Papers by Masaharu Mizumoto
Asian Jounral of Philosophy, 2024
In this paper, we will report the results of two sets of cross-linguistic studies about truth jud... more In this paper, we will report the results of two sets of cross-linguistic studies about truth judgments and correctness judgments by speakers of English and Japanese, which will show a significant influence of a moral-political factor in an utterance on Japanese truth/correctness judgments. Following up Mizumoto (2022), which demonstrated such an effect on Japanese truth judgments and correctness judgments about utterances containing a contrastive conjunction (such as “but”), Study 1 shows the same effect on Japanese correctness judgments about utterances containing a pejorative. Study 2 then shows that a moral-political factor in utterances can affect Japanese truth/correctness judgments about them even if they are simple utterances containing neither a contrastive conjunction nor a pejorative. In conclusion, we will briefly discuss whether this effect is linguistic or psychological, and present three hypotheses: the semantic hypothesis, pragmatic hypothesis, and error theory hypothesis, to account for the data, which we leave open for future studies.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 18, 2018
Anglophone epistemologists have devoted a great deal of attention to the English word “know” and ... more Anglophone epistemologists have devoted a great deal of attention to the English word “know” and to English sentences used to attribute knowledge. Many contemporary epistemologists, including contextualists and subject-sensitive invariantists, are concerned with the truth-conditions of “S knows that p,” or the proposition it expresses. However, there are over 6,000 languages in the world. Thus, it is not clear why we should think that subtle facts about the English verb “know” have important implications for epistemology. Are the properties of the English word “know” and sentences of the form “S knows that p” shared in their translations into most or all other languages? This, what has been termed the universality thesis, raises many novel questions in the field of epistemology, whether it turns out to be true or false. The essays collected in this volume discuss these questions and related issues, and aim to contribute to the important new field of cross-cultural epistemology, as well as to epistemology in general.
Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally res... more Philosophers have long debated whether, if determinism is true, we should hold people morally responsible for their actions since in a deterministic universe, people are arguably not the ultimate source of their actions nor could they have done otherwise if initial conditions and the laws of nature are held fixed. To reveal how non-philosophers ordinarily reason about the conditions for free will, we conducted a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic survey (N = 5,268) spanning twenty countries and sixteen languages. Overall, participants tended to ascribe moral responsibility whether the perpetrator lacked sourcehood or alternate possibilities. However, for American, European, and Middle Eastern participants, being the ultimate source of one’s actions promoted perceptions of free will and control as well as ascriptions of blame and punishment. By contrast, being the source of one’s actions was not particularly salient to Asian participants. Finally, across cultures, participants exhib...
Mind & Language, 2018
Since at least Hume and Kant, philosophers working on the nature of aesthetic judgment have gener... more Since at least Hume and Kant, philosophers working on the nature of aesthetic judgment have generally agreed that common sense does not treat aesthetic judgments in the same way as typical expressions of subjective preferences—rather, it endows them with intersubjective validity, the property of being right or wrong regardless of disagreement. Moreover, this apparent intersubjective validity has been taken to constitute one of the main explananda for philosophical accounts of aesthetic judgment. But is it really the case that most people spontaneously treat aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity? In this paper, we report the results of a cross‐cultural study with over 2,000 respondents spanning 19 countries. Despite significant geographical variations, these results suggest that most people do not treat their own aesthetic judgments as having intersubjective validity. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for theories of aesthetic judgment and th...
In this paper, we present results of cross-linguistic studies of Japanese and English knowing how... more In this paper, we present results of cross-linguistic studies of Japanese and English knowing how constructions that show radical differences in knowledge-how attributions with large effect sizes. The results suggest that the relevant ability is neither necessary nor sufficient for knowledge-how captured by Japanese constructions. We shall argue that such data will open up a gap between otherwise indistinguishable two conceptions of the very topic of knowledge-how, or the debate between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism, namely a debate about the nature of knowledge-how and a debate about the state captured by “know how,” which we call the knowledge-how interpretation and the state interpretation, respectively. Consequently, the results have not only various possible philosophical implications that have not been considered or discussed in the literature but also provide new topics in the theory of knowledge-how, including the question of which interpretation of the topic is correct itself.
Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, 2005
In Mizumoto & Ishikawa (2002), we introduced a paradigm of experiment which is of interest to bot... more In Mizumoto & Ishikawa (2002), we introduced a paradigm of experiment which is of interest to both psychology as well as philosophy. This experiment involved a subject wearing a Head-Mount Display (HMD) while a camera was set up in the upper corner of the same room in which the subject was to be found. In the experiment images were sent wirelessly from the camera to the HMD, so that the subject could observe himself from the third-person perspective through the HMD. In this paper we will discuss the interdisciplinary aspect of this experiment, presenting specific results of psychological experiments as examples together with outlines for further experiments.
Journal of Consciousness Studies, Jul 1, 2005
This work involved human subjects or animals in its research. The authors confirm that all human/... more This work involved human subjects or animals in its research. The authors confirm that all human/animal subject research procedures and protocols are exempt from review board approval.
Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, 2003
Kagaku tetsugaku, 2005
Merely saying that someone believes that p does not imply anything about whether the .belief is h... more Merely saying that someone believes that p does not imply anything about whether the .belief is held consciously and/ or held with certainty. In this paper I will give some analysis of such subjective differences of belief and try to express them in terms of the combinations of familiar epistemic operators such as the knowledge operator K and the belief operator B. Proper formulation of such differences will in turn clarify the interconnection between consciousness and certainty qua properties of belief, and assure us that we do not have to take special care of these properties when we are concerned with formal theories of belief and knowledge.
Indian International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2005
Theoria, Nov 1, 2022
In this paper, we propose and justify the cross-linguistic study of the concept of truth through ... more In this paper, we propose and justify the cross-linguistic study of the concept of truth through empirical studies of truth predicates, with actual data of such studies. We first conceptually explore the possibility of cross-linguistic disagreement about truth purely due to linguistic norms governing truth predicates, which may imply a kind of pluralism about the concept of truth. We then consider the conditions under which we would be justified in inferring this sort of pluralism from the fact of such cross-linguistic disagreement. We then report results of three studies on the use of English “is true” and Japanese two truth predicates, as well as “is correct” and its Japanese counterpart. Next, we report another set of studies using a different vignette, where the radical cross-linguistic difference observed in earlier studies disappeared. These data together suggest that the moral-political factor in the truth-bearer (utterance) strongly affects the uses of Japanese truth predicates but not those of English. Finally, we will discuss the implications of the studies and results reported here, and the empirical possibility of what we call lexical alethic pluralism, for debates over relativism, theories of meaning, and the deflationary and inflationary theories of truth.
Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, 2009
Joiiathan Bennett, in his (2003), says that fbr indicative conditjonals tbe unrestricted forin of... more Joiiathan Bennett, in his (2003), says that fbr indicative conditjonals tbe unrestricted forin of rriodiis penens (MP) is not valid, but restT'icted MP is still valid. In this paper I argue that Bemnet･t is wrong, that even the rGstricted fbrm of rv'TP t'ails for indicative coiiclitioiials. I wi]1 show this by consLructirig, firoiri his own count･erexamp!c to other formal propertjes of indicatives, a counLerexainple which is immune to the types of ci'iticism that Bennett launches against the famous ceunterexample to MI' b.v Vl)nn McGee. I will also show that this type of failure of MP can be confirined visually by a new but natural reading of the Adams-style Veiiii diagrain.
Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, 2003
According to this view, the difference between them is mainly a matter of emphasis. That may be t... more According to this view, the difference between them is mainly a matter of emphasis. That may be true from a formal point of view. But this kind of relation holds only while one follows the tradition of so-called AGM theory. The AGM theory, named after the seminal paper by Alchourron, Gardenfors, and Makinson (1985), has been a dominant paradigm in the symbolic approach to the belief change, by providing a set of postulates that the theory of belief change should satisfy.2 But its presuppositions are now being questioned. Especially, I take the following two are the most problematic. 1) Beliefs one has are closed under deduction. (The closure principle) 2) Belief change must be kept minimal. (The principle of conservatism)
Language Sciences, May 1, 2021
Is KNOW a semantic prime? In other words, does "know" express a universal semantic primitive that... more Is KNOW a semantic prime? In other words, does "know" express a universal semantic primitive that is shared by all the corresponding verbs in languages of the world? The researchers of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), part of whose project is to find such universal semantic primitives, think so. Recently, Gian Marco Farese, in his paper published in this journal, defended this view in relation to the Japanese knowledge verbs. Since one of his main targets was my own paper but he did not respond to the main part of its empirical data while misrepresenting another part of my data, I would like to clarify the point of my paper here.
