20th Century Analytic Philosophy, Misc

This paper deals with a relatively recent trend in the history of analytic philosophy, philosophical logic, and theory of science: the philosophical study of the role of inconsistency in empirical science. This paper is divided in three sections that correspond to the three types of inconsistencies identified: (i) factual, occurring between theory and observations, (ii) external, occurring between two mutually contradictory theories, and (iii) internal, characterising theories that entail mutually contradictory statements.

This is a one page handout identifying some notable omissions from her brief history of gender identity theory.

Forthcoming in Darren Bradley (ed.), Carnap and Contemporary Philosophy. -/- This paper is centered on Carnap’s views on rationality. More specifically, much of the focus is on a puzzle regarding Carnap’s view on rationality that Florian Steinberger has recently discussed. Not only is Steinberger’s discussion of significant intrinsic interest: his discussion also raises general questions about Carnap interpretation. As I have discussed in earlier work, there are two very different ways of interpreting Carnap’s talk of “frameworks” – and, relatedly, different (...) ways of interpreting Carnap’s principle of tolerance. Carnap can be interpreted as either a relativist or as what I call a language pluralist. Steinberger’s puzzle arises given the relativist interpretation; I believe the language pluralist interpretation is correct. Most of the discussion will concern the correct interpretation of Carnap, and what this means for Steinberger’s puzzle. While I will not here mount a full defense of the language pluralist interpretation, I will pause to discuss Vera Flocke’s recent criticism of it. Towards the end, I will describe a puzzle regarding rationality different from Steinberger’s. The puzzle that I describe does arise already for the language pluralist. (shrink)

Cosmopolitans like Gillian Brock, Charles Beitz, and Thomas Pogge argue that the principles of justice selected and arranged in lexical priority in Rawls’ first original position would—and should for the same reasons as in the first—also be selected in Rawls’ second original position. After all, the argument goes, what reasons other than morally arbitrary ones do we have for selecting a second set of principles? A different, though undoubtedly related, point of contention is the cosmopolitan charge that Rawls fails to (...) consider the unfavorable conditions that owe themselves to global factors. Perhaps there was a time when interconnectedness and interdependency between states was not a factor, but in the current global order, this is certainly not the case. While this paper will address other related cosmopolitan concerns mentioned in Brock’s work, it is these two points that are perhaps the two biggest threats to the Rawlsian project and, as such, it is these two points that will be the primary focus of this paper. (shrink)

In his recent article "Carnapian Frameworks" (Synthese, 2021), Gabriel Broughton criticizes my discussions of Carnap on ontology and puts forward his own interpretation of what Carnap’s external/internal distinction amounts to. I here first argue that Broughton’s main claims about me are based on a misinterpretation. Then I turn to some issues of broader interest. I argue that Broughton’s own, potentially interesting interpretation of Carnap’s external/internal distinction does not work. And in light of Broughton’s discussion I present a sharpened version of (...) what I have earlier said about Carnap’s this distinction. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars’ “myth of the given” had a momentous influence on 20th-century epistemology, putting under pressure the internalist foundationalism so prominent in early analytic philosophy. In this paper, I argue that the core themes in Sellars’ argument are anticipated in the work of the London philosopher and psychologist Beatrice Edgell (1871-1948). Indeed, in some respects Edgell’s argument against the myth of the given is even more compelling than Sellars’. The paper logically reconstructs and historically contextualizes Edgell’s line of argument, as (...) emerging out of a critique of Russell’s epistemology, with the goal of showing that the “myth of the given” effectively predated Sellars by four decades. (shrink)

To believe that logic has no history might at first seem peculiar today. But since the early 20th century, this position has been repeatedly conflated with logical monism of Kantian provenance. This logical monism asserts that only one logic is authoritative, thereby rendering all other research in the field marginal and negating the possibility of acknowledging a history of logic. In this paper, I will show how this and many related issues have developed, and that they are founded on only (...) one prominent statement by Kant. I will argue, however, that this statement takes on a very different meaning in a broader context of the history and philosophy of science, and that Kant and his supporters never advocated the logical monism that they are still said to hold today. (shrink)

Review Essay of G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (1978, 2000).

