This volume draws connections between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the work of Saul Kripke, especially his Naming and Necessity. Saul Kripke is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of contemporary analytic philosophy. His most important contributions include the strict distinction between metaphysical and epistemological questions, the introduction of the notions of contingent a priori truth and necessary a posteriori truth and original accounts of names, descriptions, identity, necessity and realism. The chapters in this book elucidate the relevant connections between Kripke's (...) work and Wittgenstein, specifically concerning the standard meter, contingent apriori and rule-following. The contributions shed light on how Kripke's philosophical outlook was influenced by Wittgenstein, and how mainstream analytic philosophy and Wittgensteinian philosophy can fruitfully engage with one another. Kripke and Wittgenstein will be of interest to philosophers working on Wittgenstein, Kripke, and the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected 2nd eBook edition, 2021. ●●●●● _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly, technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost. ●●●●● The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 and is now available through (...) all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6. ●●●●● In light of the length of this book, readers who would like to have a more detailed description of the book's objectives and method may find it helpful to read the detailed and clearly written Wikipedia entry about this work: From the Wikipedia search page, use the search phrase "Critique of Impure Reason". At least at the time of this writing (11/29/2021), the Wikipedia entry is well-researched and accurate. ●●●●● In addition, a "Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" has been made available by the author. It is available under its title through PhilPapers and other philosophy online archives. ●●●●● COMMENDATIONS OF THIS WORK, from the back cover of the published edition: ●●●●● “I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books. ●●●●● “Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_. ●●●●● “[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness. ●●●●● ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to philosophy. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive 885-page volume has been published as a free open access eBook (3.75MB) as well as an open access printed edition. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of philosophical problems. In the process, the work fundamentally transforms the way in which the concepts of reference, meaning, and possibility are understood. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. ●●●●● In Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_ we find an analysis of the preconditions of experience and of knowledge. In contrast, but yet in parallel, the new _Critique_ focuses upon the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we employ _conflict_ with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge. ●●●●● This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled when we attempt to transgress beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful. We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often attempt to trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful. ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason_ proposes a bold, ground-breaking, and startling thesis: that a great many of the major philosophical problems of the past can be solved through the recognition of a viciously deceptive form of thinking to which philosophers as well as non-philosophers commonly fall victim. For the first time, the book advances and justifies the criticism that a substantial number of the questions that have occupied philosophers fall into the category of “impure reason,” violating the very conditions of their possible meaningfulness. ●●●●● The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophical problems. As a consequence, the boundaries of _possible meaning_ are determined. ●●●●● Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, is responsible for identifying this widespread and delusion-inducing variety of error, _metalogical projection_. It is a previously unrecognized and insidious form of erroneous thinking that undermines its own possibility of meaning. It comes about as a result of the pervasive human compulsion to seek to transcend the limits of possible reference and meaning. ●●●●● Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a self-validating method that makes it possible to recognize, correct, and eliminate this major and pervasive form of fallacious thinking. In so doing, the book provides at last provable and constructive solutions to a wide range of major philosophical problems. ●●●●● CONTENTS AT A GLANCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Preface ▪▪▪▪▪ Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ▪▪▪▪▪ Acknowledgments ▪▪▪▪▪ Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call ▪▪▪▪▪ Introduction ▪▪▪▪▪ A note to the reader ▪▪▪▪▪ A note on conventions ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART I ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN ▪▪▪▪▪ 1 Philosophical-psychological prelude ▪▪▪▪▪ 