Quine often argued for a simple, untyped system of logic rather than the typed systems that were championed by Russell and Carnap, among others. He claimed that nothing important would be lost by eliminating sorts, and the result would be additional simplicity and elegance. In support of this claim, Quine conjectured that every many-sorted theory is equivalent to a single-sorted theory. We make this conjecture precise, and prove that it is true, at least according to one reasonable notion of theoretical (...) equivalence. Our clarification of Quine’s conjecture, however, exposes the shortcomings of his argument against many-sorted logic. (shrink)

This thesis will focus on two elements, viz. experience and inquiry, which are central to John Deweys philosophy and their relation to the movement known as pragmatism. Although each of these concepts has received extensive treatment by other schools of thought, the pragmatists, and particularly Dewey, did much to redefine each in hopes of alleviating the tension between conflicting philosophical viewpoints. An explication of Deweys view on experience is the first step in understanding his application of the pragmatic method towards (...) reconstructing philosophical thinking. Therefore, this paper will explore the meaning that Dewey gave to each and how that meaning is helpful to the overall pragmatist project of reuniting philosophical speculation with practical consequences. (shrink)

Embodiment is a fact of human existence which philosophers should not ignore. They may differ to a great extent in what they have to say about our bodies, but they have to take into account that for each of us our body has a special status, it is not merely one amongst the physical objects, but a physical object to which we have a unique relation. While Descartes approached the issue of embodiment through consideration of sensation and imagination, it is (...) more directly reached by consideration of action and agency: whenever we act upon the world, we act by moving our bodies. So if we can understand what an immaterialist such as Berkeley thinks about agency, we will have gone a fair way to understanding what he thinks about embodiment. §1 discusses a recent flurry of articles on the subject of Berkeley’s account of action. I choose to present Berkeley as a causal-volitional theorist (realist) not because I think it is the uniquely correct interpretation of the texts, but because I find it more philosophically interesting as a version of immaterialism. In particular, it raises the possibility of a substantive account of human embodiment which is completely unavailable to the occasionalist. §2 articulates an apparent philosophical problem for Berkeley qua causal-volitional theorist and show that Locke was aware of a related problem and had a solution of which Berkeley would have known. §3 distinguishes two interpretations of Berkeley’s famous denial of blind agency – as the assertion of a weak representational condition or a strong epistemic one – and provide evidence that there was a well-established debate about blind powers in the seventeenth century which took the metaphor of blindness as indicating an epistemic rather than merely representational failing. What remains to do in §4 is to consider whether Berkeley, with his own peculiar commitments, could in fact accept this account of agency. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida's lecture entitled "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials", given in Jerusalem in 1986, responds both to those who subsume his project within negative theology and to those that ignore their interrelation. The former fail to see that while negative theology is oriented towards ineffable union with the divine, deconstruction radically denies the possibility of this union. The latter, however, read negative theology solely in the context of this ineffable union, ignoring the possibility of a second apophatic language whose critique (...) of language is itself so radical that it engages in a paradoxcical self-critique that denies, if not union itself, at least the possibility of speaking about union. This second, concurrent language has a distinct family resemblance to Derrida's own deconstructive project, for it embraces the radically negative denials of differance. This study will first present a critique of those who offer either an affirmative or negative answer to the question "Is deconstruction a form of negative theology?", arguing instead that Derrida denies all answers. Its final step will analyze the similarities between negative theology's escape from the silence of pure denial--prayer--and Derrida's own means of escaping the silence summoned when he asks: "How to avoid speaking?". (shrink)