Omul a căutat dintotdeauna să descopere în viața sa chintesența elementelor existențiale. Adunate laolaltă ca un imens puzzle cosmologic, întrebările Filosofiei au avut cel puțin capacitatea revelatoare a marilor problematizări în ascendența omului de la imanent la transcendent. Prima etapă notabilă în atingerea acestei performanțe îi este negreșit tributată „Filosofiei”, socotită de Platon drept „cea mai mare artă”. Mai concis, pornind de la termenul de artă (gr. μουσικη – lumea muzelor), ni se arată în mod inspirat că „Filosofia este cea (...) mai înaltă muzică pe care a creat-o și a intonat-o mintea omenească. Numai prin acordurile și armoniile acestei muzici a filosofiei, înțelepții lui Platon se puteau ridica până la cel mai înalt cerc al sferelor cerești, unde erau învredniciți de epopteia divină a sublimelor Idei și unde se desfătau cu inefabila muzică a sferelor, muzica universală, cosmică”. Temele fundamentale descoperite prin atare contextualizări, în ceea ce privește filosofia platonică, au rămas până astăzi: „Binele”, „Adevărul” și „Frumosul”. Pentru lămurirea și înțelegerea lor deplină avem însă, negreșit, nevoie de interdisciplinaritate, aplecându-ne așadar spre contextualizarea filosofică, juridică și nu în cele din urmă, teologico-religioasă. „Marii filosofi ai antichității, Socrate, Platon sau Aristotel, ca să enumerăm pe cei mai importanți dintre ei, au cultivat în rândul contemporanilor gustul valorilor eterne, pentru bine, adevăr și frumos, pregătind astfel terenul pentru răspândirea Evangheliei lui Hristos, ca sinteză a valorilor supreme și în primul rând a iubirii. Dacă există până astăzi continente mai puțin receptive la valorile creștine, acestea se datorează în bună măsură absenței unor filosofi care să ridice mintea omului la înălțimea valorilor ideale. Filosofia antică a făcut parte din planul lui Dumnezeu pentru plinirea vremii, în vederea întrupării Fiului lui Dumnezeu. Dacă Vechiul Testament poate fi considerat, după cuvântul Sfântului Apostol Pavel, ca un pedagog către Hristos pentru evrei, tot astfel și filosofia antică a îndeplinit în lumea păgână același rol de pedagog către Hristos. Ca o dovadă a prețuirii lor, Biserica răsăriteană a așezat chipurile lui Platon, Socrate sau Aristotel în rândul personajelor din tinda locașului de cult”. Înainte de a analiza interdisciplinar aceste valori perene ale culturii universale, este necesar să conștientizăm ascendența omului spre dobândirea deplină a virtuților. Astfel, în perspectiva descoperirii omului corect, filosofia platoniciană merge până la experierea directă a paideei conceptelor de persoană, stat și societate, de unde trece foarte ușor spre problematizarea Binelui absolut. „Așa trebuie gândite în statul platonic, înțelepciunea, curajul cumpătarea și dreptatea ... Respingerea tiraniei și unitatea reală a corpului social impun acțiuni reciproce ale individului și statului. Sensul și limitele libertății sunt determinate prin formula educației prin stat și pentru stat”. Această absorbție statală a individului l-a depărtat pe Aristotel de Republica lui Platon, „Stagiritul având un simț deosebit al concretului, ca orice observator al naturii”. (shrink)

In this paper, I look at Susan Stebbing’s articles and reviews that critically engage logical positivism. These appeared before the publication of A.J. Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic and helped shape the early British reception of logical positivism. I highlight Stebbing’s adoption of G.E. Moore’s tripartite distinction between knowing a proposition, understanding it, and giving an analysis of it and, in light of this distinction, her focus on whether the principle of verifiability can ground a plausible account of communication. Stebbing (...) thinks not, and I reconstruct her reasons, as well as her own account of communication. In doing this, I relate her criticisms to her rejection of methodological solipsism and her dissatisfaction with the logical positivist treatment of statements about other minds and the past. I also argue that Stebbing’s work provides a bridge to later criticisms of logical positivism from ordinary language philosophers. Foregrounding Stebbing’s engagement with logical positivism, especially her focus on communication, paints a fuller picture of how the logical positivists came to be part of analytic philosophy despite having different concerns than many of the British philosophers engaging their work. (shrink)

Katzav and Vaesen have argued that control by analytic philosophers of key journals, philosophy departments and at least one funding body plays a substantial role in explaining the emergence of analytic philosophy into dominance in the Anglophone world and the corresponding decline of speculative philosophy. They also argued that this use of control suggests a characterisation of analytic philosophy as, at the institutional level, a sectarian form of critical philosophy. I test these hypotheses against data about philosophy job hires at (...) key philosophy departments in the USA during the period 1930-1979, and against data about PhD completions during the period 1956-1965. I argue, further, that Katzav and Vaesen’s hypotheses can fully explain the data and are more fully able to do so than are some other key accounts of the emergence of analytic philosophy in the USA. (shrink)

I introduce the key ideas of foundationalist, coherentist and pragmatist theories of knowledge. I then use these ideas as background for presenting the work on knowledge and perception in this part, work by Grace Andrus de Laguna and Marie Collins Swabey. We will see that these authors critique the idea of sense data that was central to the foundationalist theories of knowledge of Bertrand Russel and other early analytic thinkers, though de Laguna’s critique leads to perspectivism about perception and knowledge (...) while Swabey rejects perspectivism. So too, we will see that de Laguna and Swabey develop epistemologies with strong coherentist elements, much as did their idealist teacher James Edwin Creighton. De Laguna’s, developed jointly with her husband, Theodore de Laguna, is a sophisticated form of naturalism that is built on a critique of pragmatist naturalism and is similar to the one made famous later by Willard V. Quine. Swabey rejects all forms of naturalism, arguing that knowledge requires an a priori foundation in reason. (shrink)

This chapter uses the distinction between speculative and analytic philosophy as a background against which to present the summaries of the articles on the nature of philosophy by Mary Whiton Calkins, Dorothy Walsh and Marjorie Glicksman. Calkins and Walsh (in her first contribution) examine the relationship between philosophy and metaphysics: Calkins identifies philosophy with speculative metaphysics while Walsh argues that any ethical theory requires some underlying speculative metaphysics. In Walsh’s second contribution, she further argues that philosophical language rightly is characteristically (...) different from the languages of science, logic and poetry. Glicksman, finally, addresses the question how to deal with the multiplicity of views concerning the nature of philosophy. (shrink)

Anselm’s ontological argument is an argument for the existence of God. This paper presents Iris Murdoch’s ontological argument for the existence of the Good. It discusses her interpretation of Anselm’s argument, her distinctive appropriation of it, as well as some of the merits of her version of the argument. In doing so, it also shows how the argument integrates some key Murdochian ideas: morality’s wide scope, the basicness of vision to morality, moral realism, and Platonism.

In this article, the author analyses the relationship between two prominent philosophers of the 20th century in Europe and Great Britain—Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell. According to a lot of correspondence available nowadays we can reconstruct not only the environment of thought in Cambridge in the beginning and the first half of the 20th century but to find out some very personal, subjective grounds for the changes of relationship between thinkers, misunderstandings between them. Such a kind of biographical-historical reconstruction does (...) not interfere but helps to understand better the origin, development, and criticism of philosophical ideas and theories. In this context, the personal relationship between Russell and Wittgenstein, their friendship for more than 30 years, and mutual assistance, both intellectual and business, played a big role in the development and formation of both philosophers as philosophers. Even mutual disagreements and criticism of ideas over time helped them to see the shortcomings and sometimes even complete failure of their theses and statements. First, the author describes in detail the role of Russell in Wittgenstein’s life: first meeting and inspiration to do philosophy, support in studies, assistance in the publication of Wittgenstein’s first book, support, and facilitation in returning to Cambridge in 1929, obtaining PhD degree and receiving Trinity College grant. Second, the author considers the fundamental points of philosophical disagreements between the two philosophers and Wittgenstein’s critique of Russell’s ideas. (shrink)

This article analyses in detail Wittgenstein’s ‘Cambridge period’ from his return to Cambridge in 1929 until his decease in 1951. Within the ‘Cambridge period’, scholars usually distinguish the ‘middle’ (1929–1936) and the ‘late’ (1936–1951) periods. The trigger point of Wittgenstein’s return to Cambridge and philosophy was his visit to Brouwer’s lecture on ‘Mathematics, Science, and Language’ in Vienna in March 1928. Dutch mathematician Brouwer influenced not only Wittgenstein’s ability to do philosophy again but also the development of some of his (...) ideas. Namely, for Brouwer, language was a natural development of the social history of human beings. With the help of his friends, F. P. Ramsey, J. M. Keynes, G. E. Moore, and B. Russell, in 1929 Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge. The author argues that this was the crucial turning point in his philosophy that led to the revision of some of his ideas. Wittgenstein returned from self-isolation in remote villages of Lower Austria to the intellectual academic environment, where he could discuss his ideas with intellectual interlocutors and receive their valuable remarks and comments. This article is organised in chronological order: it describes the very ‘early’ middle period of 1929–1935 involving the development of Wittgenstein’s ‘phenomenology’ and the origin of the ‘language-games’ concept in the Blue and Brown Books; 1935–1936 period of ‘romantic’ enthusiasm for Soviet Russia and a trip there; Wittgenstein’s life and work during the WWII-time; resign from teaching in Cambridge in 1947 to finally finish his Philosophical Investigations. The author suggests that the ‘romantic areal’ about the USSR was formed by Wittgenstein’s predilection for Russian poetry and literature of the nineteenth century, i.e., Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin. Analysing the development of Wittgenstein’s ideas on language in his Cambridge period, the author mentions the influence of N. Bakhtin and P. Sraffa. Also, the author touches upon the topic of the possibility of Marxism’s influence on Wittgenstein’s life and thought. (shrink)

This article supports the thesis that the rejection of the analytic/Continental distinction is not possible with an analytic point of view, and grounds the possibility of authentic philosophy within the reasons for the existence of contemporary Continental philosophy. After the presentation of the problem, in the first part, the reasons why classical philosophy was experienced as a way of life in ancient Greece is explained and associated with the act of ‘parrhesia’. In the second part, the rise of the analytic/Continental (...) distinction and the dogmas of reductionism and scientism are shed light on with reference to the texts of some pioneering analytic philosophers. Afterwards, the problem of hegemony in the Anglophone world is pointed out and the position of Continental philosophy is reconsidered under the conceptualization major and minor philosophy. Finally, contemporary Continental philosophy is defined as ‘authentic philosophy’ due to the rhizomatic connections it establishes both in itself & at an interdisciplinary level. (shrink)

When experimental participants are given the chance to reflect and revise their initial judgments in a dynamic conversational context, do their responses to philosophical scenarios differ from responses to those same scenarios presented in a traditional static survey? In three experiments comparing responses given in conversational contexts with responses to traditional static surveys, we find no consistent evidence that responses differ in these different formats. This aligns with recent findings that various manipulations of reflectiveness have no effect on participants’ judgments (...) about philosophical scenarios. Although we did not find a consistent quantitative effect of format (conversation vs. static survey), conversational experiments still provide qualitative insights into debates about how participants are understanding (or misunderstanding) the scenarios they read in experimental studies, whether they are replacing difficult questions with questions that are more easily answered, and how participants are imagining the scenarios they read in ways that differ from what is explicitly stated by experimenters. We argue that conversational experiments—"Socratic questionnaires"—help show what is going on “under the hood” of traditional survey designs in the experimental investigation of philosophical questions. (shrink)

This paper introduces the philosophy of Grace Andrus de Laguna in order to renew interest in it. I show that, in the 1910s and 1920s, she develops ideas and arguments that are also found playing key roles in the development of analytic philosophy decades later. Further, I describe her sympathetic, but acute, criticism of pragmatism and Heideggerian ontology, and situate her work in the tradition of American, speculative philosophy. Before 1920, we will see, de Laguna appeals to multiple realizability to (...) undermine reductionism in science, to support perspectival, scientific realism and, with help from a private language argument, to favour the view that mental states are classified by behavioural, teleological roles over what came to be called ‘type physicalism’. Her view of speech, mostly developed in the 1920s, tells us that its primary role is coordinating group behaviour rather than expressing thoughts. Belief is understood in terms of its causal role, including its causal relations to other kinds of mental states, when coordinating group behaviour. Thought is similarly understood. In developing her theory of mind, de Laguna rejects the pragmatist claims that belief can be reduced to dispositions to behaviour and that thought’s function is to address specific, rather than general, problems. She also favours meaning holism and rejects the analytic–synthetic distinction. In later work, de Laguna argues that individuals’ activity of self-maintenance brings universals, conceived of as irreducible potentialities, into being and makes them increasingly determinate. Further, she identifies the existence of all individuals with forms of self-maintenance and takes the existence of people to include maintenance of the cultural world. Such a unified treatment of existence, she holds, permits making its evolution intelligible. Heidegger’s view of being is rejected for not permitting this. All de Laguna’s work, we will see, fits a vision of philosophy as the systematic, imaginative and naturalistic examination of being as well as a source of criticism of science. (shrink)

This paper contributes to explaining the rise of logical empiricism in mid-twentieth century (North) America and to a better understanding of American philosophy of science before the dominance of logical empiricism. We show that, contrary to a number of existing histories, philosophy of science was already a distinct subfield of philosophy, one with its own approaches and issues, even before logical empiricists arrived in America. It was a form of speculative philosophy with a concern for speculative metaphysics, normative issues relating (...) to science and society and issues which later were associated with logical empiricist philosophy of science, issues such as confirmation, scientific explanation, reductionism and laws of nature. Further, philosophy of science was not primarily pragmatist in orientation. We also show, with the help of our historical characterization, that a recent account of the emergence of analytic philosophy applies to the rise of logical empiricism. It has been argued that the emergence of American analytic philosophy is partly explained by analytic philosophers’ use of key institutions, including of journals, to marginalize speculative philosophy and promote analytic philosophy. We argue that this use of institutions included the marginalization of speculative and value-laden philosophy of science and the promotion of logical empiricism. (shrink)

It has been insufficiently remarked that Murdoch deems “Kant’s ethical theory” to be “one of the most beautiful and exciting things in the whole of philosophy” in her 1959 essay “The Sublime and the Good”. Murdoch specifically has in mind the connection between Kant’s ethics and his theory of the sublime, which runs via the moral feeling of respect (Achtung). The chapter examines Murdoch’s interest in Kant on this point as a way to tease out the range of issues that (...) complicate Kant’s significance for the development of Murdoch’s distinctive conception of ethics as it is articulated in _The Sovereignty of Good_ and earlier essays. It focuses on her particular concerns about the moral dangers of consolation, and why this led her to propose reworking the Kantian theory of the sublime as a theory of art, and specifically of tragedy. (shrink)

Burton Dreben taught a generation of scholars the value of closely attending to the recent philosophical past. But the few papers he authored do little to capture his philosophical voice. In this article, I turn instead to an unpublished transcript of Dreben in conversation with his contemporaries. In addition to yielding insights into a transitional period in W.V. Quine’s and Donald Davidson’s thought, I argue that this document showcases Dreben in his element, revealing the way that he shaped the views (...) of key analytic philosophers. More broadly, I argue that by writing conversationalists like Dreben into our histories we can capture the collaborative nature of philosophy. (shrink)

Margaret MacDonald (1907–56) was a central figure in the history of early analytic philosophy in Britain due to both her editorial work as well as her own writings. While her later work on aesthetics and political philosophy has recently received attention, her early writings in the 1930s present a coherent and, for its time, strikingly original blend of common-sense and scientific philosophy. In these papers, MacDonald tackles the central problems of philosophy of her day: verification, the problem of induction, and (...) the relationship between philosophical and scientific method. MacDonald’s philosophy of science starts from the principle that we should carefully analyse the elements of scientific practice (particularly its temporal features) and the ways that scientists describe that practice. That is, she applies the techniques of ordinary language philosophy to actual scientific language. MacDonald shows how ‘scientific common-sense’ is inconsistent with both of the dominant schools of philosophy of her day. Bringing MacDonald back into the story of analytic philosophy corrects the impression that in early analytic philosophy, there are fundamental dichotomies between the style of Moore and Wittgenstein, on the one hand, and the Vienna Circle on the other. (shrink)

