I. Background A valid deductive argument is one where the truth of the conclusion follows necessarily from the truth of its premises. An argument is valid when it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false and invalid when it is possible for the conclusion to be false and the premises true. When we speak of the truth and falsity of an argument's premises and conclusion, we are being somewhat deceptive because validity has more to do with an argument's

In his paper "Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity" published recently in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association, the late Hilary Putnam does an admirable job of disentangling Tarski's Convention-T from Tarski's T-Schema. For too long, orthodox interpretations of Tarski's theory of truth have accepted that Convention-T and the material adequacy condition are the same, indistinguishable from one another. Putnam seems to suggest an alternative to the orthodox int

Thirteen years ago I created a blog (oohlah.blogspot.com) that intended to talk about philosophical topics, ranging from metaphysics and epistemology, and general concerns about personal/professional life, particularly work-life balance and academic freedom. That blog was opened at a time when the blogging community in philosophy was far more widespread than it is today. It seemed that every philosopher had a blog or, at least, contributed to one. Only a few blogs from the ea