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed polemic ▪▪▪▪▪ 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of reference to metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART II ▪▪▪▪▪ THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy ▪▪▪▪▪ 5 Reference, identity, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 6 Self-referential argument and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 7 Possibility theory ▪▪▪▪▪ 8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 10 Framework relativity ▪▪▪▪▪ 11 The metalogic of meaning ▪▪▪▪▪ 12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of meaninglessness ▪▪▪▪▪ 13 Projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 14 Horizons ▪▪▪▪▪ 15 De-projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 16 Self-validation ▪▪▪▪▪ 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART III ▪▪▪▪▪ PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science ▪▪▪▪▪ 18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics ▪▪▪▪▪ 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” ▪▪▪▪▪ 21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism ▪▪▪▪▪ 22 The projections of time, space, and space-time ▪▪▪▪▪ 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will ▪▪▪▪▪ 24 Projections of the self and of solipsism ▪▪▪▪▪ 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields ▪▪▪▪▪ 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to relativity physics and quantum theory ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART IV ▪▪▪▪▪ HORIZONS ▪▪▪▪▪ 29 Beyond belief ▪▪▪▪▪ 30 _Critique of Impure Reason_: Its results in retrospect ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ SUPPLEMENT ▪▪▪▪▪ The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX I ▪▪▪▪▪ The Concept of Horizon in the Work of Other Philosophers ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX II ▪▪▪▪▪ Epistemological Intelligence ▪▪▪▪▪ References ▪▪▪▪▪ Index ▪▪▪▪▪ About the author. 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Theories of meaning developed within the analytic tradition, starting with Gottlob Frege, and within continental philosophy, starting with Husserl, can be distinguished by their disagreement about the phenomenon of collapse or failure of meaning. Our text focuses on Frege’s legacy, taken up by Rudolph Carnap, which culminated in a view of the collapse of meaning defined first by a purely syntactic conception of categorial error and second, when Tarski entered the scene, by the paradoxes created by the conflict between the (...) use of the predicate truth and the concept of proof. As positivism’s conventionalism and late model-theoretic semantics became the paradigms derived from this position, the result, in our view, was a conception of meaning success and meaning failure dominated by dependence on a technological conception. We will argue that this dependence leads to the inability to evaluate the breaks in rational parameters and crises of meaning addressed by the phenomenological and transcendental perspectives. Husserl’s critique of logic as technology is the basis for the reflexive standpoint on the phenomena of meaning failure that leads to a theoretical and eidetic ideal approach to that phenomenon. It is then suggested that this phenomenological reflective standpoint on the problem of meaning failure is the origin of the doors that lead to the divergent paths between the analytic and continental traditions. Thus, this is an article with three argumentative phases connected into a larger unity. The first phase presents Husserl’s critique of a purely extensional, syntactic, and recursive conception of logical consequence and the concept of truth; the second presents Hussel’s larger conception of meaning-failure; the third—presented in an appendix— presents a lesson on the division between continental and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Abstract: One of the institutional highlights of the encounter between Austrian “wissen¬schaftliche Philosophie” and French “philosophie scientifique” in the first half of the 20th century was the “First International Congress for Unity of Science” that took place 1935 in Paris. In my contribution I deal with an episode of the philosophical mega-event whose protagonist was the American philosopher and semiotician Charles William Morris. At the Paris congress he presented his programme of a comprehensive, practice-oriented scientific philosophy and, in a more (...) elaborated version he published it two years later in Logical Positivism, Pragmatism and Scientific Empiricism (Morris 1937). Morris aimed at a synthesis of formalism, pragmatism, and traditional empiricism that combined the virtues of these accounts while avoided their shortocmings. The core of approach was a comprehensive theory of the concept of meaning. Through an analysis of the concept of meaning he sought to sort out the existing differences and the options for a possible future rapprochment between logical empiricism and pragmatism. Against the overly narrow logical empiricist understanding of philosophy as the syntax of the language of science Morris argued for a “scientific pragmatism” that comprised four levels: (1) Philosophy as Logic of Science, (2) Philosophy as Clarification of Meaning (Peirce), (3) Philosophy as Empirical Axiology (Dewey), and (4) Philosophy as Empirical Cosmology (Whitehead). (shrink)

In this paper I will investigate the possibility of completing a Positivist style account of demarcation. One reason for pursuing this project is that standard criticisms of Positivism do not have the bite against the demarcation project that they are often assumed to have. To argue this will be the burden of the first part of this paper. The other reason is that new research in logic has provided machinery not available to the Positivists; machinery that shows promise for solving (...) some of the technical problems faced by Positivists' account of demarcation. To argue this will be the burden of the second part of this paper. (shrink)

Bilimi ve bilimsel bilgiyi kültür, değer ve öznel yargılardan izole ederek nesnel bir şekilde ortaya koyabilmeye yönelik hararetli tartışmaların yaşandığı yirminci yüzyıl bilim anlayışının temel gayesi, deney ve gözleme tabi olabilecek fiziki dünyadaki olguları, mantıksal çözümlemeye tabi tutarak birleştirilmiş bilime ulaşmaktır. Bu amaca giden yolda olgulara dayanmayan ve sınanamayan her türlü metafizik öge yok sayılır. Bilimsel bilginin sadece deney ve gözleme tabi olana, diğer bir deyişle olgu verilerine dayandığı iddiasını taşıyan bu düşünce sistemi, özellikle Viyana Çevresi üyeleri tarafından benimsenmiştir. Bu (...) bakımdan Çevre üyelerinin bilimsellik anlayışındaki temel ölçüt olgulara dayanan önermelerin ya da yargıların doğrulanabilmesidir. Bilimsel bilginin sadece olgusal dünyanın gözlemlenmesi ve bu gözlem sonucunda ortaya konulan önermelerin ya da ifadelerin doğrulanmasıyla sağlandığını düşünen Çevre üyelerinin bu savlarındaki amacı bilimi ve onun bilgisini her türlü kültür ve değer alanından uzaklaştırarak metafiziksel unsurlardan arındırılmış nesnel bilgiye ulaşmaktır. Çevre üyelerinin birçoğu bilim alanı içerisinde tartışmaya yol açan meselelerin aslında metafiziksel içerikli ve dolayısıyla bunların görünüşte problemler olduğunu belirterek bu tartışmaların bilimsel bilginin gelişimi önünde bir engel oluşturacağı kanaatindedir (Hızır, 1965, s. 254). Söz gelimi, Carnap’a göre, metafizik ögeler olgusal içeriğe sahip olmadığı ve sınanabilir nitelikte olmadıkları için bilim alanı içerisinde değerlendirilemez. Bu nedenle, metafizik ögeler hem doğrulanması mümkün olmadığı hem de dilin mantıksal dizimine genellikle uymadığı gerekçesiyle anlamsızdır (Öztürk, 2011, s. 155). Bu bakımdan Çevre üyelerine göre, olgulara dayanmayan ve bilimde yanılsamalara yol açan metafizik söylemler bilimden ayıklanmalı ve bilimsel bilgi ancak olgu ve deneye dayanan önermeler üzerinden yürütülmelidir. Öte yandan Çevre düşünürleri mantıksal çözümleme yoluyla olgulara dayanan önermelerin metafiziksel unsurlar içeren önermelerden ayırt edilebileceğini ifade etmiştir. Bu bağlamda metafizik önermeleri, metafizik olmayan önermelerden ayırt edecek ölçütün doğrulanabilirlik olduğunu savunurlar. Çevre üyelerinin bu tutumları bir bakıma bilim ve sözde bilim arasında ayrım yapma ve metafiziği bilimin dışında tutma çabası olarak da değerlendirilebilir (Kabadayı, 2011, s. 39-40). Yirminci yüzyıl bilim anlayışında bilimsel etkinlikte gözlemin ve gözlemi yürüten bilim insanlarının dolaysız öznel duyu verileriyle ilişkili olduğu bu nedenle gözlem verilerinin psikolojizmin etkisinde olduğu fikri ortaya atılır. Başta Neurath olmak üzere dönemin bilim felsefecileri bilimsel bilginin kültür, değer ve psikoloji gibi öznel unsurlardan uzaklaştığı sürece değerli olduğu kanısında olduğu için bu fikre karşı çıkmaktadır (Gillies, 2018, s. 123). Görüldüğü üzere, Çevre üyelerinin temel amacı metafizik önermelerden arındırılmış, olgulara dayanan bir bilime ulaşmaktır. Bu amacın gerçekleşmesine olanak sağlayacak yöntem ise mantıksal çözümlemedir. Bu bağlamda Çevre üyeleri olgulara dayanan ve doğrulanabilen önermelerin, söz dizimi (sentaks) ve anlamsal (semantik) açıdan incelemeye tabi tutulması gerektiğini düşünmektedir (Yardımcı, 2018, s. 13-15). Özellikle Carnap (1935, s. 9-10) doğrulamanın ancak öne sürülen önermenin mantıksal analize tabi tutularak yapılması gerektiğini iddia etmiştir (Irzık, 1962, s. 65). Bununla birlikte, felsefenin işlevi, önermeleri mantıksal analize tabi tutarak yalın hale getirmektir. İşte felsefenin bu yönü Neurath’da bilimin birliği, Carnap’ta ise bilimin sentaksı, yani bilimin mantığı üzerine çalışma anlamına gelir (Hızır, 1965, s. 252). Bilimi, bilim olmayandan ayırma yöntemi olarak kullanılan doğrulama işlemi, teorik bir söylem ve gözlem önermesi arasında yapılan bir işlem olması bakımından mantıksal ve dilsel bir özellik taşır. Buradaki temel sorun ise teorik bir önermenin gözlem önermelerine indirgenebilir nitelikte olması ve gözlem önermelerinin, gözlem ile nasıl ilişki kurduğunu saptamaktır. İşte Viyana Çevresi üyeleri bu ilişkinin protokol önermeleri ile kurulduğu kanaatindedir (Ural, 2012, s. 105-107) çünkü onlara göre; öznelerarası bir bilimin sağlanması için yansız ve anlam karmaşasından arındırılmış bir dil gereklidir (Serin, 2015, s. 55). Bu dil de ancak protokol önermeler aracılığıyla kurulabilir. Bu bağlamda Çevre üyelerinin, metafiziksel ifadeler barındıran önermelerin anlamsızlığı ve bilimleri ortak bir paydada birleştiren fiziksel bir dil oluşturma olmak üzere iki temel hedefinin olduğu söylenebilir (Godfrey-Smith, 2003, s. 25; Salgar, 2012, s. 187). (shrink)

While Wilfrid Sellars’ philosophy is often depicted in an ahistorical fashion, this book explores the consequences of placing his work in its historical context. In order to show how Sellars’ early publications depend on contextual factors, Peter Olen reconstructs the conceptions of language, psychological, and social explanation that dominated American philosophy in the early 20th century. Because of Sellars’ differing explanations of language and behaviour, Olen argues that many of Sellars’ early commitments are incompatible with his later works. In the (...) course of doing so, Olen highlights problematic tensions between Sellars’ early and later conceptions of language, meta-philosophy, and normativity. Supplementing the main text is a collection of previously unpublished archival material from Wilfrid Sellars, Gustav Bergmann, Everett Hall, and other early 20th century philosophers. This text will be a useful resource to those with an interest in the history of American philosophy, the history of analytic philosophy, Wilfrid Sellars’ philosophy, and the myriad issues surrounding normativity and language. (shrink)

The books’ goal is to answer the question: Do the weaknesses of value-free economics imply the need for a paradigm shift? The author synthesizes criticisms from different perspectives (descriptive and methodological). Special attention is paid to choices over time, because in this area value-free economics has the most problems. In that context, the enriched concept of multiple self is proposed and investigated. However, it is not enough to present the criticisms towards value-free economics. For scientists, a bad paradigm is better (...) than no paradigm. Therefore, the author considers whether value-based economics with normative approaches such as economics of happiness, capability approach, libertarian paternalism, and the concept of multiple self can be the alternative paradigm for value-free economics. This book is essential reading to everyone interested in the current state of economics as a discipline. (shrink)

During the past few decades, a radical shift has occurred in how philosophers conceive of the relation between science and philosophy. A great number of analytic philosophers have adopted what is commonly called a ‘naturalistic’ approach, arguing that their inquiries ought to be in some sense continuous with science. Where early analytic philosophers often relied on a sharp distinction between science and philosophy—the former an empirical discipline concerned with fact, the latter an a priori discipline concerned with meaning—philosophers today largely (...) follow Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) in his seminal rejection of this distinction. -/- This book offers a comprehensive study of Quine’s naturalism. Building on Quine’s published corpus as well as thousands of unpublished letters, notes, lectures, papers, proposals, and annotations from the Quine archives, this book aims to reconstruct both the nature (chapters 2-4) and the development (chapter 5-7) of his naturalism. As such, this book aims to contribute to the rapidly developing historiography of analytic philosophy, and to provide a better, historically informed, understanding of what is philosophically at stake in the contemporary naturalistic turn. (shrink)

Using a base of philosophical athropology, this article suggests that an ethical analysis of persuasion must include not just the logic human response, but culture and experience as well. The authors propose potential maxims for ethical behavior in advertising and public relations and applies them to two case studies, political advertising and the Bridgestone/Firestone controversy.

Carnap’s 1931 attack against metaphysics notoriously utilises Heidegger’s work to exemplify the meaninglessness of metaphysical pseudo‐statements. This paper interprets Carnap’s metametaphysics as concerned with delimiting theoretical dialogue in such a manner as to exclude unresolvable disagreements. It puts forth a revised version of Carnap’s argument against the viability of metaphysics, by setting aside his stronger claims that rely on verificationism and focusing instead on his account of metaphysical claims as mere expressions of what he calls “Lebensgefühl,” or a general attitude (...) towards life. Such attitudes, Carnap argues, are unsuitable objects of theoretical dialogue, insofar as disagreements that concern them are unresolvable. Carnap thus recommends abandoning the attempt to resolve metaphysical disagreements as if they were theoretical. As long as it does not enter into unresolvable disagreements, art, rather than theory, is the appropriate medium for expressing Lebensgefühl. (shrink)

Imperatives cannot be true or false, so they are shunned by logicians. And yet imperatives can be combined by logical connectives: "kiss me and hug me" is the conjunction of "kiss me" with "hug me". This example may suggest that declarative and imperative logic are isomorphic: just as the conjunction of two declaratives is true exactly if both conjuncts are true, the conjunction of two imperatives is satisfied exactly if both conjuncts are satisfied—what more is there to say? Much more, (...) I argue. "If you love me, kiss me", a conditional imperative, mixes a declarative antecedent ("you love me") with an imperative consequent ("kiss me"); it is satisfied if you love and kiss me, violated if you love but don't kiss me, and avoided if you don't love me. So we need a logic of three -valued imperatives which mixes declaratives with imperatives. I develop such a logic. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Many philosophers believe that judgments about propositional attitudes, or about which mental states are expressed by which sentences, are normative judgments. If this is so, then metanormative expressivism must be given expressivist treatment. This might seem to make expressivism self-defeating or worrisomely circular, or to frustrate the explanatory ambitions central to the view. I argue that recent objections along these lines to giving an expressivist account of expressivism are not successful. I shall also suggest that in order to deal with (...) these worries, Dreier's influential response to the so-called ‘problem of creeping minimalism’ must be slightly revised. (shrink)

Essay Review of Tim Maudlin's "The Metaphysics within Physics", Oxford University Press, 2007.

Some versions of empiricism have been accused of being neither empirically confirmable nor analytically true and therefore meaningless or unknowable by their own lights. Carnap, and more recently van Fraassen, have responded to this objection by construing empiricism as a stance containing non-cognitive attitudes. The resulting stance empiricism is not subject to the norms of knowledge, and so does not self-defeat as per the objection. In response to this proposal, several philosophers have argued that if empiricism is a stance, then (...) there can be no distinctively epistemic reasons in favor of adopting it, but only prudential or moral reasons. I defend stance empiricism against this objection by showing that stance empiricism furthers many plausibly epistemic goals, such as false belief avoidance, wisdom, and justification. I respond to three objections to my argument: that I assume a conception of epistemic reason that leads to problematic tradeoffs, that to have epistemic reason is just to be epistemically justified, and that my premise that experience is the only source of information has no empirical content. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders the notion that Nagarjuna and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus may only be seen as comparable under a shared ineffability thesis, that is, the idea that reality is impossible to describe in sensible discourse. Historically, Nagarjuna and the early Wittgenstein have both been widely construed as offering either metaphysical theories or attempts to refute all such theories. Instead, by employing an interpretive framework based on a ‘resolute’ reading of the Tractatus, I suggest we see their philosophical affinity in terms of (...) a shared conception of philosophical method without proposing theses. In doing so, this offers us a new way to understand Nagarjuna’s characteristic claims both to have ‘no views’ and refusal to accept that things exist ‘inherently’ or with ‘essence’. Therefore, instead of either a view about the nature of a mind-independent ‘ultimate reality’ or a thesis concerning the rejection of such a domain, I propose that we understand Nagarjuna’s primary aim as ‘therapeutic’, that is, concerned with the dissolution of philosophical problems. However, this ‘therapy’ should neither be confined to the psychotherapeutic metaphor nor should it be taken to imply a private enlightenment only available to philosophers. Instead, for Nagarjuna and Wittgenstein, philosophical problems are cast as a source of disquiet for all of us; what their work offers is a soteriology, a means towards our salvation. (shrink)

The relationship between American pragmatism and logical empiricism is complicated at best. The received view is that by around the late 1930s or early 1940s pragmatism had been replaced, supplanted, or eclipsed by the younger and more logic-oriented form of empiricism developed in interwar Vienna. Recently, however, this picture has been challenged, and this paper offers further reasons for thinking that the received view is inadequate. Through a critical examination of William James's Pragmatism and “The Sentiment of Rationality” and Rudolf (...) Carnap's “Elimination of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language” and other works, the paper builds a case for the existence of a rather striking correspondence between the work of one of pragmatism's most vaunted figures and the thought of logical empiricism's most famous advocate. Not only were both philosophers interested in what might be called metaphilosophy or the psychology of philosophy, both held very similar deflationary views. (shrink)

The story of the rise and fall of pragmatism is sometimes called the eclipse narrative. This paper addresses a specific version of this narrative that the logical empiricists arrived in North America in the 1930s and within 30 years had supplanted the pragmatists as the dominant philosophy there. Philosophers such as Alan Richardson and Cheryl Misak have challenged this view by emphasizing the similarities between these two movements. While both seem to admit that there is a distinction between the two (...) when it comes to values, I point out that the issue of values feeds into all aspects of pragmatist thinking, and so despite what seems on the surface to be agreements between the two movements, they were still quite different in all areas of their thinking. I challenge the degree of similarities by arguing that there were some sharp distinctions between the two movements, with the most important being the fact-value distinction and its impact on how each conceived of the term “practical.” I close by addressing how these distinctions should affect how we conceive of the eclipse narrative. (shrink)

In the 1960s, Peter Geach and John Searle independently posed an important objection to the wide class of 'noncognitivist' metaethical views that had at that time been dominant and widely defended for a quarter of a century. The problems raised by that objection have come to be known in the literature as the Frege-Geach Problem, because of Geach's attribution of the objection to Frege's distinction between content and assertoric force, and the problem has since occupied a great deal of the (...) attention both of defenders of broadly noncognitivist views, and of their critics. In this article I explain Geach and Searle's historical objections, and put the subsequent discussion into dialectical context, paying some attention to the developments along the way and how they have enhanced our overall understanding of the problem. The article covers a lot of territory, so we will only be able to see the highlights, along the way. For further reading, see the Works Cited. (shrink)

Here is a prima facie plausible view: since the metaethical error theory says that all positive moral claims are false, it makes no sense for error theorists to engage in normative ethics. After all, normative ethics tries to identify what is right or wrong (and why), but the error theory implies that nothing is ever right or wrong. One way for error theorists to push back is to argue for “concept preservationism,” that is, the view that even though our ordinary (...) moral discourse is deeply flawed, we should nevertheless continue to engage in moral thought and talk. However, in this article, I pursue a different strategy. I argue that even if we completely abandon moral discourse, thus endorsing “concept abolitionism,” the discipline of normative ethics survives. While traditional normative ethics uses as its “starting points” moral claims and beliefs, instead, concept abolitionists can make use of alternative utterances and attitudes that share salient characteristics with moral claims and beliefs, allowing for a kind of theorizing that is practically oriented, impartial, involves the traditional subject matters and methods of normative ethics, and allows engagement with the arguments of traditional moral philosophers. (shrink)

Bimal Krishna Matilal was interested in the paradoxes of the ineffability of mystical experiences throughout his career. He was all eager to prove that the concept of mysticism in Indian tradition had its own strong logic, which had helped its proponents overcome the charges of being ‘self-refuting’. In various articles, Matilal had analysed various formulations of the logic of ineffability in various systems of Indian philosophy and examined various ways to get out of the logical paradoxes. While discussing the paradox (...) of ineffability, he often refers to the ineffability of the mystical in the Tractatus and maintains that the Tractatus paragraphs T4.003 and 6.522 and Wittgenstein’s letter to Russell, quoted in Anscombe, ‘strike a very familiar note in the heart of the mystics’. His own view in this regard was that ‘ineffability in the sense that something is beyond the reach of all words, is impossible. For in the last analysis it is possible to speak of that which is ineffable, by the word “ineffable” itself’. He discusses also the ways how one can finally avoid the paradoxes of ultimate ineffability. His position is that ‘the so-called ineffable is not really or ultimately ineffable.’ In this paper, there will be an attempt to apply Matilal’s viewpoint on the paradox of ineffability in the Tractatus. This exploration unfolds in three main sections. Matilal’s perspective on the concept of ineffability along with the paradoxes and its solutions in various systems of Indian tradition will be highlighted in the first section and the paradox of ineffability in the Tractatus along with the controversy regarding its interpretation in the second, and finally, in the concluding section, attempts will be made to find a way out of this impasse by applying Matilal’s stance on this matter and see how it allows us to give ‘fresh answers to the questions raised in Western Philosophy’. (shrink)

Confronting any science studies or learning sciences researcher in the 21st century is the reality of interdisciplinary science. New hybrid fields1 collaboratively build new concepts, combine models from two or more disciplines and forge inter-reliant relationships among specialists with different skill sets to solve new problems. This paper emerges from our recognition that inescapable psychological factors, including identity dynamics, must be described and analyzed in order to better understand the social and cognitive practices specific to interdisciplinary science. In analysis of (...) the foundations and opportunities for an... (shrink)

En el prefacio al Tractatus, Wittgenstein establece que la cuestión del sinsentido tiene que ver con trazar los límites del lenguaje. Las expresiones sinsentido van más allá de los límites del lenguaje significativo y residen “del otro lado” de lo que puede ser dicho. Aún así, al final del libro declara que sus propias proposiciones son, hablando de manera estricta, sinsentidos. El presente trabajo pretende analizar la estrategia de auto-refutación del primer Wittgenstein como un modo de trascender los límites del (...) lenguaje, comparando su concepto de “sinsentido” con la visión de Kierkegaard acerca de la comunicación indirecta y de la ironía socrática. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is make a contribution to the ongoing search for an adequate concept of the a priori element in scientific knowledge. The point of departure is C.I. Lewis’s account of a pragmatic a priori put forward in his "Mind and the World Order" (1929). Recently, Hasok Chang in "Contingent Transcendental Arguments for Metaphysical Principles" (2008) reconsidered Lewis’s pragmatic a priori and proposed to conceive it as the basic ingredient of the dynamics of an embodied scientific reason. (...) The present paper intends to further elaborate Chang’s account by relating it with some conceptual tools from cognitive semantics and certain ideas that first emerged in the context of the category-theoretical foundations of mathematics. (shrink)

Many commentators now view Quine's ‘Truth by Convention’ as a flawed criticism of Carnap. Gary Ebbs argued recently that Quine never intended Carnap as his target. Quine's criticisms were part of his attempt to work out his own scientific naturalism. I agree that Carnap was not Quine's target but object that Quine's criticisms were wholly internal to his own philosophy. Instead, I argue that C.I. Lewis held the kind of truth‐by‐convention thesis that Quine rejects. This, however, leaves Carnap out of (...) the picture. I then show how Quine came to see the earlier criticisms as also having force against Carnap. (shrink)

In his “Epistemology Naturalized,” Quine embraces a form of Humeanism. In this paper, I try to work out the significance of this Humeanism. In particular, I argue that it represents an anti-metaphysical position that Quine shares with Carnap. Crucial to my account is that contrary to much contemporary thinking on metaphysics, Carnap, and Quine following him, recognize both an ontological and an epistemological sense of metaphysics. As commentators have frequently acknowledged, Carnap and Quine disagree over rejecting metaphysics in the ontological (...) sense. I will argue, though, that they agree in rejecting metaphysics in their shared epistemological sense of the term. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap is well known for his attack on metaphysics, and W. V. Quine is equally well known for his attack on Carnap’s analytic/synthetic distinction. Receiving far less attention is their basic agreement that a properly scientific approach to philosophy should eliminate the metaphysical excesses of the past. This paper aims to remedy this. It focuses initially on the development of Carnap’s rejection of metaphysics from 1932 to 1950 and the role that analyticity plays. It then turns to Quine, emphasizing (...) his basic agreement with Carnap over the elimination of metaphysics and what this looks like without the analytic/synthetic distinction. (shrink)

Certain primitive Yoruba carry about with them boxes covered with cowrie shells, which they treat with special regard. When asked what they are doing, they apparently reply that the boxes are their heads or souls and that they are protecting them against witchcraft. Is that an interesting fact or a bad translation? The question is, I believe, partly philosophical. In what follows, I shall propound and try to solve the philosopher's question, arguing that it has large implications for the theory (...) of Social Anthropology. (shrink)

Carnap’s search for a criterion of empirical significance is usually considered a failure. I argue that the results from two out of his three different approaches are at the very least problematic, but that one approach led to success. Carnap’s criterion of translatability into logical syntax is too vague to allow for definite results. His criteria for terms—introducibility by chains of reduction sentences and his criterion from “The Methodological Character of Theoretical Concepts”—are almost trivial and have no clear relation to (...) the empirical significance of sentences. However, his criteria for sentences—translatability, verifiability, falsifiability, confirmability—are usable, and under the assumptions needed for the Carnap sentence approach, verifiability, falsifiability, and translatability become equivalent. As a result of the Carnap sentence approach, metaphysics is rendered analytic. (shrink)