This Open Access volume is based on the 'Early Carnap in Context’ workshop that took place in Konstanz in 2017 and looks at Rudolf Carnap’s philosophy, documented in his recently released diaries, from a combination of historical, cultural and philosophical perspectives. It enables further evaluation of the diaries and traces newly found interrelationships and their systematic definition. From a cultural and historical point of view, Logical Empiricism and Carnap’s pivotal opus, The Logical Structure of the World, did not evolve in (...) a vacuum. This applies equally in a history of philosophy context as well as under consideration of contemporary historical and cultural influences such as the socio-cultural setting in Vienna and Prague, the correlation between Logical Empiricism and Bauhaus modernism, the connection to the Life Reform Movement or the Youth Movement with its own life philosophy. Pursuing Carnap’s progression on a micro level of history and referring the results back to Carnap’s philosophy is now facilitated by recent access to his Diaries from 1908–1935. These shorthand records, reading lists, travel reports and notes constitute a valuable source for the research of networks and social movements which left their mark on him. (shrink)

The discussion of the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) in Aristotle’s Metaphysics Γ is usually taken to include three ‘versions’ of the principle: an ontological, psychological, and logical one. In this article I develop an interpretation of Metaphysics Γ3 and a parallel text, De interpretatione 14, in order to show that these texts are concerned with two related but different principles: a version of the Principle of Identity, and a corollary to this, which concerns the ability to accept two ‘opposite’ items (...) at the same time. I argue that these principles must be considered separately in order to properly understand Aristotle’s remarks about PNC in Metaphysics Γ, and in order to defend his approach in these remarks against certain objections raised against the discussion in Metaphysics Γ by Jan Łukasiewicz in his "Über den Satz des Widerspruchs bei Aristoteles". The main result of my interpretation is to distinguish in the discussion of PNC in Metaphysics Γ three principles: one concerning linguistic items (words and statements), one concerning thoughts (δόξαι), and one concerning objects or states of affairs. (shrink)

Die Moralphilosophie des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts hat mit Konsequentialismus, Deontologie, Kontraktualismus und Tugendethik nicht nur höchst einflussreiche Theorieparadigmen produktiv weiterentwickelt, sondern auch eine Reihe wichtiger neuer Probleme aufgeworfen. Der vorliegende Band versammelt zentrale Beiträge der analytischen Moralphilosophie, u. a. von David Gauthier, Shelly Kagan, Frances Kamm, Thomas Nagel, Michael Slote, Christine Swanton und Susan Wolf, die für ein Verständnis gegenwärtiger Diskussionen in der normativen Ethik unabdingbar sind. -/- Inhaltsverzeichnis: Vorwort Einleitung: Analytische Moralphilosophie der Gegenwart -/- 1. Konsequentialismus Shelly Kagan: (...) Ein Plädoyer gegen die Alltagsmoral Peter Railton: Entfremdung, Konsequentialismus und die Anforderungen der Moral -/- 2. Deontologie Thomas Nagel: Ethik William David Ross: Was macht richtige Handlungen richtig? -/- 3. Kontraktualismus David Gauthier: Warum Kontraktualismus? Thomas Scanlon: Die Struktur des Kontraktualismus -/- 4. Tugendethik Christine Swanton: Eine tugendethische Theorie des richtigen Handelns Michael Slote: Akteursbasierte Tugendethik -/- 5. Moralische Aggregation John Taurek: Zählt die Anzahl? Frances M. Kamm: Aggregation und zwei moralphilosophische Methoden -/- 6. Das Prinzip der Doppelwirkung Jonathan Bennett: Vorhergesehene Nebenwirkungen vs. beabsichtigte Folgen Ralph Wedgwood: Zur Verteidigung der Lehre von der Doppelwirkung -/- 7. Moralische Rechte H. L. A. Hart: Gibt es natürliche Rechte? Joseph Raz: Über die Beschaffenheit von Rechten -/- 8. Moralischer Zufall Thomas Nagel: Moralischer Zufall Susan Wolf: Die Moral des moralischen Zufalls. (shrink)

This chapter examines Bertrand Russell’s various confrontations with Bergson’s work. Russell’s meetings with Bergson during 1911 would be followed in 1912 by the publication of Russell’s earliest polemical pieces. His 1912 review of Bergson’s Laughter ridicules the effort to develop a philosophical account of humour on the basis of some formula. In his 1912 “The Philosophy of Bergson”, Russell develops a series of objections against Bergson’s accounts of number, space, and duration. Bergson’s position is defended against Russell’s onslaught by H. (...) W. Carr (1913) and Karin Costelloe-Stephen (1914), though Russell only replies to the former. By contrast to Bergson’s silence in the face of Russell’s criticisms, Russell would continue responding to Bergson’s views in multiple works during the 1910s and 1920s. As this chapter shows, Russell not only develops further objections against specific theses upheld by Bergson, but also comments upon the political implications of Bergson’s philosophy, as well as its positioning within the history of French philosophy. (shrink)

This paper aims to shed light on an underexplored aspect of Gilbert Ryle’s interest in the notion of “knowing-how”. It is argued that in addition to his motive of discounting a certain theory of mind, his interest in the notion also stemmed (and perhaps stemmed more deeply) from two ethical interests: one concerning his own life as a philosopher and whether the philosopher has any meaningful task, and one concerning the ancient issue of whether virtue is a kind of knowledge. (...) It is argued that Ryle saw know-how as crucial in both respects and, also, that he continued to be interested in these ethical issues throughout his career. (shrink)

