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Disputes and Defective Disputes

abstract: One activity for which philosophers are perhaps best known is having disputes with one another. Some non-philosophers, and increasingly many philosophers, believe that a number of these disputes are silly or misguided in some way. Call such silly or misguided disputes defective disputes. When is a dispute defective? What kinds of defective disputes are there? How are these different kinds of defective disputes different from one another? What does it mean to call a dispute 'merely verbal'? These questions come up for consideration in Part One of this manuscript. In Part Two I examine whether certain disputes in ontology and over the nature of possible worlds are defective in any of the ways described in Part One. I focus mainly on the question of whether these disputes are merely verbal disputes, though I examine whether they are defective in any other ways. I conclude that neither dispute is defective in any of the senses that I make clear in Part One. Moreover, I conclude that even some defective philosophical disputes can be worth consideration under certain circumstances. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Philosophy 2011

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:asu.edu/item:8926
Date January 2011
ContributorsMarsh, Gerald Horton (Author), French, Peter (Advisor), Creath, Richard (Committee member), Blackson, Thomas (Committee member), Arizona State University (Publisher)
Source SetsArizona State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDoctoral Dissertation
Format389 pages
Rightshttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/, All Rights Reserved

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