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)

Perhaps the actual world does not contain moral properties. But might moral properties be impossible because no world, possible or actual, contains them? Two metaethical theories can be argued to entail just that conclusion; viz., emotivism and error theory. This paper works towards the strongest formulation of the emotivist argument for the impossibility of moral properties, but ultimately rejects it. It then uses the reason why the emotivist argument fails to argue that error-theoretic arguments for the impossibility of moral properties (...) face the same conclusion. Finally the paper argues that these arguments for the possibility of moral properties might have consequences for our thinking about their actuality, regardless of whether we accept emotivism or error theory. (shrink)

In his essay “Logical Empiricism”, in the anthologyTwentieth Century Philosophy, Professor Feigl writes: “All forms of empiricism agree in repudiating the existence of synthetic a priori knowledge.”2Schlick makes the same point even more forcibly: “The empiricism which I represent believes itself to be clear on the point that, as a matter of principle, all propositions are either synthetic a posteriori or tautologous; synthetic aprioripropositions seem to it to be a logical impossibility.”3 The denial of synthetic apriorisis a major thesis of (...) the logical empiricist position, being found in the writings of most of the leaders of the movement.4 The reason for its importance is fairly clear. It provides a formula on which the empiricists can base their critique of traditional philosophy. To use Ayer's phrase, denial of the synthetic aprioriresults in “the elimination of metaphysics”. The philosophical tradition to which the empiricists are opposed and whose “metaphysics” they wish to eliminate can be called, somewhat loosely, rationalism. (shrink)

We compare Carnap's and Kuhn's views on science. Although there are important differences between them, the similarities are striking. The basis for the latter is a pragmatically oriented semantic conventionalist picture of science, which suggests that the view that post-positivist philosophy of science constitutes a radical revolution which has no interesting affinities with logical positivism must be seriously mistaken.

This article explores how the thought that language is expressive, in the sense of bearing emotional or affective meaning, can be made sense of, with particular attention to two authors for whom this thought plays an important role. It begins by introducing the idea of language being “expressive” and using Charles Taylor's work to consider its potential interest, before showing how the expressiveness of language might be accounted for by a position that seems particularly suited to this task, namely Merleau‐Ponty's (...) view of embodied expression in Phenomenology of Perception. I then set out a significant challenge to that position based on Wittgenstein's “private language argument,” which implies there is no necessary connection between language use and a subject's internal (affective) states, thus contesting Merleau‐Ponty's explanatory emphasis on the body. I therefore propose a revised “complex” view of language's expressiveness that meets this Wittgensteinian challenge by reconceiving the body's role. Finally, I draw out some implications of this revised view, arguing that while language itself cannot be considered expressive, it remains significant that we can experience language as expressive. I also suggest that, although apparently threatened, Taylor's position can not only accommodate, but be better understood with, this revised view. (shrink)

My purpose in this paper is to look at Cassirer's relation to critical philosophy from a new perspective. Most discussions concerning Cassirer's Kantianism have so far centered on his relation to neo-Kantianism and the Marburg school. My focus will not be on neo-Kantianism but on Cassirer's notion of a "critique of culture." In an often cited paragraph from the introduction to The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer says that his aim is to broaden Kant's critical approach to all various forms (...) of culture, to language as well as myth and art, and thus to transform the "critique of reason" into the "critique of culture." I will explore Cassirer's concept of the "critique of culture" and suggest that it can best be understood by placing it in the context of early twentieth century German philosophy. More precisely, I will aim to show that Cassirer's critique can be seen as an effort to find a middle path between Lebensphilosophie and the positivism of the Vienna Circle. (shrink)

On rationalist infallibilism, a wide range of both (i) analytic and (ii) synthetic a priori propositions can be infallibly justified (or absolutely warranted), i.e., justified to a degree that entails their truth and precludes their falsity. Though rationalist infallibilism is indisputably running its course, adherence to at least one of the two species of infallible a priori justification refuses to disappear from mainstream epistemology. Among others, Putnam (1978) still professes the a priori infallibility of some category (i) propositions, while Burge (...) (1986, 1988, 1996) and Lewis (1996) have recently affirmed the a priori infallibility of some category (ii) propositions. In this paper, I take aim at rationalist infallibilism by calling into question the a priori infallibility of both analytic and synthetic propositions. The upshot will be twofold: first, rationalist infallibilism unsurprisingly emerges as a defective epistemological doctrine, and second, more importantly, the case for the a priori infallibility of one or both categories of propositions turns out to lack cogency. (shrink)