The paper portrays the influence of major philosophical ideas on the 1935 debates on quantum theory that reached their climax in the paper by Einstein, Podosky and Rosen, and describes the relevance of these ideas to the vast impact of the paper. I claim that the focus on realism in many common descriptions of the debate misses important aspects both of Einstein's and Bohr's thinking. I suggest an alternative understanding of Einstein's criticism of quantum mechanics as a manifestation of the (...) same methodological principles that served him in the construction of the special and the general theories of relativity. These principles address, in a very specific way, the relation of the theoretical mathematical representations to the represented physical systems. These ideas, I claim, played a key role in the influence of the paper on later works that changed our understanding of quantum theory despite the rejection of EPR's central conclusion. (shrink)

While C. I. Lewis was traditionally interpreted as an epistemological foundationalist throughout his major works, virtually every recent treatment of Lewis's epistemology dissents. But the traditional interpretation is correct: Lewis believed that apprehensions of "the given" are certain independently of support from, and constitute the ultimate warrant for, objective empirical beliefs. This interpretation proves surprisingly capable of accommodating apparently contrary textual evidence. The non-foundationalist reading, by contrast, simply cannot explain Lewis's explicit opposition to coherentism and his insistence that only apprehensions (...) of the given enable us to answer the regress problem -- and so vindicate the possibility of empirical justification. (shrink)

“Dialectic” has been a matter of growing interest in contemporary philosophy. The present article analyzes dialectical methods and positions them by reference to two paradigmatic texts of German idealism and analytic philosophy, i.e. J.G. Fichte’s Science of Knowing (1804) and J. McDowell’s Mind and World. Both dialectical approaches will be interpreted with regard to their contribution in the debate on reductionism and anti-reductionism: both Fichte and McDowell claim that philosophical positions and logical terms stand in a dualistic relationship to one (...) another, on the one hand, but are separated by a gulf, on the other. I will argue that for McDowell dialectic seems to be an alternative to one-sided reductionisms as well as to normal anti-reductionistic holism. Furthermore, for Fichte dialectic is an adequate method for describing the relationship of reductionism and anti-reductionism itself. Both see in dialectic a technique for bridging the gulf between binary opposite terms of logic as well as mutually exclusive positions, such as mind and world, subject and object, or idealism and realism. (shrink)

Reism or concretism are the labels for a position in ontology and semantics that is represented by various philosophers. As Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and Jan Woleński have shown, there are two dimensions with which the abstract expression of reism can be made concrete: The ontological dimension of reism says that only things exist; the semantic dimension of reism says that all concepts must be reduced to concrete terms in order to be meaningful. In this paper we argue for the following two (...) theses: (1) Arthur Schopenhauer has advocated a reistic philosophy of language which says that all concepts must ultimately be based on concrete intuition in order to be meaningful. (2) In his semantics, Schopenhauer developed a theory of logic diagrams that can be interpreted by modern means in order to concretize the abstract position of reism. Thus we are not only enhancing Jan Woleński’s list of well-known reists, but we are also adding a diagrammatic dimension to concretism, represented by Schopenhauer. (shrink)

Why would philosophers interested in the points or functions of our conceptual practices bother with genealogical explanations if they can focus directly on paradigmatic examples of the practices we now have?? To answer this question, I compare the method of pragmatic genealogy advocated by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker—a method whose singular combination of fictionalising and historicising has met with suspicion—with the simpler method of paradigm-based explanation. Fricker herself has recently moved towards paradigm-based explanation, arguing that it is (...) a more perspicuous way of reaping the same explanatory pay-off as pragmatic genealogy while dispensing with its fictionalising and historicising. My aim is to determine when and why the reverse movement from paradigm-based explanation to pragmatic genealogy remains warranted. I argue that the fictionalising and historicising of pragmatic genealogy is well motivated, and I outline three ways in which the method earns its keep: by successfully handling historically inflected practices which paradigm-based explanation cannot handle; by revealing and arguing for connections to generic needs we might otherwise miss; and by providing comprehensive views of practices that place and relate the respects in which they serve both generic and local needs. (shrink)

The current debate concerning musical profundity was instigated, and set up by Peter Kivy in his book Music Alone (1990) as part of his comprehensive defense of enhanced formalism, a position he championed vigorously throughout his entire career. Kivy’s view of music led him to maintain utter skepticism regarding musical profundity. The scholarly debate that ensued centers on the question whether or not (at least some) music can be profound. In this study I would like to take the opportunity to (...) relate Wittgenstein’s ideas on music to this current debate, thereby achieving a twofold goal: not only to reintroduce Wittgenstein’s ideas into the current debate, but also to use the current debate as a foil to better appreciating Wittgenstein’s otherness as a philosopher of music. I argue that Wittgenstein’s unique philosophical response to the Romantic framing of the discourse concerning musical profundity —specifically, its threefold emphasis on the specificity, aboutness, and artistically exalted status of music— occasioned a view, which was bound to be glossed over by a philosophical tradition, whose origins had made it inimical to Wittgenstein’s original philosophical insights. I conclude that, in a sense, Wittgenstein occasions a paradigm shift by his philosophical thrust to undo the gravitational forces which form the current debate: the very idea of aboutness pertaining to music, and the very idea that a clear line could ever be drawn between music and language. (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga has played a pivotal role in bringing theological questions and ideas into the broad philosophical, predominantly non-theistic community. His “Advice to Christian Philosophers” (1983) was the turning point in the history of philosophical theology. In his “Advice” Plantinga talks about how best to be a Christian in philosophy. He suggests that Christian intellectuals should become more autonomous from the rest of philosophical world, display more unity, and express greater Christian self-confidence. These advices, however, are addressed not to just (...) any intellectual of a Christian affiliation. He addresses them to those 1) who have graduated from a conservative Christian college, 2) who have obtained a PhD in philosophy, and 3) who continue their career as professional philosophers. That means that the person should be well acquainted with the traditional Christian doctrine and practice, should be well versed in the contemporary analytic philosophy, and should be an acknowledged member of the established philosophical community. It would be a mistake to apply Plantinga’s “Advice” to a person who does not meet all of the three requirements. The present day situation in Russia is such that there is a dramatic shortfall of those intellectuals who satisfy all of the three Plantinga’s requirements. It is still premature for Russian Christian philosophers to become autonomous from the rest of the philosophical community, to establish Christian philosophical clusters, and to display Christian self-confidence in the face of the non-theistic majority. Philosophical theology in Russia is currently in its “pre-Plantingan” phase. In order to improve this situation I suggest reversing Plantinga’s advices into their opposites. Russian Christian philosophers ought to learn how to operate within the broad philosophical community. They should familiarize themselves with the contemporary analytic philosophy and its methods, and they should become acknowledged members of the established professional circles. Then, and only then, philosophical theology in Russia can enter its post-Plantingan era. (shrink)

