois at Urgana-Champaign Pragmatics and Pragmatisms Robert Brandom, University of Pittsburgh What Laws of Logic Say Charles Travis, Northwestern Univrsity in Evanston, Illinois Causal Theory of Perception and Direct Realism Tadeusz Szubka, Catholic University of Lublin, Poland Comments on papers Hilary Putnam, Harvard University

Gary Ebbs, Rule-Following and Realism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1997), xvi + 368 pp., $42.50 (cloth).

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Is scepticism about self-knowledge incoherent?

Anti-individualism appears to preclude the possibility of direct, unproblematic knowledge of the contents of one's own intentional mental states. Gary Ebbs argues that such scepticism about the compatibility of anti-individualism and self-knowledge is incoherent. (See Ebbs 1996, section 6, entitled 'Why skepticism about self-knowledge is incoherent') I think that his argument is unsuccessful. Here is Ebbs's presentation of the self-knowledge sceptic's reasoning: