Esta enciclopédia abrange, de uma forma introdutória mas desejavelmente rigorosa, uma diversidade de conceitos, temas, problemas, argumentos e teorias localizados numa área relativamente recente de estudos, os quais tem sido habitual qualificar como «estudos lógico-filosóficos». De uma forma apropriadamente genérica, e apesar de o território teórico abrangido ser extenso e de contornos por vezes difusos, podemos dizer que na área se investiga um conjunto de questões fundamentais acerca da natureza da linguagem, da mente, da cognição e do raciocínio humanos, bem (...) como questões acerca das conexões destes com a realidade não mental e extralinguística. A razão daquela qualificação é a seguinte: por um lado, a investigação em questão é qualificada como filosófica em virtude do elevado grau de generalidade e abstracção das questões examinadas (entre outras coisas); por outro, a investigação é qualificada como lógica em virtude de ser uma investigação logicamente disciplinada, no sentido de nela se fazer um uso intenso de conceitos, técnicas e métodos provenientes da disciplina de lógica. O agregado de tópicos que constitui a área de estudos lógico-filosóficos é já visível, pelo menos em parte, no Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus de Ludwig Wittgenstein, uma obra publicada em 1921. E uma boa maneira de ter uma ideia sinóptica do território disciplinar abrangido por esta enciclopédia, ou pelo menos de uma porção substancial dele, é extrair do Tractatus uma lista dos tópicos mais salientes aí discutidos; a lista incluirá certamente tópicos do seguinte género, muitos dos quais se podem encontrar ao longo desta enciclopédia: factos e estados de coisas; objectos; representação; crenças e estados mentais; pensamentos; a proposição; nomes próprios; valores de verdade e bivalência; quantificação; funções de verdade; verdade lógica; identidade; tautologia; o raciocínio matemático; a natureza da inferência; o cepticismo e o solipsismo; a indução; as constantes lógicas; a negação; a forma lógica; as leis da ciência; o número. (shrink)

This study considers Newton's views on space and time with respect to some important ontologies of substance in his period. Specifically, it deals in a philosophico-historical manner with his conception of substance, attribute, existence, to actuality and necessity. I show how Newton links these “features” of things to his conception of God's existence with respect of infinite space and time. Moreover, I argue that his ontology of space and time cannot be understood without fully appreciating how it relates to the (...) nature of Divine existence. In order to establish this, the ontology embodied in Newton's theory of predication is analysed, and shown to be different from the presuppositions of the ontological argument. From the historical point of view Gassendi's influence is stressed, via the mediation of Walter Charleton. Furthermore, Newton's thought on these matters is contrasted with Descartes's and Spinoza's. In point of fact, in his earliest notebook Newton recorded observations on Descartes's version of the ontological argument. Soon, however, he was to oppose the Cartesian conception of the actuality of Divine existence by means of arguments similar to those of Gassendi. Lastly, I suggest that the nature and extent of Henry More's influence on Newton's conception of how God relates to absolute space and time bears further examination. (shrink)

The core of Kant’s criticism of the ontological argument is the thesis that existence is not a real predicate capable of being added to the concept of an object. The concept of the most perfect or the most real being is a subjective content that is as such completely determined, that is to say, that already has all the determinations that define that concept as such. Therefore, to know if that object also exists in the real world is indispensable that (...) the subject has an intuition of it. The absence of such intuition is, according to Kant, an insuperable obstacle for the different attempts to prove the existence of God. Although Hegel agrees in principle with Kant´s claim that existence must not be conceived as a real predicate, he considers, however, that to understand it as the position of the already exhaustively determined concept of the object does not imply a true overcoming of the particular notion of existence that is at the base of the ontological argument. In this article I defend the claim that Hegel´s counter-criticism of Kant´s criticism of the ontological argument is actually a radicalization of Kant´s general critique of metaphysics. (shrink)

The currently standard philosophical conception of existence makes a connection between three things: certain ways of talking about existence and being in natural language; certain natural language idioms of quantification; and the formal representation of these in logical languages. Thus a claim like ‘Prime numbers exist’ is treated as equivalent to ‘There is at least one prime number’ and this is in turn equivalent to ‘Some thing is a prime number’. The verb ‘exist’, the verb phrase ‘there is’ and the (...) quantifier ‘some’ are treated as all playing similar roles, and these roles are made explicit in the standard common formalization of all three sentences by a single formula of first-order logic: ‘(∃ x )[P( x ) & N( x )]’, where ‘P( x )’ abbreviates ‘ x is prime’ and ‘N( x )’ abbreviates ‘ x is a number’. The logical quantifier ‘∃’ accordingly symbolizes in context the role played by the English words ‘exists’, ‘some’ and ‘there is’. (shrink)

Queremos neste ensaio introduzir um esboço de uma semântica simples e adequada para uma classe importante de predicações singulares de inexistência, ou frases existenciais singulares negativas. Frases deste género, como “Sócrates (já) não existe” e “O pássaro Dódó não existe”, são usualmente tidas como de algum modo paradoxais e semanticamente problemáticas. O modelo semântico que vamos delinear para tais frases, que desejavelmente se caracteriza pela simplicidade e pela economia, depende no entanto de duas importantes e substantivas suposições de partida, e, (...) mais crucialmente, de uma tese semântica de alguma maneira controversa acerca da referência singular. Trata-se da tese da rigidez obstinada, a tese de que nomes próprios e outros termos irredutivelmente singulares – tais como indexicais, demonstrativos e termos para categorias naturais – são designadores, não apenas rígidos, mas obstinadamente rígidos, dos objectos que de facto designam. (shrink)

Há alguns anos atrás, algumas pessoas acreditavam que a tese de que a existência não é um predicado, uma tese defendida por autoridades como Gottlob Frege e Bertrand Russell, era um dos traços distintivos da chamada filosofia analítica. Que uma tal crença é afinal falsa pode ser tomado como mais um sinal da vitalidade e do anti-dogmatismo que caracterizam em geral a tradição analítica; e o mesmo se aplica a quaisquer outras crenças do género, que comprometam esta tradição com teses (...) filosóficas substantivas. O meu propósito neste ensaio é duplo. Por um lado, descrevo o estado actual da questão relativamente ao venerável tópico da existência, caracterizando e examinando as principais teorias disponíveis. Por outro, argumento a favor de um ponto de vista específico sobre o tópico. Esse ponto de vista consiste na conjunção das seguintes três teses: (F) Não há objectos não-existentes; (H*) A existência é um predicado; e (H**) As afirmações de existência não são uniformes quanto à forma lógica, tendo por vezes a forma de quantificações existenciais e por vezes a forma de predicações monádicas de primeira ordem. (shrink)

Attempts to analyze negative existential statements face the following familiar problem. If a negative existential statement—say, “Hamlet does not exist” or “the golden mountain does not exist”—is true, its subject term must lack an object of reference. But, absent such an object, it seems that nothing true or false can be said about “it.” In particular, if there is no Hamlet to talk about, we surely cannot truthfully say that “he” does not exist. Hence, the truth of true negative existentials—and (...) there are many—seems to preclude their truth and falsity. Call this “the negative existential problem.”. (shrink)

It is often said that the ontological argument fails because it wrongly treats existence as a first-level property or predicate. This has proved a controversial claim, and efforts to evaluate it are complicated by the fact that the words ‘existence is not a property/predicate’ have been used by philosophers to make at least three different negative claims: (a) one about a first-level phenomenon possessed by objects like horses, stones, you and me; (b) another about the logical form of assertions of (...) existence; and (c) still another about a second-level phenomenon possessed by concepts when they are instantiated. I argue that only the last of these claims, originally voiced by Kant, is both plausible and relevant to the ontological argument. And I try to show that the relevance of the Kantian version comes from its providing the underlying justification for a different, and far less controversial, criticism of the ontological argument. (shrink)

It is often said that the ontological argument fails because it wrongly treats existence as a first-level property or predicate. This has proved a controversial claim, and efforts to evaluate it are complicated by the fact that the words ‘existence is not a property/predicate’ have been used by philosophers to make at least three different negative claims: (a) one about a first-level phenomenon possessed by objects like horses, stones, you and me; (b) another about the logical form of assertions of (...) existence; and (c) still another about a second-level phenomenon possessed by concepts when they are instantiated. I argue that only the last of these claims, originally voiced by Kant, is both plausible and relevant to the ontological argument. And I try to show that the relevance of the Kantian version comes from its providing the underlying justification for a different, and far less controversial, criticism of the ontological argument. (shrink)

The paper presents an account of the concept of existence that is based on Brentano’s work. In contrast to Frege and Russell, Brentano took ‘exists’ to express a that subsumes objects and explained it with recourse to the non-propositional attitude of acknowledgment. I argue that the core of Brentano’s view can be developed to a defensible alternative to the Frege-Russell view of existence.

Thanks to the Inlaks Foundation in India, I was able to do my doctoral research on Our Talk About Nonexistents at Oxford in the early eighties. The two greatest philosophers of that heaven of analytical philosophy - Peter Strawson and Michael Dummett - supervised my work, reading and criticising all the fledgling philosophy that I wrote during those three years. At Sir Peter's request, Gareth Evans, shortly before his death, lent me an unpublished transcript of Kripke's John Locke Lectures. Work (...) on the Appendix about Indian Philosophy was supervised by the late Professor Bimal Krishna Matilal with whom informal but intense philosophical conversations used to spill over into dinner at his place almost every other day. It was Professor Matilal who sent me, over a summer, to study a tough Navya-Nyaya text under his own Nyaya teacher Pandit Visvabandhu Tarkatirtha at Calcutta. All four of these teachers were as kind to me as my life-long mentor in philosophy Professor Pranab Kumar Sen, whose clarity and depth remain the unreachable regu lative ideal of my intellect. When I came back to India, my life became blissfully free of the agonising anxiety to publish, until, after a conference at Jadavpur University where I gave an impromptu paper, ironically enough, on Non-doings, I met Derek Parfit. He had a six-hour conversation with me, explicitly planning my life. Five years had already elapsed since I had finished my D. Phil, but Derek read my thesis and liked it. (shrink)

Introductory Note to Volume 1 of Disputatio.

Biozentrische Postulate eines intrinsischen Wert des Lebendigen können nicht nur metaethisch unterschiedlich eingebettet sein, sie lassen sich auch unterschiedlich begründen und akzentuieren. Der Beitrag untersucht die Tragfähigkeit des Versuchs, den intrinsischen Wert des Lebendigen auf dessen Würde zurückzuführen, eine Konzeption, die u. a. bei der Einführung des Begriffs "Würde der Kreatur" in die Schweizerische Bundesverfassung in den frühen 1990er Jahren leitend gewesen ist. Es werden drei unterschiedlich anspruchsvolle Konzeptionen einer "Würde des Lebendigen" unterschieden sowie drei unterschiedlich anspruchsvolle normative Ausgestaltungen und (...) gezeigt, dass selbst noch die jeweils schwächsten Formen mit schwerwiegenden Begründungsproblemen konfrontiert sind. (shrink)