An analysis of the recent efforts to define what counts as a "conspiracy theory", in which I argue that the philosophical and non-pejorative definition best captures the phenomenon researchers of conspiracy theory wish to interrogate.

This paper shows that during the first half of the 1960s The Journal of Philosophy quickly moved from publishing work in diverse philosophical traditions to, essentially, only publishing analytic philosophy. Further, the changes at the journal are shown, with the help of previous work on the journals Mind and The Philosophical Review, to be part of a pattern involving generalist philosophy journals in Britain and America during the period 1925-1969. The pattern is one in which journals controlled by analytic philosophers (...) systematically promote a form of critical philosophy and marginalise rival approaches to philosophy. This pattern, it is argued, helps to explain the growing dominance of analytic philosophy during the twentieth century and allows characterising this form of philosophy as, at least during 1925-1969, a sectarian form of critical philosophy. (shrink)

On a common reading of Davidson, the motivation for his proposal that a meaning theory is to take the form of a truth theory is at least partly guided by concern with the ends and means of interpretation. At the same time, the consensus seems to be that this proposal faces a particularly stubborn justificatory burden. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to suggest that there is a promising route to discharging this burden, albeit one that is visible (...) only once we shift our attention away from the so-called ‘problem of interpretation’; second, to make the case that, contrary to initial appearances, the line of justification offered here gives us a plausible interpretation of Davidson’s own goals. (shrink)

This is an instructor’s manual with student exercises for the Analytic Philosophy and Philosophy of Language course. It is intended to assist the instructor in teaching the subject to students for whom English is a second language. -/- This manual begins with a chapter that describes the types of learning activities during this course. Next are topic chapters, each of which has four sections: a synopsis of the lecture on the topic; a lecture lesson worksheet with tasks; a seminar lesson (...) worksheet with tasks; and assignments for essay writing. At the end of the manual is a list of key definitions for the course, a list of exam questions, and answer keys for seminar tasks and lecture worksheets. (shrink)

A longstanding debate in the philosophy of action opposes causalists to anti-causalists. Causalists claim the authority of Davidson, who offered powerful arguments to the effect that intentional explanations must be causal explanations. Anti-causalists claim the authority of Wittgenstein, who offered equally powerful arguments to the effect that reasons cannot be causes. My aim in this paper is to achieve a rapprochement between Davidsonian causalists and Wittgensteinian anti-causalists by showing how both sides can agree that reasons are not causes, but that (...) intentional explanations are causal explanations. To this end, I first defuse Davidson’s Challenge, an argument purporting to show that intentional explanations are best made sense of as being explanatory because reasons are causes. I argue that Wittgenstein furnishes anti-causalists with the means to resist this conclusion. I then argue that this leaves the Master Argument for the claim that intentional explanations are causal explanations, but that by distinguishing between a narrow and a wide conception of causal explanation, we can resolve the stalemate between Wittgensteinian anti-causalists impressed by the thought that reasons cannot be causes and Davidsonian causalists impressed by the thought that intentional explanations must be causal explanations. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe distinction between ‘context of discovery’ and ‘context of justification’ in philosophy of science appears simple at first but contains interesting complexities. Paul Hoyningen-Huene has catalogued some of these complexities and suggested that the core usefulness of the ‘context distinction’ is in distinguishing between descriptive and normative perspectives. Here, I expand on Hoyningen-Huene’s project by tracing the label ‘context of discovery and context of justification’ to its origin. I argue that, contrary to initial appearances, Hans Reichenbach’s initial context distinction from (...) 1938 does not easily map onto Hoyningen-Huene’s distinction between descriptive and normative perspectives on science. However, this is not a reason to reject Hoyningen-Huene’s simplified context distinction, nor do I recommend returning to Reichenbach’s initial proposal. It is, however, further reason to believe that the context distinction does not have a single, easily understood meaning. Along the way, I revisit Reichenbach’s version of ‘rational reconstruction’ and highlight its usefulness as a tool for philosophy in general. (shrink)