This paper discusses the account of alethic modality as presented by Wilfrid Sellars in his earlier work from 1947 to 1958. Its aim is twofold. First, I discuss Sellars' analysis by exploring its historical relationship to Carnap's account of modality. I argue that Carnap's early syntactic treatment of modality profoundly influenced Sellars' own so-called ‘regulist' account of modality in terms of rules of inference. Furthermore, it is suggested that Sellars' lesser-known possible worlds analysis was influenced by Carnap's later semantic account (...) of modality. The second aim of the paper is a critical one. I raise a number of objections to Sellars’ account of modality and argue that his account confronts some serious limitations. I also argue that Sellars does not provide a satisfying explanation of the relationship between his regulist account and his possible worlds analysis. I offer such an explanation by arguing that his regulist account should be understood as a pragmatic account of what is conveyed by the use of modal sentences, whereas his possible worlds analysis is a semantic account of the asserted content of modal statements. That is, the regulist account and the possible worlds analysis have different explanatory targets. (shrink)

As is rather generally admitted today, the terms of our language in scientific as well as in everyday use, are not completely precise, but exhibit a more or less high degree of vagueness. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the consequences of this circumstance for a series of questions which belong to the field of logic. First of all, the meaning and the logical status of the concept of vagueness will be analyzed; then we will try to (...) find out whether logical terms are free from vagueness, and whether vagueness has an influence upon the validity of the customary principles of logic; finally, the possibilities of diminishing the vagueness of scientific concepts by suitable logical devices will be briefly dealt with. As starting point for the subsequent considerations we choose the clear and stimulating analysis of the concept of vagueness which has recently been carried out by Max Black ([1]) and which has suggested the considerations of this paper. (shrink)

Abstract: One oft-cited feature of speech acts is their expressive character: Assertion expresses belief, apology regret, promise intention. Yet expression, or at least sincere expression, is as I argue a form of showing: A sincere expression shows whatever is the state that is the sincerity condition of the expressive act. How, then, can a speech act show a speaker's state of thought or feeling? To answer this question I consider three varieties of showing, and argue that only one of them (...) is suited to help us answer our question. I also argue that concepts from the evolutionary biology of communication provide one source of insight into how speech acts enable one to show, and thereby express, a psychological state. (shrink)

Methods and goals in philosophy are discussed by first describing an ideal, and then looking at how the ideal might be approached. David Lewis’s work in metaphysics is critically examined and compared to analogous work by Mackie and Carnap. Some large-scale philosophical systematic work, especially in metaphysics, is best treated as model-building, in a sense of that term that draws on the philosophy of science. Models are constructed in a way that involves deliberate simplification, or other imaginative modification of reality, (...) in order to make relationships visible or problems tractable. (shrink)

Popper’s original definition of verisimilitude in terms of comparisons of truth content and falsity content has known counter-examples. More complicated approaches have met with mixed success. This paper uses a new account of logical content to develop a definition of verisimilitude that is close to Popper’s original account. It is claimed that Popper’s mistake was to couch his account of truth and falsity content in terms of true and false consequences. Comparison to a similar approach by Schurz and Wiengartner show (...) certain advantages of this new approach. (shrink)

In Gemes (1990) I examined certain formal versions of hypothetico-deductivism (H-D) showing that they have the unacceptable consequence that "Abe is a white raven" confirms "All ravens are black"! In Gemes (1992) I developed a new notion of content that could save H-D from this bizarre consequence. In this paper, I argue that more traditional formulations of H-D also need recourse to this new notion of content. I present a new account of the vexing notion of the natural axiomatization of (...) a theory. The notion is used to construct a form of H-D that allows for the type of selective confirmation without which Glymour (1980a,b) claims H-D is hopeless. (shrink)

There are many ways of understanding the nature of philosophical questions. One may consider their morphology, semantics, relevance, or scope. This article introduces a different approach, based on the kind of informational resources required to answer them. The result is a definition of philosophical questions as questions whose answers are in principle open to informed, rational, and honest disagreement, ultimate but not absolute, closed under further questioning, possibly constrained by empirical and logico-mathematical resources, but requiring noetic resources to be answered. (...) The article concludes with a discussion of some of the consequences of this definition for a conception of philosophy as the study (or “science”) of open questions, which uses conceptual design to analyse and answer them. (shrink)

Do numbers exist? Carnap (1956 [1950]) famously argues that this question can be understood in an “internal” and in an “external” sense, and calls “external” questions “non-cognitive”. Carnap also says that external questions are raised “only by philosophers” (p. 207), which means that, in his view, philosophers raise ”non-cognitive” questions. However, it is not clear how the internal/external distinction and Carnap’s related views about philosophy should be understood. This paper provides a new interpretation. I draw attention to Carnap’s distinction between (...) purely external statements, which are independent from all frameworks, and pragmatic external statements, which concern which framework one should adopt, and argue that the latter express noncognitive mental states. Specifically, I argue that “frameworks” are systems of rules for the assessment of statements, which are utterances of ordinary language sentences. Pragmatic external statements express noncognitive dispositions to follow only certain rules of assessment. For instance, “numbers exist” understood as a pragmatic external statement expresses a noncognitive disposition to use only rules of assessment according to which numbers do exist. Carnap can thereby be understood as proposing a distinctive form of noncognitivism about ontology that is in some respects analogous to norm-expressivism in metaethics. (shrink)