Philosophical Studies, May 26, 2017
In this paper I will propose a simple linguistic approach to the Knobe effect, or the moral asymm... more In this paper I will propose a simple linguistic approach to the Knobe effect, or the moral asymmetry of intention-attribution in general. 1 Joshua Knobe has taken such an effect to be a psychological phenomenon, over and above what can be investigated through the traditional conceptual analysis (e.g. Knobe 2010, Phillips, Luguri, Knobe 2015). If he is right, it seems that language is not really relevant to the phenomenon and the linguistic approach to it is misguided from the start. 2 So let us first briefly discuss this issue starting from the linguistic relevance of experimental philosophy in general. 1. What are experimental philosophers doing? the positive program "are motivated to explore intuitions experimentally because they think that by doing so they can do a better job of conceptual analysis" (p. 33). 3 Let us call this the supplementary picture of experimental philosophy. 4 However, although there Stich and Tobia use the Knobe effect as one of the representative results in the positive program of experimental philosophy, Knobe himself began to explicitly reject this kind of picture after his 2003a, 5 saying "we abandon the assumption that the study of people's intuitions about cases can only have philosophical significance insofar as it helps us to answer semantic questions" (Knobe 2007, p. 120). He instead claims that his research is about folk psychology, which is supposed to reveal facts about (in his words) "how the mind works" (ibid.). 6 The main reason for not adopting the semantic/conceptual interpretation of the Knobe effect, or the moral asymmetry of intention-attribution, may be that it is part of 3 On the other hand, experimental philosophy of the negative program denies the reliance on intuitions in philosophy in general, or in its weaker form, the reliance on intuitions without any empirical support. Weinberg (2016) takes the latter as the negative program of experimental philosophy. If so, it corresponds to Experimental Restrictionism of Nadelhoffer and Nahmias (2007). See section 5.2 of Weinberg (2016) for more on the negative program.
Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, 2009
More than two decades ago, VtLnn McGee presented an alleged countcrexample to modus ponens (MP), ... more More than two decades ago, VtLnn McGee presented an alleged countcrexample to modus ponens (MP), Despit,e criticisrns, iL seems to have survived to dat･e. Tn this papcr, I "iill dafend McGee:s counterexample against the critici,sm by Ber-a,rd Katz, as a reprcsentativc of a type of the defenrse of MP, which appeals te certain logical principles, or what I ca]l the togicat defensc of MPi. I will arguc t･hat his way of criticizing)LrtcGee, aild therefbre of defendiiig)CP, actually begs the question. I wi]I c:enc]ude tha,t, thc logical dcfense of ",/TP in general will ii]evitably beg the question, and hence is doomed t･o t'ail. (This paper, toget･her with my (2e09), constitutes a purt of iny project on indicative conditionals, which is itself a, part of the larger project on the theory of knowledge and belief change.
Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, Oct 11, 2022
In this paper, we present what we call the argument from accidental truth, according to which som... more In this paper, we present what we call the argument from accidental truth, according to which some instances of deflationist schemata, even those carefully reformulated and adjusted by Field and Horwich to accommodate the truth of utterances, are falsified due to accidental truths. Since the folk concept of truth allows for accidental truths, the deflationary theory of truth will face a serious problem. In particular, it follows that the deflationist schema fails to capture the proper extension of truth by precluding accidental truths of utterances. Even though the argument uses the contextualist cases, this conclusion does not require so much as the truth of contextualism, but only two assumptions, the existence of context-relative non-literal contents of utterances (or speech acts), and the existence of accidental truths, both of which are widely accepted by folks and theorists. We will also consider various responses to the argument, including the revisionary deflationist position, all of which we argue are unsatisfactory or committed to a highly implausible view.
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Papers by Masaharu Mizumoto