In the middle of last century metaphysics was widely criticized, ridiculed, and committed to the flames. During this period a handful of philosophers, against several anti-metaphysical trends, defended metaphysics and articulated novel metaphysical doctrines. Donald C. Williams was one of these philosophers. But while his contributions to metaphysics are well known his defence of metaphysics is not and yet it played a key part in the development and revival of metaphysics. In this paper I present his defence of metaphysics in (...) its historical context. I also show how his defence is relevant in response to recent attacks on metaphysics. (shrink)

Many have tackled the question ‘What (if anything) is analytic philosophy?’ I will not attempt to answer this vexed question. Rather, I address a smaller, more manageable set of interrelated questions: first, when and how did people begin using the label ‘analytic philosophy’? Second, how did those who used this label understand it? Third, why did many philosophers we today classify as analytic initially resist being grouped together under the single category of ‘analytic philosophy’? Finally, for the first generation who (...) described themselves as analytic philosophers, what was their intended contrast class? Relatedly, when did ‘continental philosophy’ become the standard opposition? Some evidence I present justifies received answers to these questions; other evidence supports surprising and unorthodox answers to these questions. (shrink)

Recently, mainstream philosophy journals have tended to implement more and more stringent forms of peer review, probably in an attempt to prevent editorial decisions that are based on factors other than quality. Against this trend, we propose that journals should relax their standards of acceptance, as well as be less restrictive about whom is to decide what is admitted into the debate. We start by arguing, partly on the basis of the history of peer review in the journal Mind, that (...) past and current peer review practices attest to partisanship with respect to philosophical approach. Then, we explain that such partisanship conflicts with the standard aims of peer review, and that it is both epistemically and morally problematic. This assessment suggests that, if feasible, journals should treat all available and proposed standards of acceptance in philosophy as epistemically equal, and that philosophical work should be evaluated in terms of the novelty and significance of its contribution to developing thought in ways that are of value. Finally, we show, in a programmatic way, that improving the current situation is feasible, and can be done fairly easily. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: It is a familiar story that Kant’s defence of our synthetic a priori cognition in the Critique of Pure Reason suffered sharp criticism throughout the extended philosophical revolutions that established analytic philosophy, the pragmatist tradition, and the phenomenological tradition as dominant philosophical movements in the first half of the twentieth century. One of the most important positive adaptations of Kant’s outlook, however, was the combined analytic and pragmatist conceptions of the a priori that were developed by the American philosophers (...) C. I. Lewis (1883–1964) and Wilfrid Sellars (1912–1989), most notably in Lewis’s 1929 classic, Mind and the World Order, followed by Sellars’ critical reworking of Lewis’s outlook in ‘Is There a Synthetic A Priori?’ (1953) and other mid-century articles. Both Lewis and Sellars defended central aspects of Kant’s analysis of our a priori knowledge of mind-independent physical objects and necessary causal connections. But both also radically transformed Kant’s view by defending the idea that there are alternative a priori conceptual frameworks that are subject to an ongoing process of reassessment and replacement on overall pragmatic and explanatory grounds. Furthermore, while Sellars’ answer to his question, ‘Is There a Synthetic A Priori?’ thus represented a partial endorsement of Lewis’s pragmatic relativization of the a priori, I argue that Sellars’ account of meaning diverged from Lewis in ways that constituted a significant improvement upon the previous ‘analytic’ defenses of the a priori, not only in Lewis but in general. This arguably has implications for wider disputes concerning the nature and possibility of a priori knowledge in non-formal domains. (shrink)

El presente artículo introduce el lector a la filosofía analítica de la religión desde un punto de vista histórico y haciendo énfasis en su evolución. El objetivo es doble: primero dar a conocer una nueva disciplina que se ha desarrollado de manera notoria dentro del habla inglesa pero que ha sido ignorada dentro de la filosofía de habla hispana; segundo, comprender su nacimiento y algunas de sus principales características.

This paper develops Bernard Williams’s suggestion that for philosophy to ignore its history is for it to assume that its history is vindicatory. The paper aims to offer a fruitful line of inquiry into the question whether philosophy has a vindicatory history by providing a map of possible answers to it. It first distinguishes three types of history: the history of discovery, the history of progress, and the history of change. It then suggests that much of philosophy lacks a vindicatory (...) history, for reasons that reflect philosophy’s character as a humanistic discipline. On this basis, the paper reconstructs Williams’s conception of what it means for philosophy to engage with its own history. The paper concludes that it is a mistake to think that a vindicatory history is what we would really like to have, and that in fact, the resulting picture gives philosophy several reasons to engage with its own history. (shrink)

W. V. Quine is arguably the intellectual father of contemporary naturalism, the idea that there is no distinctively philosophical perspective on reality. Yet, even though Quine has always been a science-minded philosopher, he did not adopt a fully naturalistic perspective until the early 1950s. In this paper, I reconstruct the genesis of Quine’s ideas on the relation between science and philosophy. Scrutinizing his unpublished papers and notebooks, I examine Quine’s development in the first decades of his career. After identifying three (...) commitments supporting his naturalism—viz. empiricism, holism, and realism—I piece together the evolution of Quine’s position by examining the origins of these commitments one by one, showing how his early views gradually evolved into the mature naturalistic position that would have such an enormous impact on post-war analytic philosophy. (shrink)